Castle of Wizardry (37 page)

The door opened and Silk came back in. He was dressed in the nondescript clothing he had worn on the road, and he carried two bundles.

"I think these should fit you," he said, handing one of the bundles to Belgarath and the other to Garion.

"Did you get the money?" the old man asked him.

"I borrowed some from Barak."

"That's surprising," Belgarath replied. "He isn't notorious for generosity."

"I didn't tell him I was borrowing it," the little man returned with a broad wink. "I thought it would save time if I didn't have to go into long explanations."

One of Belgarath's eyebrows shot up.

"We are in a hurry, aren't we?" Silk asked with an innocent expression. "And Barak can be tedious when it comes to money."

"Spare me the excuses," Belgarath told him. He turned back to Garion. "Have you finished with that yet?"

"What do you think?" Garion asked, handing him the note.

The old man glanced at it. "Good enough," he said. "Now sign it and we'll put it where somebody'll find it sometime tomorrow."

"Late tomorrow," Silk suggested. "I'd like to be well out of Polgara's range when she finds out that we've left."

Garion signed the note, folded it and wrote, "For Lady Polgara," across the outside.

"We'll leave it on the throne," Belgarath said. "Let's change clothes and go get the sword."

"Isn't the sword going to be a bit bulky?" Silk asked after Garion and Belgarath had changed.

"There's a scabbard for it in one of the antechambers," Belgarath answered opening the door carefully and peering out into the silent hall. "He'll have to wear it slung across his back."

"That glow is going to be a bit ostentatious," Silk said.

"We'll cover the Orb," Belgarath replied. "Let's go."

The three of them slipped out into the dimly lighted corridor and crept through the midnight stillness toward the throne room. Once, a sleepy servant going toward the kitchen almost surprised them, but an empty chamber provided them with a temporary hiding place until he had passed. Then they moved on.

"Is it locked?" Silk whispered when they reached the door to the Hall of the Rivan King.

Garion took hold of the large handle and twisted, wincing as the latch clacked loudly in the midnight stillness. He pushed, and the door creaked as it swung open.

"You ought to have somebody take care of that," Silk muttered.

The Orb of Aldur began to glow faintly as soon as the three of them entered the Hall.

"It seems to recognize you," Silk observed to Garion.

When Garion took down the sword, the Orb flared, filling the Hall of the Rivan King with its deep blue radiance. Garion looked around nervously, fearful that someone passing might see the light and come in to investigate. "Stop that," he irrationally admonished the stone. With a startled flicker, the glow of the Orb subsided back into a faint, pulsating light, and the triumphant song of the Orb stilled to a murmur.

Belgarath looked quizzically at his grandson, but said nothing. He led them to an antechamber and removed a long, plain scabbard from a case standing against the wall. The belt attached to the scabbard had seen a certain amount of use. The old man buckled it in place for Garion, passing it over the young man's right shoulder and down across his chest so that the scabbard, attached to the belt in two places, rode diagonally down his back. There was also a knitted tube in the case, almost like a narrow sock. "Slide this over the hilt," Belgarath instructed.

Garion covered the hilt of his great sword with the tube and then took hold of the blade itself and carefully inserted the tip into the top of the scabbard. It was awkward, and neither Silk nor Belgarath offered to help him. All three of them knew why. The sword slid home and, since it seemed to have no weight, it was not too uncomfortable. The crosspiece of the hilt, however, stood out just at the top of his head and tended to poke him if he moved too quickly.

"It wasn't really meant to be worn," Belgarath told him. "We had to improvise."

Once again, the three of them passed through the dimly lighted corndors of the sleeping palace and emerged through a side door. Silk slipped on ahead, moving as soundlessly as a cat and keeping to the shadows. Belgarath and Garion waited. An open window perhaps twenty feet overhead faced out into the courtyard. As they stood together beneath it, a faint light appeared, and the voice that spoke down to them was very soft. "Errand?" it said.

"Yes," Garion replied without thinking. "Everything's all right. Go back to bed."

"Belgarion," the child said with a strange kind of satisfaction. Then he added, "Good-bye," in a somewhat more wistful tone, and he was gone.

"Let's hope he doesn't run straight to Polgara," Belgarath muttered.

"I think we can trust him, Grandfather. He knew we were leaving and he just wanted to say good-bye."

"Would you like to explain how you know that?"

"I don't know." Garion shrugged. "I just do."

Silk whistled from the courtyard gate, and Belgarath and Garion followed him down into the quiet streets of the city.

It was still early spring, and the night was cool but not chilly. There was a fragrance in the air, washing down over the city from the high meadows in the mountains behind Riva and mingling with peat smoke and the salty tang of the sea. The stars overhead were bright, and the newly risen moon, looking swollen as it rode low over the horizon, cast a glittering golden path across the breast of the Sea of the Winds. Garion felt that excitement he always experienced when starting out at night. He had been cooped up too long, and each step that took him farther and farther from the dull round of appointments and ceremonies filled him with an almost intoxicating anticipation.

"It's good to be on the road again," Belgarath murmured, as if reading his thoughts.

"Is it always like this?" Garion whispered back. "I mean, even after all the years that you've been doing it?"

"Always," Belgarath replied. "Why do you think I prefer the life of a vagabond?"

They moved on down through the dark streets to the city gate and out through a small sallyport to the wharves jutting into the moondappled waters of the harbor.

Captain Greldik was a bit drunk when they reached his ship. The vagrant seaman had ridden out the winter in the safety of the harbor at Riva. His ship had been hauled out on the strand, her bottom scraped and her seams recaulked. Her main mast, which had creaked rather alarmingly on the voyage from Sendaria, had been reinforced and fitted with new sails. Then Greldik and his crew had spent much of their time carousing. The effects of three months of steady dissipation showed on his face when they woke him. His eyes were bleary, and there were dark-stained pouches under them. His bearded face looked puffy and unwell.

"Maybe tomorrow," he grunted when Belgarath told him of their urgent need to leave the island.
"Or the next day.
The next day would be better, I think."

Belgarath spoke more firmly.

"My sailors couldn't possibly man the oars," Greldik objected. "They'll be throwing up all over the deck, and it takes a week to clean up a mess like that."

Belgarath delivered a blistering ultimatum, and Greldik sullenly climbed out of his rumpled bunk. He lurched toward the crew's quarters, pausing only long enough to be noisily sick over the rail, and then he descended into the forward hold, where with kicks and curses he roused his men.

The moon was high and dawn only a few hours off when Greldik's ship slid quietly out of the harbor and met the long, rolling swells of the Sea of the Winds. When the sun came up they were far out at sea.

The weather held fair, even though the winds were not favorable, and in two days' time Greldik dropped Garion, Silk and Belgarath off on a deserted beach just north of the mouth of the Seline River on the northwest coast of Sendaria.

"I don't know that I'd be in all that big a hurry to go back to Riva," Belgarath told Greldik as he stepped out of the small boat onto the sand of the beach. He handed the bearded Cherek a small pouch of jingling coins. "I'm sure you and your crew can find a bit of diversion somewhere."

"It's always nice in Camaar this time of year," Greldik mused, bouncing the pouch thoughtfully in his hand, "and I know a young widow there who's always been very friendly."

"You ought to pay her a visit," Belgarath suggested. "You've been away for quite some time, and she's sure to have been terribly lonely for you."

"I think maybe I will," Greldik said, his eyes suddenly bright. "Have a good trip." He motioned to his men, and they began rowing the small boat back toward the lean ship standing a few hundred yards offshore.

"What was that all about?" Garion asked.

"I'd like to get a bit of distance between us and Polgara before she gets her hands on Greldik," the old man replied. "I don't particularly want her chasing us." He looked around. "Let's see if we can find somebody with a boat to row us upriver to Seline. We should be able to buy horses and supplies there."

A fisherman, who immediately saw that turning ferryboatman would provide a more certain profit than trusting his luck on the banks off the northwest coast, agreed to take them upriver; by the time the sun was setting, they had arrived in the city of Seline. They spent the night in a comfortable inn and went the following morning to the central market. Silk negotiated the purchase of horses, haggling down to the last penny, bargaining more out of habit, Garion thought, than out of any real necessity. Then they bought supplies for the trip. By midmorning, they were pounding along the road that led toward Darine, some forty leagues distant.

The fields of northern Sendaria had begun to sprout that first green blush that lay on damp earth like a faint jade mist and more than anything announced spring. A few fleecy clouds scampered across the blue of the sky, and, though the wind was gusty, the sun warmed the air. The road opened before them, stretching across the verdant fields; and though their mission was deadly serious, Garion almost wanted to shout out of pure exuberance.

In two more days they reached Darine.

"Do you want to take ship here?" Silk asked Belgarath as they crested the hill up which they had come so many months before with their three wagonloads of turnips. "We could be in Kotu inside a week."

Belgarath scratched at his beard, looking out at the expanse of the Gulf of Cherek, glittering in the afternoon sun. "I don't think so," he decided. He pointed at several lean Cherek warboats patrolling just outside Sendarian territorial waters.

"The Chereks are always moving around out there," Silk replied. "It might have nothing whatsoever to do with us."

"Polgara's very persistent," Belgarath said. "She can't leave Riva herself as long as so many things are afoot there, but she can send people out to look for us. Let's avoid any possible trouble if we can. We'll go along the north coast and then on up through the fens to Boktor."

Silk gave him a look of profound distaste. "It will take a lot longer," he objected.

"We aren't in
all that
great a hurry," Belgarath remarked blandly. "The Alorns are beginning to mass their armies, but they still need more time, and it's going to take a while to get the Arends all moving in the same direction."

"What's that got to do with it?" Silk asked him.

"I have plans for those armies, and I'd like to start them moving before we cross into Gar
og
Nadrak if possible and certainly before we get to Mallorea. We can afford the time it will take to avoid any unpleasantness with the people Polgara's sent out to find us."

And so they detoured around Darine and took the narrow, rocky road that led along the cliffs where the waves crashed and boomed and foamed, beating themselves to fragments against the great rocks of the north coast.

The mountains of eastern Sendaria ran down into the Gulf of Cherek along that forbidding shore, and the road, which twisted and climbed and dropped steeply again, was not good. Silk grumbled every mile of the way.

Garion, however, had other worries. The decision he had made after reading the Mrin Codex had seemed quite logical at the time, but logic was scant comfort now. He was deliberately riding toward Mallorea to face Torak in a duel. The more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed. How could he possibly hope to defeat a God? He brooded about that as they rode eastward along the rocky coast, and his mood became as unpleasant as Silk's.