After Daran had finished, he tossed his whip down and picked up his clothes again. ‘I think that concludes our business here for the day, my friends,’ he announced to the shocked assemblage. ‘If I remember correctly, the archery contest begins this afternoon. I might even shoot off a quiver of arrows myself. I’ll see you all there, then.’
After the three of us had returned to Kamion’s study, I put it to the two of them directly. ‘You had that flogging all planned in advance, didn’t you?’
‘Of course, Aunt Pol,’ Daran grinned at me.
‘Without consulting me?’
‘We didn’t want to upset you, Pol,’ Kamion said smoothly. ‘Did you really find it too offensive?’
I pretended to consider it. ‘Not really,’ I conceded. ‘Considering Karak’s behavior, it was more or less appropriate.’
‘We talked about some alternatives,’ Kamion said. ‘I thought it might be sort of nice if I called that beer-soaked bully out, gave him a sword and then chopped him to pieces, but his Highness decided that might upset you, so we settled for the flogging instead – less messy, you understand.’
‘And the threat to chop off his hands?’
‘I just made that up on the spur of the moment, Aunt Pol,’ Daran admitted. ‘I think it might have gotten my point about wife-beating across, though.’ Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Why don’t we enter that in the criminal code, Kamion?’
‘You’re a barbarian, Daran,’ I accused him.
‘No, Aunt Pol, I’m an Alorn. I know my people, and I know what frightens them. I don’t want to rule by terror, but I do want other Rivans to understand that things can get very nasty if they do something that I don’t like, and I really don’t like wife-beating.’ He leaned back in his chair and looked speculatively out the window at the bright sunny day. ‘That’s really at the center of all power, Aunt Pol,’ he mused. ‘We can try to act civilized and polite, but at the bottom of it all, the power of any ruler is based on a threat. Fortunately, we don’t have to carry that threat out too often. If I’d known I was going to have to be a savage to sit in my father’s place, I wouldn’t be here at all. I’d still be running, and neither you nor grandfather would ever have been able to find me.’
I was so proud of him at that point that I almost exploded.
News of Daran’s handling of the feud between Garhein and Altor spread far and wide throughout the Isle, and the Rivans began to look at their youthful Prince Regent with a new respect. Daran was working out just fine.
Chapter 11
Anrak sailed into the harbor late the following summer. Over the years I’d noted that Anrak moved around a lot. Most men settle down eventually, but Anrak was born to wander. The cousin of Iron-grip, Bull-neck, and Fleet-foot had grey hair by now, but there was still an irrepressible quality of youth about him. He visited with Riva for quite some time and then joined Kamion, Daran, and me in a blue-draped conference chamber high in one of the towers of the Citadel. As Kamion’s seemingly endless succession of children had begun to spill over into his study, it had become necessary for us to find another place to work. ‘My cousin’s not going to get over his wife’s death, is he, Pol?’ Anrak asked as we all sat at a long conference table. ‘He talks about old times, but he doesn’t seem to even mention anything that’s happened recently. It’s almost as if his life ended when your sister died.’
‘In many ways it did, Anrak,’ I told him, ‘and mine very nearly did, too.’
He sighed. ‘I’ve seen it happen before, Pol. It’s too bad.’ He sighed again and then looked at Daran. ‘How’s he doing?’ he asked as if Daran weren’t sitting right there.
‘We have some hopes for him,’ Kamion replied. Then he recounted the story of the flogging.
‘Good for you, Daran,’ Anrak said approvingly. ‘Oh, before I forget, my uncle Bear-shoulders asked me to pass something along to you.’
‘How is he?’ Daran asked.
Anrak shrugged. ‘Old,’ he said. ‘You still wouldn’t want to cross him, though. He’s having trouble with the Bear-Cult, and he wanted me to warn you about it.’ He leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Back in the old days, the Cult didn’t really have any kind of coherent system of beliefs. All they were really doing was trying to find some theological justification for pillaging the southern kingdoms. That all changed after Belgarath and the others took the Orb back from Torak, though. Now they want Riva – or his successor – to lead them south with that flaming sword. Right now, Riva’s at the very center of what the Cultists choose to call their religion.’
‘We’ve had some problems here, too,’ Kamion noted. ‘Elthek, the Rivan Deacon, leads the Cult here on the Isle. Since he’s the high priest of Belar, we have to step around him rather carefully. Iron-grip didn’t want any direct confrontations with the Church, so he didn’t step on the Deacon’s neck the way he probably should have.’
‘I’m not nearly as accommodating as my father is,’ Daran noted. The time’s not far off when I’m going to kill Elthek.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’ Anrak asked.
‘I’ll change the law,’ Daran replied.
I looked at him rather closely and saw that it was almost time to pull him up short. My nephew, emboldened by his success with Garhein and Altor, hovered right on the verge of becoming a tyrant.
‘Is Bull-neck having the same problems in Drasnia?’ Kamion asked Anrak.
‘It’s even worse there,’ Anrak replied moodily. ‘After Fleet-foot trampled all over the Cult in Algaria, the survivors fled into the fens and then into the border country off toward Gar og Nadrak. The Cult controls virtually everything east of Boktor.’
‘I’d say that the core of the problem’s here, then,’ Kamion observed. ‘This is where the Orb is, and if the Cult can gain control of the Orb’s Guardian, we’ll all be marching south before long.’
‘You could solve that by making every priest of Belar here on the Isle swim back to Val Alorn,’ Anrak said with an evil grin.
‘In full armor,’ Daran added.
‘No.’ I said it firmly. ‘Some of those priests are innocent, and people need the comforts of religion. I do think that Kamion’s right, though. We don’t want the Cult so close to the Orb.’