Queen of Sorcery

1

Vo Wacune was no more. Twenty-four centuries had passed since the city of the Wacite Arends had been laid waste, and the dark, endless forests of northern Arendia had reclaimed the ruins. Broken walls had toppled and been swallowed up in the moss and wet brown bracken of the forest floor, and only the shattered stumps of the once proud towers moldered among the trees and fog to mark the place where Vo Wacune had stood. Sodden snow blanketed the mist-shrouded ruins, and trickles of water ran down the faces of ancient stones like tears.

Garion wandered alone down the tree-choked avenues of the dead city, his stout gray wool cloak drawn tight against the chill, and his thoughts as mournful as the weeping stones around him. Faldor’s farm with its green, sun-drenched fields was so far behind him that it seemed lost in a kind of receding haze, and he was desperately homesick. No matter how hard he tried to hold onto them, details kept escaping him. The rich smells of Aunt Pol’s kitchen were only a faint memory; the ring of Durnik’s hammer in the smithy faded like the dying echo of the last note of a bell, and the sharp, clear faces of his playmates wavered in his remembrance of them until he could no longer be sure that he would even recognize them. His childhood was slipping away, and try though he might he could not hold on to it.

Everything was changing; that was the whole problem. The core of his life, the rock upon which his childhood had been built, had always been Aunt Pol. In the simple world of Faldor’s farm she had been Mistress Pol, the cook, but in the world beyond Faldor’s gate she was Polgara the Sorceress, who had watched the passage of four millennia with a purpose beyond mortal comprehension.

And Mister Wolf, the old vagabond storyteller, had also changed. Garion knew now that this old friend was in fact his great-great grandfather—with an infinite number of additional “greats” added on for good measure—but that behind that roguish old face there had always been the steady gaze of Belgarath the Sorcerer, who had watched and waited as he had looked upon the folly of men and Gods for seven thousand years. Garion sighed and trudged on through the fog.

Their very names were unsettling. Garion had never wanted to believe in sorcery or magic or witchcraft. Such things were unnatural, and they violated his notion of solid, sensible reality. But too many things had happened to allow him to hold on to his comfortable skepticism any longer. In a single, shattering instant the last vestiges of his doubt had been swept away. As he had watched with stunned disbelief, Aunt Pol had erased the milky stains from the eyes of Martje the witch with a gesture and a single word, restoring the madwoman’s sight and removing her power to see into the future with a brutal evenhandedness. Garion shuddered at the memory of Martje’s despairing wail. That cry somehow marked the point at which the world had become less solid, less sensible, and infinitely less safe.

Uprooted from the only place he had ever known, unsure of the identities of the two people closest to him, and with his whole conception of the difference between the possible and the impossible destroyed, Garion found himself committed to a strange pilgrimage. He had no idea what they were doing in this shattered city swallowed up in trees, and not the faintest idea where they would go when they left. The only certainty that remained to him was the single grim thought to which he now clung; somewhere in the world there was a man who had crept through the predawn darkness to a small house in a forgotten village and had murdered Garion’s parents; if it took him the rest of his life, Garion was going to find that man, and when he found him, he was going to kill him. There was something strangely comforting in that one solid fact.

He carefully climbed over the rubble of a house that had fallen outward into the street and continued his gloomy exploration of the ruined city. There was really nothing to see. The patient centuries had erased nearly all of what the war had left behind, and slushy snow and thick fog hid even those last remaining traces. Garion sighed again and began to retrace his steps toward the moldering stump of the tower where they had all spent the previous night.

As he approached, he saw Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol standing together some distance from the ruined tower, talking quietly. The old man’s rust-colored hood was turned up, and Aunt Pol’s blue cloak was drawn about her. There was a look of timeless regret on her face as she looked out at the foggy ruins. Her long, dark hair spilled down her back, and the single white lock at her brow seemed paler than the snow at her feet.

“There he is now,” Mister Wolf said to her as Garion approached them.

She nodded and looked gravely at Garion. “Where have you been?” she asked.

“No place,” Garion replied. “I was thinking, that’s all.”

“I see you’ve managed to soak your feet.”

Garion lifted one of his sodden brown boots and looked down at the muddy slush clinging to it. “The snow’s wetter than I thought,” he apologized.

“Does wearing that thing really make you feel better?” Mister Wolf asked, pointing at the sword Garion always wore now.

“Everybody keeps saying how dangerous Arendia is,” Garion explained. “Besides, I need to get used to it.” He shifted the creaking new leather sword belt around until the wirebound hilt was not so obvious. The sword had been an Erastide present from Barak, one of several gifts he had received when the holiday had passed while they were at sea.

“It doesn’t really suit you, you know,” the old man told him somewhat disapprovingly.

“Leave him alone, father,” Aunt Pol said almost absently. “It’s his, after all, and he can wear it if he likes.”

“Shouldn’t Hettar be here by now?” Garion asked, wanting to change the subject.

“He may have run into deep snow in the mountains of Sendaria,” Wolf replied. “He’ll be here. Hettar’s very dependable.”

“I don’t see why we just didn’t buy horses in Camaar.”

“They wouldn’t have been as good,” Mister Wolf answered, scratching at his short, white beard. “We’ve got a long way to go, and I don’t want to have to worry about a horse foundering under me somewhere along the way. It’s a lot better to take a little time now than to lose more time later.”

Garion reached back and rubbed at his neck where the chain of the curiously carved silver amulet Wolf and Aunt Pol had given him for Erastide had chafed his skin.

“Don’t worry at it, dear,” Aunt Pol told him.

“I wish you’d let me wear it outside my clothes,” he complained. “Nobody can see it under my tunic.”

“It has to be next to your skin.”

“It’s not very comfortable. It looks nice enough, I suppose, but sometimes it seems cold, and other times it’s hot, and once in a while it seems to be awfully heavy. The chain keeps rubbing at my neck. I guess I’m not used to ornaments.”

“It’s not entirely an ornament, dear,” she told him. “You’ll get used to it in time.”

Wolf laughed. “Maybe it will make you feel better to know that it took your Aunt ten years to get used to hers. I was forever telling her to put it back on.”

“I don’t know that we need to go into that just now, father,” Aunt Pol answered coolly.

“Do you have one, too?” Garion asked the old man, suddenly curious about it.

“Of course.”

“Does it mean something that we all wear them?”

“It’s a family custom, Garion,” Aunt Pol told him in a tone that ended the discussion. The fog eddied around them as a chill, damp breeze briefly swirled through the ruins.

Garion sighed. “I wish Hettar would get here. I’d like to get away from this place. It’s like a graveyard.”

“It wasn’t always this way,” Aunt Pol said very quietly.

“What was it like?”

“I was happy here. The walls were high, and the towers soared. We all thought it would last forever.” She pointed toward a rank patch of winter-browned brambles creeping over the broken stones. “Over there was a flower-filled garden where ladies in pale yellow dresses used to sit while young men sang to them from beyond the garden wall. The voices of the young men were very sweet, and the ladies would sigh and throw bright red roses over the wall to them. And down that avenue was a marble-paved square where the old men met to talk of forgotten wars and long-gone companions. Beyond that there was a house with a terrace where I used to sit with friends in the evening to watch the stars come out while a boy brought us chilled fruit and the nightingales sang as if their hearts were breaking.” Her voice drifted off into silence. “But then the Asturians came,” she went on, and there was a different note then. “You’d be surprised at how little time it takes to tear down something that took a thousand years to build.”

“Don’t worry at it, Pol,” Wolf told her. “These things happen from time to time. There’s not a great deal we can do about it.”

“I could have done something, father,” she replied, looking off into the ruins. “But you wouldn’t let me, remember?”

“Do we have to go over that again, Pol?” Wolf asked in a pained voice. “You have to learn to accept your losses. The Wacite Arends were doomed anyway. At best, you’d have only been able to stall off the inevitable for a few months. We’re not who we are and what we are in order to get mixed up in things that don’t have any meaning.”

“So you said before.” She looked around at the filmy trees marching away in the fog down the empty streets. “I didn’t think the trees would come back so fast,” she said with a strange little catch in her voice. “I thought they might have waited a little longer.”

“It’s been almost twenty-five centuries, Pol.”

“Really? It seems like only last year.”

“Don’t brood about it. It’ll only make you melancholy. Why don’t we go inside? The fog’s beginning to make us all a bit moody.”

Unaccountably, Aunt Pol put her arm about Garion’s shoulders as they turned toward the tower. Her fragrance and the sense of her closeness brought a lump to his throat. The distance that had grown between them in the past few months seemed to vanish at her touch.

The chamber in the base of the tower had been built of such massive stones that neither the passage of centuries nor the silent, probing tendrils of tree roots had been able to dislodge them. Great, shallow arches supported the low stone ceiling, making the room seem almost like a cave. At the end of the room opposite the narrow doorway a wide crack between two of the rough-hewn blocks provided a natural chimney. Durnik had soberly considered the crack the previous evening when they had arrived, cold and wet, and then had quickly constructed a crude but efficient fireplace out of rubble. “It will serve,” the smith had said “Not very elegant perhaps, but good enough for a few days.”

As Wolf, Garion and Aunt Pol entered the low, cavelike chamber, a good fire crackled in the fireplace, casting looming shadows among the low arches and radiating a welcome warmth. Durnik in his brown leather tunic was stacking firewood along the wall. Barak, huge, red-bearded, and mail-shined, was polishing his sword. Silk, in an unbleached linen shirt and black leather vest, lounged idly on one of the packs, toying with a pair of dice.

“Any sign of Hettar yet?” Barak asked, looking up.

“It’s a day or so early,” Mister Wolf replied, going to the fireplace to warm himself.

“Why don’t you change your boots, Garion?” Aunt Pol suggested, hanging her blue cloak on one of the pegs Durnik had hammered into a crack in the wall.

Garion lifted his pack down from another peg and began rummaging through it.

“Your stockings, too,” she added.

“Is the fog lifting at all?” Silk asked Mister Wolf.

“Not a chance.”

“If I can persuade you all to move out from in front of the fire, I’ll see about supper,” Aunt Pol told them, suddenly very businesslike. She began setting out a ham, a few loaves of dark, peasant bread, a sack of dried peas and a dozen or so leathery-looking carrots, humming softly to herself as she always did when she was cooking.

The next morning after breakfast, Garion pulled on a fleece-lined overvest, belted on his sword, and went back out into the fog-muffled ruins to watch for Hettar. It was a task to which he had appointed himself, and he was grateful that none of his friends had seen fit to tell him that it wasn’t really necessary. As he trudged through the slush-covered streets toward the broken west gate of the city, he made a conscious effort to avoid the melancholy brooding that had blackened the previous day. Since there was absolutely nothing he could do about his circumstances, chewing on them would only leave a sour taste in his mouth. He was not exactly cheerful when he reached the low piece of wall by the west gate, but he was not precisely gloomy either.

The wall offered some protection, but the damp chill still crept through his clothes, and his feet were already cold. He shivered and settled down to wait. There was no point in trying to see any distance in the fog, so he concentrated on listening. His ears began to sort out the sounds in the forest beyond the wall, the drip of water from the trees, the occasional sodden thump of snow sliding from the limbs, and the tapping of a woodpecker working on a dead snag several hundred yards away.

“That’s my cow,” a voice said suddenly from somewhere off in the fog.

Garion froze and stood silently, listening.

“Keep her in your own pasture, then,” another voice replied shortly. “Is that you, Lammer?” the first voice asked.

“Right. You’re Detton, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t recognize you. How longs it been?”

“Four or five years, I suppose,” Lammer judged.

“How are things going in your village?” Detton asked.

“We’re hungry. The taxes took all our food.”

“Ours too. We’ve been eating boiled tree roots.”

“We haven’t tried that yet. We’re eating our shoes.”

“How’s your wife?” Detton asked politely.

“She died last year,” Lammer answered in a flat, unemotional voice. “My lord took our son for a soldier, and he was killed in a battle somewhere. They poured boiling pitch on him. After that my wife stopped eating. It didn’t take her long to die.”

“I’m sorry,” Detton sympathized. “She was very beautiful.”

“They’re both better off,” Lammer declared. “They aren’t cold or hungry anymore. Which kind of tree roots have you been eating?”

“Birch is the best,” Detton told him. “Spruce has too much pitch, and oak’s too tough. You boil some grass with the roots to give them a bit of flavor.”

“I’ll have to try it.”

“I’ve got to get back,” Detton said. “My lord’s got me clearing trees, and he’ll have me flogged if I stay away too long.”

“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

“If we both live.”

“Good-bye, Detton.”

“Good-bye, Lammer.”

The two voices drifted away. Garion stood quite still for a long time after they were gone, his mind numb with shock and with tears of sympathy standing in his eyes. The worst part of it was the matter-of fact way in which the two had accepted it all. A terrible anger began to burn in his throat. He wanted suddenly to hit somebody.

Then there was another sound off in the fog. Somewhere in the forest nearby someone was singing. The voice was a light, clear tenor, and Garion could hear it quite plainly as it drew closer. The song was filled with ancient wrongs, and the refrain was a call to battle. Irrationally, Garion’s anger focused on the unknown singer. His vapid bawling about abstract injustices seemed somehow obscene in the face of the quiet despair of Lammer and Detton. Without thinking, Garion drew his sword and crouched slightly behind the shattered wall.

The song came yet nearer, and Garion could hear the step of a horse’s hooves in the wet snow. Carefully he poked his head out from behind the wall as the singer appeared out of the fog no more than twenty paces away. He was a young man dressed in yellow hose and a bright red jerkin. His fur-lined cloak was tossed back, and he had a long, curved bow slung over one shoulder and a well-sheathed sword at his opposite hip. His reddish-gold hair fell smoothly down his back from beneath a pointed cap with a feather rising from it. Although his song was grim and he sang it in a voice throbbing with passion, there was about his youthful face a kind of friendly openness that no amount of scowling could erase. Garion glared at this empty-headed young nobleman, quite certain that the singing fool had never made a meal of tree roots or mourned the passing of a wife who had starved herself to death out of grief. The stranger turned his horse and, still singing, rode directly toward the broken arch of the gateway beside which Garion lurked in ambush.

Garion was not normally a belligerent boy, and under other circumstances he might have approached the situation differently. The gaudy young stranger, however, had presented himself at precisely the wrong time. Garion’s quickly devised plan had the advantage of simplicity. Since there was nothing to complicate it, it worked admirably—up to a point. No sooner had the lyric young man passed through the gate than Garion stepped from his hiding place, grasped the back of the rider’s cloak and yanked him bodily out of the saddle. With a startled outcry and a wet splat, the stranger landed unceremoniously on his back in the slush at Garion’s feet. The second part of Garion’s plan, however, fell completely apart. Even as he moved in to take the fallen rider prisoner at sword point, the young man rolled, came to his feet, and drew his own sword, seemingly all in one motion. His eyes were snapping with anger, and his sword weaved threateningly.

Garion was not a fencer, but his reflexes were good and the chores he had performed at Faldor’s farm had hardened his muscles. Despite the anger which had moved him to attack in the first place, he had no real desire to hurt this young man. His opponent seemed to be holding his sword lightly, almost negligently, and Garion thought that a smart blow on the blade might very well knock it out of his hand. He swung quickly, but the blade flicked out of the path of his heavy swipe and clashed with a steely ring down on his own sword. Garion jumped back and made another clumsy swing. The swords rang again. Then the air was filled with clash and scrape and bell-like rattle as the two of them banged and parried and feinted with their blades. It took Garion only a moment to realize that his opponent was much better at this than he was but that the young man had ignored several opportunities to strike at him. In spite of himself he began to grin in the excitement of their noisy contest. The stranger’s answering grin was open, even friendly.

“All right, that’s enough of that!” It was Mister Wolf. The old man was striding toward them with Barak and Silk close on his heels. “Just exactly what do you two think you’re doing?”

Garion’s opponent, after one startled glance, lowered his sword. “Belgarath—” he began.

“Lelldorin,” Wolf’s tone was scathing, “have you lost what little sense you had to begin with?”

Several things clicked into place in Garion’s mind simultaneously as Wolf turned on him coldly. “Well, Garion, would you like to explain this?”

Garion instantly decided to try guile. “Grandfather,” he said, stressing the word and giving the younger stranger a quick warning look, “you didn’t think we were really fighting, did you? Lelldorin here was just showing me how you block somebody’s sword when he attacks, that’s all.”

“Really?” Wolf replied skeptically.

“Of course,” Garion said, all innocence now. “What possible reason could there be for us to be trying to hurt each other?”

Lelldorin opened his mouth to speak, but Garion deliberately stepped on his foot.

“Lelldorin’s really very good,” he rushed on, putting his hand in a friendly fashion on the young man’s shoulder. “He taught me a lot in just a few minutes.”

—Let it stand-Silk’s fingers flickered at him in the minute gestures of the Drasnian secret language. Always keep a lie simple.

“The lad is an apt pupil, Belgarath,” Lelldorin said lamely, finally understanding.

“He’s agile, if nothing else,” Mister Wolf replied dryly. “What’s the idea behind all the frippery?” He indicated Lelldorin’s gaudy clothes. “You look like a maypole.”

“The Mimbrates had started detaining honest Asturians for questioning,” the young Arend explained, “and I had to pass several of their strongholds. I thought that if I dressed like one of their toadies I wouldn’t be bothered.”

“Maybe you’ve got better sense than I thought,” Wolf conceded grudgingly. He turned to Silk and Barak. “This is Lelldorin, son of the Baron of Wildantor. He’ll be joining us.”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, Belgarath,” Lelldorin put in quickly. “My father commanded me to come here and I can’t disobey him, but I’m pledged in a matter of extremest urgency.”

“Every young nobleman in Asturias pledged in at least two or three such matters of urgency,” Wolf replied. “I’m sorry, Lelldorin, but the matter we’re involved in is much too important to be postponed while you go out to ambush a couple of Mimbrate tax collectors.”

Aunt Pol approached them out of the fog then, with Durnik striding protectively at her side. “What are they doing with the swords, father?” she demanded, her eyes flashing.

“Playing,” Mister Wolf replied shortly. “Or so they say. This is Lelldorin. I think I’ve mentioned him to you.”

Aunt Pol looked Lelldorin up and down with one raised eyebrow. “A very colorful young man.”

“The clothes are a disguise,” Wolf explained. “He’s not as frivolous as all that—not quite, anyway. He’s the best bowman in Asturia, and we might need his skill before we’re done with all this.”

“I see,” she said, somewhat unconvinced.

“There’s another reason, of course,” Wolf continued, “but I don’t think we need to get into that just now, do we?”

“Are you still worried about that passage, father?” she asked with exasperation. “The Mrin Codex is very obscure, and none of the other versions say anything at all about the people it mentions. It could be pure allegory, you know.”

“I’ve seen a few too many allegories turn out to be plain fact to start gambling at this point. Why don’t we all go back to the tower?” he suggested. “It’s a bit cold and wet out here for lengthy debates on textual variations.”

Garion glanced at Silk, baffled by this exchange, but the little man returned his look with blank incomprehension.

“Will you help me catch my horse, Garion?” Lelldorin asked politely, sheathing his sword.

“Of course,” Garion replied, also putting away his weapon. “I think he went that way.”

Lelldorin picked up his bow, and the two of them followed the horse’s tracks off into the ruins.

“I’m sorry I pulled you off your horse,” Garion apologized when they were out of sight of the others.

“No matter.” Lelldorin laughed easily. “I should have been paying more attention.” He looked quizzically at Garion. “Why did you lie to Belgarath?”

“It wasn’t exactly a lie,” Garion replied. “We weren’t really trying to hurt each other, and sometimes it takes hours trying to explain something like that.”

Lelldorin laughed again, an infectious sort of laugh. In spite of himself, Garion could not help joining in.

Both laughing, they continued together down an overgrown street between the low mounds of slush-covered rubble.

2

Lelldorin of Wildantor was eighteen years old, although his ingenuous nature made him seem more boyish. No emotion touched him that did not instantly register in his expression, and sincerity shone in his face like a beacon. He was impulsive, extravagant in his declarations, and probably, Garion reluctantly concluded, not overly bright. It was impossible not to like him, however.

The following morning when Garion pulled on his cloak to go out and continue his watch for Hettar, Lelldorin immediately joined him. The young Arend had changed out of his garish clothing and now wore brown hose, a green tunic, and a dark brown wool cape. He carried his bow and wore a quiver of arrows at his belt; as they walked through the snow toward the broken west wall he amused himself by loosing arrows at targets only half visible ahead of him.

“You’re awfully good,” Garion said admiringly after one particularly fine shot.

“I’m an Asturian,” Lelldorin replied modestly. “We’ve been bowmen for thousands of years. My father had the limbs of this bow cut on the day I was born, and I could draw it by the time I was eight.”

“I imagine you hunt a great deal,” Garion said, thinking of the dense forest all around them and the tracks of game he had seen in the snow.

“It’s our most common pastime.” Lelldorin stopped to pull the arrow he had just shot from a tree trunk. “My father prides himself on the fact that beef or mutton are never served at his table.”

“I went hunting once, in Cherek.”

“Deer?” Lelldorin asked.

“No. Wild boars. We didn’t use bows though. The Chereks hunt with spears.”

“Spears? How can you get close enough to kill anything with a spear?”

Garion laughed a bit ruefully, remembering his bruised ribs and aching head. “Getting close isn’t the problem. It’s getting away after you’ve speared him that’s the difficult part.”

Lelldorin didn’t seem to grasp that.

“The huntsmen form a line,” Garion explained, “and they crash through the woods, making as much noise as they can. You take your spear and wait where the boars are likely to pass when they try to get away from the noise. Being chased makes them bad-tempered, and when they see you, they charge. That’s when you spear them.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Lelldorin’s eyes were wide.

Garion nodded. “I almost got all my ribs broken.” He was not exactly boasting, but he admitted to himself that he was pleased by Lelldorin’s reaction to his story.

“We don’t have many dangerous animals in Asturia,” Lelldorin said almost wistfully. “A few bears and once in a while a pack of wolves.” He seemed to hesitate for a moment, looking closely at Garion. “Some men, though, find more interesting things to shoot at than wild stags.” He said it with a kind of secretive sidelong glance.

“Oh?” Garion was not quite sure what he meant.

“Hardly a day goes by that some Mimbrate’s horse doesn’t come home riderless.”

Garion was shocked at that.

“Some men think that there are too many Mimbrates in Asturia,” Lelldorin explained with heavy emphasis.

“I thought that the Arendish civil war was over.”

“There are many who don’t believe that. There are many who believe that the war will continue until Asturia is free of the Mimbrate crown.” Lelldorin’s tone left no question as to where he stood in the matter.

“Wasn’t the country unified after the Battle of Vo Mimbre?” Garion objected.

“Unified? How could anybody believe that? Asturia is treated like a subject province. The king’s court is at Vo Mimbre; every governor, every tax collector, every bailiff, every high sheriff in the kingdom is a Mimbrate. There’s not a single Asturian in a position of authority anywhere in Arendia. The Mimbrates even refuse to recognize our titles. My father, whose line extends back a thousand years, is called landowner. A Mimbrate would sooner bite out his tongue than call him Baron.” Lelldorin’s face had gone white with suppressed indignation.

“I didn’t know that,” Garion said carefully, not sure how to handle the young man’s feelings.

“Asturia’s humiliation is almost at an end, however,” Lelldorin declared fervently. “There are some men in Asturia for whom patriotism is not dead, and the time is not far off when these men will hunt royal game.” He emphasized his statement by snapping an arrow at a distant tree.

That confirmed the worst of Garion’s fears. Lelldorin was a bit too familiar with the details not to be involved in this plot.

As if he had realized himself that he had gone too far, Lelldorin stared at Garion with consternation. “I’m a fool,” he blurted with a guilty look around him. “I’ve never learned to control my tongue. Please forget what I just said, Garion. I know you’re my friend, and I know you won’t betray what I said in a moment of heat.”

That was the one thing Garion had feared. With that single statement, Lelldorin had effectively sealed his lips. He knew that Mister Wolf should be warned that some wild scheme was afoot, but Lelldorin’s declaration of friendship and trust had made it impossible for him to speak. He wanted to grind his teeth with frustration as he stared full in the face of a major moral dilemma.

They walked on, neither of them speaking and both a little embarrassed, until they reached the bit of wall where Garion had waited in ambush the day before. For a time they stared out into the fog, their strained silence growing more uncomfortable by the moment.

“What’s it like in Sendaria?” Lelldorin asked suddenly. “I’ve never been there.”

“There aren’t so many trees,” Garion answered, looking over the wall at the dark trunks marching off in the fog. “It’s an orderly kind of place.”

“Where did you live there?”

“At Faldor’s farm. It’s near Lake Erat.”

“Is this Faldor a nobleman?”

“Faldor?” Garion laughed. “No, Faldor’s as common as old shoes. He’s just a farmer—decent, honest, good-hearted. I miss him.”

“A commoner, then,” Lelldorin said, seeming ready to dismiss Faldor as a man of no consequence.

“Rank doesn’t mean very much in Sendaria,” Garion told him rather pointedly. “What a man does is more important than what he is.” He made a wry face. “I was a scullery boy. It’s not very pleasant, but somebody’s got to do it, I suppose.”

“Not a serf, certainly?” Lelldorin sounded shocked.

“There aren’t any serfs in Sendaria.”

“No serfs?” The young Arend stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“No,” Garion said firmly. “We’ve never found it necessary to have serfs.”

Lelldorin’s expression clearly showed that he was baffled by the notion. Garion remembered the voices that had come to him out of the fog the day before, but he resisted the urge to say something about serfdom. Lelldorin would never understand, and the two of them were very close to friendship. Garion felt that he needed a friend just now and he didn’t want to spoil things by saying something that would offend this likeable young man.

“What sort of work does your father do?” Lelldorin asked politely.

“He’s dead. So’s my mother.” Garion found that if he said it quickly, it didn’t hurt so much.

Lelldorin’s eyes filled in sudden, impulsive sympathy. He put his hand consolingly on Garion’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice almost breaking. “It must have been a terrible loss.”

“I was a baby.” Garion shrugged, trying to sound offhand about it. “I don’t even remember them.” It was still too personal to talk about.

“Some pestilence?” Lelldorin asked gently.

“No,” Garion answered in the same flat tone. “They were murdered.”

Lelldorin gasped and his eyes went wide.

“A man crept into their village at night and set fire to their house,” Garion continued unemotionally. “My grandfather tried to catch him, but he got away. From what I understand, the man is a very old enemy of my family.”

“Surely you’re not going to let it stand like that?” Lelldorin demanded.

“No,” Garion replied, still looking out into the fog. “As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to find him and kill him.”

“Good lad!” Lelldorin exclaimed, suddenly catching Garion in a rough embrace. “We’ll find him and cut him to pieces.”

“We?”

“I’ll be going with you, of course,” Lelldorin declared. “No true friend could do any less.” He was obviously speaking on impulse, but just as obviously he was totally sincere. He gripped Garion’s hand firmly. “I swear to you, Garion, I won’t rest until the murderer of your parents lies dead at your feet.”

The sudden declaration was so totally predictable that Garion silently berated himself for not keeping his mouth shut. His feelings in the matter were very personal, and he was not really sure he wanted company in his search for his faceless enemy. Another part of his mind, however, rejoiced in Lelldorin’s impulsive but unquestioning support. He decided to let the subject drop. He knew Lelldorin well enough by now to realize that the young man undoubtedly made a dozen devout promises a day, quickly offered in absolute sincerity, and just as quickly forgotten.

They talked then of other things, standing close together beside the shattered wall with their dark cloaks drawn tightly about them.

Shortly before noon Garion heard the muffled sound of horses’ hooves somewhere out in the forest. A few minutes later, Hettar materialized out of the fog with a dozen wild-looking horses trailing after him. The tall Algar wore a short, fleece-lined leather cape. His boots were mudspattered and his clothes travel-stained, but otherwise he seemed unaffected by his two weeks in the saddle.

“Garion,” he said gravely by way of greeting and Garion and Lelldorin stepped out to meet him.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” Garion told him and introduced Lelldorin. “We’ll show you where the others are.”

Hettar nodded and followed the two young men through the ruins to the tower where Mister Wolf and the others were waiting. “Snow in the mountains,” the Algar remarked laconically by way of explanation as he swung down from his horse. “It delayed me a bit.” He pulled his hood back from his shaved head and shook out his long, black scalp lock.

“No harm’s been done,” Mister Wolf replied. “Come inside to the fire and have something to eat. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Hettar looked at the horses, his tan, weathered face growing strangely blank as if he were concentrating. The horses all looked back at him, their eyes alert and their ears pointed sharply forward. Then they turned and picked their way off among the trees.

“Won’t they stray?” Durnik wanted to know.

“No,” Hettar answered. “I asked them not to.”

Durnik looked puzzled, but he let it pass.

They all went into the tower and sat near the fireplace. Aunt Pol cut dark bread and pale, yellow cheese for them while Durnik put more wood on the fire.

“Cho-Hag sent word to the Clan-Chiefs,” Hettar reported, pulling off his cape. He wore a black, long-sleeved horsehide jacket with steel discs riveted to it to form a kind of flexible armor. “They’re gathering at the Stronghold for council.” He unbelted the curved sabre he wore, laid it to one side and sat near the fire to eat.

Wolf nodded. “Is anyone trying to get through to Prolgu?”

“I sent a troop of my own men to the Gorim before I left,” Hettar responded. “They’ll get through if anyone can.”

“I hope so,” Wolf stated. “The Gorim’s an old friend of mine, and I’ll need his help before all this is finished.”

“Aren’t your people afraid of the Land of the Ulgos?” Lelldorin inquired politely. “I’ve heard that there are monsters there that feed on the flesh of men.”

Hettar shrugged. “They stay in their lairs in the wintertime. Besides, they’re seldom brave enough to attack a full troop of mounted men.” He looked over at Mister Wolf. “Southern Sendaria’s crawling with Murgos. Or did you know that?”

“I could have guessed,” Wolf replied. “Did they seem to be looking for anything in particular?”

“I don’t talk with Murgos,” Hettar said shortly. His hooked nose and fierce eyes made him look at that moment like a hawk about to swoop down to the kill.

“I’m surprised you weren’t delayed even more,” Silk bantered. “The whole world knows how you feel about Murgos.”

“I indulged myself once,” Hettar admitted. “I met two of them alone on the highway. It didn’t take very long.”

“Two less to worry about, then,” Barak grunted with approval.

“I think it’s time for some plain talk,” Mister Wolf said, brushing crumbs off the front of his tunic. “Most of you have some notion of what we’re doing, but I don’t want anybody blundering into something by accident. We’re after a man named Zedar. He used to be one of my Master’s disciples—then he went over to Torak. Early last fall he somehow slipped into the throne room at Riva and stole the Orb of Aldur. We’re going to chase him down and get it back.”

“Isn’t he a sorcerer too?” Barak asked, tugging absently at a thick red braid.

“That’s not the term we use,” Wolf replied, “but yes, he does have a certain amount of that kind of power. We all did—me, Beltira and Belkira, Belzedar—all the rest of us. That’s one of the things I wanted to warn you about.”

“You all seem to have the same sort of names,” Silk noticed.

“Our Master changed our names when he took us as disciples. It was a simple change, but it meant a great deal to us.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that your original name was Garath?” Silk asked, his ferret eyes narrowing shrewdly.

Mister Wolf looked startled and then laughed. “I haven’t heard that name for thousands of years. I’ve been Belgarath for so long that I’d almost completely forgotten Garath. It’s probably just as well. Garath was a troublesome boy—a thief and a liar among other things.”

“Some things never change,” Aunt Pol observed.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Wolf admitted blandly.

“Why did Zedar steal the Orb?” Hettar asked, setting aside his plate.

“He’s always wanted it for himself,” the old man replied. “That could be it—but more likely he’s trying to take it to Torak. The one who delivers the Orb to One-Eye is going to be his favorite.”

“But Torak’s dead,” Lelldorin objected. “The Rivan Warder killed him at Vo Mimbre.”

“No,” Wolf said. “Torak isn’t dead; only asleep. Brand’s sword wasn’t the one destined to kill him. Zedar carried him off after the battle and hid him someplace. Someday he’ll awaken—probably someday fairly soon, if I’m reading the signs right. We’ve got to get the Orb back before that happens.”

“This Zedar’s caused a lot of trouble,” Barak rumbled. “You should have dealt with him a long time ago.”

“Possibly,” Wolf admitted.

“Why don’t you just wave your hand and make him disappear?” Barak suggested, making a sort of gesture with his thick fingers.

Wolf shook his head. “I can’t. Not even the Gods can do that.”

“We’ve got some big problems, then,” Silk said with a frown. “Every Murgo from here to Rak Goska’s going to try to stop us from catching Zedar.”

“Not necessarily,” Wolf disagreed. “Zedar’s got the Orb, but Ctuchik commands the Grolims.”

“Ctuchik?” Lelldorin asked.

“The Grolim High Priest. He and Zedar hate each other. I think we can count on him to try to keep Zedar from getting to Torak with the Orb.”

Barak shrugged. “What difference does it make? You and Polgara can use magic if we run into anything difficult, can’t you?”

“There are limitations on that sort of thing,” Wolf said a bit evasively.

“I don’t understand,” Barak said, frowning.

Mister Wolf took a deep breath. “All right. As long as it’s come up, let’s go into that too. Sorcery—if that’s what you want to call it—is a disruption of the natural order of things. Sometimes it has certain unexpected effects, so you have to be very careful about what you do with it. Not only that, it makes—” He frowned. “—Let’s call it a sort of noise. That’s not exactly what it is, but it serves well enough to explain. Others with the same abilities can hear that noise. Once Polgara and I start changing things, every Grolim in the West is going to know exactly where we are and what we’re doing. They’ll keep piling things in front of us until we’re exhausted.”

“It takes almost as much energy to do things that way as it does to do them with your arms and back,” Aunt Pol explained. “It’s very tiring.”

She sat beside the fire, carefully mending a small tear in one of Garion’s tunics.

“I didn’t know that,” Barak admitted. “Not many people do.”

“If we have to, Pol and I can take certain steps,” Wolf went on, “but we can’t keep it up forever and we can’t simply make things vanish. I’m sure you can see why.”

“Oh, of course,” Silk professed, though his tone indicated that he did not.

“Everything that exists depends on everything else,” Aunt Pol explained quietly. “If you were to unmake one thing, it’s altogether possible that everything would vanish.”

The fire popped, and Garion jumped slightly. The vaulted chamber seemed suddenly dark, and shadows lurked in the corners.

“That can’t happen, of course,” Wolf told them. “When you try to unmake something, your will simply recoils on you. If you say, `Be not,’ then you are the one who vanishes. That’s why we’re very careful about what we say.”

“I can understand why,” Silk said, his eyes widening slightly.

“Most of the things we’ll encounter can be dealt with by ordinary means,” Wolf continued. “That’s the reason we’ve brought you together—at least that’s one of the reasons. Among you, you’ll be able to handle most of the things that get in our way. The important thing to remember is that Polgara and I have to get to Zedar before he can reach Torak with the Orb. Zedar’s found some way to touch the Orb—I don’t know how. If he can show Torak how it’s done, no power on earth will be able to stop One-Eye from becoming King and God over the whole world.”

They all sat in the ruddy, flickering light of the fire, their faces serious as they considered that possibility.

“I think that pretty well covers everything, don’t you, Pol?”

“I believe so, father,” she replied, smoothing the front of her gray, homespun gown.

Later, outside the tower as gray evening crept in among the foggy ruins of Vo Wacune and the smell of the thick stew Aunt Pol was cooking for supper drifted out to them, Garion turned to Silk. “Is it all really true?” he asked.

The small man looked out into the fog. “Let’s act as if we believed that it is,” he suggested. “Under the circumstances, I think it would be a bad idea to make a mistake.”

“Are you afraid too, Silk?” Garion asked.

Silk sighed. “Yes,” he admitted, “but we can behave as if we believed that we aren’t, can’t we?”

“I guess we can try,” Garion said, and the two of them turned to go back into the chamber at the foot of the tower where the firelight danced on the low stone arches, holding the fog and chill at bay.

3

The next morning Silk came out of the tower wearing a rich maroon doublet and a baglike black velvet cap cocked jauntily over one ear.

“What’s all that about?” Aunt Pol asked him.

“I chanced across an old friend in one of the packs,” Silk replied airily. “Radek of Boktor by name.”

“What happened to Ambar of Kotu?”

“Ambar’s a good enough fellow, I suppose,” Silk said a bit deprecatingly, “but a Murgo named Asharak knows about him and may have dropped his name in certain quarters. Let’s not look for trouble if we don’t have to.”

“Not a bad disguise,” Mister Wolf agreed. “One more Drasnian merchant on the Great West Road won’t attract any attention—whatever his name.”

“Please,” Silk objected in an injured tone. “The name’s very important. You hang the whole disguise on the name.”

“I don’t see any difference,” Barak asserted bluntly.

“There’s all the difference in the world. Surely you can see that Ambar’s a vagabond with very little regard for ethics, while Radek’s a man of substance whose word is good in all the commercial centers of the West. Besides, Radek’s always accompanied by servants.”

“Servants?” One of Aunt Pol’s eyebrows shot up.

“Just for the sake of the disguise,” Silk assured her quickly. “You, of course, could never be a servant, Lady Polgara.”

“Thank you.”

“No one would ever believe it. You’ll be my sister instead, traveling with me to see the splendors of Tol Honeth.”

“Your sister?”

“You could be my mother instead, if you prefer,” Silk suggested blandly, “making a religious pilgrimage to Mar Terrin to atone for a colorful past.”

Aunt Pol gazed steadily at the small man for a moment while he grinned impudently at her. “Someday your sense of humor’s going to get you into a great deal of trouble, Prince Kheldar.”

“I’m always in trouble, Lady Polgara. I wouldn’t know how to act if I weren’t.”

“Do you two suppose we could get started?” Mister Wolf asked.

“Just a moment more,” Silk replied. “If we meet anyone and have to explain things, you, Lelldorin, and Garion are Polgara’s servants. Hettar, Barak, and Durnik are mine.”

“Anything you say,” Wolf agreed wearily.

“There are reasons.”

“All right.”

“Don’t you want to hear them?”

“Not particularly.”

Silk looked a bit hurt.

“Are we ready?” Wolf asked.

“Everything’s out of the tower,” Durnik told him. “Oh just a moment. I forgot to put out the fire.” He went back inside.

Wolf glanced after the smith in exasperation. “What difference does it make?” he muttered. “This place is a ruin anyway.”

“Leave him alone, father,” Aunt Pol said placidly. “It’s the way he is.”

As they prepared to mount, Barak’s horse, a large, sturdy gray, sighed and threw a reproachful look at Hettar, and the Algar chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Barak demanded suspiciously.

“The horse said something,” Hettar replied. “Never mind.”

Then they swung into their saddles and threaded their way out of the foggy ruins and along the narrow, muddy track that wound into the forest. Sodden snow lay under wet trees, and water dripped continually from the branches overhead. They all drew their cloaks about them to ward off the chill and dampness. Once they were under the trees, Lelldorin pulled his horse in beside Garion’s, and they rode together.

“Is Prince Kheldar always so—well—extremely complicated?” he asked.

“Silk? Oh yes. He’s very devious. You see, he’s a spy, and disguises and clever lies are second nature to him.”

“A spy? Really?” Lelldorin’s eyes brightened as his imagination caught hold of the idea.

“He works for his uncle, the King of Drasnia,” Garion explained. “From what I understand, the Drasnians have been at this sort of thing for centuries.”

“We’ve got to stop and pick up the rest of the packs,” Silk was reminding Mister Wolf.

“I haven’t forgotten,” the old man replied.

“Packs?” Lelldorin asked.

“Silk picked up some wool cloth in Camaar,” Garion told him. “He said it would give us a legitimate reason to be on the highway. We hid them in a cave when we left the road to come to Vo Wacune.”

“He thinks of everything, doesn’t he?”

“He tries. We’re lucky to have him with us.”

“Maybe we could have him show us a few things about disguises,” Lelldorin suggested brightly. “It might be very useful when we go looking for your enemy.”

Garion had thought that Lelldorin had forgotten his impulsive pledge. The young Arend’s mind seemed too flighty to keep hold of one idea for very long, but he saw now that Lelldorin only seemed to forget things. The prospect of a serious search for his parents’ murderer with this young enthusiast adding embellishments and improvisations at every turn began to present itself alarmingly.

By midmorning, after they had picked up Silk’s packs and lashed them to the backs of the spare horses, they were back out on the Great West Road, the Tolnedran highway running through the heart of the forest. They rode south at a loping canter that ate up the miles.

They passed a heavily burdened serf clothed in scraps and pieces of sackcloth tied on with bits of string. The serf’s face was gaunt, and he was very thin under his dirty rags. He stepped off the road and stared at them with apprehension until they had passed. Garion felt a sudden stab of compassion. He briefly remembered Lammer and Detton, and he wondered what would finally happen to them. It seemed important for some reason. “Is it really necessary to keep them so poor?” he demanded of Lelldorin, unable to hold it in any longer.

“Who?” Lelldorin asked, looking around.

“That serf.”

Lelldorin glanced back over his shoulder at the ragged man. “You didn’t even see him,” Garion accused.

Lelldorin shrugged. “There are so many.”

“And they all dress in rags and live on the edge of starvation.”

“Mimbrate taxes,” Lelldorin replied as if that explained everything.

“You seem to have always had enough to eat.”

“I’m not a serf, Garion,” Lelldorin answered patiently. “The poorest people always suffer the most. It’s the way the world is.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Garion retorted.

“You just don’t understand.”

“No. And I never will.”

“Naturally not,” Lelldorin said with infuriating complacency. “You’re not Arendish.”

Garion clenched his teeth to hold back the obvious reply.

By late afternoon they had covered ten leagues, and the snow had largely disappeared from the roadside. “Shouldn’t we start to give some thought to where we’re going to spend the night, father?” Aunt Pol suggested.

Mister Wolf scratched thoughtfully at his beard as he squinted at the shadows hovering in the trees around them.

“I have an uncle who lives not far from here,” Lelldorin offered, “Count Reldegen. I’m sure he’ll be glad to give us shelter.”

“Thin?” Mister Wolf asked. “Dark hair?”

“It’s gray now,” Lelldorin replied. “Do you know him?”

“I haven’t seen him for twenty years,” Wolf told him. “As I recall, he used to be quite a hothead.”

“Uncle Reldegen? You must have him confused with somebody else, Belgarath.”

“Maybe,” Wolf said. “How far is it to his house?”

“No more than a league and a half away.”

“Let’s go see him,” Wolf decided.

Lelldorin shook his reins and moved into the lead to show them the way.

“How are you and your friend getting along?” Silk asked, falling in beside Garion.

“Fine, I suppose,” Garion replied, not quite sure how the rat-faced little man intended the question. “It seems to be a little hard to explain things to him though.”

“That’s only natural,” Silk observed. “He’s an Arend, after all.”

Garion quickly came to Lelldorin’s defense. “He’s honest and very brave.”

“They all are. That’s part of the problem.”

“I like him,” Garion asserted.

“So do I, Garion, but that doesn’t keep me from realizing the truth about him.”

“If you’re trying to say something, why don’t you just go ahead and say it?”

“All right, I will. Don’t let friendship get the better of your good sense. Arendia’s a very dangerous place, and Arends tend to blunder into disasters quite regularly. Don’t let your exuberant young companion drag you into something that’s none of your business.” Silk’s look was direct, and Garion realized that the little man was quite serious.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised.

“I knew I could count on you,” Silk said gravely.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Would I do that, Garion?” Silk asked mockingly. Then he laughed and they rode on together through the gloomy afternoon.

The gray stone house of Count Reldegen was about a mile back in the forest from the highway, and it stood in the center of a clearing that extended beyond bowshot in every direction. Although it had no wall, it had somehow the look of a fort. The windows facing out were narrow and covered with iron gratings. Strong turrets surmounted by battlements stood at each corner, and the gate which opened into the central courtyard of the house was made of whole tree trunks, squared off and strapped together with iron bands. Garion stared at the brooding pile as they approached in the rapidly fading light. There was a kind of haughty ugliness about the house, a grim solidity that seemed to defy the world.

“It’s not a very pleasant-looking sort of place, is it?” he said to Silk.

“Asturian architecture’s a reflection of their society,” Silk replied. “A strong house isn’t a bad idea in a country where neighborhood disputes sometimes get out of hand.”

“Are they all so afraid of each other?”

“Just cautious, Garion. Just cautious.”

Lelldorin dismounted before the heavy gate and spoke to someone on the other side through a small grill. There was finally a rattling of chains and the grinding sound of heavy, iron-shod bars sliding back.

“I wouldn’t make any quick moves once we’re inside,” Silk advised quietly. “There’ll probably be archers watching us.”

Garion looked at him sharply.

“A quaint custom of the region,” Silk informed him.

They rode into a cobblestoned courtyard and dismounted.

Count Reldegen, when he appeared, was a tall, thin man with irongray hair and beard who walked with the aid of a stout cane. He wore a rich green doublet and black hose; despite the fact that he was in his own house, he carried a sword at his side. He limped heavily down a broad flight of stairs from the house to greet them.

“Uncle,” Lelldorin said, bowing respectfully.

“Nephew,” the count replied in polite acknowledgment.

“My friends and I found ourselves in the vicinity,” Lelldorin stated, “and we thought we might impose on you for the night.”

“You’re always welcome, nephew,” Reldegen answered with a kind of grave formality. “Have you dined yet?”

“No, uncle.”

“Then you must all take supper with me. May I know your friends?”

Mister Wolf pushed back his hood and stepped forward. “You and I are already acquainted, Reldegen,” he said.

The count’s eyes widened. “Belgarath? Is it really you?”

Wolf grinned. “Oh, yes. I’m still wandering about the world, stirring up mischief.”

Reldegen laughed then and grasped Wolf’s upper arm warmly. “Come inside, all of you. Let’s not stand about in the cold.” He turned and limped up the steps to the house.

“What happened to your leg?” Wolf asked him.

“An arrow in the knee.” The count shrugged. “The result of an old disagreement—long since forgotten.”

“As I recall, you used to get involved in quite a few of those. I thought for a while that you intended to go through life with your sword half drawn.”

“I was an excitable youth,” the count admitted, opening the broad door at the top of the steps. He led them down a long hallway to a room of imposing size with a large blazing fireplace at each end. Great curving stone arches supported the ceiling. The floor was of polished black stone, scattered with fur rugs, and the walls, arches, and ceiling were whitewashed in gleaming contrast. Heavy, carved chairs of dark brown wood sat here and there, and a great table with an iron candelabra in its center stood near the fireplace at one end. A dozen or so leather-bound books were scattered on its polished surface.

“Books, Reldegen?” Mister Wolf said in amazement as he and the others removed their cloaks and gave them to the servants who immediately appeared. “You have mellowed, my friend.”

The count smiled at the old man’s remark.

“I’m forgetting my manners,” Wolf apologized. “My daughter, Polgara. Pol, this is Count Reldegen, an old friend.”

“My Lady,” the count acknowledged with an exquisite bow, “my house is honored.”

Aunt Pol was about to reply when two young men burst into the room, arguing heatedly.

“You’re an idiot, Berentain!” the first, a dark-haired youth in a scarlet doublet, snapped.

“It may please thee to think so, Torasin,” the second, a stout young man with pale, curly hair and wearing a green and yellow striped tunic, replied, “but whether it please thee or not, Asturias future is in Mimbrate hands. Thy rancorous denouncements and sulfurous rhetoric shall not alter that fact.”

“Don’t thee me or thou me, Berentain,” the dark-haired one sneered. “Your imitation Mimbrate courtesy turns my stomach.”

“Gentlemen, that’s enough!” Count Reldegen said sharply, rapping his cane on the stone floor. “If you two are going to insist on discussing politics, I’ll have you separated—forcibly, if necessary.”

The two young men scowled at each other and then stalked off to opposite sides of the room. “My son, Torasin,” the count admitted apologetically, indicating the dark-haired youth, “and his cousin Berentain, the son of my late wife’s brother. They’ve been wrangling like this for two weeks now. I had to take their swords away from them the day after Berentain arrived.”

“Political discussion is good for the blood, my Lord,” Silk observed, “especially in the winter. The heat keeps the veins from clogging up.”

The count chuckled at the little man’s remark.

“Prince Kheldar of the royal house of Drasnia,” Mister Wolf introduced Silk.

“Your Highness,” the count responded, bowing.

Silk winced slightly. “Please, my Lord. I’ve spent a lifetime running from that mode of address, and I’m sure that my connection with the royal family embarrasses my uncle almost as much as it embarrasses me.”

The count laughed again with easy good nature. “Why don’t we all adjourn to the dining table?” he suggested. “Two fat deer have been turning on spits in my kitchen since daybreak, and I recently obtained a cask of red wine from southern Tolnedra. As I recall, Belgarath has always had a great fondness for good food and fine wines.”

“He hasn’t changed, my Lord,” Aunt Pol told him. “My father’s terribly predictable, once you get to know him.”

The count smiled and offered her his arm as they all moved toward a door on the far side of the room.

“Tell me, my Lord,” Aunt Pol said, “do you by chance have a bathtub in your house?”

“Bathing in winter is dangerous, Lady Polgara,” the count warned her.

“My Lord,” she stated gravely, “I’ve been bathing winter or summer for more years than you could possibly imagine.”

“Let her bathe, Reldegen,” Mister Wolf urged. “Her temper deteriorates quite noticeably when she thinks she’s getting dirty.”

“A bath wouldn’t hurt you either, Old Wolf,” Aunt Pol retorted tartly. “You’re starting to get a bit strong from the downwind side.”

Mister Wolf looked a bit injured.

Much later, after they had eaten their fill of venison, gravy-soaked bread, and rich cherry tarts, Aunt Pol excused herself and went with a maidservant to oversee the preparation of her bath. The men all lingered at the table over their wine cups, their faces washed with the golden light of the many candles in Reldegen’s dining hall.

“Let me show you to your rooms,” Torasin suggested to Lelldorin and Garion, pushing back his chair and casting a look of veiled contempt across the table at Berentain.

They followed him from the room and up a long flight of stairs toward the upper stories of the house. “I don’t want to offend you, Tor,” Lelldorin said as they climbed, “but your cousin has some peculiar ideas.”

Torasin snorted. “Berentain’s a jackass. He thinks he can impress the Mimbrates by imitating their speech and by fawning on them.” His dark face was angry in the light of the candle he carried to light their way.

“Why should he want to?” Lelldorin asked.

“He’s desperate for some kind of holding he can call his own,” Torasin replied. “My mother’s brother has very little land to leave him. The fat idiot’s all calf eyed over the daughter of one of the barons in his district, and since the baron won’t even consider a landless suitor, Berentain’s trying to wheedle an estate from the Mimbrate governor. He’d swear fealty to the ghost of Kal Torak himself, if he thought it would get him land.”

“Doesn’t he realize that he hasn’t got a chance?” Lelldorin inquired. “There are too many land-hungry Mimbrate knights around the governor for him to even think of granting an estate to an Asturian.”

“I’ve told him the same thing myself,” Torasin declared with scathing contempt, “but there’s no reasoning with him. His behavior degrades our whole family.”

Lelldorin shook his head commiseratingly as they reached an upper hall. He looked around quickly then. “I have to talk with you, Tor,” he blurted, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Torasin looked at him sharply.

“My father’s committed me to Belgarath’s service in a matter of great importance,” Lelldorin hurried on in that same hushed voice. “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, so you and the others will have to kill Korodullin without me.”

Torasin’s eyes went wide with horror. “We’re not alone, Lelldorin!” he said in a strangled voice.

“I’ll go down to the other end of the hall,” Garion said quickly.

“No,” Lelldorin replied firmly, taking hold of Garion’s arm. “Garion’s my friend, Tor. I have no secrets from him.”

“Lelldorin, please,” Garion protested. “I’m not an Asturian—I’m not even an Arend. I don’t want to know what you’re planning.”

“But you will know, Garion, as proof of my trust in you,” Lelldorin declared. “Next summer, when Korodullin journeys to the ruined city of Vo Astur to hold court there for the six weeks that maintain the fiction of Arendish unity, we’re going to ambush him on the highway.”

“Lelldorin!” Torasin gasped, his face turning white.

But Lelldorin was already plunging on. “It won’t be just a simple ambush, Garion. This will be a master stroke at Mimbre’s heart. We’re going to ambush him in the uniforms of Tolnedran legionnaires and cut him down with Tolnedran swords. Our attack will force Mimbre to declare war on the Tolnedran Empire, and Tolnedra will crush Mimbre like an eggshell. Mimbre will be destroyed, and Asturia will be free!”

“Nachak will have you killed for this, Lelldorin,” Torasin cried. “We’ve all been sworn to secrecy on a blood oath.”

“Tell the Murgo that I spit on his oath,” Lelldorin said hotly. “What need have Asturian patriots for a Murgo henchman?”

“He’s providing us with gold, you blockhead!” Torasin raged, almost beside himself. “We need his good red gold to buy the uniforms, the swords, and to strengthen the backbones of some of our weaker friends.”

“I don’t need weaklings with me,” Lelldorin said intensely. “A patriot does what he does for love of his country-not for Angarak gold.”

Garion’s mind was moving quickly now. His moment of stunned amazement had passed. “There was a man in Cherek,” he recalled. “The Earl of Jarvik. He also took Murgo gold and plotted to kill a king.”

The two stared at him blankly.

“Something happens to a country when you kill its king,” Garion explained. “No matter how bad the king is or how good the people are who kill him, the country falls apart for a while. Everything is confused, and there’s nobody to point the country in any one direction. Then, if you start a war between that country and another one at the same time, you add just that much more confusion. I think that if I were a Murgo, that’s exactly the kind of confusion I’d want to see in all the kingdoms of the West.”

Garion listened to his own voice almost in amazement. There was a dry, dispassionate quality in it that he instantly recognized. From the time of his earliest memories that voice had always been there—inside his mind—occupying some quiet, hidden corner, telling him when he was wrong or foolish. But the voice had never actively interfered before in his dealings with other people. Now, however, it spoke directly to these two young men, patiently explaining.

“Angarak gold isn’t what it seems to be,” he went on. “There’s a kind of power in it that corrupts you. Maybe that’s why it’s the color of blood. I’d think about that before I accepted any more red gold from this Murgo Nachak. Why do you suppose he’s giving you gold and helping you with this plan of yours? He’s not an Asturian, so patriotism couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it? I’d think about that, too.”

Lelldorin and his cousin looked suddenly troubled.

“I’m not going to say anything about this to anybody,” Garion said. “You told me about it in confidence, and I really wasn’t supposed to hear about it anyway. But remember that there’s a lot more going on in the world right now than what’s happening here in Arendia. Now I think I’d like to get some sleep. If you’ll show me where my bed is, I’ll leave you to talk things over all night, if you’d like.”

All in all, Garion thought he’d handled the whole thing rather well. He’d planted a few doubts at the very least. He knew Arends well enough by now to realize that it probably wouldn’t be enough to turn these two around, but it was a start.

4

The following morning they rode out early while the mist still hung among the trees. Count Reldegen, wrapped in a dark cloak, stood at his gate to bid them farewell; and Torasin, standing beside his father, seemed unable to take his eyes off Garion’s face. Garion kept his expression as blank as possible. The fiery young Asturian seemed to be filled with doubts, and those doubts might keep him from plunging headlong into something disastrous. It wasn’t much, Garion realized, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.

“Come back soon, Belgarath,” Reldegen said. “Sometime when you can stay longer. We’re very isolated here, and I’d like to know what the rest of the world’s doing. We’ll sit by the fire and talk away a month or two.

Mister Wolf nodded gravely. “Maybe when this business of mine is over, Reldegen.” Then he turned his horse and led the way across the wide clearing that surrounded Reldegen’s house and back once again into the gloomy forest.

“The count’s an unusual Arend,” Silk said lightly as they rode along. “I think I actually detected an original thought or two in him last evening.”

“He’s changed a great deal,” Wolf agreed.

“He sets a good table,” Barak said. “I haven’t felt this full since I left Val Alorn.”

“You should,” Aunt Pol told him. “You ate the biggest part of one deer by yourself.”

“You’re exaggerating, Polgara,” Barak said.

“But not by very much,” Hettar observed in his quiet voice. Lelldorin had pulled his horse in beside Garion’s, but he had not spoken. His face was as troubled as his cousin’s had been. It was obvious that he wanted to say something and just as obvious that he didn’t know how to begin.

“Go ahead,” Garion said quietly. “We’re good enough friends that I’m not going to be upset if it doesn’t come out exactly right.”

Lelldorin looked a little sheepish.

“Am I really that obvious?”

“Honest is a better word for it,” Garion told him. “You’ve just never learned to hide your feelings, that’s all.”

“Was it really true?” Lelldorin blurted. “I’m not doubting your word, but was there really a Murgo in Cherek plotting against King Anheg?”

“Ask Silk,” Garion suggested, “or Barak, or Hettar-any of them. We were all there.”

“Nachak isn’t like that, though,” Lelldorin said quickly, defensively.

“Can you be sure?” Garion asked him. “The plan was his in the first place, wasn’t it? How did you happen to meet him?”

“We’d all gone down to the Great Fair, Torasin, me, several of the others. We bought some things from a Murgo merchant, and Tor made a few remarks about Mimbrates—you know how Tor is. The merchant said that he knew somebody we might be interested in meeting and he introduced us to Nachak. The more we talked with him, the more sympathetic he seemed to become to the way we felt.”

“Naturally.”

“He told us what the king is planning. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Probably not.”

Lelldorin gave him a quick, troubled look. “He’s going to break up our estates and give them to landless Mimbrate nobles.” He said it accusingly.

“Did you verify that with anybody but Nachak?”

“How could we? The Mimbrates wouldn’t admit it if we confronted them with it, but it’s the kind of thing Mimbrates would do.”

“So you’ve only got Nachak’s word for it? How did this plan of yours come up?”

“Nachak said that if he were an Asturian, he wouldn’t let anybody take his land, but he said that it’d be too late to try to stop them when they came with knights and soldiers. He said that if he were doing it, he’d strike before they were ready and that he’d do it in such a way that the Mimbrates wouldn’t know who’d done it. That’s when he suggested the Tolnedran uniforms.”

“When did he start giving you money?”

“I’m not sure. Tor handled that part of it.”

“Did he ever say why he was giving you money?”

“He said it was out of friendship.”

“Didn’t that seem a little odd?”

“I’d give someone money out of friendship,” Lelldorin protested.

“You’re an Asturian,” Garion told him. “You’d give somebody your life out of friendship. Nachak’s a Murgo, though, and I’ve never heard that they were all that generous. What it comes down to, then, is that a stranger tells you that the king’s planning to take your land. Then he gives you a plan to kill the king and start a war with Tolnedra; and to make sure you succeed with his plan, he gives you money. Is that about it.

Lelldorin nodded mutely, his eyes stricken.

“Weren’t any of you just the least bit suspicious?”

Lelldorin seemed almost about to cry.

“It’s such a good plan,” he burst out finally. “It couldn’t help but succeed.”

“That’s what makes it so dangerous,” Garion replied.

“Garion, what am I going to do?” Lelldorin’s voice was anguished.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do right now,” Garion told him. “Maybe later, after we’ve had time to think about it, we’ll come up with something. If we can’t, we can always tell my grandfather about it. He’ll think of a way to stop it.”

“We can’t tell anybody,” Lelldorin reminded him. “We’re pledged to silence.”

“We might have to break that pledge,” Garion said somewhat reluctantly. “I don’t see that either of us owes that Murgo anything, but it’s going to have to be up to you. I won’t say anything to anybody without your permission.”

“You decide,” Lelldorin pleaded then. “I can’t do it, Garion.”

“You’re going to have to,” Garion told him. “I’m sure that if you think about it, you’ll see why.”

They reached the Great West Road then, and Barak led them south at a brisk trot, cutting off the possibility of further discussion.

A league or so down the road they passed a muddy village, a dozen or so turf roofed huts with walls made of wattles plastered over with mud. The fields around the village were dotted with tree stumps, and a few scrawny cows grazed near the edge of the forest. Garion could not control his indignation as he looked at the misery implicit in the crude collection of hovels.

“Lelldorin,” he said sharply, “look!”

“What? Where?” The blond young man came out of his troubled preoccupation quickly as if expecting some danger.

“The village,” Garion told him. “Look at it.”

“It’s only a serfs’ village,” Lelldorin said indifferently. “I’ve seen hundreds like it.” He seemed ready to return to his own inner turmoil.

“In Sendaria we wouldn’t keep pigs in places like that.” Garion’s voice rang with fervor. If he could only make his friend see!

Two ragged serfs were dispiritedly hacking chunks of firewood from one of the stumps near the road. As the party approached, they dropped their axes and bolted in terror for the forest.

“Does it make you proud, Lelldorin?” Garion demanded. “Does it make you feel good to know that your own countrymen are so afraid of you that they run from the very sight of you?”

Lelldorin looked baffled.

“They’re serfs, Garion,” he said as if that explained.

“They’re men. They’re not animals. Men deserve to be treated better.”

“I can’t do anything about it. They aren’t my serfs.” And with that Lelldorin’s attention turned inward again as he continued to struggle with the dilemma Garion had placed upon him.

By late afternoon they had covered ten leagues and the cloudy sky was gradually darkening as evening approached.

“I think we’re going to have to spend the night in the forest, Belgarath,” Silk said, looking around. “There’s no chance of reaching the next Tolnedran hostel.”

Mister Wolf had been half-dozing in his saddle. He looked up, blinking a bit.

“All right,” he replied, “but let’s get back from the road a bit. Our fire could attract attention, and too many people know we’re in Arendia already.”

“There’s a woodcutter’s track right there.” Durnik pointed at a break in the trees just ahead. “It should lead us back into the trees.”

“All right,” Wolf agreed.

The sound of their horses’ hooves was muffled by the sodden leaves on the forest floor as they turned in among the trees to follow the narrow track. They rode silently for the better part of a mile until a clearing opened ahead of them.

“How about here?” Durnik asked. He indicated a brook trickling softly over mossy stones on one side of the clearing.

“It will do,” Wolf agreed.

“We’re going to need shelter,” the smith observed.

“I bought tents in Camaar,” Silk told him. “They’re in the packs.”

“That was foresighted of you,” Aunt Pol complimented him.

“I’ve been in Arendia before, my Lady. I’m familiar with the weather.”

“Garion and I’ll go get wood for a fire then,” Durnik said, climbing down from his horse and untying his axe from his saddle.

“I’ll help you,” Lelldorin offered, his face still troubled.

Durnik nodded and led the way off into the trees. The woods were soaked, but the smith seemed to know almost instinctively where to find dry fuel. They worked quickly in the lowering twilight and soon had three large bundles of limbs and fagots. They returned to the clearing where Silk and the others were erecting several dun-colored tents. Durnik dropped his wood and cleared a space for the fire with his foot. Then he knelt and began striking sparks with his knife from a piece of flint into a wad of dry tinder he always carried. In a short time he had a small fire going, and Aunt Pol set out her pots beside it, humming softly to herself.

Hettar came back from tending the horses, and they all stood back watching Aunt Pol prepare a supper from the stores Count Reldegen had pressed on them before they had left his house that morning.

After they had eaten, they sat around the fire talking quietly.

“How far have we come today?” Durnik asked.

“Twelve leagues,” Hettar estimated.

“How much farther do we have to go to get out of the forest?”

“It’s eighty leagues from Camaar to the central plain,” Lelldorin replied.

Durnik sighed. “A week or more. I’d hoped that it’d be only a few days.”

“I know what you mean, Durnik,” Barak agreed. “It’s gloomy under all these trees.”

The horses, picketed near the brook, stirred uneasily. Hettar rose to his feet.

“Something wrong?” Barak asked, also rising.

“They shouldn’t be—” Hettar started. Then he stopped. “Back!” he snapped.

“Away from the fire. The horses say there are men out there. Many—with weapons.” He jumped back from the fire, drawing his sabre.

Lelldorin took one startled look at him and bolted for one of the tents. Garion’s sudden disappointment in his friend was almost like a blow to the stomach.

An arrow buzzed into the light and shattered on Barak’s mail shirt.

“Arm yourselves!” the big man roared, drawing his sword.

Garion grasped Aunt Pol’s sleeve and tried to pull her from the light.

“Stop that!” she snapped, jerking her sleeve free. Another arrow whizzed out of the foggy woods. Aunt Pol flicked her hand as if brushing away a fly and muttered a single word. The arrow bounced back as if it had struck something solid and fell to the ground.

Then with a hoarse shout, a gang of rough, burly men burst from the edge of the trees and splashed across the brook, brandishing swords. As Barak and Hettar leaped forward to meet them, Lelldorin reemerged from the tent with his bow and began loosing arrows so rapidly that his hands seemed to blur as they moved. Garion was instantly ashamed that he had doubted his friend’s courage.

With a choked cry, one of the attackers stumbled back, an arrow through his throat. Another doubled over sharply, clutching at his stomach, and fell to the ground, groaning. A third, quite young and with a pale, downy beard on his cheeks, dropped heavily and sat plucking at the feathers on the shaft protruding from his chest with a bewildered expression on his boyish face. Then he sighed and slumped over on his side with a stream of blood coming from his nose.

The ragged-looking men faltered under the rain of Lelldorin’s arrows, and then Barak and Hettar were upon them. With a great sweep, Barak’s heavy sword shattered an upflung blade and crunched down into the angle between the neck and shoulder of the black-whiskered man who had held it. The man collapsed. Hettar made a quick feint with his sabre, then ran it smoothly through the body of a pockmarked ruffian. The man stiffened, and a gush of bright blood burst from his mouth as Hettar pulled out his blade. Durnik ran forward with his axe, and Silk drew his long dagger from under his vest and ran directly at a man with a shaggy brown beard. At the last moment, he dived forward, rolled and struck the bearded man full in the chest with both feet. Without pausing he came up and ripped his dagger into his enemy’s belly. The dagger made a wet, tearing sound as it sliced upward, and the stricken man clutched at his stomach with a scream, trying to hold in the blue-colored loops and coils of his entrails that seemed to come boiling out through his fingers.

Garion dived for the packs to get his own sword, but was suddenly grabbed roughly from behind. He struggled for an instant, then felt a stunning blow on the back of his head, and his eyes filled with a blinding flash of light.

“This is the one we want,” a rough voice husked as Garion sank into unconsciousness.

He was being carried—that much was certain. He could feel the strong arms under him. He didn’t know how long it had been since he had been struck on the head. His ears still rang, and he was more than a little sick to his stomach. He stayed limp, but carefully opened one eye. His vision was blurred and uncertain, but he could make out Barak’s bearded face looming above him in the darkness, and merged with it, as once before in the snowy woods outside Val Alorn, he seemed to see the shaggy face of a great bear. He closed his eyes, shuddered, and started to struggle weakly.

“It’s all right, Garion,” Barak said, his voice sunk in a kind of despair. “It’s me.”

Garion opened his eyes again, and the bear seemed to be gone. He wasn’t even sure he had ever really seen it.

“Are you all right?” Barak asked, setting him on the ground.

“They hit me on the head,” Garion mumbled, his hand going to the swelling behind his ear.

“They won’t do it again,” Barak muttered, his tone still despairing. Then the huge man sank to the ground and buried his face in his hands. It was dark and difficult to see, but it looked as if Barak’s shoulders were shaking with a kind of terrible suppressed grief—a soundless, wrenching series of convulsive sobs.

“Where are we?” Garion asked, looking around into the darkness.

Barak coughed and wiped at his face.

“Quite a ways from the tents. It took me a little while to catch up to the two who were carrying you off.”

“What happened?” Garion was still a bit confused.

“They’re dead. Can you stand up?”

“I don’t know.” Garion tried to get up, but a wave of giddiness swept over him, and his stomach churned.

“Never mind. I’ll carry you,” Barak said in a now—grimly practical voice. An owl screeched from a nearby tree, and its ghostly white shape drifted off through the trees ahead of them. As Barak lifted him, Garion closed his eyes and concentrated on keeping his stomach under control.

Before long they came out into the clearing and its circle of firelight.

“Is he all right?” Aunt Pol asked, looking up from bandaging a cut on Durnik’s arm.

“A bump on the head is all,” Barak replied, setting Garion down.

“Did you run them off?”

His voice was harsh, even brutal.

“Those that could still run,” Silk answered, his voice a bit excited and his ferret eyes bright. “They left a few behind.” He pointed at a number of still shapes lying near the edge of the firelight.

Lelldorin came back into the clearing, looking over his shoulder and with his bow half drawn. He was out of breath, his face was pale, and his hands were shaking. “Are you all right?” he asked as soon as he saw Garion.

Garion nodded, gently fingering the lump behind his ear.

“I tried to find the two who took you,” the young man declared, “but they were too quick for me. There’s some kind of animal out there. I heard it growling while I was looking for you—awful growls.”

“The beast is gone now,” Barak told him flatly.

“What’s the matter with you?” Silk asked the big man.

“Nothing.”

“Who were these men?” Garion asked.

“Robbers, most likely,” Silk surmised, putting away his dagger. “It’s one of the benefits of a society that holds men in serfdom. They get bored with being serfs and go out into the forest looking for excitement and profit.”

“You sound just like Garion,” Lelldorin objected. “Can’t you people understand that serfdom’s part of the natural order of things here? Our serfs couldn’t take care of themselves alone, so those of us in higher station accept the responsibility of caring for them.”

“Of course you do,” Silk agreed sarcastically. “They’re not so well-fed as your pigs nor as well-kenneled as your dogs, but you do care for them, don’t you?”

“That’ll do, Silk,” Aunt Pol said coolly. “Let’s not start bickering among ourselves.” She tied a last knot on Durnik’s bandage and came over to examine Garion’s head. She touched her fingers gently to the lump, and he winced.

“It doesn’t seem too serious,” she observed.

“It hurts all the same,” he complained.

“Of course it does, dear,” she said calmly. She dipped a cloth in a pail of cold water and held it to the lump. “You’re going to have to learn to protect your head, Garion. If you keep banging it like this, you’re going to soften your brains.”

Garion was about to answer that, but Hettar and Mister Wolf came back into the firelight just then.

“They’re still running,” Hettar announced. The steel discs on his horsehide jacket gleamed red in the flickering light, and his sabre was streaked with blood.

“They seemed to be awfully good at that part of it,” Wolf said. “Is everyone all right?”

“A few bumps and bruises is about all,” Aunt Pol told him. “It could have been much worse.”

“Let’s not start worrying about what could have been.”

“Shall we remove those?” Barak growled, pointing at the bodies littering the ground near the brook.

“Shouldn’t they be buried?” Durnik asked. His voice shook a little, and his face was very pale.

“Too much trouble,” Barak said bluntly. “Their friends can come back later and take care of it—if they feel like it.”

“Isn’t that just a little uncivilized?” Durnik objected.

Barak shrugged. “It’s customary.”

Mister Wolf rolled one of the bodies over and carefully examined the dead man’s gray face.

“Looks like an ordinary Arendish outlaw,” he grunted. “It’s hard to say for sure, though.”

Lelldorin was retrieving his arrows, carefully pulling them out of the bodies.

“Let’s drag them all over there a ways,” Barak said to Hettar. “I’m getting tired of looking at them.”

Durnik looked away, and Garion saw two great tears standing in his eyes.

“Does it hurt, Durnik?” he asked sympathetically, sitting on the log beside his friend.

“I killed one of those men, Garion,” the smith replied in a shaking voice. “I hit him in the face with my axe. He screamed, and his blood splashed all over me. Then he fell down and kicked on the ground with his heels until he died.”

“You didn’t have any choice, Durnik,” Garion told him. “They were trying to kill us.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” Durnik said, the tears now running down his face. “He kicked the ground for such a long time—such a terribly long time.”

“Why don’t you go to bed, Garion?” Aunt Pol suggested firmly. Her eyes were on Durnik’s tear-streaked face.

Garion understood.

“Good night, Durnik,” he said. He got up and started toward one of the tents. He glanced back once. Aunt Pol had seated herself on the log beside the smith and was speaking quietly to him with one of her arms comfortingly about his shoulders.

5

The fire had burned down to a tiny orange flicker outside the tent, and the forest around the clearing was silent. Garion lay with a throbbing head trying to sleep. Finally, long past midnight, he gave it up. He slid out from under his blanket and went searching for Aunt Pol.

Above the silvery fog a full moon had risen, and its light made the mist luminous. The air around him seemed almost to glow as he picked his way carefully through the silent camp. He scratched on the outside of her tent flap and whispered, “Aunt Pol?” There was no answer. “Aunt Pol,” he whispered a bit louder, “it’s me, Garion. May I come in?” There was still no answer, nor even the faintest sound. Carefully he pulled back the flap and peered inside. The tent was empty.

Puzzled, even a bit alarmed, he turned and looked around the clearing. Hettar stood watch not far from the picketed horses, his hawk face turned toward the foggy forest and his cape drawn about him. Garion hesitated a moment and then stepped quietly behind the tents. He angled down through the trees and the filmy, luminous fog toward the brook, thinking that if he bathed his aching head in cold water it might help. He was about fifty yards from the tents when he saw a faint movement among the trees ahead. He stopped.

A huge gray wolf padded out of the fog and stopped in the center of a small open space among the trees. Garion drew in his breath sharply and froze beside a large, twisted oak. The wolf sat down on the damp leaves as if he were waiting for something. The glowing fog illuminated details Garion would not have been able to see on an ordinary night. The wolf’s ruff and shoulders were silvery, and his muzzle was shot with gray. He carried his age with enormous dignity, and his yellow eyes seemed calm and very wise somehow.

Garion stood absolutely still. He knew that the slightest sound would instantly reach the sharp ears of the wolf, but it was more than that. The blow behind his ear had made him light-headed, and the strange glow of moon-drenched fog made this encounter seem somehow unreal. He found that he was holding his breath.

A large, snowy white owl swooped over the open space among the trees on ghosting wings, settled on a low branch and perched there, looking down at the wolf with an unblinking stare. The gray wolf looked calmly back at the perched bird. Then, though there was no breath of wind, it seemed somehow that a sudden eddy in the shimmering fog made the figures of the owl and the wolf hazy and indistinct. When it cleared again, Mister Wolf stood in the center of the opening, and Aunt Pol in her gray gown was seated rather sedately on the limb above him.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve hunted together, Polgara,” the old man said.

“Yes, it has, father.” She raised her arms and pushed her fingers through the long, dark weight of her hair. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like.” She seemed to shudder then with a strange kind of pleasure. “It’s a very good night for it.”

“A little damp,” he replied, shaking one foot.

“It’s very clear above the treetops, and the stars are particularly bright. It’s a splendid night for flying.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Did you happen to remember what you were supposed to be doing?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, father.”

“Well?”

“There’s no one in the vicinity but Arends, and most of them are asleep.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. There isn’t a Grolim for five leagues in any direction. Did you find the ones you were looking for?”

“They weren’t hard to follow,” Wolf answered. “They’re staying in a cave about three leagues deeper into the forest. Another one of them died on their way back there, and a couple more probably won’t live until morning. The rest of them seemed a little bitter about the way things turned out.”

“I can imagine. Did you get close enough to hear what they were saying?”

He nodded. “There’s a man in one of the villages nearby who watches the road and lets them know when somebody passes by who might be worth robbing.”

“Then they’re just ordinary thieves?”

“Not exactly. They were watching for us in particular. We’d all been described to them in rather complete detail.”

“I think I’ll go talk to this villager,” she said grimly. She flexed her fingers in an unpleasantly suggestive manner.

“It’s not worth the time it would take,” Wolf told her, scratching thoughtfully at his beard. “All he’d be able to tell you is that some Murgo offered him gold. Grolims don’t bother to explain very much to their hirelings.”

“We should attend to him, father,” she insisted. “We don’t want him lurking behind us, trying to buy up every brigand in Arendia to send after us.”

“After tomorrow he won’t buy much of anything,” Wolf replied with a short laugh. “His friends plan to lure him out into the woods in the morning and cut his throat for him—among other things.”

“Good. I’d like to know who the Grolim is, though.”

Wolf shrugged. “What difference does it make? There are dozens of them in northern Arendia, all stirring up as much trouble as they can. They know what’s coming as well as we do. We can’t expect them to just sit back and let us pass.”

“Shouldn’t we put a stop to it?”

“We don’t have the time,” he said. “It takes forever to explain things to Arends. If we move fast enough, maybe we can slip by before the Grolims are ready.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then we’ll do it the other way. I’ve got to get to Zedar before he crosses into Cthol Murgos. If too many things get in my way, I’ll have to be more direct.”

“You should have done that from the beginning, father. Sometimes you’re too delicate about things.”

“Are you going to start that again? That’s always your answer to everything, Polgara. You’re forever fixing things that would fix themselves if you’d just leave them alone, and changing things when they don’t have to be changed.”

“Don’t be cross, father. Help me down.”

“Why not fly down?” he suggested.

“Don’t be absurd.”

Garion slipped away among the mossy trees, trembling violently as he went.

When Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf returned to the clearing, they roused the others. “I think we’d better move on,” Wolf told them. “We’re a little vulnerable out here. It’s safer on the highway, and I’d like to get past this particular stretch of woods.”

The dismantling of their night’s encampment took less than an hour, and they started back along the woodcutter’s track toward the Great West Road. Though it was still some hours before dawn, the moonbathed fog filled the night with misty luminosity, and it seemed almost as if they rode through a shining cloud that had settled among the dark trees. They reached the highway and turned south again.

“I’d like to be a good way from here when the sun comes up,” Wolf said quietly, “but we don’t want to blunder into anything, so keep your eyes and ears open.”

They set off at a canter and had covered a good three leagues by the time the fog had begun to turn a pearly gray with the approach of morning. As they rounded a broad curve, Hettar suddenly raised his arm, signaling for a halt.

“What’s wrong?” Barak asked him.

“Horses ahead,” Hettar replied. “Coming this way.”

“Are you sure? I don’t hear anything.”

“Forty at least,” Hettar answered firmly.

“There,” Durnik said, his head cocked to one side. “Hear that?”

Faintly they all heard a jingling clatter some distance off in the fog. “We could hide in the woods until they’ve passed,” Lelldorin suggested.

“It’s better to stay on the road,” Wolf replied.

“Let me handle it,” Silk said confidently, moving into the lead. “I’ve done this sort of thing before.” They proceeded at a careful walk.

The riders who emerged from the fog were encased in steel. They wore full suits of polished armor and round helmets with pointed visors that made them look strangely like huge insects. They earned long lances with colored pennons at their tips, and their horses were massive beasts, also encased in armor.

“Mimbrate knights,” Lelldorin snarled, his eyes going flat.

“Keep your feelings to yourself,” Wolf told the young man. “If any of them say anything to you, answer in such a way that they’ll think you’re a Mimbrate sympathizer—like young Berentain back at your uncle’s house.”

Lelldorin’s face hardened.

“Do as he tells you, Lelldorin,” Aunt Pol said. “This isn’t the time for heroics.”

“Hold!” the leader of the armored column commanded, lowering his lance until the steel point was leveled at them. “Let one come forward so that I may speak with him.” The knight’s tone was peremptory.

Silk moved toward the steel-cased man, his smile ingratiating. “We’re glad to see you, Sir Knight,” he lied glibly. “We were set upon by robbers last night, and we’ve been riding in fear of our lives.”

“What is thy name?” the knight demanded, raising his visor, “and who are these who accompany thee?”

“I am Radek of Boktor, my Lord,” Silk answered, bowing and pulling off his velvet cap, “a merchant of Drasnia bound for Tol Honeth with Sendarian woolens in hopes of catching the winter market.”

The armored man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Thy party seems overlarge for so simple an undertaking, worthy merchant.”

“The three there are my servants,” Silk told him, pointing at Barak, Hettar, and Durnik. “The old man and the boy serve my sister, a widow of independent means who accompanies me so that she might visit Tol Honeth.”

“What of the other?” the knight pressed. “The Asturian?”

“A young nobleman traveling to Vo Mimbre to visit friends there. He graciously consented to guide us through this forest.”

The knight’s suspicion seemed to relax a bit. “Thou madest mention of robbers,” he said. “Where did this ambush take place?”

“About three or four leagues back. They set upon us after we had made our night’s encampment. We managed to beat them off, but my sister was terrified.”

“This province of Asturia seethes with rebellion and brigandage,” the knight said sternly. “My men and I are sent to suppress such offenses. Come here, Asturian.”

Lelldorin’s nostrils flared, but he obediently came forward. “I will require thy name of thee.”

“My name is Lelldorin, Sir Knight. How may I serve thee?”

“These robbers thy friends spoke of—were they commons or men of quality?”

“Serfs, my Lord,” Lelldorin replied, “ragged and uncouth. Doubtless fled from lawful submission to their masters to take up outlawry in the forest.”

“How may we expect duty and proper submission from serfs when nobles raise detestable rebellion against the crown?” the knight asserted.

“Truly, my Lord,” Lelldorin agreed with a show of sadness that was a trifle overdone. “Much have I argued that selfsame point with those who speak endlessly of Mimbrate oppression and overweening arrogance. My appeals for reason and dutiful respect for His Majesty, our Lord King, however, are greeted with derision and cold despite.” He sighed.

“Thy wisdom becomes thee, young Lelldorin,” the knight approved. “Regrettably, I must detain thee and thy companions in order that we may verify certain details.”

“Sir Knight!” Silk protested vigorously. “A change in the weather could destroy the value of my merchandise in Tol Honeth. I pray you, don’t delay me.”

“I regret the necessity, good merchant,” the knight replied, “but Asturia is filled with dissemblers and plotters. I can permit none to pass without meticulous examination.”

There was a stir at the rear of the Mimbrate column. In single file, resplendent in burnished breastplates, plumed helmets and crimson capes, a half a hundred Tolnedran legionnaires rode slowly along the flank of the armored knights.

“What seems to be the problem here?” the legion commander, a lean, leather-faced man of forty or so, asked politely as he stopped not far from Silk’s horse.

“We do not require the assistance of the legions in this matter,” the knight said coldly. “Our orders are from Vo Mimbre. We are sent to help restore order in Asturia and we were questioning these travelers to that end.”

“I have a great respect for order, Sir Knight,” the Tolnedran replied, “but the security of the highway is my responsibility.” He looked inquiringly at Silk.

“I am Radek of Boktor, Captain,” Silk told him, “a Drasnian merchant bound for Tol Honeth. I have documents, if you wish to see them.”

“Documents are easily forged,” the knight declared.

“So they are,” the Tolnedran agreed, “but to save time I make it a practice to accept all documents at face value. A Drasnian merchant with goods in his packs has a legitimate reason to be on an Imperial Highway, Sir Knight. There’s no reason to detain him, is there?”

“We seek to stamp out banditry and rebellion,” the knight asserted hotly.

“Stamp away,” the captain said, “but off the highway, if you don’t mind. By treaty the Imperial Highway is Tolnedran territory. What you do once you’re fifty yards back in the trees is your affair; what happens on this road is mine. I’m certain that no true Mimbrate knight would want to humiliate his king by violating a solemn agreement between the Arendish crown and the Emperor of Tolnedra, would he?”

The knight looked at him helplessly.

“I think you should proceed, good merchant,” the Tolnedran told Silk. “I know that all Tol Honeth awaits your arrival breathlessly.” Silk grinned at him and bowed fioridly in his saddle. Then he gestured to the others and they all rode slowly past the fuming Mimbrate knight. After they had passed, the legionnaires closed ranks across the highway, effectively cutting off any pursuit.

“Good man there,” Barak said. “I don’t think much of Tolnedrans ordinarily, but that one’s different.”

“Let’s move right along,” Mister Wolf said. “I’d rather not have those knights doubling back on us after the Tolnedrans leave.”

They pushed their horses into a gallop and rode on, leaving the knights behind, arguing heatedly with the legion commander in the middle of the road.

They stayed that night at a thick-walled Tolnedran hostel, and for perhaps the first time in his life Garion bathed without the insistence or even the suggestion of his Aunt. Though he had not had the chance to become directly involved in the fight in the clearing the night before, he felt somehow as if he were spattered with blood or worse. He had not before realized how grotesquely men could be mutilated in close fighting. Watching a living man disembowled or brained had filled him with a kind of deep shame that the ultimate inner secrets of the human body could be so grossly exposed. He felt unclean. He removed his clothing in the chilly bathhouse and even, without thinking, the silver amulet Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol had given him, and then he entered the steaming tub where he scrubbed at his skin with a coarse brush and strong soap, much harder than even the most meticulous obsession with personal cleanliness would have required.

For the next several days they moved southward at a steady pace, stopping each night at the evenly spaced Tolnedran hostels where the presence of the hard-faced legionnaires was a continual reminder that all the might of Imperial Tolnedra guaranteed the safety of travelers who sought refuge there.

On the sixth day after the fight in the forest, however, Lelldorin’s horse pulled up lame. Durnik and Hettar, under Aunt Pol’s supervision, spent several hours brewing poultices over a small fire by the roadside and applying steaming compresses to the animal’s leg while Wolf fumed at the delay. By the time the horse was fit to continue, they all realized that there was no chance to reach the next hostel before dark.

“Well, Old Wolf,” Aunt Pol said after they had remounted, “what now? Do we ride on at night, or do we try to take shelter in the forest again?”

“I haven’t decided,” Wolf answered shortly.

“If I remember right, there’s a village not far ahead,” Lelldorin, now mounted on an Algar horse, stated. “It’s a poor place, but I think it has an inn—of sorts.”

“That sounds ominous,” Silk said. “What exactly do you mean by ‘of sorts’?”

“The Lord of this demesne is notoriously greedy,” Lelldorin replied. “His taxes are crushing, and his people have little left for themselves. The inn isn’t good.”

“We’ll have to chance it,” Wolf decided, and led them off at a brisk trot. As they approached the village, the heavy clouds began to clear off, and the sun broke through wanly.

The village was even worse than Lelldorin’s description had led them to believe. A half dozen ragged beggars stood in the mud on the outskirts, their hands held out imploringly and their voices shrill. The houses were nothing more than rude hovels oozing smoke from the pitiful fires within. Scrawny pigs rooted in the muddy streets, and the stench of the place was awful.

A funeral procession slogged through the mud toward the burial ground on the other side of the village. The corpse, carried on a board, was wrapped in a ragged brown blanket, and the richly robed and cowled priests of Chaldan, the Arendish God, chanted an age-old hymn that had much to do with war and vengeance, but little to do with comfort. The widow, a whimpering infant at her breast, followed the body, her face blank and her eyes dead.

The inn smelled of stale beer and half-rotten food. A fire had destroyed one end of the common room, charring and blackening the low-beamed ceiling. The gaping hole in the burned wall was curtained off with a sheet of rotting canvas. The fire pit in the center of the room smoked, and the hard-faced innkeeper was surly. For supper he offered only bowls of watery gruel—a mixture of barley and turnips.

“Charming,” Silk said sardonically, pushing away his untouched bowl. “I’m a bit surprised at you, Lelldorin. Your passion for correcting wrongs seems to have overlooked this place. Might I suggest that your next crusade include a visit to the Lord of this demesne? His hanging seems long overdue.”

“I hadn’t realized it was so bad,” Lelldorin replied in a subdued voice. He looked around as if seeing certain things for the first time. A kind of sick horror began to show itself in his transparent face.

Garion, his stomach churning, stood up. “I think I’ll go outside,” he declared.

“Not too far,” Aunt Pol warned.

The air outside was at least somewhat cleaner, and Garion picked his way carefully toward the edge of the village, trying to avoid the worst of the mud.

“Please, my Lord,” a little girl with huge eyes begged, “have you a crust of bread to spare?”

Garion looked at her helplessly. “I’m sorry.” He fumbled through his clothes, looking for something to give her, but the child began to cry and turned away.

In the stump-dotted field beyond the stinking streets, a ragged boy about Garion’s own age was playing a wooden flute as he watched a few scrubby cows. The melody he played was heartbreakingly pure, drifting unnoticed among the hovels squatting in the slanting rays of the pale sun. The boy saw him, but did not break off his playing. Their eyes met with a kind of grave recognition, but they did not speak.

At the edge of the forest beyond the field, a dark-robed and hooded man astride a black horse came out of the trees and sat watching the village. There was something ominous about the dark figure, and something vaguely familiar as well. It seemed somehow to Garion that he should know who the rider was, but, though his mind groped for a name, it tantalizingly eluded him. He looked at the figure at the edge of the woods for a long time, noticing without even being aware of it that though the horse and rider stood in the full light of the setting sun, there was no shadow behind them. Deep in his mind something tried to shriek at him, but, all bemused, he merely watched. He would not say anything to Aunt Pol or the others about the figure at the edge of the woods because there was nothing to say; as soon as he turned his back, he would forget.

The light began to fade, and, because he had begun to shiver, he turned to go back to the inn with the aching song of the boy’s flute soaring toward the sky above him.

6

Despite the promise of the brief Sunset, the next day dawned cold and murky with a chill drizzle that wreathed down among the trees and made the entire forest sodden and gloomy. They left the inn early and soon entered a part of the wood that seemed more darkly foreboding than even the ominous stretches through which they had previously passed. The trees here were enormous, and many vast, gnarled oaks lifted their bare limbs among the dark firs and spruces. The forest floor was covered with a kind of gray moss that looked diseased and unwholesome.

Lelldorin had spoken little that morning, and Garion assumed that his friend was still struggling with the problem of Nachak’s scheme. The young Asturian rode along, wrapped in his heavy green cloak, his reddish-gold hair damp and dispirited-looking in the steady drizzle. Garion pulled in beside his friend, and they rode silently for a while. “What’s troubling you, Lelldorin?” he asked finally.

“I think that all my life I’ve been blind, Garion,” Lelldorin replied.

“Oh? In what way?” Garion said it carefully, hoping that his friend had finally decided to tell Mister Wolf everything.

“I saw only Mimbre’s oppression of Asturia. I never saw our own oppression of our own people.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that,” Garion pointed out. “What made you see it finally?”

“That village where we stayed last night,” Lelldorin explained. “I’ve never seen so poor and mean a place—or people crushed into such hopeless misery. How can they bear it?”

“Do they have any choice?”

“My father at least looks after the people on his land,” the young man asserted defensively. “No one goes hungry or without shelter—but those people are treated worse than animals. I’ve always been proud of my station, but now it makes me ashamed.” Tears actually stood in his eyes.

Garion was not sure how to deal with his friend’s sudden awakening. On the one hand, he was glad that Lelldorin had finally seen what had always been obvious; but on the other, he was more than a little afraid of what this newfound perception might cause his mercurial companion to leap into.

“I’ll renounce my rank,” Lelldorin declared suddenly, as if he had been listening to Garion’s thoughts, “and when I return from this quest, I’ll go among the serfs and share their lives—their sorrows.”

“What good will that do? How would your suffering in any way make theirs less?”

Lelldorin looked up sharply, a half dozen emotions chasing each other across his open face. Finally he smiled, but there was a determination in his blue eyes. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “You always are. It’s amazing how you can always see directly to the heart of a problem, Garion.”

“Just what have you got in mind?” Garion asked a little apprehensively.

“I’ll lead them in revolt. I’ll sweep across Arendia with an army of serfs at my back.” His voice rang as his imagination fired with the idea.

Garion groaned. “Why is that always your answer to everything, Lelldorin?” he demanded. “In the first place, the serfs don’t have any weapons and they don’t know how to fight. No matter how hard you talk, you’d never get them to follow you. In the second place, if they did, every nobleman in Arendia would join ranks against you. They’d butcher your army; and afterward, things would be ten times worse. In the third place, you’d just be starting another civil war; and that’s exactly what the Murgos want.”

Lelldorin blinked several times as Garion’s words sank in. His face gradually grew mournful again. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he confessed.

“I didn’t think you had. You’re going to keep making these mistakes as long as you keep carrying your brain in the same scabbard with your sword, Lelldorin.”

Lelldorin hushed at that, and then he laughed ruefully. “That’s a pointed way of putting it, Garion,” he said reproachfully.

“I’m sorry,” Garion apologized quickly. “Maybe I should have said it another way.”

“No,” Lelldorin told him. “I’m an Arend. I tend to miss things if they aren’t said directly.”

“It’s not that you’re stupid, Lelldorin,” Garion protested. “That’s a mistake everyone makes. Arends aren’t stupid—they’re just impulsive.”

“All this was more than just impulsiveness,” Lelldorin insisted sadly, gesturing out at the damp moss lying under the trees.

“This what?” Garion asked, looking around.

“This is the last stretch of forest before we come out on the plains of central Arendia,” Lelldorin explained. “It’s the natural boundary between Mimbre and Asturia.”

“The woods look the same as all the rest,” Garion observed, looking around.

“Not really,” Lelldorin said somberly. “This was the favorite ground for ambush. The floor of this forest is carpeted with old bones. Look there.” He pointed.

At first it seemed to Garion that what his friend indicated was merely a pair of twisted sticks protruding from the moss with the twigs at their ends entangled in a scrubby bush. Then, with revulsion, he realized that they were the greenish bones of a human arm, the fingers clutched at the bush in a last convulsive agony. Outraged, he demanded, “Why didn’t they bury him?”

“It would take a thousand men a thousand years to gather all the bones that lie here and commit them to earth,” Lelldorin intoned morbidly. “Whole generations of Arendia rest here—Mimbrate, Wacite, Asturian. All lie where they fell, and the moss blankets their endless slumber.”

Garion shuddered and pulled his eyes away from the mute appeal of that lone arm rising from the sea of moss on the floor of the forest. The curious lumps and hummocks of that moss suggested the horror which lay moldering beneath. As he raised his eyes, he realized that the uneven surface extended as far as he could see, “How long until we reach the plain?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Two days, probably.”

“Two days? And it’s all like this?”

Lelldorin nodded.

“Why?” Garion’s tone was harsher, more accusing than he’d intended.

“At first for pride—and honor,” Lelldorin replied. “Later for grief and revenge. Finally it was simply because we didn’t know how to stop. As you said before, sometimes we Arends aren’t very bright.”

“But always brave,” Garion answered quickly.

“Oh yes,” Lelldorin admitted. “Always brave. It’s our national curse.”

“Belgarath,” Hettar said quietly from behind them, “the horses smell something.”

Mister Wolf roused himself from the doze in which he usually rode. “What?”

“The horses,” Hettar repeated. “Something out there’s frightening them.”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed and then grew strangely blank. After a moment he drew in a sharp breath with a muttered curse.

“Algroths,” he swore.

“What’s an Algroth?” Durnik asked.

“A non-human-somewhat distantly related to Trolls.”

“I saw a Troll once,” Barak said. “A big ugly thing with claws and fangs.”

“Will they attack us?” Durnik asked.

“Almost certainly.” Wolf’s voice was tense. “Hettar, you’re going to have to keep the horses under control. We don’t dare get separated.”

“Where did they come from?” Lelldorin asked. “There aren’t any monsters in this forest.”

“They come down out of the mountains of Ulgo sometimes when they get hungry,” Wolf answered. “They don’t leave survivors to report their presence.”

“You’d better do something, father,” Aunt Pol said. “They’re all around us.”

Lelldorin looked quickly around as if getting his bearings. “We’re not far from Elgon’s tor,” he offered. “We might be able to hold them off if we get there.”

“Elgon’s tor?” Barak said. He had already drawn his heavy sword.

“It’s a high hillock covered with boulders,” Lelldorin explained. “It’s almost like a fort. Elgon held it for a month against a Mimbrate army.”

“Sounds promising,” Silk said. “It would get us out of the trees at least.” He looked nervously around at the forest looming about them in the drizzling rain.

“Let’s try for it,” Wolf decided. “They haven’t worked themselves up to the point of attacking yet, and the rain’s confusing their sense of smell.”

A strange barking sound came from back in the forest.

“Is that them?” Garion asked, his voice sounding shrill in his own ears.

“They’re calling to each other,” Wolf told him. “Some of them have seen us. Let’s pick up the pace a bit, but don’t start running until we see the tor.”

They nudged their nervous horses into a trot and moved steadily along the muddy road as it began to climb toward the top of a low ridge. “Half a league,” Lelldorin said tensely. “Half a league and we should see the tor.”

The horses were difficult to hold in, and their eyes rolled wildly at the surrounding woods. Garion felt his heart pounding, and his mouth was suddenly dry. It started to rain a bit harder. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and looked quickly. A manlike figure was loping along parallel to the road about a hundred paces back in the forest. It ran half crouched, its hands touching the ground. It seemed to be a loathsome gray color.

“Over there!” Garion cried.

“I saw him,” Barak growled. “Not quite as big as a Troll.”

Silk grimaced. “Big enough.”

“If they attack, be careful of their claws,” Wolf warned. “They’re venomous.”

“That’s exciting,” Silk said.

“There’s the tor,” Aunt Pol announced quite calmly.

“Let’s run!” Wolf barked.

The frightened horses, suddenly released, leaped forward and fled up the road, their hoofs churning. An enraged howl came from the woods behind them, and the barking sound grew louder all around them.

“We’re going to make it!” Durnik shouted in encouragement. But suddenly a half-dozen snarling Algroths were in the road in front of them, their arms spread wide and their mouths gaping hideously. They were huge, with apelike arms and claws instead of fingers. Their faces were goatish, surmounted by short, sharp-pointed horns, and they had long, yellow fangs. Their gray skin was scaly, reptilian.

The horses screamed and reared, trying to bolt. Garion clung to his saddle with one hand and fought the reins with the other.

Barak beat at his horse’s rump with the flat of his sword and kicked savagely at the animal’s flanks until the horse, finally more afraid of him than the Algroths, charged. With two great sweeps, one to either side, Barak killed two of the beasts as he plunged through. A third, claws outstretched, tried to leap on his back, but stiffened and collapsed facedown in the mud with one of Lelldorin’s arrows between its shoulders. Barak wheeled his horse and chopped at the three remaining creatures. “Let’s go!” he bellowed.

Garion heard Lelldorin gasp and turned quickly. With sick horror he saw that a lone Algroth had crept out of the woods beside the road and was clawing at his friend, trying to hook him out of the saddle. Weakly, Lelldorin beat at the goat face with his bow. Garion desperately drew his sword, but Hettar, coming from behind, was already there. His curved sabre ran through the beast’s body, and the Algroth shrieked and fell writhing to the ground beneath the pounding hoofs of the pack animals.

The horses, running now in sheer panic, scrambled toward the slope of the boulder-strewn tor. Garion glanced back over his shoulder and saw Lelldorin swaying dangerously in his saddle, his hand pressed to his bleeding side. Garion pulled in savagely on his reins and turned his horse.

“Save yourself, Garion!” Lelldorin shouted, his face deadly pale.

“No!” Garion sheathed his sword, pulled in beside his friend and took his arm, steadying him in the saddle. Together they galloped toward the tor with Garion straining to hold the injured young man.

The tor was a great jumble of earth and stone thrusting up above the tallest trees around it. Their horses scrambled and clattered up the side among the wet boulders. When they reached the small flat area at the top of the tor where the pack animals huddled together, trembling in the rain, Garion slid out of his saddle in time to catch Lelldorin, who toppled slowly to one side.

“Over here,” Aunt Pol called sharply. She was pulling her small bundle of herbs and bandages out of one of the packs. “Durnik, I’ll need a fire—at once.”

Durnik looked around helplessly at the few scraps of wood lying in the rain at the top of the tor. “I’ll try,” he said doubtfully.

Lelldorin’s breathing was shallow and very fast. His face was still a deadly white, and his legs would not hold him. Garion held him up, a sick fear in the pit of his stomach. Hettar took the wounded man’s other arm, and between them they half carried him to where Aunt Pol knelt, opening her bundle.

“I have to get the poison out immediately,” she told them. “Garion, give me your knife.”

Garion drew his dagger and handed it to her. Swiftly she ripped open Lelldorin’s brown tunic along his side, revealing the savage wounds the Algroth’s claws had made.

“This will hurt,” she said. “Hold him.”

Garion and Hettar took hold of Lelldorin’s arms and legs, holding him down.

Aunt Pol took a deep breath and then deftly sliced open each of the puffy wounds. Blood spurted and Lelldorin screamed once. Then he fainted.

“Hettar!” Barak shouted from atop a boulder near the edge of the slope. “We need you!”

“Go!” Aunt Pol told the hawk-faced Algar. “We can handle this now. Garion, you stay here.” She was crushing some dried leaves and sprinkling the fragments into the bleeding wounds. “The fire, Durnik,” she ordered.

“It won’t start, Mistress Pol,” Durnik replied helplessly. “It’s too wet.”

She looked quickly at the pile of sodden wood the smith had gathered.

Her eyes narrowed, and she made a quick gesture. Garion’s ears rang strangely and there was a sudden hissing. A cloud of steam burst from the wood, and then crackling flames curled up from the sticks. Durnik jumped back, startled.

“The small pot, Garion,” Aunt Pol instructed, “and water. Quickly.” She pulled off her blue cloak and covered Lelldorin with it.

Silk, Barak and Hettar stood at the edge of the slope, heaving large rocks over the edge. Garion could hear the clatter and clash of the rocks striking the boulders below and the barking of the Algroths, punctuated by an occasional howl of pain.

He cradled his friend’s head in his lap, terribly afraid. “Is he going to be all right?” he appealed to Aunt Pol.

“It’s too early to tell,” she answered. “Don’t bother me with questions just now.”

“They’re running!” Barak shouted.

“They’re still hungry,” Wolf replied grimly. “They’ll be back.”

From far off in the forest there came the sound of a brassy horn.

“What’s that?” Silk asked, still puffing from the effort of heaving the heavy stones over the edge.

“Someone I’ve been expecting,” Wolf answered with a strange smile. He raised his hands to his lips and whistled shrilly.

“I can manage now, Garion,” Aunt Pol said, mashing a thick paste into a steaming pad of wet linen bandage. “You and Durnik go help the others.”

Reluctantly Garion lowered Lelldorin’s head to the wet turf and ran over to where Wolf stood. The slope below was littered with dead and dying Algroths, crushed by the rocks Barak and the others had hurled down on them.

“They’re going to try again,” Barak said, hefting another rock. “Can they get at us from behind?”

Silk shook his head. “No. I checked. The back of the hill’s a sheer face.”

The Algroths came out of the woods below, barking and snarling as they loped forward with their half crouched gait. The first of them had already crossed the road when the horn blew again, very close this time.

And then a huge horse bearing a man in full armor burst out of the trees and thundered down upon the attacking creatures. The armored man crouched over his lance and plunged directly into the midst of the startled Algroths. The great horse screamed as he charged, and his iron-shod hoofs churned up big clots of mud. The lance crashed through the chest of one of the largest Algroths and splintered from the force of the blow. The splintered end took another full in the face. The knight discarded the shattered lance and drew his broadsword with a single sweep of his arm. With wide swings to the right and left he chopped his way through the pack, his warhorse trampling the living and the dead alike into the mud of the road. At the end of his charge he whirled and plunged back again, once more opening a path with his sword. The Algroths turned and fled howling into the woods.

“Mandorallen!” Wolf shouted. “Up here!”

The armored knight raised his blood-spattered visor and looked up the hill. “Permit me to disperse this rabble first, my ancient friend,” he answered gaily, clanged down his visor, and plunged into the rainy woods after the Algroths.

“Hettar!” Barak shouted, already moving.

Hettar nodded tersely, and the two of them ran to their horses. They swung into their saddles and plunged down the wet slope to the aid of the stranger.

“Your friend shows a remarkable lack of good sense,” Silk observed to Mister Wolf, wiping the rain from his face. “Those things will turn on him any second now.”

“It probably hasn’t occurred to him that he’s in any danger,” Wolf replied. “He’s a Mimbrate, and they tend to think they’re invincible.” The fight in the woods seemed to last for a long time. There were shouts and ringing blows and shrieks of terror from the Algroths. Then Hettar, Barak, and the strange knight rode out of the trees and trotted up the tor. At the top, the armored man clanged down from his horse. “Well met, my old friend,” he boomed to Mister Wolf. “Thy friends below were most frolicsome.” His armor gleamed wetly in the rain.

“I’m glad we found something to entertain you,” Wolf said dryly.

“I can still hear them,” Durnik reported. “I think they’re still running.”

“Their cowardice hath deprived us of an amusing afternoon,” the knight observed, regretfully sheathing his sword and removing his helmet.

“We must all make sacrifices,” Silk drawled.

The knight sighed. “All too true. Thou art a man of philosophy, I see.” He shook the water out of the white plume on his helmet.

“Forgive me,” Mister Wolf said. “This is Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor. He’ll be going with us. Mandorallen, this is Prince Kheldar of Drasnia and Barak, Earl of Trellheim and cousin to King Anheg of Cherek. Over there is Hettar, son of Cho-Hag, chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria. The practical one is Goodman Durnik of Sendaria, and this boy is Garion, my grandson—several times removed.”

Mandorallen bowed deeply to each of them. “I greet you, comrades all,” he declaimed in his booming voice. “Our adventure hath seen a fortuitous beginning. And pray tell, who is this lady, whose beauty doth bedazzle mine eye?”

“A pretty speech, Sir Knight,” Aunt Pol replied with a rich laugh, her hand going almost unconsciously to her damp hair. “I’m going to like this one, father.”

“The legendary Lady Polgara?” Mandorallen asked. “My life hath now seen its crown.” His courtly bow was somewhat marred by the creaking of his armor.

“Our injured friend is Lelldorin, son of the Baron of Wildantor,” Wolf continued. “You may have heard of him.”

Mandorallen’s face darkened slightly. “Indeed. Rumor, which sometimes loth run before us like a barking dog, hath suggested that Lelldorin of Wildantor hath raised on occasion foul rebellion against the crown.”

“That’s of no matter now,” Wolf stressed. “The business which has brought us together is much more serious than all that. You’ll have to put it aside.”

“It shall be as you say, noble Belgarath,” Mandorallen declared immediately, though his eyes still lingered on the unconscious Lelldorin.

“Grandfather!” Garion called, pointing at a mounted figure that had suddenly appeared on the side of the stony hilltop. The figure was robed in black and sat a black horse. He pushed back his hood to reveal a polished steel mask cast in the form of a face that was at once beautiful and strangely repelling. A voice deep in Garion’s mind told him that there was something important about the strange rider—something he should remember—but whatever it was eluded him.

“Abandon this quest, Belgarath.” The voice was hollow behind the mask.

“You know me better than that, Chamdar,” Mister Wolf said calmly, quite obviously recognizing the rider. “Was this childishness with the Algroths your idea?”

“And you should know me better than that,” the figure retorted derisively. “When I come against you, you can expect things to be a bit more serious. For now, there are enough underlings about to delay you. That’s all we really need. Once Zedar has carried Cthrag Yaska to my Master, you can try your power against the might and will of Torak, if you’d like.”

“Are you running errands for Zedar, then?” Wolf asked.

“I run no man’s errands,” the figure replied with heavy contempt. The rider seemed solid, as real as any of them standing on the hilltop, but Garion could see the filmy drizzle striking the rocks directly beneath horse and man. Whatever the figure was, the rain was falling right through it.

“Why are you here then, Chamdar?” Wolf demanded.

“Let’s call it curiosity, Belgarath. I wanted to see for myself how you’d managed to translate the Prophecy into everyday terms.” The figure looked around at the others on the hilltop. “Clever,” it said with a certain grudging admiration. “Where did you find them all?”

“I didn’t have to find them, Chamdar,” Wolf answered. “They’ve been there all along. If any part of the Prophecy is valid, then it all has to be valid, doesn’t it? There’s no contrivance involved at all, Each one has come down to me through more generations than you can imagine.”

The figure seemed to hiss with a sharp intake of its breath. “It isn’t complete yet, old man.”

“It will be, Chamdar,” Wolf replied confidently. “I’ve already seen to that.”

“Which is the one who will live twice?” the figure asked suddenly. Wolf smiled coldly, but did not answer.

“Hail, my Queen,” the figure said mockingly then to Aunt Pol.

“Grolim courtesy always leaves me quite cold,” she returned with a frosty look. “I’m not your queen, Chamdar.”

“You will be, Polgara. My Master said that you are to become his wife when he comes into his kingdom. You’ll be queen of all the world.”

“That puts you at a bit of a disadvantage, doesn’t it, Chamdar? If I’m to become your queen, you can’t really cross me, can you?”

“I can work around you, Polgara, and once you’ve become the bride of Torak, his will becomes your will. I’m sure you won’t hold any old grudges at that point.”

“I think we’ve had about enough of this, Chamdar,” Mister Wolf said. “Your conversation’s beginning to bore me. You can have your shadow back now.” He waved his hand negligently as if brushing away a troublesome fly. “Go,” he commanded.

Once again Garion felt that strange surge and that hollow roaring in his mind. The horseman vanished.

“You didn’t destroy him, did you?” Silk gasped in a shocked voice.

“No,” Mister Wolf told him. “It was all just an illusion. It’s a childish trick the Grolims find impressive. A shadow can be projected over quite some distance if you want to take the trouble. All I did was send his shadow back to him.” He grinned suddenly with a sly twist to his lips. “Of course I selected a somewhat indirect route. It may take a few days to make the trip. It won’t actually hurt him, but it’s going to make him a bit uncomfortable—and extremely conspicuous.”

“A most unseemly specter,” Mandorallen observed. “Who was this rude shade?”

“It was Chamdar,” Aunt Pol said, returning her attention to the injured Lelldorin, “one of the chief priests of the Grolims. Father and I have met him before.”

“I think we’d better get off this hilltop,” Wolf stated. “How soon will Lelldorin be able to ride?”

“A week at least,” Aunt Pol replied, “if then.”

“That’s out of the question. We can’t stay here.”

“He can’t ride,” she told him firmly.

“Couldn’t we make a litter of some sort?” Durnik suggested. “I’m sure I can make something we can sling between two horses so we can move him without hurting him.”

“Well, Pol?” Wolf asked.

“I suppose it will be all right,” she said a little dubiously.

“Let’s do it then. We’re much too exposed up here, and we’ve got to move on.”

Durnik nodded and went to the packs for rope to use in building the litter.

7

Sir Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor, was a man of slightly more than medium height. His hair was black and curly, his eyes were deep blue, and he had a resonant voice in which he expressed firmly held opinions. Garion did not like him. The knight’s towering self confidence, an egotism so pure that there was a kind of innocence about it, seemed to confirm the worst of Lelldorin’s dark pronouncements about Mimbrates; and Mandorallen’s extravagant courtesy to Aunt Pol struck Garion as beyond the bounds of proper civility. To make matters even worse, Aunt Pol seemed quite willing to accept the knight’s flatteries at face value.

As they rode through the continuing drizzle along the Great West Road, Garion noted with some satisfaction that his companions appeared to share his opinion. Barak’s expression spoke louder than words; Silk’s eyebrows lifted sardonically at each of the knight’s pronouncements; and Durnik scowled.

Garion, however, had little time to sort out his feelings about the Mimbrate. He rode close beside the litter upon which Lelldorin tossed painfully as the Algroth Polson seared in his wounds. He offered his friend what comfort he could and exchanged frequent worried looks with Aunt Pol, who rode nearby. During the worst of Lelldorin’s paroxysms, Garion helplessly held the young man’s hand, unable to think of anything else to do to ease his pain.

“Bear thine infirmity with fortitude, good youth,” Mandorallen cheerfully advised the injured Asturian after a particularly bad bout that left Lelldorin gasping and moaning. “This discomfort of throe is but an illusion. Thy mind can put it to rest if thou wouldst have it so.”

“That’s exactly the kind of comfort I’d expect from a Mimbrate,” Lelldorin retorted from between clenched teeth. “I think I’d rather you didn’t ride so close. Your opinions smell almost as bad as your armor.”

Mandorallen’s face flushed slightly. “The venom which loth rage through the body of our injured friend hath, it would seem, bereft him of civility as well as sense,” he observed coldly.

Lelldorin half raised himself in the litter as if to respond hotly, but the sudden movement seemed to aggravate his injury, and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

“His wounds are grave,” Mandorallen stated. “Thy poultice, Lady Polgara, may not suffice to save his life.”

“He needs rest,” she told him. “Try not to agitate him so much.”

“I will place myself beyond the reach of his eye,” Mandorallen replied. “Through no fault of mine own, my visage is hateful to him and doth stir him to unhealthful choler.” He moved his warhorse ahead at a canter until he was some distance in front of the rest of them.

“Do they all talk like that?” Garion asked with a certain rancor. “Thee’s and thou’s and cloth’s?”

“Mimbrates tend to be very formal,” Aunt Pol explained. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I think it sounds stupid,” Garion muttered darkly, glaring after the knight.

“An example of good manners won’t hurt you all that much, Garion.”

They rode on through the dripping forest as evening settled among the trees.

“Aunt Pol?” Garion asked finally.

“Yes, dear?”

“What was that Grolim talking about when he said that about you and Torak?”

“It’s something Torak said once when he was raving. The Grolims took it seriously, that’s all.” She pulled her blue cloak tighter about her.

“Doesn’t it worry you?”

“Not particularly.”

“What was that Prophecy the Grolim was talking about? I didn’t understand any of that.” The word “Prophecy” for some reason stirred something very deep in him.

“The Mrin Codex,” she answered. “It’s a very old version, and the writing’s almost illegible. It mentions companions—the bear, the rat, and the man who will live twice. It’s the only version that says anything about them. Nobody knows for certain that it really means anything.”

“Grandfather thinks it does, doesn’t he?”

“Your grandfather has a number of curious notions. Old things impress him—probably because he’s so old himself.”

Garion was going to ask her about this Prophecy that seemed to exist in more than one version, but Lelldorin moaned then and they both immediately turned to him.

They arrived shortly thereafter at a Tolnedran hostel with thick, whitewashed walls and a red tile roof. Aunt Pol saw to it that Lelldorin was placed in a warm room, and she spent the night sitting by his bed caring for him. Garion padded worriedly down the dark hallway in his stocking feet a half-dozen times before morning to check on his friend, but there seemed to be no change.

By daybreak the rain had let up. They started out in the grayish dawn with Mandorallen still riding some distance ahead until they reached at last the edge of the dark forest and saw before them the vast, open expanse of the Arendish central plain, dun-colored and sere in the last few weeks of winter. The knight stopped there and waited for them to join him, his face somber.

“What’s the trouble?” Silk asked him.

Mandorallen pointed gravely at a column of black smoke rising from a few miles out on the plain.

“What is it?” Silk inquired, his rat face puzzled.

“Smoke in Arendia can mean but one thing,” the knight replied, pulling on his plumed helmet. “Abide here, dear friends. I will investigate, but I fear the worst.” He set his spurs to the flanks of his charger and leaped forward at a thunderous gallop.

“Wait!” Barak roared after him, but Mandorallen rode on obliviously. “That idiot,” the big Cherek fumed. “I’d better go with him in case there’s trouble.”

“It isn’t necessary,” Lelldorin advised weakly from his litter. “Not even an army would dare to interfere with him.”

“I thought you didn’t like him,” Barak said, a little surprised.

“I don’t,” Lelldorin admitted, “but he’s the most feared man in Arendia. Even in Asturia we’ve heard of Sir Mandorallen. No sane man would stand in his way.”

They drew back into the shelter of the forest and waited for the knight to come back. When he returned, his face was angry. “It is as I feared,” he announced. “A war doth rage in our path—a senseless war, since the two barons involved are kinsmen and the best of friends.”

“Can we go around it?” Silk asked.

“Nay, Prince Kheldar,” Mandorallen replied. “Their conflict is so widespread that we would be waylaid ere we had gone three leagues. I must, it would appear, buy us passage.”

“Do you think they’ll take money to let us pass?” Durnik asked dubiously.

“In Arendia there is another way to make such purchase, Goodman,” Mandorallen responded. “May I prevail upon thee to obtain six or eight stout poles perhaps twenty feet in length and about as thick as my wrist at the butt?”

“Of course.” Durnik took up his axe.

“What have you got in mind?” Barak rumbled.

“I will challenge them,” Mandorallen announced calmly, “one or all. No true knight could refuse me without being called craven. Wilt thou be my second and deliver my challenge, my Lord?”

“What if you lose?” Silk suggested.

“Lose?” Mandorallen seemed shocked. “I? Lose?”

“Let it pass,” Silk said.

By the time Durnik had returned with the poles, Mandorallen had finished tightening various straps beneath his armor. Taking one of the poles, he vaulted into his saddle and started at a rolling trot toward the column of smoke, with Barak at his side.

“Is this really necessary, father?” Aunt Pol asked.

“We have to get through, Pol,” Mister Wolf replied. “Don’t worry. Mandorallen knows what he’s doing.”

After a couple of miles they reached the top of a hill and looked down at the battle below. Two grim, black castles faced each other across a broad valley, and several villages dotted the plain on either side of the road. The nearest village was in flames, with a great pillar of greasy smoke rising from it to the lead-gray sky overhead, and serfs armed with scythes and pitchforks were attacking each other with a sort of mindless ferocity on the road itself. Some distance off, pikemen were gathering for a charge, and the air was thick with arrows. On two opposing hills parties of armored knights with bright-colored pennons on their lances watched the battle. Great siege engines lofted boulders into the air to crash down on the struggling men, killing, so far as Garion could tell, friend and foe indiscriminately. The valley was littered with the dead and the dying.

“Stupid,” Wolf muttered darkly.

“No one I know of has ever accused Arends of brilliance,” Silk observed.

Mandorallen set his horn to his lips and blew a shattering blast. The battle paused as the soldiers and serfs all stopped to stare up at him. He sounded his horn again, and then again, each brassy note a challenge it itself. As the two opposing bodies of knights galloped through the kneehigh, winter-yellowed grass to investigate, Mandorallen turned to Barak. “If it please thee, my Lord,” he requested politely, “deliver my challenge as soon as they approach us.”

Barak shrugged. “It’s your skin,” he noted. He eyed the advancing knights and then lifted his voice in a great roar. “Sir Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor, desires entertainment,” he declaimed. “It would amuse him if each of your parties would select a champion to joust with him. If, however, you are all such cowardly dogs that you have no stomach for such a contest, cease this brawling and stand aside so that your betters may pass.”

“Splendidly spoken, my Lord Barak,” Mandorallen said with admiration.

“I’ve always had a way with words,” Barak replied modestly. The two parties of knights warily rode closer.

“For shame, my Lords,” Mandorallen chided them. “Ye will gain no honor in this sorry war. Sir Derigen, what hath caused this contention?”

“An insult, Sir Mandorallen,” the noble replied. He was a large man, and his polished steel helmet had a golden circlet riveted above the visor. “An insult so vile that it may not go unpunished.”

“It was I who was insulted,” a noble on the other side contended hotly.

“What was the nature of this insult, Sir Oltorain?” Mandorallen inquired.

Both men looked away uneasily, and neither spoke.

“Ye have gone to war over an insult which cannot even be recalled?” Mandorallen said incredulously. “I had thought, my Lords, that ye were serious men, but I now perceive my error.”

“Don’t the nobles of Arendia have anything better to do?” Barak asked in a voice heavy with contempt.

“Of Sir Mandorallen the bastard we have all heard,” a swarthy knight in black enamelled armor sneered, “but who is this red-bearded ape who so maligns his betters?”

“You’re going to take that?” Barak asked Mandorallen.

“It’s more or less true,” Mandorallen admitted with a pained look, “since there was some temporary irregularity about my birth which still raises questions about my legitimacy. This knight is Sir Haldorin, my third cousin-twice removed. Since it’s considered unseemly in Arendia to spill the blood of kinsmen, he thus cheaply gains reputation for boldness by casting the matter in my teeth.”

“Stupid custom,” Barak grunted. “In Cherek kinsmen kill each other with more enthusiasm than they kill strangers.”

“Alas.” Mandorallen sighed. “This is not Cherek.”

“Would you be offended if I dealt with this?” Barak asked politely.

“Not at all.”

Barak moved closer to the swarthy knight. “I am Barak, Earl of Trellheim,” he announced in a loud voice, “kinsman to King Anheg of Cherek, and I see that certain nobles in Arendia have even fewer manners than they have brains.”

“The Lords of Arendia are not impressed by the self bestowed titles of the pig-sty kingdoms of the north,” Sir Haldorin retorted coldly.

“I find your words offensive, friend,” Barak said ominously.

“And I find thy ape face and scraggly beard amusing,” Sir Haldorin replied.

Barak did not even bother to draw his sword. He swung his huge arm in a wide circle and crashed his fist with stunning force against the side of the swarthy knight’s helmet. Sir Haldorin’s eyes glazed as he was swept from his saddle, and he made a vast clatter when he struck the ground.

“Would anyone else like to comment about my beard?” Barak demanded.

“Gently, my Lord,” Mandorallen advised. He glanced down with a certain satisfaction at the unconscious form of his senseless kinsman twitching in the tall grass.

“Will we docilely accept this attack on our brave companion?” one of the knights in Baron Derigen’s party demanded in a harshly accented voice. “Kill them all!” He reached for his sword.

“In the instant thy sword leaves its sheath thou art a dead man, Sir Knight,” Mandorallen coolly advised him.

The knight’s hand froze on his sword hilt.

“For shame, my Lords,” Mandorallen continued accusingly. “Surely ye know that by courtesy and common usage my challenge, until it is answered, guarantees my safety and that of my companions. Choose your champions or withdraw. I tire of all this and presently will become irritable.”

The two parties of knights pulled back some distance to confer, and several men-at-arms came to the hilltop to pick up Sir Haldorin.

“That one who was going to draw his sword was a Murgo,” Garion said quietly.

“I noticed that,” Hettar murmured, his dark eyes glittering.

“They’re coming back,” Durnik warned.

“I will joust with thee, Sir Mandorallen,” Baron Derigen announced as he approached. “I doubt not that thy reputation is well-deserved, but I also have taken the prize in no small number of tourneys. I would be honored to try a lance with thee.”

“And I too will try my skill against throe, Sir Knight,” Baron Oltorain declared. “My arm is also feared in some parts of Arendia.”

“Very well,” Mandorallen replied. “Let us seek level ground and proceed. The day wears on, and my companions and I have business to the south.”

They all rode down the hill to the field below where the two groups of knights drew up on either side of a course which had been quickly trampled out in the high, yellow grass. Derigen galloped to the far end, turned and sat waiting, his blunted lance resting in his stirrup.

“Thy courage becomes thee, my Lord,” Mandorallen called, taking up one of the poles Durnik had cut. “I shall try not to injure thee too greatly. Art thou prepared to meet my charge?”

“I am,” the baron replied, lowering his visor.

Mandorallen clapped down his visor, lowered his lance, and set his spurs to his warhorse.

“It’s probably inappropriate under the circumstances,” Silk murmured, “but I can’t help wishing that our overbearing friend could suffer some humiliating defeat.”

Mister Wolf gave him a withering look. “Forget it!”

“Is he that good?” Silk asked wistfully.

“Watch,” Wolf told him.

The two knights met in the center of the course with a resounding crash, and their lances both shattered at the stunning impact, littering the trampled grass with splinters. They thundered past each other, turned and rode back, each to his original starting place. Derigen, Garion noticed, swayed somewhat in the saddle as he rode.

The knights charged again, and their fresh lances also shattered. “I should have cut more poles,” Durnik said thoughtfully.

But Baron Derigen swayed even more as he rode back this time, and on the third charge his faltering lance glanced off Mandorallen’s shield. Mandorallen’s lance, however, struck true, and the baron was hurled from his saddle by the force of their meeting.

Mandorallen reined in his charger and looked down at him. “Art thou able to continue, my Lord?” he asked politely.

Derigen staggered to his feet. “I do not yield,” he gasped, drawing his sword.

“Splendid,” Mandorallen replied. “I feared that I might have done thee harm.” He slid out of his saddle, drew his sword and swung directly at Derigen’s head. The blow glanced off the baron’s hastily raised shield, and Mandorallen swung again without pause. Derigen managed one or two feeble swings before Mandorallen’s broadsword caught him full on the side of the helmet. He spun once and collapsed facedown on the earth.

“My Lord?” Mandorallen inquired solicitously. He reached down, rolled over his fallen opponent and opened the dented visor of the baron’s helmet. “Art thou unwell, my Lord?” he asked. “Dost thou wish to continue?”

Derigen did not reply. Blood ran freely from his nose, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. His face was blue, and the right side of his body quivered spasmodically.

“Since this brave knight is unable to speak for himself,” Mandorallen announced, “I declare him vanquished.” He looked around, his broadsword still in his hand. “Would any here gainsay my words?”

There was a vast silence.

“Will some few then remove him from the field?” Mandorallen suggested. “His injuries do not appear grave. A few months in bed should make him whole again.” He turned to Baron Oltorain, whose face had grown visibly pale. “Well, my Lord,” he said cheerfully, “shall we proceed? My companions and I are impatient to continue our journey.”

Sir Oltorain was thrown to the ground on the first charge and broke his leg as he fell.

“Ill luck, my Lord,” Mandorallen observed, approaching on foot with drawn sword. “Dost thou yield?”

“I cannot stand,” Oltorain said from between clenched teeth. “I have no choice but to yield.”

“And I and my companions may continue our journey?”

“Ye may freely depart,” the man on the ground replied painfully.

“Not just yet,” a harsh voice interrupted. The armored Murgo pushed his horse through the crowd of other mounted knights until he was directly in front of Mandorallen.

“I thought he might decide to interfere,” Aunt Pol said quietly. She dismounted and stepped out onto the hoof churned course. “Move out of the way, Mandorallen,” she told the knight.

“Nay, my Lady,” Mandorallen protested.

Wolf barked sharply. “Move, Mandorallen!”

Mandorallen looked startled and stepped aside.

“Well, Grolim?” Aunt Pol challenged, pushing back her hood.

The mounted man’s eyes widened as he saw the white lock in her hair, and then he raised his hand almost despairingly, muttering rapidly under his breath.

Once again Garion felt that strange surge, and the hollow roaring filled his mind.

For an instant Aunt Pol’s figure seemed surrounded by a kind of greenish light. She waved her hand indifferently, and the light disappeared. “You must be out of practice,” she told him. “Would you like to try again?”

The Grolim raised both hands this time, but got no further. Maneuvering his horse carefully behind the armored man, Durnik had closed on him. With both hands he raised his axe and smashed it down directly on top of the Grolim’s helmet.

“Durnikl” Aunt Pol shouted. “Get away!”

But the smith, his face set grimly, swung again, and the Grolim slid senseless from his saddle with a crash.

“You fool!” Aunt Pol raged. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“He was attacking you, Mistress Pol,” Durnik explained, his eyes still hot.

“Get down off that horse.”

He slid down.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” she demanded. “He could have killed you.”

“I will protect you, Mistress Pol,” Durnik replied stubbornly. “I’m not a warrior or a magician, but I won’t let anybody try to hurt you.”

Her eyes widened in surprise for an instant, then narrowed, then softened. Garion, who had known her from childhood, recognized her rapid changes of emotion. Without warning she suddenly embraced the startled Durnik. “You great, clumsy, dear fool,” she said. “Never do that again—never! You almost made my heart stop.”

Garion looked away with a strange lump in his throat and saw the brief, sly smile that flickered across Mister Wolf’s face.

A peculiar change had come over the knights lining the sides of the course. Several of them were looking around with the amazed expressions of men who had just been roused from some terrible dream. Others seemed suddenly lost in thought. Sir Oltorain struggled to rise.

“Nay, my Lord,” Mandorallen told him, pressing him gently back down. “Thou wilt do thyself injury.”

“What have we done?” the baron groaned, his face anguished.

Mister Wolf dismounted and knelt beside the injured man.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he informed the baron. “Your war was the Murgo’s doing. He twisted your minds and set you on each other.”

“Sorcery?” Oltorain gasped, his face growing pale.

Wolf nodded. “He’s not really a Murgo, but a Grolim priest.”

“And the spell is now broken?”

Wolf nodded again, glancing at the unconscious Grolim.

“Chain the Murgo,” the baron ordered the assembled knights. He looked back at Wolf. “We have ways of dealing with sorcerers,” he said grimly. “We will use the occasion to celebrate the end of our unnatural war. This Grolim sorcerer hath cast his last enchantment.”

“Good,” Wolf replied with a bleak smile.

“Sir Mandorallen,” Baron Oltorain said, wincing as he shifted his broken leg, “in what way may we repay thee and thy companions for bringing us to our senses?”

“That peace hath been restored is reward enough,” Mandorallen replied somewhat pompously, “for, as all the world knows, I am the most peace-loving man in the kingdom.” He glanced once at Lelldorin lying nearby on the ground in his litter, and a thought seemed to occur to him. “I would, however, ask a boon of thee. We have in our company a brave Asturian youth of noble family who hath suffered grievous injury. We would leave him, if we might, in thy care.”

“His presence shall honor me, Sir Mandorallen,” Oltorain assented immediately. “The women of my household will care for him most tenderly.” He spoke briefly to one of his retainers, and the man mounted and rode quickly toward one of the nearby castles.

“You’re not going to leave me behind,” Lelldorin protested weakly. “I’ll be able to ride in a day or so.” He began to cough rackingly.

“I think not,” Mandorallen disagreed with a cool expression. “The results of thy wounding have not yet run their natural course.”

“I won’t stay with Mimbrates,” Lelldorin insisted. “I’d rather take my chances on the road.”

“Young Lelldorin,” Mandorallen replied bluntly, even harshly, “I know thy distaste for the men of Mimbre. Thy wound, however, will soon begin to abscess and then suppurate, and raging fever and delirium will aflict thee, making thy presence a burden upon us. We have not the time to care for thee, and thy sore need would delay us in our quest.”

Garion gasped at the brutal directness of the knight’s words. He glared at Mandorallen with something very close to hatred.

Lelldorin’s face meanwhile had gone white. “Thank you for pointing that out to me, Sir Mandorallen,” he said stiffly. “I should have considered it myself. If you’ll help me to my horse, I’ll leave immediately.”

“You’ll stay right where you are,” Aunt Pol told him flatly.

Baron Oltorain’s retainer returned with a group of household servants and a blonde girl of about seventeen wearing a rose-colored gown of stiff brocade and a velvet cloak of teal.

“My younger sister, Lady Ariana,” Oltorain introduced her. “She’s a spirited girl, and though she is young she is already well-versed in the care of the sick.”

“I won’t trouble her for long, my Lord,” Lelldorin declared. “I’ll be returning to Asturia within a week.”

Lady Ariana laid a professional hand to his forehead. “Nay, good youth,” she disagreed. “Thy visit, I think, will be protracted.”

“I’ll leave within the week,” Lelldorin repeated stubbornly.

She shrugged. “As it please thee. I expect that my brother will be able to spare some few servants to follow after thee to provide thee that decent burial which, if I misjudge not, thou wilt require before thou hast gone ten leagues.”

Lelldorin blinked.

Aunt Pol took Lady Ariana to one side and spoke with her at some length, giving her a small packet of herbs and certain instructions. Lelldorin motioned to Garion, and Garion went to him immediately and knelt beside the litter.

“So it ends,” the young man murmured. “I wish I could go on with you.”

“You’ll be well in no time at all,” Garion assured him, knowing that it wasn’t true. “Maybe you can catch up with us later.”

Lelldorin shook his head. “No,” he disagreed, “I’m afraid not.” He began to cough again, the spasms seeming to tear at his lungs. “We don’t have much time, my friend,” he gasped weakly, “so listen carefully.”

Garion, near tears, took his friend’s hand.

“You remember what we were talking about that morning after we left my uncle’s house?”

Garion nodded.

“You said that I was the one who’d have to decide if we were to break our pledge to Torasin and the others to keep silent.”

“I remember,” Garion told him.

“All right,” Lelldorin said. “I’ve decided. I release you from your pledge. Do what you have to do.”

“It would be better if you told my grandfather about it yourself, Lelldorin,” Garion protested.

“I can’t, Garion,” Lelldorin groaned. “The words would stick in my throat. I’m sorry, but it’s the way I am. I know that Nachak’s only using us, but I gave the others my word. I’m an Arend, Garion. I’ll keep my word even though I know it’s wrong, so it’s up to you. You’re going to have to keep Nachak from destroying my country. I want you to go straight to the king himself.”

“To the king? He’d never believe me.”

“Make him believe you. Tell him everything.”

Garion shook his head firmly. “I won’t tell him your name,” he declared, “or Torasin’s. You know what he’d do to you if I did.”

“We don’t matter,” Lelldorin insisted, coughing again.

“I’ll tell him about Nachak,” Garion said stubbornly, “but not about you. Where do I tell him to find the Murgo?”

“He’ll know,” Lelldorin replied, his voice very weak now. “Nachak’s the ambassador to the court at Vo Mimbre. He’s the personal representative of Taur Urggs, King of the Murgos.”

Garion was stunned at the implications of that.

“He’s got all the gold from the bottomless mines of Cthol Murgos at his command,” Lelldorin continued. “The plot he gave my friends and me could be just one of a dozen or more all aimed at destroying Arendia. You’ve got to stop him, Garion. Promise me.” The pale young man’s eyes were feverish, and his grip on Garion’s hand tightened.

“I’ll stop him, Lelldorin,” Garion vowed. “I don’t know how yet, but one way or another, I’ll stop him.”

Lelldorin sank weakly back on the litter, his strength seeming to run out as if the necessity for extracting that promise had been the only thing sustaining him.

“Good-bye, Lelldorin,” Garion said softly, his eyes filling with tears.

“Good-bye, my friend,” Lelldorin barely more than whispered, and then his eyes closed, and the hand gripping Garion’s went limp. Garion stared at him with a dreadful fear until he saw the faint flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat. Lelldorin was still alive—if only barely. Garion tenderly put down his friend’s hand and pulled the rough gray blanket up around his shoulders. Then he stood up and walked quickly away with tears running down his cheeks.

The rest of the farewells were brief, and they remounted and rode at a trot toward the Great West Road. There were a few cheers from the serfs and pikemen as they passed, but in the distance there was another sound. The women from the villages had come out to search for their men among the bodies littering the field, and their wails and shrieks mocked the cheers.

With deliberate purpose, Garion pushed his horse forward until he drew in beside Mandorallen. “I have something to say to you,” he said hotly. “You aren’t going to like it, but I don’t really care.”

“Oh?” the knight replied mildly.

“I think the way you talked to Lelldorin back there was cruel and disgusting,” Garion told him. “You might think you’re the greatest knight in the world, but I think you’re a loud-mouthed braggart with no more compassion than a block of stone, and if you don’t like it, what do you plan to do about it?”

“Ah,” Mandorallen said. “That! I think that thou hast misunderstood, my young friend. It was necessary in order to save his life. The Asturian youth is very brave and so gives no thought to himself. Had I not spoken so to him, he would surely have insisted upon continuing with us and would soon have died.”

“Died?” Garion scoffed. “Aunt Pol could have cured him.”

“It was the Lady Polgara herself who informed me that his life was in danger,” Mandorallen replied. “His honor would not permit him to seek proper care, but that same honor prevailed upon him to remain behind lest he delay us.” The knight smiled wryly. “He will, I think, be no fonder of me for my words than thou art, but he will be alive, and that’s what matters, is it not?”

Garion stared at the arrogant-seeming Mimbrate, his anger suddenly robbed of its target. With painful clarity he realized that he had just made a fool of himself. “I’m sorry,” he apologized grudgingly. “I didn’t realize what you were doing.”

Mandorallen shrugged. “It’s not important. I’m frequently misunderstood. As long as I know that my motives are good, however, I’m seldom very concerned with the opinions of others. I’m glad, though, that I had the opportunity to explain this to thee. Thou art to be my companion, and it ill-behooves companions to have misapprehensions about each other.”

They rode on in silence as Garion struggled to readjust his thinking. There was, it seemed, much more to Mandorallen than he had suspected.

They reached the highway then and turned south again under a threatening sky.

8

The Arendish Plain was a vast, rolling grassland Only sparsely settled. The wind sweeping across the dried grass was raw and chill, and dirty-looking clouds scudded overhead as they rode. The necessity for leaving the injured Lelldorin behind had put them all into a melancholy mood, and for the most part they traveled in silence for the next several days. Garion rode at the rear with Hettar and the packhorses, doing his best to stay away from Mandorallen.

Hettar was a silent man who seemed undisturbed by hours of riding without conversation; but after two days of this, Garion made a deliberate effort to draw the hawk-faced Algar out.

“Why is it that you hate Murgos so much, Hettar?” he asked for want of something better to say.

“All Alorns hate Murgos,” Hettar answered quietly.

“Yes,” Garion admitted, “but it seems to be something personal with you. Why is that?”

Hettar shifted in his saddle, his leather clothing creaking. “They killed my parents,” he replied.

Garion felt a sudden shock as the Algar’s words struck a responsive note.

“How did it happen?” he asked before he realized that Hettar might prefer not to talk about it.

“I was seven,” Hettar told him in an unemotional voice. “We were going to visit my mother’s family—she was from a different clan. We had to pass near the eastern escarpment, and a Murgo raiding-party caught us. My mother’s horse stumbled, and she was thrown. The Murgos were on us before my father and I could get her back on her horse. They took a long time to kill my parents. I remember that my mother screamed once, near the end.” The Algar’s face was as bleak as rock, and his flat, quiet voice made his story seem that much more dreadful.

“After my parents were dead, the Murgos tied a rope around my feet and dragged me behind one of their horses,” he continued. “When the rope finally broke, they thought I was dead, and they all rode off. They were laughing about it as I recall. Cho-Hag found me a couple of days later.”

As clearly as if he had been there, Garion had a momentary picture of a child, dreadfully injured and alone, wandering in the emptiness of eastern Algaria with only grief and a terrible hatred keeping him alive.

“I killed my first Murgo when I was ten,” Hettar went on in the same flat voice. “He was trying to escape from us, and I rode him down and put a javelin between his shoulders. He screamed when the javelin went through him. That made me feel better. Cho-Hag thought that if he made me watch the Murgo die, it might cure me of the hatred. He was wrong about that, though.” The tall Algar’s face was expressionless, and his wind-whipped scalp lock tossed and flowed out behind him. There was a kind of emptiness about him as if he were devoid of any feeling but that one driving compulsion.

For an instant Garion dimly understood what Mister Wolf had been driving at when he had warned about the danger of becoming obsessed with a desire for revenge, but he pushed the notion out of his mind. If Hettar could live with it, so could he. He felt a sudden fierce admiration for this lonely hunter in black leather.

Mister Wolf was deep in conversation with Mandorallen, and the two of them loitered until Hettar and Garion caught up with them. For a time they rode along together.

“It is our nature,” the knight in his gleaming armor was saying in a melancholy voice. “We are over-proud, and it is our pride that dooms our poor Arendia to internecine war.”

“That can be cured,” Mister Wolf said.

“How?” Mandorallen asked. “It is in our blood. I myself am the most peaceful of men, but even I am subject to our national disease. Moreover, our divisions are too great, too buried in our history and our souls to be purged away. The peace will not last, my friend. Even now Asturian arrows sing in the forests, seeking Mimbrate targets, and Mimbre in reprisal burns Asturian houses and butchers hostages. War is inevitable, I fear.”

“No,” Wolf disagreed, “it’s not.”

“How may it be prevented?” Mandorallen demanded. “Who can cure our insanity?”

“I will, if I have to,” Wolf told him quietly, pushing back his gray hood.

Mandorallen smiled wanly. “I appreciate thy good intentions, Belgarath, but that is impossible, even for thee.”

“Nothing is actually impossible, Mandorallen,” Wolf answered in a matter-of fact voice. “Most of the time I prefer not to interfere with other people’s amusements, but I can’t afford to have Arendia going up in flames just now. If I have to, I’ll step in and put a stop to any more foolishness.”

“Hast thou in truth such power?” Mandorallen asked somewhat wistfully as if he could not quite bring himself to believe it.

“Yes,” Wolf replied prosaically, scratching at his short white beard, “as a matter of fact, I do.”

Mandorallen’s face grew troubled, even a bit awed at the old man’s quiet statement, and Garion found his grandfather’s declaration profoundly disturbing. If Wolf could actually stop a war single-handedly, he’d have no difficulty at all thwarting Garion’s own plans for revenge. It was something else to worry about.

Then Silk rode back toward them. “The Great Fair’s just ahead,” the rat-faced man announced. “Do we want to stop, or should we go around it.

“We might as well stop,” Wolf decided. “It’s almost evening, and we need some supplies.”

“The horses could use some rest, too,” Hettar said. “They’re starting to complain.”

“You should have told me,” Wolf said, glancing back at the pack train.

“They’re not really in bad shape yet,” Hettar informed him, “but they’re starting to feel sorry for themselves. They’re exaggerating of course, but a little rest wouldn’t hurt them.”

“Exaggerating?” Silk sounded shocked. “You don’t mean to say that horses can actually lie, do you?”

Hettar shrugged. “Of course. They lie all the time. They’re very good at it.”

For a moment Silk looked outraged at the thought, and then he suddenly laughed. “Somehow that restores my faith in the order of the universe,” he declared.

Wolf looked pained. “Silk,” he said pointedly, “you’re a very evil man. Did you know that?”

“One does one’s best,” Silk replied mockingly.

The Arendish Fair lay at the intersection of the Great West Road and the mountain track leading down out of Ulgoland. It was a vast collection of blue, red and yellow tents and broad-striped pavilions stretching for a league or more in every direction. It appeared like a brightly hued city in the midst of the dun-colored plain, and its brilliant pennons snapped bravely in the endless wind under a lowering sky.

“I hope I’ll have time to do some business,” Silk said as they rode down a long hill toward the Fair. The little man’s sharp nose was twitching. “I’m starting to get out of practice.”

A half dozen mud-smeared beggars crouched miserably beside the road, their hands outstretched. Mandorallen paused and scattered some coins among them.

“You shouldn’t encourage them,” Barak growled.

“Charity is both a duty and a privilege, my Lord Barak,” Mandorallen replied.

“Why don’t they build houses here?” Garion asked Silk as they approached the central part of the Fair.

“Nobody stays here that long,” Silk explained. “The Fair’s always here, but the population’s very fluid. Besides, buildings are taxed; tents aren’t.”

Many of the merchants who came out of their tents to watch the party pass seemed to know Silk, and some of them greeted him warily, suspicion plainly written on their faces.

“I see that your reputation’s preceded you, Silk,” Barak observed dryly.

Silk shrugged. “The price of fame.”

“Isn’t there some danger that somebody’ll recognize you as that other merchant?” Durnik asked. “The one the Murgos are looking for?”

“You mean Ambar? It’s not very likely. Ambar doesn’t come to Arendia very often, and he and Radek don’t look a bit alike.”

“But they’re the same man,” Durnik objected. “They’re both you.”

“Ah,” Silk said, raising one finger, “you and I both know that, but they don’t. To you I always look like myself, but to others I look quite different.”

Durnik looked profoundly skeptical.

“Radek, old friend,” a bald Drasnian merchant called from a nearby tent.

“Delvor,” Silk replied delightedly. “I haven’t seen you in years.”

“You look prosperous,” the bald man observed.

“Getting by,” Silk responded modestly. “What are you dealing in now?”

“I’ve got a few Mallorean carpets,” Delvor told him. “Some of the local nobles are interested, but they don’t like the price.” His hands, however, were already speaking of other matters.—Your uncle sent out word that we were to help you if necessary. Do you need anything? “What are you carrying in your packs?” he asked aloud.

“Sendarian woolens,” Silk answered, “and a few other odds and ends.” Have you seen any Murgos here at the Fair?

—One, but he left for Vo Mimbre a week ago. There are some Nadraks on the far side of the Fair, though

—They’re a long way from home-Silk gestured. Are they really in business?

It’s hard to say—Delvor answered.

—Can you put us up for a day or so?

I’m sure we can work something out Delvor replied with a sly twinkle in his eyes.

Silk’s fingers betrayed his shock at the suggestion.

—Business is business, after all—Delvor gestured. “You must come inside,” he said aloud. “Take a cup of wine, have some supper. We have years of catching up to do.”

“We’d be delighted,” Silk returned somewhat sourly.

“Could it be that you’ve met your match, Prince Kheldar?” Aunt Pal inquired softly with a faint smile as the little man helped her down from her horse in front of Delvor’s brightly striped pavilion.

“Delvor? Hardly. He’s been trying to get even with me for years ever since a ploy of mine in Yar Gorak cost him a fortune. I’ll let him think he’s got me for a while though. It will make him feel good, and I’ll enjoy it that much more when I pull the rug out from under him.”

She laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”

He winked at her.

The interior of Delvor’s main pavilion was ruddy in the light of several glowing braziers that put out a welcome warmth. The floor was covered with a deep blue carpet, and large red cushions were scattered here and there to sit upon. Once they were inside, Silk quickly made the introductions.

“I’m honored, Ancient One,” Delvor murmured, bowing deeply to Mister Wolf and then to Aunt Pol. “What can I do to help?”

“Right now we need information more than anything,” Wolf replied, pulling off his heavy cloak. “We ran into a Grolim stirring up trouble a few days north of here. Can you nose about and find out what’s happening between here and Vo Mimbre? I’d like to avoid any more neighborhood squabbles if possible.”

“I’ll make inquiries,” Delvor promised.

“I’ll be moving around too,” Silk said. “Between us, Delvor and I should be able to sift out most of the loose information in the Fair.” Wolf looked at him inquiringly.

“Radek of Boktor never passes up a chance to do business,” the little man explained just a bit too quickly. “It would look very strange if he stayed in Delvor’s tent.”

“I see,” Wolf said.

“We wouldn’t want anything to spoil our disguise, would we?” Silk asked innocently. His long nose, however, was twitching even more violently.

Wolf surrendered. “All right. But don’t get exotic. I don’t want a crowd of outraged customers outside the tent in the morning howling for your head.”

Delvor’s porters took the packs from the spare horses, and one of them showed Hettar the way to the horse pens on the outskirts of the Fair. Silk began rummaging through the packs. A myriad of small, expensive items began to pile up on Delvor’s carpet as Silk’s quick hands dipped into the corners and folds of the wool cloth.

“I wondered why you needed so much money in Camaar,” Wolf commented dryly.

“Just part of the disguise,” Silk replied. “Radek always has a few curios with him for trade along the way.”

“That’s a very convenient explanation,” Barak observed, “but I wouldn’t run it into the ground if I were you.”

“If I can’t double our old friend’s money in the next hour, I’ll retire permanently,” Silk promised. “Oh, I almost forgot. I’ll need Garion to act as a porter for me. Radek always has at least one porter.”

“Try not to corrupt him too much,” Aunt Pol said.

Silk bowed extravagantly and set his black velvet cap at a jaunty angle; with Garion at his heels, carrying a stout sack of his treasures, he swaggered out into the Great Arendish Fair like a man going into battle.

A fat Tolnedran three tents down the way proved troublesome and succeeded in getting a jeweled dagger away from Silk for only three times what it was worth, but two Arendish merchants in a row bought identical silver goblets at prices which, though widely different, more than made up for that setback. “I love to deal with Arends,” Silk gloated as they moved on down the muddy streets between the pavilions.

The sly little Drasnian moved through the Fair, wreaking havoc as he went. When he could not sell, he bought; when he could not buy, he traded; and when he could not trade, he dredged for gossip and information. Some of the merchants, wiser than their fellows, saw him coming and promptly hid from him. Garion, swept along by the little man’s enthusiasm, began to understand his friend’s fascination with this game where profit was secondary to the satisfaction of besting an opponent.

Silk’s predations were broadly ecumenical. He was willing to deal with anyone. He met them all on their own ground. Tolnedrans, Arends, Chereks, fellow Drasnians, Sendars—all fell before him. By midafternoon he had disposed of all of what he had bought in Camaar. His full purse jingled, and the sack on Garion’s shoulder was still as heavy, but now it contained entirely new merchandise.

Silk, however, was frowning. He walked along bouncing a small, exquisitely blown glass bottle on the palm of his hand. He had traded two ivory-bound books of Wacite verse to a Rivan for the little bottle of perfume. “What’s the trouble?” Garion asked him as they walked back toward Delvor’s pavilions.

“I’m not sure who won,” Silk told him shortly.

“What?”

“I don’t have any idea what this is worth.”

“Why did you take it, then?”

“I didn’t want him to know that I didn’t know its value.”

“Sell it to somebody else.”

“How can I sell it if I don’t know what to ask for it? If I ask too much, nobody’ll talk to me; and if I ask too little, I’ll be laughed out of the Fair.”

Garion started to chuckle.

“I don’t see that it’s all that funny, Garion,” Silk said sensitively. He remained moody and irritable as they entered the pavilion. “Here’s the profit I promised you,” he told Mister Wolf somewhat ungraciously as he poured coins into the old man’s hand.

“What’s bothering you?” Wolf asked, eyeing the little man’s grumpy face.

“Nothing,” Silk replied shortly. Then he glanced over at Aunt Pol, and a broad smile suddenly appeared on his face. He crossed to her and bowed. “My dear Lady Polgara, please accept this trifling memento of my regard for you.” With a flourish he presented the perfume bottle to her.

Aunt Pol’s look was a peculiar mixture of pleasure and suspicion. She took the small bottle and carefully worked out the tightly fitting stopper. Then with a delicate gesture she touched the stopper to the inside of her wrist and raised the wrist to her face to catch the fragrance. “Why, Kheldar,” she exclaimed with delight, “this is a princely gift.”

Silk’s smile turned a bit sickly, and he peered sharply at her, trying to determine if she was serious or not. Then he sighed and went outside, muttering darkly to himself about the duplicity of Rivans.

Delvor returned not long afterward, dropped his striped cloak in one corner and held out his hands to one of the glowing braziers. “As near as I was able to find out, things are quiet between here and Vo Mimbre,” he reported to Mister Wolf, “but five Murgos just rode into the Fair with two dozen Thulls behind them.”

Hettar looked up quickly, his hawk face alert.

Wolf frowned. “Did they come from the north or the south?”

“They claim to have come from Vo Mimbre, but there’s red clay on the Thulls’ boots. I don’t think there’s any clay between here and Vo Mimbre, is there?”

“None,” Mandorallen declared firmly. “The only clay in the region is to the north.”

Wolf nodded. “Get Silk back inside,” he told Barak. Barak went to the tent flap.

“Couldn’t it just be a coincidence?” Durnik wondered.

“I don’t think we want to take that chance,” Wolf answered. “We’ll wait until the Fair settles down for the night and then slip away.”

Silk came back inside, and he and Delvor spoke together briefly.

“It won’t take the Murgos long to find out we’ve been here,” Barak rumbled, tugging thoughtfully at his red beard. “Then we’ll have them dogging our heels every step of the way from here to Vo Mimbre. Wouldn’t it simplify things if Hettar, Mandorallen, and I go pick a fight with them? Five dead Murgos aren’t going to follow anybody.”

Hettar nodded with a certain dreadful eagerness.

“I don’t know if that would set too well with the Tolnedran legionnaires who police the Fair,” Silk drawled. “Policemen seem to worry about unexplained bodies. It upsets their sense of neatness.”

Barak shrugged. “It was a thought.”

“I think I’ve got an idea,” Delvor said, pulling on his cloak again. “They set up their tents near the pavilions of the Nadraks. I’ll go do some business with them.” He started toward the tent flap, then paused. “I don’t know if it means anything,” he told them, “but I found out that the leader is a Murgo named Asharak.”

Garion felt a sudden chill at the mention of the name.

Barak whistled and looked suddenly very grim. “We’re going to have to attend to that one sooner or later, Belgarath,” he declared.

“You know him?” Delvor did not seem very surprised.

“We’ve met a time or two,” Silk replied in an offhand way.

“He’s starting to make a nuisance of himself,” Aunt Pol agreed.

“I’ll get started,” Delvor said.

Garion lifted the tent flap to allow Delvor to leave; but as he glanced outside, he let out a startled gasp and jerked the flap shut again.

“What’s the matter?” Silk asked him.

“I think I just saw Brill out there in the street.”

“Let me see,” Durnik said. His fingers parted the flap slightly, and he and Garion both peered out. A slovenly figure loitered in the muddy street outside. Brill had not changed much since they’d left Faldor’s farm. His tunic and hose were still patched and stained; his face was still unshaven, and his cast eye still gleamed with a kind of unwholesome whiteness.

“It’s Brill, all right,” Durnik confirmed. “He’s close enough for me to smell him.”

Delvor looked at the smith inquiringly.

“Brill bathes irregularly,” Durnik explained. “He’s a fragrant sort of a fellow.”

“May I?” Delvor asked politely. He glanced out over Durnik’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said, “that one. He works for the Nadraks. I thought that was a little strange, but he didn’t seem important, so I didn’t bother to investigate.”

“Durnik,” Wolf said quickly, “step outside for a moment. Make sure he sees you, but don’t let him know that you know he’s there. After he sees you, come back inside. Hurry. We don’t want to let him get away.”

Durnik looked baffled, but he lifted the tent flap and stepped out.

“What are you up to, father?” Aunt Pol asked rather sharply. “Don’t just stand there smirking, old man. That’s very irritating.”

“It’s perfect,” Wolf chortled, rubbing his hands together.

Durnik came back in, his face worried. “He saw me,” he reported. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Of course,” Wolf replied. “Asharak’s obviously here because of us, and he’s going to be looking all over the Fair for us.”

“Why make it easy for him?” Aunt Pol asked.

“We won’t,” Wolf replied. “Asharak’s used Brill before—in Murgos, remember? He brought Brill down here because Brill would recognize you or me or Durnik or Garion—probably Barak too, and maybe Silk. Is he still out there?”

Garion peered out through the narrow opening. After a moment he saw the unkempt Brill half hidden between two tents across the street. “He’s still there,” he answered.

“We’ll want to keep him there,” Wolf said. “We’ll have to be sure that he doesn’t get bored and go back to report to Asharak that he’s found us.”

Silk looked at Delvor, and they both began to laugh.

“What’s funny?” Barak demanded suspiciously.

“You almost have to be a Drasnian to appreciate it,” Silk replied. He looked at Wolf admiringly. “Sometimes you amaze me, old friend.”

Mister Wolf winked at him.

“Thy plan still escapes me,” Mandorallen confessed.

“May I?” Silk asked Wolf. He turned back to the knight. “It goes like this, Mandorallen. Asharak’s counting on Brill to find us for him, but as long as we keep Brill interested enough, he’ll delay going back to tell Asharak where we are. We’ve captured Asharak’s eyes, and that puts him at quite a disadvantage.”

“But will this curious Sendar not follow us as soon as we leave the tent?” Mandorallen asked. “When we ride from the Fair, the Murgos will be immediately behind us.”

“The back wall of the tent is only canvas, Mandorallen,” Silk pointed out gently. “With a sharp knife you can make as many doors in it as you like.”

Delvor winced slightly, then sighed. “I’ll go see the Murgos,” he said. “I think I can delay them even more.”

“Durnik and I’ll go out with you,” Silk told his bald friend. “You go one way, and we’ll go another. Brill will follow us, and we can lead him back here.”

Delvor nodded, and the three of them went out.

“Isn’t all this unnecessarily complicated?” Barak asked sourly. “Brill doesn’t know Hettar. Why not just have Hettar slip out the back, circle around behind him, and stick a knife between his ribs? Then we could stuff him in a sack and drop him in a ditch somewhere after we leave the Fair.”

Wolf shook his head. “Asharak would miss him,” he replied. “I want him to tell the Murgos that we’re in this tent. With any luck, they’ll sit outside for a day or so before they realize that we’re gone.”

For the next several hours various members of the party went out into the street in front of the tent on short and wholly imaginary errands to hold the attention of the lurking Brill. When Garion stepped out into the gathering darkness, he put on a show of unconcern, although his skin prickled as he felt Brill’s eyes on him. He went into Delvor’s supply tent and waited for several minutes. The noise from a tavern pavilion several rows of tents over seemed very loud in the growing stillness of the Fair as Garion waited nervously in the dark supply tent. Finally he drew a deep breath and went out again, one arm tucked up as if he were carrying something. “I found it, Durnik,” he announced as he reentered the main pavilion.

“There’s no need to improvise, dear,” Aunt Pol remarked.

“I just wanted to sound natural,” he replied innocently.

Delvor returned soon after that, and they all waited in the warm tent as it grew darker outside and the streets emptied. Once it was fully dark, Delvor’s porters pulled the packs out through a slit in the back of the tent. Silk, Delvor, and Hettar went with them to the horse pens on the outskirts of the Fair while the rest remained long enough to keep Brill from losing interest. In a final attempt at misdirection, Mister Wolf and Barak went outside to discuss the probable conditions of the road to Prolgu in Ulgoland.

“It might not work,” Wolf admitted as he and the big red-bearded man came back inside. “Asharak’s sure to know that we’re following Zedar south, but if Brill tells him that we’re going to Prolgu, it might make him divide his forces to cover both roads.” He looked around the inside of the tent. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

One by one they squeezed out through the slit in the back of the tent and crept into the next street. Then, walking at a normal pace like serious people on honest business, they proceeded toward the horse pens. They passed the tavern pavilion where several men were singing. The streets were mostly empty by now, and the night breeze brushed the city of tents, fluttering the pennons and banners.

Then they reached the edge of the Fair where Silk, Delvor and Hettar waited with their mounts.

“Good luck,” Delvor said as they prepared to mount. “I’ll delay the Murgos for as long as I can.”

Silk shook his friend’s hand. “I’d still like to know where you got those lead coins.”

Delvor winked at him.

“What’s this?” Wolf asked.

“Delvor’s got some Tolnedran crowns stamped out of lead and gilded over,” Silk told him. “He hid some of them in the Murgos’ tent, and tomorrow morning he’s going to go to the legionnaires with a few of them and accuse the Murgos of passing them. When the legionnaires search the Murgos’ tent, they’re sure to find the others.”

“Money’s awfully important to Tolnedrans,” Barak observed. “If the legionnaires get excited enough about those coins, they might start hanging people.”

Delvor smirked. “Wouldn’t that be a terrible shame?”

They mounted then and rode away from the horse pens toward the highway. It was a cloudy night, and once they were out in the open the breeze was noticeably brisk. Behind them the Fair gleamed and twinkled under the night sky like some vast city.

Garion drew his cloak about him. It was a lonely feeling to be on a dark road on a windy night when everyone else in the world had a fire and a bed and walls around him. Then they reached the Great West Road stretching pale and empty across the dark, rolling Arendish plain and turned south again.

9

The wind picked up again shortly before dawn and was blowing briskly by the time the sky over the low foothills to the east began to lighten. Garion was numb with exhaustion by then, and his mind had drifted into an almost dreamlike trance. The faces of his companions all seemed strange to him as the pale light began to grow stronger. At times he even forgot why they rode. He seemed caught in a company of grim-faced strangers pounding along a road to nowhere through a bleak, featureless landscape with their wind-whipped cloaks flying dark behind them like the clouds scudding low and dirty overhead. A peculiar idea began to take hold of him. The strangers were somehow his captors, and they were taking him away from his real friends. The idea seemed to grow stronger the farther they rode, and he began to be afraid.

Suddenly, without knowing why, he wheeled his horse and broke away, plunging off the side of the road and across the open field beside it.

“Garion!” a woman’s voice called sharply from behind, but he set his heels to his horse’s flanks and sped even faster across the rough field.

One of them was chasing him, a frightening man in black leather with a shaved head and a dark lock at his crown flowing behind him in the wind. In a panic Garion kicked at his horse, trying to make the beast run even faster, but the fearsome rider behind him closed the gap quickly and seized the reins from his hands.

“What are you doing?” he demanded harshly.

Garion stared at him, unable to answer.

Then the woman in the blue cloak was there, and the others not far behind her. She dismounted quickly and stood looking at him with a stern face. She was tall for a woman, and her face was cold and imperious. Her hair was very dark, and there was a single white lock at her brow.

Garion trembled. The woman made him terribly afraid.

“Get down off that horse,” she commanded.

“Gently, Pol,” a silvery-haired old man with an evil face said.

A huge red-bearded giant rode closer, threatening, and Garion, almost sobbing with fright, slid down from his horse.

“Come here,” the woman ordered.

Falteringly, Garion approached her.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

Hesitantly, he lifted his hand and she took his wrist firmly. She opened his fingers to reveal the ugly mark on his palm that he seemed to always have hated and then put his hand against the white lock in her hair.

“Aunt Pol,” he gasped, the nightmare suddenly dropping away. She put her arms about him tightly and held him for some time. Strangely, he was not even embarrassed by that display of affection in front of the others.

“This is serious, father,” she told Mister Wolf.

“What happened, Garion?” Wolf asked, his voice calm.

“I don’t know,” Garion replied. “I was as if I didn’t know any of you, and you were my enemies, and all I wanted to do was run away to try to get back to my real friends.”

“Are you still wearing the amulet I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had it off at any time since I gave it to you?”

“Just once,” Garion admitted. “When I took a bath in the Tolnedran hostel.”

Wolf sighed. “You can’t take it off,” he said, “not ever—not for any reason. Take it out from under your tunic.”

Garion drew out the silver pendant with the strange design on it. The old man took a medallion out from under his own tunic. It was very bright and there was upon it the figure of a standing wolf so lifelike that it looked almost ready to lope away.

Aunt Pol, her one arm still about Garion’s shoulders, drew a similar amulet out of her bodice. Upon the disc of her medallion was the figure of an owl. “Hold it in your right hand, dear,” she instructed, firmly closing Garion’s fingers over the pendant. Then, holding her amulet in her own right hand, she placed her left hand over his closed fist. Wolf, also holding his talisman, put his hand on theirs.

Garion’s palm began to tingle as if the pendant were suddenly alive. Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol looked at each other for a long moment, and the tingling in Garion’s hand suddenly became very strong. His mind seemed to open, and strange things flickered before his eyes. He saw a round room very high up somewhere. A fire burned, but there was no wood in it. At a table there was seated an old man who looked somewhat like Mister Wolf but obviously was someone else. He seemed to be looking directly at Garion, and his eyes were kindly, even affectionate. Garion was suddenly overwhelmed with a consuming love for the old man.

“That should be enough,” Wolf judged, releasing Garion’s hand.

“Who was the old man?” Garion asked.

“My Master,” Wolf replied.

“What happened?” Durnik asked, his face concerned.

“It’s probably better not to talk about it,” Aunt Pol said. “Do you think you could build a fire? It’s time for breakfast.”

“There are some trees over there where we can get out of the wind,” Durnik suggested.

They all remounted and rode toward the trees.

After they had eaten, they sat by the small fire for a while. They were tired, and none of them felt quite up to facing the blustery morning again. Garion felt particularly exhausted, and he wished that he were young enough to sit close beside Aunt Pol and perhaps to put his head in her lap and sleep as he had done when he was very young. The strange thing that had happened made him feel very much alone and more than a little frightened. “Durnik,” he said, more to drive the mood away than out of any real curiosity. “What sort of bird is that?” He pointed.

“A raven, I think,” Durnik answered, looking at the bird circling above them.

“I thought so too,” Garion said, “but they don’t usually circle, do they?”

Durnik frowned. “Maybe it’s watching something on the ground.”

“How long has it been up there?” Wolf asked, squinting up at the large bird.

“I think I first saw it when we were crossing the field.” Garion told him.

Mister Wolf glanced over at Aunt Pol. “What do you think?”

She looked up from one of Garion’s stockings she had been mending. “I’ll see.” Her face took on a strange, probing expression.

Garion felt a peculiar tingling again. On an impulse he tried to push his own mind out toward the bird.

“Garion,” Aunt Pol said without looking at him, “stop that.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologized quickly and pulled his mind back where it belonged.

Mister Wolf looked at him with a strange expression, then winked at him.

“It’s Chamdar,” Aunt Pol announced calmly. She carefully pushed her needle into the stocking and set it aside. Then she stood up and shook off her blue cloak.

“What have you got in mind?” Wolf asked.

“I think I’ll go have a little chat with him,” she replied, flexing her fingers like talons.

“You’d never catch him,” Wolf told her. “Your feathers are too soft for this kind of wind. There’s an easier way.” The old man swept the windy sky with a searching gaze. “Over there.” He pointed at a barely visible speck above the hills to the west. “You’d better do it, Pol. I don’t get along with birds.”

“Of course, father,” she agreed. She looked intently at the speck, and Garion felt the tingle as she sent her mind out again. The speck began to circle, rising higher and higher until it disappeared.

The raven did not see the plummeting eagle until the last instant, just before the larger bird’s talons struck. There was a sudden puff of black feathers, and the raven, screeching with fright, flapped wildly away with the eagle in pursuit.

“Nicely done, Pol,” Wolf approved.

“It will give him something to think about.” She smiled. “Don’t stare, Durnik.”

Durnik was gaping at her, his mouth open. “How did you do that?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked.

Durnik shuddered and looked away quickly.

“I think that just about settles it,” Wolf said. “Disguises are probably useless now. I’m not sure what Chamdar’s up to, but he’s going to be watching us every step of the way. We might as well arm ourselves and ride straight on to Vo Mimbre.”

“Aren’t we going to follow the trail anymore?” Barak asked.

“The trail goes south,” Wolf replied. “I can pick it up again once we cross over into Tolnedra. But first I want to stop by and have a word with King Korodullin. There are some things he needs to know.”

“Korodullin?” Durnik looked puzzled. “Wasn’t that the name of the first Arendish king? It seems to me somebody told me that once.”

“All Arendish kings are named Korodullin,” Silk told him. “And the queens are all named Mayaserana. It’s part of the fiction the royal family here maintains to keep the kingdom from flying apart. They have to marry as closely within the bloodline as possible to maintain the illusion of the unification of the houses of Mimbre and Asturia. It makes them all a bit sickly, but there’s no help for it—considering the peculiar nature of Arendish politics.”

“All right, Silk,” Aunt Pol said reprovingly.

Mandorallen looked thoughtful. “Could it be that this Chamdar who so dogs our steps is one of great substance in the dark society of the Grolims?” he asked.

“He’d like to be,” Wolf answered. “Zedar and Ctuchik are Torak’s disciples, and Chamdar wants to be one as well. He’s always been Ctuchik’s agent, but he may believe that this is his chance to move up in the Grolim hierarchy. Ctuchik’s very old, and he spends all his time in the temple of Torak at Rak Cthol. Maybe Chamdar thinks it’s time that someone else became High Priest.”

“Is Torak’s body at Rak Cthol?” Silk asked quickly.

Mister Wolf shrugged. “Nobody knows for sure, but I doubt it. After Zedar carried him away from the battlefield at Vo Mimbre, I don’t think he’d have just handed him over to Ctuchik. He could be in Mallorea or somewhere in the southern reaches of Cthol Murgos. It’s hard to say.”

“But at the moment, Chamdar’s the one we have to worry about,” Silk concluded.

“Not if we keep moving,” Wolf told him.

“We’d better get moving then,” Barak said, standing up.

By midmorning the heavy clouds had begun to break up, and patches of blue sky showed here and there. Enormous pillars of sunlight stalked ponderously across the rolling fields that waited, damp and expectant, for the first touches of spring. With Mandorallen in the lead they had ridden hard and had covered a good six leagues. Finally they slowed to a walk to allow their steaming horses to rest.

“How much farther is it to Vo Mimbre, grandfather?” Garion asked, pulling his horse in beside Mister Wolf.

“Sixty leagues at least,” Wolf answered. “Probably closer to eighty.”

“That’s a long way.” Garion winced as he shifted in his saddle.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I ran away like that back there,” Garion apologized.

“It wasn’t your fault. Chamdar was playing games.”

“Why did he pick me? Couldn’t he have done the same thing to Durnik—or Barak?”

Mister Wolf looked at him. “You’re younger, more susceptible.”

“That’s not really it, is it?” Garion accused.

“No,” Wolf admitted, “not really, but it’s an answer, of sorts.”

“This is another one of those things you aren’t going to tell me, isn’t it?”

“I suppose you could say that,” Wolf answered blandly.

Garion sulked about that for a while, but Mister Wolf rode on, seemingly unconcerned by the boy’s reproachful silence.

They stopped that night at a Tolnedran hostel, which, like all of them, was plain, adequate, and expensive. The next morning the sky had cleared except for billowy patches of white cloud scampering before the brisk wind. The sight of the sun made them all feel better, and there was even some bantering between Silk and Barak as they rode along—something Garion hadn’t heard in all the weeks they’d spent traveling under the gloomy skies of northern Arendia.

Mandorallen, however, scarcely spoke that morning, and his face grew more somber with each passing mile. He was not wearing his armor, but instead a mail suit and a deep blue surcoat. His head was bare, and the wind tugged at his curly hair.

On a nearby hilltop a bleak-looking castle brooded down at them as they passed, its grim walls high and haughty-looking. Mandorallen seemed to avoid looking at it, and his face became even more melancholy.

Garion found it difficult to make up his mind about Mandorallen. He was honest enough with himself to admit that much of his thinking was still clouded by Lelldorin’s prejudices. He didn’t really want to like Mandorallen; but aside from the habitual gloominess which seemed characteristic of all Arends and the studied and involuted archaism of the man’s speech and his towering self confidence, there seemed little actually to dislike.

A half league along the road from the castle, a ruin sat at the top of a long rise. It was not much more than a single wall with a high archway in the center and broken columns on either side. Near the ruin a woman sat on horseback, her dark red cape flowing in the wind.

Without a word, almost without seeming to think about it, Mandorallen turned his warhorse from the road and cantered up the rise toward the woman, who watched his approach without any seeming surprise, but also with no particular pleasure.

“Where’s he going?” Barak asked.

“She’s an acquaintance of his,” Mister Wolf said dryly.

“Are we supposed to wait for him?”

“He can catch up with us,” Wolf replied.

Mandorallen had stopped his horse near the woman and dismounted. He bowed to her and held out his hands to help her down from her horse. They walked together toward the ruin, not touching, but walking very close to each other. They stopped beneath the archway and talked. Behind the ruin, clouds raced in the windy sky, and their enormous shadows swept uncaring across the mournful fields of Arendia.

“We should have taken a different route,” Wolf said. “I wasn’t thinking, I guess.”

“Is there some problem?” Durnik asked.

“Nothing unusual—in Arendia,” Wolf answered. “I suppose it’s my fault. Sometimes I forget the kind of things that can happen to young people.”

“Don’t be cryptic, father,” Aunt Pol told him. “It’s very irritating. Is this something we should know about?”

Wolf shrugged. “It isn’t any secret,” he replied. “Half of Arendia knows about it. A whole generation of Arendish virgins cry themselves to sleep every night over it.”

“Father,” Aunt Pol snapped exasperatedly.

“All right,” Wolf said. “When Mandorallen was about Garion’s age, he showed a great deal of promise-strong, courageous, not too bright the qualities that make a good knight. His father asked me for advice, and I made arrangements for the young man to live for a while with the Baron of Vo Ebor—that’s his castle back there. The baron had an enormous reputation, and he provided Mandorallen with the kind of instruction he needed. Mandorallen and the baron became almost like father and son, since the baron was quite a bit older. Everything was going along fine until the baron got married. His bride, however, was much younger—about Mandorallen’s age.”

“I think I see where this is going,” Durnik remarked disapprovingly.

“Not exactly,” Wolf disagreed. “After the honeymoon, the baron returned to his customary knightly pursuits and left a very bored young lady wandering around his castle. It’s a situation with all kinds of interesting possibilities. Anyway, Mandorallen and the lady exchanged glances—then words—the usual sort of thing.”

“It happens in Sendaria too,” Durnik observed, “but I’m sure the name we have for it is different from the one they use here.” His tone was critical, even offended.

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Durnik,” Wolf told him. “Things never went any further. It might have been better if they had. Adultery isn’t really all that serious, and in time they’d have gotten bored with it. But, since they both loved and respected the baron too much to dishonor him, Mandorallen left the castle before things could get out of hand. Now they both suffer in silence. It’s all very touching, but it seems like a waste of time to me. Of course I’m older.”

“You’re older than everyone, father,” Aunt Pol said.

“You didn’t have to say that, Pol.”

Silk laughed sardonically. “I’m glad to see that our stupendous friend at least has the bad taste to fall in love with another man’s wife. His nobility was beginning to get rather cloying.” The little man’s expression had that bitter, self mocking cast to it Garion had first seen in Val Alorn when they had spoken with Queen Porenn.

“Does the baron know about it?” Durnik asked.

“Naturally,” Wolf replied. “That’s the part that makes the Arends get all mushy inside about it. There was a knight once, stupider than most Arends, who made a bad joke about it. The baron promptly challenged him and ran a lance through him during the duel. Since then very few people have found the situation humorous.”

“It’s still disgraceful,” Durnik said.

“Their behavior’s above reproach, Durnik,” Aunt Pol maintained firmly. “There’s no shame in it as long as it doesn’t go any further.”

“Decent people don’t allow it to happen in the first place,” Durnik asserted.

“You’ll never convince her, Durnik,” Mister Wolf told the smith. “Polgara spent too many years associating with the Wacite Arends. They were as bad or worse than the Mimbrates. You can’t wallow in that kind of sentimentality for that long without some of it rubbing off. Fortunately it hasn’t totally blotted out her good sense. She’s only occasionally girlish and gushy. If you can avoid her during those seizures, it’s almost as if there was nothing wrong with her.”

“My time was spent a little more usefully than yours, father,” Aunt Pol observed acidly. “As I remember, you spent those years carousing in the waterfront dives in Camaar. And then there was that uplifting period you spent amusing the depraved women of Maragor. I’m certain those experiences broadened your concept of morality enormously.”

Mister Wolf coughed uncomfortably and looked away.

Behind them, Mandorallen had remounted and begun to gallop back down the hill. The lady stood in the archway with her red cloak billowing in the wind, watching him as he rode away.

They were five days on the road before they reached the River Arend, the boundary between Arendia and Tolnedra. The weather improved as they moved farther south, and by the morning when they reached the hill overlooking the river, it was almost warm. The sun was very bright, and a few fleecy clouds raced overhead in the fresh breeze.

“The high road to Vo Mimbre branches to the left just there,” Mandorallen remarked.

“Yes,” Wolf said. “Let’s go down into that grove near the river and make ourselves a bit more presentable. Appearances are very important in Vo Mimbre, and we don’t want to arrive looking like vagabonds.”

Three brown-robed and hooded figures stood humbly at the crossroads, their faces down and their hands held out in supplication. Mister Wolf reined in his horse and approached them. He spoke with them briefly, then gave each a coin.

“Who are they?” Garion asked.

“Monks from Mar Terrin,” Silk replied.

“Where’s that?”

“It’s a monastery in southeastern Tolnedra where Maragor used to be,” Silk told him. “The monks try to comfort the spirits of the Marags.”

Mister Wolf motioned to them, and they rode on past the three humble figures at the roadside. “They say that no Murgos have passed here in the last two weeks.”

“Are you sure you can believe them?” Hettar asked.

“Probably. The monks won’t lie to anybody.”

“Then they’ll tell anybody who comes by that we’ve passed here?” Barak asked.

Wolf nodded. “They’ll answer any question anybody puts to them.”

“That’s an unsavory habit,” Barak grunted darkly.

Mister Wolf shrugged and led the way among the trees beside the river. “This ought to do,” he decided, dismounting in a grassy glade. He waited while the others climbed down from their horses. “All right,” he told them, “we’re going to Vo Mimbre. I want you all to be careful about what you say there. Mimbrates are very touchy, and the slightest word can be taken as an insult.”

“I think you should wear the white robe Fulrach gave you, father,” Aunt Pol interrupted, pulling open one of the packs.

“Please, Pol,” Wolf said, “I’m trying to explain something.”

“They heard you, father. You tend to belabor things too much.” She held up the white robe and looked at it critically. “You should have folded it more carefully. You’ve wrinkled it.”

“I’m not going to wear that thing,” he declared flatly.

“Yes, you are, father,” she told him sweetly. “We might have to argue about it for an hour or two, but you’ll wind up wearing it in the end anyway. Why not just save yourself all the time and aggravation?”

“It’s silly,” he complained.

“Lots of things are silly, father. I know the Arends better than you do. You’ll get more respect if you look the part. Mandorallen and Hettar and Barak will wear their armor; Durnik and Silk and Garion can wear the doublets Fulrach gave them in Sendar; I’ll wear my blue gown, and you’ll wear the white robe. I insist, father.”

“You what? Now listen here, Polgara—”

“Be still, father,” she said absently, examining Garion’s blue doublet.

Wolf’s face darkened, and his eyes bulged dangerously.

“Was there something else?” she asked with a level gaze.

Mister Wolf let it drop.

“He’s as wise as they say he is,” Silk observed.

An hour later they were on the high road to Vo Mimbre under a sunny sky. Mandorallen, once again in full armor and with a blue and silver pennon streaming from the tip of his lance, led the way with Barak in his gleaming mail shirt and black bearskin cape riding immediately behind him. At Aunt Pol’s insistence, the big Cherek had combed the tangles out of his red beard and even re-braided his hair. Mister Wolf in his white robe rode sourly, muttering to himself, and Aunt Pol sat her horse demurely at his side in a short, fur-lined cape and with a blue satin headdress surmounting the heavy mass of her dark hair. Garion and Durnik were ill at ease in their finery, but Silk wore his doublet and black velvet cap with a kind of exuberant flair. Hettar’s sole concession to formality had been the replacement of a ring of beaten silver for the leather thong which usually caught in his scalp lock.

The serfs and even the occasional knight they encountered along the way stood aside and saluted respectfully. The day was warm, the road was good, and their horses were strong. By midafternoon they crested a high hill overlooking the plain which sloped down to the gates of Vo Mimbre.

10

The city of the Mimbrate Arends reared almost like a mountain beside the sparkling river. Its thick, high walls were surmounted by massive battlements, and great towers and slender spires with bright banners at their tips rose within the walls, gleaming golden in the afternoon sun.

“Behold Vo Mimbre,” Mandorallen proclaimed with pride, “queen of cities. Upon that rock the tide of Angarak crashed and recoiled and crashed again. Upon this field met they their ruin. The soul and pride of Arendia loth reside within that fortress, and the power of the Dark One may not prevail against it.”

“We’ve been here before, Mandorallen,” Mister Wolf said sourly.

“Don’t be impolite, father,” Aunt Pol told the old man. Then she turned to Mandorallen and to Garion’s amazement she spoke in an idiom he had never heard from her lips before. “Wilt thou, Sir Knight, convey us presently into the palace of thy king? We must needs take council with him in matters of gravest urgency.” She delivered this without the least trace of self-consciousness as if the archaic formality came quite naturally to her. “Forasmuch as thou art the mightiest knight on life, we place ourselves under the protection of thy arm.”

Mandorallen, after a startled instant, slid with a crash from his warhorse and sank to his knees before her. “My Lady Polgara,” he replied in a voice throbbing with respect—with reverence even, “I accept thy charge and will convey thee safely unto King Korodullin. Should any man question thy paramount right to the king’s attention, I shall prove his folly upon his body.”

Aunt Pol smiled at him encouragingly, and he vaulted into his saddle with a clang and led the way at a rolling trot, his whole bearing seething with a willingness to do battle.

“What was that all about?” Wolf asked.

“Mandorallen needed something to take his mind off his troubles,” she replied. “He’s been out of sorts for the last few days.”

As they drew closer to the city, Garion could see the scars on the great walls where heavy stones from the Angarak catapults had struck the unyielding rock. The battlements high above were chipped and pitted from the impact of showers of steel-tipped arrows. The stone archway that led into the city revealed the incredible thickness of the walls, and the ironbound gate was massive. They clattered through the archway and into the narrow, crooked streets. The people they passed seemed for the most part to be commoners, who quickly moved aside. The faces of the men in dun-colored tunics and the women in patched dresses were dull and uncurious.

“They don’t seem very interested in us,” Garion commented quietly to Durnik.

“I don’t think the ordinary people and the gentry pay much attention to each other here,” Durnik replied. “They live side by side, but they don’t know anything about each other. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Arendia.”

Garion nodded soberly.

Although the commoners were indifferent, the nobles at the palace seemed afire with curiosity. Word of the party’s entrance into the city apparently had raced ahead of them through the narrow streets, and the windows and parapets of the palace were alive with people in brightly colored clothes.

“Abate thy pace, Sir Knight,” a tall man with dark hair and beard, wearing a black velvet surcoat over his polished mail, called down from the parapet to Mandorallen as they clattered into the broad plaza before the palace. “Lift thy visor so that I may know thee.”

Mandorallen stopped in amazement before the closed gate and raised his visor. “What discourtesy is this?” he demanded. “I am, as all the world knows, Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor. Surely thou canst see my crest upon the face of my shield.”

“Any man may wear another’s crest,” the man above declared disdainfully.

Mandorallen’s face darkened. “Art thou not mindful that no man on life would dare to counterfeit my semblance?” he asked in a dangerous tone.

“Sir Andorig,” another knight on the parapet told the dark-haired man, “this is indeed Sir Mandorallen. I met him on the field of the great tourney last year, and our meeting cost me a broken shoulder and put a ringing in my ears which hath not yet subsided.”

“Ah,” Sir Andorig replied, “since thou wilt vouch for him, Sir Helbergin, I will admit that this is indeed the bastard of Vo Mandor.”

“You’re going to have to do something about that one of these days,” Barak said quietly to Mandorallen.

“It would seem so,” Mandorallen replied.

“Who, however, are these others with thee who seek admittance, Sir Knight?” Andorig demanded. “I will not cause the gates to open for foreign strangers.”

Mandorallen straightened in his saddle. “Behold!” he announced in a voice that could probably be heard all over the city. “I bring you honor beyond measure. Fling wide the palace gate and prepare one and all to make obeisance. You look upon the holy face of Belgarath the Sorcerer, the Eternal Man, and upon the divine countenance of his daughter, the Lady Polgara, who have come to Vo Mimbre to consult with the King of Arendia on diverse matters.”

“Isn’t that a little overdone?” Garion whispered to Aunt Pol.

“It’s customary, dear,” she replied placidly. “When you’re dealing with Arends, you have to be a little extravagant to get their attention.”

“And who hath told thee that this is the Lord Belgarath?” Andorig asked with the faintest hint of a sneer. “I will bend no knee before an unproved vagabond.”

“Dost thou question my word, Sir Knight?” Mandorallen returned in an ominously quiet voice. “And wilt thou then come down and put thy doubt to the test? Or is it perhaps that thou wouldst prefer to cringe doglike behind thy parapet and yap at thy betters?”

“Oh, that was very good,” Barak said admiringly. Mandorallen grinned tightly at the big man.

“I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this,” Mister Wolf muttered. “It looks like I’ll have to prove something to this skeptic if we’re ever going to get in to see Korodullin.” He slid down from his saddle and thoughtfully removed a twig from his horse’s tail, picked up somewhere during their journey. Then he strode to the center of the plaza and stood there in his gleaming white robe. “Sir Knight,” he called up mildly to Andorig, “you’re a cautious man, I see. That’s a good quality, but it can be carried too far.”

“I am hardly a child, old man,” the dark-haired knight replied in a tone hovering on the verge of insult, “and I believe only what mine own eye hath confirmed.”

“It must be a sad thing to believe so little,” Wolf observed. He bent then and inserted the twig he’d been holding between two of the broad granite flagstones at his feet. He stepped back a pace and stretched his hand out above the twig, his face curiously gentle. “I’m going to do you a favor, Sir Andorig,” he announced. “I’m going to restore your faith. Watch closely.” And then he spoke a single soft word that Garion couldn’t quite hear, but which set off the now-familiar surge and a faint roaring sound.

At first nothing seemed to be happening. Then the two flagstones began to buckle upward with a grinding sound as the twig grew visibly thicker and began to reach up toward Mister Wolf’s outstretched hand. There were gasps from the palace walls as branches began to sprout from the twig as it grew. Wolf raised his hand higher, and the twig obediently grew at his gesture, its branches broadening. By now it was a young tree and still growing. One of the flagstones cracked with a sharp report.

There was absolute silence as every eye fixed in awed fascination on the tree. Mister Wolf held out both hands and turned them until the palms were up. He spoke again, and the tips of the branches swelled and began to bud. Then the tree burst into flower, its blossoms a delicate pink and white.

“Apple, wouldn’t you say, Pol?” Wolf asked over his shoulder.

“It appears to be, father,” she replied.

He patted the tree fondly and then turned back to the dark-haired knight who had sunk, white-faced and trembling, to his knees. “Well, Sir Andorig,” he inquired, “what do you believe now?”

“Please forgive me, Holy Belgarath,” Andorig begged in a strangled voice.

Mister Wolf drew himself up and spoke sternly, his words slipping into the measured cadences of the Mimbrate idiom as easily as Aunt Pol’s had earlier. “I charge thee, Sir Knight, to care for this tree. It hath grown here to renew thy faith and trust. Thy debt to it must be paid with tender and loving attention to its needs. In time it will bear fruit, and thou wilt gather the fruit and give it freely to any who ask it of thee. For thy soul’s sake, thou wilt refuse none, no matter how humble. As the tree gives freely, so shalt thou.”

“That’s a nice touch,” Aunt Pol approved. Wolf winked at her.

“I will do even as thou hast commanded me, Holy Belgarath,” Sir Andorig choked. “I pledge my heart to it.”

Mister Wolf returned to his horse. “At least he’ll do one useful thing in his life,” he muttered.

After that there was no further discussion. The palace gate creaked open, and they all rode into the inner courtyard and dismounted. Mandorallen led them past kneeling and even sobbing nobles who reached out to touch Mister Wolf’s robe as he passed. At Mandorallen’s heels they walked through the broad, tapestried hallways with a growing throng behind them. The door to the throne room opened, and they entered.

The Arendish throne room was a great, vaulted hall with sculptured buttresses soaring upward along the walls. Tall, narrow windows rose between the buttresses, and the light streaming through their stained-glass panels was jeweled. The floor was polished marble, and on the carpeted stone platform at the far end stood the double throne of Arendia, backed by heavy purple drapes. Flanking the draped wall hung the massive antique weapons of twenty generations of Arendish royalty. Lances, maces, and huge swords, taller than any man, hung among the tattered war banners of forgotten kings.

Korodullin of Arendia was a sickly-looking young man in a gold-embroidered purple robe, and he wore his large gold crown as if it were too heavy for him. Beside him on the double throne sat his pale, beautiful queen. Together they watched somewhat apprehensively as the throng surrounding Mister Wolf approached the wide steps leading up to the throne.

“My King,” Mandorallen announced, dropping to one knee, “I bring into thy presence Holy Belgarath, Disciple of Aldur and the staff upon which the kingdoms of the West have leaned since time began.”

“He knows who I am, Mandorallen,” Mister Wolf said. He stepped forward and bowed briefly. “Hail Korodullin and Mayaserana,” he greeted the king and queen. “I’m sorry we haven’t had the chance to get acquainted before.”

“The honor is ours, noble Belgarath,” the young king replied in a voice whose rich timbre belied his frail appearance.

“My father spoke often of thee,” the queen said.

“We were good friends,” Wolf told her. “Allow me to present my daughter, Polgara.”

“Great Lady,” the king responded with a respectful inclination of his head. “All the world knows of thy power, but men have forgotten to speak of thy beauty.”

“We’ll get along well together,” Aunt Pol answered warmly, smiling at him.

“My heart trembles at the sight of the flower of all womanhood,” the queen declared.

Aunt Pol looked at the queen thoughtfully. “We must talk, Mayaserana,” she said in a serious tone, “in private and very soon.”

The queen looked startled.

Mister Wolf introduced the rest of them, and each bowed in turn to the young king.

“Welcome, gentles all,” Korodullin said. “My poor court is overwhelmed by so noble a company.”

“We don’t have much time, Korodullin,” Mister Wolf told him. “The courtesy of the Arendish throne is the marvel of the world. I don’t want to offend you and your lovely queen by cutting short those stately observances which so ornament your court, but I have certain news which I have to present to you in private. The matter is of extreme urgency.”

“Then I am at thy immediate disposal,” the king replied, rising from his throne. “Forgive us, dear friends,” he said to the assembled nobles, “but this ancient friend of our kingly line hath information which must be imparted to our ears alone with utmost urgency. I pray thee, let us go apart for a little space of time to receive this instruction. We shall return presently.”

“Polgara,” Mister Wolf said.

“Go ahead, father,” she replied. “Just now I have to speak with Mayaserana about something that’s very important to her.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, father, it can’t.” And with that she took the queen’s arm, and the two left. Mister Wolf stared after her for a moment; then he shrugged, and he and Korodullin also left the throne room. An almost shocked silence followed their departure.

“Most unseemly,” an old courtier with wispy white hair disapproved. “A necessary haste, my Lord,” Mandorallen informed him. “As the revered Belgarath hath intimated, our mission is the hinge-pin of the survival of all the kingdoms of the west. Our Ancient Foe may soon be abroad again. It will not be long, I fear, ere Mimbrate knights will again stand the brunt of titanic war.”

“Blessed then be the tongue which brings the news,” the white-haired old man declared. “I had feared that I had seen my last battle and would die abed in my dotage. I thank great Chaldan that I still have my vigor, and that my prowess is undiminished by the passage of a mere fourscore years.”

Garion drew off by himself to one side of the room to wrestle with a problem. Events had swept him into King Korodullin’s court before he had had the time to prepare himself for an unpleasant duty. He had given his word to Lelldorin to bring certain things to the king’s attention, but he did not have the faintest idea how to begin. The exaggerated formality of the Arendish court intimidated him. This was not at all like the rough, good-natured court of King Anheg in Val Alorn or the almost homey court of King Fulrach in Sendar. This was Vo Mimbre, and the prospect of blurting out news of the wild scheme of a group of Asturian firebrands as he had blurted out the news of the Earl of Jarvik in Cherek now seemed utterly out of the question.

Suddenly the thought of that previous event struck him forcibly. The situation then was so similar to this one that it seemed all at once like some elaborate game. The moves on the board were almost identical, and in each case he had been placed in the uncomfortable position of being required to block that last crucial move where a king would die and a kingdom would collapse. He felt oddly powerless, as if his entire life were in the fingers of two faceless players maneuvering pieces in the same patterns on some vast board in a game that, for all he knew, had lasted for eternity. There was no question about what had to be done. The players, however, seemed content to leave it up to him to come up with a way to do it.

King Korodullin appeared shaken when he returned to the throne room with Mister Wolf a half hour later, and he controlled his expression with obvious difficulty. “Forgive me, gentles all,” he apologized, “but I have had disturbing news. For the present time, however, let us put aside our cares and celebrate this historic visit. Summon musicians and command that a banquet be made ready.”

There was a stir near the door, and a black-robed man entered with a half dozen Mimbrate knights in full armor following him closely, their eyes narrow with suspicion and their hands on their sword hilts as if daring anyone to bar their leader’s path. As the robed man strode nearer, Garion saw his angular eyes and scarred cheeks. The man was a Murgo.

Barak put a firm hand on Hettar’s arm.

The Murgo had obviously dressed in haste and he seemed slightly breathless from his burned trip to the throne room. “Your Majesty,” he rasped, bowing deeply to Korodullin, “I have just been advised that visitors have arrived at thy court and have made haste here to greet them in the name of my king, Taur Urgas.”

Korodullin’s face grew cold. “I do not recall summoning thee, Nachak,” he said.

“It is, then, as I had feared,” the Murgo replied. “These messengers have spoken ill of my race, seeking to dissever the friendship which loth exist between the thrones of Arendia and of Cthol Murgos. I am chagrined to find that thou bast given ear to slanders without offering me opportunity to reply. Is this just, august Majesty?”

“Who is this?” Mister Wolf asked Korodullin.

“Nachak,” the king replied, “the ambassador of Cthol Murgos. Shall I introduce thee to him, Ancient One?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mister Wolf answered bleakly. “Every Murgo alive knows who I am. Mothers in Cthol Murgos frighten their children into obedience by mentioning my name.”

“But I am not a child, old man,” Nachak sneered. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“That could be a serious failing,” Silk observed.

The Murgo’s name had struck Garion almost like a blow. As he looked at the scarred face of the man who had so misled Lelldorin and his friends, he realized that the players had once again moved their pieces into that last crucial position, and that who would win and who would lose once again depended entirely on him.

“What lies have you told the king?” Nachak was demanding of Mister Wolf.

“No lies, Nachak,” Wolf told him. “Just the truth. That should be enough.”

“I protest, your Majesty,” Nachak appealed to the king. “I protest in the strongest manner possible. All the world knows of his hatred for my people. How can you allow him to poison your mind against us?”

“He forgot the thees and thous that time,” Silk commented slyly.

“He’s excited,” Barak replied. “Murgos get clumsy when they’re excited. It’s one of their shortcomings.”

“Alorns!” Nachak spat.

“That’s right, Murgo,” Barak said coldly. He was still holding Hettar’s arm.

Nachak looked at them, and then his eyes widened as he seemed to see Hettar for the first time. He recoiled from the Algar’s hate-filled stare, and his half dozen knights closed protectively around him. “Your Majesty,” he rasped, “I know that man to be Hettar of Algaria, a known murderer. I demand that you arrest him.”

“Demand, Nachak?” the king asked with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Thou wilt present demands to me in my own court?”

“Forgive me, your Majesty,” Nachak apologized quickly. “The sight of that animal so disturbed me that I forgot myself.”

“You’d be wise to leave now, Nachak,” Mister Wolf recommended. “It’s not really a good idea for a Murgo to be alone in the presence of so many Alorns. Accidents have a way of happening under such conditions.”

“Grandfather,” Garion said urgently. Without knowing exactly why, he knew that it was time to speak. Nachak must not be allowed to leave the throne room. The faceless players had made their final moves, and the game must end here. “Grandfather,” he repeated, “there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Not now, Garion.” Wolf was still looking with hard eyes at the Murgo.

“It’s important, grandfather. Very important.”

Mister Wolf turned as if to reply sharply, but then he seemed to see something—something that no one else in the throne room could see and his eyes widened in momentary amazement. “All right, Garion,” he said in a strangely quiet voice. “Go ahead.”

“Some men are planning to kill the king of Arendia. Nachak’s one of them.” Garion had said it louder than he’d intended, and a sudden silence fell over the throne room at his words.

Nachak’s face went pale, and his hand moved involuntarily toward his sword hilt, then froze. Garion was suddenly keenly aware of Barak hulking just behind him and Hettar, grim as death in black leather towering beside him. Nachak stepped back and made a quick gesture to his steel-clad knights. Quickly they formed a protective ring around him, their hands on their weapons. “I won’t stay and listen to such slander,” the Murgo declared.

“I have not yet given thee my permission to withdraw, Nachak,” Korodullin informed him coolly. “I require thy presence yet a while.” The young king’s face was stern, and his eyes bored into the Murgo’s. Then he turned to Garion. “I would hear more of this. Speak truthfully, lad, and fear not reprisal from any man for thy words.”

Garion drew a deep breath and spoke carefully. “I don’t really know all the details, your Majesty,” he explained. “I found out about it by accident.”

“Say what thou canst,” the king told him.

“As nearly as I can tell, your Majesty, next summer when you travel to Vo Astur, a group of men are going to try to kill you somewhere on the highway.”

“Asturian traitors, doubtless,” a gray-haired courtier suggested.

“They call themselves patriots,” Garion answered.

“Inevitably,” the courtier sneered.

“Such attempts are not uncommon,” the king stated. “We will take steps to guard against them. I thank thee for this information.”

“There’s more, your Majesty,” Garion added. “When they attack, they’re going to be wearing the uniforms of Tolnedran legionnaires.”

Silk whistled sharply.

“The whole idea is to make your nobles believe that you’ve been killed by the Tolnedrans,” Garion continued. “These men are sure that Mimbre will immediately declare war on the Empire, and that as soon as that happens the legions will march in. Then, when everybody here is involved in the war, they’re going to announce that Asturias no longer subject to the Arendish throne. They’re sure that the rest of Asturia will follow them at that point.”

“I see,” the king replied thoughtfully. “ ‘This a well-conceived plan, but with a subtlety uncharacteristic of our wild-eyed Asturian brothers. But I have yet heard nothing linking the emissary of Taur Urgas with this treason.”

“The whole plan was his, your Majesty. He gave them all the details and the gold to buy the Tolnedran uniforms and to encourage other people to join them.”

“He lies!” Nachak burst out.

“Thou shalt have opportunity to reply, Nachak,” the king advised him. He turned back to Garion. “Let us pursue this matter further. How camest thou by this knowledge?”

“I can’t say, your Majesty,” Garion replied painfully. “I gave my word not to. One of the men told me about it to prove that he was my friend. He put his life in my hands to show how much he trusted me. I can’t betray him.”

“Thy loyalty speaks well of thee, young Garion,” the king commended him, “but thy accusation against the Murgo ambassador is most grave. Without violating thy trust, canst thou provide corroboration?”

Helplessly, Garion shook his head.

“This is a serious matter, your Majesty,” Nachak declared. “I am the personal representative of Taur Urgas. This lying urchin is Belgarath’s creature, and his wild, unsubstantiated story is an obvious attempt to discredit me and to drive a wedge between the thrones of Arendia and Cthol Murgos. This accusation must not be allowed to stand. The boy must be forced to identify these imaginary plotters or to admit that he lies.”

“He hath given his pledge, Nachak,” the king pointed out.

“He says so, your Majesty,” Nachak replied with a sneer. “Let us put him to the test. An hour on the rack may persuade him to speak freely.”

“I’ve seldom had much faith in confessions obtained by torment,” Korodullin said.

“If it please your Majesty,” Mandorallen interjected, “it may be that I can help to resolve this matter.”

Garion threw a stricken look at the knight. Mandorallen knew Lelldorin, and it would be a simple thing for him to guess the truth. Mandorallen, moreover, was a Mimbrate, and Korodullin was his king. Not only was he under no compulsion to remain silent, but his duty almost obliged him to speak.

“Sir Mandorallen,” the king responded gravely, “thy devotion to truth and duty are legendary. Canst thou perchance identify these plotters?”

The question hung there.

“Nay, Sire,” Mandorallen replied firmly, “but I know Garion to be a truthful and honest boy. I will vouch for him.”

“That’s scanty corroboration,” Nachak asserted. “I declare that he lies, so where does that leave us?”

“The lad is my companion,” Mandorallen said. “I will not be the instrument of breaking his pledge, since his honor is as dear to me as mine own. By our law, however, a cause incapable of proof may be decided by trial at arms. I will champion this boy. I declare before this company that this Nachak is a foul villain who hath joined with diverse others to slay my king.” He pulled off his steel gauntlet and tossed it to the floor. The crash as it struck the polished stone seemed thunderous. “Take up my gage, Murgo,” Mandorallen said coldly, “or let one of thy sycophant knights take it up for thee. I will prove thy villainy upon thy body or upon the body of thy champion.”

Nachak stared first at the mailed gauntlet and then at the great knight standing accusingly before him. He licked his lips nervously and looked around the throne room. Except for Mandorallen, none of the Mimbrate nobles present were under arms. The Murgo’s eyes narrowed with a sudden desperation. “Kill him!” he snarled at the six men in armor surrounding him.

The knights looked shocked, doubtful.

“Kill him!” Nachak commanded them. “A thousand gold pieces to the man who spills out his life!”

The faces of the six knights went flat at his words. As one man they drew their swords and spread out, moving with raised shields toward Mandorallen. There were gasps and cries of alarm as the nobles and their ladies scrambled out of the way.

“What treason is this?” Mandorallen demanded of them. “Are ye so enamored of this Murgo and his gold that ye will draw weapons in the king’s presence in open defiance of the law’s prohibitions? Put up your swords.”

But they ignored his words and continued their grim advance.

“Defend thyself, Sir Mandorallen,” Korodullin urged, half rising from his throne. “I free thee of the law’s constraint.”

Barak, however, had already begun to move. Noting that Mandorallen had not carried his shield into the throne room, the red-bearded man jerked an enormous two-handed broadsword down from the array of banners and weapons at one side of the dais. “Mandorallen!” he shouted and with a great heave he slid the huge blade skittering and bouncing across the stone floor toward the knight’s feet. Mandorallen stopped the sliding weapon with one mailed foot, stooped, and picked it up.

The approaching knights looked a bit less confident as Mandorallen lifted the six-foot blade with both hands.

Barak, grinning hugely, drew his sword from one hip and his war axe from the other. Hettar, his drawn sabre held low, was circling the clumsy knights on catlike feet. Without thinking, Garion reached for his own sword, but Mister Wolf’s hand closed on his wrist. “You stay out of it,” the old man told him and pulled him clear of the impending fight.

Mandorallen’s first blow crashed against a quickly raised shield, shattering the arm of a knight with a crimson surcoat over his armor and hurling him into a clattering heap ten feet away. Barak parried a sword stroke from a burly knight with his axe and battered at the man’s raised shield with his own heavy sword. Hettar toyed expertly with a knight in green-enameled armor, easily avoiding his opponent’s awkward strokes and flicking the point of his sabre at the man’s visored face.

The steely ring of sword on sword echoed through Korodullin’s throne room, and showers of sparks cascaded from the clash of edge against edge. With huge blows, Mandorallen smashed at a second man. A vast sweep of his two-handed sword went under the knight’s shield, and the man shrieked as the great blade bit through his armor and into his side. Then he fell with blood spouting from the sheared-in gash that reached halfway through his body.

Barak, with a deft backswing of his war axe, caved in the side of the burly knight’s helmet, and the knight half spun and fell to the floor. Hettar feinted a quick move, then drove his sabre point through a slot in the green-armored knight’s visor. The stricken knight stiffened as the sabre ran into his brain.

As the melee surged across the polished floor, the nobles and ladies scurried this way and that to avoid being overrun by the struggling men. Nachak watched with dismay as his knights were systematically destroyed before his eyes. Then, quite suddenly he turned and fled.

“He’s getting away!” Garion shouted, but Hettar was already in pursuit, his dreadful face and blood-smeared sabre melting the courtiers and their screaming ladies out of his path as he ran to cut off Nachak’s flight. The Murgo had almost reached the far end of the hall before Hettar’s long strides carried him through the crowd to block the doorway. With a cry of despair, the ambassador yanked his sword from its scabbard, and Garion felt a strange, momentary pity for him.

As the Murgo raised his sword, Hettar flicked his sabre almost like a whip, lashing him once on each shoulder. Nachak desperately tried to raise his numbed arms to protect his head, but Hettar’s blade dropped low instead. Then, with a peculiar fluid grace, the grim-faced Algar quite deliberately ran the Murgo through. Garion saw the sabre blade come out between Nachak’s shoulders, angling sharply upward. The ambassador gasped, dropped his sword and gripped Hettar’s wrist with both hands, but the hawk-faced man inexorably turned his hand, twisting the sharp, curved blade inside the Murgo’s body. Nachak groaned and shuddered horribly. Then his hands slipped off Hettar’s wrist and his legs buckled under him. With a gurgling sigh, he toppled backward, sliding limply off Hettar’s blade.

11

A moment of dreadful silence filled the throne room following the death of Nachak. Then the two members of his bodyguard who were still on their feet threw their weapons down on the blood-spattered floor with a sudden clatter. Mandorallen raised his visor and turned toward the throne. “Sire,” he said respectfully, “the treachery of Nachak stands proved by reason of this trial at arms:”

“Truly,” the king agreed. “My only regret is that thy enthusiasm in pursuing this cause hath deprived us of the opportunity to probe more deeply into the full extent of Nachak’s duplicity.”

“I expect that the plots he hatched will dry up once word of what happened here gets around,” Mister Wolf observed.

“Perhaps so,” the king acknowledged. “I would have pursued the matter further, however. I would know if this villainy was Nachak’s own or if I must look beyond him to Taur Urgas himself.” He frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head as if to put certain dark speculations aside. “Arendia stands in thy debt, Ancient Belgarath. This brave company of throe hath forestalled the renewal of a war best forgotten.” He looked sadly at the blood-smeared floor and the bodies littering it. “My throne room hath become as a battlefield. The curse of Arendia extends even here.” He sighed. “Have it cleansed,” he ordered shortly and turned his head so that he would not have to watch the grim business of cleaning up.

The nobles and ladies began to buzz as the dead were removed and the polished stone floor was quickly mopped to remove the pools of sticky blood.

“Good fight,” Barak commented as he carefully wiped his axe blade.

“I am in thy debt, Lord Barak,” Mandorallen said gravely. “Thy aid was fortuitous.”

Barak shrugged. “It seemed appropriate.”

Hettar rejoined them, his expression one of grim satisfaction.

“You did a nice job on Nachak,” Barak complimented him.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Hettar answered. “Murgos always seem to make that same mistake when they get into a fight. I think there’s a gap in their training somewhere.”

“That’s a shame, isn’t it?” Barak suggested with vast insincerity.

Garion moved away from them. Although he knew it was irrational, he nevertheless felt a keen sense of personal responsibility for the carnage he had just witnessed. The blood and violent death had come about as the result of his words. Had he not spoken, men who were now dead would still be alive. No matter how justified—how necessary—his speaking out had been, he still suffered the pangs of guilt. He did not at the moment trust himself to speak with his friends. More than anything he wished that he could talk with Aunt Pol, but she had not yet returned to the throne room, and so he was left to wrestle alone with his wounded conscience.

He reached one of the embrasures formed by the buttresses along the south wall of the throne room and stood alone in somber reflection until a girl, perhaps two years older than he, glided across the floor toward him, her stiff, crimson brocade gown rustling. The girl’s hair was dark, even black, and her skin was creamy. Her bodice was cut quite low, and Garion found some difficulty in finding a safe place for his eyes as she bore down on him.

“I would add my thanks to the thanks of all Arendia, Lord Garion,” she breathed at him. Her voice was vibrant with all kinds of emotions, none of which Garion understood. “Thy timely revelation of the Murgo’s plotting hath in truth saved the life of our sovereign.”

Garion felt a certain warmth at that. “I didn’t do all that much, my lady,” he replied with a somewhat insincere attempt at modesty. “My friends did all the fighting.”

“But it was thy brave denunciation which uncovered the foul plot,” she persisted, “and virgins will sing of the nobility with which thou protected the identity of thy nameless and misguided friend.”

Virgin was not a word with which Garion was prepared to deal. He blushed and floundered helplessly.

“Art thou in truth, noble Garion, the grandson of Eternal Belgarath?”

“The relationship is a bit more distant. We simplify it for the sake of convenience.”

“But thou art in his direct line?” she persisted, her violet eyes glowing.

“He tells me I am.”

“Is the Lady Polgara perchance thy mother?”

“My aunt.”

“A close kinship nonetheless,” she approved warmly, her hand coming to rest lightly on his wrist. “Thy blood, Lord Garion, is the noblest in the world. Tell me, art thou perchance as yet unbetrothed?”

Garion blinked at her, his ears growing suddenly redder.

“Ah, Garion,” Mandorallen boomed in his hearty voice, striding into the awkward moment, “I had been seeking thee. Wilt thou excuse us, Countess?”

The young lady shot Mandorallen a look filled with sheer venom, but the knight’s firm hand was already drawing Garion away.

“We will speak again, Lord Garion,” she called after him.

“I hope so, my Lady,” Garion replied back over his shoulder. Then he and Mandorallen merged with the crowd of courtiers near the center of the throne room.

“I wanted to thank you, Mandorallen,” Garion said finally, struggling with it a little.

“For what, lad?”

“You knew whom I was protecting when I told the King about Nachak, didn’t you?”

“Naturally,” the knight replied in a rather offhand way.

“You could have told the king,—actually it was your duty to tell him, wasn’t it?”

“But thou hadst given thy pledge.”

“You hadn’t, though.”

“Thou art my companion, lad. Thy pledge is as binding upon me as it is upon thee. Didst thou not know that?”

Garion was startled by Mandorallen’s words. The exquisite involvement of Arendish ethics were beyond his grasp. “So you fought for me instead.”

Mandorallen laughed easily. “Of course,” he answered, “though I must confess to thee in all honesty, Garion, that my eagerness to stand as thy champion grew not entirely out of friendship. In truth I found the Murgo Nachak offensive and liked not the cold arrogance of his hirelings. I was inclined toward battle before thy need of championing presented itself. Perhaps it is I who should thank thee for providing the opportunity.”

“I don’t understand you at all, Mandorallen,” Garion admitted. “Sometimes I think you’re the most complicated man I’ve ever met.”

“I?” Mandorallen seemed amazed. “I am the simplest of men.” He looked around then and leaned slightly toward Garion. “I must advise thee to have a care in thy speech with the Countess Vasrana,” he warned. “It was that which impelled me to draw thee aside.”

“Who?”

“The comely young lady with whom thou wert speaking. She considers herself the greatest beauty in the kingdom and is seeking a husband worthy of her.”

“Husband?” Garion responded in a faltering voice.

“Thou art fair game, lad. Thy blood is noble beyond measure by reason of thy kinship to Belgarath. Thou wouldst be a great prize for the countess.”

“Husband?” Garion quavered at.in, his knees beginning to tremble. “Me?”

“I know not how things stand in misty Sendaria,” Mandorallen declared, “but in Arendia thou art of marriageable age. Guard well thy speech, lad. The most innocent remark can be viewed as a promise, should a noble choose to take it so.”

Garion swallowed hard and looked around apprehensively. After that he did his best to hide. His nerves, he felt, were not up to any more shocks.

The Countess Vasrana, however, proved to be a skilled huntress. With appalling determination she tracked him down and pinned him in another embrasure with smoldering eyes and heaving bosom. “Now perchance we may continue our most interesting discussion, Lord Garion,” she purred at him.

Garion was considering flight when Aunt Pol, accompanied by a now radiant Queen Mayaserana, reentered the throne room. Mandorallen spoke briefly to her, and she immediately crossed to the spot where the violet-eyed countess held Garion captive.

“Garion, dear,” she said as she approached. “It’s time for your medicine.”

“Medicine?” he replied, confused.

“A most forgetful boy,” she told the countess. “Probably it was all the excitement, but he knows that if he doesn’t take the potion every three hours, the madness will return.”

“Madness?” the Countess Vasrana repeated sharply.

“The curse of his family,” Aunt Pol sighed. “They all have it-all the male children. The potion works for a while, but of course it’s only temporary. We’ll have to find some patient and self sacrificing lady soon, so that he can marry and father children before his brains begin to soften. After that his poor wife will be doomed to spend the rest of her days caring for him.” She looked critically at the young countess. “I wonder,” she said. “Could it be possible that you are as yet unbetrothed? You appear to be of a suitable age.” She reached out and briefly took hold of Vasrana’s rounded arm. “Nice and strong,” she said approvingly. “I’ll speak to my father, Lord Belgarath, about this immediately.”

The countess began to back away, her eyes wide.

“Come back,” Aunt Pol told her. “His fits won’t start for several minutes yet.”

The girl fled.

“Can’t you ever stay out of trouble?” Aunt Pol demanded of Garion, leading him firmly away.

“But I didn’t say anything,” he objected.

Mandorallen joined them, grinning broadly. “I perceive that thou hast routed our predatory countess, my Lady. I should have thought she would prove more persistent.”

“I gave her something to worry about. It dampened her enthusiasm for matrimony.”

“What matter didst thou discuss with our queen?” he asked. “I have not seen her smile so in years.”

“Mayaserana’s had a problem of a female nature. I don’t think you’d understand.”

“Her inability to carry a child to term?”

“Don’t Arends have anything better to do than gossip about things that don’t concern them? Why don’t you go find another fight instead of asking intimate questions?”

“The matter is of great concern to us all, my Lady,” Mandorallen apologized. “If our queen does not produce an heir to the throne, we stand in danger of dynastic war. All Arendia could go up in flames.”

“There aren’t going to be any flames, Mandorallen. Fortunately I arrived in time—though it was very close. You’ll have a crown prince before winter.”

“Is it possible?”

“Would you like all the details?” she asked pointedly. “I’ve noticed that men usually prefer not to know about the exact mechanics involved in childbearing.”

Mandorallen’s face slowly flushed. “I will accept thy assurances, Lady Polgara,” he replied quickly.

“I’m so glad.”

“I must inform the king,” he declared.

“You must mind your own business, Sir Mandorallen. The queen will tell Korodullin what he needs to know. Why don’t you go clean off your armor? You look as if you just walked through a slaughterhouse.”

He bowed, still blushing, and moved away.

“Men!” she said to his retreating back. Then she turned back to Garion. “I hear that you’ve been busy.”

“I had to warn the king,” he replied.

“You seem to have an absolute genius for getting mixed up in this sort of thing. Why didn’t you tell me—or your grandfather.”

“I promised that I wouldn’t say anything.”

“Garion,” she said firmly, “under our present circumstances, secrets are very dangerous. You knew that what Lelldorin told you was important, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t say it was Lelldorin.”

She gave him a withering look. “Garion, dear,” she told him bluntly, “don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that I’m stupid.”

“I didn’t,” he floundered. “I wasn’t. I—Aunt Pol, I gave them my word that I wouldn’t tell anybody.”

She sighed. “We’ve got to get you out of Arendia,” she declared. “The place seems to be affecting your good sense. The next time you feel the urge to make one of these startling public announcements, talk it over with me first, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“Oh, Garion, what am I ever going to do with you?” Then she laughed fondly and put her arm about his shoulder and everything was all right again.

The evening passed uneventfully after that. The banquet was tedious, and the toasts afterward interminable as each Arendish noble arose in turn to salute Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol with flowery and formal speeches. They went to bed late, and Garion slept fitfully, troubled by nightmares of the hot-eyed countess pursuing him through endless, flower-strewn corridors.

They were up early the next morning, and after breakfast Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf spoke privately with the king and queen again. Garion, still nervous about his encounter with the Countess Vasrana, stayed close to Mandorallen. The Mimbrate knight seemed best equipped to help him avoid any more such adventures. They waited in an antechamber to the throne room, and Mandorallen in his blue surcoat explained at length an intricate tapestry which covered one entire wall.

About midmorning Sir Andorig, the dark-haired knight Mister Wolf had ordered to spend his days caring for the tree in the plaza, came looking for Mandorallen. “Sir Knight,” he said respectfully, “the Baron of Vo Ebor hath arrived from the north accompanied by his lady. They have asked after thee and besought me that I should seek thee out for them.”

“Thou art most kind, Sir Andorig,” Mandorallen replied, rising quickly from the bench where he had been sitting. “Thy courtesy becomes thee greatly.”

Andorig sighed. “Alas that it was not always so. I have this past night stood vigil before that miraculous tree which Holy Belgarath commended to my care. I thus had leisure to consider my life in retrospect. I have not been an admirable man. Bitterly I repent my faults and will strive earnestly for amendment.”

Wordlessly, Mandorallen clasped the knight’s hand and then followed him down a long hallway to a room where the visitors waited.

It was not until they entered the sunlit room that Garion remembered that the wife of the Baron of Vo Ebor was the lady to whom Mandorallen had spoken on that windswept hill beside the Great West Road some days before.

The baron was a solid-looking man in a green surcoat, and his hair and beard were touched with white. His eyes were deep-set, and there seemed to be a great sadness in them. “Mandorallen,” he said, warmly embracing the younger knight. “Thou art unkind to absent thyself from us for so long.”

“Duty, my Lord,” Mandorallen replied in a subdued voice. “Come, Nerina,” the baron told his wife, “greet our friend.”

The Baroness Nerina was much younger than her husband. Her hair was dark and very long. She wore a rose-colored gown, and she was beautiful-though, Garion thought, no more so than any of a half dozen others he had seen at the Arendish court.

“Dear Mandorallen,” she said, kissing the knight with a brief, chaste embrace, “we have missed thee at Vo Ebor.”

“And the world is desolate for me that I must be absent from its well-loved halls.”

Sir Andorig had bowed and then discreetly departed, leaving Garion standing awkwardly near the door.

“And who is this likely-appearing lad who accompanies thee, my son?” the baron asked.

“A Sendarian boy,” Mandorallen responded. “His name is Garion. He and diverse others have joined with me in a perilous quest.”

“Joyfully I greet my son’s companion,” the baron declared.

Garion bowed, but his mind raced, attempting to find some legitimate excuse to leave. The situation was terribly embarrassing, and he did not want to stay.

“I must wait upon the king,” the baron announced. “Custom and courtesy demand that I present myself to him as soon as possible upon my arrival at his court. Wilt thou, Mandorallen, remain here with my baroness until I return?”

“I will, my Lord.”

“I’ll take you to where the king is meeting with my aunt and my grandfather, sir,” Garion offered quickly.

“Nay, lad,” the baron demurred. “Thou too must remain. Though I have no cause for anxiety, knowing full well the fidelity of my wife and my dearest friend, idle tongues would make scandal were they left together unattended. Prudent folk leave no possible foundation for false rumor and vile innuendo.”

“I’ll stay then, sir,” Garion replied quickly.

“Good lad,” the baron approved. Then, with eyes that seemed somehow haunted, he quietly left the room.

“Wilt thou sit, my Lady?” Mandorallen asked Nerina, pointing to a sculptured bench near a window.

“I will,” she said. “Our journey was fatiguing.”

“It is a long way from Vo Ebor,” Mandorallen agreed, sitting on another bench. “Didst thou and my Lord find the roads passable?”

“Perhaps not yet so dry as to make travel enjoyable,” she told him. They spoke at some length about roads and weather, sitting not far from each other, but not so close that anyone chancing to pass by the open door could have mistaken their conversation for anything less than innocent. Their eyes, however, spoke more intimately. Garion, painfully embarrassed, stood looking out a window, carefully choosing one that kept him in full view of the door.

As the conversation progressed, there were increasingly long pauses, and Garion cringed inwardly at each agonizing silence, afraid that either Mandorallen or the Lady Nerina might in the extremity of their hopeless love cross that unspoken boundary and blurt the one word, phrase, or sentence which would cause restraint and honor to crumble and turn their lives into disaster. And yet a certain part of his mind wished that the word or phrase or sentence might be spoken and that their love could flame, however briefly.

It was there, in that quiet sunlit chamber, that Garion passed a small crossroad. The prejudice against Mandorallen that Lelldorin’s unthinking partisanship had instilled in him finally shattered and fell away. He felt a surge of feelings—not pity, for they would not have accepted pity, but compassion rather. More than that, there was the faint beginning of an understanding of the honor and towering pride which, though utterly selfless, was the foundation of that tragedy which had existed in Arendia for uncounted centuries.

For perhaps a half hour more Mandorallen and the Lady Nerina sat, speaking hardly at all now, their eyes lost in each other’s faces while Garion, near to tears, stood his enforced watch over them. And then Durnik came to tell them that Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf were getting ready to leave.