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  ‘What can we do without him?’

  ‘We’d go on, Garion,’ she replied quietly, looking directly into his eyes. ‘Our task is too important for us to falter because a man falls by the wayside – even if that man happens to be your grandfather. We’re racing against time in all this, Garion. We absolutely must fulfill the Prophecy and get the Orb back to Riva by Erastide, and there are people who must be gathered up to go with us.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Princess Ce’Nedra, for one.’

  ‘Ce’Nedra?’ Garion had never really forgotten the little princess, but he failed to see why Aunt Pol was making such an issue of her going with them to Riva.

  ‘In time you’ll understand, dear. All of this is part of a series of events that must occur in proper sequence and at the proper time. In most situations, the present is determined by the past. This series of events is different, however. In this case, what’s happening in the present is determined by the future. If we don’t get it exactly the way it’s supposed to be, the ending will be different, and I don’t think any of us would like that at all.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, placing himself unquestioningly in her hands.

  She smiled gratefully at him. ‘Thank you, Garion,’ she said simply. ‘When you rejoin the others, they’re going to ask you how father’s coming along, and I want you to put on your best face and tell them that he’s doing fine.’

  ‘You want me to lie to them.’ It was not even a question.

  ‘No place in the world is safe from spies, Garion. You know that as well as I, and no matter what happens, we can’t let any hint that father might not recover fully get back to the Angaraks. If necessary, you’ll lie until your tongue turns black. The whole fate of the West could depend on how well you do it.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘It’s possible that all this is totally unnecessary,’ she reassured him. ‘He may be exactly the same as always after he’s had a week or two of rest, but we’ve got to be ready to move smoothly, just in case he’s not.’

  ‘Can’t we do something?’

  ‘We’re doing all we can. Go back to the others now, Garion – and smile. Smile until your jaws ache if you have to.’

  There was a faint sound in the corner of the room, and they both turned sharply. Errand, his blue eyes very serious, stood watching them.

  ‘Take him with you,’ Aunt Pol said. ‘See that he eats and keep an eye on him.’

  Garion nodded and beckoned to the child. Errand smiled his trusting smile and crossed the room. He reached out and patted the unconscious Belgarath’s hand, then turned to follow Garion from the room.

  The tall, brown-haired girl who had accompanied Queen Silar out through the gates of the Stronghold was waiting for him in the corridor outside. Her skin, Garion noticed, was very pale, almost translucent, and her grey eyes were direct. ‘Is the Eternal Man really any better?’ she asked.

  ‘Much better,’ Garion replied with all the confidence he could muster. ‘He’ll be out of bed in no time at all.’

  ‘He seems so weak,’ she said. ‘So old and frail.’

  ‘Frail? Belgarath?’ Garion forced a laugh. ‘He’s made out of old iron and horseshoe nails.’

  ‘He is seven thousand years old, after all.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything to him. He stopped paying attention to the years a long time ago.’

  ‘You’re Garion, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘Queen Silar told us about you when she returned from Val Alorn last year. For some reason I thought you were younger.’

  ‘I was then,’ Garion replied. ‘I’ve aged a bit this last year.’

  ‘My name is Adara,’ the tall girl introduced herself. ‘Queen Silar asked me to show you the way to the main hall. Supper should be ready soon.’

  Garion inclined his head politely. In spite of the worry gnawing at him, he could not shake off the peculiar feeling that he ought to know this quiet, beautiful girl. Errand reached out and took the girl’s hand, and the three of them passed hand in hand down the torch-lighted corridor.

  King Cho-Hag’s main hall was on a lower floor. It was a long, narrow room where chairs and padded benches sat in little clusters around braziers filled with glowing coals. Barak, holding a large ale tankard in one huge fist, was describing with some embellishment their descent from the top of the escarpment.

  ‘We didn’t really have any choice, you see,’ the big man was saying. ‘Taur Urgas had been frothing on our heels for several days, and we had to take the shortest way down.’

  Hettar nodded. ‘Plans sometimes have a way of changing when the unexpected crops up,’ he agreed. ‘That’s why we put men to watching every known pass down from the top of the escarpment.’

  ‘I still think you might have let us know you were there.’ Barak sounded a little injured.

  Hettar grinned wolfishly. ‘We couldn’t really take the chance, Barak,’ he explained. ‘The Murgos might have seen us, and we didn’t want to frighten them off. It would have been a shame if they’d gotten away, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Is that all you ever think about?’

  Hettar considered the question for a moment. ‘Pretty much, yes,’ he admitted.

  Supper was announced then, and they all moved to the long table at the far end of the hall. The general conversation at the table made it unnecessary for Garion to lie directly to anyone about the frightening possibility Aunt Pol had raised, and after supper he sat beside Adara and lapsed into a kind of sleepy haze, only half-listening to the talk.

  There was a stir at the door, and a guard entered. ‘The priest of Belar!’ he announced in a loud voice, and a tall man in a white robe strode into the room, followed by four men dressed in shaggy furs. The four walked with a peculiar shuffling gait, and Garion instantly recognized them as Bear-cultists, indistinguishable from the Cherek members of the same group he had seen in Val Alorn.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ the man in the white robe boomed.

  ‘Hail, Cho-Hag,’ the cultists intoned in unison, ‘Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of the Algars and guardian of the southern reaches of Aloria.’

  King Cho-Hag inclined his head briefly. ‘What is it, Elvar?’ he asked the priest.

  ‘I have come to congratulate your Majesty upon the occasion of your great victory over the forces of the Dark God,’ the priest replied.

  ‘You are most kind, Elvar,’ Cho-Hag answered politely.

  ‘Moreover,’ Elvar continued, ‘it has come to my attention that a holy object has come into the Stronghold of the Algars. I presume that your Majesty will wish to place it in the hands of the priesthood for safekeeping.’

  Garion, alarmed at the priest’s suggestion, half rose from his seat, but stopped, not knowing how to voice his objection. Errand, however, with a confident smile, was already walking toward Elvar. The knots Durnik had so carefully tied were undone, and the child took the Orb out of the pouch at his waist and offered it to the startled priest. ‘Errand?’ he said.

  Elvar’s eyes bulged and he recoiled from the Orb, lifting his hands above his head to avoid touching it.

  ‘Go ahead, Elvar,’ Polgara’s voice came mockingly from the doorway. ‘Let him who is without ill intent in the silence of his soul stretch forth his hand and take the Orb.’

  ‘Lady Polgara,’ the priest stammered. ‘We thought – that is – I—’

  ‘He seems to have some reservations,’ Silk suggested dryly. ‘Perhaps he has some lingering and deep-seated doubts about his own purity. That’s a serious failing in a priest, I’d say.’

  Elvar looked at the little man helplessly, his hands still held aloft.

  ‘You should never ask for something you’re not prepared to accept, Elvar,’ Polgara suggested.

  ‘Lady Polgara,’ Elvar blurted, ‘we thought that you’d be so busy caring for your father that—’ He faltered.

  ‘—That you could take possession of the Orb before I knew about it? Think again, Elvar. I won’t allow the Orb to fall
into the hands of the Bear-cult.’ She smiled rather sweetly at him. ‘Unless you happen to be the one destined to wield it, of course. My father and I would both be overjoyed to hand the burden over to someone else. Why don’t we find out? All you have to do is reach out your hand and take the Orb.’

  Elvar’s face blanched, and he backed away from Errand fearfully.

  ‘I believe that will be all, Elvar,’ King Cho-Hag said firmly.

  The priest looked about helplessly, then turned and quickly left the hall with his cultists close behind him.

  ‘Make him put it away, Durnik,’ Polgara told the smith. ‘And see if you can do something about the knots.’

  ‘I could seal them up with lead,’ Durnik mused. ‘Maybe that would keep him from getting it open.’

  ‘It might be worth a try.’ Then she looked around. ‘I thought you might all like to know that my father’s awake,’ she told him. ‘The old fool appears to be stronger than we thought.’

  Garion, immediately alert, looked at her sharply, trying to detect some hint that she might not be telling them everything, but her calm face was totally unreadable.

  Barak, laughing loudly with relief, slapped Hettar on the back. ‘I told you he’d be all right,’ he exclaimed delightedly. The others in the room were already crowding around Polgara, asking for details.

  ‘He’s awake,’ she told them. ‘That’s about all I can say at the moment – except that he’s his usual charming self. He’s already complaining about lumps in the bed and demanding strong ale.’

  ‘I’ll send some at once,’ Queen Silar said.

  ‘No, Silar,’ Polgara replied firmly. ‘He gets broth, not ale.’

  ‘He won’t like that much,’ Silk suggested.

  ‘Isn’t that a shame?’ She smiled. She half-turned, as if about to go back to the sickroom, then stopped and looked rather quizzically at Garion who sat, relieved, but still apprehensive about Belgarath’s true condition, beside Adara. ‘I see that you’ve met your cousin,’ she observed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t sit there with your mouth open, Garion,’ she advised him. ‘It makes you look like an idiot. Adara’s the youngest daughter of your mother’s sister. Haven’t I ever told you about her?’

  It all came crashing in on him. ‘Aunt Pol!’ he protested. ‘How could you forget something that important?’

  But Adara, obviously as startled by the announcement as he had been, gave a low cry, put her arms about his neck and kissed him warmly. ‘Dear cousin!’ she exclaimed.

  Garion flushed, then went pale, then flushed again. He stared first at Aunt Pol, then at his cousin, unable to speak or even to think coherently.

  Chapter Seven

  In the days that followed while the others rested and Aunt Pol nursed Belgarath back to health, Garion and his cousin spent every waking moment together. From the time he had been a very small child he had believed that Aunt Pol was his only family. Later, he had discovered that Mister Wolf – Belgarath – was also a relative, though infinitely far removed. But Adara was different. She was nearly his own age, for one thing, and she seemed immediately to fill that void that had always been there. She became at once all those sisters and cousins and younger aunts that others seemed to have but that he did not.

  She showed him the Algar Stronghold from top to bottom. As they wandered together down long, empty corridors, they frequently held each others’ hands. Most of the time, however, they talked. They sat together in out-of-the-way places with their heads close together, talking, laughing, exchanging confidences and opening their hearts to each other. Garion discovered a hunger for talk in himself that he had not suspected. The circumstances of the past year had made him reticent, and now all that flood of words broke loose. Because he loved his tall, beautiful cousin, he told her things he would not have told any other living soul.

  Adara responded to his affection with a love of her own that seemed as deep, and she listened to his outpourings with an attention that made him reveal himself even more.

  ‘Can you really do that?’ she asked when, one bright winter afternoon, they sat together in an embrasure high up in the fortress wall with a window behind them overlooking the vast sea of winter-brown grass stretching to the horizon. ‘Are you really a sorcerer?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he replied.

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘There are some pretty awful things involved in it, Adara. At first I didn’t want to believe it, but things kept happening because I wanted them to happen. It finally reached the point where I couldn’t doubt it any more.’

  ‘Show me,’ she urged him.

  He looked around a bit nervously. ‘I don’t really think I should,’ he apologized. ‘It makes a certain kind of noise, you see, and Aunt Pol can hear it. For some reason I don’t think she’d approve if I just did it to show off.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of her, are you?’

  ‘It’s not exactly that. I just don’t want her to be disappointed in me.’ He considered that. ‘Let me see if I can explain. We had an awful argument once – in Nyissa. I said some things I didn’t really mean, and she told me exactly what she’d gone through for me.’ He looked somberly out of the window, remembering Aunt Pol’s words on the steamy deck of Greldik’s ship. ‘She’s devoted a thousand years to me, Adara – to my family actually, but finally all because of me. She’s given up every single thing that’s ever been important to her for me. Can you imagine the kind of obligation that puts on me? I’ll do anything she wants me to, and I’d cut off my arm before I’d ever hurt her again.’

  ‘You love her very much, don’t you, Garion?’

  ‘It goes beyond that. I don’t think there’s even been a word invented yet to describe what exists between us.’

  Wordlessly Adara took his hand, her eyes warm with a wondering affection.

  Later that afternoon, Garion went alone to the room where Aunt Pol was caring for her recalcitrant patient. After the first few days of bed rest, Belgarath had steadily grown more testy about his enforced confinement. Traces of that irritability lingered on his face even as he dozed, propped up by many pillows in his canopied bed. Aunt Pol, wearing her familiar grey dress, sat nearby, her needle busy as she altered one of Garion’s old tunics for Errand. The little boy, sitting not far away, watched her with that serious expression that always seemed to make him look older than he really was.

  ‘How is he?’ Garion asked softly, looking at his sleeping grandfather.

  ‘Improving,’ Aunt Pol replied, setting aside the tunic. ‘His temper’s getting worse, and that’s always a good sign.’

  ‘Are there any hints that he might be getting back his—? Well, you know.’ Garion gestured vaguely.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Nothing yet. It’s probably too early.’

  ‘Will you two stop that whispering?’ Belgarath demanded without opening his eyes. ‘How can I possibly sleep with all that going on?’

  ‘You were the one who said he didn’t want to sleep,’ Polgara reminded him.

  ‘That was before,’ he snapped, his eyes popping open. He looked at Garion. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘Garion’s been getting acquainted with his cousin Adara,’ Aunt Pol explained.

  ‘He could stop by to visit me once in a while,’ the old man complained.

  ‘There’s not much entertainment in listening to you snore, father.’

  ‘I do not snore, Polgara.’

  ‘Whatever you say, father,’ she agreed placidly.

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Pol!’

  ‘Of course not, father. Now, how would you like a nice hot cup of broth?’

  ‘I would not like a nice hot cup of broth. I want meat – rare, red meat – and a cup of strong ale.’

  ‘But you won’t get meat and ale, father. You’ll get what I decide to give you – and right now it’s broth and milk.’

  ‘Milk?’

  ‘Would you prefer gruel?’

  The old man gla
red indignantly at her, and Garion quietly left the room.

  After that, Belgarath’s recovery was steady. A few days later he was out of bed, though Polgara raised some apparently strenuous objections. Garion knew them both well enough to see directly to the core of his Aunt’s behavior. Prolonged bed rest had never been her favorite form of therapy. She had always wanted her patients ambulatory as soon as possible. By seeming to want to coddle her irrascible father, she had quite literally forced him out of bed. Even beyond that, the precisely calibrated restrictions she imposed on his movements were deliberately designed to anger him, to goad his mind to activity – never anything more than he could handle at any given time, but always just enough to force his mental recovery to keep pace with his physical recuperation. Her careful manipulation of the old man’s convalescence stopped beyond the mere practice of medicine into the realm of art.

  When Belgarath first appeared in King Cho-Hag’s hall, he looked shockingly weak. He seemed actually to totter as he leaned heavily on Aunt Pol’s arm, but a bit later when the conversation began to interest him, there were hints that this apparent fragility was not wholly genuine. The old man was not above a bit of self-dramatization once in a while, and he soon demonstrated that no matter how skillfully Aunt Pol played, he could play too. It was marvellous to watch the two of them subtly maneuvering around each other in their elaborate little game.

  The final question, however, still remained unanswered. Belgarath’s physical and mental recovery now seemed certain, but his ability to bring his will to bear had not yet been tested. That test, Garion knew, would have to wait.

  Quite early one morning, perhaps a week after they had arrived at the Stronghold, Adara tapped on the door of Garion’s room; even as he came awake, he knew it was she. ‘Yes?’ he said through the door, quickly pulling on his shirt and hose.

  ‘Would you like to ride today, Garion?’ she asked. ‘The sun’s out, and it’s a little warmer.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed immediately, sitting to pull on the Algar boots Hettar had given him. ‘Let me get dressed. I’ll just be a minute.’

  ‘There’s no great hurry,’ she told him. ‘I’ll have a horse saddled for you and get some food from the kitchen. You should probably tell Lady Polgara where you’re going, though. I’ll meet you in the west stables.’