Belgarath’s expression grew careful. ‘Garion,’ he said in a level voice, ‘I want you to take the sword out of its scabbard. I think the Orb is trying to tell you something.’
Garion reached back over his shoulder and drew Iron-grip’s great sword from its sheath with a steely slither. Without even stopping to think how irrational it might sound, he spoke directly to the glowing stone on the pommel. ‘I’m awfully busy right now. Can’t this wait?’
The answer was a steady pull toward the door.
‘What is it doing?’ Garion demanded irritably.
‘Let’s just follow it,’ Belgarath told him.
Helplessly, Garion followed the powerful urging through the door and out into the torchlit corridor, with the others trailing curiously along behind him. He could sense the peculiarly crystalline awareness of the Orb and feel its overwhelming anger. Not since the dreadful night in Cthol Mishrak when he had faced the maimed God of Angarak had he felt so much outrage emanating from that living stone. The sword continued to pull him down the corridor, moving faster and faster until he was half running to keep up.
‘What’s it trying to do, father?’ Polgara asked in a puzzled tone. ‘It’s never done anything like this before.’
‘I’m not sure,’ the old man replied. ‘We’ll just have to follow it and find out. I think it might be important, though.’
Kail stopped briefly in front of a sentry posted in the corridor. ‘Would you go get my brothers?’ he asked the man. ‘Have them come to the royal apartment.’
‘Yes sir,’ the sentry replied, with a quick salute.
Garion stopped at the dark, polished door to the apartment, opened it, and went inside with the sword still pulling at him.
Queen Layla was just in the act of drawing a blanket over the exhausted Adara, who lay asleep on the couch, and she looked up with astonishment. ‘What on earth—?’ she began.
‘Hush, Layla,’ Polgara told her. ‘Something’s happening that we don’t quite understand.’
Garion steeled himself and went on into the bedroom. Ce’Nedra lay in the bed, tossing and whimpering in her sleep. At her bedside sat Queen Islena and Barak’s wife Merel. Ariana dozed in a deep chair near the window. He was only able to give the ladies attending his wife the briefest of glances, however, before the sword pulled him on into the nursery, where the sight of the empty cradle wrenched at his heart. The great sword dipped over the cradle, and the Orb glowed. Then the stone flickered with a pulsating light for a moment.
‘I think I’m starting to understand,’ Belgarath said. ‘I won’t absolutely swear to this, but I think it wants to follow Geran’s trail.’
‘Can it do that?’ Durnik asked.
‘It can do almost anything, and it’s totally committed to the Rivan line. Let it go, Garion. Let’s see where it leads you.’
In the corridor outside, Kail’s two brothers, Verdan and Brin, met them. Verdan, the eldest of the three, was as burly as an ox, and Brin, the youngest, only slightly less so. Both men wore mail shirts and helmets and had heavy broadswords belted to their sides.
‘We think that the Orb may be trying to lead us to the prince,’ Kail explained tersely to them. ‘We might need you two when we find him.’
Brin flashed a broad, almost boyish grin. ‘We’ll have the abductor’s head on a pole before nightfall, then,’ he said.
‘Let’s not be too hasty about removing heads,’ Belgarath told him. ‘I want the answers to some questions first.’
‘One of you stay with Ce’Nedra at all times,’ Aunt Pol told Queen Layla, who had curiously trailed along behind them. ‘She’ll probably wake up sometime this afternoon. Let Ariana sleep for now. Ce’Nedra might need her when she awakens.’
‘Of course, Polgara,’ the plump queen of Sendaria replied.
‘And you,’ Aunt Pol said firmly to Errand, who was just coming down the hall. ‘I want you to stay in the royal apartment and do exactly what Layla tells you to do.’
‘But —’ he started to protest.
‘No buts, Errand. What we have to do might be dangerous, and that’s something you haven’t quite learned to understand yet.’
He sighed. ‘All right, Polgara,’ he said disconsolately.
With the Orb on the pommel of the massive sword pulling him along, Garion followed the unseen track of his son’s abductor out through one of the side gates with the rest of them close on his heels.
‘It seems to want to go toward the mountains,’ Garion said. ‘I thought the trail would lead down into the city.’
‘Don’t think, Garion,’ Polgara told him. ‘Just go where the Orb leads you.’
The trail led across the meadow rising steeply behind the Citadel and then into the forest of dark fir and spruce where Garion and Ce’Nedra had often strolled on their summer outings.
‘Are you sure it knows what it’s doing?’ Garion asked as he pushed his way through a tangled patch of undergrowth. ‘There’s no path here at all. I don’t think anyone would have come this way.’
‘It’s following some kind of trail, Garion,’ Belgarath assured him. ‘Just keep up with it.’
They struggled through the thick underbrush for an hour or so. Once a covey of grouse exploded from under Garion’s feet with a heart-stopping thunder of wings.
‘I’ll have to remember this place,’ Brin said to Kail. ‘The hunting here might be very good.’
‘We’re hunting other game at the moment. Keep your mind on you work.’
When they reached the upper edge of the forest, Garion stared up at the steep, rock-strewn meadow rising above the timberline. ‘Is there a pass of any kind through these mountains?’ he asked.
‘Off to the left of that big peak,’ Brin replied, pointing. ‘I use it when I go out to hunt wild stags, and the shepherds take their flocks through it to the pastures in the interior valleys.’
‘Also the shepherdesses,’ Verdan added drily. ‘Sometimes the game my brother chases doesn’t have horns.’
Brin threw a quick, nervous glance at Polgara, and a slow blush mounted his cheeks.
‘I’ve always been rather fond of shepherdesses,’ Belgarath noted blandly. ‘For the most part, they’re gentle, understanding girls—and frequently lonely, aren’t they, Brin?’
‘That will do, father,’ Aunt Pol said primly.
It took the better part of the day to go over the pass and through the green meadows lying in the hidden valleys among the mountains beyond. The sun hovered just above the gleaming, almost molten-looking sea on the western side of the Isle when they crested a boulder-covered ridge and started down the long, rocky slope toward the cliffs and the frothy surf pounding endlessly aganst the western coast.
‘Could a ship have landed on this side?’ Garion asked Kail as they went downhill.
Kail was puffing noticeably from the strenuous trek across the island and he mopped his streaming face with his sleeve. ‘There are a few places where it’s possible, Belgarion—if you know what you’re doing. It’s difficult and dangerous, but it is possible.’
Garion’s heart sank. ‘Then he could very well have gotten away,’ he said.
‘I had ships out there, Belgarion,’ Kail said to him, pointing at the sea. ‘I sent them out as soon as we found out that the prince had been taken. About the only way someone could have gotten all the way across the island to this side in time to sail away before those ships got around here would be if he could fly.’
‘We’ve got him, then,’ the irrepressible Brin exclaimed, loosening his sword in its scabbard and searching the boulder-strewn slope and the brink of the cliffs with a hunter’s trained eye.
‘Hold it a second,’ Durnik said sharply. He lifted his head and sniffed at the onshore breeze. ‘There’s somebody up ahead.’
‘What?’ Garion said, a sudden excitement building up in him.
‘I just caught a distinct whiff of somebody who doesn’t bathe regularly.’
Belgarath’s face took on an intense expr
ession. ‘Pol,’ he said, ‘why don’t you take a quick look down there?’
She nodded tersely, and her forehead furrowed with concentration. Garion felt and heard the whispered surge as she probed the empty-looking terrain ahead. ‘Chereks,’ she said after a moment, ‘about a dozen of them. They’re hiding behind those boulders at the edge of the cliffs. They’re watching us and planning an ambush.’
‘Chereks?’ Brin exclaimed. ‘Why would Chereks want to attack us?’
‘They’re Bear-cultists,’ she told him, ‘and nobody knows why those madmen do anything.’
‘What do we do?’ Brin asked in a half whisper.
‘An ambusher always has the advantage,’ Verdan replied, ‘unless the person about to be ambushed knows that he’s there. Then it’s the other way around.’ He looked down the slope grimly, his big hand on his sword hilt.
‘Then we just go down there and spring their trap?’ Brin asked eagerly.
Kail looked at Belgarath. ‘What do you think, Ancient One? We have the advantage now. They’re going to expect us to be startled when they jump out at us, but we’ll be ready for them. We could have half of them down before they realize their mistake.’
Belgarath squinted at the setting sun. ‘Normally, I’d say no,’ he said. ‘These little incidental fights aren’t usually very productive, but we’re losing the light.’ He turned to Aunt Pol. ‘Is Geran anywhere in the vicinity?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘There’s no sign of him.’
Belgarath scratched at his beard. ‘If we leave the Chereks there, they’re going to follow us, and I don’t think I want them creeping along behind—particularly once it gets dark.’ His lined old face tightened into a wolfish grin. ‘All right, let’s indulge ourselves.’
‘Save a few of them though, father,’ Polgara said. ‘I have some questions I’d like answered. And try not to get yourselves hurt, gentlemen. I’m a little tired for surgery today.’
‘No surgery today, Lady Polgara,’ Brin promised blithely. ‘A few funerals, perhaps, but no surgery.’
She raised her eyes toward the sky. ‘Alorns,’ she sighed.
The ambush did not turn out at all as the hidden Bear-cultists had anticipated. The fur-clad Cherek who leaped howling at Garion was met in midair by the flaming sword of the Rivan King and was sheared nearly in two at the waist by the great blade. He fell to the suddenly blood-drenched grass, writhing and squealing. Kail coolly split a charging cultist’s head while his brothers fell on the startled attackers and savagely but methodically began to hack them to pieces.
One cultist leaped atop a large rock, drawing a bow with his arrow pointed directly at Garion, but Belgarath made a short gesture with his left hand, and the bowman was suddenly hurled backward in a long, graceful arc that carried him out over the edge of the nearby cliff. His arrow went harmlessly into the air as he fell shrieking toward the foamy breakers five hundred feet below.
‘Remember, I need a few of them alive!’ Polgara sharply reminded them, as the carnage threatened to get completely out of hand.
Kail grunted, then neatly parried the thrust of a desperate Cherek. His big left fist swung in a broad arc and smashed solidly into the side of the Cherek’s head, sending him spinning to the turf.
Durnik was using his favorite weapon, a stout cudgel perhaps three feet long. Expertly, he slapped a cultist’s sword out of his hand and cracked him sharply alongside the head. The man’s eyes glazed, and he tumbled limply to the ground. Belgarath surveyed the fight, selected a likely candidate and then levitated him about fifty feet into the air. The suspended man was at first apparently unaware of his new location and kept slashing ineffectually at the surrounding emptiness.
The fight was soon over. The last crimson rays of the setting sun mingled with the scarlet blood staining the grass near the edge of the cliff, and the ground was littered with broken swords and scraps of bloody bearskin. ‘For some reason, that makes me feel better,’ Garion declared, wiping his sword on the fallen body of one of the cultists. The Orb, he noted, was also blazing with a kind of fiery satisfaction.
Polgara was coolly inspecting a couple of unconscious survivors. ‘These two will sleep for a while,’ she noted, rolling back an eyelid to examine the glazed eye underneath. ‘Bring that one down, father,’ she said, pointing at the man Belgarath had suspended in midair, ‘In one piece, if you can manage it. I’d like to question him.’
‘Of course, Pol.’ The old man’s eyes were sparkling, and his grin very nearly split his face.
‘Father,’ she said, ‘when are you ever going to grow up?’
‘Why, Polgara,’ he said mockingly, ‘what a thing to say.’
The floating cultist had finally realized his situation and had dropped his sword. He stood tremblng on the insubstantial air, with his eyes bulging in terror and his limbs twitching violently. When Belgarath gently lowered him to the ground, he immediately collapsed in a quivering heap. The old man firmly grasped him by the front of his fur tunic and hauled him roughly into a half-standing position. ‘Do you know who I am?’ he demanded, thrusting his face into that of the cringing captive.
‘You—I —’
‘Do you?’ Belgarath’s voice cracked like a whip.
‘Yes,’ the man chocked.
‘Then you know that if you try to run away, I’ll just hang you back up in the air again and leave you there. You know that I can do that, don’t you?’
‘Yes?’
‘That won’t be necessary, father,’ Polgara said coolly. ‘This man is going to be very co-operative.’
‘I will say nothing, witch-woman,’ the captive declared, though his eyes were still a bit wild.
‘Ah, no, my friend,’ she told him with a chilly little smile. ‘You will say everything. You’ll talk for weeks if I need you to.’ She gave him a hard stare and made a small gesture in front of his face with her left hand. ‘Look closely, friend,’ she said. ‘Enjoy every single detail.’
The bearded Bear-cultist stared at the empty air directly in front of his face, and the blood drained from his cheeks. His eyes started from his head in horror, and he shrieked, staggering back. Grimly, she made a sort of hooking gesture with her still-extended hand, and his retreat stopped instantly. ‘You can’t run away from it,’ she said, ‘and unless you talk—right now—it will stand in front of your face until the day you die.’
‘Take it away!’ he begged in an insane shriek. ‘Please, I’ll do anything—anything!’
‘I wonder where she learned to do that,’ Belgarath murmured to Garion. ‘I could never do it to anybody—and I’ve tried.’
‘He’ll tell you whatever he knows now, Garion,’ Polgara said then. ‘He’s aware of what will happen if he doesn’t.’
‘What have you done with my son?’ Garion demanded of the terrified man.
The prisoner swallowed hard, and then he straightened defiantly. ‘He’s far beyond your reach now, King of Riva.’
The rage welled up in Garion again, and, without thinking, he reached over his shoulder for his sword.
‘Garion!’ Polgara said sharply.
The cultist flinched back, his face going pale. ‘Your son is alive,’ he said hastily. Then a smug look crossed his face. ‘But the next time you meet him, he will kill you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Ulfgar has consulted the oracles. You are not the Rivan King we have awaited for all these centuries. It’s the next King of Riva who will unite Aloria and lead us against the kingdoms of the south. It is your son, Belgarion, and he will lead us because he will be raised to share our beliefs.’
‘Where is my son?’ Garion shouted at him.
‘Where you will never find him,’ the prisoner taunted. ‘We will raise and nurture him in the true faith, as befits an Alorn monarch. And when he is grown, he will come and kill you and take his crown and his sword and his Orb from your usurping hand.’ The man’s eyes were bulging, his limbs shook with religious ecstasy, and there
was foam on his lips. ‘You will die by your own son’s hand, Belgarion of Riva,’ he shrieked, ‘and King Geran will lead all Alorns against the unbelievers of the south, as Belar commanded.’
‘We’re not getting too far with this line of questioning,’ Belgarath said. ‘Let me try for a while.’ He turned to the wild-eyed captive. ‘How much do you know about this Ulfgar?’ he asked.
‘Ulfgar is the Bear-lord, and he has even more power than you, old man.’
‘Interesting notion,’ Belgarath murmured. ‘Have you ever met this master sorcerer—or even seen him, for that matter?’
‘Well —’ the captive hedged.
‘I didn’t think so. How did you know he wanted you to come here and abduct Belgarion’s son, then?’
The captive bit his lip.
‘Answer me!’
‘He sent a messenger,’ the man replied sullenly.
A sudden thought occurred to Garion. ‘Was this Ulfgar of yours behind the attempt to kill my wife?’ he demanded.
‘Wife!’ The cultist sneered. ‘No Alorn takes a Tolnedran mongrel to wife. You—Iron-grip’s heir—should know that better than any man. Naturally we tried to kill the Tolnedran wench. It was the only way to rid Aloria of the infection you brought here.’
‘You’re starting to irritate me, friend,’ Garion said bleakly. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘Let’s get back to this messenger,’ Belgarath said. ‘You say that the baby is where we can’t reach him, but you’re still here, aren’t you? Could it just possibly be that it was the messenger who was the actual abductor and that you and your friends are merely underlings?’
The cultist’s eyes grew wild, and he looked this way and that like a trapped animal. His limbs began to tremble violently.
‘I think we’re approaching a question that you don’t want to answer, friend,’ Belgarath suggested.
It came almost like a blow. There was a wrenching kind of feeling to it, almost as if someone were reaching inside a skull to twist and crush the brain within. The captive shrieked, gave Belgarath one wild look, then spun, took three quick steps, and hurled himself off the edge of the cliff behind him.
‘Question me now!’ he shrieked as he plummeted down into the twilight that was rising out of the dark, angry waters surging about the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Then, even as he fell, Garion heard peal upon peal of insane laughter fading horribly as the fanatic dropped away from them.
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