The Seeress of Kell

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS NOT a large city, but its architecture was at a level of sophistication Garion had never seen before. It nestled in a shallow valley near the foot of the vast white peak, looking somehow as if it were resting in the mountain’s lap. It was a city of slender white spires and marble colonnades. The low buildings spaced among the spires often had entire walls of glass. There were wide lawns around the buildings and groves of trees with marble benches beneath them. Formal gardens were spaced about the lawns – boxy hedges and beds of flowers lined by low, white walls. Fountains played in the gardens and in the courtyards of the buildings.

  Zakath gaped at the city of Kell in stunned amazement. ‘I never even knew this was here!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘You didn’t know about Kell?’ Garion asked him.

  ‘I knew about Kell, but I didn’t know it was like this.’ Zakath made a face. ‘It makes Mal Zeth look like a collection of hovels, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Tol Honeth as well – and even Melcene,’ Garion agreed.

  ‘I didn’t think the Dals even knew how to build a proper house,’ the Mallorean said, ‘and now they show me something like this.’

  Toth had been gesturing to Durnik.

  ‘He says that it’s the oldest city in the world,’ the smith supplied. ‘It was built this way long before the world was cracked. It hasn’t changed in almost ten thousand years.’

  Zakath sighed. ‘They’ve probably forgotten how to do it then. I was going to press some of their architects into service. Mal Zeth could use a bit of beautifying.’

  Toth gestured again, and a frown appeared on Durnik’s face. ‘I can’t have gotten that right,’ he muttered.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The way I got it was that nothing the Dals have ever done has ever been forgotten.’ Durnik looked at his friend. ‘Is that what you meant?’ he asked.

  Toth nodded and gestured again.

  Durnik’s eyes went wide. ‘He says that every Dal alive today knows everything that every Dal who’s ever lived knew.’

  ‘They must have very good schools then,’ Garion suggested.

  Toth only smiled at that. It was a strange smile, tinged slightly with pity. Then he gestured briefly to Durnik, slid down from his horse, and walked away.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ Silk asked.

  ‘To see Cyradis,’ Durnik replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go with him?’

  Durnik shook his head. ‘She’ll come to us when she’s ready.’

  Like all the Dals Garion had ever seen, the inhabitants of Kell wore simple white robes with deep cowls attached to the shoulders. They walked quietly across the lawns or sat in the gardens in groups of two or three engaged in sober discussion. Some carried books or scrolls. Others did not. Garion was somehow reminded of the University of Tol Honeth or the one at Melcene. This community of scholars, he was convinced, however, was engaged in studies far more profound than the often petty research which filled the lives of the professors at those exalted institutions.

  The group of Dals who had escorted them to this jewel-like city led them along a gently curving street to a simple house on the far side of one of the formal gardens. An ancient, white-robed man leaned on a long staff in the doorway. His eyes were very blue, and his hair was snowy white. ‘We have long awaited your coming,’ he said to them in a quavering voice, ‘for the Book of Ages has fortold that in the Fifth Age the Child of Light and his company would come to us here at Kell to seek guidance.’

  ‘And the Child of Dark?’ Belgarath asked him, dismounting. ‘Will she also come here?’

  ‘No, Ancient Belgarath,’ the elderly man replied. ‘She may not come here, but will find direction elsewhere and in a different manner. I am Dallan, and I am bid to greet you.’

  ‘Do you rule here, Dallan?’ Zakath asked, also dismounting.

  ‘No one rules here, Emperor of Mallorea,’ Dallan said, ‘not even you.’

  ‘You seem to know us,’ Belgarath noted.

  ‘We have known you all since the book of the heavens was first opened to us, for your names are written large in the stars. And now I will take you to a place where you may rest and await the pleasure of the Holy Seeress.’ He looked at the oddly placid she-wolf at Garion’s side and the frolicking puppy behind her. ‘How is it with you, little sister?’ he asked in formal tones.

  ‘One is content, friend,’ she replied in the language of wolves.

  ‘One is pleased that it is so,’ he replied in her own tongue.

  ‘Does everyone in the whole world except me speak wolf?’ Silk asked with some asperity.

  ‘Would you like lessons?’ Garion asked.

  ‘Never mind.’

  And then with tottering step the white-haired man led them across the verdant lawn to a large marble building with broad, gleaming steps at the front. ‘This house was prepared for you at the beginning of the Third Age, Ancient Belgarath,’ the old man said. ‘Its first stone was laid on the day when you recovered your Master’s Orb from the City of Endless Night.’

  ‘That was quite some time ago,’ the sorcerer observed.

  ‘The Ages were long in the beginning,’ Dallan agreed. ‘They grow shorter now. Rest well. We will attend to your mounts.’ Then he turned and, leaning on his staff, he went back toward his own house.

  ‘Someday a Dal is going to come right out and say what he means without all the cryptic babble, and the world will come to an end,’ Beldin growled. ‘Let’s go inside. If this house has been here for as long as he said it has, the dust’s likely to be knee-deep in there, and it’s going to need to be swept out.’

  ‘Tidiness, uncle?’ Polgara laughed as they started up the marble steps. ‘From you?’

  ‘I don’t mind a certain amount of dirt, Pol, but dust makes me sneeze.’

  The interior of the house, however, was spotless. Gossamer curtains hung at the windows, billowing in the sweet-scented summer breeze, and the furniture, although oddly constructed and strangely alien-looking, was very comfortable. The interior walls were peculiarly curved, and there were no corners anywhere to be seen.

  They wandered about this strange house, trying to adjust themselves to it. Then they gathered in a large, domed central room where a small fountain trickled water down one wall.

  ‘There isn’t any back door,’ Silk noted critically.

  ‘Were you planning to leave, Kheldar?’ Velvet asked him.

  ‘Not necessarily, but I like to have that option open if the need should arise.’

  ‘You can always jump out a window if you have to.’

  ‘That’s amateurish, Liselle. Only a first-year student at the academy dives out of windows.’

  ‘I know, but sometimes we have to improvise.’

  There was a peculiar murmuring sound in Garion’s ears. At first he thought it might be the fountain, but somehow it didn’t quite sound like running water. ‘Do you think they’d mind if we went out and had a look around?’ he asked Belgarath.

  ‘Let’s wait a bit before we do that. We were sort of put here. I don’t know yet if that means we’re supposed to stay or what. Let’s feel things out before we take any chances. The Dals here – and Cyradis in particular – have something we need. Let’s not offend them.’ He looked at Durnik. ‘Did Toth give you any hints about when she’ll be coming here?’

  ‘Not really, but I got the impression it wouldn’t be too long.’

  ‘That’s not really too helpful, brother mine,’ Beldin said. ‘The Dals have a rather peculiar notion of time. They keep track of it in ages rather than years.’

  Zakath had been rather closely examining the wall a few yards from the trickling fountain. ‘Do you realize that there’s no mortar holding this wall together?’

  Durnik joined him, took his knife from its sheath, and probed at the slender fissure between two of the marble slabs. ‘Mortise and tenon,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘and very tightly fit, too. It must have taken years to build this house.’
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  ‘And centuries to build the city, if it’s all put together that way,’ Zakath added. ‘Where did they learn how to do all this? And when?’

  ‘Probably during the First Age,’ Belgarath told him.

  ‘Stop that, Belgarath,’ Beldin snapped irritably. ‘You sound just the way they do.’

  ‘I always try to follow local customs.’

  ‘I still don’t know any more than I did before,’ Zakath complained.

  ‘The First Age covered the period of time from the creation of man until the day when Torak cracked the world,’ Belgarath told him. ‘The beginning of it is a little vague. Our Master was never very specific about when He and His brothers made the world. I expect that none of Them want to talk about it because Their Father disapproved. The cracking of the world is fairly well pinpointed, though.’

  ‘Were you around when it happened, Lady Polgara?’ Sadi asked curiously.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘My sister and I were born a while later.’

  ‘How long a while?’

  ‘Two thousand years or so, wasn’t it, Father?’

  ‘About that, yes.’

  ‘It chills my blood, the casual way you people shrug off eons,’ Sadi shuddered.

  ‘What makes you think they learned this style of building before the cracking of the world?’ Zakath asked Belgarath.

  ‘I’ve read parts of the Book of Ages,’ the old man said. ‘It fairly well documents the history of the Dals. After the world was cracked and the Sea of the East rushed in, you Angaraks fled to Mallorea. The Dals knew that eventually they’d have to come to terms with your people, so they decided to pose as simple farmers. They dismantled their cities – all except this one.’

  ‘Why would they leave Kell intact?’

  ‘There was no need to take it apart. The Grolims were the ones they were really worried about, and the Grolims can’t come here.’

  ‘But other Angaraks can,’ Zakath noted shrewdly. ‘How is it that none of them has ever reported a city like this to the bureaucracy?’

  ‘They’re probably encouraged to forget,’ Polgara told him.

  He looked at her sharply.

  ‘It’s not really that difficult, Zakath. A hint or two can usually erase memories.’ An expression of irritation crossed her face. ‘What is that murmuring sound?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Silk said, looking slightly baffled.

  ‘You must have your ears stopped up, then, Kheldar.’

  About sunset, several young women in soft white robes brought supper to them on covered trays.

  ‘I see that things are the same the world over,’ Velvet said wryly to one of the young women. ‘The men sit around and talk, and the women do the work.’

  ‘Oh, we don’t mind,’ the girl replied earnestly. ‘It’s an honor to serve.’ She had very large dark eyes and lustrous brown hair.

  ‘That’s what makes it even worse,’ Velvet said. ‘First they make us do all the work, and then they persuade us that we like it.’

  The girl gave her a startled look, then giggled. Then she looked around guiltily and blushed.

  Beldin had seized a crystal flagon almost as soon as the young women had entered. He filled a goblet and drank noisily. Then he began to choke, spraying a purplish liquid over half the room. ‘What is this stuff?’ he demanded indignantly.

  ‘It’s fruit juice, sir,’ the young woman with the dark hair assured him earnestly. ‘It’s very fresh. It was pressed only this morning.’

  ‘Don’t you let it set long enough to ferment?’

  ‘You mean when it goes bad? Oh, no. We throw it out when that happens.’

  He groaned. ‘What about ale? Or beer?’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘I knew there was going to be something wrong with this place,’ the dwarf growled to Belgarath.

  Polgara, however, had a beatific smile on her face.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Silk asked Velvet after the Dalasian women had left, ‘all that chit-chat, I mean?’

  ‘Groundwork,’ she replied mysteriously. ‘It never hurts to open channels of communication.’

  ‘Women,’ he sighed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.

  Garion and Ce’Nedra exchanged a quick look, both of them remembering how often each of them had said approximately the same thing in the same tone early in their marriage. Then they both laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Silk asked suspiciously.

  ‘Nothing, Kheldar,’ Ce’Nedra replied. ‘Nothing at all.’

  Garion slept poorly that night. The murmuring in his ears was just enough of a distraction to bring him back from the edge of sleep over and over again. He arose the next morning sandy-eyed and out of sorts.

  In the large round central room he found Durnik. The smith had his ear pressed against the wall near the fountain.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Garion asked him.

  ‘I’m trying to pinpoint that noise,’ Durnik said. ‘It might be something in the plumbing. The water in this fountain has to come from somewhere. Probably it’s piped in, and then the pipe runs under the floor or up through the walls.’

  ‘Would water running through a pipe make that sort of noise?’

  Durnik laughed. ‘You never know what sort of sounds are going to come out of the plumbing, Garion. I saw a whole town abandoned once. They all thought the place was haunted. The noise turned out to be coming from the municipal water supply.’

  Sadi came into the room once again wearing his iridescent silk robe.

  ‘Colorful,’ Garion observed. For the past several months, the eunuch had been wearing a tunic, hose, and Sendarian half-boots.

  Sadi shrugged. ‘For some reason I feel homesick this morning,’ he sighed. ‘I think I could live out my life in perfect contentment if I never saw another mountain. What are you doing, Goodman Durnik? Still examining the construction?’

  ‘No. I’m trying to track down the source of that noise.’

  ‘What noise?’

  ‘Surely you can hear it.’

  Sadi cocked his head to one side. ‘I hear some birds just outside the window,’ he said, ‘and there’s a stream somewhere nearby, but that’s about all.’

  Garion and Durnik exchanged a long, speculative look. ‘Silk couldn’t hear it yesterday either,’ Durnik recalled.

  ‘Why don’t we get everybody up?’ Garion suggested.

  ‘That might make some of them a little unhappy, Garion.’

  ‘They’ll get over it. I think this might be important.’

  There were some surly looks directed at Garion as the others filed in.

  ‘What’s this all about, Garion?’ Belgarath asked in exasperation.

  ‘It’s what you might call an experiment, Grandfather.’

  ‘Do your experiments on your own time.’

  ‘My, aren’t we cross this morning?’ Ce’Nedra said to the old man.

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

  ‘That’s strange. I slept like a baby.’

  ‘Durnik,’ Garion said, ‘would you stand over there, please?’ He pointed to one side of the room, ‘and Sadi, you over there.’ He pointed to the other side. ‘This will only take a few minutes,’ he told them all. ‘I’m going to whisper a question to each of you, and I want you to answer yes or no.’

  ‘Aren’t you being just a bit exotic?’ Belgarath asked sourly.

  ‘I don’t want to contaminate the experiment by giving all of you the chance to talk it over.’

  ‘It’s a sound scientific principle,’ Beldin approved. ‘Let’s humor him. He’s stirred up my curiosity.’

  Garion went from person to person, whispering a single question: ‘Can you hear that murmuring sound?’ Depending on the answer, he asked each of them to join either Sadi or Durnik. It did not take long, and the result confirmed Garion’s suspicions. Standing with Durnik were Belgarath, Polgara, Beldin, and – somewhat surprisingly – Eriond. Standing with Sadi were Silk, Velvet,
Ce’Nedra, and Zakath.

  ‘Now do you suppose you could explain all this rigamarole?’ Belgarath asked.

  ‘I asked everybody the same question, Grandfather. The people standing with you can hear that sound. The people over there can’t.’

  ‘Of course they can. It kept me awake half the night.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why you’re so dense this morning,’ Beldin grunted. ‘Good experiment, Garion. Now, why don’t you explain it to our fuzzy-headed friend?’

  ‘It’s not difficult, Grandfather,’ Garion said deprecatingly. ‘It’s probably so simple that you’re overlooking it. The only people who can hear the sound are those with what you used to call “talent”. Ordinary people can’t.’

  ‘I’ll be honest, Belgarath,’ Silk said. ‘I can’t hear a sound.’

  ‘And I’ve been hearing it ever since we first caught sight of Kell,’ Durnik added.

  ‘Now isn’t that interesting?’ Beldin said to Belgarath. ‘Shall we take it a few steps further, or did you want to go back to bed?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ Belgarath replied absently.

  ‘All right then,’ Beldin continued, ‘we’ve got a sound that ordinary people can’t hear, but that we can. I can think of another right offhand as well, can’t you?’

  Belgarath nodded. ‘The sound of someone using sorcery.’

  ‘This is not a natural sound, then,’ Durnik mused. He suddenly laughed. ‘I’m glad you worked this out, Garion. I was right on the verge of tearing up the floor.’

  ‘What on earth for?’ Polgara asked him.

  ‘I thought the noise was coming from a water pipe somewhere.’

  ‘This isn’t sorcery, though,’ Belgarath said. ‘It doesn’t sound the same and it doesn’t feel the same.’

  Beldin was scratching thoughtfully at his matted beard. ‘How does this idea strike you?’ he said to Belgarath. ‘The people here have enough concentrated power to deal with any Grolim or group of Grolims who might come along, so why go to the trouble of laying down that curse of theirs?’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you.’

  ‘A large proportion of Grolims are sorcerers, right? So they’d be able to hear this sound. What if that enchantment is there to keep the Grolims far enough away so that they won’t hear it?’