Pawn of Prophecy

thoughtfully touching his arm at the elbow with the point of the knife.
    Tears coming to his eyes, Doroon gulped down the rest of the liquid and a few minutes later he was nodding, almost drowsing on his stool. He screamed once, though, when Aunt Pol set the broken bone, but after the arm had been wrapped and splinted, he drowsed again. Aunt Pol spoke briefly with the boy's frightened mother and then had Durnik carry him up to bed.
    "You wouldn't really have cut off his arm," Garion said.
    Aunt Pol looked at him, her expression unchanging. "Oh?" she said, and he was no longer sure. "I think I'd like to have a word with Mistress Zubrette now," she said then.
    "She ran away when Doroon fell out of the tree," Garion said.
    "Find her."
    "She's hiding," Garion protested. "She always hides when something goes wrong. I wouldn't know where to look for her."
    "Garion," Aunt Pol said, "I didn't ask you if you knew where to look. I told you to find her and bring her to me."
    "What if she won't come?" Garion hedged.
    "Garion!" There was a note of awful finality in Aunt Pol's tone, and Garion fled.
    "I didn't have anything to do with it," Zubrette lied as soon as Garion led her to Aunt Pol in the kitchen.
    "You," Aunt Pol said, pointing at a stool, "sit!"
    Zubrette sank onto the stool, her mouth open and her eyes wide.
    "You," Aunt Pol said to Garion, pointing at the kitchen door, "outl"
    Garion left hurriedly.
    Ten minutes later a sobbing little girl stumbled out of the kitchen. Aunt Pol stood in the doorway looking after her with eyes as hard as ice.
    "Did you thrash her?" Garion asked hopefully.
    Aunt Pol withered him with a glance. "Of course not," she said. "You don't thrash girls."
    "I would have," Garion said, disappointed. "What did you do to her?"
    "Don't you have anything to do?" Aunt Pol asked.
    "No," Garion said, "not really."
    That, of course, was a mistake.
    "Good," Aunt Pol said, finding one of his ears. "It's time you started to earn your way. You'll find some dirty pots in the scullery. I'd like to have them scrubbed."
    "I don't know why you're angry with me," Garion objected, squirming. "It wasn't my fault that Doroon went up that tree."
    "The scullery, Garion," she said. "Now."
    The rest of that spring and the early part of the summer were quiet. Doroon, of course, could not play until his arm mended, and Zubrette had been so shaken by whatever it was that Aunt Pol had said to her that she avoided the two other boys. Garion was left with only Rundorig to play with, and Rundorig was not bright enough to be much fun. Because there was really nothing else to do, the boys often went into the fields to watch the hands work and listen to their talk.
    As it happened, during that particular summer the men on Faldor's farm were talking about the Battle of Vo Mimbre, the most cataclysmic event in the history of the west. Garion and Rundorig listened, enthralled, as the men unfolded the story of how the hordes of Kal Torak had quite suddenly struck into the west some five hundred years before.
    It had all begun in 4865, as men reckoned time in that part of the world, when vast multitudes of Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls had struck down across the mountains of the eastern escarpment into Drasnia, and behind them in endless waves had come the uncountable numbers of the Malloreans.
    After Drasnia had been brutally crushed, the Angaraks had turned southward onto the vast grasslands of Algaria and had laid siege to that enormous fortress called the Algarian Stronghold. The siege had lasted for eight years until finally, in disgust, Kal Torak had abandoned it. It was not until he turned his army westward into Ulgoland that the other kingdoms became aware that the Angarak invasion was directed not only against the Alorns but against all of the west. In the summer of 4875 Kal Torak had come down upon the Arendish plain before the city of Vo Mimbre, and it was there that the combined armies of the west awaited him.
    The Sendars who participated in the battle were a part of the force under the leadership of Brand, the Rivan Warder. That force, consisting of Rivans, Sendars and Asturian Arends, assaulted the Angarak rear after the left had been engaged by Algars, Drasnians and Ulgos; the right by Tolnedrans and Chereks; and the front by the legendary charge of the Mimbrate Arends. For hours the battle had raged until, in the center of the field, Brand had met in a single combat with Kal Torak himself. Upon that duel had hinged the