I rather suspect that merging was easier for me than it’d been for mother. I still remembered that time before Beldaran and I’d been born, so close proximity – even union – was not totally alien to me. On second thoughts, though, mother had probably been born as one of a litter, so she’d been through that herself.

An idle thought came to me even as mother and I flowed into the owl, and the answer, naturally, was right there. I did, as a matter of fact, have aunts and uncles I’d never known, and now I did know them – and love them – even as mother had when they were all playful puppies.

We preened our feathers almost absently as we grew accustomed to our union, and then, our thoughts unified, we rose on snowy wings into the rain-swept darkness.

We flew out toward the north, and we soon saw the smouldering campfires of the Angarak army which had settled for the night not three leagues from the Stronghold. We continued on to the center of that huge encampment, and there we spied the iron pavilion of the Dragon-God. Silently we settled on the ornamental battlements. Of course, everything about the pavilion was ornamental. The whole thing was no more than a decoration stacked atop a very large wagon. Torak’s ego was even more grotesquely expanded than we’d imagined.

We peered around with our large, golden eyes, and we spied an embrasured window near the top of one of the towers, and we found that detail not only amusing but convenient. A few wing beats lifted us to that embrasure, and our clawed feet caught its lower edge. Then we wormed our way inside, enclosing ourselves as we did so – enclosing so completely that we were turned all inward. It was that inward turning, of course, that made us invisible and permitted no stray thought to escape to warn Torak of our presence.

‘I am ill at ease, Zedar.’ The voice was hollow, echoing, and we immediately saw why. Torak lounged on his iron throne almost in a posture of repose, but his maimed face was still enclosed in that polished steel mask. The mask that hid his maiming had become a part of him.

‘It is always thus before a battle, Master,’ Zedar replied. ‘I share thy disquiet.’

‘Can the reports we have received of the nature of this Algar fortress indeed be true?’ Torak asked in his harsh, hollow voice.

‘The Alorns are a stupid people, Master,’ Zedar sneered. ‘Set any empty, meaningless task before them and they will mindlessly pursue it for generations. Like ants, the Algars have been piling rocks atop that absurd heap of stone for eons now.’

‘It is an inconvenience, nothing more, Zedar. I will brush it aside and continue on toward my goal. Aldur’s Orb will be mine again, and with it yet another prize.’

‘Oh?’

‘Long have I considered this, Zedar, and now is my mind set upon a goal. I will have lordship and dominion over all this world and a jewel will ornament my crown.’

‘Aldur’s Orb, Master?’ Zedar guessed.

‘Cthrag Yaska – my brother’s Orb – is no ornament, Zedar. It is but a means to an end. Truly I tell thee, Zedar, I do hate that accursed jewel for what it hath done unto me. The jewel of which I spake is more fair. I will be the king of all the world, and it is fitting that a king should have a queen. Already have I chosen she who shall share my throne.’ Then he laughed a hideous laugh. ‘She is not fond of me, but, truly, I shall much enjoy bending her to my will. She will obey me – nay, even worship me.’

‘And who is this fortunate woman who will be thy queen, Master?’

‘Think, Zedar. Truly, it was thine own clever deception of my brother’s handmaiden, Salmissra, which set me upon my present course.’ He sighed. ‘My brothers have cast me out, so now must I father a new race of Gods to assist me in my domination of the world. Who of all the women of this world is fit to share my throne – and my bed?’

‘Polgara?’ Zedar asked incredulously.

‘Thou art quick, Zedar,’ the One-eyed God said. ‘Indeed, our pilgrimage upon the face of this continent hath two goals – two prizes. The first prize is Cthrag Yaska, my brother’s Orb. The second, and no less important, is Polgara, daughter of Belgarath. She will be mine, Zedar. I will have Polgara to wife, and will she, nil she, Polgara will be mine!’

Chapter 32

I shrieked in the silence of mind and heart at this suddenly revealed horror, and it was only mother’s iron control that kept my terror and revulsion from echoing from the Eastern Escarpment to the mountains of Ulgoland. All thought ceased as I realized that should a direct confrontation between Torak and me ever take place, his Will would crush mine and I’d inevitably succumb to his hideous blandishments. I would become his slave – and worse. I think that had mother not been so totally merged with me, I would have gone mad. Her method of preventing that was fairly direct. She simply suspended my awareness and took over. I have no memory of our owl wriggling back out of Torak’s tin palace nor of taking wing as mother flew us up and up through the rainy darkness.

‘All right, Polgara!’ Her voice at the center of my stunned consciousness was crisp, ‘Snap out of it!’

‘Oh, mother!’ I wailed.

‘Stop that! You had to know about this, Pol, and you had to hear it from his own mouth. Now pull yourself together. We have things that have to be done.’

I looked around and saw that we were much higher than owls usually fly. Our wings were locked and we were making a long, shallow descent toward the mountainous Algarian Stronghold. ‘As soon as we get back, you’d better wake your father and let him know that Torak’s arrived, but he doesn’t need to know about what we just heard. Go ahead and call him, Pol. It takes him a while to start moving when he first wakes up, so we’ll be there before he climbs all those stairs.’

I grimly pushed my revulsion aside. ‘I think you’d better come up here, father,’ I sent my thought out to my snoring parent.

‘Where are you?’ his thought was blurred with sleep.

‘I can’t understand you, father. Just come up the parapet on top of the north wall. There’s something you’d better have a look at.’

‘Keep a tight grip on yourself, Pol,’ mother suggested. ‘He’ll ask questions, and you won’t want to be too specific when you answer.’

‘I do that most of the time anyway, mother.’ I’d pushed my private horror aside enough to be rational.

We swooped in and settled on the parapet just before father came puffing up the steep stairs. He took one look at the form that enclosed me and immediately began to scold me. ‘I’ve asked you not to do that, Pol.’ He couldn’t know, of course, that I wasn’t alone in that assumed form, but I was, and I was awed by the depth of mother’s love for this shabby and sometimes foolish old man.