‘That’s right,’ Aunt Pol said encouragingly. ‘Now kill him. Hurry, Garion. You have to be finished by suppertime.’
He spun around to stare at her. Kill Rundorig? But when he looked back, it was not Rundorig. Instead the face that looked at him from beneath the kettle was maimed and hideous.
‘No, no,’ Barak said impatiently. ‘Don’t hold it like that. Grip it in both hands and keep it pointed at his chest. Keep the point low so that, when he charges, he doesn’t knock the spear aside with his tusks. Now do it again. Try to get it right this time. Hurry, Garion. We don’t have all day, you know.’ The big man nudged the dead boar with his foot, and the boar got up and began to paw at the snow. Barak gave Garion a quick look. ‘Are you ready?’ he demanded.
Then he was standing on a strange, colorless plain, and there seemed to be statues all around him. No. Not statues – figures. King Anheg was there – or a figure that looked like him – and King Korodullin, and Queen Islena, and there was the Earl of Jarvik, and over there was Nachak, the Murgo ambassador at Vo Mimbre.
‘Which piece do you want to move?’ It was the dry voice in his mind.
‘I don’t know the rules,’ Garion objected.
‘That doesn’t matter. You have to move. It’s your turn.’
When Garion turned back, one of the figures was rushing at him. It wore a cowled robe, and its eyes bulged with madness. Without thinking, Garion raised his hand to ward off the figure’s attack.
‘Is that the move you want to make?’ the voice asked him.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s too late to change it now. You’ve already touched him. From now on, you have to make your own moves.’
‘Is that one of the rules?’
‘That’s the way it is. Are you ready?’
There was the smell of loam and of ancient oak trees. ‘You really must learn to control your tongue, Polgara,’ Asharak the Murgo said with a bland smile, slapping Aunt Pol sharply across the face.
‘It’s your move again,’ the dry voice said. ‘There’s only one that you can make.’
‘Do I have to do it? Isn’t there anything else I can do?’
‘It’s the only move there is. You’d better hurry.’
With a deep sigh of regret, Garion reached out and set fire to Asharak with the palm of his hand.
A sudden, gusting draft banged open the door of the room Garion shared with Lelldorin, and the two of them sat bolt upright in their beds.
‘I’ll latch it again,’ Lelldorin said, throwing back the covers and stumbling across the chilly stones of the floor.
‘How long’s it going to keep blowing like this?’ Garion asked peevishly. ‘How’s anyone supposed to sleep with all this noise?’
Lelldorin closed the door again, and Garion heard him fumbling around in the darkness. There was a scraping click and a sudden bright spark. The spark went out, and Lelldorin tried again. This time it caught in the tinder. The young Asturian blew on it, and it grew brighter, then flared into a small finger of flame.
‘Have you got any idea what time it is?’ Garion asked as his friend lighted the candle.
‘Some hours before dawn, I imagine,’ Lelldorin replied.
Garion groaned. ‘It feels like this night’s already been about ten years long.’
‘We can talk for a while,’ Lelldorin suggested. ‘Maybe the storm will die down toward dawn.’
‘Talking’s better than lying here in the dark, jumping at every sound,’ Garion agreed, sitting up and pulling his blanket around his shoulders.
‘Things have happened to you since we saw each other last haven’t they, Garion?’ Lelldorin asked, climbing back into his own bed.
‘A lot of things,’ Garion told him, ‘not all of them good, either.’
‘You’ve changed a great deal,’ Lelldorin noted.
‘I’ve been changed. There’s a difference. Most of it wasn’t my idea. You’ve changed, too, you know.’
‘Me?’ Lelldorin laughed ruefully. ‘I’m afraid not, my friend. The mess I’ve made of things in the past week is proof that I haven’t changed at all.’
‘That will take a bit of straightening out, won’t it?’ Garion agreed. ‘The funny part about it all is that there is a perverse sort of logic about the whole thing. There wasn’t one single thing you did that was actually insane. It’s just when you put them all together that it starts to look like a catastrophe.’
Lelldorin sighed. ‘And now my poor Ariana and I are doomed to perpetual exile.’
‘I think we’ll be able to fix it,’ Garion assured him. ‘Your uncle will forgive you, and Torasin probably will, too. He likes you too much to stay angry for long. Baron Oltorain is probably very put out with you, but he’s a Mimbrate Arend. He’ll forgive anything if it’s done for love. We might have to wait until his leg heals up again, though. That was the part that was a real blunder, Lelldorin. You shouldn’t have broken his leg.’
‘Next time I’ll try to avoid that,’ Lelldorin promised quickly.
‘Next time?’
They both laughed then and talked on as their candle flickered in the vagrant drafts stirred by the raging storm. After an hour or so, the worst of the gale seemed to pass, and the two of them found their eyes growing heavy once more.
‘Why don’t we try to sleep again?’ Garion suggested.
‘I’ll blow out the candle,’ Lelldorin agreed. He got up out of bed and stepped to the table. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked Garion.
Garion slept again almost immediately, and almost immediately heard a sibilant whisper in his ear and felt a dry, cold touch. ‘Are you ready?’ the whispering voice hissed, and he turned to look with uncomprehending eyes at the face of Queen Salmissra, a face that shifted back and forth from woman to snake to something midway between.
Then he stood beneath the shimmering dome of the cave of the Gods and moved without thought to touch the unblemished, walnut-colored shoulder of the stillborn colt, thrusting his hand into the absolute silence of death itself.
‘Are you ready?’ Belgarath asked quite calmly.
‘I think so.’
‘All right. Put your will against it and push.’
‘It’s awfully heavy, Grandfather.’
‘You don’t have to pick it up, Garion. Just push it. It will roll over if you do it right. Hurry up. We have a great deal more to do.’
Garion began to gather his will.
And then he sat on a hillside with his cousin Adara. In his hand he held a dead twig and a few wisps of dry grass.
‘Are you ready?’ the voice in his mind asked him.
‘Is this going to mean anything?’ Garion asked. ‘I mean, will it make any difference?’
‘That depends on you and how well you do it.’
‘That’s not a very good answer.’
‘It wasn’t a very good question. If you’re ready, turn the twig into a flower.’
Garion did that and looked critically at the result. ‘It’s not a very good flower, is it?’ he apologized.
‘It will have to do,’ the voice told him.
‘Let me try it again.’
‘What are you going to do with this one?’
‘I’ll just—’ Garion raised his hand to obliterate the defective bloom he had just created.
‘That’s forbidden, you know,’ the voice reminded him.
‘I made it, didn’t I?’
‘That has nothing to do with it. You can’t unmake it. It will be fine. Come along now. We have to hurry.’
‘I’m not ready yet.’
‘That’s too bad. We can’t wait any longer.’
And then Garion woke up. He felt oddly light-headed, as if his troubled sleep had done him more harm than good. Lelldorin was still deep in slumber, and Garion found his clothes in the dark, pulled them on and quietly left the room. The strange dream nagged at his mind as he wandered in the dimly lighted corridors of Iron-grip’s Citadel. He still felt that pressing urgency and the pe
culiar sense that everyone was waiting impatiently for him to do something.
He found a windswept courtyard where snow had piled up in the corners and the stones were black and shiny with ice. Dawn was just breaking, and the battlements surrounding the courtyard were etched sharply against a sky filled with scudding cloud.
Beyond the courtyard lay the stables – warm, smelling of fragrant hay and of horses. Durnik had already found his way there. As was so frequently the case, the smith was uncomfortable in the presence of nobility, and he sought the company of animals instead. ‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’ he asked as Garion entered the stable.
Garion shrugged. ‘For some reason sleep just made things worse. I feel as if my head’s stuffed full of straw.’
‘Joyous Erastide, Garion,’ Durnik said then.
‘That’s right. It is, isn’t it?’ In all the rush, the holiday seemed to have crept up on him. ‘Joyous Erastide, Durnik.’
The colt, who had been sleeping in a back stall, nickered softly as he caught Garion’s scent, and Garion and Durnik went back to where the small animal stood.
‘Joyous Erastide, horse,’ Garion greeted him a bit whimsically. The colt nuzzled at him. ‘Do you think that the storm has blown over completely?’ Garion asked Durnik as he rubbed the colt’s ears. ‘Or is there more on the way?’
‘It has the smell of being over,’ Durnik answered. ‘Weather could smell differently here on this island, though.’
Garion nodded his agreement, patted the colt’s neck and turned toward the door. ‘I suppose I’d better go find Aunt Pol,’ he said. ‘She was saying something last night about wanting to check my clothes. If I make her look for me, she’ll probably make me wish I hadn’t.’
‘Age is bringing you wisdom, I see.’ Durnik grinned at him. ‘If anyone wants me, I’ll be here.’
Garion put his hand briefly on Durnik’s shoulder and then left the stable to go looking for Aunt Pol.
He found her in the company of women in the apartment that appeared to have been set aside for her personal use centuries before. Adara was there and Taiba, Queen Layla and Ariana, the Mimbrate girl; in the center of the room stood Princess Ce’Nedra.
‘You’re up early,’ Aunt Pol observed, her needle flickering as she made some minute modification to Ce’Nedra’s creamy gown.
‘I had trouble sleeping,’ he told her, looking at the princess with a certain puzzlement. She looked different somehow.
‘Don’t stare at me, Garion,’ she told him rather primly.
‘What have you done to your hair?’ he asked her.
Ce’Nedra’s flaming hair had been elaborately arranged, caught at brow and temples by a gold coronet in the form of a band of twined oak leaves. There was some rather intricate braiding involved at the back and then the coppery mass flowed smoothly down over one of her tiny shoulders. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked him.
‘That’s not the way you usually wear it,’ he noted.
‘We’re all aware of that, Garion,’ she replied loftily. Then she turned and looked rather critically at her reflection in the mirror. ‘I’m still not convinced about the braiding, Lady Polgara,’ she fretted. ‘Tolnedran ladies don’t braid their hair. This makes me look like an Alorn.’
‘Not entirely, Ce’Nedra,’ Adara murmured.
‘You know what I mean, Adara – all those buxom blondes with their braids and their milk-maid complexions.’
‘Isn’t it a little early to be getting ready?’ Garion asked. ‘Grandfather said that we weren’t going to take the Orb to the throne room until noon.’
‘That’s not really that far off, Garion,’ Aunt Pol told him, biting a thread and stepping back to look critically at Ce’Nedra’s dress. ‘What do you think, Layla?’
‘She looks just like a princess, Pol,’ Queen Layla gushed.
‘She is a princess, Layla,’ Aunt Pol reminded the plump little queen. Then she turned to Garion. ‘Get some breakfast and have someone show you the way to the baths,’ she instructed. ‘They’re in the cellars under the west wing. After you’ve bathed, you’ll need a shave. Try not to cut yourself. I don’t want you bleeding all over your good clothes.’
‘Do I have to wear all that?’
She gave him a look that immediately answered that question – as well as several others he might have asked.
‘I’ll go find Silk,’ he agreed quickly. ‘He’ll know where the baths are.’
‘Do that,’ she told him quite firmly. ‘And don’t get lost. When the time comes, I want you to be ready.’
Garion nodded and left. Her words had somehow strangely echoed the words of his dream, and he wondered about that as he went looking for Silk.
The little man was lounging in the company of the others in a large, torch-lighted room in the west wing. The kings were there, with Brand, Belgarath and Garion’s other friends. They were breakfasting on cakes and hot spiced wine.
‘Where did you go this morning?’ Lelldorin asked him. ‘You were gone when I woke up.’
‘I couldn’t sleep any more,’ Garion replied.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
‘Why should you lose sleep just because I’m having a restless night?’ Garion could see that they were deep in a discussion, and he sat down quietly to wait for the opportunity to speak to Silk.
‘I think we’ve managed to aggravate Taur Urgas pretty thoroughly in the past couple of months,’ Barak was saying. The big man was sprawled deep in a high-backed chair with his face sunk in the shadows from the flaring torch behind him. ‘First Relg steals Silk right out from under his nose, then Belgarath destroys Ctuchik and knocks down Rak Cthol in the process of taking back the Orb, and finally Cho-Hag and Hettar exterminate a sizable piece of his army when he tries to follow us. The king of the Murgos has had a bad year.’ The big man’s chuckle rumbled out of the shadows. For a moment – a fleeting instant – Garion seemed to see a different shape sprawled there. Some trick of the flickering light and dancing shadows made it appear momentarily that a great, shaggy bear sat in Barak’s place. Then it was gone. Garion rubbed at his eyes and tried to shake off the half-bemused reverie that had dogged him all morning.
‘I still don’t quite follow what you mean about Relg going into the rock to rescue Prince Kheldar.’ King Fulrach frowned. ‘Do you mean that he can burrow through?’
‘I don’t think you’d understand unless you saw it, Fulrach,’ Belgarath told him. ‘Show him, Relg.’
The Ulgo zealot looked at the old man, then walked over to the stone wall beside the large window. Silk instantly turned his back, shuddering. ‘I still can’t stand to watch that,’ he declared to Garion.
‘Aunt Pol said I was supposed to ask you the way to the baths,’ Garion said quietly. ‘She wants me to get cleaned up and shaved, and then I guess I’m supposed to put on my best clothes.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Silk offered. ‘I’m sure that all these gentlemen are going to be fascinated by Relg’s demonstration, and they’ll want him to repeat it. What’s he doing?’
‘He stuck his arm through the wall and he’s wiggling his fingers at them from outside the window,’ Garion reported.
Silk glanced once over his shoulder, then shuddered again and quickly averted his eyes. ‘That makes my blood cold,’ he said with revulsion. ‘Let’s go bathe.’
‘I’ll go along,’ Lelldorin said, and the three of them quietly left the room.
The baths were in a cavernous cellar beneath the west wing of the Citadel. There were hot springs deep in the rock, and they bubbled up to fill the tiled chambers with steam and a faintly sulfurous smell. There were but few torches and only one attendant who wordlessly handed them towels and then went off into the steam to manage the valves that adjusted the water temperature.
‘The big pool there gets hotter the closer you go toward the far end,’ Silk told Garion and Lelldorin as they all disrobed. ‘Some people say you should go in until it’s as hot as you can stand it, but I prefer just t
o pick a comfortable temperature and soak.’ He splashed down into the water.
‘Are you sure we’ll be alone here?’ Garion asked nervously. ‘I don’t think I’d care to have a group of ladies come trooping in while I’m trying to bathe.’
‘The women’s baths are separate,’ Silk assured him. ‘The Rivans are very proper about that sort of thing. They aren’t nearly as advanced as the Tolnedrans yet.’
‘Are you really sure that bathing in the wintertime is healthy?’ Lelldorin asked, eyeing the steaming water suspiciously.
Garion plunged into the pool and moved quickly out of the tepid water at the near end toward the hotter area. The steam rose more thickly as he waded out into the pool, and the pair of torches set in rings on the back wall receded into a kind of ruddy glow. The tiled walls echoed back the sounds of their voices and splashing with a peculiar, cavernlike hollowness. The steam eddied up out of the water, and he found himself suddenly shut off by it, separated from his friends in the hazy dimness. The hot water relaxed him, and he seemed almost to want to float, half-aware, and let it soak out all memory – all the past and all the future. Dreamily he lay back, and then, not knowing why, he allowed himself to sink beneath the dark, steaming water. How long he floated, his eyes closed and all sense suspended, he could not have said, but finally his face rose to the surface and he stood up, the water streaming out of his hair and down across his shoulders. He felt strangely purified by his immersion. And then the sun broke through the tattered cloud outside for a moment, and a single shaft of sunlight streamed down through a small grilled window to fall fully upon Garion. The sudden light was diffused by the steam and seemed to flicker with an opalescent fire.
‘Hail, Belgarion,’ the voice in his mind said to him. ‘I greet thee on this Erastide.’ There was no hint of the usual amusement in the voice, and the formality seemed strange, significant.
‘Thank you,’ Garion replied gravely, and they did not speak again.
The steam rose and eddied about him as he waded back toward the cooler reaches of the pool where Silk and Lelldorin, both sunk to their necks in warm water, were talking quietly together.
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