‘You won’t try to run away, will you?’ she demanded.
‘Of course not. I need to talk with Princess Xoria.’
‘I saw you first. Xoria can have you after I’ve finished with you.’
As I mentioned before, I’d swung by Prolgu on my way to Tolnedra. My long talk with the Gorim had been about the Dryads, so I was prepared. I reached into my pocket and took out a piece of chocolate candy. ‘Here,’ I said, holding it out to her.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s something to eat. Try it. You’ll like it.’
She took the candy and sniffed at it suspiciously. Then she popped it into her mouth.
You wouldn’t believe how she reacted. There’s something about chocolate that does strange things to Dryads. I’ve seen many women in the throes of passion, but Xalla carried it to such extremes that it actually embarrassed me. Finally, I turned my back and went off a little distance so that she could have some privacy.
I don’t know that I need to go into any greater detail. I’m sure you get the picture.
Anyway, after the sugar had run its course through her tiny body, Xalla was very docile - even kittenish. You might want to keep that in mind the next time you’re going through the Wood of the Dryads. I know that it’s a point of pride among most young men to claim unlimited stamina in that particular area of human activity, but these are the young men who’ve never encountered a Dryad at that time of year.
Take chocolate with you. Trust me.
My affectionate little companion took me through the Wood to Princess Xoria’s tree. Xoria was even tinier than Xalla, and she had flaming red hair. Now that I think about it, she very closely resembled her ultimate great-granddaughter. She was comfortably lying on a bed of moss in a fork of her tree about twenty feet up when Xalla led me into the clearing. She looked at me a bit appraisingly. ‘I appreciate the gift, Xalla,’ she said critically, ‘but isn’t it a bit old?’
‘It has some food in its pocket, Xoria,’ Xalla replied, ‘and the food makes you feel very nice.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ the princess said indifferently.
‘You really ought to try some, Xoria,’ Xalla urged her.
‘I just ate. Why don’t you take it out into the Wood and kill it? It’s probably too old to be much good.’
‘Just try a piece of its candy,’ Xalla pressed. ‘You’ll really like it.’
‘Oh, all right, I guess.’ The Dryad princess climbed down. ‘Give me some,’ she commanded me.
‘As your Highness wishes,’ I replied, reaching into my pocket.
Princess Xoria’s reaction to the chocolate was even more intense than Xalla’s had been, and when she finally recovered her composure, she seemed to have lost her homicidal impulses. ‘Why have you come into our Wood, old man?’ she asked me.
‘I’m supposed to suggest a marriage to you,’ I replied.
‘What’s marriage?’
‘It’s a sort of formalized arrangement that involves mating,’ I explained.
‘With you? I don’t think so. You’re nice enough, I suppose, but you’re very old.’
‘No,’ I told her, ‘not with me, with somebody else.’
‘What’s involved in this marriage business?’
‘There’s a little ceremony, and then you live together. You’re supposed to agree not to mate with anybody else.’
‘How boring. Why on earth would I want to agree to something like that?’
‘To protect your Wood, your Highness. If you marry the young man, his family will keep wood-cutters away from your oak trees.’
‘We can do that ourselves. A lot of humans have come into our Wood with axes. Their bones are still here, but their axes turned to rust a long time ago.’
‘Those were single wood-cutters, Xoria. If they start coming down here in gangs, you and your sisters will run out of arrows. They’ll also build fires.’
‘Fire!’
‘Humans like fire. It’s one of their peculiarities.’
‘Why are you doing this, old man? Why are you trying to force me to join with somebody I’ve never even seen?’
‘Necessity, Xoria. The young man’s a member of the Borune family, and you’re going to mate with him because a long time from now your mating’s going to produce someone very special. She’ll be the mate of the Child of Light, and she’ll be called the Queen of the World.’ Then I sighed and put it to her directly. ‘You’re going to do it, Xoria. You’ll argue with me about it, but in the end, you’ll do as you’re told - just the same as I will. Neither of us has any choice in the matter.’
‘What does this Borune creature look like?’
I’d looked rather carefully at the young man while I’d been talking to his father, so I cast his image onto the surface of the forest pool at the foot of Princess Xoria’s tree so that she could see the face of her future husband.
She gazed at the image with those grass-green eyes of hers, absently nibbling on the end of one of her flaming red locks. ‘It’s not bad-looking,’ she conceded. ‘Is it vigorous?’
‘All the Borunes are vigorous, Xoria.’
‘Give me another piece of candy, and I’ll think about it.’
Chapter 29
The son of the Grand Duke of the Borunes was named Dellon, and he was a rather pleasant young man who found the idea of being married to a Dryad intriguing. I went back to Tol Borune to pick up more candy and to talk with him privately. I cast Princess Xoria’s image on the surface of a basin of water for him, and he grew even more interested. Then I went back to the Wood and dosed Xoria with judiciously spaced-out pieces of sugar-laced candy.
You have to be very careful when you’re feeding sweets to a Dryad. If you give her too much, she’ll become addicted to sugar, and she won’t be interested in anything else. I wanted Xoria to be docile, not comatose.
The major stumbling-block in the whole business turned out to be Dellon’s mother, the Grand Duchess. The lady was a member of the Honethite family, and the sole reason the Honeths had arranged her marriage to the Grand Duke of the Borune family in the first place was to gain access to the priceless resources of the Wood of the Dryads. There were forests in the mountains east of Tol Honeth and around Tol Rane, of course, but those forests were fir, pine and spruce - all softwoods. The only significant source of hardwoods in Tolnedra was the forest of Vordue in the north, and the Vorduvians charged outrageous prices for their lumber. The Honeths had been eyeing the oaks in the Wood of the Dryads with undisguised greed for centuries.
My promise to the Grand Duke that this marriage would eventually result in a Borune Dynasty on the imperial throne had won him over to my side, but when I casually mentioned that one of the stipulations of the marriage contract would be the inviolability of the Wood, the Grand Duchess went up in flames.
She was a Honethite to the core, however, so after an initial outburst, she resorted to guile. I knew perfectly well that her objection was based on economics, but she pretended that it was theological. Religion is almost always the last refuge of the scoundrel - and the Grand Duchess was a scoundrel if I ever met one. It sort of runs in her family. Back before the cracking of the world, the Gods had frowned on interracial marriages. Alorns didn’t marry Nyissans, and Tolnedrans didn’t marry Arends. Torak, of course, was the one who took it to extremes. My proposal involved an interspecies union, and Dellon’s mother took her case to the priests of Nedra. Priests are bigots by nature, so she enlisted their aid without much difficulty.
That brought everything to a standstill. I was still shuttling back and forth between the Wood and Tol Borune, so she had plenty of opportunity to sneak around behind my back and gain support in her opposition.
‘My hands are tied, Belgarath,’ the Grand Duke told me when I returned to Tol Borune after a trip down into the Wood. ‘The priests absolutely forbid this marriage.’
‘Your wife’s playing politics, your Grace,’ I told him bluntly.
‘I know, but as long as the priests of Nedra are on her side, there’s nothing I can do.’
I fumed about it for a while, and then I came up with a solution. The Grand Duchess wanted to play politics, and I was going to show her that I could play, too. ‘I’ll be gone for a while, your Grace,’ I told him.
‘Where are you going? Back to the Wood?’
‘No. I have to see somebody in Tol Honeth.’
This was during the early years of the second Vorduvian Dynasty, and I knew just the man to see. When I reached Tol Honeth, I went to the imperial palace and bullied enough functionaries to get a private audience with the emperor, Ran Vordue II.
‘I’m honored, Ancient One,’ he greeted me.
‘Let’s skip the pleasantries, Ran Vordue,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got much time, and we have some interests that coincide right now. What would you say if I told you that the Honeths are right on the verge of gaining access to an unlimited supply of hardwood?’
‘What?’ he exploded.
‘I thought you might feel that way about it. The fortunes of your family are based almost entirely on the Forest of Vordue. If the Honeths gain access to the Wood of the Dryads, you can expect the price of hardwood lumber to head for the cellar. I’m trying to arrange a marriage that’ll keep the Honeths out of the Wood - permanently. The Borune Grand Duchess is a Honethite, though, and she’s fighting me on theological grounds. Is the High Priest of Nedra by any chance related to you?’