Castle of Wizardry

17

“Dear Aunt Pol,” Garion’s note began, “I know this is going to make you angry, but there’s no other way. I’ve seen the Mrin Codex, and now I know what I have to do. The—” He broke off, frowning. “How do you spell ‘Prophecy’?” he asked.

Belgarath spelled it out for him. “Don’t drag it out too much, Garion,” the old man advised. “Nothing you say is going to make her happy about this, so stick to the point.”

“Don’t you think I ought to explain why we’re doing this?” Garion fretted.

“She’s read the Codex, Garion,” Belgarath replied. “She’ll know why without your explanation.”

“I really ought to leave a note for Ce’Nedra, too,” Garion considered.

“Polgara can tell her what she needs to know,” Belgarath said. “We have things to do and we can’t afford to spend the whole night on correspondence.”

“I’ve never written a letter before,” Garion remarked. “It’s not nearly as easy as it looks.”

“Just say what you have to say and then stop,” the old man advised. “Don’t labor at it so much.”

The door opened and Silk came back in. He was dressed in the nondescript clothing he had worn on the road, and he carried two bundles.

“I think these should fit you,” he said, handing one of the bundles to Belgarath and the other to Garion.

“Did you get the money?” the old man asked him.

“I borrowed some from Barak.”

“That’s surprising,” Belgarath replied. “He isn’t notorious for generosity.”

“I didn’t tell him I was borrowing it,” the little man returned with a broad wink. “I thought it would save time if I didn’t have to go into long explanations.”

One of Belgarath’s eyebrows shot up.

“We are in a hurry, aren’t we?” Silk asked with an innocent expression. “And Barak can be tedious when it comes to money.”

“Spare me the excuses,” Belgarath told him. He turned back to Garion. “Have you finished with that yet?”

“What do you think?” Garion asked, handing him the note.

The old man glanced at it. “Good enough,” he said. “Now sign it and we’ll put it where somebody’ll find it sometime tomorrow.”

“Late tomorrow,” Silk suggested. “I’d like to be well out of Polgara’s range when she finds out that we’ve left.”

Garion signed the note, folded it and wrote, “For Lady Polgara,” across the outside.

“We’ll leave it on the throne,” Belgarath said. “Let’s change clothes and go get the sword.”

“Isn’t the sword going to be a bit bulky?” Silk asked after Garion and Belgarath had changed.

“There’s a scabbard for it in one of the antechambers,” Belgarath answered opening the door carefully and peering out into the silent hall. “He’ll have to wear it slung across his back.”

“That glow is going to be a bit ostentatious,” Silk said.

“We’ll cover the Orb,” Belgarath replied. “Let’s go.”

The three of them slipped out into the dimly lighted corridor and crept through the midnight stillness toward the throne room. Once, a sleepy servant going toward the kitchen almost surprised them, but an empty chamber provided them with a temporary hiding place until he had passed. Then they moved on.

“Is it locked?” Silk whispered when they reached the door to the Hall of the Rivan King.

Garion took hold of the large handle and twisted, wincing as the latch clacked loudly in the midnight stillness. He pushed, and the door creaked as it swung open.

“You ought to have somebody take care of that,” Silk muttered.

The Orb of Aldur began to glow faintly as soon as the three of them entered the Hall.

“It seems to recognize you,” Silk observed to Garion.

When Garion took down the sword, the Orb flared, filling the Hall of the Rivan King with its deep blue radiance. Garion looked around nervously, fearful that someone passing might see the light and come in to investigate. “Stop that,” he irrationally admonished the stone. With a startled flicker, the glow of the Orb subsided back into a faint, pulsating light, and the triumphant song of the Orb stilled to a murmur.

Belgarath looked quizzically at his grandson, but said nothing. He led them to an antechamber and removed a long, plain scabbard from a case standing against the wall. The belt attached to the scabbard had seen a certain amount of use. The old man buckled it in place for Garion, passing it over the young man’s right shoulder and down across his chest so that the scabbard, attached to the belt in two places, rode diagonally down his back. There was also a knitted tube in the case, almost like a narrow sock. “Slide this over the hilt,” Belgarath instructed.

Garion covered the hilt of his great sword with the tube and then took hold of the blade itself and carefully inserted the tip into the top of the scabbard. It was awkward, and neither Silk nor Belgarath offered to help him. All three of them knew why. The sword slid home and, since it seemed to have no weight, it was not too uncomfortable. The crosspiece of the hilt, however, stood out just at the top of his head and tended to poke him if he moved too quickly.

“It wasn’t really meant to be worn,” Belgarath told him. “We had to improvise.”

Once again, the three of them passed through the dimly lighted corridors of the sleeping palace and emerged through a side door. Silk slipped on ahead, moving as soundlessly as a cat and keeping to the shadows. Belgarath and Garion waited. An open window perhaps twenty feet overhead faced out into the courtyard. As they stood together beneath it, a faint light appeared, and the voice that spoke down to them was very soft. “Errand?” it said.

“Yes,” Garion replied without thinking. “Everything’s all right. Go back to bed.”

“Belgarion,” the child said with a strange kind of satisfaction. Then he added, “Good-bye,” in a somewhat more wistful tone, and he was gone.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t run straight to Polgara,” Belgarath muttered.

“I think we can trust him, Grandfather. He knew we were leaving and he just wanted to say good-bye.”

“Would you like to explain how you know that?”

“I don’t know.” Garion shrugged. “I just do.”

Silk whistled from the courtyard gate, and Belgarath and Garion followed him down into the quiet streets of the city.

It was still early spring, and the night was cool but not chilly. There was a fragrance in the air, washing down over the city from the high meadows in the mountains behind Riva and mingling with peat smoke and the salty tang of the sea. The stars overhead were bright, and the newly risen moon, looking swollen as it rode low over the horizon, cast a glittering golden path across the breast of the Sea of the Winds. Garion felt that excitement he always experienced when starting out at night. He had been cooped up too long, and each step that took him farther and farther from the dull round of appointments and ceremonies filled him with an almost intoxicating anticipation.

“It’s good to be on the road again,” Belgarath murmured, as if reading his thoughts.

“Is it always like this?” Garion whispered back. “I mean, even after all the years that you’ve been doing it?”

“Always,” Belgarath replied. “Why do you think I prefer the life of a vagabond?”

They moved on down through the dark streets to the city gate and out through a small sallyport to the wharves jutting into the moon-dappled waters of the harbor.

Captain Greldik was a bit drunk when they reached his ship. The vagrant seaman had ridden out the winter in the safety of the harbor at Riva. His ship had been hauled out on the strand, her bottom scraped and her seams recaulked. Her main mast, which had creaked rather alarmingly on the voyage from Sendaria, had been reinforced and fitted with new sails. Then Greldik and his crew had spent much of their time carousing. The effects of three months of steady dissipation showed on his face when they woke him. His eyes were bleary, and there were dark-stained pouches under them. His bearded face looked puffy and unwell.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he grunted when Belgarath told him of their urgent need to leave the island. “Or the next day. The next day would be better, I think.”

Belgarath spoke more firmly.

“My sailors couldn’t possibly man the oars,” Greldik objected. “They’ll be throwing up all over the deck, and it takes a week to clean up a mess like that.”

Belgarath delivered a blistering ultimatum, and Greldik sullenly climbed out of his rumpled bunk. He lurched toward the crew’s quarters, pausing only long enough to be noisily sick over the rail, and then he descended into the forward hold, where with kicks and curses he roused his men.

The moon was high and dawn only a few hours off when Greldik’s ship slid quietly out of the harbor and met the long, rolling swells of the Sea of the Winds. When the sun came up they were far out at sea.

The weather held fair, even though the winds were not favorable, and in two days’ time Greldik dropped Garion, Silk and Belgarath off on a deserted beach just north of the mouth of the Seline River on the northwest coast of Sendaria.

“I don’t know that I’d be in all that big a hurry to go back to Riva,” Belgarath told Greldik as he stepped out of the small boat onto the sand of the beach. He handed the bearded Cherek a small pouch of jingling coins. “I’m sure you and your crew can find a bit of diversion somewhere.”

“It’s always nice in Camaar this time of year,” Greldik mused, bouncing the pouch thoughtfully in his hand, “and I know a young widow there who’s always been very friendly.”

“You ought to pay her a visit,” Belgarath suggested. “You’ve been away for quite some time, and she’s sure to have been terribly lonely for you.”

“I think maybe I will,” Greldik said, his eyes suddenly bright. “Have a good trip.” He motioned to his men, and they began rowing the small boat back toward the lean ship standing a few hundred yards offshore.

“What was that all about?” Garion asked.

“I’d like to get a bit of distance between us and Polgara before she gets her hands on Greldik,” the old man replied. “I don’t particularly want her chasing us.” He looked around. “Let’s see if we can find somebody with a boat to row us upriver to Seline. We should be able to buy horses and supplies there.”

A fisherman, who immediately saw that turning ferryboatman would provide a more certain profit than trusting his luck on the banks off the northwest coast, agreed to take them upriver; by the time the sun was setting, they had arrived in the city of Seline. They spent the night in a comfortable inn and went the following morning to the central market. Silk negotiated the purchase of horses, haggling down to the last penny, bargaining more out of habit, Garion thought, than out of any real necessity. Then they bought supplies for the trip. By midmorning, they were pounding along the road that led toward Darine, some forty leagues distant.

The fields of northern Sendaria had begun to sprout that first green blush that lay on damp earth like a faint jade mist and more than anything announced spring. A few fleecy clouds scampered across the blue of the sky, and, though the wind was gusty, the sun warmed the air. The road opened before them, stretching across the verdant fields; and though their mission was deadly serious, Garion almost wanted to shout out of pure exuberance.

In two more days they reached Darine.

“Do you want to take ship here?” Silk asked Belgarath as they crested the hill up which they had come so many months before with their three wagonloads of turnips. “We could be in Kotu inside a week.”

Belgarath scratched at his beard, looking out at the expanse of the Gulf of Cherek, glittering in the afternoon sun. “I don’t think so,” he decided. He pointed at several lean Cherek warboats patrolling just outside Sendarian territorial waters.

“The Chereks are always moving around out there,” Silk replied. “It might have nothing whatsoever to do with us.”

“Polgara’s very persistent,” Belgarath said. “She can’t leave Riva herself as long as so many things are afoot there, but she can send people out to look for us. Let’s avoid any possible trouble if we can. We’ll go along the north coast and then on up through the fens to Boktor.”

Silk gave him a look of profound distaste. “It will take a lot longer,” he objected.

“We aren’t in all that great a hurry,” Belgarath remarked blandly. “The Alorns are beginning to mass their armies, but they still need more time, and it’s going to take a while to get the Arends all moving in the same direction.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Silk asked him.

“I have plans for those armies, and I’d like to start them moving before we cross into Gar og Nadrak if possible and certainly before we get to Mallorea. We can afford the time it will take to avoid any unpleasantness with the people Polgara’s sent out to find us.”

And so they detoured around Darine and took the narrow, rocky road that led along the cliffs where the waves crashed and boomed and foamed, beating themselves to fragments against the great rocks of the north coast.

The mountains of eastern Sendaria ran down into the Gulf of Cherek along that forbidding shore, and the road, which twisted and climbed and dropped steeply again, was not good. Silk grumbled every mile of the way.

Garion, however, had other worries. The decision he had made after reading the Mrin Codex had seemed quite logical at the time, but logic was scant comfort now. He was deliberately riding toward Mallorea to face Torak in a duel. The more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed. How could he possibly hope to defeat a God? He brooded about that as they rode eastward along the rocky coast, and his mood became as unpleasant as Silk’s.

After about a week, the cliffs became lower, and the land more gently rolling. From the top of the last of the eastern foothills, they looked out and saw what appeared to be a vast, flat plain, dark-green and very damp-looking.

“Well, there they are,” Silk sourly informed Belgarath.

“What’s got you so bad-tempered?” the old man asked him.

“One of the main reasons I left Drasnia in the first place was to avoid the possibility of ever being obliged to go anywhere near the fens,” Silk replied crisply. “Now you propose to drag me lengthwise through the whole soggy, stinking expanse of them. I’m bitterly disappointed in you, old friend, and it’s altogether possible that I’ll never forgive you for this.”

Garion was frowning at the marshland spread out below. “That wouldn’t be Drasnia, would it?” he asked. “I thought that Drasnia was farther north.”

“It’s Algaria, actually,” Belgarath told him. “The beginning of Aldurfens. Up beyond the mouths of the Aldur River is the Drasnian border. They call it Mrin marsh up there, but it’s all the same swamp. It goes on for another thirty leagues or so beyond Kotu at the mouth of the Mrin River.”

“Most people just call it the fens and let it go at that,” Silk observed. “Most people have sense enough to stay out of it,” he added pointedly.

“Quit complaining so much,” Belgarath told him bluntly. “There are fishermen along this coast. We’ll buy a boat.”

Silk’s eyes brightened. “We can go up along the coast then,” he suggested.

“That wouldn’t be very prudent,” Belgarath disagreed, “not with Anheg’s fleet scouring the Gulf of Cherek, looking for us.”

“You don’t know that they’re looking for us,” Silk said quickly.

“I know Polgara,” Belgarath answered.

“I feel that this trip is definitely growing sour on us,” Silk grumbled.

The fishermen along the marshy coast were a peculiar mixture of Algars and Drasnians, close-mouthed and wary of strangers. Their villages were built on pilings driven deep into the marshy earth, and there lingered about them that peculiar odor of long-dead fish that hovers over fishing villages wherever one finds them. It took some time to find a man with a boat he was willing to sell and even longer to persuade him that three horses and a few silver coins beside was a fair price for it.

“It leaks,” Silk declared, pointing at the inch or so of water that had collected in the bottom of the boat as they poled away from the reeking village.

“All boats leak, Silk,” Belgarath replied calmly. “It’s the nature of boats to leak. Bail it out.”

“It will just fill up again.”

“Then you can bail it out again. Try not to let it get too far ahead of you.”

The fens stretched on interminably, a wilderness of cattails and rushes and dark, slowly moving water. There were channels and streams and quite frequently small lakes where the going was much easier. The air was humid and, in the evenings, thick with gnats and mosquitoes. Frogs sang of love all night, greeting spring with intoxicated fervor-little chirping frogs and great, booming, bull-voiced frogs as big as dinner plates. Fish leaped in the ponds and lakes, and beaver and muskrats nested on soggy islands.

They poled their way through the confused maze of channels marking the mouths of the Aldur and continued northeasterly in the slowly warming northern spring. After a week or more, they crossed the indeterminate border and left Algaria behind.

A false channel put them aground once, and they were obliged to climb out to heave and push their boat off a mudbank by main strength. When they were afloat again, Silk sat disconsolately on the gunwale regarding his ruined boots that were dripping thick mud into the water. When he spoke, his voice was filled with profound disgust. “Delightful,” he said. “How wonderful to be home again in dear old mucky Drasnia.”

18

Although it was all one vast swampland, it seemed to Garion that the fens here in Drasnia were subtly different from those farther south. The channels were narrower, for one thing, and they twisted and turned more frequently. After a couple of days poling, he developed a growing conviction that they were lost. “Are you sure you know where we’re going?” he demanded of Silk.

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” Silk replied candidly.

“You keep saying that you know the way everywhere,” Garion accused him.

“There isn’t any certain way here in the fens, Garion,” Silk told him. “All you can do is keep going against the current and hope for the best.”

“There’s got to be a route,” Garion objected. “Why don’t they put up markers or something?”

“It wouldn’t do any good. Look.” The little man put his pole against a solid-looking hummock rising out of the water beside the boat and pushed. The hummock moved sluggishly away. Garion stared at it in amazement.

“It’s floating vegetation,” Belgarath explained, stopping his poling to wipe the sweat from his face. “Seeds fall on it, and it grows grass just like solid earth—except that it isn’t solid. It floats wherever the wind and current push it. That’s why there aren’t any permanent channels and there’s no definite route.”

“It’s not always just wind and current,” Silk added darkly. He glanced out at the lowering sun. “We’d better find something solid to tie up to for the night,” he suggested.

“How about that one?” Belgarath replied, pointing at a brushy hummock that was somewhat higher than those surrounding it.

They poled their way to the clump of ground rising out of the surrounding water, and Silk kicked at it experimentally a few times. “It seems to be stationary,” he confirmed. He stepped out of the boat and climbed to the top, frequently stamping his feet. The ground responded with a satisfactorily solid sound. “There’s a dry spot up here,” he reported, “and a pile of driftwood on the other side. We can sleep on solid ground for a change, and maybe even have a hot meal.”

They pulled the boat far up onto the sloping side, and Silk took some rather exotic-seeming precautions to make certain that it was securely tied.

“Isn’t that sort of unnecessary?” Garion asked him.

“It isn’t much of a boat,” Silk replied, “but it’s the only one we’ve got. Let’s not take chances with it.”

They got a fire going and erected their single tent as the sun slowly settled in a cloudbank to the west, painting the marsh in a ruddy glow. Silk dug out a few pans and began to work on supper.

“It’s too hot,” Garion advised critically as the rat-faced little man prepared to lay strips of bacon in a smoking iron pan.

“Do you want to do this?”

“I was just warning you, that’s all.”

“I don’t have your advantages, Garion,” Silk replied tartly. “I didn’t grow up in Polgara’s kitchen the way you did. I just make do the best I can.”

“You don’t have to get grumpy about it,” Garion said. “I just thought you’d like to know that the pan’s too hot.”

“I think I can manage without any more advice.”

“Suit yourself—but you’re going to burn the bacon.”

Silk gave him an irritated look and started slapping bacon slices into the pan. The slices sizzled and smoked, and their edges turned black almost immediately.

“I told you so,” Garion murmured.

“Belgarath,” Silk complained, “make him leave me alone.”

“Come away, Garion,” the old man said. “He can burn supper without any help.”

“Thanks,” Silk responded sarcastically.

Supper was not an absolute disaster. After they had eaten, they sat watching as the fire burned down and purple evening crept across the fens. The frogs took up their vast chorus among the reeds, and birds perched on the bending stalks of cattails, clucking and murmuring sleepily. There were faint splashes and rippling sounds in the brown water about them and occasional eruptions of bubbles as swamp gas gurgled to the surface. Silk sighed bitterly. “I hate this place,” he said. “I absolutely hate it.”

That night Garion had a nightmare. It was not the first he had suffered since they had left Riva; and as he sat up, sweat-drenched and trembling, he was positive it would not be the last. It was not a new nightmare, but rather was one which had periodically haunted his sleep since boyhood. Unlike an ordinary bad dream, this one did not involve being chased or threatened, but consisted rather of a single image—the image of a hideously maimed face. Although he had never actually seen the owner of the face, he knew exactly whose face it was, and now he knew why it inhabited his darkest dreams.

The next day dawned cloudy with a threat of approaching rain. As Belgarath stirred up the fire and Silk rummaged through his pack for something suitable for breakfast, Garion stood looking out at the swamp around him. A flight of geese swept by overhead in a ragged V, their wings whistling and their muted cries drifting, lonely and remote. A fish jumped not far from the edge of the hummock, and Garion watched the ripples widening out toward the far shore. He looked for quite some time at that shore before he realized exactly what it was he was seeing. Concerned, then a bit alarmed, he began to peer first this way and then that.

“Grandfather!” he cried. “Look!”

“At what?”

“It’s all changed. There aren’t any channels any more. We’re in the middle of a big pond, and there isn’t any way out of it.” He spun around, desperately trying to see some exit, but the edges of the pond in which they sat were totally unbroken. There were no channels leading out of it, and the brown water was absolutely still, showing no evidence of current.

Then in the center of the pond, without making so much as a ripple, a round, furred head emerged from the water. The animal’s eyes were very large and bright; it had no external ears, and its little nose was as black as a button. It made a peculiar chirping noise, and another head emerged out of the water a few feet away.

“Fenlings!” Silk gasped, drawing his short sword with a steely rustle.

“Oh, put that away,” Belgarath told him disgustedly. “They aren’t going to hurt you.”

“They’ve trapped us, haven’t they?”

“What do they want?” Garion asked.

“Breakfast, obviously,” Silk answered, still holding his sword.

“Don’t be stupid, Silk,” Belgarath told him. “Why would they want to eat a raw Drasnian when there’s a whole swampful of fish available? Put the sword away.”

The first fenling which had poked its head up out of the water lifted one of its webbed forefeet and made a peremptory gesture. The webbed foot was strangely handlike.

“They seem to want us to follow them,” Belgarath said calmly.

“And you’re going to do it?” Silk was aghast. “Are you mad?”

“Do we have any choice?”

Without further discussion, Belgarath began taking down the tent.

“Are they monsters, Grandfather?” Garion asked worriedly as he helped. “Like Algroths or Trolls?”

“No, they’re just animals-like seals or beaver. They’re curious and intelligent and very playful.”

“But they play very nasty games,” Silk added.

After they had stowed all their packs into the boat, they pushed it down the bank into the water. The fenlings watched them curiously with no particular threat or malice in their gaze, but rather a kind of firm determination on their furry little faces. The solid-looking edge of the pond opened then to reveal the channel that had been concealed during the night. The strangely rounded head of the fenling who had gestured to them moved on ahead, leading the way and glancing back often to be certain they were following. Several others trailed after the boat, their large eyes alert.

It began to rain, a few drops at first, and then a steady drizzle that veiled the endless expanse of reed and cattail stretching out on all sides of them.

“Where do you think they’re taking us?” Silk asked, stopping his poling to wipe the rain out of his face. One of the fenlings behind the boat chattered angrily at him until he dug his pole into the muddy bottom of the channel again.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Belgarath replied.

The channel continued to open before them, and they poled steadily along, following the round-headed fenling who had first appeared.

“Are those trees up ahead?” Silk asked, peering into the misty drizzle.

“It appears so,” Belgarath answered. “I suspect that’s where we’re going.”

The large cluster of trees slowly emerged from the mist. As they drew closer, Garion could see a gentle rise of ground swelling up out of the reeds and water. The grove which crowned the island appeared to be mostly willows with long, trailing branches.

The fenling who had been leading them swam on ahead. When it reached the island, it emerged half out of the water and gave a strange, whistling cry. A moment or so later, a hooded figure stepped out of the trees and moved slowly down to the bank. Garion did not know what to expect, but he was more than a little startled when the brown-cloaked figure on the shore pushed back the hood to reveal a woman’s face that, though very old, still bore the luminous trace of what had once been an extraordinary beauty.

“Hail, Belgarath,” she greeted the old sorcerer in an oddly neutral voice.

“Hello, Vordai,” he replied conversationally. “It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

The little creatures that had guided them to the island waded out of the water to gather around the brown-cloaked woman. They chirped and chattered to her, and she looked at them fondly, touching their wet fur with gentle fingers. They were medium-sized animals with short hind legs and little rounded bellies and they walked upright with a peculiar quick shuffle, their forepaws held delicately in front of their furry chests.

“Come inside out of the rain, Belgarath,” the woman said. “Bring your friends.” She turned and walked up a path leading into the willow grove with her fenlings scampering along beside her.

“What do we do?” Garion whispered.

“We go inside,” Belgarath replied, stepping out of the boat onto the island.

Garion was not sure what to expect as he and Silk followed the old man up the path toward the dripping willows, but he was totally unprepared for the neat, thatch-roofed cottage with its small adjoining garden. The house was built of weathered logs, tightly chinked with moss, and a wispy tendril of smoke drifted from its chimney.

At the doorway, the woman in brown carefully wiped her feet on a rush mat and shook the rain out of her cloak. Then she opened the door and went inside without looking back.

Silk’s expression was dubious as he stopped outside the cottage. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Belgarath?” he asked quietly. “I’ve heard stories about Vordai.”

“It’s the only way to find out what she wants,” Belgarath told him, “and I’m fairly sure we aren’t going any farther until we talk with her. Let’s go in. Be sure to wipe your feet.”

The interior of Vordai’s cottage was scrupulously neat. The ceilings were low and heavily beamed. The wooden floor was scrubbed to whiteness, and a table and chairs sat before an arched fireplace where a pot hung in the flames from an iron arm. There were wildflowers in a vase on the table and curtains at the window overlooking the garden.

“Why don’t you introduce your friends to me, Belgarath?” the woman suggested, hanging her cloak on a peg. She smoothed the front of her plain brown dress.

“As you wish, Vordai,” the old man replied politely. “This is Prince Kheldar, your countryman. And this is King Belgarion of Riva.”

“Noble guests,” the woman observed in that strangely neutral voice. “Welcome to the house of Vordai.”

“Forgive me, madame,” Silk said in his most courtly manner, “but your reputation seems to be grossly inaccurate.”

“Vordai, the witch of the fens?” she asked, looking amused. “Do they still call me that?”

He smiled in return. “Their descriptions are misleading, to say the least.”

“The hag of the swamps.” She mimicked the speech of a credulous peasant. “Drowner of travellers and queen of the fenlings.” There was a bitter twist to her lips.

“That’s more or less what they say,” he told her. “I always believed you were a myth conjured up to frighten unruly children.”

“Vordai will get you and gobble you up!” She laughed, but there was no humor in her laughter. “I’ve been hearing that for generations. Take off your cloaks, gentlemen. Sit down and make yourselves comfortable. You’ll be staying for a while.”

One of the fenlings—the one who had led them to the island, Garion thought—chattered at her in a piping little voice, glancing nervously at the pot hanging in the fire.

“Yes,” she answered quite calmly, “I know that it’s boiling, Tupik. It has to boil or it won’t cook.” She turned back to her guests. “Breakfast will be ready in a bit,” she told them. “Tupik tells me you haven’t eaten yet.”

“You can communicate with them?” Silk sounded surprised.

“Isn’t that obvious, Prince Kheldar? Here, let me hang your cloaks by the fire to dry.” She stopped and regarded Garion gravely. “So great a sword for one so young,” she noted, looking at the great hilt rising above his shoulder. “Stand it in the corner, King Belgarion. There’s no one to fight here.”

Garion inclined his head politely, unbuckled the sword belt and handed her his cloak.

Another, somewhat smaller fenling darted out of a comer with a piece of cloth and began busily wiping up the water that had dripped from their cloaks, chattering disapprovingly all the while.

“You’ll have to forgive Poppi.” Vordai smiled. “She’s obsessed with tidiness. I sometimes think that, if I left her alone, she’d sweep holes in the floor.”

“They’re changing, Vordai,” Belgarath said gravely, seating himself at the table.

“I know,” she replied, going to the fireplace to stir the bubbling pot. “I’ve watched them over the years. They’re not the same as they were when I came here.”

“It was a mistake to tamper with them,” he told her.

“So you’ve said before—you and Polgara both. How is she, by the way?”

“Probably raging by now. We slipped out of the Citadel at Riva without telling her we were leaving, and that sort of thing irritates her.”

“Polgara was born irritable.”

“We agree on that point anyway.”

“Breakfast’s ready.” She lifted the pot with a curved iron hook and set it on the table. Poppi scampered over to a cupboard standing against the far wall and brought back a stack of wooden bowls, then returned for spoons. Her large eyes were very bright, and she chittered seriously at the three visitors.

“She’s telling you not to drop crumbs on her clean floor,” Vordai advised them, removing a steaming loaf of bread from an oven built into the side of the fireplace. “Crumbs infuriate her.”

“We’ll be careful,” Belgarath promised.

It was a peculiar sort of breakfast, Garion thought. The stew that came steaming from the pot was thick, with strange vegetables floating in it, and large chunks of fish. It was delicately seasoned, however, and he found it delicious. By the time he had finished eating, he rather reluctantly concluded that Vordai might even be as good a cook as Aunt Pol.

“Excellent, Vordai,” Belgarath complimented her, finally pushing his bowl away. “Now suppose we get down to business. Why did you have us brought here?”

“To talk, Belgarath,” she replied. “I don’t get much company, and conversation’s a good way to pass a rainy morning. Why have you come into the fens?”

“The Prophecy moves on, Vordai—even if sometimes we don’t. The Rivan King has returned, and Torak stirs in his sleep.”

“Ah,” she said without much real interest.

“The Orb of Aldur stands on the pommel of Belgarion’s sword. The day is not far off when the Child of Light and the Child of Dark must meet. We go toward that meeting, and all mankind awaits the outcome.”

“Except me, Belgarath.” She gave him a penetrating look. “The fate of mankind is a matter of only the mildest curiosity to me. I was excluded from mankind three hundred years ago, you’ll remember.”

“Those people are all long dead, Vordai.”

“Their descendants are no different. Could I walk into any village in this part of Drasnia and tell the good villagers who I am without being stoned or burned?”

“Villagers are the same the world over, madame,” Silk put in. “Provincial, stupid, and superstitious. Not all men are like that.”

“All men are the same, Prince Kheldar,” she disagreed. “When I was young, I tried to involve myself in the affairs of my village. I only wanted to help, but very soon not a cow died or a baby took colic without my being blamed for it. They stoned me finally and tried to drag me back to the village to burn me at the stake. They had quite a celebration planned. I managed to escape, though, and I took refuge here in the fens. After that I had very little interest in the affairs of men.”

“You probably shouldn’t have displayed your talents quite so openly,” Belgarath told her. “People prefer not to believe in that sort of thing. There’s a whole catalogue of nasty little emotions curdling in the human spirit, and anything the least bit out of the ordinary raises the possibility of retribution.”

“My village learned that it was more than a possibility,” she replied with a certain grim satisfaction.

“What happened?” Garion asked curiously.

“It started raining,” Vordai told him with an odd smile.

“Is that all?”

“It was enough. It rained on that village for five years, King Belgarion just on the village. A hundred yards beyond the last house everything was normal, but in the village there was rain. They tried to move twice, but the rain followed them. Finally they gave up and left the area. For all I know, some of their descendants are still wandering.”

“You’re not serious,” Silk scoffed.

“Quite serious.” She gave him an amused look. “Your credulity appears selective, Prince Kheldar. Here you are, going about the world in the company of Belgarath the Sorcerer. I’m sure you believe in his power; but you can’t bring yourself to accept the idea of the power of the witch of the fens.”

Silk stared at her.

“I really am a witch, Prince Kheldar. I could demonstrate if you wish, but I don’t think you’d like it very much. People seldom do.”

“That isn’t really necessary, Vordai,” Belgarath said. “What is it that you want exactly?”

“I was coming to that, Belgarath,” she replied. “After I escaped into the fens, I discovered my little friends here.” She affectionately stroked the side of Poppi’s furry little face, and Poppi nuzzled at her hand ecstatically. “They were afraid of me at first, but they finally grew less shy. They began bringing me fish—and flowers—as tokens of friendship, and I needed friends very badly at that time. I altered them a bit out of gratitude.”

“You shouldn’t have, you know,” the old man said rather sadly.

She shrugged. “Should and shouldn’t have very little meaning to me any more.”

“Not even the Gods would do what you did.”

“The Gods have other amusements.” She looked directly at him then. “I’ve been waiting for you, Belgarath—for years now. I knew that sooner or later you’d come back into the fens. This meeting you spoke of is very important to you, isn’t it?”

“It’s the most important event in the history of the world.”

“That depends on your point of view, I suppose. You need my help, though.”

“I think we can manage, Vordai.”

“Perhaps, but how do you expect to get out of the fens?”

He looked at her sharply.

“I can open the way for you to the dry ground at the edge of the swamp, or I can see to it that you wander around in these marshes forever—in which case this meeting you’re concerned about will never happen, will it? That puts me in a very interesting situation, wouldn’t you say?”

Belgarath’s eyes narrowed.

“I discovered that when men deal with each other, there’s usually an exchange of some kind,” she added with a strange little smile. “Something for something; nothing for nothing. It seems to be a sensible arrangement.”

“Exactly what did you have in mind?”

“The fenlings are my friends,” she replied. “In a very special way, my children. But men look upon them as animals with pelts worth the taking. They trap them, Belgarath, and they kill them for their fur. The fine ladies in Boktor and Kotu dress themselves in the skins of my children and give no thought to the grief it causes me. They call my children animals and they come into the fens to hunt them.”

“They are animals, Vordai,” he told her gently.

“Not any more.” Almost without seeming to think, Vordai put her arm about Poppi’s shoulders. “It may be that you were right when you said that I shouldn’t have tampered with them, but it’s too late now to change it back.” She sighed. “I’m a witch, Belgarath,” she continued, “not a sorceress. My life has a beginning and an end, and it’s approaching its end, I think. I won’t live forever, as you and Polgara have done. I’ve lived several hundred years already and I’m growing very tired of life. As long as I’m alive, I can keep men from coming into the fens; but once I’m gone, my children will have no protection.”

“And you want me to take them into my care?”

“No, Belgarath. You’re too busy; and sometimes you forget promises you don’t care to remember. I want you to do the one thing that will make it forever impossible for men to think of the fenlings as animals.”

His eyes widened as what she was suggesting dawned on him.

“I want you to give my children the power of speech, Belgarath,” Vordai said. “I can’t do it. My witchcraft doesn’t reach that far. Only a sorcerer can make it possible for them to talk.”

“Vordai—”

“That’s my price, Belgarath,” she told him. “That’s what my help will cost you. Take it or leave it.”

19

They slept that night in Vordai’s cottage, though Garion slept very little. The ultimatum of the witch of the fens troubled him profoundly. He knew that tampering with nature had far-reaching effects, and to go as far as Vordai wished might forever erase the dividing line between men and animals. The philosophical and theological implications of that step were staggering. There were, moreover, other worries. It was entirely possible that Belgarath could not do what Vordai demanded of him. Garion was almost positive that his grandfather had not attempted to use his will since his collapse months before, and now Vordai had set him an almost impossible task.

What would happen to Belgarath if he tried and failed? What would that do to him? Would the doubts then take over and rob him of any possibility of ever regaining his power? Desperately Garion tried to think of a way to warn his grandfather without arousing those fatal doubts.

But they absolutely had to get out of the fens. However reluctantly Garion had made the decision to meet Torak, he now knew that it was the only possible choice open to him. The meeting, however, could not be delayed indefinitely. If it were put off too long, events would move on, and the world would be plunged into the war they were all so desperately trying to head off, Vordai’s threat to trap them all here in the fens unless Belgarath paid her price threatened not only them, but the entire world. In a very real sense, she held the fate of all mankind in her uncaring hands. Try though he might, Garion could not think of any way to avoid the test of Belgarath’s will. Though he would reluctantly have done what Vordai wished himself, he did not even know where to begin. If it could be done at all, his grandfather was the only one who could do it—if his illness had not destroyed his power.

When dawn crept through the misty fens, Belgarath arose and sat before the fire, brooding into the crackling flames with a somber face.

“Well?” Vordai asked him. “Have you decided?”

“It’s wrong, Vordai,” he told her. “Nature cries out against it.”

“I’m much closer to nature than you are, Belgarath,” she replied. “Witches live more intimately with her than sorcerers do. I can feel the turning of the seasons in my blood, and the earth is alive under my feet. I hear no outcry. Nature loves all her creatures, and she would grieve over the obliteration of my fenlings almost as much as I. But that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? Even though the very rocks shrieked out against it, I would not relent.”

Silk exchanged a quick look with Garion, and the little man’s sharp face seemed as troubled as Belgarath’s.

“Are the fenlings really beasts?” Vordai continued. She pointed to where Poppi still slept, her delicate forepaws open like little hands. Tupik, moving stealthily, crept back into the house, carrying a handful of dew-drenched swamp flowers. With precise care, he placed them about the slumbering Poppi and gently laid the last one in her open hand. Then, with an oddly patient expression, he sat on his haunches to watch her awakening.

Poppi stirred, stretched, and yawned. She brought the flower to her little black nose and sniffed at it, looking affectionately at the expectant Tupik. She made a happy little chirping sound, and then she and Tupik scampered off together for a morning swim in the cool water of the swamp.

“It’s a courting ritual,” Vordai explained. “Tupik wants Poppi to be his mate, and as long as she continues to accept his gifts, he knows that she’s still fond of him. It will go on for quite some time, and then they’ll swim off into the swamp together for a week or so. When they come back, they’ll be mates for life. Is that really so different from the way young humans behave?”

Her question profoundly disturbed Garion for some reason he could not quite put his finger on.

“Look there,” Vordai told them, pointing through the window at a group of young fenlings, scarcely more than babies, at play. They had fashioned a ball out of moss and were rapidly passing it around in a circle, their large eyes intent on their game. “Couldn’t a human child join that group and not feel the slightest bit out of place?” Vordai pressed.

Not far beyond the game, a mature female fenling cradled her sleeping baby, rocking gently with her cheek against the little one’s face. “Isn’t motherhood universal?” Vordai asked. “In what way do my children differ from humans?—except that they’re perhaps more decent, more honest and loving with each other?”

Belgarath sighed. “All right, Vordai,” he said, “you’ve made your point. I’ll grant that the fenlings are probably nicer creatures than men. I don’t know that speech will improve them, but if that’s what you want—” He shrugged.

“You’ll do it then?”

“I know it’s wrong, but I’ll try to do what you ask. I really don’t have much choice, do I?”

“No,” she replied, “you don’t. Will you need anything? I have all the customary implements and compounds.”

He shook his head. “Sorcery doesn’t work that way. Witchcraft involves the summoning of spirits, but sorcery comes all from within. Someday, if we have the leisure, I’ll explain the difference to you.” He stood up. “I don’t suppose you’d care to change your mind about this?”

Her face hardened. “No, Belgarath,” she replied.

He sighed again. “All right, Vordai. I’ll be back in a bit.” He turned quietly and walked out into the mist-shrouded morning.

In the silence that followed his departure, Garion closely watched Vordai for some hint that her determination might not be as iron-hard as it seemed. It had occurred to him that if she were not blindly adamant, he might be able to explain the situation and persuade her to relent. The witch of the fens paced nervously about the room, picking things up absently and setting them down again. She seemed unable to concentrate her attention on any one thing for more than a moment.

“This may ruin him, you know,” Garion told her quietly. Bluntness perhaps might sway her where other attempts at persuasion had failed.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded sharply.

“He was very ill last winter,” Garion replied. “He and Ctuchik fought each other for possession of the Orb. Ctuchik was destroyed, but Belgarath nearly died too. It’s quite possible that his power was destroyed by his illness.”

Silk’s gasp was clearly audible. “Why didn’t you tell us?” he exclaimed.

“Aunt Pol said that we didn’t dare,” Garion said. “We couldn’t take any chance of word of it getting back to the Angaraks. Belgarath’s power is the one thing that’s held them in check all these years. If he’s lost it and they find out, they’ll feel free to invade the West.”

“Does he know?” Vordai asked quickly.

“I don’t think so. Neither one of us said anything to him about it. We couldn’t let him think for a moment that anything might be wrong. If he has one single doubt, it won’t work for him. That’s the main thing about sorcery. You have to believe that what you want to happen is going to. Otherwise, nothing happens at all—and each time you fail, it gets worse.”

“What did you mean when you said that this might ruin him?” Vordai’s face looked stricken, and Garion began to have some hope. “He may still have his power—or some of it,” he explained. “But not enough to do what you’ve asked of him. It takes a tremendous effort to do even simple things, and what you’ve asked him to do is very difficult. It could be too much for him; but once he starts, he won’t be able to stop. And the effort may drain his will and his life energy until he cannot ever recover—or until he dies.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Vordai demanded, her face anguished.

“I couldn’t—not without his hearing me, too.”

She turned quickly toward the door. “Belgarath!” she cried. “Wait!” She spun back to Garion. “Go after him! Stop him!”

That was what Garion had been waiting for. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door. As he swung it open and was about to call out across the rainy yard, he felt a strange oppression as if something were almost happening—almost, but not quite. The shout froze on his lips.

“Go on, Garion,” Silk urged him.

“I can’t,” Garion groaned. “He’s already begun to pull in his will. He wouldn’t even hear me.”

“Can you help him?”

“I don’t even know exactly what he’s trying to do, Silk,” Garion replied helplessly. “If I went blundering in there now, all I’d do is make things worse.”

They stared at him in consternation.

Garion felt a strange echoing surge. It was not at all what he expected, and so he was totally unprepared for it. His grandfather was not trying to move anything or change anything, but instead he was calling out—reaching across some vast distance with the voice of his mind. The words were not at all distinct, but the one word, “Master,” did come through once quite distinctly. Belgarath was trying to reach Aldur. Garion held his breath.

Then, from infinitely far away, Aldur’s voice replied. They spoke together quietly for several moments, and all the while Garion could feel the force of Belgarath’s will, infused and magnified by the will of Aldur, growing stronger and stronger.

“What’s happening?” Silk’s voice was almost frightened.

“He’s talking with Aldur. I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

“Will Aldur help him?” Vordai asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if Aldur can use his will here any more. There’s some kind of limitation—something that he and the other Gods agreed to.”

Then the strange conversation ended, and Garion felt Belgarath’s will mounting, gathering itself. “He’s begun,” Garion said in a half whisper.

“His power’s still there?” Silk asked.

Garion nodded.

“As strong as ever?”

“I don’t know. There’s no way to measure it.”

The tension of it grew until it was almost intolerable. What Belgarath was doing was at once very subtle and very profound. There was no rushing surge or hollow echo this time. Instead, Garion felt an odd, tingling whisper as the old man’s will was unleashed with agonizing slowness. The whisper seemed to be saying something over and over—something Garion could almost understand, but which tantalizingly eluded him.

Outside, the young fenlings stopped their game. The ball dropped unnoticed as the players all stood, listening intently. Poppi and Tupik, returning hand in hand from their swim, froze in their tracks and stood with their heads cocked as Belgarath’s whisper spoke gently to them, reaching down into their thoughts, murmuring, explaining, teaching. Then their eyes widened as if in sudden understanding.

Belgarath emerged finally from the misty willows, his step heavy, weary. He walked slowly toward the house, stopping just outside to look intently at the stunned faces of the fenlings gathered in the dooryard. He nodded then and came back inside. His shoulders were slumped with exhaustion, and his white-bearded face seemed drained.

“Are you all right?” Vordai asked him, her tone no longer neutral. He nodded and sank into a chair by the table. “It’s done,” he said shortly.

Vordai looked at him, and her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“No tricks, Vordai,” he said. “And I’m too tired to try to lie to you. I’ve paid your price. If it’s all right with you, we’ll leave right after breakfast. We still have a long way to go.”

“I’ll need more than just your word, Belgarath. I don’t really trust you—or any human, for that matter. I want proof that you’ve paid.”

But there was a strange new voice from the doorway. Poppi, her furry little face contorted with the effort, was struggling with something. “M-m.m-m-,” she stammered. Her mouth twisted, and she tried again. “M-m-m-m—.” It seemed to be the hardest thing she had ever tried to do. She took a deep breath and tried once more. “M-m-m-motherrr,” Poppi said.

With a low cry, Vordai rushed to the little creature, knelt, and embraced her.

“Mother,” Poppi said again. It was clearer this time.

From outside the cottage there came a growing babble of small, squeaky voices, all repeating, “Mother, mother, mother.” The excited fenlings converged on the cottage, their voices swelling as more and more of them emerged from the swamps.

Vordai wept.

“You’ll have to teach them, of course,” Belgarath said wearily. “I gave them the ability, but they don’t know very many words yet.”

Vordai looked at him with tears streaming down her face. “Thank you, Belgarath,” she said in a faltering voice.

The old man shrugged. “Something for something,” he replied. “Wasn’t that the bargain?”

It was Tupik who led them from the fens. The little creature’s chirping to his fellows, however, now had words mixed in with it—faltering, often badly mispronounced, but words nonetheless.

Garion thought for a long time before he spoke, wrestling with an idea as he pushed on his pole. “Grandfather,” he said finally.

“Yes, Garion,” the old man replied from where he rested in the stern of their boat.

“You knew all along, didn’t you?”

“Knew what?”

“That it was possible that you couldn’t make things happen any more?”

Belgarath stared at him. “Where did you get that idea?” he asked.

“Aunt Pol said that after you got sick last winter, you might have lost all your power.”

“She said what?”

“She said that ”

“I heard you.” The old man was frowning, his face creased with thought. “That possibility never even occurred to me,” he admitted. Suddenly he blinked and his eyes opened very wide. “You know, she might have been right. The illness could have had that sort of effect. What an amazing thing.”

“You didn’t feel any—well—weaker?”

“What? No, of course not.” Belgarath was still frowning, turning the idea over in his mind. “What an amazing thing,” he repeated, and then he suddenly laughed.

“I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“Is that what’s been bothering you and your Aunt for all these months? The two of you have been tiptoeing around me as if I were made out of thin glass.”

“We were afraid the Angaraks might find out, and we didn’t dare say anything to you because—”

“Because you were afraid it might make me doubt my abilities?”

Garion nodded.

“Maybe in the long run it wasn’t a bad idea at that. I certainly didn’t need any doubts plaguing me this morning.”

“Was it terribly difficult?”

“Moderately so, yes. I wouldn’t want to have to try that sort of thing every day.”

“But you didn’t really have to do it, did you?”

“Do what?”

“Show the fenlings how to talk. If you’ve still got your power, then between the two of us, you and I could have opened a channel straight through to the edge of the swamp—no matter what Vordai or the fenlings could have done to try to stop us.”

“I wondered how long it was going to be before that occurred to you,” the old man replied blandly.

Garion gave him an irritated look. “All right,” he said, “why did you do it then, since you didn’t have to?”

“That question’s rather impolite, Garion,” Belgarath chided. “There are certain courtesies customarily observed. It’s not considered good manners to ask another sorcerer why he did something.”

Garion gave his grandfather an even harder look. “You’re evading the question,” he said bluntly. “Let’s agree that I don’t have very good manners, and then you can go ahead and answer anyway.”

Belgarath appeared slightly injured. “It’s not my fault that you and your Aunt were so worried. You don’t really have any reason to be so cross with me.” He paused, then looked at Garion. “You’re absolutely going to insist?” he asked.

“Yes, I think I really am. Why did you do it?”

Belgarath sighed. “Vordai’s been alone for most of her life, you know,” he replied, “and life’s been very hard to her. Somehow I’ve always thought that she deserved better. Maybe this makes up for it—a little bit.”

“Did Aldur agree with you?” Garion pressed. “I heard his voice when the two of you were talking.”

“Eavesdropping is really a bad habit, Garion.”

“I’ve got lots of bad habits, Grandfather.”

“I don’t know why you’re taking this tone with me, boy,” the old man complained. “All right, since you’re going to be this way about it, I did, as a matter of fact, have to talk rather fast to get my Master to agree.”

“You did all of this because you felt sorry for her?”

“That’s not exactly the right term, Garion. Let’s just say that I have certain feelings about justice.”

“If you knew you were going to do it anyway, why did you argue with her?”

Belgarath shrugged. “I wanted to be sure that she really wanted it. Besides, it’s not a good idea to let people get the idea that you’ll do anything they ask just because you might feel that they have a certain claim on you.”

Silk was staring at the old man in amazement. “Compassion, Belgarath?” he demanded incredulously. “From you? If word of this ever gets out, your reputation’s going to be ruined.”

Belgarath looked suddenly painfully embarrassed. “I don’t know that we need to spread it around all that much, Silk,” he said. “People don’t really have to know about this, do they?”

Garion felt as if a door had suddenly opened. Silk, he realized, was right. He had never precisely thought of it that way, but Belgarath did have a certain reputation for ruthlessness. Most men felt that there was a kind of implacableness about the Eternal Man—a willingness to sacrifice anything in his single-minded drive toward a goal so obscure that no one else could ever fully understand it. But with this single act of compassion, he had revealed another, softer side of his nature. Belgarath the Sorcerer was capable of human emotion and feeling, after all. The thought of how those feelings had been wounded by all the horrors and pain he had seen and endured in seven thousand years came crashing in on Garion, and he found himself staring at his grandfather with a profound new respect.

The edge of the fens was marked by a solid-looking dike that stretched off into the misty distance in either direction.

“The causeway,” Silk told Garion, pointing at the dike. “It’s part of the Tolnedran highway system.”

“Bel-grath,” Tupik said, his head popping up out of the water beside the boat, “thank-you.”

“Oh, I rather think you’d have learned to talk eventually anyway, Tupik,” the old man replied. “You were very close to it, you know.”

“May-be, may-be-not,” Tupik disagreed. “Want-to-talk and talk dif-ferent. Not-same.”

“Soon you’ll learn to lie,” Silk told him sardonically, “and then you’ll be as good as any man alive.”

“Why learn to talk if only to lie?” Tupik asked, puzzled.

“It’ll come to you in time.”

Tupik frowned slightly, and then his head slipped under the water. He came up one more time some distance away from the boat. “Good-bye,” he called to them. “Tupik thanks you—for Mother.” Then, without a ripple, he disappeared.

“What a strange little creature.” Belgarath smiled.

With a startled exclamation, Silk frantically dug into his pocket. Something a pale green color leaped from his hand to plop into the water.

“What’s the matter?” Garion asked him.

Silk shuddered. “The little monster put a frog in my pocket.”

“Perhaps it was meant as a gift,” Belgarath suggested.

“A frog?”

“Then again perhaps it wasn’t.” Belgarath grinned. “It’s a little primitive perhaps, but it might just be the beginnings of a sense of humor.”

There was a Tolnedran hostel a few miles up the great causeway that ran north and south through the eastern edge of the fens. They reached it in the late afternoon and purchased horses at a price that made Silk wince. The following morning they moved out at a canter in the direction of Boktor.

The strange interlude in the fens had given Garion a great deal to think about. He began to perceive that compassion was a kind of love broader and more encompassing than the somewhat narrow idea he had previously had of that emotion. The word love seemed, as he thought more deeply about it, to include a great number of things that at first glance did not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with it. As his understanding of this grew, a peculiar notion took hold of his imagination. His grandfather, the man they called Eternal, had probably in his seven thousand years developed a capacity for love beyond the ability of other men even remotely to guess at. In spite of that gruff, irritable exterior, Belgarath’s entire life had been an expression of that transcendant love. As they rode, Garion glanced often at the strange old man, and the image of the remote, all-powerful sorcerer towering above the rest of humanity gradually faded; he began to see the real man behind that image—a complicated man to be sure, but a very human one.

Two days later in clearing weather, they reached Boktor.

20

There was an open quality about Boktor that Garion noticed immediately as they rode through its broad streets. The houses were not for the most part over two storeys high, and they were not jammed up against each other as they were in other cities he had seen. The avenues were wide and straight, and there was a minimum of litter in them.

He commented on that as they rode along a spacious, tree-lined boulevard.

“Boktor’s a new city,” Silk explained. “At least relatively.”

“I thought that it has been here since the time of Dras Bullneck.”

“Oh, it has,” Silk replied, “but the old city was destroyed by the Angaraks when they invaded, five hundred years ago.”

“I’d forgotten that,” Garion admitted.

“After Vo Mimbre, when the time came to rebuild, it was decided to take advantage of the chance to start over,” Silk continued. He looked about rather distastefully. “I don’t really like Boktor,” he said. “There aren’t enough alleys and back streets. It’s almost impossible to move around without being seen.” He turned to Belgarath. “That reminds me of something, by the way. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to avoid the central marketplace. I’m rather well-known here, and there’s no point in letting the whole city know we’ve arrived.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to slip through unnoticed?” Garion asked him.

“In Boktor?” Silk laughed. “Of course not. We’ve already been identified a half dozen times. Spying is a major industry here. Porenn knew we were coming before we’d even entered the city.” He glanced up at a second floor window, and his fingers flickered a quick rebuke in the gestures of the Drasnian secret language. The curtain at the window gave a guilty little twitch. “Just too clumsy,” he observed with profound disapproval. “Must be a first-year student at the academy.”

“Probably nervous about seeing a celebrity,” Belgarath suggested. “You are, after all, something of a legend, Silk.”

“There’s still no excuse for sloppy work,” Silk said. “If I had time, I’d stop by the academy and have a talk with the headmaster about it.” He sighed. “The quality of student work has definitely gone downhill since they discontinued the use of the whipping post.”

“The what?” Garion exclaimed.

“In my day, a student who was seen by the person he was assigned to watch was flogged,” Silk told him. “Flogging’s a very effective teaching technique, Garion.”

Just ahead of them a door to a large house opened, and a dozen uniformed pikemen marched out into the street, halted and turned to face them. The officer in charge came forward and bowed politely. “Prince Kheldar,” he greeted Silk, “Her Highness wonders if you’d be so good as to stop by the palace.”

“You see,” Silk said to Garion. “I told you she knew we were here.” He turned to the officer. “Just out of curiosity, captain, what would you do if I told you that we didn’t feel like being so good as to stop by the palace?”

“I’d probably have to insist,” the captain replied.

“I rather thought you might feel that way about it.”

“Are we under arrest?” Garion asked nervously.

“Not precisely, your Majesty,” the captain answered. “Queen Porenn most definitely wishes to speak with you, however.” He bowed then to Belgarath. “Ancient One,” he greeted the old man respectfully. “I think that if we went around to the side entrance, we’d attract less attention.” And he turned and gave his men the order to march.

“He knows who we are,” Garion muttered to Silk.

“Naturally,” Silk said.

“How are we going to get out of this? Won’t Queen Porenn just ship us all back to Riva?”

“We’ll talk to her,” Belgarath said. “Porenn’s got good sense. I’m sure we can explain this to her.”

“Unless Polgara’s been issuing ultimatums,” Silk added. “She does that when she gets angry, I’ve noticed.”

“We’ll see,”

Queen Porenn was even more radiantly lovely than ever. Her slimness made it obvious that the birth of her first child had already occurred. Motherhood had brought a glow to her face and a look of completion to her eyes. She greeted them fondly as they entered the palace and led them immediately to her private quarters. The little queen’s rooms were somehow lacy and feminine with rubies on the furniture and soft, pink curtains at the windows. “Where have you been?” she asked them as soon as they were alone. “Polgara’s frantic.”

Belgarath shrugged. “She’ll recover, What’s happening in Riva?”

“They’re directing the search for you, naturally,” Porenn replied. “How did you manage to get this far? Every road’s been blocked.”

“We were ahead of everybody, Auntie dearest.” Silk grinned impudently at her. “By the time they started blocking roads, we’d already gone through.”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that, Kheldar,” she admonished him.

“Forgive me, your Highness,” he said with a bow, though still grinning mockingly.

“You’re impossible,” she told him.

“Of course I am,” he answered. “It’s part of my charm.”

The queen sighed. “What am I going to do with all of you now?”

“You’re going to let us continue our journey,” Belgarath replied calmly. “We’ll argue about it, of course, but in the end that’s the way it will turn out.”

She stared at him.

“You did ask, after all. I’m sure you feel better now that you know.”

“You’re as bad or worse than Kheldar,” she accused.

“I’ve had more practice.”

“It’s quite out of the question,” she told him firmly. “I have strict orders from Polgara to send you all back to Riva.”

Belgarath shrugged.

“You’ll go?” She seemed surprised.

“No,” he replied, “we won’t. You said that Polgara gave you strict orders to send us back. All right, then, I give you strict orders not to. Now where does that leave us?”

“That’s cruel, Belgarath.”

“Times are hard.”

“Before we get down to serious squabbling, do you suppose we might have a look at the heir to the throne?” Silk asked.

His question was artful. No new mother could resist the opportunity to show off her infant, and Queen Porenn had already turned toward the cradle standing in the corner of the room before she realized that she was being cleverly manipulated.

“You’re bad, Kheldar,” she said reprovingly, but she nonetheless pulled back the satin coverlet to reveal the baby that had become the absolute center of her life.

The Crown Prince of Drasnia was very seriously attempting to put one of his toes in his mouth. With a happy little cry, Porenn caught him up in her arms and hugged him. Then she turned him and held him out for them to see. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she demanded.

“Hail, cousin,” Silk greeted the baby gravely. “Your timely arrival has insured that I will be spared the ultimate indignity.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Porenn asked him suspiciously. “Only that his little pink Highness has permanently removed any possibility of my ever ascending the throne,” Silk replied. “I’d be a very bad king, Porenn. Drasnia would suffer almost as much as I would, if that disaster ever took place. Our Garion here is already a better king by accident than I could ever be.”

“Oh dear.” Porenn flushed slightly. “That completely slipped my mind.” She curtsied somewhat awkwardly, her baby still in her arms. “Your Majesty,” she greeted Garion formally.

“Your Highness,” Garion answered with the bow Aunt Pol had made him practice for hours.

Porenn laughed her silvery little laugh. “That all seems so inappropriate.” She put one hand to the back of Garion’s neck, drew his head down and kissed him warmly. The baby in her other arm cooed. “Dear Garion,” she said. “You’ve grown so tall.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that.

The queen studied his face for a moment. “Many things have happened to you,” she observed shrewdly. “You’re not the same boy I knew in Val Alorn.”

“He’s making progress,” Belgarath agreed, settling himself into a chair. “How many spies are listening to us at the moment, Porenn?”

“Two that I know of,” she replied, returning her baby to his cradle.

Silk laughed. “And how many spies are spying on the spies?”

“Several, I’d imagine,” Porenn told him. “If I tried to unravel all the spying that goes on here, I’d never get anything done.”

“I’ll assume that they’re all discreet,” Belgarath said with a meaningful glance around at the walls and draperies.

“Of course they are,” Porenn declared, sounding slightly offended. “We do have standards, you know. Amateurs are never allowed to spy inside the palace.”

“All right, let’s get down to business, then. Is it really going to be necessary for us to go through some long, involved argument about whether or not you’re going to try to send us back to Riva?”

She sighed and then gave a helpless little laugh. “I suppose not,” she surrendered. “You are going to have to give me an excuse to give to Polgara, though.”

“Just tell her that we’re acting on the instructions contained in the Mrin Codex.”

“Are there instructions in the Mrin Codex?” She sounded surprised.

“There might be,” he replied. “Most of it’s such unmitigated gibberish that no one can be absolutely sure one way or the other.”

“Are you asking me to try to deceive her?”

“No, I’m asking you to let her think that I deceived you—there’s a difference.”

“A very subtle one, Belgarath.”

“It will be all right,” he assured her. “She’s always ready to believe the worst about me. Anyway, the three of us are on our way to Gar og Nadrak. Get word to Polgara that we’re going to need a diversion of sorts. Tell her that I said to stop wasting time looking for us and to mass an army somewhere in the south—make a lot of noise. I want the Angaraks all to be so busy watching her that they don’t have time to look for us.”

“What on earth are you going to do in Gar og Nadrak?” Porenn asked curiously.

Belgarath looked suggestively at the walls behind which the official spies—as well as a few unofficial ones-lurked. “Polgara will know what we’re doing. What’s the current situation along the Nadrak border?”

“Tense,” she replied. “It’s not hostile yet, but it’s a long way from cordial. The Nadraks don’t really want to go to war. If it weren’t for the Grolims, I honestly think we could persuade them to stay neutral. They’d much rather kill Murgos than Drasnians.”

Belgarath nodded. “Pass the word on to your husband that I’d like for him to keep a fairly tight rein on Anheg,” he continued. “Anheg’s brilliant, but he’s a trifle erratic at times. Rhodar’s steadier. Tell him that what I want in the south is a diversion, not a general war. Alorns sometimes get overenthusiastic.”

“I’ll get word to him,” Porenn promised. “When will you start?”

“Let’s leave that a bit tentative.” The old man glanced once again at the walls of the queen’s room.

“You’ll stay the night, at least,” she insisted.

“How could we possibly refuse?” Silk asked mockingly.

Queen Porenn looked at him for a long moment. Then she sighed. “I guess I should tell you, Kheldar,” she said very quietly. “Your mother’s here.”

Silk’s face blanched. “Here? In the palace?”

The queen nodded. “She’s in the west wing. I’ve given her that apartment near the garden she loves so much.”

Silk’s hands had begun to tremble visibly, and his face was still ashen. “How long has she been here?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Several weeks. She came before the baby was born.”

“How is she?”

“The same.” The little blond queen’s voice was hushed with sadness. “You’ll have to see her, you know.”

Silk drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. His face, however, was still stricken. “There’s no avoiding it, I guess,” he said, almost to himself. “I might as-right-get it over with. You’ll excuse me?”

“Of course.”

He turned and left the room, his face somber.

“Doesn’t he like his mother?” Garion asked.

“He loves her very much,” the queen replied. “That’s why it’s so terribly difficult for him. She’s blind-fortunately.”

“Fortunately?”

“There was a pestilence in western Drasnia about twenty years ago,” Porenn explained. “It was a horrible disease, and it left dreadful scars on the faces of the survivors. Prince Kheldar’s mother had been one of the most beautiful women in Drasnia. We’ve concealed the truth from her. She doesn’t realize how disfigured her face is—at least we hope she doesn’t. The meetings between Kheldar and his mother are heartbreaking. There’s no hint in his voice of what he sees, but his eyes—” She broke off. “Sometimes I think that’s why he stays away from Drasnia,” she added. Then she straightened. “I’ll ring for supper,” she said, “and something to drink. Kheldar usually needs that after he’s visited with his mother.”

It was an hour or more before Silk returned, and he immediately started drinking. He drank grimly like a man bent on reducing himself to unconsciousness as quickly as possible.

It was an uncomfortable evening for Garion. Queen Porenn cared for her infant son even while keeping a watchful eye on Silk. Belgarath sat silently in a chair, and Silk kept drinking. Finally, pretending a weariness he did not feel, Garion went to bed.

He had not realized how much he had depended on Silk in the year and a half he had known him. The rat-faced little Drasnian’s sardonic humor and towering self reliance had always been something to cling to. To be sure, Silk had his quirks and peculiarities. He was a high-strung, complex little man, but his unfailing sense of humor and his mental agility had seen them all through some very unpleasant situations. Now, however, all traces of humor and wit were gone, and the little man seemed on the verge of total collapse.

The dreadful confrontation toward which they rode seemed all the more perilous now for some reason. Although Silk might not have been able to help him when he finally faced Torak, Garion had counted on his friend to assist him through the terrible days leading up to the meeting. Now even that slight comfort seemed to have been taken away. Unable to sleep, he tossed and turned for hours; finally, well past midnight, he rose, pulled his cloak about him and padded on stockinged feet to see if his friend had made it to bed.

Silk had not. He still sat in the same chair. His tankard, unnoticed, had spilled, and he sat with his elbows in a puddle of ale and his face in his hands. Not far away, her face unreadable, sat the weary little blond queen of Drasnia. As Garion watched from the doorway, a muffled sound came from between Silk’s hands. With a gentle, almost tender expression, Queen Porenn rose, came around the table and put her arms about his head, drawing him to her. With a despairing cry Silk clung to her, weeping openly like a hurt child.

Queen Porenn looked across the little man’s shaking head at Garion. Her face quite clearly revealed that she was aware of Silk’s feelings for her. Her look was one of helpless compassion for this man of whom she was fond but not in the way he wished—and combined with that was a deep sympathy for the suffering his visit with his mother had caused him.

Silently Garion and the Queen of Drasnia stood looking at each other. Speech was unnecessary; they both understood. When at last Porenn did speak, her tone was curiously matter-of fact. “I think you can put him to bed now,” she said. “Once he’s able to cry, the worst is usually over.”

The next morning they left the palace and joined an east-bound caravan. The Drasnian moors beyond Boktor were desolate. The North Caravan Route wound through low, rolling hills covered with sparse vegetation and scanty grass. Although it was the middle of spring, there seemed to be a sere quality to the moors, as if the seasons only lightly touched them; the wind, sweeping down from the polar ice, still had the smell of winter in it.

Silk rode in silence, his eyes on the ground, though whether from grief or from the aftereffects of the ale he had drunk, Garion could not guess. Belgarath was also quiet, and the three of them rode with only the sound of the harness bells of a Drasnian merchant’s mules for companionship.

About noon, Silk shook himself and looked around—his eyes finally alert, though still a bit bloodshot. “Did anybody think to bring something to drink?” he asked.

“Didn’t you get enough last night?” Belgarath replied.

“That was for entertainment. What I need now is something therapeutic.”

“Water?” Garion suggested.

“I’m thirsty, Garion, not dirty.”

“Here.” Belgarath handed the suffering man a wineskin. “But don’t overdo it.”

“Trust me,” Silk said, taking a long drink. He shuddered and made a face. “Where did you buy this?” he inquired. “It tastes like somebody’s been boiling old shoes in it.”

“You don’t have to drink it.”

“I’m afraid I do.” Silk took another drink, then restoppered the wineskin and handed it back. He looked sourly around at the moors. “Hasn’t changed much,” he observed. “Drasnia has very little to recommend it, I’m afraid. It’s either too wet or too dry.” He shivered in the chilly wind. “Are either of you aware of the fact that there’s nothing between us and the pole to break the wind but an occasional stray reindeer?”

Garion began to relax. Silk’s sallies and comments grew broader and more outrageous as they rode through the afternoon. By the time the caravan stopped for the night, he seemed to be almost his old self again.

21

The caravan wound its slow way through the dreary moors of eastern Drasnia with the sound of mule bells trailing mournfully behind it. Sparse patches of heath, which had but lately begun to bloom with tiny, pink flowers, dotted the low, rolling hills. The sky had turned cloudy, and the wind, seemingly perpetual, blew steadily out of the north.

Garion found his mood growing as sad and bleak as the moors around him. There was one inescapable fact which he no longer could hide from himself. Each mile, each step, brought him closer to Mallorea and closer to his meeting with Torak. Even the whispered song of the Orb, murmuring continually in his ears from the pommel of the great sword strapped to his back, could not reassure him. Torak was a God—invincible, immortal; and Garion. not even yet full-grown, was quite deliberately trekking to Mallorea to seek him out and to fight him to the death. Death was a word Garion tried very hard not to think about. It had been a possibility once or twice during their long pursuit of Zedar and the Orb; but now it seemed a certainty. He would meet Torak alone. Mandorallen or Barak or Hettar could not come to his aid with their superior skill at swordsmanship; Belgarath or Aunt Pol could not intercede for him with sorcery; Silk would not be able to devise some clever ruse to allow him to escape. Titanic and enraged, the Dark God would rush upon him, eager for blood. Garion began to fear sleep, for sleep brought nightmares which would not go away and which haunted his days, making each worse than the last.

He was afraid. The fear grew worse with each passing day until the sour taste of it was always in his mouth. More than anything, he wanted to run, but he knew that he could not. Indeed, he did not even know any place where he could run. There was no place in all the world for him to hide. The Gods themselves would seek him out if he tried and sternly drive him to that awful meeting which had been fated to take place since the beginning of time. And so it was that, sick with fear, Garion rode to meet his fate.

Belgarath, who was not always asleep when he seemed to doze in his saddle, watched, shrewdly waiting until Garion’s fear had reached its peak before he spoke. Then, one cloudy morning when the lead-gray sky was as dreary as the moors around them, he pulled his horse in beside Garion’s. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked calmly.

“What’s the point, Grandfather?”

“It might help.”

“Nothing’s going to help. He’s going to kill me.”

“If I thought it was that inevitable, I wouldn’t have let you start on this journey.”

“How can I possibly fight with a God?”

“Bravely,” was the unhelpful reply. “You’ve been brave at some pretty inappropriate times in the past. I don’t imagine you’ve changed all that much.”

“I’m so afraid, Grandfather,” Garion confessed, his voice anguished. “I think I know how Mandorallen felt now. The fear’s so awful that I can’t live with it.”

“You’re stronger than you think you are. You can live with it if you have to.”

Garion brooded about that. It didn’t seem to help much. “What’s he like?” he asked, suddenly filled with a morbid curiosity.

“Who?”

“Torak.”

“Arrogant. I never cared much for him.”

“Is he like Ctuchik was—or Asharak?”

“No. They tried to be like him. They didn’t succeed, of course, but they tried. If it’s any help to you, Torak’s probably as much afraid of you as you are of him. He knows who you are. When you meet him, he isn’t going to see a Sendarian scullery boy named Garion; he’s going to see Belgarion, the Rivan King, and he’s going to see Riva’s sword thirsting for his blood. He’s also going to see the Orb of Aldur. And that will probably frighten him more than anything.”

“When was the first time you met him?” Garion suddenly wanted the old man to talk—to tell stories as he had so long ago. Stories somehow always helped. He could lose himself in a story, and for a little while it might make things bearable.

Belgarath scratched at his short, white beard. “Let’s see,” he mused. “I think the first time was in the Vale—it was a very long time ago. The others had gathered there—Belzedar, Beldin, all the rest—and each of us was involved in his own studies. Our Master had withdrawn into his tower with the Orb, and sometimes months would pass during which we didn’t see him.

“Then one day a stranger came to us. He seemed to be about the same height as I, but he walked as if he were a thousand feet tall. His hair was black and his skin was very pale, and he had, as I remember, greenish-colored eyes. His face was beautiful to the point of being pretty, and his hair looked as if he spent a lot of time combing it. He appeared to be the kind of person who always has a mirror in his pocket.”

“Did he say anything?” Garion asked.

“Oh, yes,” Belgarath replied. “He came up to us and said, ‘I would speak with my brother, thy Master,’ and I definitely didn’t care for his tone. He spoke as if we were servants—it’s a failing he’s always had. Still, my Master had—after a great deal of trouble—taught me at least a few manners. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I told him as politely as I could manage.

“‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in that irritatingly superior tone of his. ‘My brother knows I am here.’ ”

“How did he know your name, Grandfather?”

Belgarath shrugged. “I never found that out. I assume that my Master had communicated with him—and the other Gods—from time to time and told them about us. At any rate, I led this over-pretty visitor to my Master’s tower. I didn’t bother to speak to him along the way. When we got there, he looked me straight in the face and said, ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake I hope that when next we meet thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.’”

“ ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I told him—a bit tartly, I’ll admit. ‘Will you require anything else?’

“‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he said to me. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.’ And then he went into the tower. As you can see, Torak and I got off on the wrong foot right at the very beginning. I didn’t care for his attitude, and he didn’t care for mine.”

“What happened then?” Garion’s curiosity had begun to quiet the fear somewhat.

“You know the story,” Belgarath replied. “Torak went up into the tower and spoke with Aldur. One thing led to another and finally Torak struck my Master and stole the Orb.” The old man’s face was bleak. “The next time I saw him, he wasn’t nearly so pretty,” he continued with a certain grim satisfaction. “That was after the Orb had burned him and he’d taken to wearing a steel mask to hide the ruins of his face.”

Silk had drawn closer and was riding with them, fascinated by the story. “What did you all do then? After Torak stole the Orb, I mean?” he asked.

“Our Master sent us to warn the other Gods,” Belgarath replied. “I was supposed to find Belar—he was in the north someplace, carousing with his Alorns. Belar was a young God at that time, and he enjoyed the diversions of the young. Alorn girls used to dream about being visited by him, and he tried to make as many dreams come true as he possibly could—or so I’ve been told.”

“I’ve never heard that about him.” Silk seemed startled.

“Perhaps it’s only gossip,” Belgarath admitted.

“Did you find him?” Garion asked.

“It took me quite a while. The shape of the land was different then. What’s now Algaria stretched all the way to the east—thousands of leagues of open grassland. At first I took the shape of an eagle, but that didn’t work out too well.”

“It seems quite suitable,” Silk observed.

“Heights make me giddy,” the old man replied, “and my eyes were continually getting distracted by things on the ground. I kept having this overpowering urge to swoop down and kill things. The character of the forms we assume begins to dominate our thinking after a while, and although the eagle is quite splendid-looking, he’s really a very stupid bird. Finally I gave that idea up and chose the form of the wolf instead. It worked out much better. About the only distraction I encountered was a young she-wolf who was feeling frolicsome.” There was a slight tightening about his eyes as he said it, and his voice had a peculiar catch in it.

“Belgarath!” Silk actually sounded shocked.

“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions, Silk. I considered the morality of the situation. I realized that being a father is probably all well and good, but that a litter of puppies might prove embarrassing later on. I resisted her advances, even though she persisted in following me all the way to the north where the Bear-God dwelt with his Alorns.” He broke off and looked out at the gray-green moors, his face unreadable. Garion knew that there was something the old man wasn’t saying—something important.

“Anyway,” Belgarath continued, “Belar accompanied us back to the Vale where the other Gods had gathered, and they held a council and decided that they’d have to make war on Torak and his Angaraks. That was the start of it all. The world has never been the same since.”

“What happened to the wolf?” Garion asked, trying to pin down his grandfather’s peculiar evasion.

“She stayed with me,” Belgarath replied calmly. “She used to sit for days on end in my tower watching me. She had a curious turn of mind, and her comments were frequently a trifle disconcerting.”

“Comments?” Silk asked. “She could talk?”

“In the manner of the wolf, you understand. I’d learned how they speak during our journey together. It’s really a rather concise and often quite beautiful language. Wolves can be eloquent—even poetic—once you get used to having them speak to you without words.”

“How long did she stay with you?” Garion asked.

“Quite a long time,” Belgarath replied. “I remember that I asked her about that once. She answered with another question. It was an irritating habit of hers. She just said, ‘What is time to a wolf?’ I made a few calculations and found out that she’d been with me for just over a thousand years. I was a bit amazed by that, but she seemed indifferent to the fact. ‘Wolves live as long as they choose to live,’ was all she said. ‘Then one day I had to change my form for some reason or other—I forget exactly why. She saw me do it, and that was the end of any peace for me. She just said, ‘So that’s how you do it,’ and promptly changed herself into a snowy owl. She seemed to take a great delight in startling me, and I never knew what shape I’d see when I turned around. She was fondest of the owl, though. A few years after that she left me. I was rather surprised to find that I missed her. We’d been together for a very long time.” He broke off and once again he looked away.

“Did you ever see her again?” Garion wanted to know.

Belgarath nodded. “She saw to that—though I didn’t know it at the time. I was running an errand for my Master somewhere to the north of the Vale and I came across a small, neatly thatched cottage in a grove of trees by a small river. A woman named Poledra lived in the cottage—a woman with tawny hair and curiously golden eyes. We grew to know each other, and eventually we were married. She was Polgara’s mother—and Beldaran’s.”

“You were saying that you met the wolf again,” Garion reminded him.

“You don’t listen too well, Garion,” the old man said, looking directly at his grandson. There was a deep and ancient injury in his eyes—a hurt so great that Garion knew it would be there for as long as the old man lived.

“You don’t mean—?”

“It took me a while to accept it myself, actually. Poledra was very patient and very determined. When she found out that I couldn’t accept her as a mate in the form of a wolf, she simply found a different shape. She got what she wanted in the end.” He sighed.

“Aunt Pol’s mother was a wolf?” Garion was stunned.

“No, Garion,” Belgarath replied calmly, “she was a woman—a very lovely woman. The change of shape is absolute.”

“But—but she started out as a wolf.”

“So?”

“But—” The whole notion was somehow shocking.

“Don’t let your prejudices run away with you,” Belgarath told him. Garion struggled with the idea. It seemed monstrous somehow. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “It’s unnatural, no matter what you say.”

“Garion,” the old man reminded him with a pained look, “just about everything we do is unnatural. Moving rocks with your mind isn’t the most natural thing in the world, if you stop and think about it.”

“But this is different,” Garion protested. “Grandfather, you married a wolf—and the wolf had children. How could you do that?”

Belgarath sighed and shook his head. “You’re a very stubborn boy, Garion,” he observed. “It seems that you’re never going to understand until you’ve been through the experience. Let’s go over behind that hill, and I’ll show you how it’s done. There’s no point in upsetting the rest of the caravan.”

“Mind if I come along?” Silk asked, his nose twitching with curiosity.

“Might not be a bad idea,” Belgarath agreed. “You can hold the horses. Horses tend to panic in the presence of wolves.”

They rode away from the caravan track under the leaden sky and circled around behind a low, heath-covered hill. “This should do,” Belgarath decided, reining in and dismounting in a shallow swale just behind the hill. The swale was covered with new grass, green with spring.

“The whole trick is to create the image of the animal in your mind,” Belgarath explained, “down to the last detail. Then you direct your will inward—upon yourself—and then change, fitting yourself into the image.”

Garion frowned, not understanding.

“It’s going to take too long if I have to explain it in words,” Belgarath said. “Here—watch—and watch with your mind as well as your eyes.”

Unbidden, the shape of the great gray wolf he had seen on occasion before came into Garion’s mind. He could clearly see the gray—shot muzzle and the silver ruff: Then he felt the surge and heard the hollow roaring sound in his mind. For an instant, the image of the wolf curiously mingled with an image of Belgarath himself—as if the two were trying to both occupy the same space. Then Belgarath was gone and only the wolf remained.

Silk whistled, then took a firmer grip on the reins of their startled horses.

Belgarath changed back again to an ordinary—looking old man in a rust-brown tunic and gray, hooded cloak. “Do you understand?” he asked Garion.

“I think so,” Garion replied, a bit dubiously.

“Try it. I’ll lead you through it one step at a time.” Garion started to put a wolf together in his mind.

“Don’t forget the toenails,” Belgarath told him. “They may not look like much, but they’re very important.”

Garion put the toenails in. “Tail’s too short.”

Garion fixed that.

“That’s about right. Now fit yourself into it.”

Garion put his will to it. “Change,” he said.

It seemed almost as if his body had grown somehow fluid, shifting, altering, flowing into the image of the wolf that he had in his mind. When the surge was gone, he sat on his haunches panting. He felt very strange.

“Stand up and let’s have a look at you,” Belgarath told him. Garion rose and stood on all four paws. His tail felt extremely peculiar.

“You made the hind legs a bit too long,” Belgarath noted critically. Garion started to object that it was the first time he’d ever done it, but his voice came out in a peculiar series of whines and yelps.

“Stop that,” Belgarath growled. “You sound like a puppy. Change back.”

Garion did that.

“Where do your clothes go?” Silk asked curiously.

“They’re with us,” Belgarath replied, “but at the same time they’re not. It’s kind of hard to explain, actually. Beldin tried to work out exactly where the clothes were once. He seems to think he’s got the answer, but I never understood the whole theory. Beldin’s quite a bit more intelligent than I am, and his explanations are sometimes a bit exotic. At any rate, when we return to our original shape, our clothing is always just as it was.”

“Even Garion’s sword?” Silk asked. “And the Orb?”

The old man nodded.

“Isn’t it sort of dangerous having it floating around out there—unattached, so to speak?”

“It isn’t really unattached. It’s still there—but at the same time it’s not.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Silk conceded dubiously.

“Try it again, Garion,” Belgarath suggested.

Garion switched back and forth several times until his wolfshape satisfied his grandfather.

“Stay with the horses,” the old man told Silk. “We’ll be back in a little bit.” He flickered and shimmered into the great gray wolf. “Let’s run for a bit,” he said to Garion. The meaning of what he said was conveyed directly from his mind to Garion’s, aided only slightly by expressions and positions of his head and ears and a few brief barking sounds. Garion suddenly understood why the bond of the pack was so strong in wolves. Quite literally, they inhabited each others’ minds. What one saw, they all saw; and what one felt, they all felt.

“Where do we run to?” Garion asked, not really surprised at how easily the speech of wolves came to him.

“No place in particular. I just need to stretch out a few kinks.” And the gray wolf bounded away with astonishing speed.

The tail was a definite problem at first. Garion kept forgetting that it was there, and its swishing back and forth kept jerking him off balance. By the time he got the hang of it, the old wolf was far out ahead of him on the gray-green moors. After a while, however, Garion found himself literally flying across the ground. His paws scarcely seemed to touch the earth as he bunched and stretched his body in great bounds. He marvelled at the economy of the running gait of the wolf. He ran not with his legs alone, but with his entire body. He became quite certain that, if need be, he could run for days without tiring.

The rolling moors were different somehow. What had seemed as desolate and empty as the dead sky overhead was suddenly teeming with life. There were mice and burrowing squirrels; in scrubby brown thickets, rabbits, petrified with fright, watched him as he loped by with his toenails digging into the springy turf. Silently he exulted in the strength and freedom of his new body. He was the lord of the plain, and all creatures gave way to him.

And then he was not alone. Another wolf ran beside him—a strangely insubstantial-looking wolf that seemed to have a bluish, flickering light playing about her.

“And how far will you run?” she asked him in the manner of wolves.

“We can stop if you’d like,” Garion replied politely, dropping back into a lope and then a trot.

“It’s easier to talk if one isn’t running,” she agreed. She stopped and dropped to her haunches.

Garion also stopped. “You’re Poledra, aren’t you?” He asked it very directly, not yet accustomed to the subtleties of the language of wolves.

“Wolves have no need of names,” she sniffed. “He used to worry about that, too.”

It was not exactly like the voice that had been in his mind since his childhood. He didn’t actually hear her, but instead he seemed to know exactly what she wanted to say to him. “Grandfather, you mean?”

“Who else? Men seem to have a need to classify things and put names on them. I think they overlook some very important things that way.”

“How is it that you’re here? Aren’t you—well—?”

“Dead, you mean? Don’t be afraid of the word. It’s only a word, after all. I suppose I am, though. It doesn’t really feel all that much different.”

“Doesn’t somebody have to do something to bring you back?” he asked. “Like what Aunt Pol did that time when we were fighting with Grul in the mountains of Ulgo?”

“It’s not entirely necessary. I can be summoned that way, but I can manage it myself if I have to.” She looked at him quizzically. “You’re really confused by all this, aren’t you?”

“All of what?”

“Everything. Who you are; who we are; what you have to do.”

“A little,” he admitted.

“Let me see if I can explain it. Take him for instance. I never really saw him as a man, you know. There’s something decidedly wolfish about him. I always rather thought that his being born in man-shape had been a mistake of some kind. Maybe it was because of what he had to do. The shape doesn’t really matter, though.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Did you really think it did?” She almost seemed to laugh. “Here. Let me show you. Let’s change.” She shimmered into air and was standing before him then in the form of a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes. Her gown was very plain and brown.

Garion shrugged himself back into his natural form.

“Am I really any different, Belgarion?” she asked him. “Am I not who I am, whether as wolf or owl or woman?”

And then he understood. “May I call you Grandmother?” he asked her, a bit embarrassed.

“If it makes you happy,” she replied. “It’s a bit inaccurate, though.”

“I know,” he said, “but I feel a little more comfortable with it.”

“Have you finally accepted who you are?”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?”

“But you’re afraid of it and what you have to do, is that it?” He nodded mutely.

“You’re not going to be alone, you know.”

He looked at her sharply. “I thought the Codex said—”

“The Codex doesn’t really say everything that’s involved,” she told him. “Your meeting with Torak will be the coming together of two enormous, opposing forces. The two of you are really just the representatives of those forces. There’ll be so much power involved in your meeting that you and Torak will be almost incidental to what’s really happening.”

“Why couldn’t somebody else do it then?” he asked quickly. “Somebody better suited to it?”

“I said almost incidental,” she said firmly. “It has to be you, and it’s always been Torak. You are the channels through which the forces will collide. When it happens, I think you’ll be surprised at how easy it all is.”

“Am I going to win?”

“I don’t know. The universe itself doesn’t know. That’s why you have to meet him. If we knew how it would turn out, the meeting wouldn’t be necessary.” She looked around. “Belgarath’s coming back. I’ll have to leave you now.”

“Why—”

“My presence pains him—more than you could ever know.”

“Because—?” He broke off, not knowing how to say it.

“We were closer than others and we were together for a very long time. Sometimes I wish that he could understand that we haven’t really been separated, but perhaps it’s too early.”

“It’s been three thousand years, Grandmother.”

“What is time to a wolf?” she asked cryptically. “The mating of wolves is permanent, and the grief caused by separation is also permanent. Perhaps someday—” Her voice trailed off wistfully, and then she sighed. “As soon as I leave, change back again. Belgarath will want you to hunt with him. It’s sort of a formality. You’ll understand when you’re back in the shape of a wolf.”

Garion nodded and began to form the image of the wolf in his mind. “One other thing, Belgarion.”

“Yes, Grandmother?”

“I do love you, you know.”

“I love you too, Grandmother.”

And then she was gone. Garion sighed and changed himself back into a wolf. And then he went out from that place to join Belgarath in the hunt.