"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.
Chapter Nine
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 ni
ght 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.
Rivan Codex Series Page 120