Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "No," Silk agreed, "they aren't."

  "I think they can do things that other people can't do," Garion said, struggling with the words. "Mister Wolf can follow this thing - whatever it is - without seeing it. And last week in those woods when the Murgos passed, they did something - I don't even know how to describe it, but it was almost as if they reached out and put my mind to sleep. How did they do that? And why?"

  Silk chuckled.

  "You're a very observant lad," he said. Then his tone became more serious. "We're living in momentous times, Garion. The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days. The world, I'm told, is like that. Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again."

  "I think that if I had my choice, I'd prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glumly.

  "Oh, no," Silk said, his lips drawing back in a ferretlike grin. "Now's the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure."

  Garion let that pass.

  "What is this thing we're following?" he asked.

  "It's best if you don't even know its name," Silk told him seriously, "or the name of the one who stole it. There are people trying to stop us; and what you don't know, you can't reveal."

  "I'm not in the habit of talking to Murgos," Garion said stiffly.

  "It's not necessary to talk to them," Silk said. "There are some among them who can reach out and pick the thoughts right out of your mind."

  "That isn't possible," Garion said.

  "Who's to say what's possible and what isn't?" Silk asked. And Garion remembered a conversation he had once had with Mister Wolf about the possible and the impossible.

  Silk sat on the stump in the newly risen sun looking thoughtfully down into the still-shadowy valley, an ordinary-looking little man in ordinary-looking tunic and hose and a rough brown shoulder cape with its hood turned up over his head.

  "You were raised as a Sendar, Garion," he said, "and Sendars are solid, practical men with little patience for such things as sorcery and magic and other things that can't be seen or touched. Your friend, Durnik, is a perfect Sendar. He can mend a shoe or fix a broken wheel or dose a sick horse, but I doubt that he could bring himself to believe in the tiniest bit of magic."

  "I am a Sendar," Garion objected. The hint implicit in Silk's observation struck at the very center of his sense of his own identity.

  Silk turned and looked at him closely.

  "No," he said, "you aren't. I know a Sendar when I see one just as I can recognize the difference between an Arend and a Tolnedran or a Cherek and an Algar. There's a certain set of the head, a certain look about the eyes of Sendars that you don't have. You're not a Sendar."

  "What am I then?" Garion challenged.

  "I don't know," Silk said with a puzzled frown, "and that's very unusual, since I've been trained to know what people are. It may come to me in time, though."

  "Is Aunt Pol a Sendar?" Garion asked.

  "Of course not." Silk laughed.

  "That explains it then," Garion said. "I'm probably the same thing she is."

  Silk looked sharply at him.

  "She's my father's sister, after all," Garion said. "At first I thought it was my mother she was related to, but that was wrong. It was my father; I know that now."

  "That's impossible," Silk said flatly.

  "Impossible?"

  "Absolutely out of the question. The whole notion's unthinkable."

  "Why?"

  Silk chewed at his lower lip for a moment. "Let's go back to the wagons," he said shortly.

  They turned and went down through the dark trees with the bright morning sunlight slanting on their backs in the frosty air.

  They rode the back lanes for the rest of the day. Late in the afternoon when the sun had begun to drop into a purple bank of clouds toward the west, they arrived at the farm where they were to pick up Mingan's hams. Silk spoke with the stout farmer and showed him the piece of parchment Mingan had given them in Darine.

  "I'll be glad to get rid of them," the farmer said. "They've been occupying storage space I sorely need."

  "That's frequently the case when one has dealings with Tolnedrans," Silk observed. "They're gifted at getting a bit more than they pay foreven if it's only the free use of someone else's storage sheds."

  The farmer glumly agreed.

  "I wonder," Silk said as if the thought had just occurred to him, "I wonder if you might have seen a friend of mine - Brill by name? A medium-sized man with black hair and beard and a cast to one eye?"

  "Patched clothes and a sour disposition?" the stout farmer asked.

  "That's him," Silk said.

  "He's been about the area," the farmer said, "looking - or so he said - for an old man and a woman and a boy. He said that they stole some things from his master and that he'd been sent to find them."

  "How long ago was that?" Silk asked.

  "A week or so," the farmer said.

  "I'm sorry to have missed him," Silk said. "I wish I had the leisure to look him up."

  "I can't for my life think why," the farmer said bluntly. "To be honest with you, I didn't care much for your friend."

  "I'm not overfond of him myself," Silk agreed, "but the truth is that he owes me some money. I could quite easily do without Brill's companionship, but I'm lonesome for the money, if you take my meaning."

  The farmer laughed.

  "I'd take it as a kindness if you happened to forget that I asked after him," Silk said. "He'll likely be hard enough to find even if he isn't warned that I'm looking for him."

  "You can depend on my discretion," the stout man said, still laughing. "I have a loft where you and your wagoneers can put up for the night, and I'd take it kindly if you'd sup with my workers in the dining hall over there."

  "My thanks," Silk said, bowing slightly. "The ground's cold, and it's been some time since we've eaten anything but the rough fare of the road."

  "You wagoneers lead adventuresome lives," the stout man said almost enviously. "Free as birds with always a new horizon just beyond the next hilltop."

  "It's much overrated," Silk told him, "and winter's a thin time for birds and wagoneers both."

  The farmer laughed again, clapped Silk on the shoulder and then showed him where to put up the horses.

  The food in the stout farmer's dining hall was plain, but there was plenty; and the loft was a bit drafty, but the hay was soft. Garion slept soundly. The farm was not Faldor's, but it was familiar enough, and there was that comforting sense of having walls about him again that made him feel secure.

  The following morning, after a solid breakfast, they loaded the wagons with the Tolnedran's salt-crusted hams and bade the farmer a friendly good-bye.

  The clouds that had begun to bank up in the west the evening before had covered the sky during the night, and it was cold and gray as they set out for Muros, fifty leagues to the south.

  Chapter Nine

  THE ALMOST TWO WEEKS it took them to reach Muros were the most uncomfortable Garion had ever spent. Their route skirted the edge of the foothills through rolling and sparsely settled country, and the sky hung gray and cold overhead. There were occasional spits of snow, and the mountains loomed black against the skyline to the east.

  It seemed to Garion that he would never be warm again. Despite Durnik's best efforts to find dry firewood each night, their fires always seemed pitifully small, and the great cold around them enormously large. The ground upon which they slept was always frozen, and the chill seemed actually to seep into Garion's bones.

  His education in the Drasnian secret language continued and he became, if not adept, at least competent by the time they passed Lake Camaar and began the long, downhill grade that led to Muros.

  The city of Muros in south-central Sendaria was a sprawling, unattractive place that had been since time immemori
al the site of a great annual fair. Each year in late summer, Algar horsemen drove vast cattle herds through the mountains along the Great North Road to Muros where cattle buyers from all over the west gathered to await their coming. Huge sums changed hands, and, because the Algar clansmen also commonly made their yearly purchases of useful and ornamental articles at that time, merchants from as far away as Nyissa in the remote south gathered to offer their wares. A large plain which lay to the east of the city was given over entirely to the cattle pens that stretched for miles but were still inadequate to contain the herds which arrived at the height of the season. Beyond the pens to the east lay the more or less permanent encampment of the Algars.

  It was to this city one midmorning at the tag end of the fair, when the cattle pens were nearly empty and most of the Algars had departed and only the most desperate merchants remained, that Silk led the three wagons laden with the hams of Mingan the Tolnedran.

  The delivery of the hams took place without incident, and the wagons soon drew into an innyard near the northern outskirts of the city.

  "This is a respectable inn, great lady," Silk assured Aunt Pol as he helped her down from the wagon. "I've stopped here before."

  "Let's hope so," she said. "The inns of Muros have an unsavory reputation."

  "Those particular inns lie along the eastern edge of town," Silk assured her delicately. "I know them well."

  "I'm certain you do," she said with an arched eyebrow.

  "My profession sometimes requires me to seek out places I might otherwise prefer to avoid," he said blandly.

  The inn, Garion noted, was surprisingly clean, and its guests seemed for the most part to be Sendarian merchants.

  "I thought there'd be many different kinds of people here in Muros," he said as he and Silk carried their bundles up to the chambers on the second floor.

  "There are," Silk said, "but each group tends to remain aloof from the others. The Tolnedrans gather in one part of town, the Drasnians in another, the Nyissans in yet another. The Earl of Muros prefers it that way. Tempers sometimes flare in the heat of the day's business, and it's best not to have natural enemies housed under the same roof."

  Garion nodded. "You know," he said as they entered the chambers they had taken for their stay in Muros, "I don't think I've ever seen a Nyissan."

  "You're lucky," Silk said with distaste. "They're an unpleasant race."

  "Are they like Murgos?"

  "No," Silk said. "The Nyissans worship Issa, the Snake-God, and it's considered seemly among them to adopt the mannerisms of the serpent. I don't find it at all that attractive myself. Besides, the Nyissans murdered the Rivan King, and all Alorns have disliked them since then."

  "The Rivans don't have a king," Garion objected.

  "Not anymore," Silk said. "They did once, though - until Queen Salmissra decided to have him murdered."

  "When was that?" Garion asked, fascinated.

  "Thirteen hundred years ago," Silk said, as if it had only been yesterday.

  "Isn't that sort of a long time to hold a grudge?" Garion asked.

  "Some things are unforgivable," Silk said shortly.

  Since there was still a good part of the day left, Silk and Wolf left the inn that afternoon to search the streets of Muros for those strange, lingering traces that Wolf could apparently see or feel and which would tell him whether the object they sought had passed this way. Garion sat near the fire in the chamber he shared with Aunt Pol, trying to bake the chill out of his feet. Aunt Pol also sat by the fire, mending one of his tunics, her shining needle flickering in and out of the fabric.

  "Who was the Rivan King, Aunt Pol?" he asked her. She stopped sewing.

  "Why do you ask?" she said.

  "Silk was telling me about Nyissans," he said. "He told me that their queen murdered the Rivan King. Why would she do that?"

  "You're full of questions today, aren't you?" she asked, her needle moving again.

  "Silk and I talk about a lot of things as we ride along," Garion said, pushing his feet even closer to the fire.

  "Don't burn your shoes," she told him.

  "Silk says that I'm not a Sendar," Garion said. "He says that he doesn't know what I am, but that I'm not a Sendar."

  "Silk talks too much," Aunt Pol observed.

  "You never tell me anything, Aunt Pol," he said in irritation.

  "I tell you everything you need to know," she said calmly. "Right now it's not necessary for you to know anything about Rivan kings or Nyissan queens."

  "All you want to do is keep me an ignorant child," Garion said petulantly. "I'm almost a man, and I don't even know what I am - or who."

  "I know who you are," she said, not looking up.

  "Who am I then?"

  "You're a young man who's about to catch his shoes on fire," she said.

  He jerked his feet back quickly.

  "You didn't answer me," he accused.

  "That's right," she said in that same infuriatingly calm voice.

  "Why not?"

  "It's not necessary for you to know yet. When it's time, I'll tell you, but not until."

  "That's not fair," he objected.

  "The world's full of injustice," she said. "Now, since you're feeling so manly, why don't you fetch some more firewood? That'll give you something useful to think about."

  He glared at her and stamped across the room.

  "Garion," she said.

  "What?"

  "Don't even think about slamming the door."

  That evening when Wolf and Silk returned, the usually cheerful old man seemed impatient and irritable. He sat down at the table in the common room of the inn and stared moodily at the fire. "I don't think it

  passed this way," he said finally. "There are a few places left to try, but I'm almost certain that it hasn't been here."

  "Then we go on to Camaar?" Barak rumbled, his thick fingers combing his bristling beard.

  "We must," Wolf said. "Most likely we should have gone there first."

  "There was no way to know," Aunt Pol told him. "Why would he go to Camaar if he's trying to carry it to the Angarak kingdoms?"

  "I can't even be certain where he's going," Wolf said irritably. "Maybe he wants to keep the thing for himself. He's always coveted it." He stared into the fire again.

  "We're going to need some kind of cargo for the trip to Camaar," Silk said.

  Wolf shook his head. "It slows us too much," he said. "It's not unusual for wagons to return to Camaar from Muros without cargo, and it's reaching the point where we'll have to gamble our disguise for the sake of speed. It's forty leagues to Camaar, and the weather's turning bad. A heavy snowstorm could stop the wagons entirely, and I don't have time to spend the whole winter mired down in a snowbank."

  Durnik dropped his knife suddenly and started to scramble to his feet.

  "What's amiss?" Barak asked quickly.

  "I just saw Brill," Durnik said. "He was in that doorway."

  "Are you sure?" Wolf demanded.

  "I know him," Durnik said grimly. "It was Brill, all right."

  Silk pounded his fist down on the table.

  "Idiot!" he accused himself. "I underestimated the man."

  "That doesn't matter now," Mister Wolf said, and there was almost a kind of relief in his voice. "Our disguise is useless now. I think it's time for speed."

  "I'll see to the wagons," Durnik said.

  "No," Wolf said. "The wagons are too slow. We'll go to the camp of the Algars and buy good horses." He stood up quickly.

  "What of the wagons?" Durnik persisted.

  "Forget them," Wolf said. "They're only a hindrance now. We'll ride the wagon horses to the camp of the Algars and take only what we can conveniently carry. Let's get ready to leave immediately. Meet me in the innyard as soon as you can." He went quickly to the door and out into the cold night.

  It was only a few minutes later that they all met near the door to the stable in the cobblestoned innyard, each carrying a small bundle. Hulk
ing Barak jingled as he walked, and Garion could smell the oiled steel of his mail shirt. A few Bakes of snow drifted down through the frosty air and settled like tiny feathers to the frozen ground.

  Durnik was the last to join them. He came breathlessly out of the inn and pressed a small handful of coins upon Mister Wolf.

  "It was the best I could do," he apologized. "It's scarce half the worth of the wagons, but the innkeeper sensed my haste and bargained meanly." He shrugged then. "At least we're rid of them," he said. "It's not good to leave things of value behind. They nag at the mind and distract one from the business at hand."

  Silk laughed. "Durnik," he said, "you're the absolute soul of a Sendar."

  "One must follow one's nature," Durnik said.

  "Thank you, my friend," Wolf said gravely, dropping the coins in his purse. "Let's lead the horses," he went on. "Galloping through these narrow streets at night would only attract attention."

  "I'll lead," Barak announced, drawing his sword. "If there's any trouble, I'm best equipped to deal with it."

  "I'll walk along beside you, friend Barak;" Durnik said, hefting a stout cudgel of firewood.

  Barak nodded, his eyes grimly bright, and led his horse out through the gate with Durnik closely at his side.

  Taking his lead from Durnik, Garion paused momentarily as he passed the woodpile and selected a good oak stick. It had a comforting weight, and he swung it a few times to get the feel of it. Then he saw Aunt Pol watching him, and he hurried on without any further display.

  The streets through which they passed were narrow and dark, and the snow had begun to fall a bit more heavily now, settling almost lazily through the dead calm air. The horses, made skittish by the snow, seemed to be fearful and crowded close to those who led them.

  When the attack came, it was unexpected and swift. There was a sudden rush of footsteps and a sharp ring of steel on steel as Barak fended off the first blow with his sword.

  Garion could see only shadowy figures outlined against the falling snow, and then, as once before when in his boyhood he had struck down his friend Rundorig in mock battle, his ears began to ring; his blood surged boilingly in his veins as he leaped into the fight, ignoring the single cry from Aunt Pol.