Of course, I was not the only one who’d been totally incensed by the murders. As I mentioned, both Corrolin and Alleran took them very personally, and the simple blockade of the borders of Asturia tightened, becoming almost like a noose, and large raiding parties swept out of both Mimbre and Wacune, savaging Asturia with a kind of studied brutality.

Despite my best efforts, the Arendish civil wars had taken up almost exactly where they’d left off when I’d first gone there. The thing they called ‘Polgara’s Peace’ had fallen apart.

The situation in Asturia was growing more desperate as the months dragged by. Corrolin’s Mimbrate knights rode almost at will through the agricultural south and west of the Asturian duchy, and Wacite archers, who were at least as proficient as their Asturian counterparts, quite literally killed everything that moved along Asturia’s eastern frontier. At first this random violence seemed senseless, but when I berated Alleran for renewing the war, he gave me that innocent look that Arends are so good at and said, ‘We aren’t making war on the Asturians, Aunt Pol. We’re making war on their food. Eventually, they’ll get hungry enough to take care of Nerasin all by themselves.’

It was a brutal, ugly way to make war, but nobody’s ever said that wars are pretty.

Nerasin grew increasingly desperate as food grew scarcer and scarcer on the tables in Vo Astur. His solution to his problem should have been obvious, but unfortunately, I completely missed it.

It all happened on a blustery night when I’d decided to stay home rather than go to the palace. The palace was the nerve-center of the ‘food-fight’, and the noise of messengers running through the halls waving dispatches announcing that ten Asturians cows and fourteen of their pigs had been killed that day was starting to get on my nerves. To my way of looking at things, the assassination of cattle hardly constituted a major victory, so I decided that I’d earned a quiet evening at home. I took a long, leisurely bath, ate a light supper, and retired early with a good book.

It was sometime after midnight when I was somewhat rudely awakened by Killane’s shouting. My personal maid – Killane’s youngest sister Rana, incidentally – was trying valiantly to keep him out of my bedroom, and he was just as valiantly trying to get in.

I muttered something that I won’t repeat here, climbed out of bed, and pulled on my robe. ‘What’s going on out here?’ I demanded crossly, jerking open my bedroom door.

‘It’s me oafish brother, me Lady,’ the slender little Rana said in disgust. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all t’ find that he’s been drinkin’.’

‘Go along w’ y’ now, Rana,’ Killane told her. ‘There be trouble at th’ palace, Lady Polgara,’ he said to me. ‘Y’d better be after puttin’ on some clothes. His Grace’s messenger’s waitin’ fery’ out in th’ sittin’ room.’

‘What’s happened, Killane?’

‘His Grace’s son’s bin spirited away by th’ cursed Asturians, me Lady, an’ th’ Duke wants y’ to come t’ th’ palace immediately.’

Tell the messenger I’ll be right with him,’ I said. Then I closed the door and pulled on my clothes hurriedly, muttering curses under my breath. We’d had plenty of evidence to prove just how unprincipled Nerasin was. Why hadn’t I anticipated his next move?

Abduction has long played a significant role in international politics – as Garion and Ce’Nedra can testify – but the removal of Duke Alleran’s two-year-old son from the palace in Vo Wacune was the first time I’d ever encountered the practice. Some abductions are perpetrated purely for the ransom, and those are rather easily dealt with. A political abduction, however, doesn’t involve money, but behavior. A message had been found on the young Kathandrion’s bed, and it was fairly blunt. It told Alleran that if he didn’t pull back from Asturia’s eastern frontier, he’d never see his son alive again. Mayaserell was in hysterics, and Alleran wasn’t much better, so there wasn’t really much point in talking with them. I provided the court physicians with a compound of certain herbs that was strong enough to fell a horse, and then I spoke at some length with the young duke’s advisors. ‘We don’t have much choice,’ I told them finally. ‘Do as that message demands. Then send a dispatch to Duke Corrolin in Vo Mimbre. Tell him what’s happened here, and also tell him that I’m taking care of it. I want everybody to keep his nose out of this. I’ll deal with it, and I don’t want any enthusiasts running around cluttering things up for me.’ Then I went home to think my way through the situation.

The short-range solution would have been quite simple. Clearly, I wouldn’t be dealing with ‘talented’ people here, and locating the place where little Kathandrion was being held wouldn’t have been difficult, but then we’d have all had to sit around holding our breath while we waited for Nerasin’s next move. Clearly, I’d have to come up with something that would permanently keep the nominal Duke of Asturia out of mischief. Killing him would be permanent, of course, but then we’d have to deal with his successor. After what Nerasin had done to Asrana and Mandorin, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about keeping him alive, but the politics of the situation – and mother’s cryptic statement that someday I’d need Nerasin – strongly suggested that the best hope for restoring peace to Arendia lay in compelling Nerasin to do exactly what I told him to do for the rest of his life and then insuring as best I could that he lived well into his eighties. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that the rescue of Alleran’s son and the ‘civilizing’ of Nerasin should not be two separate acts, but should rather be combined.

Nerasin’s hired abductors could be holding the boy anywhere, but, in reality, that didn’t matter. I could get exactly what I wanted in Vo Astur itself. I didn’t have to tear the woods apart in a desperate search. Once I had Nerasin under my thumb, I could arrange for the boy’s return without endangering him or savaging vast tracts of Asturian real estate.

My next problem was standing just outside the door to my library when I prepared to leave the next morning. His red fringe of a beard was bristling, his arms were crossed defiantly, and his expression was adamantine. ‘I’ll not be after lettin’ y’ go off by yerself, Lady-O,’ he told me flatly.