‘He’s an irritating little fellow, isn’t he?’ Zakath said to Garion.
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Why, your Majesties,’ Velvet said, all wide-eyed innocence, ‘what a thing to suggest.’
‘Well, isn’t he?’ Zakath said pointedly.
‘Of course, but it’s not nice to talk about it.’
Silk looked slightly offended. ‘Would you people like for me to go away so you can talk freely?’
‘Oh, that won’t be necessary, Kheldar,’ Velvet said with a dimpled smile.
They gained little more in the way of information that afternoon, and the frustration of the fruitless quest made them all irritable. ‘I think perhaps we should follow up that idea of yours,’ Garion said to Zakath after supper. ‘First thing tomorrow morning, why don’t we go see that old man, Dallan? We’ll tell him right out that you’re supposed to present yourself to Cyradis. I think it’s time to start pushing a little.’
‘Right,’ Zakath agreed.
Dallan, however, proved to be as unresponsive as all the rest of the citizens of Kell. ‘Be patient, Emperor of Mallorea,’ he advised. ‘The Holy Seeress will come to you at the proper time.’
‘And when is that?’ Garion asked bluntly.
‘Cyradis knows, and that’s all that’s really important, isn’t it?’
‘If he weren’t so old and feeble, I’d shake some answers out of him,’ Garion muttered as he and Zakath walked back to the house.
‘If this goes on much longer, I might just ignore his age and infirmity,’ Zakath said. ‘I’m not in the habit of having my questions evaded this way.’
Velvet and Ce’Nedra were approaching the house from the other direction as Garion and Zakath reached the broad marble steps. The two young women were walking quickly, and Ce’Nedra’s expression was triumphant.
‘I think we managed to get something useful at last,’ Velvet said. ‘Let’s go inside so we can tell everyone at once.’
They gathered again in the domed room, and the blond girl spoke to them quite seriously. ‘This isn’t too precise,’ she admitted, ‘but I think it might be all we’re likely to get out of these people. This morning, Ce’Nedra and I went back to that house where those young women work. They were weaving, and that’s the sort of thing that tends to make people a little less than alert. Anyway, that girl with the large eyes, Onatel, wasn’t there, and Ce’Nedra put on her most empty-headed expression and—’
‘I most certainly did not,’ Ce’Nedra said indignantly.
‘Oh, but you did, dear – and it was absolutely perfect. She stood there all wide-eyed and innocent and asked the young women where we could find our “dear friend”, and one of them let something slip that she probably wasn’t supposed to have. She said that Onatel had been summoned to serve in “the place of the seers.” Ce’Nedra’s eyes went – if possible – even more vacant, and she asked where that might be. Nobody answered, but one of them looked at the mountain.’
‘How can you avoid looking at that monster?’ Silk scoffed. ‘I’m a little dubious about this, Liselle.’
‘The girl was weaving, Kheldar. I’ve done that myself a few times, and I know you have to keep your eyes on what you’re doing. She looked away in response to Ce’Nedra’s question, and then she jerked her eyes back and tried to cover her mistake. I’ve been to the academy, too, Silk, and I can read people almost as well as you can. That girl might as well have screamed it out loud. The Seers are somewhere up on that mountain.’
Silk made a face. ‘She’s probably right, you know,’ he admitted. ‘That’s one of the things they stress at the academy. If you know what you’re looking for, most people’s faces are like open books.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘Well, Zakath,’ he said, ‘it looks as if we’ll get to climb that mountain a little sooner than we’d expected.’
‘I don’t think so, Kheldar,’ Polgara said firmly. ‘You could spend half a lifetime poking around in those glaciers and still not find the seers.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Several, actually.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Come along, Garion,’ she said. ‘You too, uncle.’
‘What are you up to, Pol?’ Belgarath asked.
‘We’re going to go up and have a look.’
‘That’s what I suggested already,’ Silk objected.
‘There’s one difference, though, Kheldar,’ she said sweetly. ‘You can’t fly.’
‘Well,’ he said in an offended tone, ‘if you’re going to be that way about it.’
‘I am, Silk. It’s one of the advantages of being a woman. I get to do all sorts of unfair things, and you have to accept them because you’re too polite not to.’
‘One for her side,’ Garion murmured.
‘You keep saying that,’ Zakath said, puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘It’s an Alorn joke,’ Garion told him.
‘Why don’t you save yourself a bit of time, Pol?’ Belgarath suggested. ‘See if you can get some confirmation from that group mind before you go swooping off!’
‘That’s a very good idea, Father,’ she agreed. She closed her eyes and lifted her face. After a moment she shook her head. ‘They won’t let me back in,’ she sighed.
‘That’s a kind of confirmation in itself,’ Beldin chuckled.
‘I don’t exactly follow that,’ Sadi said, rubbing his freshly shaved scalp.
‘The Dals may be wise,’ the hunchback told him, ‘but they’re not very shrewd. These two girls of ours have picked up some information. If the information weren’t correct, there wouldn’t be any reason to keep Pol out. Since they did keep her out, it indicates that we’re on to something. Let’s go outside of town,’ he suggested to Polgara, ‘so that we don’t give away any secrets.’
‘I don’t really fly all that well, Aunt Pol,’ Garion said dubiously. ‘Are you sure you need me?’
‘Let’s not take chances, Garion. If the Dals go out of their way to make this place inaccessible, we might need to use the Orb to break through. We’ll save time if you come along with it in the first place.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘maybe you’re right.’
‘Keep in touch,’ Belgarath said as the three of them started out the door.
‘Naturally,’ Beldin grunted.
Once they were out on the lawn, the dwarf squinted around. ‘Over there, I think,’ he said, pointing. ‘That thicket on the edge of town should hide what we’re doing.’
‘All right, uncle,’ Polgara agreed.
‘One other thing, Pol,’ he added, ‘and I’m not trying to be offensive.’
‘That’s a novelty.’
‘You’re in good form this morning,’ he grinned. ‘Anyway, a mountain like that one breeds its own weather – and most particularly, its own winds.’
‘Yes, Uncle, I know.’
‘I know how fond you are of snowy owls, but the feathers are too soft. If you get into a high wind, you could end up coming back naked.’
She gave him a long, level look.
‘Do you want all your feathers blown off?’
‘No, Uncle, as a matter of fact, I don’t.’
‘Why don’t you do it my way then? You might even find that you like being a hawk.’
‘Blue banded, I suppose?’
‘Well, that’s up to you, but you do look good in blue, Pol.’
‘You’re impossible.’ She laughed. ‘All right, uncle, we’ll do it your way.’
‘I’ll change first,’ he offered. ‘Then you can use me as a model to make sure you get the shape right.’
‘I know what a hawk looks like, Uncle.’
‘Of course you do, Pol. I’m just trying to be helpful.’
‘You’re too kind.’
It felt very strange to take a shape other than that of a wolf. Garion looked himself over carefully, making frequent comparisons to Beldin, who perched fierce-eyed and magnificent on a branch overhead.
‘Good enough,’ Beldin told him, ‘but next time make yo
ur tail feathers a little fuller. You need them to steer with.’
‘All right, gentlemen,’ Polgara said from a near-by limb, ‘let’s get started.’
‘I’ll lead,’ Beldin said. ‘I’ve had more practice at this. If we hit a downdraft, sheer away from the mountain. You don’t want to get banged up against those rocks.’ He spread his wings, flapped a few times, and flew off.
The only time Garion had been aloft before had been on the long flight from Jarviksholm to Riva after Geran had been abducted. He had flown that time as a speckled falcon. The blue-banded hawk was a much bigger bird, and flying over mountain terrain was much different from flying over the vast open expanse of the Sea of the Winds. The air currents eddied and swirled around the rocks, making them unpredictable and even dangerous.
The three hawks spiraled upward on a rising column of air. It was an effortless way to fly, and Garion began to understand Beldin’s intense joy in flight.
He also discovered that his eyes were incredibly sharp. Every detail on the mountainside stood out as if it were directly in front of him. He could see insects and the individual petals of wildflowers. His talons twitched involuntarily when a small mountain rodent scurried across a rockfall.
‘Pay attention to what we’re here for, Garion,’ he heard Aunt Pol’s voice in the silences of his mind.
‘But—’ The yearning to plummet down with his talons spread wide was almost irresistible.
‘No buts, Garion. You’ve already had breakfast. Just leave the poor little creature alone.’
‘You’re taking all the fun out of it for him, Pol,’ Garion heard Beldin protest.
‘We’re not here to have fun, uncle. Lead on.’
The buffeting was sudden, and it took Garion by surprise. A violent downdraft hurled him toward a rocky slope, and it was only at the last instant that he was able to veer away from certain disaster. The downdraft pushed him this way and that, wrenching at his wings, and it was suddenly accompanied by a pelting rainstorm, huge, icy drops that pounded at him like large wet hammers.
‘It isn’t natural, Garion!’ Aunt Pol’s voice came to him sharply. He looked around desperately, but he could not see her.
‘Where are you?’ he called out.
‘Never mind that! Use the Orb! The Dals are trying to keep us away!’
Garion was not entirely positive that the Orb could hear him in that strange place to which it went when he changed form, but he had no choice but to try. The driving rain and howling wind currents made settling to earth and resuming his own shape unthinkable. ‘Make it stop!’ he called out to the stone, ‘– the wind, the rain, all of it!’
The surge he felt when the Orb unleashed its power sent him staggering through the air, flapping his wings desperately to hold his balance. The air around him seemed suddenly bright blue.
And then the turbulence and the rain which had accompanied it was gone, and the column of warm air was back, rising undisturbed into the summer air.
He had lost at least a thousand feet in the downdraft, and he saw Aunt Pol and Beldin, each over a mile away in opposite directions. As he began again to spiral upward, he saw that they also were rising and veering through the air toward him. ‘Stay on your guard,’ Aunt Pol’s voice told him. ‘Use the Orb to muffle anything else they try to throw at us.’
It took them only a few minutes to regain the height they had lost, and they continued upward over forests and rockslides until they reached that region on the flanks of the mountain above the tree-line and below the eternal snows. It was an area of steep meadows with grass and wildflowers nodding in the mountain breeze.
‘There!’ Beldin’s voice seemed to crackle. ‘It’s a trail.’
‘Are you sure it’s not just a game trail, uncle?’ Polgara asked him.
‘It’s too straight, Pol. A deer couldn’t walk in a straight line if his life depended on it. That trail is man-made. Let’s see where it goes.’ He tilted on one wing and swooped down toward the well-traveled track stretching up one of the meadows toward a gap in a rocky ridge. At the upper end of the meadow, he flared his wings. ‘Let’s go down,’ he told them. ‘It might be better if we follow the rest of the way on foot.’
Aunt Pol and Garion followed him down, and the three of them blurred back into their own forms. ‘It was touch and go there for a while,’ Beldin said. ‘I came within a few feet of bending my beak on a rockslide.’ He looked critically at Polgara. ‘Would you like to revise your theory about the Dals not hurting anybody?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I wish I had my sword,’ Garion said. ‘If we run into trouble, we’re pretty much defenseless.’
‘I don’t know if your sword would be much use against the kind of trouble we’re likely to come up against,’ Beldin told him. ‘Don’t lose contact with the Orb, though. Let’s see where this goes.’ He started up the steep trail toward the ridge.
The gap in the ridge was a narrow pass between two large boulders. Toth stood in the center of the trail, mutely blocking their way.
Polgara looked him coolly in the face. ‘We will go to the place of the seers, Toth. It is fore-ordained.’
Toth’s eyes grew momentarily distant. Then he nodded and stepped aside for them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CAVERN WAS vast, and there was a city inside. The city looked much like Kell, thousands of feet below, except, of course, for the absence of lawns and gardens. It was dim, since the blindfolded seers needed no light, and the eyes of their mute guides had, Garion surmised, become adjusted to the faint light.
There were few people abroad in those shadowy streets, and those they saw as Toth led them into the city paid no attention to them. Beldin was muttering to himself as he stumped along.
‘What is it, uncle?’ Polgara asked him.
‘Have you ever noticed how much some people are slaves to convention?’ he replied.
‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at.’
‘This town is inside a cave, but they still put roofs on the houses. Isn’t that sort of an absurdity? It isn’t going to rain in here.’
‘But it will get cold – particularly in the winter. If a house has no roof, it’s a little hard to keep the heat in, wouldn’t you say?’
He frowned. ‘I guess I didn’t think of that,’ he admitted.
The house to which Toth led them was in the very center of this strange subterranean city. Although it was no different from those around it, its location hinted that the inhabitant was of some importance. Toth entered without knocking and led them to the simple room where Cyradis sat waiting for them, her pale young face illuminated by a single candle.
‘You have reached us more quickly than we had expected,’ she said. In a peculiar way her voice was different from the way it had sounded in their previous meetings. Garion uneasily felt that the seeress was speaking in more than one voice, and the result was startlingly choral.
‘You knew that we could come, then?’ Polgara asked her.
‘Of course. It was but a question of time before you would complete your three-fold task.’
‘Task?’
‘It was but a simple endeavor for one as powerful as thou art, Polgara, but it was a necessary test.’
‘I don’t seem to recall—’
‘As I told thee, it was so simple that doubtless thou hast forgotten it.’
‘Remind us,’ Beldin said gruffly.
‘Of course, gentle Beldin,’ she smiled. ‘You have found this place; you have subdued the elements to reach it; and Polgara hath spoken correctly the words which gained you entry.’
‘More riddles,’ he said sourly.
‘A riddle is sometimes the surest way to make the mind receptive.’
He grunted.
‘It was necessary for the riddle to be solved and the tasks to be completed ’ere I could reveal to you that which must be revealed.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Let us depart from this place then, and go down even unto Kell. My guide and dear com
panion will bear the great book which must be delivered into the hands of Ancient Belgarath.’
The mute giant went to a shelf on the far side of the dimly lit room and took down a large book bound in black leather. He tucked it under his arm, took his mistress by the hand, and led them back out of the house.
‘Why the secrecy, Cyradis?’ Beldin asked the blindfolded girl. ‘Why do the seers hide up here on the mountain instead of staying at Kell?’
‘But this is Kell, gentle Beldin.’
‘What’s that city down in the valley, then?’
‘Also Kell.’ She smiled. ‘It hath ever been thus among us. Unlike the cities of others, our communities are wide-spread. This is the place of the seers. There are many other places on this mountain – the place of the wizards, the place of the necromancers, the place of the diviners – and all are a part of Kell.’
‘Trust a Dal to come up with an unnecessary complication.’
‘The cities of others are built for different purposes, Beldin. Some are for commerce. Some are for defense. Our cities are built for study.’
‘How can you study if you have to walk all day in order to talk with your colleagues?’
‘There is no need for walking, Beldin. We can speak to each other whenever we choose. Is this not the way in which thou and Ancient Belgarath converse?’
‘That’s different,’ he growled.
‘In what way?’
‘Our conversations are private.’
‘We have no need of privacy. The thoughts of one are the thoughts of all.’
It was shortly before noon when they emerged from the cavern into the warm sunlight again. Gently guiding Cyradis, Toth led them back to the gap in the ridge and down the steep path that crossed the high meadows. After about an hour of descent, they entered a cool green forest where birds caroled from the tree tops and insects whirled like specks of fire in the slanting columns of sunlight.
The trail was still steep, and Garion soon discovered one of the disadvantages of walking downhill for any extended period of time. A large and painful blister was forming atop one of the toes on his left foot, and a few twinges from his right clearly indicated that he would soon have a matched set. He gritted his teeth and limped on.
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