Castle of Wizardry

1

Ctuchik was dead—and more than dead—and the earth itself heaved and groaned in the aftershock of his destruction. Garion and the others fled down through the dim galleries that honeycombed the swaying basalt pinnacle, with the rocks grinding and cracking about them and fragments shattering away from the ceilings and raining down on them in the darkness. Even as he ran, Garion’s mind jerked and veered, his thoughts tumbling over each other chaotically, stunned out of all coherence by the enormity of what had just happened. Flight was a desperate need, and he fled without thought or even awareness, his running steps as mechanical as his heartbeat.

His ears seemed full of a swelling, exultant song that rang and soared in the vaults of his mind, erasing thought and filling him with stupefied wonder. Through all his confusion, however, he was sharply conscious of the trusting touch of the small hand he held in his. The little boy they had found in Ctuchik’s grim turret ran beside him with the Orb of Aldur clasped tightly to his little chest. Garion knew that it was the Orb that filled his mind with song. It had whispered to him as they had mounted the steps of the turret, and its song had soared as he had entered the room where it had lain. It was the song of the Orb that obliterated all thought—more than shock or the thunderous detonation that had destroyed Ctuchik and tumbled Belgarath across the floor like a rag doll or the deep sullen boom of the earthquake that had followed.

Garion struggled with it as he ran, trying desperately to pull his wits into some kind of order, but the song intruded on his every effort, scattering his mind so that chance impression and random memory fluttered and scurried this way and that and left him to flee without design or direction.

The dank reek of the slave pens lying just beneath the disintegrating city of Rak Cthol came sharply through the shadowy galleries. As if suddenly awakened by that single stimulus, a flood of memories of other smells crashed in on Garion’s consciousness—the warm smell of fresh-baked bread in Aunt Pol’s kitchen back at Faldor’s farm, the salt smell of the sea when they had reached Darine on the north coast of Sendaria on the first leg of their quest for the Orb, the stink of the swamps and jungles of Nyissa, the stomach-turning smell of the burning bodies of the sacrificed slaves in the Temple of Torak which even now shattered and fell in upon itself among the collapsing walls of Rak Cthol. But, oddly, the smell that came sharpest to his confused memory was the sun-warmed scent of Princess Ce’Nedra’s hair.

“Garion!” Aunt Pol’s voice came sharply to him in the near dark through which they ran. “Watch where you’re going!” And he struggled to pull his mind back from its wandering even as he stumbled over a pile of broken rock where a large stretch of ceiling had fallen to the floor.

The terrified wails of the imprisoned slaves locked in clammy cells rose all around them now, joining in a weird counterharmony with the rumble and boom of earthquake. Other sounds came from the darkness as well-confused shouts in harshly accented Murgo voices, the lurching stagger of running feet, the clanging of an unlatched iron cell door swinging wildly as the huge rock pinnacle swayed and shuddered and heaved in the surging roll. Dust billowed through the dark caves, a thick, choking rock dust that stung their eyes and made them all cough almost continually as they clambered over the broken rubble.

Garion carefully lifted the trusting little boy over the pile of shattered rock, and the child looked into his face, calm and smiling despite the chaos of noise and stink all around them in the oppressive dimness. He started to set the child down again, but changed his mind. It would be easier and safer to carry the boy. He turned to go on along the passageway, but he recoiled sharply as his foot came down on something soft. He peered at the floor, then felt his stomach suddenly heave with revulsion as he saw that he had stepped on a lifeless human hand protruding from the rockfall.

They ran on through the heaving darkness with the black Murgo robes which had disguised them flapping around their legs and the dust still thick in the air about them.

“Stop!” Relg, the Ulgo zealot, raised his hand and stood with his head cocked to one side, listening intently.

“Not here!” Barak told him, still lumbering forward with the dazed Belgarath in his arms. “Move, Relg!”

“Be still!” Relg ordered. “I’m trying to listen.” Then he shook his head. “Go back!” he barked, turning quickly and pushing at them. “Run!”

“There are Murgos back there!” Barak objected.

“Run!” Relg repeated. “The side of the mountain’s breaking away!” Even as they turned, a new and dreadful creaking roar surrounded them. Screeching in protest, the rock ripped apart with a long, hideous tearing. A sudden flood of light filled the gallery along which they fled as a great crack opened in the side of the basalt peak, widening ponderously as a vast chunk of the mountainside toppled slowly outward to fall to the floor of the wasteland thousands of feet below. The red glow of the new-risen sun was blinding as the dark world of the caves was violently opened, and the great wound in the side of the peak revealed a dozen or more dark openings both above and beneath, where caves suddenly ran out into nothingness.

“There!” a shout came from overhead. Garion jerked his head around. Perhaps fifty feet above and out along the sharp angle of the face, a half dozen black-robed Murgos, swords drawn, stood in a cave mouth with the dust billowing about them. One was pointing excitedly at the fleeing fugitives. And then the peak heaved again, and another great slab of rock sheared away, carrying the shrieking Murgos into the abyss beneath.

“Run!” Relg shouted again, and they all pounded along at his heels, back into the darkness of the shuddering passageway.

“Stop a minute,” Barak gasped, plowing to a sudden halt after they had retreated several hundred yards. “Let me get my breath.” He lowered Belgarath to the floor, his huge chest heaving.

“Can I help thee, my Lord?” Mandorallen offered quickly.

“No,” Barak panted. “I can manage all right, I’m just a little winded.” The big man peered around. “What happened back there? What set all this off?”

“Belgarath and Ctuchik had a bit of a disagreement,” Silk told him with sardonic understatement. “It got a little out of hand toward the end.”

“What happened to Ctuchik?” Barak asked, still gasping for breath. “I didn’t see anybody else when Mandorallen and I broke into that room.”

“He destroyed himself,” Polgara replied, kneeling to examine Belgarath’s face.

“We saw no body, my Lady,” Mandorallen noted, peering into the darkness with his great broadsword in his hand.

“There wasn’t that much left of him,” Silk said.

“Are we safe here?” Polgara asked Relg.

The Ulgo set the side of his head against the wall of the passageway, listening intently. Then he nodded. “For the moment,” he replied. “Let’s stop here for a while then. I want to have a look at my father. Make me some light.”

Relg fumbled in the pouches at his belt and mixed the two substances that gave off that faint Ulgo light.

Silk looked curiously at Polgara. “What really happened?” he asked her. “Did Belgarath do that to Ctuchik?”

She shook her head, her hands lightly touching her father’s chest. “Ctuchik tried to unmake the Orb for some reason,” she said. “Something happened to frighten him so much that he forgot the first rule.”

A momentary flicker of memory came to Garion as he set the little boy down on his feet—that brief glimpse of Ctuchik’s mind just before the Grolim had spoken the fatal “Be Not” that had exploded him into nothingness. Once again he caught that single image that had risen in the High Priest’s mind—the image of himself holding the Orb in his hand—and he felt the blind, unreasoning panic the image had caused Ctuchik. Why? Why would that have frightened the Grolim into that deadly mistake?

“What happened to him, Aunt Pol?” he asked. For some reason he had to know.

“He no longer exists,” she replied. “Even the substance that formed him is gone.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Garion started to object, but Barak was already speaking.

“Did he destroy the Orb?” the big man asked with a kind of weak sickness in his voice.

“Nothing can destroy the Orb,” she told him calmly.

“Where is it then?”

The little boy pulled his hand free from Garion’s and went confidently to the big Cherek. “Errand?” he asked, holding out the round, gray stone in his hand.

Barak recoiled from the offered stone. “Belay!” he swore, quickly putting his hands behind his back. “Make him stop waving it around like that, Polgara. Doesn’t he know how dangerous it is?”

“I doubt it.”

“How’s Belgarath?” Silk asked.

“His heart’s still strong,” Polgara replied. “He’s exhausted, though. The fight nearly killed him.”

With a long, echoing shudder the quaking subsided, and the silence seemed very loud.

“Is it over?” Durnik asked, looking around nervously.

“Probably not,” Relg replied, his voice hushed in the sudden quiet. “An earthquake usually goes on for quite some time.”

Barak was peering curiously at the little boy. “Where did he come from?” he asked, his rumbling voice also subdued.

“He was in the turret with Ctuchik,” Polgara told him. “He’s the child Zedar raised to steal the Orb.”

“He doesn’t look all that much like a thief.”

“He isn’t precisely.” She looked gravely at the blond-headed waif. “Somebody’s going to have to keep an eye on him,” she observed. “There’s something very peculiar about him. After we get down, I’ll look into it, but I’ve got too much on my mind for that at the moment.”

“Could it be the Orb?” Silk asked curiously. “I’ve heard that it has strange effects on people.”

“Perhaps that’s it.” But she didn’t sound very convinced. “Keep him with you, Garion, and don’t let him lose the Orb.”

“Why me?” He said it without thinking. She gave him a level gaze.

“All right, Aunt Pol.” He knew there was no point in arguing with her.

“What was that?” Barak asked, holding up his hand for silence. Somewhere off in the darkness there was the murmur of voices—harsh, guttural voices.

“Murgos!” Silk whispered sharply, his hand going to his dagger.

“How many?” Barak asked Aunt Pol.

“Five,” she replied. “No-six. One’s lagging behind.”

“Are any of them Grolims?”

She shook her head.

“Let’s go, Mandorallen,” the big Cherek muttered, grimly drawing his sword.

The knight nodded, shifting his own broadsword in his hands. “Wait here,” Barak whispered to the rest of them. “We shouldn’t be long.” And then he and Mandorallen moved off into the darkness, their black Murgo robes blending into the shadows.

The others waited, their ears straining to catch any sound. Once again that strange song began to intrude itself upon Garion’s awareness, and once again his thoughts scattered before its compulsion. Somewhere a long, hissing slither of dislodged pebbles rattled down a slope, and that sound raised a confused welter of memory in him. He seemed to hear the ring of Durnik’s hammer on the anvil at Faldor’s farm, and then the plodding step of the horses and the creak of the wagons in which they had carried turnips to Darine back when this had all begun. As clearly as if he were there, he heard again the squealing rush of the boar he had killed in the snowy woods outside Val Alorn, and then the aching song of the Arendish serfboy’s flute that had soared to the sky from the stump-dotted field where Asharak the Murgo had watched with hate and fear on his scarred face.

Garion shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, but the song drew him back into that bemused reverie. Sharply, he heard the awful, hissing crackle of Asharak burning beneath the vast, ancient trees in the Wood of the Dryads and heard the Grolim’s desperate plea, “Master, have mercy.” Then there were the screams in Salmissra’s palace as Barak, transformed into that dreadful bear shape, clawed and ripped his way toward the throne room with Aunt Pol in her icy fury striding at his side.

And then the voice that had always been in his mind was there again. “Stop fighting with it.”

“What is it?” Garion demanded, trying to focus his thoughts.

“It’s the Orb.”

“What’s it doing?”

“It wants to know you. This is its way of finding things out.”

“Can’t it wait? We don’t really have time just now ”

“You can try to explain that, if you’d like.” The voice sounded amused. “It might listen, but I doubt it. It’s been waiting for you for a very long time. ”

“Why me?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of saying that?”

“Is it doing the same thing to the others?”

“To a lesser degree. You might as well relax. One way or another, it’s going to get what it wants. ”

There was a sudden ring of steel against steel somewhere off in the dark passageways and a startled cry. Then Garion heard the crunch of blows, and someone groaned. After that, there was silence.

A few moments later they heard the scuff of footsteps, and Barak and Mandorallen returned. “We couldn’t find that one who was coming along behind the rest of them,” Barak reported. “Is Belgarath showing any signs of coming around yet?”

Polgara shook her head. “He’s still completely dazed,” she replied.

“I’ll carry him then. We’d better go. It’s a long way back down, and these caves are going to be full of Murgos before long.”

“In a moment,” she said. “Relg, do you know where we are?”

“Roughly.”

“Take us back to the place where we left the slave woman,” she instructed in a tone that tolerated no objection.

Relg’s face went hard, but he said nothing.

Barak bent and picked up the unconscious Belgarath. Garion held out his arms, and the little boy obediently came to him, the Orb still held protectively against his chest. The child seemed peculiarly light, and Garion carried him with almost no effort. Relg lifted his faintly glowing wooden bowl to illuminate their path, and they started out again, twisting, turning, following a zigzag course that went deeper and deeper into the gloomy caves. The darkness of the peak above them seemed to bear down on Garion’s shoulders with a greater and greater weight the farther they went. The song in his mind swelled again, and the faint light Relg carried sent his thoughts roving once more. Now that he understood what was happening, it seemed to go more easily. The song opened his mind, and the Orb leeched out every thought and memory, passing through his life with a light, flickering touch. It had a peculiar kind of curiosity, lingering often on things Garion did not think were all that important and barely touching matters that had seemed so dreadfully urgent when they had occurred. It traced out in detail each step they had taken in their long journey to Rak Cthol. It passed with them to the crystal chamber in the mountains above Maragor where Garion had touched the stillborn colt and given life in that oddly necessary act of atonement that had somehow made up for the burning of Asharak. It went down with them into the Vale where Garion had turned over the large white rock in his first conscious attempt to use the Will and the Word objectively. It scarcely noticed the dreadful fight with Grul the Eldrak nor the visit to the caves of Ulgo, but seemed to have a great curiosity about the shield of imagining which Garion and Aunt Pol had erected to conceal their movements from the searching minds of the Grolims as they had approached Rak Cthol. It ignored the death of Brill and the sickening ceremonies in the Temple of Torak, but lingered instead on the conversation between Belgarath and Ctuchik in the Grolim High Priest’s hanging turret. And then, most peculiarly, it went back to sift through every one of Garion’s memories of Princess Ce’Nedra—of the way the sun caught her coppery hair, of the lithe grace of her movements, of her scent, of each unconscious gesture, of the flicker and play of emotion across her tiny, exquisite face. It lingered on her in a way that Garion eventually found unsettling. At the same time he found himself a bit surprised that so much of what the princess had said and done had stuck so firmly in his memory.

“Garion,” Aunt Pol said, “what is the matter with you? I told you to hold onto the child. Pay attention. This isn’t the time for daydreaming.”

“I wasn’t. I was—” How could he explain it?

“You were what?”

“Nothing.” They moved on, and there were periodic tremors as the earth settled uneasily. The huge basalt pinnacle swayed and groaned each time the earth shuddered and convulsed under its base; and at each new quiver, they stopped, almost fearing to breathe.

“How far down have we come?” Silk asked, looking around nervously.

“A thousand feet perhaps,” Relg replied.

“That’s all? We’ll be penned up in here for a week at this rate.”

Relg shrugged his heavy shoulders. “It will take as long as it takes,” he said in his harsh voice as they moved on.

There were Murgos in the next gallery, and another nasty little fight in the darkness. Mandorallen was limping when he came back,

“Why didn’t you wait for me as I told you to?” Barak demanded crossly.

Mandorallen shrugged. “They were but three, my Lord.”

“There’s just no point in trying to talk to you, do you know that?” Barak sounded disgusted.

“Are you all right?” Polgara asked the knight.

“A mere scratch, my Lady,” Mandorallen replied indifferently. “It is of no moment.”

The rock floor of the gallery shuddered and heaved again, and the booming noise echoed up through the caves. They all stood frozen, but the uneasy movement of the earth subsided after a few moments.

They moved steadily downward through the passageways and caves. The aftershocks of the earthquake that had shattered Rak Cthol and sent Ctuchik’s turret crashing to the floor of the wasteland of Murgos continued at intervals. At one point, hours later it seemed, a party of Murgos, perhaps a dozen strong, passed through a gallery not far ahead, their torches casting flickering shadows on the walls and their harsh voices echoing. After a brief, whispered conference, Barak and Mandorallen let them go by unmolested and unaware of the terrible violence lurking in the shadows not twenty yards away. After they were out of earshot, Relg uncovered his light again and selected yet another passageway. They moved on, descending, twisting, zigzagging their way down through the caves toward the foot of the pinnacle and the dubious safety of the wasteland which lay outside.

While the song of the Orb did not diminish in any way, Garion was at least able to think as he followed Silk along the twisting passageways with the little boy in his arms. He thought that perhaps it was because he had grown at least partially accustomed to it—or maybe its attention was concentrated on one of the others.

They had done it; that was the amazing thing. Despite all the odds against them, they had retrieved the Orb. The search that had so abruptly interrupted his quiet life at Faldor’s farm was over, but it had changed him in so many ways that the boy who had crept out through the gate at Faldor’s farm in the middle of a windswept autumn night no longer even existed. Garion could feel the power he had discovered within himself even now and he knew that power was there for a reason. There had been hints along the way—vague, half spoken, sometimes only implied—that the return of the Orb to its proper place was only a beginning of something much larger and much more serious. Garion was absolutely certain that this was not the end of it.

“It’s about time,” the dry voice in his mind said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why do I have to explain this every single time?”

“Explain what?”

“That I know what you’re thinking. It’s not as if we were completely separate, you know.”

“All right, then. Where do we go from here?”

“To Riva.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll see.”

“You aren’t going to tell me?”

“No. Not yet. You haven’t come nearly as far as you think you have. There’s still a very long way to go. ”

“If you aren’t going to tell me anything, why don’t you just leave me alone?”

“I just wanted to advise you not to make any long-term plans. The recovery of the Orb was only a step—an important one—but only a beginning.”

And then, as if mention of it somehow reminded the Orb of Garion’s presence, its song returned in full force, and Garion’s concentration dissolved.

Not much later, Relg stopped, lifting the faint light aloft.

“What’s the trouble?” Barak demanded, lowering Belgarath to the floor again.

“The ceiling fell in,” Relg replied, pointing at the rubble choking the passageway ahead. “We can’t get through.” He looked at Aunt Pol. “I’m sorry,” he said, and Garion felt that he really meant it. “That woman we left down here is on the other side of the cave-in.”

“Find another way,” she told him shortly.

“There isn’t any. This was the only passageway leading to the pool where we found her.”

“We’ll have to clear it then.”

Relg shook his head gravely. “We’d just bring more of it down on top of us. It probably fell in on her as well—at least we can hope so.”

“Isn’t that just a bit contemptible, Relg?” Silk asked pointedly.

The Ulgo turned to regard the little man. “She has water there and sufficient air to breathe. If the cave-in didn’t kill her, she could live for weeks before she starves to death.” There was a peculiar, quiet regret in Relg’s voice.

Silk stared at him for a moment. “Sorry, Relg,” he said finally. “I misunderstood.”

“People who live in caves have no desire to see anyone trapped like that.”

Polgara, however, was considering the rubble-blocked passageway. “We have to get her out of there,” she declared.

“Relg could be right, you know,” Barak pointed out. “For all we know, she’s buried under half the mountain.”

She shook her head. “No,” she disagreed. “Taiba’s still alive, and we can’t leave without her. She’s as important to all of this as any one of us.” She turned back to Relg. “You’ll have to go get her,” she told him firmly.

Relg’s large, dark eyes widened.

“You can’t ask that,” he protested.

“There’s no alternative.”

“You can do it, Relg,” Durnik encouraged the zealot. “You can go through the rock and bring her out the same way you carried Silk out of that pit where Taur Urgas had him.”

Relg had begun to tremble violently. “I can’t!” his voice was choked. “I’d have to touch her—put my hands on her. It’s sin.”

“This is most uncharitable of thee, Relg,” Mandorallen told him. “There is no sin in giving aid to the weak and helpless. Consideration for the unfortunate is a paramount responsibility of all decent men, and no force in all the world can corrupt the pure spirit. If compassion doth not move thee to fly to her aid, then mayest thou not perhaps regard her rescue a test of thy purity?”

“You don’t understand,” Relg told him in an anguished voice. He turned back to Polgara. “Don’t make me do this, I beg you.”

“You must,” she replied quietly. “I’m sorry, Relg, but there’s no other way.”

A dozen emotions played across the fanatic’s face as he shrank under Aunt Pol’s unrelenting gaze. Then with a strangled cry, he turned and put his hand to the solid rockface at the side of the passageway. With a dreadful concentration, he pushed his fingers into the rock, demonstrating once more his uncanny ability to slip his very substance through seemingly unyielding stone.

Silk quickly turned his back. “I can’t stand to watch that,” the little man choked. And then Relg was gone, submerged in the rock.

“Why does he make so much fuss about touching people?” Barak demanded.

But Garion knew why. His enforced companionship with the ranting zealot during the ride across Algaria had given him a sharp insight into the workings of Relg’s mind. The harsh-voiced denunciations of the sins of others served primarily to conceal Relg’s own weakness. Garion had listened for hours at a time to hysterical and sometimes incoherent confessions about the lustful thoughts that raged through the fanatic’s mind almost continually. Taiba, the lush-bodied Marag slave woman, would represent for Relg the ultimate temptation, and he would fear her more than death itself.

In silence they waited. Somewhere a slow drip of water measured the passing seconds. The earth shuddered from time to time as the last uneasy shocks of earthquake trembled beneath their feet. The minutes dragged on in the dim cavern.

And then there was a flicker of movement, and Relg emerged from the rock wall carrying the half naked Taiba. Her arms were desperately clasped about his neck, and her face was buried in his shoulder. She was whimpering in tenor and trembling uncontrollably.

Relg’s face was twisted into an agony. Tears of anguish streamed openly from his eyes, and his teeth were clenched as if he were in the grip of intolerable pain. His arms, however, cradled the terrified slave woman protectively, almost gently, and even when they were free of the rock, he held her closely against him as if he intended to hold her thus forever.

2

It was noon by the time they reached the foot of the basalt tower and the large cave where they had left the horses. Silk went to the cave mouth to stand watch as Barak carefully lowered Belgarath to the floor. “He’s heavier than he looks,” the big man grunted, wiping the sweat from his face. “Shouldn’t he be starting to come around?”

“It may be days before he’s fully conscious,” Polgara replied. “Just cover him and let him sleep.”

“How’s he going to ride?”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“Nobody’s going to be riding anywhere for a while,” Silk announced from the narrow mouth of the cave. “The Murgos are swarming around out there like hornets.”

“We’ll wait until dark,” Polgara decided. “We all need some rest anyway.” She pushed back the hood of her Murgo robe and went to one of the packs they had piled against the cave wall when they had entered the night before. “I’ll see about something to eat, then you’d all better sleep.”

Taiba, the slave woman, wrapped once again in Garion’s cloak, had been watching Relg almost continually. Her large, violet eyes glowed with gratitude mingled with a faint puzzlement. “You saved my life,” she said to him in a rich, throaty voice. She leaned slightly toward him as she spoke. It was an unconscious gesture, Garion was certain, but it was distinctly noticeable. “Thank you,” she added, her hand moving to rest lightly on the zealot’s arm.

Relg cringed back from her. “Don’t touch me,” he gasped. She stared at him in amazement, her hand still half extended. “You must never put your hands on me,” he told her. “Never.” Taiba’s look was incredulous. Her life had been spent almost entirely in darkness, and she had never learned to keep her emotions from showing on her face. Amazement gave way to humiliation, and her expression settled then into a kind of stiff, sullen pout as she turned quickly away from the man who had just so harshly rejected her. The cloak slipped from her shoulders as she turned, and the few rags she had for clothing scarcely concealed her nakedness. Despite her tangled hair and the dirty smudges on her limbs, there was a lush, inviting ripeness about her. Relg stared at her and he began to tremble. Then he quickly turned, moved as far away from her as possible, and dropped to his knees, praying desperately and pressing his face against the rocky floor of the cave.

“Is he all right?” Taiba asked quickly.

“He’s got some problems,” Barak replied. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Taiba,” Polgara said. “Come over here.” She looked critically at the woman’s scanty clothing. “We’re going to have to get something together for you to wear. It’s very cold outside. There are other reasons too, it appears.”

“I’ll see what I can find in the packs,” Durnik offered. “we’ll need something for the boy too, I think. That smock of his doesn’t look any too warm.” He looked over at the child, who was curiously examining the horses.

“You won’t need to bother about me,” Taiba told them. “There’s nothing out there for me. As soon as you leave, I’m going back to Rak Cthol.”

“What are you talking about?” Polgara asked her sharply.

“I still have something to settle with Ctuchik,” Taiba replied, fingering her rusty knife.

Silk laughed from the cave mouth. “We took care of that for you. Rak Cthol’s falling to pieces up there, and there isn’t enough left of Ctuchik to make a smudge on the floor.”

“Dead?” she gasped. “How?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Silk told her.

“Did he suffer?” She said it with a terrible eagerness.

“More than you could ever imagine,” Polgara replied.

Taiba drew in a long, shuddering breath, and then she began to cry. Aunt Pol opened her arms and took the sobbing woman into them, comforting her even as she had comforted Garion so often when he was small.

Garion sank wearily to the floor, resting his back against the rocky wall of the cave. Waves of exhaustion washed over him, and a great lassitude drained him of all consciously directed thought. Once again the Orb sang to him, but lulling now. Its curiosity about him apparently was satisfied, and its song seemed to be there only to maintain the contact between them. Garion was too tired even to be curious about why the stone took such pleasure in his company.

The little boy turned from his curious examination of the horses and went to where Taiba sat with one of Aunt Pol’s arms about her shoulders. He looked puzzled, and reached out with one hand to touch his fingers to her tear-streaked face.

“What does he want?” Taiba asked.

“He’s probably never seen tears before,” Aunt Pol replied.

Taiba stared at the child’s serious little face, then suddenly laughed through her tears and gave him a quick embrace.

The little boy smiled then. “Errand?” he asked, offering her the Orb. “Don’t take it, Taiba,” Polgara told her very quietly. “Don’t even touch it.”

Taiba looked at the smiling child and shook her head.

The little boy sighed, then came across the cave, sat down beside Garion, and nestled against him.

Barak had gone a short distance back up the passageway they had followed; now he returned, his face grim. “I can hear Murgos moving around up there,” the big man reported. “You can’t tell how far away they are with all the echoes in these caves, but it sounds as if they’re exploring every cave and passageway.”

“Let us find some defensible spot then, my Lord, and give them reason to look for us elsewhere,” Mandorallen suggested gaily.

“Interesting notion,” Barak replied, “but I’m afraid it wouldn’t work. Sooner or later they’re going to find us.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Relg said quietly, breaking off his praying and getting to his feet. The ritual formulas had not helped him, and his eyes were haunted.

“I’ll go with you,” Barak offered.

Relg shook his head. “You’d just be in my way,” he said shortly, already moving toward the passage leading back into the mountain. “What’s come over him?” Barak asked, puzzled.

“I think our friend’s having a religious crisis,” Silk observed from the mouth of the cave where he kept watch.

“Another one?”

“It gives him something to occupy his spare moments,” Silk replied lightly.

“Come and eat,” Aunt Pol told them, laying slices of bread and cheese on top of one of the packs. “Then I want to have a look at the cut on your leg, Mandorallen.”

After they had eaten and Polgara had bandaged Mandorallen’s knee, she dressed Taiba in a peculiar assortment of clothes Durnik had taken from the packs. Then she turned her attention to the little boy. He returned her grave look with one just as serious, then reached out and touched the white lock at her brow with curious fingers. With a start of remembrance, Garion recalled how many times he had touched that lock with the selfsame gesture, and the memory of it raised a momentary irrational surge of jealousy, which he quickly suppressed.

The little boy smiled with sudden delight. “Errand,” he said firmly, offering the Orb to Aunt Pol.

She shook her head. “No, child,” she told him. “I’m afraid I’m not the one.” She dressed him in clothing that had to be rolled up and taken in with bits of twine in various places, then sat down with her back against the wall of the cave and held out her arms to him. Obediently he climbed into her lap, put one arm about her neck and kissed her. Then he nestled his face down against her, sighed and immediately fell asleep. She looked down at him with a strange expression on her face—a peculiar mixture of wonder and tenderness—and Garion fought down another wave of jealousy.

There was a grinding rumble in the caves above them.

“What’s that?” Durnik asked, looking around with apprehension.

“Relg, I’d imagine,” Silk told him. “He seems to be taking steps to head off the Murgos.”

“I hope he doesn’t get carried away,” Durnik said nervously, gland ing at the rock ceiling.

“How longs it going to take to get to the Vale?” Barak asked.

“A couple of weeks, probably,” Silk replied. “A lot’s going to depend on the terrain and how quickly the Grolims can organize a search for us. If we can get enough of a headstart to put down a good false trail, we can send them all running off to the west toward the Tolnedran border, and we can move toward the Vale without needing to waste all that time dodging and hiding.” The little man grinned. “The notion of deceiving the whole Murgo nation appeals to me,” he added.

“You don’t have to get too creative,” Barak told him. “Hettar’s going to be waiting for us in the Vale—along with King Cho-Hag and half the clans of Algaria. They’ll be awfully disappointed if we don’t bring them at least a few Murgos.”

“Life’s full of little disappointments,” Silk told him sardonically. “As I remember it, the eastern edge of the Vale is very steep and rough. It will take a couple of days at least to make it down, and I don’t think we’ll want to try it with all of Murgodom snapping at our heels.”

It was midafternoon when Relg returned. His exertions seemed to have quieted some of the turmoil in his mind, but there was still a haunted look in his eyes, and he deliberately avoided Taiba’s violet-eyed gaze. “I pulled down the ceilings of all the galleries leading to this cave,” he reported shortly. “We’re safe now.”

Polgara, who had seemed asleep, opened her eyes. “Get some rest,” she told him.

He nodded and went immediately to his blankets.

They rested in the cave through the remainder of the day, taking turns on watch at the narrow opening. The wasteland of black sand and wind-scoured rock lying out beyond the tumbled scree at the base of the pinnacle was alive with Murgo horsemen scurrying this way and that in a frenzied, disorganized search.

“They don’t seem to know what they’re doing,” Garion observed quietly to Silk as the two of them watched. The sun was just sinking into a bank of cloud on the western horizon, staining the sky fiery red, and the stiff wind brought a dusty chill with it as it seeped into the cave opening.

“I imagine that things are a bit scrambled up in Rak Cthol,” Silk replied. “No one’s in charge any more, and that confuses Murgos. They tend to go all to pieces when there’s nobody around to give them orders.”

“Isn’t that going to make it hard for us to get out of here?” Garion asked. “What I mean is that they’re not going anyplace. They’re just milling around. How are we going to get through them?”

Silk shrugged. “We’ll just pull up our hoods and mill around with the rest of them.” He pulled the coarse cloth of the Murgo robe he wore closer about him to ward off the chill and turned to look back into the cave. “The sun’s going down,” he reported.

“Let’s wait until it’s completely dark,” Polgara replied. She was carefully bundling the little boy up in one of Garion’s old tunics.

“Once we get out a ways, I’ll drop a few odds and ends,” Silk said. “Murgos can be a little dense sometimes, and we wouldn’t want them to miss our trail.” He turned to look back out at the sunset. “It’s going to be a cold night,” he remarked to no one in particular.

“Garion,” Aunt Pol said, rising to her feet, “you and Durnik stay close to Taiba. She’s never ridden before, and she might need some help at first.”

“What about the little boy?” Dumik asked.

“He’ll ride with me.”

“And Belgarath?” Mandorallen inquired, glancing over at the still-sleeping old sorcerer.

“When the time comes, we’ll just put him on his horse,” Polgara replied. “I can keep him in his saddle—as long as we don’t make any sudden changes in direction. Is it getting any darker?”

“We’d better wait for a little longer,” Silk answered. “There’s still quite a bit of light out there.”

They waited. The evening sky began to turn purple, and the first stars came out, glittering cold and very far away. Torches began to appear among the searching Murgos. “Shall we go?” Silk suggested, rising to his feet.

They led their horses quietly out of the cave and down across the scree to the sand. There they stopped for several moments while a group of Murgos carrying torches galloped by several hundred yards out. “Don’t get separated,” Silk told them as they mounted.

“How far is it to the edge of the wasteland?” Barak asked the little man, grunting as he climbed up onto his horse.

“Two days’ hard riding,” Silk replied. “Or nights in this case. We’ll probably want to take cover when the sun’s out. We don’t look all that much like Murgos.”

“Let’s get started,” Polgara told him.

They moved out at a walk, going slowly until Taiba became more sure of herself and Belgarath showed that he could stay in his saddle even though he could not yet communicate with anyone. Then they nudged their horses into a canter that covered a great deal of ground without exhausting the horses.

As they crossed the first ridge, they rode directly into a large group of Murgos carrying torches.

“Who’s there?” Silk demanded sharply, his voice harsh with the characteristic accents of Murgo speech. “Identify yourselves.”

“We’re from Rak Cthol,” one of the Murgos answered respectfully.

“I know that, blockhead,” Silk barked. “I asked your identity.”

“Third Phalanx,” the Murgo said stiffly.

“That’s better. Put out those torches. How do you expect to see anything beyond ten feet with them flaring in your eyes?”

The torches were immediately extinguished.

“Move your search to the north,” Silk commanded. “The Ninth Phalanx is covering this sector.”

“But ”

“Are you going to argue with me?”

“No, but—”

“Move! Now!”

The Murgos wheeled their horses about and galloped off into the darkness.

“Clever,” Barak said admiringly.

Silk shrugged. “Pretty elementary,” he replied. “People are grateful for a bit of direction when they’re confused. Let’s move along, shall we?”

There were other encounters during the long, cold, moonless night as they rode west. They were inescapable in view of the hordes of Murgos scouring the wasteland in search of them, but Silk handled each such meeting smoothly, and the night passed without significant incident.

Toward morning the little man began artfully dropping various articles to mark their trail. “A bit overdone, perhaps,” he said critically, looking at an old shoe he had just tossed into the hoof churned sand behind them.

“What are you mumbling about?” Barak asked him.

“Our trail,” Silk replied. “We want them to follow us, remember? They’re supposed to think we’re headed toward Tolnedra.”

“So?”

“I was just suggesting that this is a bit crude.”

“You worry too much about things like that.”

“It’s a question of style, my dear Barak,” Silk replied loftily. “Sloppy work tends to be habit-forming.”

As the first steel-gray light of dawn began to creep across the wintry sky, they took shelter among the boulders of one of the ridges that laced the floor of the wasteland. Durnik, Barak and Mandorallen stretched the canvas of their tents tautly over a narrow ravine on the west side of the ridge and sprinkled sand on top of it to disguise their makeshift shelter.

“It’s probably best not to build a fire,” Durnik said to Polgara as they led their horses in under the canvas, “what with the smoke and all.”

She nodded her agreement. “We could all use a hot meal,” she said, “but I suppose we’ll have to wait.”

They ate a cold breakfast of bread and cheese and began to settle in, hoping to sleep out the day so that they could ride on the next night.

“I could definitely use a bath,” Silk said, brushing sand out of his hair.

The little boy looked at nim, frowning slightly. Then he walked over and offered him the Orb. ‘Errand’” he asked.

Silk carefully put his hands behind his back and shook his head. “Is that the only word he knows?” he asked Polgara.

“It seems to be,” she replied.

“I don’t quite get the connection,” Silk said. “What does he mean by it.

“He’s probably been told that he has an errand to run,” she explained, “to steal the Orb. I imagine that Zedar’s been telling him that over and over since he was a baby, and the word stuck in his mind.”

“It’s a bit disconcerting.” Silk was still holding his hands behind his back. “It seems oddly appropriate sometimes.”

“He doesn’t appear to think the way we do,” she told him. “The only purpose he has in life is to give the Orb to someone—anyone, it would seem.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Durnik, why don’t you see if you can make him some kind of pouch to carry it in, and we’ll fasten it to his waist. Maybe if he doesn’t have it right there in his hand all the time, he won’t think about it so much.”

“Of course, Mistress Pol,” Durnik agreed. “I should have thought of that myself.” He went to one of the packs and took out an old, burn-scarred leather apron and fashioned a pouch out of a wide piece of leather he cut from it. “Boy,” he said when he had finished, “come here.”

The little boy was curiously examining a small, very dry bush at the upper end of the ravine and gave no indication that he knew the smith was calling him.

“You-Errand!” Durnik said.

The little boy looked around quickly and smiled as he went to Durnik.

“Why did you call him that?” Silk asked curiously.

Durnik shrugged. “He seems to be fond of the word and he answers to it. It will do for a name until we can find something more suitable, I suppose.”

“Errand?” the child asked, offering the Orb to Durnik.

Durnik smiled at him, bent over and held the mouth of the pouch open. “Put it in here, Errand,” he instructed, “and we’ll tie it up all nice and safe so you won’t lose it.”

The little boy delightedly deposited the Orb in the leather pouch. “Errand,” he declared firmly.

“I suppose so,” Durnik agreed. He pulled the drawstring tight and then tied the pouch to the bit of rope the boy wore as a belt. “There we are, Errand. All safe and secure now.”

Errand examined the pouch carefully, tugging at it a few times as if to be sure it was tightly tied. Then he gave a happy little laugh, put his arms about Durnik’s neck and kissed his cheek.

“He’s a good lad,” Durnik said, looking a trifle embarrassed.

“He’s totally innocent,” Aunt Pol told him from where she was examining the sleeping Belgarath. “He has no idea of the difference between good and evil, so everything in the world seems good to him.”

“I wonder what it’s like to see the world that way,” Taiba mused, gently touching the child’s smiling face. “No sorrow; no fear; no pain—just to love everything you see because you believe that everything is good.”

Relg, however, had looked up sharply. The troubled expression that had hovered on his face since he had rescued the trapped slave woman fell away to be replaced by that look of fanatic zeal that it had always worn before. “Monstrous!” he gasped.

Taiba turned on him, her eyes hardening. “What’s so monstrous about happiness?” she demanded, putting her arm about the boy.

“We aren’t here to be happy,” he replied, carefully avoiding her eyes.

“Why are we here then?” she challenged.

“To serve our God and to avoid sin.” He still refused to look at her, and his tone seemed a trifle less certain.

“Well, I don’t have a God,” she retorted, “and the child probably doesn’t either, so if it’s all the same to you, he and I will just concentrate on trying to be happy—and if a bit of sin gets involved in it, so what?”

“Have you no shame?” His voice was choked.

“I am what I am,” she replied, “and I won’t apologize, since I didn’t have very much to say about it.”

“Boy,” Relg snapped at the child, “come away from her at once.”

Taiba straightened, her face hardening even more, and she faced him defiantly. “What do you think you’re going to do?” she demanded.

“I will fight sin wherever I find it,” he declared.

“Sin, sin, sin!” she flared. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“It’s my constant care. I guard against it every moment.”

She laughed. “How tedious. Can’t you think of anything better to do? Oh, I forgot,” she added mockingly. “There’s all that praying too, isn’t there? All that bawling at your God about how vile you are. I think you must bore this UL of yours tremendously sometimes, do you know that?”

Enraged, Relg raised his fist. “Don’t ever speak UL’s name again!”

“Will you hit me if I do? It doesn’t matter that much. People have been hitting me all my life. Go ahead, Relg. Why don’t you hit me?” She lifted her smudged face to him.

Relg’s hand fell.

Sensing her advantage, Taiba put her hands to the throat of the rough gray dress Polgara had given her. “I can stop you, Relg,” she told him.

She began unfastening the dress. “Watch me. You look at me all the time anyway—I’ve seen you with your hot eyes on me. You call me names and say that I’m wicked, but still you watch. Look then. Don’t try to hide it.” She continued to unfasten the front of the dress. “If you’re free of sin, my body shouldn’t bother you at all.”

Relg’s eyes were bulging now.

“My body doesn’t bother me, but it bothers you very much, doesn’t it? But is the wickedness in my mind or yours? I can sink you in sin any time I want to. All I have to do is this.” And she pulled open the front of her dress.

Relg spun about, making strangled noises.

“Don’t you want to look, Relg?” she mocked him as he fled.

“You have a formidable weapon there, Taiba,” Silk congratulated her.

“It was the only weapon I had in the slave pens,” she told him. “I learned to use it when I had to.” She carefully rebuttoned her dress and turned back to Errand as if nothing had happened.

“What’s all the shouting?” Belgarath mumbled, rousing slightly, and they all turned quickly to him.

“Relg and Taiba were having a little theological discussion,” Silk replied lightly. “The finer points were very interesting. How are you?” But the old man had already drifted back into sleep.

“At least he’s starting to come around,” Durnik noted.

“It will be several days before he’s fully recovered,” Polgara told him, putting her hand to Belgarath’s forehead. “He’s still terribly weak.”

Garion slept for most of the day, wrapped in his blankets and lying on the stony ground. When the chill and a particularly uncomfortable rock under his hip finally woke him, it was late afternoon. Silk sat guard near the mouth of the ravine, staring out at the black sand and the grayish salt flats, but the rest were all asleep. As he walked quietly down to where the little man sat, Garion noticed that Aunt Pol slept with Errand in her arms, and he pushed away a momentary surge of jealousy. Taiba murmured something as he passed, but a quick glance told him that she was not awake. She was lying not far from Relg; in her sleep, her hand seemed to be reaching out toward the slumbering Ulgo.

Silk’s sharp little face was alert and he showed no signs of weariness. “Good morning,” he murmured, “or whatever.”

“Don’t you ever get tired?” Garion asked him, speaking quietly so that his voice would not disturb the others.

“I slept a bit,” Silk told him.

Durnik came out from under the canvas roof to join them, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. “I’ll relieve you now,” he said to Silk. “Did you see anything?” He squinted out toward the lowering sun.

Silk shrugged. “Some Murgos. They were a couple of miles off to the south. I don’t think anyone’s found our trail yet. We might have to make it a little more obvious for them.”

Garion felt a peculiar, oppressive sort of weight on the back of his neck. He glanced around uncomfortably. Then, with no warning, there was a sudden sharp stab that seemed to go straight into his mind. He gasped and tensed his will, pushing the attack away.

“What’s wrong?” Silk asked sharply.

“A Grolim,” Garion snarled, clenching his will as he prepared to fight.

“Garion!” It was Aunt Pol, and her voice sounded urgent. He turned and darted back in under the canvas with Silk and Durnik on his heels. She had risen to her feet and was standing with her arms protectively about Errand.

“That was a Grolim, wasn’t it?” Garion demanded, his voice sounding a bit shrill.

“It was more than one,” she replied tensely. “The Hierarchs control the Grolims now that Ctuchik’s dead. They’ve joined their wills to try to kill Errand.”

The others, awakened by her sharp cry, were stumbling to their feet and reaching for weapons.

“Why are they after the boy?” Silk asked.

“They know that he’s the only one who can touch the Orb. They think that if he dies, we won’t be able to get it out of Cthol Murgos.”

“What do we do?” Garion asked her, looking around helplessly.

“I’m going to have to concentrate on protecting the child,” she told him. “Step back, Garion.”

“What?”

“Get back away from me.” She bent and drew a circle in the sand, enclosing herself and the little boy in it. “Listen to me, all of you,” she said. “Until we’re out of this, none of you come any closer to me than this. I don’t want any of you getting hurt.” She drew herself up, and the white lock in her hair seemed to blaze.

“Wait,” Garion exclaimed.

“I don’t dare. They could attack again at any moment. It’s going to be up to you to protect your grandfather and the others.”

” Me?”

“You’re the only one who can do it. You have the power. Use it.” She raised her hand.

“How many of them are there that I have to fight off?” Garion demanded, but he already felt the sudden surge and the peculiar roaring sound in his mind as Aunt Pol’s will thrust out. The air about her seemed to shimmer, distorting like heat-waves on a summer afternoon. Garion could actually feel the barrier encircling her. “Aunt Pol?” he said to her. Then he raised his voice and shouted, “Aunt Pol!”

She shook her head and pointed at her ear. She seemed to say something, but no sound penetrated the shimmering shield she had erected.

“How many?” Garion mouthed the words exaggeratedly.

She held up both hands with one thumb folded in.

“Nine?” he mouthed again.

She nodded and then drew her cloak in around the little boy.

“Well, Garion?” Silk asked then, his eyes penetrating, “What do we do now?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You heard her. Belgarath’s still in a daze, and she’s busy. You’re in charge now.”

“Me?”

“What do we do?” Silk pressed. “You’ve got to learn to make decisions.”

“I don’t know.” Garion floundered helplessly.

“Never admit that,” Silk told him. “Act as if you know—even if you don’t.”

“We-uh—we’ll wait until it gets dark, I guess—then we’ll keep going the same way we have been.”

“There.” Silk grinned. “See how easy it is?”

3

There was the faintest sliver of a moon low over the horizon as they started out across the black sand of the wasteland in the biting chill. Garion felt distinctly uncomfortable in the role Silk had thrust upon him. He knew that there had been no need for it, since they all knew where they were going and what they had to do. If any kind of leadership had actually been required, Silk himself was the logical one to provide it; but instead, the little man had placed the burden squarely on Garion’s shoulders and now seemed to be watching intently to see how he would handle it.

There was no time for leadership or even discussion when, shortly after midnight, they ran into a party of Murgos. There were six of them, and they came galloping over a low ridge to the south and blundered directly into the middle of Garion’s party. Barak and Mandorallen reacted with that instant violence of trained warriors, their swords whistling out of their sheaths to crunch with steely ringing sounds into the mail-skirted bodies of the startled Murgos. Even as Garion struggled to draw his own sword, he saw one of the black-robed intruders tumble limply out of his saddle, while another, howling with pain and surprise, toppled slowly backward, clutching at his chest. There was a confusion of shouts and shrill screams from terrified horses as the men fought in the darkness. One frightened Murgo wheeled his mount to flee, but Garion, without even thinking, pulled his horse in front of him, sword raised to strike. The desperate Murgo made a frantic swing with his own weapon, but Garion easily parried the badly aimed swipe and flicked his blade lightly, whiplike, across the Murgo’s shoulder. There was a satisfying crunch as the sharp edge bit into the Murgo’s mail shirt. Garion deftly parried another clumsy swing and whipped his blade again, slashing the Murgo across the face. All the instruction he had received from his friends seemed to click together into a single, unified style that was part Cherek, part Arendish, part Algar, and was distinctly Garion’s own. This style baked the frightened Murgo, and his efforts became more desperate. But each time he swung, Garion easily parried and instantly countered with those light, flicking slashes that inevitably drew blood. Garion felt a wild, surging exultation boiling in his veins as he fought, and there was a fiery taste in his mouth.

Then Relg darted in out of the shadows, jerked the Murgo off balance, and drove his hook-pointed knife up under the man’s ribs. The Murgo doubled over sharply, shuddered, then fell dead from his saddle.

“What did you do that for?” Garion demanded without thinking. “That was my Murgo.”

Barak, surveying the carnage, laughed, his sudden mirth startling in the darkness. “He’s turning savage on us, isn’t he?”

“His skill is noteworthy, however,” Mandorallen replied approvingly.

Garion’s spirits soared. He looked around eagerly for someone else to fight, but the Murgos were all dead. “Were they alone?” he demanded, somewhat out of breath. “I mean, were there any others coming along behind them? Maybe we should go look.”

“We do want them to find our trail, after all,” Silk reminded him. “It’s up to you of course, Garion, but if we exterminate all the Murgos in the area, there won’t be anyone left to report our direction back to Rak Cthol, will there?”

“Oh,” Garion said, feeling a little sheepish, “I forgot about that.”

“You have to keep the grand plan in view, Garion, and not lose sight of it during these little side adventures.”

“Maybe I got carried away.”

“A good leader can’t afford to do that.”

“All right.” Garion began to feel embarrassed.

“I just wanted to be sure you understood, that’s all.”

Garion didn’t answer, but he began to see what it was about Silk that irritated Belgarath so much. Leadership was enough of a burden without these continuously comments from the weasel-faced little man to complicate things.

“Are you all right?” Taiba was saying to Relg with a strange note of concern in her voice. The Ulgo was still on his knees beside the body of the Murgo he had killed.

“Leave me alone,” he told her harshly.

“Don’t be stupid. Are you hurt? Let me see.”

“Don’t touch me!” He cringed away from her outstretched hand. “Belgarion, make her get away from me.”

Garion groaned inwardly. “What’s the trouble now?” he asked.

“I killed this man,” Relg replied. “There are certain things I have to do—certain prayers—purification. She’s interfering.”

Garion resisted an impulse to swear. “Please, Taiba,” he said as calmly as he could, “just leave him alone.”

“I just wanted to see if he was all right,” Taiba answered a bit petulantly. “I wasn’t hurting him.” She had an odd look on her face that Garion could not begin to understand. As she stared at the kneeling Ulgo, a curious little smile flickered across her lips. Without warning, she reached her hand out toward him again.

Relg shrank back. “No!” he gasped.

Taiba chuckled, a throaty, wicked little sound, and walked away, humming softly to herself. After Relg had performed his ritual of purification over the dead Murgo’s body, they remounted and rode on. The sliver of moon stood high overhead in the chill sky, casting a pale light down on the black sands, and Garion looked about constantly as he rode, trying to pick out any possible dangers lurking ahead. He glanced frequently at Aunt Pol, wishing that she were not so completely cut off from him, but she seemed to be totally absorbed in maintaining her shield of will. She rode with Errand pulled closely against her, and her eyes were distant, unfathomable. Garion looked hopefully at Belgarath, but the old man, though he looked up from his doze at times, seemed largely unaware of his surroundings. Garion sighed, and his eyes resumed their nervous scrutiny of the trail ahead. They rode on through the tag-end of night in the biting chill with the faint moonlight about them and the stars glittering like points of ice in the sky above.

Suddenly Garion heard a roaring in his mind—a sound that had a peculiar echo to it—and the shield of force surrounding Aunt Pol shimmered with an ugly orange glow. He jerked his will in sharply and gestured with a single word. He had no idea what word he used, but it seemed to work. Like a horse blundering into a covey of feeding birds, his will scattered the concerted attack on Aunt Pol and Errand. There had been more than one mind involved in the attack—he sensed that—but it seemed to make no difference. He caught a momentary flicker of chagrin and even fear as the joined wills of Aunt Pol’s attackers broke and fled from him.

“Not bad,” the voice in his mind observed. “A little clumsy, perhaps, but not bad at all.”

“It’s the first time I ever did it,” Garion replied. “I’ll get better with more practice.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” the voice advised dryly, and then it was gone.

He was growing stronger, there was no doubt about that. The ease with which he had dispersed the combined wills of that group of Grolims Aunt Pol had called the Hierarchs amazed him. He faintly began to understand what Aunt Pol and Belgarath meant in their use of the word “talent.” There seemed to be some kind of capacity, a limit beyond which most sorcerers could not go. Garion realized with a certain surprise that he was already stronger than men who had been practicing this art for centuries, and that he was only beginning to touch the edges of his talent. The thought of what he might eventually be able to do was more than a little frightening.

It did, however, make him feel somewhat more secure. He straightened in his saddle and rode a bit more confidently. Perhaps leadership wasn’t so bad after all. It took some getting used to, but once you knew what you were doing, it didn’t seem all that hard.

The next attack came as the eastern horizon had begun to grow pale behind them. Aunt Pol, her horse, and the little boy all seemed to vanish as absolute blackness engulfed them. Garion struck back instantly and he added a contemptuous little twist to it—a stinging slap at the joined minds that had mounted the attack. He felt a glow of self satisfaction at the surprise and pain in the minds as they flinched back from his quick counterblow. There was a glimpse—just a momentary one—of nine very old men in black robes seated around a table in a room somewhere. One of the walls of the room had a large crack in it, and part of the ceiling had collapsed as a result of the earthquake that had convulsed Rak Cthol. Eight of the evil old men looked surprised and frightened; the ninth one had fainted. The darkness surrounding Aunt Pol disappeared.

“What are they doing?” Silk asked him.

“They’re trying to break through Aunt Pol’s shield,” Garion replied. “I gave them something to think about.” He felt a little smug about it.

Silk looked at him, his eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Don’t overdo things, Garion,” he advised.

“Somebody had to do something,” Garion protested.

“That’s usually the way it works out. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t lose your perspective.”

The broken wall of peaks that marked the western edge of the waste land was clearly visible as the light began to creep up the eastern sky. “How far would you say it is?” Garion asked Durnik.

The smith squinted at the mountains ahead. “Two or three leagues at least,” he judged. “Distances are deceiving in this kind of light.”

“Well?” Barak asked. “Do we take cover for the day here or do we make a run for it?”

Garion thought about that. “Are we going to change direction as soon as we get to the mountains?” he asked Mandorallen.

“It would seem better mayhap to continue our present course for some little distance first,” the knight replied thoughtfully. “A natural boundary such as that which lies ahead might attract more than passing scrutiny.”

“That’s a good point,” Silk agreed.

Garion scratched at his cheek, noticing that his whiskers had begun to sprout again. “Maybe we should stop here then,” he suggested. “We could start out again when the sun goes down, get up into the mountains a way and then rest. When the sun comes up tomorrow morning, we can change our route. That way, we’ll have light enough to see any tracks we leave and cover them up.”

“Seems like a good plan,” Barak approved.

“Let’s do it that way then,” Garion decided.

They sought out another ridge and another ravine, and once again concealed it with their tent canvas. Although he was tired, Garion was reluctant to lose himself in sleep. Not only did the cares of leadership press heavily on him, but he also felt apprehensive about the possibility of an attack by the Hierarchs coming while he was asleep. As the others began to unroll their blankets, he walked about rather aimlessly, stopping to look at Aunt Pol, who sat with her back against a large rock, holding the sleeping Errand and looking as distant as the moon behind her shimmering shield. Garion sighed and went on down to the mouth of the ravine where Durnik was attending to the horses. It had occurred to him that all their lives depended on the well-being of their mounts, and that gave him something else to worry about.

“How are they?” he asked Durnik as he approached.

“They’re bearing up fairly well,” Durnik replied. “They’ve come a long way, though, and it’s beginning to show on some of them.”

“Is there anything we can do for them?”

“A week’s rest in a good pasture, perhaps,” Durnik answered with a wry smile.

Garion laughed. “I think we could all use a week’s rest in a good pasture.”

“You’ve really grown, Garion,” Durnik observed as he lifted another horse’s hind hoof to examine it for cuts or bruises.

Garion glanced at his arm and saw that his wrist stuck an inch or two out of his sleeve. “Most of my clothes still fit—pretty much,” he replied.

“That’s not the way I meant.” Durnik hesitated. “What’s it like, Garion? Being able to do things the way you do?”

“It scares me, Durnik,” Garion admitted quietly. “I didn’t really want any of this, but it didn’t give me any choice.”

“You mustn’t let it frighten you, you know,” Durnik said, carefully lowering the horse’s hoof. “If it’s part of you, it’s part of you just like being tall or having blond hair.”

“It’s not really like that, Durnik. Being tall or having blond hair doesn’t hurt anybody. This can.”

Durnik looked out at the long shadows of the ridge stretching away from the newly risen sun. “You just have to learn to be careful with it, that’s all. When I was about your age, I found out that I was much stronger than the other young men in our village—probably because I worked in the smithy. I didn’t want to hurt anybody, so I wouldn’t wrestle with my friends. One of them thought I was a coward because of that and he pushed me around for about six months until I finally lost my temper.”

“Did you fight him?”

Durnik nodded. “It wasn’t really much of a contest. After it was over, he realized that I wasn’t a coward after all. We even got to be good friends again—after his bones all healed up and he got used to the missing teeth.”

Garion grinned at him, and Durnik smiled back a bit ruefully. “I was ashamed of myself afterward, of course.”

Garion felt very close to this plain, solid man. Durnik was his oldest friend—somebody he could always count on.

“What I’m trying to say, Garion,” Durnik continued seriously, “is that you can’t go through life being afraid of what you are. If you do that, sooner or later somebody will come along who’ll misunderstand, and you’ll have to do something to show him that it’s not him that you’re afraid of. When it goes that far, it’s usually much worse for you—and for him, too.”

“As it was with Asharak?”

Durnik nodded. “It’s always best in the long run to be what you are. It isn’t proper to behave as if you were more, but it isn’t good to behave as if you were less, either. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“The whole problem seems to be finding out just exactly what you really are,” Garion observed.

Durnik smiled again. “That’s the part that gets most of us in trouble at times,” he agreed. Suddenly the smile fell away from his face and he gasped. Then he fell writhing to the ground, clutching at his stomach.

“Durnik!” Garion cried, “What’s wrong?”

But Durnik could not answer. His face was ashen and contorted with agony as he twisted in the dirt.

Garion felt a strange, alien pressure and he understood instantly. Thwarted in their attempts to kill Errand, the Hierarchs were directing their attacks at the others in the hope of forcing Aunt Pol to drop her shield. A terrible rage boiled up in him. His blood seemed to burn, and a fierce cry came to his lips.

“Calmly.” It was the voice within his mind again.

“What do I do?”

“Get out into the sunlight.”

Garion did not understand that, but he ran out past the horses into the pale morning light.

“Put yourself into your shadow. ”

He looked down at the shadow stretching out on the ground in front of him and obeyed the voice. He wasn’t sure exactly how he did it, but he poured his will and his awareness into the shadow.

“Now, follow the trail of their thought back to them. Quickly.” Garion felt himself suddenly flying. Enclosed in his shadow, he touched the still-writhing Durnik once like a sniffing hound, picked up the direction of the concerted thought that had felled his friend, and then flashed through the air back over the miles of wasteland toward the wreckage of Rak Cthol. He had, it seemed, no weight, and there was an odd purplish cast to everything he saw.

He felt his immensity as he entered the room with the cracked wall where the nine black-robed old men sat, trying with the concerted power of their minds to kill Durnik. Their eyes were all focused on a huge ruby, nearly the size of a man’s head, which lay flickering in the center of the table around which they sat. The slanting rays of the morning sun had distorted and enlarged Garion’s shadow, and he filled one corner of the room, bending slightly so that he could fit under the ceiling. “Stop!” he roared at the evil old men. “Leave Durnik alone!”

They flinched back from his sudden apparition, and he could feel the thought they were directing at Durnik through the stone on the table falter and begin to fall apart. He took a threatening step and saw them cringe away from him in the purple light that half clouded his vision.

Then one of the old men-very thin and with a long dirty beard and completely hairless scalp—seemed to recover from his momentary fright. “Stand firm!” he snapped at the others. “Keep the thought on the Sendar!”

“Leave him alone!” Garion shouted at them.

“Who says so?” the thin old man drawled insultingly.

“I do.”

“And just who are you?”

“I am Belgarion. Leave my friends alone.”

The old man laughed, and his laugh was as chilling as Ctuchik’s had been. “Actually, you’re only Belgarion’s shadow,” he corrected. “We know the trick of the shadow. You can talk and bluster and threaten, but that’s all you can do. You’re just a powerless shade, Belgarion.”

“Leave us alone!”

“And what will you do if we don’t?” The old man’s face was filled with contemptuous amusement.

“Is he right?” Garion demanded of the voice within his mind.

“Perhaps perhaps not,” the voice replied. “A few men have been able to go beyond the limitation. You won’t know unless you try.”

Despite his dreadful anger, Garion did not want to kill any of them. “Ice!” he said, focusing on the idea of cold and lashing out with his will. It felt odd—almost tenuous, as if it had no substance behind it, and the roaring was hollow and puny-sounding.

The bald old man sneered and waggled his beard insultingly. Garion ground his insubstantial teeth and drew himself in with dreadful concentration. “Burn!” he said then, driving his will. There was a flicker and then a sudden flash. The force of Garion’s will burst forth, directed not at the bald man himself, but rather at his whiskers.

The Hierarch jumped up and stumbled back with a hoarse exclamation, trying desperately to beat the flames out of his beard.

The concerted thought of the Hierarchs shattered as the rest of them scrambled to their feet in terrified astonishment. Grimly, Garion gathered his swelling will and began to lay about him with his immensely long arms. He tumbled the Hierarchs across the rough stone floor and slammed them into walls. Squealing with fright, they scurried this way and that, trying to escape, but he methodically reached out and grasped them one by one to administer his chastisement. With a peculiar kind of detachment, he even stuffed one of them headfirst into the crack in the wall, pushing quite firmly until only a pair of wriggling feet were sticking out.

Then, when it was done, he turned back to the bald Hierarch, who had managed finally to beat the last of the fire out of his beard.

“It’s impossible—impossible,” the Hierarch protested, his face stunned. “How did you do it?”

“I told you—I am Belgarion. I can do things you can’t even imagine.”

“The jewel,” the voice told him. “They’re using the jewel to focus their attacks. Destroy it.”

“How?”

“It can only hold so much. Look.”

Garion suddenly found that he could actually see into the interior of the still-flickering ruby on the table. He saw the minute stress lines within its crystalline structure, and then he understood. He turned his will on it and poured all his anger into it. The stone blazed with light and began to pulsate as the force within it swelled. Then, with a sharp detonation, the stone exploded into fragments.

“No!” the bald Hierarch wailed. “You idiot! That stone was irreplaceable.”

“Listen to me, old man,” Garion said in an awful voice, “you will leave us alone. You will not pursue us, or try to injure any of us any more.” He reached out with his shadowy hand and slid it directly into the bald man’s chest. He could feel the heart flutter like a terrified bird and the lungs falter as the Hierarch’s breath stopped and he gaped with horror at the arm sticking out of his chest. Garion slowly opened his fingers very wide. “Do you understand me?” he demanded.

The Hierarch gurgled and tried to take hold of the arm, but his fingers found nothing to grasp.

“Do you understand me?” Garion repeated and suddenly clenched his fist.

The Hierarch screamed.

“Are you going to leave us alone?”

“Please, Belgarion! No more! I’m dying!”

“Are you going to leave us alone?” Garion demanded again.

“Yes, yes—anything, but please stop! I beg you! I’ll do anything. Please!”

Garion unclenched his fist and drew his hand out of the Hierarch’s heaving chest. He held it up, clawlike, directly in front of the old man’s face. “Look at this and remember it,” he said in a dreadfully quiet voice. “Next time I’ll reach into your chest and pull your heart out.”

The Hierarch shrank back, his eyes filled with horror as he stared at the awful hand. “I promise you,” he stammered. “I promise.”

“Your life depends on it,” Garion told him, then turned and flashed back across the empty miles toward his friends. Quite suddenly he was standing at the mouth of the ravine staring down at his shadow slowly reforming on the ground before him. The purple haze was gone; strangely enough, he didn’t even feel tired.

Durnik drew in a shuddering breath and struggled to rise.

Garion turned quickly and ran back to his friend. “Are you all right?” he asked, taking hold of the smith’s arm.

“It was like a knife twisting inside me,” Durnik replied in a shaking voice. “What was it?”

“The Grolim Hierarchs were trying to kill you,” Garion told him. Durnik looked around, his eyes frightened.

“Don’t worry, Durnik. They won’t do it again.” Garion helped him to his feet and together they went back into the ravine.

Aunt Pol was looking directly at him as he approached her. Her eyes were penetrating. “You’re growing up very fast,” she said to him.

“I had to do something,” he replied. “What happened to your shield?”

“It doesn’t seem to be necessary any more.”

“Not bad,” Belgarath said. The old man was sitting up. He looked weak and drawn, but his eyes were alert. “Some of it was a bit exotic; but on the whole, it wasn’t bad at all. The business with the hand was just a little overdone, though.”

“I wanted to be sure he understood that I meant what I was saying.” Garion felt a tremendous wave of relief at his grandfather’s return to consciousness.

“I think you convinced him,” Belgarath said dryly. “Is there anything to eat somewhere nearby?” he asked Aunt Pol.

“Are you all right now, Grandfather?” Garion asked him.

“Aside from being as weak as a fresh-hatched baby chick and as hungry as a she-wolf with nine puppies, I’m just fine,” Belgarath replied. “I could really use something to eat, Polgara.”

“I’ll see what I can find, father,” she told him, turning to the packs.

“I don’t know that you need to bother cooking it,” he added.

The little boy had been looking curiously at Garion, his wide, blue eyes serious and slightly puzzled. Quite suddenly he laughed; smiling, he looked into Garion’s face. “Belgarion,” he said.

4

“No regrets?” Silk asked Garion that evening as they rode toward the sharply rising peaks outlined against the glittering stars ahead.

“Regrets about what?”

“Giving up command.” Silk had been watching him curiously ever since the setting sun had signalled the resumption of their journey.

“No,” Garion replied, not quite sure what the little man meant. “Why should there be?”

“It’s a very important thing for a man to learn about himself, Garion,” Silk told him seriously. “Power can be very sweet for some men, and you never know how a man’s going to handle it until you give him the chance to try.”

“I don’t know why you went to all the trouble. It’s not too likely that I’m going to be put in charge of things very often.”

“You never know, Garion. You never know.”

They rode on across the barren black sands of the wasteland toward the mountains looming ahead. The quarter moon rose behind them, and its light was cold and white. Near the edge of the wasteland there were a few scrubby thornbushes huddling low to the sand and silvered with frost. It was an hour or so before midnight when they finally reached rocky ground, and the hooves of their horses clattered sharply as they climbed up out of the sandy waste. When they topped the first ridge, they stopped to look back. The dark expanse of the wasteland behind them was dotted with the watch fires of the Murgos, and far back along their trail they saw moving torches.

“I was starting to worry about that,” Silk said to Belgarath, “but it looks as if they found our trail after all.”

“Let’s hope they don’t lose it again,” the old man replied. “Not too likely, really. I made it pretty obvious.”

“Murgos can be a bit undependable sometimes.” Belgarath seemed to have recovered almost completely, but Garion noted a weary slump to his shoulders and was glad that they did not plan to ride all night.

The mountains into which they rode were as arid and rocky as the ones lying to the north had been. There were looming cliffs and patches of alkali on the ground and a bitingly cold wind that seemed to wail endlessly through the rocks and to tug at the coarse-woven Murgo robes that disguised them. They pushed on until they were well into the mountains; then, several hours before dawn, they stopped to rest and to wait for the sun to rise.

When the first faint light appeared on the eastern horizon, Silk rode out and located a rocky gap passing to the northwest between two ocherous cliff faces. As soon as he returned, they saddled their horses again and moved out at a trot.

“We can get rid of these now, I think,” Belgarath said, pulling off his Murgo robe.

“I’ll take them,” Silk suggested as he reined in. “The gap’s just ahead there.” He pointed. “I’ll catch up in a couple of hours.”

“Where are you going?” Barak asked him.

“I’ll leave a few miles more of false trail,” Silk replied. “Then I’ll double back and make sure that you haven’t left any tracks. It won’t take long.”

“You want some company?” the big man offered.

Silk shook his head. “I can move faster alone.”

“Be careful.”

Silk grinned. “I’m always careful.” He took the Murgo garments from them and rode off to the west.

The gap into which they rode appeared to be the bed of a stream that had dried up thousands of years before. The water had cut down through the rock, revealing layer upon layer of red, brown, and yellow stone lying in bands, one atop the other. The sound of their horses’ hooves was very loud as they clattered along between the cliffs, and the wind whistled as it poured through the cut.

Taiba drew her horse in beside Garion’s. She was shivering and she had the cloak he had given her pulled tightly about her shoulders. “Is it always this cold?” she asked, her large, violet eyes very wide.

“In the wintertime,” he replied. “I imagine it’s pretty hot here in the summer.”

“The slave pens were always the same,” she told him. “We never knew what season it was.”

The twisting streambed made a sharp bend to the right, and they rode into the light of the newly risen sun. Taiba gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Garion asked her quickly.

“The light,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. “It’s like fire in my eyes.”

Relg, who rode directly in front of them, was also shielding his eyes. He looked back over his shoulder at the Marag woman. “Here,” he said. He took one of the veils he usually bound across his eyes when they were in direct sunlight and handed it back to her. “Cover your face with this until we’re back into the shadows again.” His voice was peculiarly neutral.

“Thank you,” Taiba said, binding the cloth across her eyes. “I didn’t know that the sun could be so bright.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Relg told her. “It just takes some time. Try to protect your eyes for the first few days.” He seemed about to turn and ride on, then he looked at her curiously. “Haven’t you ever seen the sun before?” he asked her.

“No,” she replied. “Other slaves told me about it, though. The Murgos don’t use women on their work gangs, so I was never taken out of the pens. It was always dark down there.”

“It must have been terrible.” Garion shuddered.

She shrugged. “The dark wasn’t so bad. It was the light we were afraid of. Light meant that the Murgos were coming with torches to take someone to the Temple to be sacrificed.”

The trail they followed turned again, and they rode out of the bright glare of sunlight. “Thank you,” Taiba said to Relg, removing the veil from her eyes and holding it out to him.

“Keep it,” he told her. “You’ll probably need it again.” His voice seemed oddly subdued, and his eyes had a strange gentleness in them. As he looked at her, the haunted expression crept back over his face.

Since they had left Rak Cthol, Garion had covertly watched these two. He knew that Relg, despite all his efforts, could not take his eyes off the Marag woman he had been forced to rescue from her living entombment in the caves. Although Relg still ranted about sin continually, his words no longer carried the weight of absolute conviction; indeed quite often, they seemed to be little more than a mechanical repetition of a set of formulas. Occasionally, Garion had noted, even those formulas had faltered when Taiba’s deep violet eyes had turned to regard the Ulgo’s face. For her part, Taiba was quite obviously puzzled. Relg’s rejection of her simple gratitude had humiliated her, and her resentment had been hot and immediate. His constant scrutiny, however, spoke to her with a meaning altogether different from the words coming from his lips. His eyes told her one thing, but his mouth said something else. She was baffled by him, not knowing whether to respond to his look or his words.

“You’ve lived your whole life in the dark, then?” Relg asked her curiously.

“Most of it,” she replied. “I saw my mother’s face once—the day the Murgos came and took her to the Temple. I was alone after that. Being alone is the worst of it. You can bear the dark if you aren’t alone.”

“How old were you when they took your mother away?”

“I don’t really know. I must have been almost a woman, though, because not long after that the Murgos gave me to a slave who had pleased them. There were a lot of slaves in the pens who did anything the Murgos wanted, and they were rewarded with extra food—or with women. I cried at first; but in time I learned to accept it. At least I wasn’t alone any more.”

Relg’s face hardened, and Taiba saw the expression. “What should I have done?” she asked him. “When you’re a slave, your body doesn’t belong to you. They can sell you or give you to anybody they want to, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“There must have been something.”

“Such as what? I didn’t have any kind of weapon to fight with —or to kill myself with—and you can’t strangle yourself.” She looked at Garion. “Did you know that? Some of the slaves tried it, but all you do is fall into unconsciousness, and then you start to breathe again. Isn’t that curious?”

“Did you try to fight?” It seemed terribly important to Relg for some reason.

“What would have been the point? The slave they gave me to was stronger than I. He’d have just hit me until I did what he wanted.”

“You should have fought,” Relg declared adamantly. “A little pain is better than sin, and giving up like that is sin.”

“Is it? If somebody forces you to do something and there’s no possible way to avoid it, is it really sin?”

Relg started to answer, but her eyes, looking directly into his face, seemed to stop up his tongue. He faltered, unable to face that gaze. Abruptly he turned his mount and rode back toward the pack animals.

“Why does he fight with himself so much?” Taiba asked.

“He’s completely devoted to his God,” Garion explained. “He’s afraid of anything that might take away some of what he feels he owes to UL.”

“Is this UL of his really that jealous?”

“No, I don’t think so, but Relg does.”

Taiba pursed her lips into a sensual pout and looked back over her shoulder at the retreating zealot. “You know,” she said, “I think he’s actually afraid of me.” She laughed then, that same low, wicked little laugh, and lifted her arms to run her fingers through the glory of her midnight hair. “No one’s ever been afraid of me before—not ever. I think I rather like it. Will you excuse me?” She turned her horse without waiting for a reply and quite deliberately rode back after the fleeing Relg.

Garion thought about it as he rode on through the narrow, twisting canyon. He realized that there was a strength in Taiba that none of them had suspected, and he finally concluded that Relg was in for a very bad time.

He trotted on ahead to speak to Aunt Pol about it as she rode with her arms about Errand.

“It’s really none of your business, Garion,” she told him. “Relg and Taiba can work out their problems without any help from you.”

“I was just curious, that’s all. Relg’s tearing himself apart, and Taiba’s all confused about him. What’s really going on between them, Aunt Pol?”

“Something very necessary,” she replied.

“You could say that about nearly everything that happens, Aunt Pol.” It was almost an accusation. “You could even say that the way Ce’Nedra and I quarrel all the time is necessary too, couldn’t you?”

She looked slightly amused. “It’s not exactly the same thing, Garion,” she answered, “but there’s a certain necessity about that too.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he scoffed.

“Is it really? Then why do you suppose the two of you go out of your way so much to aggravate each other?”

He had no answer for that, but the entire notion worried him. At the same time the very mention of Ce’Nedra’s name suddenly brought her sharply into his mind, and he realized that he actually missed her. He rode along in silence beside Aunt Pol for a while, feeling melancholy. Finally he sighed.

“And why so great a sigh?”

“It’s all over, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“This whole thing. I mean—we’ve recovered the Orb. That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it?”

“There’s more to it than that, Garion—much more—and we’re not out of Cthol Murgos yet, are we?”

“You’re not really worried about that, are you?” But then, as if her question had suddenly uncovered some lingering doubts in his own mind, he stared at her in sudden apprehension. “What would happen if we didn’t?” he blurted. “If we didn’t make it out, I mean. What would happen to the West if we didn’t get the Orb back to Riva?”

“Things would become unpleasant.”

“There’d be a war, wouldn’t there? And the Angaraks would win, and there’d be Grolims everywhere with their knives and their altars.” The thought of Grolims marching up to the gates of Faldor’s farm outraged him.

“Don’t go borrowing trouble, Garion. Let’s worry about one thing at a time, shall we?”

“But what if—”

“Garion,” she said with a pained look, “don’t belabor the ‘what ifs,’ please. If you start that, you’ll just worry everybody to death.”

“You say ‘what if’ to grandfather all the time,” he accused.

“That’s different,” she replied.

They rode hard for the next several days through a series of passes with the dry, bitter chill pressing at them like some great weight. Silk rode back often to look for any signs of pursuit, but their ruse seemed to have fooled the Murgos. Finally, about noon on a cold, sunless day when the wind was kicking up dust clouds along the horizon, they reached the broad, arid valley through which the south caravan route wound. They took cover behind a low hill while Silk rode on ahead to take a quick look.

“Thinkest thou that Taur Urgas hath joined in the search for us?” Mandorallen, dressed again in his armor, asked Belgarath.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” the old sorcerer replied. “He’s a very unpredictable man.”

“There’s a Murgo patrol headed east on the caravan route,” Silk reported when he returned. “It will be another half hour or so until they’re out of sight.”

Belgarath nodded.

“Do you think we’ll be safe once we cross over into Mishrak ac Thull?” Durnik asked.

“We can’t count on it,” Belgarath replied. “Gethel, the king of the Thulls, is afraid of Taur Urgas, so he wouldn’t make any kind of fuss about a border violation if Taur Urgas decided to follow us.”

They waited until the Murgos had crossed a low ridge to the east and then moved out again.

For the next two days they rode steadily to the northwest. The terrain grew less rocky after they crossed into the land of the Thulls, and they saw the telltale dust clouds far behind them that spoke of mounted Murgo search parties. It was late in the afternoon of a murky day when they finally reached the top of the eastern escarpment.

Barak glanced back over his shoulder at the dust clouds behind them, then pulled his horse in beside Belgarath’s. “Just how rough is the ground leading down into the Vale?” he asked.

“It’s not the easiest trail in the world.”

“Those Murgos are less than a day behind us, Belgarath. If we have to pick our way down, they’ll be on top of us before we make it.”

Belgarath pursed his lips, squinting at the dust clouds on the southern horizon. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Maybe we’d better think this through.” He raised his hand to call a halt. “It’s time to make a couple of decisions,” he told the rest of them. “The Murgos are a little closer than we really want them to be. It takes two to three days to make the descent into the Vale, and there are places where one definitely doesn’t want to be rushed.”

“We could always go on to that ravine we followed coming up,” Silk suggested. “It only takes a half day to go down that way.”

“But Lord Hettar and the Algar clans of King Cho-Hag await us in the Vale,” Mandorallen objected. “Were we to go on, would we not lead the Murgos down into undefended country?”

“Have we got any choice?” Silk asked him.

“We could light fires along the way,” Barak suggested. “Hettar will know what they mean.”

“So would the Murgos,” Silk said. “They’d ride all night and be right behind us every step of the way down.”

Belgarath scratched sourly at his short white beard. “I think we’re going to have to abandon the original plan,” he decided. “We have to take the shortest way down, and that means the ravine, I’m afraid. We’ll be on our own once we get down, but that can’t be helped.”

“Surely King Cho-Hag will have scouts posted along the foot of the escarpment,” Durnik said, his plain face worried.

“We can hope so,” Barak replied.

“All right,” Belgarath said firmly, “we’ll use the ravine. I don’t altogether like the idea, but our options seem to have been narrowed a bit. Let’s ride.”

It was late afternoon when they reached the shallow gully at the top of the steep notch leading down to the plain below. Belgarath glanced once down the precipitous cut and shook his head. “Not in the dark,” he decided. “Can you see any signs of the Algars?” he asked Barak, who was staring out at the plain below.

“I’m afraid not,” the red-bearded man answered. “Do you want to light a fire to signal them?”

“No,” the old man replied. “Let’s not announce our intentions.”

“I will need a small fire, though,” Aunt Pol told him. “We all need a hot meal.”

“I don’t know if that’s wise, Polgara,” Belgarath objected.

“We’ll have a hard day tomorrow, father,” she said firmly. “Durnik knows how to build a small fire and keep it hidden.”

“Have it your own way, Pol,” the old man said in a resigned tone of voice.

“Naturally, father.”

It was cold that night, and they kept their fire small and well sheltered. As the first light of dawn began to stain the cloudy sky to the east, they rose and prepared to descend the rocky cut toward the plain below.

“I’ll strike the tents,” Durnik said.

“Just knock them down,” Belgarath told him. He turned and nudged one of the packs thoughtfully with his foot. “We’ll take only what we absolutely have to have,” he decided. “We’re not going to have the time to waste on these.”

“You’re not going to leave them?” Durnik sounded shocked.

“They’ll just be in the way, and the horses will be able to move faster without them.”

“But—all of our belongings!” Durnik protested.

Silk also looked a bit chagrined. He quickly spread out a blanket and began rummaging through the packs, his quick hands bringing out innumerable small, valuable items and piling them in a heap on the blanket.

“Where did you get all those?” Barak asked him.

“Here and there,” Silk replied evasively.

“You stole them, didn’t you?”

“Some of them,” Silk admitted. “We’ve been on the road for a long time, Barak.”

“Do you really plan to carry all of that down the ravine?” Barak asked, curiously eyeing Silk’s treasures.

Silk looked at the heap, mentally weighing it. Then he sighed with profound regret. “No,” he said, “I guess not.” He stood up and scattered the heap with his foot. “It’s all very pretty though, isn’t it? Now I guess I’ll have to start all over again.” He grinned then. “It’s the stealing that’s fun, anyway. Let’s go down.” And he started toward the top of the steeply descending streambed that angled sharply down toward the base of the escarpment.

The unburdened horses were able to move much more rapidly, and they all passed quite easily over spots Garion remembered painfully from the upward climb weeks before. By noon they were more than halfway down.

Then Polgara stopped and raised her face. “Father,” she said calmly, “they’ve found the top of the ravine.”

“How many of them?”

“It’s an advance patrol—no more than twenty.”

Far above them they heard a sharp clash of rock against rock, and then, after a moment, another. “I was afraid of that,” Belgarath said sourly.

“What?” Garion asked.

“They’re rolling rocks down on us.” The old man grimly hitched up his belt. “All right, the rest of you go on ahead. Get down as fast as you can.

“Are you strong enough, father?” Aunt Pol asked, sounding concerned. “You still haven’t really recovered, you know.”

“We’re about to find out,” the old man replied, his face set. “Move—all of you.” He said it in a tone that cut off any possible argument. As they all began scrambling down over the steep rocks, Garion lagged farther and farther behind. Finally, as Durnik led the last packhorse over a jumble of broken stone and around a bend, Garion stopped entirely and stood listening. He could hear the clatter and slide of hooves on the rocks below and, from above, the clash and bounce of a large stone tumbling over the ravine, coming closer and closer. Then there was a familiar surge and roaring sound. A rock, somewhat larger than a man’s head, went whistling over him, angling sharply up out of the cut to fall harmlessly far out on the tumbled debris at the floor of the escarpment. Carefully Garion began climbing back up the ravine, pausing often to listen.

Belgarath was sweating as Garion came into sight around a bend in the ravine a goodly way above and ducked back out of the old man’s sight. Another rock, somewhat larger than the first, came bounding and crashing down the narrow ravine, bouncing off the walls and leaping into the air each time it struck the rocky streambed. About twenty yards above Belgarath, it struck solidly and spun into the air. The old man gestured irritably, grunting with the effort, and the rock sailed out in a long arc, clearing the walls of the ravine and falling out of sight.

Garion quickly crossed the streambed and went down several yards more, staying close against the rocky wall and peering back to be sure he was concealed from his grandfather.

When the next rock came bouncing and clashing down toward them, Garion gathered his will. He’d have to time it perfectly, he knew, and he peered around a corner, watching the old man intently. When Belgarath raised his hand, Garion pushed his own will in to join his grandfather’s, hoping to slip a bit of unnoticed help to him.

Belgarath watched the rock go whirling far out over the plain below, then he turned and looked sternly down the ravine. “All right, Garion,” he said crisply, “step out where I can see you.”

Somewhat sheepishly Garion went out into the center of the streambed and stood looking up at his grandfather.

“Why is it that you can never do what you’re told to do?” the old man demanded.

“I just thought I could help, that’s all.”

“Did I ask for help? Do I look like an invalid?”

“There’s another rock coming.”

“Don’t change the subject. I think you’re getting above yourself, young man.”

“Grandfather!” Garion said urgently, staring at the large rock bounding down the ravine directly for the old man’s back. He threw his will under the rock and hurled it out of the ravine.

Belgarath looked up at the stone soaring over his head. “Tacky, Garion,” he said disapprovingly, “very tacky. You don’t have to throw them all the way to Prolgu, you know. Stop trying to show off.”

“I got excited,” Garion apologized. “I pushed a little too hard.”

The old man grunted. “All right,” he said a bit ungraciously, “as long as you’re here anyway but stick to your own rocks. I can manage mine, and you throw me off balance when you come blundering in like that.”

“I just need a little practice, that’s all.”

“You need some instruction in etiquette, too,” Belgarath told him, coming on down to where Garion stood. “You don’t just jump in with help until you’re asked. That’s very bad form, Garion.”

“Another rock coming,” Garion informed him politely. “Do you want to get it or shall I?”

“Don’t get snippy, young man,” Belgarath told him, then turned and flipped the approaching rock out of the ravine.

They moved on down together, taking turns on the rocks the Murgos were rolling down the ravine. Garion discovered that it grew easier each time he did it, but Belgarath was drenched with sweat by the time they neared the bottom. Garion considered trying once again to slip his grandfather a bit of assistance, but the old sorcerer glared at him so fiercely as he started to gather in his will that he quickly abandoned the idea.

“I wondered where you’d gone,” Aunt Pol said to Garion as the two clambered out over the rocks at the mouth of the ravine to rejoin the rest of the party. She looked closely at Belgarath. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m just fine,” he snapped. “I had all this assistance—unsolicited, of course.” He glared at Garion again.

“When we get a bit of time, we’re going to have to give him some lessons in controlling the noise,” she observed. “He sounds like a thunderclap.”

“That’s not all he has to learn to control.” For some reason the old man was behaving as if he’d just been dreadfully insulted.

“What now?” Barak asked. “Do you want to light signal fires and wait here for Hettar and Cho-Hag?”

“This isn’t a good place, Barak,” Silk pointed out. “Half of Murgodom’s going to come pouring down that ravine very shortly.”

“The passage is not wide, Prince Kheldar,” Mandorallen observed.

“My Lord Barak and I can hold it for a week or more if need be.”

“You’re backsliding again, Mandorallen,” Barak told him.

“Besides, they’d just roll rocks down on you,” Silk said. “And they’re going to be dropping boulders off the edge up there before long. We’re probably going to have to get out on the plain a ways to avoid that sort of thing.”

Durnik was staring thoughtfully at the mouth of the ravine. “We need to send something up there to slow them down, though,” he mused. “I don’t think we want them right behind us.”

“It’s a little hard to make rocks roll uphill,” Barak said.

“I wasn’t thinking of rocks,” Durnik replied. “We’ll need something much lighter.”

“Like what?” Silk asked the smith.

“Smoke would be good,” Durnik answered. “The ravine should draw just like a chimney. If we build a fire and fill the whole thing with smoke, nobody’s going to come down until the fire goes out.”

Silk grinned broadly. “Durnik,” he said, “you’re a treasure.”

5

There were bushes, scrub and bramble for the most part, growing here and there along the base of the cliff, and they quickly fanned out with their swords to gather enough to build a large, smoky fire. “You’d better hurry,” Belgarath called to them as they worked. “There are a dozen Murgos or more already halfway down the ravine.”

Durnik, who had been gathering dry sticks and splintered bits of log, ran back to the mouth of the ravine, knelt and began striking sparks from his flint into the tinder he always carried. In a few moments he had a small fire going, the orange flames licking up around the weathered gray sticks. Carefully he added larger pieces until his fire was a respectable blaze. Then he began piling thornbushes and brambles atop it, critically watching the direction of the smoke. The bushes hissed and smoldered fitfully at first, and a great cloud of smoke wafted this way and that for a moment, then began to pour steadily up the ravine. Durnik nodded with satisfaction. “Just like a chimney,” he observed. From far up the cut came shouts of alarm and a great deal of coughing and choking.

“How long can a man breathe smoke before he chokes to death?” Silk asked.

“Not very long,” Durnik replied.

“I didn’t think so.” The little man looked happily at the smoking blaze. “Good fire,” he said, holding his hands out to the warmth.

“The smoke’s going to delay them, but I think it’s time to move on out,” Belgarath said, squinting at the cloud-obscured ball of the sun hanging low over the horizon to the west. “We’ll move on up the face of the escarpment and then make a run for it. We’ll want to surprise them a bit, to give us time to get out of range before they start throwing rocks down on us.”

“Is there any sign of Hettar out there?” Barak asked, peering out at the grassland.

“We haven’t seen any yet,” Durnik replied.

“You do know that we’re going to lead half of Cthol Murgos out onto the plain?” Barak pointed out to Belgarath.

“That can’t be helped. For right now, we’ve got to get out of here. If Taur Urgas is up there, he’s going to send people after us, even if he has to throw them off the cliff personally. Let’s go.”

They followed the face of the cliff for a mile or more until they found a spot where the rockfall did not extend so far out onto the plain. “This will do,” Belgarath decided. “As soon as we get to level ground, we ride hard straight out. An arrow shot off the top of that cliff will carry a long way. Is everybody ready?” He looked around at them. “Let’s move, then.”

They led their horses down the short, steep slope of rock to the grassy plain below, mounted quickly and set off at a dead run.

“Arrow!” Silk said sharply, looking up and back over his shoulder. Garion, without thinking, slashed with his will at the tiny speck arching down toward them. In the same instant he felt a peculiar double surge coming from either side of him. The arrow broke into several pieces in midair.

“If you two don’t mind!” Belgarath said irritably to Garion and Aunt Pol, half reining in his horse.

“I just didn’t want you to tire yourself, father,” Aunt Pol replied coolly. “I’m sure Garion feels the same way.”

“Couldn’t we discuss it later?” Silk suggested, looking apprehensively back at the towering escarpment.

They plunged on, the long, brown grass whipping at the legs of their horses. Other arrows began to fall, dropping farther and farther behind them as they rode. By the time they were a half mile out from the sheer face, the arrows were sheeting down from the top of the cliff in a whistling black rain.

“Persistent, aren’t they?” Silk observed.

“It’s a racial trait,” Barak replied. “Murgos are stubborn to the point of idiocy.”

“Keep going,” Belgarath told them. “It’s just a question of time until they bring up a catapult.”

“They’re throwing ropes down the face of the cliff,” Dumik reported, peering back at the escarpment. “As soon as a few of them get to the bottom, they’ll pull the fire clear of the ravine and start bringing horses down.”

“At least it slowed them down a bit,” Belgarath said.

Twilight, hardly more than a gradual darkening of the cloudy murk that had obscured the sky for several days, began to creep across the Algarian plain. They rode on.

Garion glanced back several times as he rode and noticed moving pinpoints of light along the base of the cliff. “Some of them have reached the bottom, grandfather,” he called to the old man, who was pounding along in the lead. “I can see their torches.”

“It was bound to happen,” the sorcerer replied.

It was nearly midnight by the time they reached the Aldur River, lying black and oily-looking between its frosty banks.

“Does anybody have any idea how we’re going to find that ford in the dark?” Durnik asked.

“I’ll find it,” Relg told him. “It isn’t all that dark for me. Wait here.”

“That could give us a certain advantage,” Silk noted. “We’ll be able to ford the river, but the Murgos will flounder around on this side in the dark for half the night. We’ll be leagues ahead of them before they get across.”

“That was one of the things I was sort of counting on,” Belgarath replied smugly.

It was a half an hour before Relg returned. “It isn’t far,” he told them.

They remounted and rode through the chill darkness, following the curve of the river bank until they heard the unmistakable gurgle and wash of water running over stones. “That’s it just ahead,” Relg said.

“It’s still going to be dangerous fording in the dark,” Barak pointed out.

“It isn’t that dark,” Relg said. “Just follow me.” He rode confidently a hundred yards farther upriver, then turned and nudged his horse into the shallow rippling water.

Garion felt his horse flinch from the icy chill as he rode out into the river, following closely behind Belgarath. Behind him he heard Durnik coaxing the now-unburdened pack animals into the water.

The river was not deep, but it was very wide—almost a half mile—and in the process of fording, they were all soaked to the knees.

“The rest of the night promises to be moderately unpleasant,” Silk observed, shaking one sodden foot.

“At least you’ve got the river between you and Taur Urgas,” Barak reminded him.

“That does brighten things up a bit,” Silk admitted.

They had not gone a half mile, however, before Mandorallen’s charger went down with a squeal of agony. The knight, with a great clatter, tumbled in the grass as he was pitched out of the saddle. His great horse floundered with threshing legs, trying futilely to rise.

“What’s the matter with him?” Barak demanded sharply.

Behind them, with another squeal, one of the packhorses collapsed. “What is it?” Garion asked Durnik, his voice shrill.

“It’s the cold,” Durnik answered, swinging down from his saddle. “We’ve ridden them to exhaustion, and then we made them wade across the river. The chill’s settled into their muscles.”

“What do we do?”

“We have to rub them down—all of them—with wool.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Silk objected.

“It’s that or walk,” Durnik declared, pulling off his stout wool cloak and beginning to rub vigorously at his horse’s legs with it.

“Maybe we should build a fire,” Garion suggested, also dismounting and beginning to rub down his horse’s shivering legs.

“There isn’t anything around here to burn,” Durnik told him. “This is all open grassland.”

“And a fire would set up a beacon for every Murgo within ten miles,” Barak added, massaging the legs of his gray horse.

They all worked as rapidly as possible, but the sky to the east had begun to pale with the first hints of dawn before Mandorallen’s horse was on his feet again and the rest of their mounts were able to move.

“They won’t be able to run,” Durnik declared somberly. “We shouldn’t even ride them.”

“Durnik,” Silk protested, “Taur Urgas is right behind us.”

“They won’t last a league if we try to make them run,” the smith said stubbornly. “There’s nothing left in them.”

They rode away from the river at a walk. Even at that pace, Garion could feel the trembling of his horse under him. They all looked back frequently, watching the dark-shrouded plain beyond the river as the sky grew gradually lighter. When they reached the top of the first low hills, the deep shadow which had obscured the grasslands behind them faded and they were able to see movement. Then, as the light grew stronger, they saw an army of Murgos swarming toward the river. In the midst of them were the flapping black banners of Taur Urgas himself.

The Murgos came on in waves until they reached the far bank of the river. Then their mounted scouts ranged out until they located the ford. The bulk of the army Taur Urgas had brought down to the plain was still on foot, but clusters of horses were being driven up from the rear as rapidly as they could be brought down the narrow cut leading from the top of the escarpment.

As the first units began splashing across the ford, Silk turned to Belgarath. “Now what?” the little man asked in a worried voice.

“We’d better get off the top of this hill,” the old man replied. “I don’t think they’ve seen us yet, but it’s just a question of time, I’m afraid.” They rode down into a little swale just beyond the hill. The overcast which had obscured the sky for the past week or more had begun to blow off, and broad patches of pale, icy blue had begun to appear, though the sun had not yet come up.

“My guess is that he’s going to hold the bulk of his army on the far side,” Belgarath told them after they had all dismounted. “He’ll bring them on across as their horses catch up. As soon as they get to this side, they’re going to spread out to look for us.”

“That’s the way I’d do it,” Barak agreed.

“Somebody ought to keep an eye on them,” Durnik suggested. He started back up the hill on foot. “I’ll let you know if they start doing anything unusual.”

Belgarath seemed lost in thought. He paced up and down, his hands clasped together behind his back and an angry look on his face. “This isn’t working out the way I’d expected,” he said finally. “I hadn’t counted on the horses playing out on us.”

“Is there any place we can hide?” Barak asked.

Belgarath shook his head. “This is all grassland,” he replied. “There aren’t any rocks or caves or trees, and it’s going to be impossible to cover our tracks.” He kicked at the tall grass. “This isn’t turning out too well,” he admitted glumly. “We’re all alone out here on exhausted horses.” He chewed thoughtfully at his lower lip. “The nearest help is in the Vale. I think we’d better turn south and make for it. We’re fairly close.”

“How close?” Silk asked.

“Ten leagues or so.”

“That’s going to take all day, Belgarath. I don’t think we’ve got that long.”

“We might have to tamper with the weather a bit,” Belgarath conceded. “I don’t like doing that, but I might not have any choice.” There was a distant low rumble somewhere off to the north. The little boy looked up and smiled at Aunt Pol. “Errand?” he asked.

“Yes, dear,” she replied absently.

“Can you pick up any traces of Algars in the vicinity, Pol?” Belgarath asked her.

She shook her head. “I think I’m too close to the Orb, father. I keep getting an echo that blots things out more than a mile or so away.”

“It always has been noisy,” he grunted sourly.

“Talk to it, father,” she suggested. “Maybe it will listen to you.”

He gave her a long, hard look—a look she returned quite calmly. “I can do without that, miss,” he told her finally in a crisp voice.

There was another low rumble, from the south this time. “Thunder?” Silk said, looking a bit puzzled. “Isn’t this an odd time of year for it?”

“This plain breeds peculiar weather,” Belgarath said. “There isn’t anything between here and Drasnia but eight hundred leagues of grass.”

“Do we try for the Vale then?” Barak asked.

“It looks as if we’ll have to,” the old man replied.

Durnik came back down the hill. “They’re coming across the river,” he reported, “but they aren’t spreading out yet. It looks as if they want to get more men across before they start looking for us.”

“How hard can we push the horses without hurting them?” Silk asked him.

“Not very,” Durnik replied. “It would be better to save them until we absolutely have to use up whatever they’ve got left. If we walk and lead them for an hour or so, we might be able to get a canter out of them—for short periods of time.”

“Let’s go along the back side of the crest,” Belgarath said, picking up the reins of his horse. “We’ll stay pretty much out of sight that way, but I want to keep an eye on Taur Urgas.” He led them at an angle back up out of the swale.

The clouds had broken even more now, and the tatters raced in the endless winds that swept the vast grassland. To the east, the sky was turning a pale pink. Although the Algarian plain did not have that bitter, arid chill that had cut at them in the uplands of Cthol Murgos and Mishrak ac Thull, it was still very cold. Garion shivered, drew his cloak in tight about him, and kept walking, trailing his weary horse behind him.

There was another brief rumble, and the little boy, perched in the saddle of Aunt Pol’s horse laughed. “Errand,” he announced.

“I wish he’d stop that,” Silk said irritably.

They glanced from time to time over the crest of the long hill as they walked. Below, in the broad valley of the Aldur River, the Murgos of Taur Urgas were fording in larger and larger groups. It appeared that fully half his army had reached the west bank by now, and the red and black standard of the king of the Murgos stood planted defiantly on Algarian soil.

“If he brings too many more men down the escarpment, it’s going to take something pretty significant to dislodge him,” Barak rumbled, scowling down at the Murgos.

“I know,” Belgarath replied, “and that’s the one thing I’ve wanted to avoid. We aren’t ready for a war just yet.”

The sun, huge and red, ponderously moved up from behind the eastern escarpment, turning the sky around it rosy. In the still-shadowed valley below them, the Murgos continued to splash across the river in the steely morning light.

“Methinks he will await the sun before he begins the search for us,” Mandorallen observed.

“And that’s not very far off,” Barak agreed, glancing at the slowly moving band of sunlight just touching the hill along which they moved. “We’ve probably got half an hour at the most. I think it’s getting to the point where we’re going to have to gamble on the horses. Maybe if we switch mounts every mile or so, we can get some more distance out of them.”

The rumble that came then could not possibly have been thunder. The ground shook with it, and it rolled on and on endlessly from both the north and south.

And then, pouring over the crests of the hills surrounding the valley of the Aldur like some vast tide suddenly released by the bursting of a mighty dam, came the clans of the Algars. Down they plunged upon the startled Murgos thickly clustered along the banks of the river, and their great war cry shook the very heavens as they fell like wolves upon the divided army of Taur Urgas.

A lone horseman veered out of the great charge of the clans and came pounding up the hillside toward Garion and his friends. As the warrior drew closer, Garion could see his long scalp lock flowing behind him and his drawn sabre catching the first rays of the morning sun. It was Hettar. A vast surge of relief swept over Garion. They were safe.

“Where have you been?” Barak demanded in a great voice as the hawk-faced Algar rode closer.

“Watching,” Hettar replied calmly as he reined in. “We wanted to let the Murgos get out a ways from the escarpment so we could cut them off. My father sent me to see how you all are.”

“How considerate,” Silk observed sardonically. “Did it ever occur to you to let us know you were out there?”

Hettar shrugged. “We could see that you were all right.” He looked critically at their exhausted mounts. “You didn’t take very good care of them,” he said accusingly.

“We were a bit pressed,” Durnik apologized.

“Did you get the Orb?” the tall man asked Belgarath, glancing hungrily down toward the river where a vast battle had been joined.

“It took a bit, but we got it,” the old sorcerer replied.

“Good.” Hettar turned his horse, and his lean face had a fierce look on it. “I’ll tell Cho-Hag. Will you excuse me?” Then he stopped as if remembering something. “Oh,” he said to Barak, “congratulations, by the way.”

“For what?” the big man asked, looking puzzled.

“The birth of your son.”

“What?” Barak sounded stunned. “How?”

“In the usual way, I’d imagine,” Hettar replied.

“I mean how did you find out?”

“Anheg sent word to us.”

“When was he born?”

“A couple months ago.” Hettar looked nervously down at the battle which was raging on both sides of the river and in the middle of the ford as well. “I really have to go,” he said. “If I don’t hurry, there won’t be any Murgos left.” And he drove his heels into his horse’s flanks and plunged down the hill.

“He hasn’t changed a bit,” Silk noted.

Barak was standing with a somewhat foolish grin on his big, red-bearded face.

“Congratulations, my Lord,” Mandorallen said to him, clasping his hand.

Barak’s grin grew broader.

It quickly became obvious that the situation of the encircled Murgos below was hopeless. With his army cut in two by the river, Taur Urgas was unable to mount even an orderly retreat. The forces he had brought across the river were quickly swarmed under by King Cho-Hag’s superior numbers, and the few survivors of that short, ugly melèe plunged back into the river, protectively drawn up around the red and black banner of the Murgo king. Even in the ford, however, the Algar warriors pressed him. Some distance upriver Garion could see horsemen plunging into the icy water to be carried down by the current to the shallows of the ford in an effort to cut off escape. Much of the fight in the river was obscured by the sheets of spray kicked up by struggling horses, but the bodies floating downstream testified to the savagery of the clash.

Briefly, for no more than a moment, the red and black banner of Taur Urgas was confronted by the burgundy—and-white horse-banner of King Cho-Hag, and then the two were swept apart.

“That could have been an interesting meeting,” Silk noted. “Cho-Hag and Taur Urgas have hated each other for years.”

Once the king of the Murgos regained the east bank, he rallied what forces he could, turned, and fled back across the open grassland toward the escarpment with Algar clansmen hotly pursuing him. For the bulk of his army, however, there was no escape. Since their horses had not yet descended the narrow ravine from the top of the escarpment, they were forced to fight on foot. The Algars swept down upon them in waves, sabres flashing in the morning sun. Faintly, Garion could hear the screams. Sickened finally, he turned away, unable to watch the slaughter any longer.

The little boy, who was standing close beside Aunt Pol with his hand in hers, looked at Garion gravely. “Errand,” he said with a sad conviction.

By midmorning the battle was over. The last of the Murgos on the far bank of the river had been destroyed, and Taur Urgas had fled with the tattered remnants of his army back up the ravine. “Good fight,” Barak observed professionally, looking down at the bodies littering both banks of the river and bobbing limply in the shallows downstream from the ford.

“The tactics of thy Algar cousins were masterly,” Mandorallen agreed. “Taur Urgas will take some time to recover from this morning’s chastisement.”

“I’d give a great deal to see the look on his face just now.” Silk laughed. “He’s probably frothing at the mouth.”

King Cho-Hag, dressed in steel-plated black leather and with his horse-banner streaming triumphantly in the bright morning sun, came galloping up the hill toward them, closely surrounded by the members of his personal guard. “Interesting morning,” he said with typical Algar understatement as he reined in. “Thanks for bringing us so many Murgos.”

“He’s as bad as Hettar,” Silk observed to Barak.

The king of the Algars grinned openly as he slowly dismounted. His weak legs seemed almost to buckle as he carefully put his weight on them, and he held onto his saddle for support. “How did things go in Rak Cthol?” he asked.

“It wound up being rather noisy,” Belgarath replied.

“Did you find Ctuchik in good health?”

“Moderately. We corrected that, however. The whole affair set off an earthquake. Most of Rak Cthol slid off its mountaintop, I’m afraid.”

Cho-Hag grinned again. “What a shame.”

“Where’s Hettar?” Barak asked.

“Chasing Murgos, I imagine,” Cho-Hag replied. “Their rear guard got cut off, and they’re out there trying to find someplace to hide.”

“There aren’t very many hiding places on this plain, are there?” Barak asked.

“Almost none at all,” the Algar king agreed pleasantly.

A dozen or so Algar wagons crested a nearby hill, rolling toward them through the tall, brown grass. They were square-boxed conveyances, looking not unlike houses on wheels. They had roofs, narrow windows, and steps at the rear leading up to the doorway on the back of each wagon. It looked, Garion thought, almost like a moving city as they approached.

“I imagine Hettar’s going to be a while,” Cho-Hag noted. “Why don’t we have a bit of lunch? I’d like to get word to Anheg and Rhodar about what’s happened here as soon as possible, but I’m sure you’ll want to pass a few things along as well. We can talk while we eat.”

Several of the wagons were drawn up close together and their sides were let down and joined to form a spacious, low-ceilinged dining hall. Braziers provided warmth, and candles illuminated the interior of the quickly assembled hall, supplementing the bright winter sunlight streaming in through the windows.

They dined on roasted meat and mellow ale. Garion soon found that he was wearing far too many clothes. It seemed that he had not been warm in months, and the glowing braziers shimmered out a welcome heat. Although he was tired and very dirty, he felt warm and safe, and he soon found himself nodding over his plate, almost drowsing as Belgarath recounted the story of their escape to the Algar king.

Gradually, however, as the old man spoke, something alerted Garion. There was, it seemed, a trace too much vivacity in his grandfather’s voice, and Belgarath’s words sometimes seemed almost to tumble over each other. His blue eyes were very bright, but seemed occasionally a bit unfocused.

“So Zedar got away,” Cho-Hag was saying. “That’s the only thing that mars the whole affair.”

“Zedar’s no problem,” Belgarath replied, smiling in a slightly dazed way.

His voice seemed strange, uncertain, and King Cho-Hag looked at the old man curiously. “You’ve had a busy year, Belgarath,” he said.

“A good one, though.” The sorcerer smiled again and lifted his ale cup. His hand was trembling violently, and he stared at it in astonishment.

“Aunt Pol!” Garion called urgently.

“Are you all right, father?”

“Fine, Pol, perfectly fine.” He smiled vaguely at her, his unfocused eyes blinking owlishly. He rose suddenly to his feet and began to move toward her, but his steps were lurching, almost staggering. And then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the floor like a pole-axed cow.

“Father!” Aunt Pol exclaimed, leaping to his side.

Garion, moving almost as fast as his Aunt, knelt on the other side of the unconscious old man. “What’s wrong with him?” he demanded. But Aunt Pol did not answer. Her hands were at Belgarath’s wrist and brow, feeling for his pulse. She peeled back one of his eyelids and stared intently into his blank, unseeing eyes. “Durnik!” she snapped. “Get my herb-bag-quickly!”

The smith bolted for the door.

King Cho-Hag had half risen, his face deathly pale. “He isn’t—”

“No,” she answered tensely. “He’s alive, but only barely.”

“Is something attacking him?” Silk was on his feet, looking around wildly, his hand unconsciously on his dagger.

“No. It’s nothing like that.” Aunt Pol’s hands had moved to the old man’s chest. “I should have known,” she berated herself. “The stubborn, proud old fool! I should have been watching him.”

“Please, Aunt Pol,” Garion begged desperately, “what’s wrong with him?”

“He never really recovered from his fight with Ctuchik,” she replied. “He’s been forcing himself, drawing on his will. Then those rocks in the ravine—but he wouldn’t quit. Now he’s burned up all his vital energy and will. He barely has enough strength left to keep breathing.”

Garion had lifted his grandfather’s head and cradled it on his lap. “Help me, Garion!”

He knew instinctively what she wanted. He gathered his will and held out his hand to her. She grasped it quickly, and he felt the force surge out of him.

Her eyes were very wide as she intently watched the old man’s face. “Again!” And once more she pulled the quickly gathered will out of him.

“What are we doing?” Garion’s voice was shrill.

“Trying to replace some of what he has lost. Maybe—” She glanced toward the door. “Hurry, Durnik!” she shouted.

Durnik rushed back into the wagon.

“Open the bag,” she instructed, “and give me that black jar—the one that’s sealed with lead—and a pair of iron tongs.”

“Should I open the jar, Mistress Pol?” the smith asked.

“No. Just break the seal—carefully. And give me a glove—leather, if you can find one.”

Wordlessly, Silk pulled a leather gauntlet from under his belt and handed it to her. She pulled it on, opened the black jar, and reached inside with the tongs. With great care, she removed a single dark, oily-looking green leaf. She held it very carefully in the tongs. “Pry his mouth open, Garion,” she ordered.

Garion wedged his fingers between Belgarath’s clenched teeth and carefully pried the old man’s jaws apart. Aunt Pol pulled down her father’s lower lip, reached inside his mouth with the shiny leaf, and lightly brushed his tongue with it, once and once only.

Belgarath jumped violently, and his feet suddenly scraped on the floor. His muscles heaved, and his arms began to flail about.

“Hold him down,” Aunt Pol commanded. She pulled back sharply and held the leaf out of the way while Mandorallen and Barak jumped in to hold down Belgarath’s convulsing body. “Give me a bowl,” she ordered. “A wooden one.”

Durnik handed her one, and she deposited the leaf and the tongs in it. Then, with great care, she took off the gauntlet and laid it atop the leaf. “Take this,” she told the smith. “Don’t touch any part of the glove.”

“What do you want me to do with it, Mistress Pol?”

“Take it out and burn it—bowl and all—and don’t let anyone get into the smoke from it.”

“Is it that dangerous?” Silk asked.

“It’s even worse, but those are the only precautions we can take out here.”

Durnik swallowed very hard and left the wagon, holding the bowl as if it were a live snake.

Polgara took a small mortar and pestle and began grinding certain herbs from her bag into a fine powder as she watched Belgarath intently. “How far is it to the Stronghold, Cho-Hag?” she asked the Algar king.

“A man on a good horse could make it in half a day,” he replied.

“How long by wagon—a wagon driven carefully to avoid bouncing?”

“Two days.”

She frowned, still mixing the herbs in the mortar. “All right, there’s no help for it, I guess. Please send Hettar to Queen Silar. Have him tell her that I’m going to need a warm, well-lighted chamber with a good bed and no drafts. Durnik, I want you to drive the wagon. Don’t hit any bumps even if it means losing an hour.”

The smith nodded.

“He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Barak asked, his voice strained and his face shocked by Belgarath’s sudden collapse.

“It’s really too early to say,” she replied. “He’s been on the point of collapse for days maybe. But he wouldn’t let himself go. I think he’s past this crisis, but there may be others.” She laid one hand on her father’s chest. “Put him in bed carefully. Then I want a screen of some kind around the bed—blankets will do. We have to keep him very quiet and out of drafts. No loud noises.”

They all stared at her as the significance of her extreme precautions struck them.

“Move, gentlemen,” she told them firmly. “His life may depend on a certain speed.”

6

The wagon seemed barely to crawl. The high, thin cloud had swept in again to hide the sun, and a kind of leaden chill descended on the featureless plain of southern Algaria. Garion rode inside the wagon, thick-headed and numb with exhaustion, watching with dreadful concern as Aunt Pol hovered over the unconscious Belgarath. Sleep was out of the question. Another crisis could arise at any time and he had to be ready to leap to her aid, joining his will and the power of his amulet with hers. Errand, his small face grave, sat quietly in a chair at the far side of the wagon, his hands firmly clasped around the pouch Durnik had made for him. The sound of the Orb still hung in Garion’s ears, muted but continual. He had grown almost accustomed to the song in the weeks since they had left Rak Cthol; but at quiet moments or when he was tired, it always seemed to return with renewed strength. It was somehow a comforting sound.

Aunt Pol leaned forward to touch Belgarath’s chest. “What’s wrong?” Garion asked in a sharp whisper.

“Nothing’s wrong, Garion,” she replied calmly. “Please don’t keep saying that every time I so much as move. If something’s wrong, I’ll tell you.”

“I’m sorry—I’m just worried, that’s all.”

She turned to give him a steady look. “Why don’t you take Errand and go up and ride on top of the wagon with Silk and Durnik?”

“What if you need me?”

“I’ll call you, dear.”

“I’d really rather stay, Aunt Pol.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t. I’ll call if I need you.”

“But—”

“Now, Garion.”

Garion knew better than to argue. He took Errand out the back door of the wagon and up the steps to the top.

“How is he?” Silk asked.

“How should I know? All I know is that she chased me out.” Garion’s reply was a bit surly.

“That might be a good sign, you know.”

“Maybe.” Garion looked around. Off to the west there was a range of low hills. Rearing above them stood a vast pile of rock.

“The Algar Stronghold,” Durnik told Garion, pointing.

“Are we that close?”

“That’s still a good day’s ride.”

“How high is it?” Garion asked.

“Four or five hundred feet at least,” Silk told him. “The Algars have been building at it for several thousand years. It gives them something to do after the calving season.”

Barak rode up. “How’s Belgarath?” he asked as he approached.

“I think he might be improving just a little,” Garion answered. “I don’t know for sure, though.”

“That’s something, anyway.” The big man pointed toward a gully just ahead. “You’d better go around that,” he told Durnik. “King Cho-Hag says that the ground gets a bit rough through there.”

Durnik nodded and changed the wagon’s direction.

Throughout the day, the Stronghold of the Algars loomed higher and higher against the western horizon. It was a vast, towering fortress rearing out of the dun-colored hills.

“A monument to an idea that got out of hand,” Silk observed as he lounged idly atop the wagon.

“I don’t quite follow that,” Durnik said.

“Algars are nomads,” the little man explained. “They live in wagons like this one and follow their herds. The Stronghold gives Murgo raiders something to attack. That’s its only real purpose. Very practical, really. It’s much easier than looking for them all over these plains. The Murgos always come here, and it’s a convenient place to wipe them out.”

“Don’t the Murgos realize that?” Durnik looked a bit skeptical.

“Quite possibly, but they come here anyway because they can’t resist the place. They simply can’t accept the fact that nobody really lives here.” Silk grinned his ferretlike little grin. “You know how stubborn Murgos are. Anyway, over the years the Algar clans have developed a sort of competition. Every year they try to outdo one another in hauling rock, and the Stronghold keeps growing higher and higher.”

“Did Kal Torak really lay siege to it for eight years?” Garion asked him.

Silk nodded. “They say that his army was like a sea of Angaraks dashing itself to pieces against the walls of the Stronghold. They might still be here, but they ran out of food. That’s always been the problem with large armies. Any fool can raise an army, but you start running into trouble around suppertime.”

As they approached the man-made mountain, the gates opened and a party emerged to greet them. In the lead on a white palfrey rode Queen Silar with Hettar close behind. At a certain point they stopped and sat waiting.

Garion lifted a small trapdoor in the roof of the wagon. “We’re here, Aunt Pol,” he reported in a hushed voice.

“Good,” she replied.

“How’s grandfather?”

“He’s sleeping. His breathing seems a bit stronger. Go ask Cho-Hag to take us inside immediately. I want to get father into a warm bed as soon as possible.”

“Yes, Aunt Pol.” Garion lowered the trapdoor and then went down the steps at the rear of the slowly moving wagon. He untied his horse, mounted and rode to the front of the column where the Algar queen was quietly greeting her husband.

“Excuse me,” he said respectfully, swinging down from his horse, “but Aunt Pol wants to get Belgarath inside at once.”

“How is he?” Hettar asked.

“Aunt Pol says that his breathing’s getting stronger, but she’s still worried.”

From the rear of the group that had emerged from the Stronghold, there was a flurry of small hooves. The colt that had been born in the hills above Maragor burst into view and came charging directly at them. Garion immediately found himself swarmed under by the colt’s exuberant greetings. The small horse nuzzled him and butted at him with its head, then pranced away only to gallop back again. When Garion put his hand on the animal’s neck to calm him, the colt quivered with joy at his touch.

“He’s been waiting for you,” Hettar said to Garion. “He seems to have known you were coming.”

The wagon drew up and stopped. The door opened, and Aunt Pol looked out.

“Everything’s ready, Polgara,” Queen Silar told her.

“Thank you, Silar.”

“Is he recovering at all?”

“He seems better, but it’s very hard to say for sure at this point.” Errand, who had been watching from the top of the wagon, suddenly clambered down the steps at the rear, hopped to the ground, and ran out along the legs of the horses.

“Catch him, Garion,” Aunt Pol said. “I think he’d better ride in here with me until we get inside the Stronghold.”

As Garion started after the little boy, the colt scampered away, and Errand, laughing with delight, ran after him. “Errand!” Garion called sharply. The colt, however, had turned in midgallop and suddenly bore down on the child, his hooves flailing wildly. Errand, showing no signs of alarm, stood smiling directly in its path. Startled, the little horse stiffened his legs and skidded to a stop. Errand laughed and held out his hand. The colt’s eyes were wide as he sniffed curiously at the hand, and then the boy touched the small animal’s face.

Again within the vaults of his mind Garion seemed to hear that strange, bell-like note, and the dry voice murmured, “Dome,” with a peculiar sort of satisfaction.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Garion asked silently, but there was no answer. He shrugged and picked Errand up to avoid any chance collision between horse and child. The colt stood staring at the two of them, its eyes wide as if in amazement; when Garion turned to carry Errand back to the wagon, it trotted alongside, sniffing and even nuzzling at the child. Garion wordlessly handed Errand up to Aunt Pol and looked her full in the face. She said nothing as she took the child, but her expression told him plainly that something very important had just happened.

As he turned to remount his horse, he felt that someone was watching him, and he turned quickly toward the group of riders that had accompanied Queen Silar from the Stronghold. Just behind the queen was a tall girl mounted on a roan horse. She had long, dark brown hair, and the eyes she had fixed on Garion were gray, calm, and very serious. Her horse pranced nervously, and she calmed him with a quiet word and a gentle touch, then turned to gaze openly at Garion again. He had the peculiar feeling that he ought to know her.

The wagon creaked as Durnik shook the reins to start the team, and they all followed King Cho-Hag and Queen Silar through a narrow gate into the Stronghold. Garion saw immediately that there were no buildings inside the towering fortress. Instead there was a maze of stone walls perhaps twenty feet high twisting this way and that without any apparent plan.

“But where is thy city, your Majesty?” Mandorallen asked in perplexity.

“Inside the walls themselves,” King Cho-Hag replied. “They’re thick enough and high enough to give us all the room we could possibly need.”

“What purpose hath all this, then?”

“It’s just a trap.” The king shrugged. “We permit attackers to break through the gates, and then we deal with them in here. We want to go this way.” He led them along a narrow alleyway.

They dismounted in a courtyard beside the vast wall. Barak and Hettar unhooked the latches and swung the side of the wagon down. Barak tugged thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at the sleeping Belgarath. “It would probably disturb him less if we just took him inside bed and all,” he suggested.

“Right,” Hettar agreed, and the two of them climbed up into the wagon to lift out the sorcerer’s bed.

“Just don’t bounce him around,” Polgara cautioned. “And don’t drop him.”

“We’ve got him, Polgara,” Barak assured her. “I know you might not believe it, but we’re almost as concerned about him as you are.”

With the two big men carrying the bed, they passed through an arched doorway into a wide, torch-lighted corridor and up a flight of stairs, then along another hallway to another flight.

“Is it much farther?” Barak asked. Sweat was running down his face into his beard. “This bed isn’t getting any lighter, you know.”

“Just up here,” the Algar Queen told him.

“I hope he appreciates all this when he wakes up,” Barak grumbled. The room to which they carried Belgarath was large and airy. A glowing brazier stood in each corner and a broad window overlooked the maze inside the walls of the Stronghold. A canopied bed stood against one wall and a large wooden tub against the other.

“This will be just fine,” Polgara said approvingly. “Thank you, Silar.”

“We love him too, Polgara,” Queen Silar replied quietly.

Polgara drew the drapes, darkening the room. Then she turned back the covers, and Belgarath was transferred to the canopied bed so smoothly that he did not even stir.

“He looks a little better,” Silk said.

“He needs sleep, rest and quiet more than anything right now,” Polgara told him, her eyes intent on the old man’s sleeping face.

“We’ll leave you with him, Polgara,” Queen Silar said. She turned to the rest of them. “Why don’t we all go down to the main hall? Supper’s nearly ready, but in the meantime I’ll have some ale brought in.”

Barak’s eyes brightened noticeably, and he started toward the door. “Barak,” Polgara called to him, “aren’t you and Hettar forgetting something?” She looked pointedly at the bed they had used for a stretcher.

Barak sighed. He and Hettar picked up the bed again.

“I’ll send some supper up for you, Polgara,” the queen said.

“Thank you, Silar.” Aunt Pol turned to Garion, her eyes grave. “Stay for a few moments, dear,” she asked, and he remained as the others all quietly left.

“Close the door, Garion,” she said, pulling a chair up beside the sleeping old man’s bed.

He shut the door and crossed the room back to her. “Is he really getting better, Aunt Pol?”

She nodded. “I think we’re past the immediate danger. He seems stronger physically. But it’s not his physical body I’m worried about—it’s his mind. That’s why I wanted to talk to you alone.”

Garion felt a sudden cold grip of fear. “His mind?”

“Keep your voice down, dear,” she told him quietly. “This has to be kept strictly between us.” Her eyes were still on Belgarath’s face. “An episode like this can have very serious effects, and there’s no way to know how it will be with him when he recovers. He could be very seriously weakened.”

“Weakened? How?”

“His will could be greatly reduced—to that of any other old man. He drained it to the utter limit, and he might have gone so far that he could never regain his powers.”

“You mean he wouldn’t be a sorcerer any more?”

“Don’t repeat the obvious, Garion,” she said wearily. “If that happens, it’s going to be up to you and me to conceal it from everybody. Your grandfather’s power is the one thing that has held the Angaraks in check for all these years. If something has happened to that power, then you and I will have to make it look as if he’s the same as he always was. We’ll have to conceal the truth even from him, if that is possible.”

“What can we do without him?”

“We’d go on, Garion,” she replied quietly, looking directly into his eyes. “Our task is too important for us to falter because a man falls by the wayside—even if that man happens to be your grandfather. We’re racing against time in all this, Garion. We absolutely must fulfill the Prophecy and get the Orb back to Riva by Erastide, and there are people who must be gathered up to go with us.”

“Who?”

“Princess Ce’Nedra, for one.”

“Ce’Nedra?” Garion had never really forgotten the little princess, but he failed to see why Aunt Pol was making such an issue of her going with them to Riva.

“In time you’ll understand, dear. All of this is part of a series of events that must occur in proper sequence and at the proper time. In most situations, the present is determined by the past. This series of events is different, however. In this case, what’s happening in the present is determined by the future. If we don’t get it exactly the way it’s supposed to be, the ending will be different, and I don’t think any of us would like that at all.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, placing himself unquestioningly in her hands.

She smiled gratefully at him. “Thank you, Garion,” she said simply. “When you rejoin the others, they’re going to ask you how father’s coming along, and I want you to put on your best face and tell them that he’s doing fine.”

“You want me to lie to them.” It was not even a question.

“No place in the world is safe from spies, Garion. You know that as well as I, and no matter what happens, we can’t let any hint that father might not recover fully get back to the Angaraks. If necessary, you’ll lie until your tongue turns black. The whole fate of the West could depend on how well you do it.”

He stared at her.

“It’s possible that all this is totally unnecessary,” she reassured him. “He may be exactly the same as always after he’s had a week or two of rest, but we’ve got to be ready to move smoothly, just in case he’s not.”

“Can’t we do something?”

“We’re doing all we can. Go back to the others now, Garion—and smile. Smile until your jaws ache if you have to.”

There was a faint sound in the corner of the room, and they both turned sharply. Errand, his blue eyes very serious, stood watching them.

“Take him with you,” Aunt Pol said. “See that he eats and keep an eye on him.”

Garion nodded and beckoned to the child. Errand smiled his trusting smile and crossed the room. He reached out and patted the unconscious Belgarath’s hand, then turned to follow Garion from the room.

The tall, brown-haired girl who had accompanied Queen Silar out through the gates of the Stronghold was waiting for him in the corridor outside. Her skin, Garion noticed, was very pale, almost translucent, and her gray eyes were direct. “Is the Eternal Man really any better?” she asked.

“Much better,” Garion replied with all the confidence he could muster. “He’ll be out of bed in no time at all.”

“He seems so weak,” she said. “So old and frail.”

“Frail? Belgarath?” Garion forced a laugh. “He’s made out of old iron and horseshoe nails.”

“He is seven thousand years old, after all.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to him. He stopped paying attention to the years a long time ago.”

“You’re Garion, aren’t you?” she asked. “Queen Silar told us about you when she returned from Val Alorn last year. For some reason I thought you were younger.”

“I was then,” Garion replied. “I’ve aged a bit this last year.”

“My name is Adara,” the tall girl introduced herself. “Queen Silar asked me to show you the way to the main hall. Supper should be ready soon.”

Garion inclined his head politely. In spite of the worry gnawing at him, he could not shake off the peculiar feeling that he ought to know this quiet, beautiful girl. Errand reached out and took the girl’s hand, and the three of them passed hand in hand down the torch-lighted corridor.

King Cho-Hag’s main hall was on a lower floor. It was a long, narrow room where chairs and padded benches sat in little clusters around braziers filled with glowing coals. Barak, holding a large ale tankard in one huge fist, was describing with some embellishment their descent from the top of the escarpment.

“We didn’t really have any choice, you see,” the big man was saying. “Taur Urgas had been frothing on our heels for several days, and we had to take the shortest way down.”

Hettar nodded. “Plans sometimes have a way of changing when the unexpected crops up,” he agreed. “That’s why we put men to watching every known pass down from the top of the escarpment.”

“I still think you might have let us know you were there.” Barak sounded a little injured.

Hettar grinned wolfishly. “We couldn’t really take the chance, Barak,” he explained. “The Murgos might have seen us, and we didn’t want to frighten them off. It would have been a shame if they’d gotten away, wouldn’t it?”

“Is that all you ever think about?”

Hettar considered the question for a moment. “Pretty much, yes,” he admitted.

Supper was announced then, and they all moved to the long table at the far end of the hall. The general conversation at the table made it unnecessary for Garion to lie directly to anyone about the frightening possibility Aunt Pol had raised, and after supper he sat beside Adara and lapsed into a kind of sleepy haze, only half listening to the talk.

There was a stir at the door, and a guard entered. “The priest of Belar!” he announced in a loud voice, and a tall man in a white robe strode into the room, followed by four men dressed in shaggy furs. The four walked with a peculiar shuffling gait, and Garion instantly recognized them as Bear-cultists, indistinguishable from the Cherek members of the same group he had seen in Val Alorn.

“Your Majesty,” the man in the white robe boomed.

“Hail, Cho-Hag,” the cultists intoned in unison, “Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of the Algars and guardian of the southern reaches of Aloria.”

King Cho-Hag inclined his head briefly. “What is it, Elvar?” he asked the priest.

“I have come to congratulate your Majesty upon the occasion of your great victory over the forces of the Dark God,” the priest replied.

“You are most kind, Elvar,” Cho-Hag answered politely.

“Moreover,” Elvar continued, “it has come to my attention that a holy object has come into the Stronghold of the Algars. I presume that your Majesty will wish to place it in the hands of the priesthood for safekeeping.”

Garion, alarmed at the priest’s suggestion, half rose from his seat, but stopped, not knowing how to voice his objection. Errand, however, with a confident smile, was already walking toward Elvar. The knots Durnik had so carefully tied were undone, and the child took the Orb out of the pouch at his waist and offered it to the startled priest. “Errand?” he said.

Elvar’s eyes bulged and he recoiled from the Orb, lifting his hands above his head to avoid touching it.

“Go ahead, Elvar,” Polgara’s voice came mockingly from the doorway. “Let him who is without ill intent in the silence of his soul stretch forth his hand and take the Orb.”

“Lady Polgara,” the priest stammered. “We thought—that is—I—”

“He seems to have some reservations,” Silk suggested dryly. “Perhaps he has some lingering and deep-seated doubts about his own purity. That’s a serious failing in a priest, I’d say.”

Elvar looked at the little man helplessly, his hands still held aloft.

“You should never ask for something you’re not prepared to accept, Elvar,” Polgara suggested.

“Lady Polgara,” Elvar blurted, “we thought that you’d be so busy caring for your father that—” He faltered.

“—That you could take possession of the Orb before I knew about it? Think again, Elvar. I won’t allow the Orb to fall into the hands of the Bear-cult.” She smiled rather sweetly at him. “Unless you happen to be the one destined to wield it, of course. My father and I would both be overjoyed to hand the burden over to someone else. Why don’t we find out? All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the Orb.”

Elvar’s face blanched, and he backed away from Errand fearfully.

“I believe that will be all, Elvar,” King Cho-Hag said firmly.

The priest looked about helplessly, then turned and quickly left the hall with his cultists close behind him.

“Make him put it away, Durnik,” Polgara told the smith. “And see if you can do something about the knots.”

“I could seal them up with lead,” Durnik mused. “Maybe that would keep him from getting it open.”

“It might be worth a try.” Then she looked around. “I thought you might all like to know that my father’s awake,” she told him. “The old fool appears to be stronger than we thought.”

Garion, immediately alert, looked at her sharply, trying to detect some hint that she might not be telling them everything, but her calm face was totally unreadable.

Barak, laughing loudly with relief, slapped Hettar on the back. “I told you he’d be all right,” he exclaimed delightedly. The others in the room were already crowding around Polgara, asking for details.

“He’s awake,” she told them. “That’s about all I can say at the moment—except that he’s his usual charming self. He’s already complaining about lumps in the bed and demanding strong ale.”

“I’ll send some at once,” Queen Silar said.

“No, Silar,” Polgara replied firmly. “He gets broth, not ale.”

“He won’t like that much,” Silk suggested.

“Isn’t that a shame?” She smiled. She half turned, as if about to go back to the sickroom, then stopped and looked rather quizzically at Garion who sat, relieved, but still apprehensive about Belgarath’s true condition, beside Adara. “I see that you’ve met your cousin,” she observed.

“Who?”

“Don’t sit there with your mouth open, Garion,” she advised him. “It makes you look like an idiot. Adara’s the youngest daughter of your mother’s sister. Haven’t I ever told you about her?”

It all came crashing in on him. “Aunt Pol!” he protested. “How could you forget something that important?”

But Adara, obviously as startled by the announcement as he had been, gave a low cry, put her arms about his neck and kissed him warmly. “Dear cousin!” she exclaimed.

Garion flushed, then went pale, then flushed again. He stared first at Aunt Pol, then at his cousin, unable to speak or even to think coherently.

7

In the days that followed while the others rested and Aunt Pol nursed Belgarath back to health, Garion and his cousin spent every waking moment together. From the time he had been a very small child he had believed that Aunt Pol was his only family. Later, he had discovered that Mister Wolf-Belgarath—was also a relative, though infinitely far removed. But Adara was different. She was nearly his own age, for one thing, and she seemed immediately to fill that void that had always been there. She became at once all those sisters and cousins and younger aunts that others seemed to have but that he did not.

She showed him the Algar Stronghold from top to bottom. As they wandered together down long, empty corridors, they frequently held each others’ hands. Most of the time, however, they talked. They sat together in out-of the-way places with their heads close together, talking, laughing, exchanging confidences and opening their hearts to each other. Garion discovered a hunger for talk in himself that he had not suspected. The circumstances of the past year had made him reticent, and now all that flood of words broke loose. Because he loved his tall, beautiful cousin, he told her things he would not have told any other living soul.

Adara responded to his affection with a love of her own that seemed as deep, and she listened to his outpourings with an attention that made him reveal himself even more.

“Can you really do that?” she asked when, one bright winter afternoon, they sat together in an embrasure high up in the fortress wall with a window behind them overlooking the vast sea of winter-brown grass stretching to the horizon. “Are you really a sorcerer?”

“I’m afraid so,” he replied.

“Afraid?”

“There are some pretty awful things involved in it, Adara. At first I didn’t want to believe it, but things kept happening because I wanted them to happen, It finally reached the point where I couldn’t doubt it any more.”

“Show me,” she urged him.

He looked around a bit nervously. “I don’t really think I should,” he apologized. “It makes a certain kind of noise, you see, and Aunt Pol can hear it. For some reason I don’t think she’d approve if I just did it to show off.”

“You’re not afraid of her, are you?”

“It’s not exactly that. I just don’t want her to be disappointed in me.” He considered that. “Let me see if I can explain. We had an awful argument once—in Nyissa. I said some things I didn’t really mean, and she told me exactly what she’d gone through for me.” He looked somberly out of the window, remembering Aunt Pol’s words on the steamy deck of Greldik’s ship. “She’s devoted a thousand years to me, Adara—to my family actually, but finally all because of me. She’s given up every single thing that’s ever been important to her for me. Can you imagine the kind of obligation that puts on me? I’ll do anything she wants me to, and I’d cut off my arm before I’d ever hurt her again.”

“You love her very much, don’t you, Garion?”

“It goes beyond that. I don’t think there’s even been a word invented yet to describe what exists between us.”

Wordlessly Adara took his hand, her eyes warm with a wondering affection.

Later that afternoon, Garion went alone to the room where Aunt Pol was caring for her recalcitrant patient. After the first few days of bed rest, Belgarath had steadily grown more testy about his enforced confinement. Traces of that irritability lingered on his face even as he dozed, propped up by many pillows in his canopied bed. Aunt Pol, wearing her familiar gray dress, sat nearby, her needle busy as she altered one of Garion’s old tunics for Errand. The little boy, sitting not far away, watched her with that serious expression that always seemed to make him look older than he really was.

“How is he?” Garion asked softly, looking at his sleeping grandfather.

“Improving,” Aunt Pol replied, setting aside the tunic. “His temper’s getting worse, and that’s always a good sign.”

“Are there any hints that he might be getting back his—? Well, you know.” Garion gestured vaguely.

“No,” she replied. “Nothing yet. It’s probably too early.”

“Will you two stop that whispering?” Belgarath demanded without opening his eyes. “How can I possibly sleep with all that going on?”

“You were the one who said he didn’t want to sleep,” Polgara reminded him.

“That was before,” he snapped, his eyes popping open. He looked at Garion. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

“Garion’s been getting acquainted with his cousin Adara,” Aunt Pol explained.

“He could stop by to visit me once in a while,” the old man complained.

“There’s not much entertainment in listening to you snore, father.”

“I do not snore, Polgara.”

“Whatever you say, father,” she agreed placidly.

“Don’t patronize me, Pol!”

“Of course not, father. Now, how would you like a nice hot cup of broth?”

“I would not like a nice hot cup of broth. I want meat—rare, red meat—and a cup of strong ale.”

“But you won’t get meat and ale, father. You’ll get what I decide to give you—and right now it’s broth and milk.”

“Milk?”

“Would you prefer gruel?”

The old man glared indignantly at her, and Garion quietly left the room.

After that, Belgarath’s recovery was steady. A few days later he was out of bed, though Polgara raised some apparently strenuous objections. Garion knew them both well enough to see directly to the core of his Aunt’s behavior. Prolonged bed rest had never been her favorite form of therapy. She had always wanted her patients ambulatory as soon as possible. By seeming to want to coddle her irascible father, she had quite literally forced him out of bed. Even beyond that, the precisely calibrated restrictions she imposed on his movements were deliberately designed to anger him, to goad his mind to activity—never anything more than he could handle at any given time, but always just enough to force his mental recovery to keep pace with his physical recuperation. Her careful manipulation of the old man’s convalescence stepped beyond the mere practice of medicine into the realm of art.

When Belgarath first appeared in King Cho-Hag’s hall, he looked shockingly weak. He seemed actually to totter as he leaned heavily on Aunt Pol’s arm, but a bit later when the conversation began to interest him, there were hints that this apparent fragility was not wholly genuine. The old man was not above a bit of self dramatization once in a while, and he soon demonstrated that no matter how skillfully Aunt Pol played, he could play too. It was marvellous to watch the two of them subtly maneuvering around each other in their elaborate little game.

The final question, however, still remained unanswered. Belgarath’s physical and mental recovery now seemed certain, but his ability to bring his will to bear had not yet been tested. That test, Garion knew, would have to wait.

Quite early one morning, perhaps a week after they had arrived at the Stronghold, Adara tapped on the door of Garion’s room; even as he came awake, he knew it was she. “Yes?” he said through the door, quickly pulling on his shirt and hose.

“Would you like to ride today, Garion?” she asked. “The sun’s out, and it’s a little warmer.”

“Of course,” he agreed immediately, sitting to pull on the Algar boots Hettar had given him. “Let me get dressed. I’ll just be a minute.”

“There’s no great hurry,” she told him. “I’ll have a horse saddled for you and get some food from the kitchen. You should probably tell Lady Polgara where you’re going, though. I’ll meet you in the west stables.”

“I won’t be long,” he promised.

Aunt Pol was seated in the great hall with Belgarath and King Cho-Hag, while Queen Silar sat nearby, her fingers flickering through warp and woof on a large loom upon which she was weaving. The click of her shuttle was a peculiarly drowsy sort of sound.

“Travel’s going to be difficult in midwinter,” King Cho-Hag was saying. “It will be savage in the mountains of Ulgo.”

“I think there’s a way we can avoid all that,” Belgarath replied lazily. He was lounging deeply in a large chair. “We’ll go back to Prolgu the way we came, but I need to talk to Relg. Do you suppose you could send for him?”

Cho-Hag nodded and gestured to a serving man. He spoke briefly to him as Belgarath negligently hung one leg over the arm of his chair and settled in even deeper. The old man was wearing a soft, gray woolen tunic; although it was early, he held a tankard of ale.

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing that a bit?” Aunt Pol asked him, looking pointedly at the tankard.

“I have to regain my strength, Pol,” he explained innocently, “and strong ale restores the blood. You seem to forget that I’m still practically an invalid.”

“I wonder how much of your invalidism’s coming out of Cho-Hag’s ale-barrel,” she commented. “You looked terrible when you came down this morning.”

“I’m feeling much better now, though.” He smiled, taking another drink.

“I’m sure you are. Yes, Garion?”

“Adara wants me to go riding with her,” Garion said. “I—that is, she—thought I should tell you where I was going.”

Queen Silar smiled gently at him. “You’ve stolen away my favorite lady in waiting, Garion,” she told him.

“I’m sorry,” Garion quickly replied. “If you need her, we won’t go.”

“I was only teasing you.” The queen laughed. “Go ahead and enjoy your ride.”

Relg came into the hall just then, and not far behind him, Taiba. The Marag woman, once she had bathed and been given decent clothes to wear, had surprised them all. She was no longer the hopeless, dirty slave woman they had found in the caves beneath Rak Cthol. Her figure was full and her skin very pale. She moved with a kind of unconscious grace, and King Cho-Hag’s clansmen looked after her as she passed, their lips pursed speculatively. She seemed to know she was being watched, and, far from being offended by the fact, it seemed rather to please her and to increase her self confidence. Her violet eyes glowed, and she smiled often now. She was, however, never very far from Relg. At first Garion had believed that she was deliberately placing herself where the Ulgo would have to look at her out of a perverse enjoyment of the discomfort it caused him, but now he was not so sure. She no longer even seemed to think about it, but followed Relg wherever he went, seldom speaking, but always there.

“You sent for me, Belgarath?” Relg asked. Some of the harshness had gone out of his voice, but his eyes still looked peculiarly haunted.

“Ah, Relg,” Belgarath said expansively. “There’s a good fellow. Come, sit down. Take a cup of ale.”

“Water, thank you,” Relg replied firmly.

“As you wish.” Belgarath shrugged. “I was wondering, do you by any chance know a route through the caves of Ulgo that reaches from Prolgu to the southern edge of the land of the Sendars?”

“That’s a very long way,” Relg told him.

“Not nearly as long as it would be if we rode over the mountains,” Belgarath pointed out. “There’s no snow in the caves, and no monsters. Is there such a way?”

“There is,” Relg admitted.

“And would you be willing to guide us?” the old man pressed.

“If I must,” Relg agreed with some reluctance.

“I think you must, Relg,” Belgarath told him.

Relg sighed. “I’d hoped that I could return home now that our journey’s almost over,” he said regretfully.

Belgarath laughed. “Actually, our journey’s only just started, Relg. We have a long way to go yet.”

Taiba smiled a slow, pleased little smile at that.

Garion felt a small hand slip into his, and he smiled down at Errand, who had just come into the hall. “Is it all right, Aunt Pol?” he asked. “If I go riding, I mean?”

“Of course, dear,” she replied. “Just be careful. Don’t try to show off for Adara. I don’t want you falling off a horse and breaking anything.”

Errand let go of Garion’s hand and walked over to where Relg stood.

The knots on the pouch that Durnik had so carefully sealed with lead were undone again, and the little boy took the Orb out and offered it to Relg. “Errand?” he said.

“Why don’t you take it, Relg?” Taiba asked the startled man. “No one in the world questions your purity.”

Relg stepped back and shook his head. “The Orb is the holy object of another religion,” he declared. “It is from Aldur, not UL, so it wouldn’t be proper for me to touch it.”

Taiba smiled knowingly, her violet eyes intent on the zealot’s face. “Errand,” Aunt Pol said, “come here.”

Obediently he went to her. She took hold of the pouch at his belt and held it open. “Put it away,” she told him.

Errand sighed and deposited the Orb in the pouch.

“How does he manage to keep getting this open?” she said half to herself as she examined the strings of the pouch.

Garion and Adara rode out from the Stronghold into the rolling hills to the west. The sky was a deep blue, and the sunlight was very bright. Although the morning was crisp, it was not nearly as cold as it had been for the past week or so. The grass beneath their horses’ hooves was brown and lifeless, lying dormant under the winter sky. They rode together without speaking for an hour or so, and finally they stopped and dismounted on the sunny south side of a hill where there was shelter from the stiff breeze. They sat together looking out at the featureless miles of the Algarian plain.

“How much can actually be done with sorcery, Garion?” she asked after a long silence.

He shrugged. “It depends on who’s doing it. Some people are very powerful; others can hardly do anything at all.”

“Could you—” She hesitated. “Could you make this bush bloom?” She went on quickly, and he knew that was not the question she had originally intended to ask. “Right now, I mean, in the middle of wintertime,” she added.

Garion looked at the dry, scrubby bit of gorse, putting the sequence of what he’d have to do together. “I suppose I could,” he replied, “but if I did that in the wrong season, the bush wouldn’t have any defense against the cold, and it would die.”

“It’s only a bush, Garion.”

“Why kill it?”

She avoided his eyes. “Could you make something happen for me, Garion?” she asked. “Some small thing. I need something to believe in very much just now.”

“I can try, I guess.” He did not understand her suddenly somber mood. “How about something like this?” He picked up a twig and turned it over in his hands, looking carefully at it. Then he wrapped several strands of dry grass around it and studied it again until he had what he wanted to do firmly in his mind. When he released his will on it, he did not do it all at once, so the change was gradual. Adara’s eyes widened as the sorry-looking clump of twig and dry grass was transmuted before her.

It really wasn’t much of a flower. It was a kind of pale lavender color, and it was distinctly lopsided. It was quite small, and its petals were not very firmly attached. Its fragrance, however, was sweet with all the promise of summer. Garion felt very strange as he wordlessly handed the flower to his cousin. The sound of it had not been that rushing noise he’d always associated with sorcery, but rather was very much like the bell-tone he’d heard in the glowing cave when he’d given life to the colt. And when he had begun to focus his will, he had not drawn anything from his surroundings. It had all come from within him, and there had been a deep and peculiar love in it.

“It’s lovely,” Adara said, holding the little flower gently in her cupped hands and inhaling its fragrance. Her dark hair fell across her cheek, hiding her face from him. Then she lifted her chin, and Garion saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “It seems to help,” she said, “for a little while, anyway ”

“What’s wrong, Adara?”

She did not answer, but looked out across the dun-brown plain.

“Who’s Ce’Nedra?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve heard the others mention her ”

“Ce’Nedra? She’s an Imperial Princess—the daughter of Itan Horune of Tolnedra.”

“What’s she like?”

“Very small—she’s part Dryad—and she has red hair and green eyes and a bad temper. She’s a spoiled little brat, and she doesn’t like me very much.”

“But you could change that, couldn’t you?” Adara laughed and wiped at the tears.

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“All you’d have to do is—” She made a vague kind of gesture.

“Oh.” He caught her meaning. “No, we can’t do very much with other people’s thoughts and feelings. What I mean is—well, there’s nothing to get hold of. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

Adara looked at him for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, alarmed.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s not important.”

“It is important. Why are you crying?”

“I’d hoped—when I first heard that you were a sorcerer—and then when you made this flower, I thought you could do anything. I thought that maybe you might be able to do something for me.”

“I’ll do anything you ask, Adara. You know that.”

“But you can’t, Garion. You just said so yourself.”

“What was it that you wanted me to do?”

“I thought that perhaps you might be able to make somebody fall in love with me. Isn’t that a foolish idea?”

“Who?” She looked at him with a quiet dignity, her eyes still full of tears. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You can’t do anything about it, and neither can I. It was just a foolish notion, and I know better now. Why don’t we just forget that I ever said anything?” She rose to her feet. “Let’s go back now. It’s not nearly as nice a day as I’d thought, and I’m starting to get cold.”

They remounted and rode in silence back toward the looming walls of the Stronghold. They did not speak any more. Adara did not wish to talk, and Garion did not know what to say.

Behind them, forgotten, lay the flower he had created. Protected by the slope and faintly warmed by the winter sun, the flower that had never existed before swelled with silent, vegetative ecstasy and bore its fruit. A tiny seed pod at its heart opened, scattering infinitesimal seeds that sifted down to the frozen earth through the stalks of winter grass, and there they lay, awaiting spring.

8

The Ulgo girls had pale skin, white-blond hair and huge, dark eyes. Princess Ce’Nedra sat in the midst of them like a single red rose in a garden of lilies. They watched her every move with a sort of gentle astonishment as if overwhelmed by this vibrant little stranger who had quite suddenly become the center of their lives. It was not merely her coloring, though that was astonishing enough. Ulgos by nature were a serious, reserved people, seldom given to laughter or outward displays of emotion. Ce’Nedra, however, lived as always on the extreme outside of her skin. They watched, enthralled, the flicker and play of mood and emotion across her exquisite little face. They blushed and giggled nervously at her outrageous and often wicked little jokes. She drew them into confidences, and each of the dozen or so who had become her constant companions had at one time or another opened her heart to the little princess.

There were bad days, of course, days when Ce’Nedra was out of sorts, impatient, willful, and when she drove the gentle-eyed Ulgo girls from her with savage vituperation, sending them fleeing in tears from her unexplained tantrums. Later, though they all resolved after such stormy outbursts never to go near her again, they would hesitantly return to find her smiling and laughing as if nothing at all had happened.

It was a difficult time for the princess. She had not fully realized the implications of her unhesitating acquiescence to the command of UL when he had told her to remain behind in the caves while the others journeyed to Rak Cthol. For her entire life, Ce’Nedra had been at the center of events, but here she was, shunted into the background, forced to endure the tedious passage of hours spent doing nothing but waiting. She was not emotionally constructed for waiting, and the outbursts that scattered her companions like startled doves were at least in part generated by her enforced inactivity.

The wild swings of her moods were particularly trying for the Gorim. The frail, ancient holy man had lived for centuries a life of quiet contemplation, and Ce’Nedra had exploded into the middle of that quiet like a comet. Though sometimes tried to the very limits of his patience, he endured the fits of bad temper, the storms of weeping, the unexplained outbursts—and just as patiently her sudden exuberant displays of affection when she would throw her arms about his neck and cover his startled face with kisses.

On those days when Ce’Nedra’s mood was congenial, she gathered her companions among the columns on the shore of the Gorim’s island to talk, laugh, and play the little games she had invented, and the dim silent cavern was filled with the babble and laughter of adolescent girls. When her mood was pensive, she and the Gorim sometimes took short walks to view the strange splendors of this subterranean world of cave and gallery and cavern beneath the abandoned city of Prolgu. To the unpracticed eye, it might have appeared that the princess was so involved in her own emotional pyrotechnics that she was oblivious to anything around her, but such was not the case. Her complex little mind was quite capable of observing, analyzing, and questioning; even in the very midst of an outburst. To the Gorim’s surprise, he found her mind quick and retentive. When he told her the stories of his people, she questioned him closely, moving always to the meaning that lay behind the stories.

The princess made many discoveries during those talks. She discovered that the core of Ulgo life was religion, and that the moral and theme of all their stories was the duty of absolute submission to the will of UL. A Tolnedran might quibble or even try to strike bargains with his God. Nedra expected it, and seemed to enjoy the play of offer and counteroffer as much as did his people. The Ulgo mind, however, was incapable of such casual familiarity.

“We were nothing,” the Gorim explained. “Less than nothing. We had no place and no God, but wandered outcast in the world until UL consented to become our God. Some of the zealots have even gone so far as to suggest that if one single Ulgo displeases our God, he will withdraw himself from us. I don’t pretend to know the mind of UL entirely, but I don’t think he’s quite that unreasonable. Still, he didn’t really want to be our God in the first place, so it’s best probably not to offend him.”

“He loves you,” Ce’Nedra pointed out quickly. “Anyone could see that in his face when he came to us that time.”

The Gorim looked doubtful. “I hope I haven’t disappointed him too much.”

“Don’t be silly,” the princess said airily. “Of course he loves you. Everyone in the whole world loves you.” Impulsively, as if to prove her point, she kissed his pale cheek fondly.

The Gorim smiled at her. “Dear child,” he observed, “your own heart is so open that you automatically assume that everyone loves those whom you love. It’s not always that way, I’m afraid. There are a good number of people in our caves who aren’t all that fond of me.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “Just because you argue with someone doesn’t mean that you don’t love him. I love my father very much, but we fight all the time. We enjoy fighting with each other.” Ce’Nedra knew that she was safe using such terms as “silly” and “nonsense” with the Gorim. She had by now so utterly charmed him that she was quite sure she could get away with almost anything.

Although it might have been difficult to persuade anyone around her that such was the case, there had been a few distinct but subtle changes in Ce’Nedra’s behavior. Impulsive though she might seem to these serious, reserved people, she now gave at least a moment’s thought—however brief—before acting or speaking. She had on occasion embarrassed herself here in the caves, and embarrassment was the one thing Ce’Nedra absolutely could not bear. Gradually, imperceptibly, she learned the value of marginal self control, and sometimes she almost appeared ladylike.

She had also had time to consider the problem of Garion. His absence during the long weeks had been particularly and inexplicably painful for her. It was as if she had misplaced something—something very valuable—and its loss left an aching kind of vacancy. Her emotions had always been such a jumble that she had never fully come to grips with them. Usually they changed so rapidly that she never had time to examine one before another took its place. This yearning sense of something missing, however, had persisted for so long that she finally had to face it.

It could not be love. That was impossible. Love for a peasant scullion—no matter how nice he was—was quite out of the question! She was, after all, an Imperial Princess, and her duty was crystal clear. If there had been even the faintest suspicion in her mind that her feelings had moved beyond casual friendship, she would have an absolute obligation to break off any further contact. Ce’Nedra did not want to send Garion away and never see him again. The very thought of doing so made her lip tremble. So, quite obviously, what she felt was not—could not—be love. She felt much better once she had worked that out. The possibility had been worrying her, but now that logic had proved beyond all doubt that she was safe, she was able to relax. It was a great comfort to have logic on her side.

That left only the waiting, the seemingly endless, unendurable waiting for her friends. Where were they? When were they coming back? What were they doing out there that could take so long? The longer she waited, the more frequently her newfound self control deserted her, and her pale-skinned companions learned to watch apprehensively for those minute danger signs that announced imminent eruption.

Then finally the Gorim told her that word had reached him that her friends were returning, and the little princess went absolutely wild with anticipation. Her preparations were lengthy and elaborate. She would greet them properly of course. No little girl enthusiasm this time. Instead, she would be demure, reserved, imperial and altogether grown up. Naturally, she would have to look the part.

She fretted for hours before selecting the perfect gown, a floor-length Ulgo dress of glistening white. Ulgo gowns, however, were perhaps a trifle too modest for Ce’Nedra’s taste. While she wished to appear reserved, she did not want to be that reserved. Thoughtfully, she removed the sleeves from the gown and made a few modifications to the neckline. Some elaborate cross-tying at bodice and waist with a slender gold sash accentuated things a bit. Critically she examined the results of her efforts and found them to her liking.

Then there was the problem of her hair. The loose, tumbled style she had always worn would never do. It needed to be up, piled in a soft mass of curls atop her head and then cascading elegantly down over one shoulder to add that splash of color across the pristine whiteness of her bodice that would set things off just right. She worked on it until her arms ached from being raised over her head for so long. When she was finished, she studied the entire effect of gown and hair and demurely regal expression. It wasn’t bad, she congratulated herself. Garion’s eyes would fall out when he saw her. The little princess exulted.

When the day finally arrived, Ce’Nedra, who had scarcely slept, sat nervously with the Gorim in his now-familiar study. He was reading from a long scroll, rolling the top with one hand while he unrolled the bottom with another. As he read, the princess fidgeted, nibbling absently on a lock.

“You seem restless today, child,” he observed.

“It’s just that I haven’t seen him—them—for so long,” she explained quickly. “Are you sure I look all right’?” She had only asked the question six or eight times that morning already.

“You’re lovely, child,” he assured her once again. She beamed at him.

A servingman came into the Gorim’s study. “Your guests have arrived, Holy One,” he said with a respectful bow.

Ce’Nedra’s heart began to pound.

“Shall we go greet them, child?” the Gorim suggested, laying aside his scroll and rising to his feet.

Ce’Nedra resisted her impulse to spring from her chair and run out of the room. With an iron grip she controlled herself. Instead, she walked at the Gorim’s side, silently repeating to herself, “Dignity. Reserve. Imperially demure.”

Her friends were travel-stained and weary-looking as they entered the Gorim’s cavern, and there were strangers with them whom Ce’Nedra did not recognize. Her eyes however, sought out only one face.

He looked older than she remembered him. His face, which had always been so serious, had a gravity to it now that had not been there before. Things had obviously happened to him while he had been gone—important things—and the princess felt a little pang at having been excluded from such momentous events in his life.

And then her heart froze. Who was that great gangling girl at his side? And why was he being so deferential to the big cow? Ce’Nedra’s jaws clenched as she glared across the calm waters of the lake at the perfidious young man. She had known it would happen. The minute she had let him out of her sight, he had run headlong into the arms of the first girl who happened by. How dared he? How dared he!

As the group on the far side of the lake began to come across the causeway, Ce’Nedra’s heart sank. The tall girl was lovely. Her dark hair was lustrous, and her features were perfect. Desperately, Ce’Nedra looked for some flaw, some blemish. And the way the girl moved! She actually seemed to flow with a grace that nearly brought tears of despair to Ce’Nedra’s eyes.

The greetings and introductions seemed hardly more than some incoherent babble to the suffering princess. Absently she curtsied to the king of the Algars and his lovely queen. Politely she greeted the lushly beautiful woman—Taiba, her name was—whom Lady Polgara introduced to her. The moment she was dreading was approaching, and there was no way she could forestall it.

“And this is Adara,” Lady Polgara said, indicating the lovely creature at Garion’s side. Ce’Nedra wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair! Even the girl’s name was beautiful. Why couldn’t it have been something ugly?

“Adara,” Lady Polgara continued, her eyes intently on Ce’Nedra’s face, “this is her Imperial Highness, the Princess Ce’Nedra.”

Adara curtsied with a grace that was like a knife in Ce’Nedra’s heart. “I’ve so wanted to meet your Highness,” the tall girl said. Her voice was vibrant, musical.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Ce’Nedra replied with a lofty superiority. Though every nerve within her screamed with the need to lash out at this detested rival, she held herself rigid and silent. Any outburst, even the faintest trace of dismay showing in her expression or her voice would make this Adara’s victory complete. Ce’Nedra was too much a princess—too much a woman—to permit that ultimate defeat. Though her pain was as real as if she were in the hands of a torturer, she stood erect, enclosed in all the imperial majesty she could muster. Silently she began to repeat all of her titles over and over to herself, steeling herself with them, reminding herself grimly just who she was. An Imperial Princess did not cry. The daughter of Ran Borune did not snivel. The flower of Tolnedra would never grieve because some clumsy scullery boy had chosen to love somebody else.

“Forgive me, Lady Polgara,” she said, pressing a trembling hand to her forehead, “but I suddenly seem to have the most dreadful headache. Would you excuse me, please?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to walk slowly toward the Gorim’s house. She paused only once, just as she passed Garion. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” she lied to him.

He looked baffled.

It had gone too far. It had been absolutely necessary to conceal her emotions from Adara, but this was Garion, and she had to let him know exactly how she felt. “I despise you, Garion,” she whispered at him with a terrible intensity, “and I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again.”

He blinked.

“I don’t think you can even begin to imagine how much I loathe the very sight of you,” she added. And with that she continued on into the Gorim’s house, her back straight and her head unbowed.

Once she was inside, she fled to her room, threw herself on the bed, and wept in broken-hearted anguish.

She heard a light step near the doorway, and then the Lady Polgara was there. “All right, Ce’Nedra,” she said, “what’s this all about?” She sat down on the edge of the bed and put one hand on the shoulder of the sobbing little princess.

“Oh, Lady Polgara,” Ce’Nedra wailed, suddenly throwing herself into Polgara’s arms. “I—I’ve l-lost him. He—he’s in love with h-h-her.”

“Who’s that, dear?” Polgara asked her calmly.

“Garion. He’s in love with that Adara, and he doesn’t even know I’m alive any m-m-more.”

“You silly little goose,” Polgara chided her gently.

“He does love her, doesn’t he?” Ce’Nedra demanded.

“Of course he does, dear.”

“I knew it,” Ce’Nedra wailed, collapsing into a fresh storm of weeping.

“It’s only natural for him to love her,” Polgara continued. “She’s his cousin, after all.”

“His cousin?” Ce’Nedra’s tear-streaked face came up suddenly.

“The daughter of his mother’s sister,” Polgara explained. “You did know that Garion’s mother was an Algar, didn’t you?”

Ce’Nedra shook her head mutely.

“Is that what all this is about?”

Ce’Nedra nodded. Her weeping had suddenly stopped.

Lady Polgara took a handkerchief from her sleeve and offered it to the tiny girl. “Blow your nose, dear,” she instructed. “Don’t sniff like that. It’s very unbecoming.”

Ce’Nedra blew her nose.

“And so you’ve finally admitted it to yourself,” Polgara observed. “I was wondering how long it was going to take you.”

“Admitted what?”

Polgara gave her a long, steady look, and Ce’Nedra flushed slowly, lowering her eyes. “That’s better,” Polgara said. “You mustn’t try to hide things from me, Ce’Nedra. It doesn’t do any good, you know, and it only makes things more difficult for you.”

Ce’Nedra’s eyes had widened as the full impact of her tacit admission struck her. “It’s not possible,” she gasped in absolute horror. “It can’t happen.”

“As my father’s so fond of saying, just about anything is possible,” Polgara told her.

“What am I going to do?”

“First you ought to go wash your face,” Polgara told her. “Some girls can cry without making themselves ugly, but you don’t have the right coloring for it. You’re an absolute fright. I’d advise you never to cry in public if you can help it.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ce’Nedra said. “What am I going to do about Garion?”

“I don’t know that you really need to do anything, dear. Things will straighten themselves out eventually.”

“But I’m a princess, and he’s—well, he’s just Garion. This sort of thing isn’t permitted.”

“Everything will probably turn out all right,” Lady Polgara assured her. “Trust me, Ce’Nedra. I’ve been handling matters like this for a very long time. Now go wash your face.”

“I made a terrible fool of myself out there, didn’t I?” Ce’Nedra said.

“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” Polgara said calmly. “We can pass it off as something brought on by the excitement of seeing your friends again after so long. You are glad to see us, aren’t you?”

“Oh, Lady Polgara,” Ce’Nedra said, embracing her and laughing and crying at the same time.

After the ravages of Ce’Nedra’s crying fit had been repaired, they rejoined the others in the Gorim’s familiar study.

“Are you recovered, my child?” the Gorim asked her gently, concern written all over his dear old face.

“Just a touch of nerves, Holy One,” Lady Polgara reassured him. “Our princess, as you’ve probably noticed, is somewhat high-strung.”

“I’m so sorry that I ran off like that,” Ce’Nedra apologized to Adara. “It was silly of me.”

“Your Highness could never be silly,” Adara told her.

Ce’Nedra lifted her chin. “Oh yes I can,” she declared. “I’ve got as much right to make a fool of myself in public as anyone else.”

Adara laughed, and the entire incident was smoothed over.

There was still, however, a problem. Ce’Nedra had, she realized, gone perhaps a bit too far in her impulsive declaration of undying hatred for Garion. His expression was confused, even a trifle hurt. Ce’Nedra decided somewhat loftily to ignore the injury she had inflicted upon him. She had suffered through that dreadful scene on the shore of the Gorim’s island, and it seemed only fair that he should suffer a little as well—not too much, of course, but a little anyway. He did, after all, have it coming. She allowed him a suitable period of anguish—at least she hoped it was anguish—then spoke to him warmly, even fondly, as if those spiteful words had never passed her lips. His expression became even more baffled, and then she turned the full force of her most winsome smile on him, noting with great satisfaction its devastating effect. After that she ignored him.

While Belgarath and Lady Polgara were recounting the events of their harrowing journey to Rak Cthol, the princess sat demurely beside Adara on a bench, half listening, but for the most part turning the amazing discovery of the past hour over and over in her mind. Suddenly, she felt eyes on her, and she looked up quickly. The little blond boy Lady Polgara called Errand was watching her, his small face very serious. There was something about his eyes. With a sudden and absolute certainty, she knew that the child was looking directly into her heart. He smiled at her then; without knowing why, she felt a sudden overwhelming surge of joy at his smile. He walked toward her, still smiling, and his little hand dipped into the pouch at his waist. He took out a round, gray stone and offered it to her. “Errand?” he said. For an instant Ce’Nedra seemed to see a faint blue flicker deep within the stone.

“Don’t touch it, Ce’Nedra,” Lady Polgara told her in a tone that made Ce’Nedra’s hand freeze in the very act of reaching for the stone. “Durnik!” Lady Polgara said to the smith with an odd note of complaint in her voice.

“Mistress Pol,” he said helplessly, “I don’t know what else to do. No matter how I seal it up, he always manages to get it open.”

“Make him put it away,” she told him with just a hint of exasperation.

Durnik went to the little boy, knelt and took hold of the pouch. Without a word he held it open, and the child dropped the stone into it. Durnik tied the pouch shut, pulling the knots as tight as he could. When he had finished, the little boy put his arms affectionately around the smith’s neck. Durnik looked a bit embarrassed and was about to lead the child away, but Errand pulled his hand free and climbed instead into Ce’Nedra’s lap. Quite seriously he kissed her, then nestled down in her arms and promptly fell asleep.

Feelings moved in Ce’Nedra that she had never felt before. Without knowing why, she was happier than she had ever been in her life. She held the child close against her, her arms protectively about him and her cheek laid snugly against his pale blond curls. She felt an impulse to rock him and perhaps to croon a very soft lullaby to him.

“We’ll have to hurry,” Belgarath was saying to the Gorim. “Even with Relg’s help, it will take a week or more to reach the Sendarian border. Then we’ll have to cross the whole country, and the snow in Sendaria can pile up in a hurry this time of year. To make things even worse, this is the season for storms in the Sea of the Winds, and it’s a long way over open water from Sendar to Riva.”

The word “Riva” jerked Ce’Nedra out of her reverie. From the very moment that she and Jeebers had crept from the Imperial Palace at Tol Honeth, one single thought had dominated her thinking. She was not going to Riva. Though she might have seemed on occasion to have surrendered on that point, her acquiescence had always been a subterfuge. Now, however, she would have to take a stand. The reasons for her adamant refusal to obey the provisions of the Accords of Vo Mimbre were no longer entirely clear to her. So much had happened that she was not even the same person, but one thing was absolutely certain no matter who she was. She was not going to Riva. It was a matter of principle.

“I’m sure that once we reach Sendaria, I’ll be able to make my way to an Imperial garrison,” she said as casually as if the matter had already been decided.

“And why would you want to do that, dear?” Lady Polgara asked her.

“As I said earlier, I’m not going to Riva,” Ce’Nedra replied. “The legionnaires will be able to make arrangements to return me to Tol Honeth.”

“Perhaps you should visit your father,” Polgara said quite calmly.

“You mean you’re just going to let me go?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m sure we’ll be able to find a ship bound for Tol Honeth sometime in the late spring or early summer. Rivan commerce with the Empire is extensive.”

“I don’t think you fully understand me, Lady Polgara. I said that I’m not going to go to Riva—under any circumstances.”

“I heard you, Ce’Nedra. You’re wrong, however. You are going to Riva. You have an appointment there, remember?”

“I won’t go!” Ce’Nedra’s voice went up an octave or two.

“Yes, you will.” Polgara’s voice was deceptively calm, but there was a hint of steel in it.

“I absolutely refuse,” the princess declared. She was about to say more, but a small finger gently brushed her lips. The sleepy child in her arms raised his hand to touch her mouth. She moved her head irritably. “I’ve told you all before that I will not submit to—” The child touched her lips again. His eyes were drowsy as he looked up at her, but his gaze was calm and reassuring. Ce’Nedra forgot what she had been saying. “I am not going to the Isle of the Winds,” she concluded rather lamely, “and that’s final.” The trouble was that it didn’t sound all that final.

“It seems that we’ve had this discussion once or twice before,” Polgara observed.

“You have no right to—” Ce’Nedra’s words trailed off again as her thoughts went astray once more. The child’s eyes were so blue—so very blue. She found herself unable to look away from them and seemed to be sinking into that incredible color. She shook her head. It was so completely unlike her to keep losing track of an argument this way. She tried to concentrate. “I refuse to be publicly humiliated,” she declared. “I will not stand in the Hall of the Rivan King like a beggar while all the Alorns snicker up their sleeves at me.” That was better. Her momentary distraction seemed to be fading. Inadvertently she glanced down at the child and it all went out the window again. “I don’t even have the right kind of dress,” she added plaintively low what had made her say that?

Polgara said nothing, but her eyes seemed very wise as she watched the princess flounder. Ce’Nedra stumbled along, her objections growing less and less relevant. Even as she argued, she realized that there was no real reason for her not going to Riva. Her refusal seemed frivolous—even childish. Why on earth had she made such a fuss about it? The little boy in her arms smiled encouragingly at her, and, unable to help herself, she smiled back at him, her defenses crumbling. She made one last try. “It’s only some silly old formality anyway, Lady Polgara,” she said. “There won’t be anyone waiting for me in the Hall of the Rivan King—there never has been. The Rivan line is extinct.” She tore her eyes away from the child’s face. “Do I really have to go?”

Lady Polgara nodded gravely.

Ce’Nedra heaved a great sigh. All this bickering seemed so unnecessary. What was the point of making such an issue of a simple trip? It was not as if there was any danger involved. If it would make people happy, why be stubborn about it? “Oh, all right,” she surrendered. “If it’s so important to everyone, I suppose I can go to Riva.” For some reason, saying it made her feel much better. The child in her arms smiled again, gently patted her cheek and went back to sleep. Lost in a sudden inexplicable happiness, the princess nestled her cheek against his curls again and began to rock back and forth gently, crooning very softly.