‘To me?’ That startled me.
‘Of course. You’re the one who shoved peace down all our throats, aren’t you? As long as Nerasin’s in power in Vo Astur, this peace of yours is in danger. I’m going to see to it that he doesn’t stay in power for much longer. Once he’s gone, we’ll all be able to breathe much more easily.’
‘Whoever replaces him will probably be just as bad, Asrana.’ I had regressed to ‘low dudgeon’ by now.
‘Well, if he is, the same thing that’s going to happen to Nerasin will happen to him. I’ll sift my way through the whole body of Asturian nobility until I find somebody we can live with, and if I can’t find a reasonable noble, I’ll promote a townsman – or even a serf, if I have to.’
‘You’re very serious about this, aren’t you, Asrana?’ When I’d first heard about her games, I’d thought she was just playing.
‘Dead serious, Polly.’ She lifted her chin. ‘Before you came to Vo Astur, I was just a silly little ornament in Oldoran’s court. You changed all that. You should always be careful when you start throwing words like “patriotism” around in the presence of Arends, you know. We tend to take things too seriously. These past few years of peace have been better for Arendia than anything that’s happened to us for the last six or eight centuries. People here are actually dying of old age now. I’ll depopulate Asturia if that’s what it takes to keep what’s coming to be known as “Polgara’s Peace” from disintegrating.’
‘Polgara’s Peace?’ That really startled me.
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t any of our doing. It’s all your fault, Polly. If you hadn’t waved peace in front of our faces, none of us would have known what it looks like.’
When I calmed down and looked at things from her perspective, I could see that she had a point, and, moreover, that her extensive contacts in Vo Astur made her the best qualified of all of us to keep Nerasin so thoroughly off balance that he’d never have time to cause trouble in the rest of Arendia. I chided her for not keeping me advised, extracted a promise from her that she wouldn’t do anything major without consulting me first, and then I went back to Vo Wacune, coming down inside the grounds of the palace instead of my own rose-garden. I spoke with Kathandrion at some length about Asrana’s activities and asked him to keep Corrolin advised. Then I went on home to give Killane the chance to scold me.
It was in the autumn of 2326 that I helped Alleran’s wife, Mayaserell, through a difficult labor and finally delivered her of a son, who was named after his grandfather – a fairly common practice. Kathandrion was so proud of it, though, that he nearly exploded.
The borders of Asturia, both to the east and to the south, remained sealed – which is to say that no one could conveniently march an army across the lines, but nobody can totally seal a border that runs through a thick forest. Asrana’s messengers and fellow-plotters had little trouble crossing that line, and I’m sure that Nerasin’s people could also slip across. Vo Astur continued to bubble like a teapot that’s been left over the fire too long.
It was on a blustery day in the early spring of 2327 that something happened which I have very good reason to remember. There’d been a certain parity of heavy weaponry among the three Arendish duchies, which is to say that the siege engines of an attacking force couldn’t throw boulders, burning pitch, or baskets full of javelins any farther than the engines of a defending force could. The defenders of a city or fort had walls to hide behind, however, while the attackers did not, and this put the attacking force at a definite disadvantage. Large amounts of money and a great deal of engineering talent were devoted to the improvement of those engines of war, since the extension of the range of a catapult by a mere fifty paces could determine the outcome of a battle.
Kathandrion’s engineers had designed a very large catapult that was based on some highly questionable theories involving pulleys, counterweights, and reciprocal tensions. Frankly, that monstrosity looked like the frame of a large house enveloped in cobwebs to me. Kathandrion was very enthusiastic about it, however, and he hovered over the shop where it was being constructed like a mother hen, and he spent his evenings deeply immersed in the engineers’ drawings. I glanced at them a few times myself, and it seemed that there was something wrong with the concept, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
In time, the monstrosity was completed, and the engineers rolled it out into a nearby meadow to find out if it could really work. Kathandrion himself pulled off his doublet to lend a hand – or in this case, a shoulder – to the task of moving the huge thing into position. Then he bent his back to the cranking of one of the many windlasses that tightened the tangle of ropes to bowstring tautness. The entire court gathered some distance off to one side to watch the Duke of Wacune pull the lanyard that was designed to release all that pent-up force.
I was there as well, and just as all was in readiness, I had a sudden premonition. There was something wrong! ‘Kathandrion!’ I shouted. ‘No!’
But it was too late. The boyishly grinning Duke Kathandrion jerked the lanyard.
And the entire framework exploded into a jumbled mass of snarled rope and splintered timbers! The computations of the engineers had been perfect. Unfortunately, they had not computed the strength of the wooden timbers that formed the frame. The sudden release of all that pent-up energy shattered those heavy beams, spraying the crew surrounding the engine with yard-long splinters that spun out faster than any arrow shot from a bow.
Duke Kathandrion of Wacune, my dear, dear friend, died instantly when a sharp-pointed chunk of wood thicker than his arm drove completely through his head.
All of Wacune went into deep mourning, but after about a week I put aside my own grief and went to the palace to speak with Alleran. His eyes were puffy from weeping as he stood at the table in his father’s study staring at those fatal drawings. ‘It should have worked, Aunt Pol!’ he said in an anguished voice. ‘What went wrong? Everything was put together exactly according to these plans.’
‘It was the plans that were at the heart of the problem, your Grace,’ I told him.
‘Your Grace?’
‘You’re the Duke of Wacune now, my Lord, so you’d better pull yourself together. Even in time of grief, events move on. With your permission, I’ll make the necessary arrangements for your coronation. Pull yourself together, Alleran. Wacune needs you now.’