Garion was considering flight when Aunt Pol, accompanied by a now radiant Queen Mayaserana, reentered the throne room. Mandorallen spoke briefly to her, and she immediately crossed to the spot where the violet-eyed countess held Garion captive.
"Garion, dear," she said as she approached. "It's time for your medicine."
"Medicine?" he replied, confused.
"A most forgetful boy," she told the countess. "Probably it was all the excitement, but he knows that if he doesn't take the potion every three hours, the madness will return."
"Madness?" the Countess Vasrana repeated sharply.
"The curse of his family," Aunt Pol sighed. "They all have it-all the male children. The potion works for a while, but of course it's only temporary. We'll have to find some patient and self sacrificing lady soon, so that he can marry and father children before his brains begin to soften. After that his poor wife will be doomed to spend the rest of her days caring for him." She looked critically at the young countess. "I wonder," she said. "Could it be possible that you are as yet unbetrothed? You appear to be of a suitable age." She reached out and briefly took hold of Vasrana's rounded arm. "Nice and strong," she said approvingly. "I'll speak to my father, Lord Belgarath, about this immediately."
The countess began to back away, her eyes wide.
"Come back," Aunt Pol told her. "His fits won't start for several minutes yet."
The girl fled.
"Can't you ever stay out of trouble?" Aunt Pol demanded of Garion, leading him firmly away.
"But I didn't say anything," he objected.
Mandorallen joined them, grinning broadly. "I perceive that thou hast routed our predatory countess, my Lady. I should have thought she would prove more persistent."
"I gave her something to worry about. It dampened her enthusiasm for matrimony."
"What matter didst thou discuss with our queen?" he asked. "I have not seen her smile so in years."
"Mayaserana's had a problem of a female nature. I don't think you'd understand."
"Her inability to carry a child to term?"
"Don't Arends have anything better to do than gossip about things that don't concern them? Why don't you go find another fight instead of asking intimate questions?"
"The matter is of great concern to us all, my Lady," Mandorallen apologized. "If our queen does not produce an heir to the throne, we stand in danger of dynastic war. All Arendia could go up in flames."
"There aren't going to be any flames, Mandorallen. Fortunately I arrived in time - though it was very close. You'll have a crown prince before winter."
"Is it possible?"
"Would you like all the details?" she asked pointedly. "I've noticed that men usually prefer not to know about the exact mechanics involved in childbearing."
Mandorallen's face slowly flushed. "I will accept thy assurances, Lady Polgara," he replied quickly.
"I'm so glad."
"I must inform the king," he declared.
"You must mind your own business, Sir Mandorallen. The queen will tell Korodullin what he needs to know. Why don't you go clean off your armor? You look as if you just walked through a slaughterhouse."
He bowed, still blushing, and moved away.
"Men!" she said to his retreating back. Then she turned back to Garion. "I hear that you've been busy."
"I had to warn the king," he replied.
"You seem to have an absolute genius for getting mixed up in this sort of thing. Why didn't you tell me - or your grandfather."
"I promised that I wouldn't say anything."
"Garion," she said firmly, "under our present circumstances, secrets are very dangerous. You knew that what Lelldorin told you was important, didn't you?"
"I didn't say it was Lelldorin."
She gave him a withering look. "Garion, dear," she told him bluntly, "don't ever make the mistake of thinking that I'm stupid."
"I didn't," he floundered. "I wasn't. I - Aunt Pol, I gave them my word that I wouldn't tell anybody."
She sighed. "We've got to get you out of Arendia," she declared. "The place seems to be affecting your good sense. The next time you feel the urge to make one of these startling public announcements, talk it over with me first, all right?"
"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, embarrassed.
"Oh, Garion, what am I ever going to do with you?" Then she laughed fondly and put her arm about his shoulder and everything was all right again.
The evening passed uneventfully after that. The banquet was tedious, and the toasts afterward interminable as each Arendish noble arose in turn to salute Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol with flowery and formal speeches. They went to bed late, and Garion slept fitfully, troubled by nightmares of the hot-eyed countess pursuing him through endless, flower-strewn corridors.
They were up early the next morning, and after breakfast Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf spoke privately with the king and queen again. Garion, still nervous about his encounter with the Countess Vasrana, stayed close to Mandorallen. The Mimbrate knight seemed best equipped to help him avoid any more such adventures. They waited in an antechamber to the throne room, and Mandorallen in his blue surcoat explained at length an intricate tapestry which covered one entire wall.
About midmorning Sir Andorig, the dark-haired knight Mister Wolf had ordered to spend his days caring for the tree in the plaza, came looking for Mandorallen. "Sir Knight," he said respectfully, "the Baron of Vo Ebor hath arrived from the north accompanied by his lady. They have asked after thee and besought me that I should seek thee out for them."
"Thou art most kind, Sir Andorig," Mandorallen replied, rising quickly from the bench where he had been sitting. "Thy courtesy becomes thee greatly."
Andorig sighed. "Alas that it was not always so. I have this past night stood vigil before that miraculous tree which Holy Belgarath commended to my care. I thus had leisure to consider my life in retrospect. I have not been an admirable man. Bitterly I repent my faults and will strive earnestly for amendment."
Wordlessly, Mandorallen clasped the knight's hand and then followed him down a long hallway to a room where the visitors waited.
It was not until they entered the sunlit room that Garion remembered that the wife of the Baron of Vo Ebor was the lady to whom Mandorallen had spoken on that windswept hill beside the Great West Road some days before.
The baron was a solid-looking man in a green surcoat, and his hair and beard were touched with white. His eyes were deep-set, and there seemed to be a great sadness in them. "Mandorallen," he said, warmly embracing the younger knight. "Thou art unkind to absent thyself from us for so long."
"Duty, my Lord," Mandorallen replied in a subdued voice. "Come, Nerina," the baron told his wife, "greet our friend."
The Baroness Nerina was much younger than her husband. Her hair was dark and very long. She wore a rose-colored gown, and she was beautiful-though, Garion thought, no more so than any of a half dozen others he had seen at the Arendish court.
"Dear Mandorallen," she said, kissing the knight with a brief, chaste embrace, "we have missed thee at Vo Ebor."
"And the world is desolate for me that I must be absent from its well loved halls."
Sir Andorig had bowed and then discreetly departed, leaving Garion standing awkwardly near the door.
"And who is this likely-appearing lad who accompanies thee, my son?" the baron asked.
"A Sendarian boy," Mandorallen responded. "His name is Garion. He and diverse others have joined with me in a perilous quest."
"Joyfully I greet my son's companion," the baron declared.
Garion bowed, but his mind raced, attempting to find some legitimate excuse to leave. The situation was terribly embarrassing, and he did not want to stay.
"I must wait upon the king," the baron announced. "Custom and courtesy demand that I present myself to him as soon as possible upon my arrival at his court. Wilt thou, Mandorallen, remain here with my baroness until I return?"
"I will, my Lord."
"I'
ll take you to where the king is meeting with my aunt and my grandfather, sir," Garion offered quickly.
"Nay, lad," the baron demurred. "Thou too must remain. Though I have no cause for anxiety, knowing full well the fidelity of my wife and my dearest friend, idle tongues would make scandal were they left together unattended. Prudent folk leave no possible foundation for false rumor and vile innuendo."
"I'll stay then, sir," Garion replied quickly.
"Good lad," the baron approved. Then, with eyes that seemed somehow haunted, he quietly left the room.
"Wilt thou sit, my Lady?" Mandorallen asked Nerina, pointing to a sculptured bench near a window.
"I will," she said. "Our journey was fatiguing."
"It is a long way from Vo Ebor," Mandorallen agreed, sitting on another bench. "Didst thou and my Lord find the roads passable?"
"Perhaps not yet so dry as to make travel enjoyable," she told him. They spoke at some length about roads and weather, sitting not far from each other, but not so close that anyone chancing to pass by the open door could have mistaken their conversation for anything less than innocent. Their eyes, however, spoke more intimately. Garion, painfully embarrassed, stood looking out a window, carefully choosing one that kept him in full view of the door.
As the conversation progressed, there were increasingly long pauses, and Garion cringed inwardly at each agonizing silence, afraid that either Mandorallen or the Lady Nerina might in the extremity of their hopeless love cross that unspoken boundary and blurt the one word, phrase, or sentence which would cause restraint and honor to crumble and turn their lives into disaster. And yet a certain part of his mind wished that the word or phrase or sentence might be spoken and that their love could flame, however briefly.
It was there, in that quiet sunlit chamber, that Garion passed a small crossroad. The prejudice against Mandorallen that Lelldorin's unthinking partisanship had instilled in him finally shattered and fell away. He felt a surge of feelings - not pity, for they would not have accepted pity, but compassion rather. More than that, there was the faint beginning of an understanding of the honor and towering pride which, though utterly selfless, was the foundation of that tragedy which had existed in Arendia for uncounted centuries.
For perhaps a half hour more Mandorallen and the Lady Nerina sat, speaking hardly at all now, their eyes lost in each other's faces while Garion, near to tears, stood his enforced watch over them. And then Durnik came to tell them that Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf were getting ready to leave.
Chapter Twelve
A brassy chorus of horns saluted them from the battlements of Vo Mimbre as they rode out of the city accompanied by twoscore armored knights and by King Korodullin himself. Garion glanced back once and thought he saw the Lady Nerina standing upon the wall above the arched gate, though he could not be sure. The lady did not wave, and Mandorallen did not look back. Garion, however, very nearly held his breath until Vo Mimbre was out of sight.
It was midafternoon by the time they reached the ford which crossed the River Arend into Tolnedra, and the bright sun sparkled on the river. The sky was very blue overhead, and the colored pennons on the lances of the escorting knights snapped in the breeze. Garion felt a desperate urgency, an almost unbearable necessity to cross the river and to leave Arendia and the terrible things that had happened there behind.
"Hail and farewell, Holy Belgarath," Korodullin said at the water's edge. "I will, as thou hast advised me, begin my preparations. Arendia will be ready. I pledge my life to it."
"And I'll keep you advised of our progress from time to time," Mister Wolf said.
"I will also examine the activities of the Murgos within my kingdom," Korodullin said. "If what thou hast told me should prove true, as I doubt not that it shall, then I will expell them from Arendia. I will seek them out, one and all, and harry them out of the land. I will make their lives a burden and an affliction to them for sowing discord and contention among my subjects."
Wolf grinned at him. "That's an idea that appeals to me. Murgos are an arrogant people, and a little affliction now and then teaches them humility." He reached out and took the king's hand. "Good-bye, Korodullin. I hope the world's happier next time we meet."
"I will pray that it may be so," the young king said.
Then Mister Wolf led the way down into the rippling water of the shallow ford. Beyond the river Imperial Tolnedra waited, and from the banks behind them the Mimbrate knights saluted with a great fanfare on their horns.
As they emerged on the far side of the river, Garion looked around, trying to see some difference in terrain or foliage which might distinguish Arendia from Tolnedra, but there seemed to be none. The land, indifferent to human boundaries, flowed on unchanged.
About a half mile from the river they entered the forest of Vordue, an extensive tract of well-kept woodland which extended from the sea to the foothills of the mountains to the east. Once they were under the trees, they stopped and changed back into their traveling clothes.
"I think we might as well keep the guise of merchants," Mister Wolf said, settling with obvious comfort back into his patched rust-colored tunic and mismatched shoes. "It won't fool the Grolims, of course, but it will satisfy the Tolnedrans we meet along the way. We can deal with the Grolims in other ways."
"Are there any signs of the Orb about?" Barak rumbled as he stowed his bearskin cloak and helmet in one of the packs.
"A hint or two," Wolf said, looking around. "I'd guess that Zedar went through here a few weeks ago."
"We don't seem to be gaining on him much," Silk said, pulling on his leather vest.
"We're holding our own at least. Shall we go?"
They remounted and continued along the Tolnedran highway, which ran straight through the forest in the afternoon sun. After a league or so, they came to a wide place in the road where a single whitewashed stone building, low and red-roofed, stood solidly at the roadside. Several soldiers lounged indolently about, but their armor and equipment seemed less well-cared-for than that of the legionnaires Garion had seen before.
"Customs station," Silk said. "Tolnedrans like to put them far enough from the border so that they don't interfere with legitimate smuggling."
"Those are very slovenly legionnaires," Durnik said disapprovingly.
"They aren't legionnaires," Silk explained. "They're soldiers of the customs service-local troops. There's a great difference."
"I can see that," Durnik said.
A soldier wearing a rusty breastplate and carrying a short spear stepped into the road and held up his hand. "Customs inspection," he announced in a bored tone. "His excellency will be with you in a moment or two. You can take your horses over there." He pointed to a kind of yard at the side of the building.
"Is trouble likely?" Mandorallen asked. The knight had removed his armor and now wore the mail suit and surcoat in which he customarily traveled.
"No," Silk said. "The customs agent will ask a few questions, and then we'll bribe him and be on our way."
"Bribe?" Durnik asked.
Silk shrugged. "Of course. That's the way things are in Tolnedra. Better let me do the talking. I've been through all this before."
The customs agent, a stout, balding man in a belted gown of a rusty brown color, came out of the stone building, brushing crumbs from the front of his clothes. "Good afternoon," he said in a businesslike manner.
"Good day, your Excellency," Silk replied with a brief bow.
"And what have we here?" the agent asked, looking appraisingly at the packs.
"I'm Radek of Boktor," Silk replied, "a Drasnian merchant. I'm taking Sendarian wool to Tol Honeth." He opened the top of one of the packs and pulled out a corner of woven gray cloth.
"Your prospects are good, worthy merchant," the customs agent said, fingering the cloth. "It's been a chilly winter this year, and wool's bringing a good price."
There was a brief clicking sound as several coins changed hands. The customs agent smiled then, and his manner grew
more relaxed. "I don't think we'll need to open all the packs," he said. "You're obviously an honorable man, worthy Radek, and I wouldn't want to delay you."
Silk bowed again. "Is there anything I should know about the road ahead, your Excellency?" he asked, tying up the pack again. "I've learned to rely on the advice of the customs service."
"The road's good," the agent said with a shrug. "The legions see to that."
"Of course. Any unusual conditions anywhere?"
"It might be wise if you kept somewhat to yourselves on your way south," the stout man advised. "There's a certain amount of political turmoil in Tolnedra just now. I'm sure, though, that if you show that you're tending strictly to business, you won't be bothered."
"Turmoil?" Silk asked, sounding a bit concerned. "I hadn't heard about that."
"It's the succession. Things are a bit stirred up at the moment."
"Is Ran Borune ill?" Silk asked with surprise.
"No," the stout man said, "only old. It's a disease no one recovers from. Since he doesn't have a son to succeed him, the Borune Dynasty hangs on his feeblest breath. The great families are already maneuvering for position. It's all terribly expensive of course, and we Tolnedrans get agitated when there's money involved."
Silk laughed briefly. "Don't we all? Perhaps it might be to my advantage to make a few contacts in the right quarters. Which family would you guess is in the best position at the moment?"
"I think we have the edge over the rest of them," the agent said rather smugly.
"We-"
"The Vorduvians. I'm distantly related on my mother's side to the family. The Grand Duke Kador of Tol Vordue's the only logical choice for the throne."
"I don't believe I know him," Silk said.
"An excellent man," the agent said expansively. "A man of force and vigor and foresight. If the selection were based on simple merit, Grand Duke Kador would be given the throne by general consent. Unfortunately, though, the selection's in the hands of the Council of Advisers."