Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "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 your 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 against 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 expression. "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 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 trembling 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 choked.

  "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.

  Aunt Pol started quickly toward the edge, but Belgarath reached out and took her arm. "Let him go, Pol," he said.

  "It wouldn't be a kindness to save him now. Someone put something in his mind that crushed out his sanity as soon as he was asked that certain question."

  "Who could possibly do that?" she asked.

  "I don't know, but I'm certainly going to find out."

  The shrieking laughter, still fading, continued to echo up to where they stood. And then it ended abruptly far below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A sudden summer storm had come howling in off the Great Western Sea two days after the fight on the cliffs and it raked the island with shrieking winds and sheets of rain that rattled against the windows of the council chamber high in the south tower. The bone-thin Javelin, who had arrived with the others aboard the Seabird that morning, slouched in his chair, looking out at the raging storm and thoughtfully tapping his fingers together. "Where did the trail finally lead?" he asked.

  "Right down to the water's edge in a secluded cove," Garion replied.

  "Then I think we'll have to assume that this abductor made a clean escape with the prince. The timing might have been a little tight, but the men aboard the ships that were patrolling the coast would have been concentrating on the shore line, and a ship that had gotten well out to sea before they arrived could have escaped their notice."

  Barak was piling an armload of logs in the cavernous fireplace. "Why were those others left behind, then?" he asked. "That doesn't make any sense at all."

  "We're talking about Bear-cultists, Barak," Silk told him. "They're not supposed to make sense."

  "There's a certain logic to it, though," the Earl of Seline pointed out. "If what the cultist said before he died is true, this Ulfgar has declared war on Belgarion. Isn't it entirely possible that those men were left behind specifically to waylay him? One way or another, he was certain to follow that trail."

  "There's still something that doesn't quite ring true." Javelin frowned. "Let me think about it for a bit."

  "We can sort out their motives later," Garion said. "The important thing right now is to find out where they've taken my son."

  "Rheon, most likely," Anheg said. "We've destroyed Jarviksholm. Rheon's the only strong point they've got left."

  "That's not entirely certain, Anheg," Queen Porenn disagreed. "This scheme to abduct Prince Geran was obviously planned quite some time ago, and you destroyed Jarviksholm only last week. It's unlikely that the abductors even knew about it. I don't think we can rule out the possibility that the prince was taken to Cherek."

  Anheg rose and began pacing up and down, a dark scowl on his face. "She's got a point," he admitted finally. "These child stealers were Chereks, after all. It's quite possible that they tried to take him to Jarviksholm, but when they found the city destroyed, they had to go someplace else. We could very well find them holed up in a fishing village somewhere on the west coast."

  "What do we do now, then?" Garion asked helplessly.

  "We split up," King Cho-Hag said quietly. "Anheg turns out all his forces, and they search every village and farm in Cherek. The rest of us go to Rheon and deal with those people there."

  "There's only one difficulty with that," Anheg said. "A baby is a baby. How do my men recognize Garion's son if they do run across
him?" "That's no real problem, Anheg," Polgara told him from her chair by the fire where she sat sipping a cup of tea. "Show them your palm, Garion."

  Garion held up his right hand to show the King of Cherek the silvery mark there.

  "I'd almost forgotten that," Anheg grunted. "Does Prince Geran have the same mark?"

  "All heirs to the Rivan Throne have that mark on their palms," she replied. "It's been that way since the birth of Iron-grip's first son."

  "All right," Anheg said. "My men will know what to look for, but will the rest of you have enough men to take Rheon? With the Algar and Drasnian cultists there, Ulfgar's got quite an army."

  General Brendig rose and went over to a large map tacked up on one of the walls. "If I leave immediately for Sendar, I can put together a sizeable army in a few days. A forced march could put us in Darine within a week."

  "I'll have ships waiting there to ferry you and your men to Boktor, then," Anheg promised.

  "And I'll go south and raise the clans," Hettar said. "We'll ride straight north to Rheon."

  Garion was also peering at the map. "If Anheg's ships take me and my troops to Boktor, we can join with the Drasnian pikemen there and march toward Rheon from the west," he said. "Then the ships can go back to Darine and pick up Brendig."

  "That would save some time," Brendig agreed.

  "With the Rivans and Drasnians, you're going to have enough troops to encircle Rheon," Silk said. "You might not have enough men to take the city, but you will have enough to keep anybody from going in or out. Then all you have to do is sit and wait for Brendig and Hettar. Once they join you, you'll have an overwhelming force."

  "It's a sound plan, Garion," Barak said approvingly.

  Mandorallen stood up. "And when we arrive at this fortified city on the moors of eastern Drasnia, I will undertake with siege engines and diverse other means to weaken the walls so that we may more easily gain access when we make our final assault," he noted. "Rheon will fall, and we will bring this miscreant Ulfgar to swift and terrible justice."

  "Not too swift, I hope," Hettar murmured. "I was thinking along the lines of something more lingering."