He stopped at the edge of the cleared area surrounding the farm, dropped to his belly in the grass, and looked at the farm for quite some time. It seemed to be deserted. He ran forward and slunk cautiously through the open gate. The compound was quite nearly as large as Faldor’s farm, half a world away.
He slipped through an open shed door and stood inside with one forepaw slightly raised as his nose and ears intently sought for any evidence that he was not alone. The farmstead was silent, save for the complaining moan of an udder-heavy cow lowing to be milked in the barn across the central yard. The smells of people were here, of course, but they were all many days old.
Garion slipped out of the shed and trotted cautiously from door to door, opening each in turn by twisting the handle with his jaws. The place in many respects was so strikingly familiar that it brought him a sharp pang of a homesickness he thought he had long since put behind him. The storage rooms were all almost the same as at Faldor’s. The smithy was so like Durnik’s that Garion could almost hear the steely ring of his friend’s hammer on the anvil. He was quite certain that he could close his eyes and pad unerringly across the yard to the kitchen.
Methodically, he entered each room around the lower floor of the farmstead, then scrambled up the stairs leading to the gallery with his toenails scratching at the wooden steps.
All was deserted.
He returned to the yard and poked an inquiring nose into the barn. The cow bawled in panic, and Garion backed out through the door to avoid causing her further distress.
‘Aunt Pol,’ he sent his thought out.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘There’s nobody here, and it’s a perfect place.’
‘Perfect is an extravagant word, Garion.’
‘Wait until you see it.’
A few moments later, Belgarath trotted through the gateway, sniffed, looked around, and blurred into his own form. ‘It’s like coming home, isn’t it?’ He grinned.
‘I thought so myself,’ Garion replied.
Beldin came spiraling in. ‘It’s about a league to the river,’ he said even as he changed. ‘If we move right along, we can make it by dark.’
‘Let’s stay here instead,’ Belgarath said. ‘The river banks might be patrolled, and there’s no point in creeping around in the dark if we don’t have to.’
The hunchback shrugged. ‘It’s up to you.’
Then Polgara, as pale and silent as a ghost, drifted over the wall, settled on the tailgate of a two-wheeled cart in the center of the yard, and resumed her own form. ‘Oh, my,’ she murmured, stepping down and looking around. ‘You were right, Garion. It is perfect.’ She folded her cloak across her arm and crossed the yard to the kitchen door.
About five minutes later, Durnik led the others into the yard. He also looked around, then suddenly laughed. ‘You’d almost expect Faldor himself to come out that door,’ he said. ‘How’s it possible for two places so far apart to look so much alike?’
‘It’s the most practical design for a farm, Durnik,’ Belgarath told him, ‘and sooner or later, practical people the world over are going to arrive at it. Can you do something about that cow? We won’t get much sleep if she bawls all night long.’
‘I’ll milk her right away.’ The smith slid down from his saddle and led his horse toward the barn.
Belgarath looked after him with an affectionate expression. ‘We may have to drag him away from here in the morning,’ he noted.
‘Where’s Polgara?’ Silk asked, looking around as he helped Velvet down from her horse.
‘Where else?’ Belgarath pointed toward the kitchen. ‘Getting her out of there may be even harder than dragging Durnik out of the smithy.’
Velvet looked around with a slightly dreamy expression on her face. The drug Sadi had given her the previous night had not yet entirely worn off, and Garion surmised that Polgara was keeping her under rigid control. ‘Very nice,’ she said, leaning involuntarily toward Silk. ‘Sort of homey.’
Silk’s expression was wary, like that of a man about ready to bolt.
They ate well again that evening, sitting around a long table in the beamed kitchen with the golden light of wax candles filling the room and winking back from the polished copper bottoms of kettles hung on the wall. The room was snug and warm, even though the storm which had been building up all afternoon raged outside, filling the night with thunder and wind and driving rain.
Garion felt oddly at peace, a peace he had not known for more than a year now, and he accepted this time of renewal gratefully, knowing that it would strengthen him in the climactic months ahead.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ Sadi exclaimed. After he had finished eating, the eunuch had taken his red case to the far end of the kitchen and had been trying to coax Zith from her little home with a saucer of fresh, warm milk.
‘What is it, Sadi?’ Velvet said, seeming to shake off the effects of the drug and Polgara’s insistence that she remain calm.
‘Zith has a little surprise for us,’ Sadi replied in a delighted tone. ‘Several little surprises, in fact.’
Velvet went curiously to his side. ‘Oh,’ she said with a little catch in her voice, ‘aren’t they adorable?’
‘What is it?’ Polgara asked.
‘Our dear little Zith is a mother,’ Velvet said.
The rest of them rose and went to the other end of the room to look at the new arrivals. Like their mother, they were all bright green with the characteristic red stripe running from nose to tail. There were five of them, and they were no larger than angleworms. They all had their chins on the edge of the saucer and they were lapping up warm milk with their forked little tongues, purring all the while. Zith hovered over them protectively, somehow managing to look demure.
‘That would explain why she’s been so bad-tempered lately,’ Sadi said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Zith? I could have helped you with the delivery.’
‘I’m not sure I’d want to be a midwife to a snake,’ Silk said. ‘Besides, I thought reptiles laid eggs.’
‘Most of them do,’ Sadi admitted. ‘Some kinds are livebearers, though. Zith happens to be one of those kinds.’
‘And here I thought she was just getting fat,’ Velvet said, ‘and all the time she was pregnant.’
Durnik was frowning. ‘Something doesn’t quite fit here,’ he said. ‘Isn’t Nyissa the only place where her species is found?’
‘Yes,’ Sadi said, ‘and they’re very rare even in Nyissa.’
‘Then how . . .’ Durnik flushed slightly. ‘What I’m getting at is, how did this happen? We’ve been away from Nyissa for a long time. Where did she meet the father?’
Sadi blinked. ‘That’s true, isn’t it? This is impossible. Zith, what have you been up to?’
The little green snake ignored him.
‘It’s really not such a mystery, Sadi,’ Eriond told him, smiling slightly. ‘Don’t you remember what Cyradis said to Zith at Ashaba?’
‘Something about something being delayed. I didn’t really pay that much attention. We were in the middle of something fairly distracting at the moment, if I remember right.’
‘She said, “Be tranquil, little sister, for the purpose of all thy days is now accomplished, and that which was delayed may now come to pass.” This is what she was talking about. This is what was delayed.’
‘You know,’ Beldin said to Belgarath, ‘I think he’s right. This isn’t the first time the prophecy’s tampered with things in order to get the job done. That business about the “purpose of all her days” simply means that Zith was born for one thing—to bite Harakan. Once she’d done that, things went back to normal again.’ Then the hunchback looked at Eriond. ‘How is it that you remembered exactly what she said? We were all fairly excited there in Urvon’s throne room.’
‘I always try to remember what people say,’ Eriond replied. ‘It may not always make sense at the time they say it, but sooner or later it always seems to fit together.’
‘This is a strange
boy, Belgarath,’ Beldin said.
‘We’ve noticed that on occasion.’
‘Is it really possible?’ Sadi asked the old sorcerer. ‘That sort of intervention, I mean?’
‘That’s the wrong question to ask my grandfather.’ Garion laughed. ‘He doesn’t believe that anything’s impossible.’
Silk was standing a safe distance away from Zith and her new brood. His eyebrow was raised slightly. ‘Congratulations, Zith,’ he said finally to the little green mother. Then he looked sternly at the others. ‘This is all very nice, I suppose,’ he added, ‘but if anybody calls them little nippers, I’ll just scream.’
They had bathed and gone to bed, but Ce’Nedra was restless, and she tossed and turned. Suddenly she sat up. ‘I wonder if that milk’s still warm,’ she murmured. She tossed back the blanket and padded on little bare feet to the door. ‘Do you want some, too?’ she asked Garion.
‘No, thanks all the same, dear.’
‘It would help you sleep.’
‘I’m not the one who’s having trouble sleeping.’
She stuck her tongue out at him and went out into the hallway.
When she returned a few moments later with her glass of milk, she was stifling a naughty little giggle.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked her.
‘I saw Silk.’
‘So?’
‘He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He was going into a bedroom.’
‘He can go in and out of his bedroom if he wants to.’
She giggled again and hopped into bed. ‘That’s the point, Garion,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t his bedroom.’
‘Oh,’ Garion coughed in embarrassment. ‘Drink your milk.’
‘I listened at the door for a moment,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to hear what they were saying?’
‘Not particularly, no.’
She told him anyway.
The rain had passed on through, although there were still rumbles of thunder far to the west, and jagged sheets of lightning raked the western horizon. Garion awoke suddenly and sat upright in bed. There was a different kind of rumble outside, and it was occasionally accompanied by a shrill bellowing noise. He slipped softly out of bed and went out onto the balcony that encircled the farmyard. A long line of torches was slowly moving out there in the darkness, perhaps a half mile to the west. Garion peered out through the tag end of the storm, then began to form up the image of the wolf in his mind. This was definitely something that needed to be investigated.
The torches moved at a peculiarly slow pace; as Garion loped closer to them, he noticed that they seemed much higher than they would have been if the torchbearers were mounted on horses. The slow rumbling sound and the peculiar bellowing continued. Then he stopped beside a bramble thicket and sat down on his haunches to watch and listen. A long line of huge grey beasts was plodding through the night in a northeasterly direction. Garion had seen the image, at least, of an elephant on the Isle of Verkat in Cthol Murgos when his Aunt Pol had routed the mad hermit in the forest. An image of an elephant is one thing, however, but the reality is quite something else. They were enormous, far larger than any animal Garion had ever seen, and there was a kind of ponderous implacability about their steady pace. Their foreheads and flanks were covered with skirts of chain mail, and Garion shuddered inwardly at the thought of such vast weight, though the elephants moved as if the mail was as insubstantial as cobwebs. Their sail-like ears swayed as they walked, and their pendulous trunks drooped down before them. Occasionally, one of them would curl his trunk up, touching it to his forehead, and give vent to a shattering trumpet sound.
Men in crude body armor were mounted on the huge, plodding beasts. One, bearing a torch, sat cross-legged atop each huge neck. Those riding behind were armed with javelins, slings, and short-limbed bows. At the head of the column, riding astride the neck of a beast fully a yard taller than the ones in his wake, was a man wearing the black robe of a Grolim.
Garion rose and slunk closer, his careful paws making no sound in the rain-wet grass. Although he was certain that the elephants could easily catch his scent, he reasoned that beasts so large would pay little attention to a predator who posed no real threat to them. In the presence of such immensity, he felt small, even flealike. He did not particularly like the feeling. His own bulk approached two hundred pounds, but an elephant’s weight was measured in tons, not in pounds.
He ranged on silent paws along the column, maintaining a distance of perhaps fifty yards and keeping his nose and eyes alert. His attention was concentrated on the black-robed Grolim astride the neck of the lead animal.
The elephants moved on, and Garion trotted alongside the column, maintaining his distance.
Then there appeared in the track ahead of the lead elephant a figure robed in shiny black satin that gleamed in the torchlight. The column halted, and Garion slunk closer.
The satin-robed figure pushed back her hood with a hand that seemed filled with swirling light. At Ashaba and again in Zamad, Garion had briefly seen the face of his son’s abductor, but the confrontations with the Darshivan sorceress had been so charged with danger and dread that he had not really had time to let the features of the Child of Dark register on his memory. Now, slinking still closer, he looked upon her torchlit face.
Her features were regular, even beautiful. Her hair was a lustrous black, and her skin was very nearly as pale as that of Garion’s cousin Adara. The similarity ended there, however. Zandramas was a Grolim, and her dark eyes had that peculiar angularity common to all Angaraks, her nose was slightly aquiline, and her forehead was broad and unlined. Her chin was pointed, which made her face seem oddly triangular.
‘I have been awaiting thee, Naradas,’ she said in her harshly accented voice. ‘Where hast thou been?’
‘Forgive me, mistress,’ the Grolim astride the neck of the massive lead bull apologized. ‘The herdsmen were farther south than we had been told.’ He pushed back his hood. His face was cruel, and his white eyes gleamed in the flickering torchlight. ‘How fares the struggle with the Disciple’s minions?’
‘Not well, Naradas,’ she replied. ‘His Guardsmen and his Chandim and the rabble out of Karanda outnumber our forces.’
‘I have a regiment of elephant cavalry behind me, mistress,’ Naradas informed her. ‘They will turn the tide of battle. The grass of central Peldane will be well watered with the blood of Urvon’s Guardsmen, Chandim, and Karands. We will roll them back and make Darshiva secure once and for all.’
‘I care nothing for Darshiva, Naradas. I seek the world, and the fate of one small principality on the eastern edge of Mallorea is a matter of sublime indifference to me. Let it stand or let it fall. I care not. It hath served its purpose, and now I am weary of it. How long will it take you to deliver your beasts to the field of battle?’
‘Two days at most, mistress.’
‘Do so then. Put them under the command of my generals and then follow me to Kell. I will return to Hemil and gather up Otrath and Belgarion’s brat. We will await thee in the shadow of the holy mountain of the seers.’
‘Is it true that Urvon brought the Demon Lord Nahaz and his hordes with him, mistress?’
‘He did, but that no longer concerns us. Demons are not so difficult to raise, and Nahaz is not the only Demon Lord in Hell. Lord Mordja consented to aid us with his hordes. There hath long been enmity between Mordja and Nahaz. They do war upon each other now with no concern for ordinary forces.’
‘Mistress!’ Naradas exclaimed. ‘Surely you would not consort with such creatures!’
‘I would consort with the King of Hell himself in order to triumph in the Place Which Is No More. Mordja hath feigned flight and hath lured Nahaz away from the battlefield. Take thy beasts there so that they may destroy Urvon’s hosts. Nahaz and his minions shall not be there to delay thee. Then come with all possible speed to Kell.’
‘I shall, mistress,’ Naradas promised submissively.
A slow rage had been building u
p in Garion. His son’s abductor was no more than seconds away from him, and he knew that there was no way she could gather in her will before his fangs were into her flesh, and then it would be too late. He curled his lips back from his dreadful teeth and slunk closer, one step at a time, his hackles erect and his belly low to the ground. He thirsted for blood, and his hatred burned like a fire in his brain. Quivering in awful anticipation, he bunched his muscles, and a low, rumbling growl filled his throat.
It was that sound that ultimately brought him to his senses. The thought that had seared his brain was the thought of a wolf, and it considered nothing beyond the immediate moment. If Zandramas indeed stood no more than a few bounds away, he could rend her flesh and scatter her blood in the tall grass beside the track upon which she stood before the echo of her shrieks had returned from nearby hillsides. But if the figure standing before white-eyed Naradas was but an insubstantial projection, he would clash his curved fangs on nothingness, and the Sorceress of Darshiva would escape his vengeance once again, even as she had at Ashaba.
It was perhaps the thought burning in his brain that alerted her; or perhaps, as Polgara had done so often, she had merely sampled the surrounding region with her mind and had located the others. Whatever it was, the sorceress suddenly hissed in alarm. ‘Danger!’ she snapped to her white-eyed underling. Then she smiled a cruel, mirthless smile. ‘But I have a form immune to Alorn sorcery.’ She tensed herself, then blurred, and then the immense shape of the dragon appeared before the suddenly terrified elephants. She spread the vast sails of her wings and launched herself into the damp night air, filling the darkness with her shrieking bellow and her sooty red fire.