‘Could you see who they were?’
‘I didn’t get that close. There’s usually a bored archer or two in any crowd like that, and I’d prefer not to have my tail feathers parted with an arrow just because some idiot wants to show off his skill.’
‘Has that ever happened?’ Silk asked curiously.
‘Once—a long time ago. My hip still aches in cold weather.’
‘Did you do something about it?’
‘I had a chat with the archer. I asked him not to do it any more. He was breaking his bow across his knee when I left.’ He turned back to Belgarath. ‘Are we sure the trail goes on down to that plain?’
‘The Orb is.’
‘Then we’ll have to chance it.’ The little man looked around. ‘I thought you’d have struck the tents by now.’
‘I decided it might not hurt to let everybody get some sleep. We’ve been traveling hard and we’re going to have to do it some more, I think.’
‘You always want to pick these idyllic spots for your rest stops, Belgarath,’ Beldin observed. ‘I think you’re secretly a romantic.’
Belgarath shrugged. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
‘Garion,’ Polgara called.
‘Yes, Aunt Pol?’
‘Why don’t you wake the others? Breakfast’s almost ready.’
‘Right away, Aunt Pol.’
After breakfast, they broke camp and started out about midmorning with Beldin flying on ahead to scout out possible trouble. It was pleasantly warm now, and there was the pungent smell of evergreens in the air. Ce’Nedra was strangely quiet as she rode along beside Garion with her dark gray cloak pulled tightly around her.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ he asked her.
‘She didn’t have Geran with her,’ the little queen murmured sadly.
‘Zandramas, you mean? No, she didn’t, did she?’
‘Was she really there, Garion?’
‘In a way, but in a way she wasn’t. It was sort of the way Cyradis was here and not here at the same time.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It was more than a projection, but less than actually being there. We talked it over last night, and Beldin explained it. I didn’t understand very much of what he said. Beldin’s explanations get a little obscure sometimes.’
‘He’s very wise, isn’t he?’
Garion nodded. ‘But he’s not a very good teacher. He gets impatient with people who can’t keep up with him. Anyway, this business of being somewhere between a projection and the real thing makes Zandramas very dangerous. We can’t hurt her, but she can hurt us. She came very close to killing you yesterday, you know—until Poledra stopped her. She’s very much afraid of Poledra.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen your grandmother.’
‘No, actually it’s not. She was there at Aunt Pol’s wedding, remember? And she helped us in Ulgoland when we had to fight the Eldrak.’
‘But one time she was an owl, and the other time she was a wolf.’
‘In Poledra’s case, I don’t think that really matters.’
Ce’Nedra suddenly laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘When this is all over and we’re back home with our baby, why don’t you change into a wolf for a while?’ she suggested.
‘Why?’
‘It might be nice having a big gray wolf lying before the fire. And then on cold nights, I could burrow my feet into your fur to keep them warm.’
He gave her a long steady look.
‘I’d scratch your ears for you, Garion,’ she offered by way of inducement, ‘and get you nice bones from the kitchen to chew on.’
‘Never mind,’ he said flatly.
‘But my feet get cold.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
Just ahead of them as they rode up through a shady mountain pass, Silk and Sadi were engaged in a heated discussion. ‘Absolutely not,’ Silk said vehemently.
‘I really think you’re being unreasonable about this, Kheldar,’ Sadi protested. The eunuch had discarded his iridescent silk robe and now wore western-style tunic and hose and stout boots. ‘You have the distribution system already in place, and I have access to unlimited supplies. We could make millions.’
‘Forget it, Sadi. I won’t deal in drugs.’
‘You deal in everything else, Kheldar. There’s a market out there just waiting to be tapped. Why let scruples stand in the way of business?’
‘You’re Nyissan, Sadi. Drugs are a part of your culture, so you wouldn’t understand.’
‘Lady Polgara uses drugs when she treats the sick,’ Sadi pointed out defensively.
‘That’s different.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘I could never explain it to you.’
Sadi sighed. ‘I’m very disappointed in you, Kheldar. You’re a spy, an assassin, and a thief. You cheat at dice, you counterfeit money, and you’re unscrupulous with married women. You swindle your customers outrageously and you soak up ale like a sponge. You’re the most corrupt man I’ve ever known, but you refuse to transport a few harmless little compounds that would make your customers very happy.’
‘A man has to draw the line somewhere,’ Silk replied loftily.
Velvet shifted in her saddle to look back at them. ‘That was one of the more fascinating conversations I’ve ever heard, gentlemen,’ she complimented them. ‘The implications in the field of comparative morality are absolutely staggering.’ She gave them a sunny smile with her dimples flashing into view.
‘Uh—Margravine Liselle,’ Sadi said. ‘Do you happen to have Zith again?’
‘Why, yes, Sadi, as a matter of fact, I do.’ The honeyblond girl held up one hand to head off his objections. ‘But I didn’t steal her this time. She crawled into my tent in the middle of the night and crept into her favorite hiding place all on her own. The poor dear was actually shivering.’
Silk turned slightly pale.
‘Would you like to have her back?’ Velvet asked the shaven-headed eunuch.
‘No,’ Sadi sighed, rubbing his hand over his scalp, ‘I suppose not. As long as she’s happy where she is, we might as well leave her there.’
‘She’s very happy. In fact, she’s purring.’ Velvet frowned slightly. ‘I think you should watch her diet just a bit, Sadi,’ she said critically. ‘Her little tummy seems to be getting bigger.’ She smiled again. ‘We wouldn’t want a fat snake on our hands, would we?’
‘Well, excuse me!’ Sadi said, sounding very offended.
There was a large snag at the top of the pass, and the blue-banded hawk perched on a dead limb, busily preening his feathers with his hooked beak. As they approached, he swooped down, and Beldin stood in the trail in front of them, muttering curses.
‘Something wrong, uncle?’ Polgara asked him.
‘I got caught in a crosswind,’ he growled. ‘It scrambled my feathers a bit. You know how that goes.’
‘Oh, goodness yes. It happens to me all the time. Night breezes are so unpredictable.’
‘Your feathers are too soft.’
‘I didn’t design the owl, uncle, so don’t blame me about the feathers.’
‘There’s a crossroads tavern just up ahead,’ Beldin said to Belgarath. ‘Did you want to stop and see if we can find out what’s going on down there on the plain?’
‘That might not be a bad idea,’ Belgarath agreed. ‘Let’s not ride into trouble if we don’t have to.’
‘I’ll wait for you inside then,’ Beldin said and soared away again.
Polgara sighed. ‘Why must it always be a tavern?’ she complained.
‘Because people who’ve been drinking like to talk, Pol,’ Belgarath explained in a reasonable tone. ‘You can gather more information in five minutes in a tavern than you can in an hour in a tea room.’
‘I knew you’d be able to find a reason for it.’
‘Naturally.’
They crossed over the top of the wooded pass and on down the s
hade-splotched trail to the tavern. It was a low building made of logs crudely chinked with mud. The roof was low, and its shingles had curled with the weather and the passage of years. Buff-colored chickens scratched at the dirt in the dooryard, and a large speckled sow lay in a mud puddle, nursing a litter of happily grunting piglets. There were a few spavined nags tied to a hitch rail in front of the tavern, and a Karand dressed in moth-eaten furs snored on the front stoop.
Polgara reined in her horse as they approached the tavern and the first whiff of its reeking interior reached her nostrils. ‘I think, ladies, that we might prefer to wait over there in the shade.’
‘There is a certain fragrance coming out that door, isn’t there?’ Velvet agreed.
‘You, too, Eriond,’ Polgara said firmly. ‘There’s no need for you to start picking up bad habits this early in life.’ She rode over toward a grove of tall fir trees some distance away from the tavern and dismounted in the shade. Durnik and Toth exchanged a quick glance, then joined her there with Velvet, Ce’Nedra, and Eriond.
Sadi started to dismount in front of the tavern. Then he sniffed once and gagged slightly. ‘This is not my sort of place, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll wait outside as well. Besides, it’s Zith’s feeding time.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Belgarath shrugged, dismounting and leading the way toward the building. They stepped over the snoring Karand on the stoop and went on inside. ‘Split up and spread out,’ the old man muttered. ‘Circulate and talk to as many as you can.’ He looked at Silk. ‘We’re not here to make a career out of this,’ he cautioned.
‘Trust me,’ Silk said, moving away.
Garion stood just inside the door blinking to let his eyes adjust to the dimness. The tavern showed no signs of ever having been cleaned. The floor was covered with moldy straw that reeked of spilled beer, and scraps of rotting food lay in heaps in the corners. A crudely built fireplace smoked at the far end, adding its fumes to the generally unpleasant odor of the place. The tables consisted of rough-hewn planks laid on trellises, and the benches were half logs with sticks drilled into their undersides for legs. Garion saw Beldin talking with several Karands over in one corner and he started over to join him.
As he passed one of the tables, his foot came down on something soft. There was a protesting squeal and a sudden scramble of hoofed feet.
‘Don’t step on my pig,’ the bleary-eyed old Karand sitting at the table said belligerently. ‘I don’t step on your pig, do I?’ He pronounced it ‘peg’, and Garion had a little trouble sorting out his dialect.
‘Watch yer fate,’ the Karand said ominously.
‘Fate?’ Garion shrank back from that word just a bit.
‘Fate. Them thangs you got on the end of yer laigs.’
‘Oh. Feet.’
‘That’s what I just said—fate.’
‘Sorry,’ Garion apologized. ‘I didn’t quite understand.’
‘That’s the trouble with you outlanders. You can’t even understand the language when she’s spoke to you plain as day.’
‘Why don’t we have a tankard of ale?’ Garion suggested. ‘I’ll apologize to your pig just as soon as he comes back.’
The Karand squinted at him suspiciously. The old man was bearded and he wore clothing made of poorly tanned furs. He wore a hat made from the whole skin of a badger—with the legs and tail still attached. He was very dirty, and Garion could clearly see the fleas peeking out of his beard.
‘I’m buying,’ Garion offered, sitting down across the table from the pig’s owner.
The old Karand’s face brightened noticeably.
They had a couple of tankards of ale together. Garion noticed that the stuff had a raw, green flavor to it, as if it had been dipped from the vat a week or so too soon. His host, however, smacked his lips and rolled his eyes as if this were the finest brew in the world. Something cold and wet touched Garion’s hand, and he jerked it away. He looked down into a pair of earnest blue eyes fenced in by bristly white eyelashes. The pig had recently been to the wallow and he carried a powerful odor with him.
The old Karand chortled. ‘That’s just my peg,’ he said. ‘He’s a good-natured young peg, and he don’t hold no grudges.’ The fur-clad fellow blinked owlishly. ‘He’s a orphan, y’know.’
‘Oh?’
‘His ma made real good bacon, though.’ The old man snuffled and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. ‘Sometimes I miss her real bad,’ he admitted. He squinted at Garion. ‘Say, that’s a mighty big knife you got there.’
‘Yes,’ Garion agreed. He absently scratched the half-grown pig’s ears, and the animal closed his eyes in bliss, laid his head in Garion’s lap, and grunted contentedly.
‘We were coming down the trail out of the mountains,’ Garion said, ‘and we saw a lot of smoke out on the plain. Is there some kind of trouble out there?’
‘The worst kinda trouble there is, friend,’ the old man said seriously. He squinted at Garion again. ‘You’re not one of them Mal-or-eens, are you?’
‘No,’ Garion assured him, ‘not Mallorean. I come from farther west.’
‘I didn’t know there was anythin’ to the west of the Mal-or-eens. Anyhow, there’s whole bunches of people down there on the plains havin’ some kind of a argument about religion.’
‘Religion?’
‘I don’t hold much with it myself,’ the Karand admitted. ‘There’s them as do and them as don’t, and I’m one of them as don’t. Let the Gods take care of theirselves, I say. I’ll take care of me and mine, and we’re quits on the whole business.’
‘Seems like a good way,’ Garion said carefully.
‘Glad you see it like that. Anyhow, there’s this Grolim named Zandramas down in Dar-sheeva. This Zandramas, she come up into Voresebo and started talkin’ about this here new God of Angarak—Torak bein’ dead an’ all, y’know. Now, I’m just about as interested in all that as my peg is. He’s a smart peg and he knows when people is talkin’ nonsense.’
Garion patted the pig’s muddy flank, and the plump little animal made an ecstatic sound. ‘Good pig,’ Garion agreed, ‘peg, that is.’
‘I’m fond of him. He’s warm and good to snuggle up against on a cold night—and he don’t hardly snore none at all. Well, sir, this Zandramas, she come up here and started preachin’ and yellin’ and I don’t know what all. The Grolims all gives out a moan and falls down on their faces. Then, a while back, a whole new bunch of Grolims comes over the mountains, and they says that this Zandramas is dead wrong. They says that there’s gonna be a new God over Angarak, right enough, but that this Zandramas don’t have the straight of it. That’s what all the smoke down there on the plains is about. Both sides is a-burnin’ and a-killin’ and a-preachin’ about their idea of who the new God’s gonna be. I’m not gonna have anythin’ to do with either side. Me and my peg are gonna go back up in the mountains and let them folks kill each other. When they get it all sorted out, we’ll come back and nod at whichever altar comes out on top as we go by.’
‘You keep calling this Zandramas “she”,’ Garion noted.
‘Would you believe it’s a woman?’ the Karand snorted. ‘That’s the foolishest thing I ever heard tell of. Women got no business mixin’ up in men’s affairs.’
‘Have you ever seen her?’
‘Like I say, I don’t mess around in religious stuff. Me and my peg, we just kinda keep to ourselves when it comes to that.’
‘Good way to get along,’ Garion said to him. ‘My friends and I have to go through that plain down there, though. Are Grolims all we need to worry about?’
‘I can see you’re a stranger,’ the Karand said, suggestively looking down into his empty tankard.
‘Here,’ Garion said, ‘let’s get another one.’ He fished another coin out of the pouch at his waist and signaled the servingman.
‘The whole thang, friend,’ the garrulous owner of the pig went on, ‘is that in this part of the country, them Grolims always has troops with ’em. The
ones as follows Zandramas, they got the army of the king of Voresebo with ’em. The old king, he didn’t hold with none of this religious stuff, but he got hisself de-posed. His son decided the old man was gettin’ too silly to run the country, so he set his pa aside and took the throne for hisself. The son’s a squinty-eyed sort and he’s lookin’ to put hisself on the side most likely to win. He’s throwed in with Zandramas, but then this Urvon fella, he comes along, and he’s got this whole army out of Jenno and Ganesia and folks in armor and some real ugly big black dogs with him—not to mention all the Grolims. It’s mean down there on the plains, friend. They’re killin’ and burnin’ and sacrificin’ prisoners on this altar or that. If it was me, I’d go a long way around all that foolishness.’
‘I wish I could, friend,’ Garion told him sincerely. ‘We heard that there were demons up in Jenno—off toward Callida. Have any of them shown up around here?’
‘Demons?’ The Karand shuddered, making the sign against evil. ‘None that I ever heard tell of. If I had, me and me peg would already be so far back in the mountains that they’d have to ship daylight in to us by pack train.’
Despite himself, Garion found that he liked this gabbly old fellow. There was an almost musical flow to his illiterate speech, a kind of warm inclusiveness that paid no attention to any kind of social distinctions, and a shrewd, even penetrating, assessment of the chaos around him. It was almost with regret that Garion briefly acknowledged Silk’s jerk of the head in the direction of the door. Gently, he removed the pig’s head from his lap. The animal made a small, discontented sound. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to go now,’ he told the Karand as he rose to his feet. ‘I thank you for your company—and the loan of your pig.’
‘Peg,’ the Karand corrected.
‘Peg,’ Garion agreed. He stopped the servingman who was going by and handed him a coin. ‘Give my friend and his peg whatever they’d like,’ he said.
‘Why, thank you, my young friend.’ The old Karand grinned expansively.
‘My pleasure,’ Garion said. He looked down. ‘Have a nice day, pig,’ he added.
The pig grunted rather distantly and clattered around the table to his master.