Guardians of the West

Rivan King, he had known much more about farm kitchens and stables than he had about throne rooms and council chambers. Statecraft had been a mystery to him, and he had known no more of diplomacy than he had of algebra.
    Fortunately, the Isle of the Winds was not a difficult kingdom to rule. The Rivan people were orderly, sober, and had a strong regard for duty and civic responsibility. This had made things much easier for their tall, sandy-haired monarch during the trying early years of his reign while he was learning the difficult art of ruling well. He made mistakes, naturally, but the consequences of those early slips and miscalculations were never dire, and his subjects were pleased to note that this earnest, sincere young man who had come so startlingly to the throne never made the same mistake twice. Once he had settled in and had become accustomed to his job, it was probably safe to say that Belgarion -or Garion, as he preferred to be called- almost never encountered major problems in his capacity as King of Riva. He had other titles, however. Some were purely honorary, others not so much so. "Godslayer," for example, involved certain duties which were not likely to come up very often.
    "Lord of the Western Sea" caused him almost no concern whatsoever, since he had concluded quite early that the waves and tides need little supervision and that fish, for the most part, were entirely capable of managing their own government. Most of Garion's headaches stemmed directly from the grand-sounding title, "Overlord of the West." He had assumed at first -since the war with the Angaraks was over- that this title, like the others, was merely something in the nature of a formality, something impressive, but largely empty, which had been tacked on to all the rest, sort of to round them out. It earned him, after all, no tax revenue; it had no special crown or throne; and there was no administrative staff to deal with day-to-day problems.
    But to his chagrin, he soon discovered that one of the peculiarities of human nature was the tendency to want to take problems to the person in charge. Had there not been an Overlord of the West, he was quite sure that his fellow monarchs would have found ways to deal with all those perplexing difficulties by themselves. But as long as he occupied that exalted position, they all seemed to take an almost childlike delight in bringing him the most difficult, the most agonizing, and the most utterly insoluble problems and then happily sitting back with trusting smiles on their faces while he struggled and floundered with them.
    As a case in point, there was the situation which arose in Arendia during the summer of Garion's twenty-third year. The year had gone fairly well up until that point. The misunderstanding which had marred his relationship with Ce'Nedra had been smoothed over, and Garion and his complicated little wife were living together in what might best be described as domestic felicity. The campaign of Emperor Kal Zakath of Mallorea, whose presence on this continent had been a great cause for concern, had bogged down in the mountains of western Cthol Murgos and showed some promise of grinding on for decades far from the borders of any of the Kingdoms of the West. General Varana, the Duke of Anadile, functioning as regent for the ailing Emperor Ran Borune XXIII, had clamped down quite firmly on the excesses of the great families of Tolnedra in their unseemly scramble for the Imperial Throne. All in all, Garion had been looking forward to a period of peace and tranquillity until that warm, early summer day when the letter arrived from King Korodullin of Arendia.
    Garion and Ce'Nedra had been spending a quiet afternoon together in the comfortable royal apartment, talking idly of little, unimportant things -more for the pleasure of each other's company than out of any real concern for the subjects at hand. Garion lounged in a large, blue velvet armchair by the window, and Ce'Nedra sat before a gilt-edged mirror, brushing her long, copper-colored hair. Garion was very fond of Ce'Nedra's hair. Its color was exciting. It smelled good, and there was one delightfully vagrant curl that always seemed to want to tumble appealingly down the side of her smooth, white neck. When the servant brought the letter from the King of Arendia, tastefully carried on a silver tray, Garion took his eyes off his lovely wife almost regretfully.
    He broke the ornately stamped wax seal and opened the crackling