‘I’m not ready for this, Aunt Pol,’ he protested.

‘It’s either you or your son, Alleran, and he’s a lot less ready than you are. That festering sore called Asturia is on your western border, and Nerasin will jump on any perceived weakness. It’s your duty, your Grace. Don’t let us down’

‘If I could just figure out why this cursed thing flew all apart the way it did!’ he burst out, slamming his fist down on the drawings. ‘I’ve gone over all the arithmetic myself. It should have worked.’

‘It did, Alleran. It did exactly what that design called for it to do. The only problem with the arithmetic was that the computations concerning the strength of the structural beams were left out. The catapult didn’t work because it was too powerful. The frame should have been made of steel instead of wooden beams. The pressures were too great to be contained by a wooden frame. That’s why it tore itself apart.’

That much steel would have been very expensive, Aunt Pol.’

‘I think the wood was even more expensive, your Grace. Fold those drawings up and put them away. We have a great deal to do.’

Alleran’s coronation was subdued, but Corrolin traveled up from Vo Mimbre to attend, so that put a bit of iron in the back of the new Duke of Wacune. I sat in on their private discussions, but it probably wasn’t really necessary. Kathandrion had been wise enough not to raise his heir in a political vacuum, and the Mimbrate emissary to the court at Vo Wacune had given Alleran instruction in the somewhat overly-involved courtesies of the Mimbrates. Their first meetings were a bit stiff, but as they came to know each other better, they started to relax. Their major concern was still Asturia, and that naturally drew them closer together.

It was in the autumn of that same year that Nerasin did something that pushed me very close to the line my father had repeatedly warned me not to cross.

Asrana and Mandorin were riding down to Vo Mimbre for what was probably only a social visit, and when they reached that band of trees that lines the River Arend and started upstream toward Vo Mimbre, a number of Asturian archers, who’d somehow managed to sneak down across the plains of Mimbre to the southern border, quite literally riddled my two dear friends with arrows. Nerasin had obviously discovered that Asrana’d been behind all the troubles he’d been having in Vo Astur, and so he’d taken some fairly typical Arendish steps.

When I heard about the deaths of my friends, I was very nearly overcome with grief. I wept for days and then steeled myself for revenge. I was quite certain that I could devise some things to do to Nerasin that would make strong men shudder in horror for several thousand years. Killane and his family wisely stayed clear of me when I came storming out of my room. My first stop was the kitchen. I was going to need some sharp implements to carry out my plans for Nerasin. My training as a cook gave me some interesting terms to work with. ‘Filleting’ had a nice sound to it, I thought, and so did ‘de-boning’. The idea of cutting out Nerasin’s bones one by one very slowly had an enormous appeal for some reason. My eyes brightened when I came across a cheese-grater.

‘All right, Polgara, put the tools back where you got them. You’re not going anywhere.’ It was mother’s voice.

‘He murdered my friends, mother!’ I burst out. ‘I’m not going to let him get away with that!’

‘I see that you’re becoming very adept at following local customs,’ she noted, and there was a faint touch of rebuke in her voice.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Why did the Master send you to Arendia?’

‘To put a stop to all their foolishness.’

‘Oh, now I understand. You’re going to wallow in that same foolishness so that you can see what it’s like. Interesting idea. Did you take the same approach in your study of medicine? Did you catch a disease so that you’d understand it better before you tried to cure it?’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you, Polgara. All this brooding about knives and meat-hooks and cheese-graters is exactly what you were sent to Arendia to put a stop to. Nerasin murdered your friends, so now you’re going to murder him. Then one of his relatives will murder you. Then your father will murder somebody else in Nerasin’s family. Then somebody will murder your father. Then Beldin will murder somebody else. And it will go on and on and on until nobody’s even able to remember who Asrana and Mandorin were. That’s what blood feuds are all about, Pol. Congratulations. You’re an Arend to your fingertips, now.’

‘But I loved them, mother!’

‘It’s a noble emotion, but wading in blood isn’t the best way to express it.’

That’s when I started to weep again.

‘I’m glad we had a chance to have this little chat, Pol,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Oh, incidentally, you’re going to need Nerasin a little later, so killing him and chopping him up for stew-meat wouldn’t really be appropriate. Be well, Polgara.’ And then she was gone.

I sighed and put all the kitchen implements back where I’d found them.

The funeral of Asrana and Mandorin was held at Vo Mandor in the autumn of 2327, and Alleran and I, quite naturally, attended. The Arendish religion isn’t good at funerals. Chaldan’s a warrior God, and his priests are far more interested in vengeance than in comforting survivors. Perhaps I’m being a little picky, but it seems to me that a funeral sermon based on the theme, ‘I’ll get even with you for that, you dirty rascal’ lacks a dignified, elegiac tone.

The blood-thirsty ranting of the priest of Chaldan who conducted the funeral seemed to move Alleran and Corrolin, though, because after the funeral and the entombment of Mandorin and Asrana, they got down to some serious plotting about appropriate responses to Nerasin’s atrocious behavior. I chose to forego participation in this little exercise of pure Arendishness. I’d put my own Arendish impulses away along with the cheese-grater.

I wandered instead about the grim, gloomy halls of Mandolin’s fortress, and I ultimately ended up in Asrana’s dressing-room, where her fragrance still faintly lingered. Asrana had never really been what you’d call tidy, and she’d left things scattered all over her dressing table. Without even thinking, I started to straighten up, setting jars and bottles in a neat row along the bottom of her mirror, brushing away the faint dusting of face powder, and placing her combs and brushes at an aesthetically pleasing angle. I was in the act of setting down her favorite ivory comb when I changed my mind. I kept it instead, and I’ve carried it with me for all these years. It lies right now on my own dressing table, not fifteen feet from where I sit at this very moment.