Guardians of the West

  Shouts of alarm came from inside the city, and Garion saw the armed men atop the walls running along the parapet, making for the seaward side of Jarviksholm. ‘Are we ready?’ he whispered to his two friends.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Silk said tensely.

  Garion rose to his feet and concentrated. He felt something that was almost like an inrushing of air as he drew in and concentrated his will. He seemed to be tingling all over as the enormous force built up in him. Grimly he drew Iron-grip’s sword, which he had left sheathed until now in order to conceal that telltale blue fire. The Orb leaped joyously into flame. ‘Here we go,’ he said from between clenched teeth. He pointed the sword at the gate, standing solid and impenetrable-looking a hundred yards in front of him. ‘Burst!’ he commanded, and all his clenched-in will surged into the sword and out through its flaming tip.

  The one thing that he had overlooked, of course, was the Orb’s desire to be helpful. The force which struck the gates of Jarviksholm was, to put it very mildly, excessive. The logs disappeared entirely, and chunks and splinters of that tar-smeared gate were later found as much as five miles distant. The solid stone wall in which the gate had been mounted also blew apart, and many of the huge, rough-hewn blocks sailed like pebbles to splash into the harbor and the inlet far from the city. Most of the back wall of Jarviksholm crumbled and fell in on itself. The noise was awful.

  ‘Belar!’ Barak swore in amazement as he watched the nearly absolute destruction.

  There was a stunned silence for a moment, and then a great shout came from the edge of the woods as Hettar and Mandorallen led the charge of the massed Rivans and Chereks into the stunned city.

  It was not what warriors call a good fight. The Bear-cult was not composed entirely of able-bodied men. It had also attracted into its ranks old men, women, and children. Because of the raging fanaticism of the cult, the warriors entering the city frequently found it necessary to kill those who might otherwise have been spared. By late afternoon, there were only a few small pockets of resistance remaining in the northwest quarter of Jarviksholm, and much of the rest of the city was on fire.

  Garion, half-sickened by the smoke and the slaughter, stumbled back through the burning city, over that shattered wall, and out into the open fields beyond. He wandered, tired and sick, for a time until he came across Silk, seated comfortably on a large rock, casually watching the destruction of the city. ‘Is it just about finished?’ the little man asked.

  ‘Nearly,’ Garion replied. ‘They only have a few buildings left in their control.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Unpleasant. A lot of old people and women and children got killed.’

  ‘That happens sometimes.’

  ‘Did Anheg say what he was going to do with the survivors? I think there’s been enough killing already.’

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ Silk replied. ‘Our Cherek cousins tend sometimes to be a bit savage, though. Some things are likely to happen in the next day or so that you probably won’t want to watch—like that.’ He pointed toward the edge of the wood where a crowd of Chereks were working on something. A long pole was raised and set into the ground. A crosspiece was attached to the top of the pole, and a man was tied by his outspread arms to that crosspiece.

  ‘No!’ Garion exclaimed.

  ‘I wouldn’t interfere, Garion,’ Silk advised. ‘It is Anheg’s kingdom, after all, and he can deal with traitors and criminals in any way he sees fit.’

  ‘That’s barbaric!’

  ‘Moderately so, yes. As I said, though, Chereks have a certain casual brutality in their nature.’

  ‘But shouldn’t we at least question the prisoners first?’

  ‘Javelin’s attending to that.’

  Garion stared at the crowd of soldiers working in the last ruddy light of the setting sun. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, choking in revulsion, ‘but that’s going entirely too far. I’m going to put a stop to it right now.’

  ‘I’d stay out of it, Garion.’

  ‘Oh, no—not when he starts crucifying women!’

  ‘He’s what?’ Silk turned to stare at the soldiers. Suddenly the blood drained from the little man’s face, and he sprang to his feet. With Garion close on his heels, he ran across the intervening turf. ‘Have you lost your mind entirely?’ he demanded hotly of the bony Chief of Drasnian Intelligence, who sat calmly at a rough table in the center of the group of soldiers.

  ‘What seems to be your problem, Kheldar?’

  ‘Do you know who that is that you just crucified?’

  ‘Naturally. I questioned her myself.’ His fingers moved almost idly, but Silk stood directly in front of the table, cutting off Garion’s view of the thin man’s hands.

  ‘Get her down from there!’ Silk said, though his voice seemed for some reason to have lost the edge of its outrage.

  ‘Why don’t you attend to your own business, Kheldar?’ Javelin suggested. ‘Leave me to mine.’ He turned to a burly Cherek standing nearby. ‘Prince Kheldar and the Rivan King will be leaving now,’ he said coldly. ‘Would you escort them, please. I think that they should be somewhere at least a quarter of a mile from here.’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Silk fumed as he and Garion were herded away. ‘I’ll kill him with my own two bare hands.’

  As soon as the soldiers had led them to a spot some distance from Javelin and had turned to go back to their grisly work, however, the little man regained his composure with astonishing speed.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Garion asked.

  ‘The girl he just crucified is his own niece, Liselle,’ Silk replied quite calmly.

  ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘I’ve known her since she was a child. He promised to explain later. His explanation had better be very good, though, or I’m going to carve out his tripes.’ He removed a long dagger from under his pearl-gray doublet and tested the edge with his thumb.

  It was after dark when Javelin came looking for them. ‘Oh, put that away, Kheldar,’ he said disgustedly, looking at Silk’s dagger.

  ‘I may need it in a minute,’ Silk replied. ‘Start talking, Javelin, and you’d better make it very convincing, or I’ll have your guts in a pile right between your feet.’

  ‘You seem upset.’

  ‘You noticed. How clever of you.’

  ‘I did what I did for a very specific reason.’

  ‘Wonderful. I thought you were just amusing yourself.’

  ‘I can do without the sarcasm, Silk. You should know by now that I never do anything without a reason. You can put your mind at rest about Liselle. She’s probably already been released.’

  ‘Released?’

  ‘Escaped, actually. There were dozens of cultists hiding in those woods. Your eyes must be going bad on you if you didn’t see them. Anyway, by now, every prisoner we crucified has been released and is on the way to safety back in the mountains.’

  ‘Exactly what is this all about, Javelin?’

  ‘It’s really very simple. We’ve been trying for years to get someone into the upper echelons of the Bear-cult. They have just rescued a genuine heroine—a martyr to the cause. Liselle’s clever enough to use that to work her way into their higher councils.’

  ‘How did she get here in the first place?’

  Javelin shrugged. ‘She put on a mail shirt, and I slipped her on board Trellheim’s ship. After the fighting was nearly over, I just slipped her in with the other prisoners.’

  ‘Won’t the others who were just rescued say that she was never in the city?’

  ‘No, your Majesty, I don’t think so,’ Javelin replied. ‘She’s going to say that she lived in the northeast quarter of Jarviksholm. The others we crucified all came from the southwest quarter. Jarviksholm is a fairly good-sized town. Nobody could really say for sure that she wasn’t there all along.’

  ‘I still can’t believe that you would actually do that to her,’ Silk said.

  ‘It took a fair amount of convincing and a great de
al of fast talking on her part to persuade me,’ Javelin admitted.

  Silk stared at him.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Javelin said. ‘Hadn’t you guessed? The whole thing was her idea in the first place.’

  Suddenly Garion heard a hollow rushing sound, and a moment later Ce’Nedra’s voice came to him quite clearly.

  ‘Garion!’ she cried out in anguish. ‘Garion, come home immediately! Someone has stolen our baby!’

  Chapter Twenty

  Polgara looked at Garion critically as they stood together in a high, open meadow above the still-burning city of Jarviksholm while the pale light of dawn washed the stars out of the sky. ‘Your wing feathers are too short,’ she told him.

  Garion made the feathers longer.

  ‘Much better,’ she said. Then her look became intense, and she also shimmered into the shape of a speckled falcon. ‘I’ve never liked these hard feathers,’ she murmured, clicking her hooked beak. Then she looked at Garion, her golden eyes fierce. ‘Try to remember everything I told you, dear. We won’t go too high on your first flight.’ She spread her wings, took a few short steps with her taloned feet, and lifted herself effortlessly into the air.

  Garion tried to imitate what she had just done and drove himself beak-first into the turf.

  She swooped back in. ‘You have to use your tail, too, Garion,’ she said. ‘The wings give the power, but the tail gives direction. Try it again.’

  The second attempt was a bit smoother. He actually flew for about fifty yards before he crashed into a tree.

  ‘That was very nice, dear. Just try to watch where you’re going.’

  Garion shook his head, trying to clear the ringing from his ears and the speckles of light from in front of his eyes.

  ‘Straighten your feathers, dear, and let’s try it again.’

  ‘It’s going to take months for me to learn this, Aunt Pol. Wouldn’t it just be faster to sail to Riva on the Seabird?’

  ‘No, dear,’ she said firmly. ‘You just need a bit of practice, that’s all!’

  His third attempt was somewhat more successful. He was beginning to get the knack of co-ordinating his wings and tail, but he still felt clumsy and he seemed to do a great deal of clawing ineffectually at the air.

  ‘Garion, don’t fight with it. Let it lift you.’

  They circled the meadow several times in the shadowless luminosity of dawn. Garion could see the smoke rising black from the city and the burned-out shipyards in the harbor as he followed Polgara in a steady upward spiral. As his confidence increased, he began to feel a fierce exhilaration. The rush of cool morning air through his feathers was intoxicating, and he found that he could lift himself higher and higher almost effortlessly. By the time the sun was fully up, the air was no longer an enemy, and he had begun to master the hundreds of minute muscular adjustments necessary to get the greatest possible efficiency out of his feathers.

  Belgarath swooped in to join them with Durnik not far behind. ‘How’s he doing?’ the fierce-looking falcon asked Polgara.’

  ‘He’s almost ready, father.’

  ‘Good. Let him practice for another fifteen minutes or so, and then we’ll get started. There’s a column of warm air rising off that lake over there. That always makes it easier.’ He tilted on one wing and veered away in a long, smooth arc.

  ‘This is really very fine, Pol,’ Durnik said. ‘I should have learned how to do this years ago.’

  When they moved into the column of air rising from the surface of the warm waters of the lake, Garion learned the secret of effortless flight. With his wings spread and unmoving, he let the air lift him up and up. Objects on the ground far below shrank as he rose higher and higher. Javiksholm now looked like a toy village, and its harbor was thick with miniature ships. The hills and forests were bright green in the morning sunshine. The sea was azure, the snowfields on the higher peaks were so intensely white that they almost hurt his eyes.

  ‘How high would you say we are?’ he heard Durnik ask Belgarath.

  ‘Several thousand feet.’

  ‘It’s sort of like swimming, isn’t it? It doesn’t really matter how deep the water is, because you’re only using the top of it anyway.’

  ‘I never really thought of it that way.’ Belgarath looked over at Aunt Pol. ‘This should be high enough,’ he said in the shrill, falcon’s whistle. ‘Let’s go to Riva.’

  The four of them beat steadily southwest, leaving the Cherek coast behind and flying out over the Sea of the Winds. For a time, a following breeze aided them, but at midday the breeze dropped, and they had to work for every mile. Garion’s shoulders ached, and the unaccustomed effort of flying made the muscles in his chest burn. Grimly, he flew on. Far below him he could see the miles-long waves on the Sea of the Winds, looking from this height almost like ripples roughening the surface in the afternoon sunlight.

  The sun was low over the western horizon when the rocky coast of the Isle of the Winds came into view. They flew southward along the east coast and spiraled down at last toward the uplifted towers and battlements of the Citadel, standing grim and gray over the city of Riva.

  A sentry, leaning idly on his spear atop the highest parapet, looked startled as the four speckled falcons swooped in to land around him, and his eyes bulged with astonishment as they shimmered into human form. ‘Y-your Majesty,’ he stammered to Garion, awkwardly trying to bow and hold onto his spear at the same time.

  ‘What happened here?’ Garion demanded.

  ‘Someone has abducted your son, Sire,’ the sentry reported. ‘We’ve sealed off the island, but we haven’t caught him yet.’

  ‘Let’s go down,’ Garion said to the others. ‘I want to talk to Ce’Nedra.’

  But that, of course, was nearly impossible. As soon as Garion entered the blue-carpeted royal apartment, she flew into his arms and collapsed in a storm of hysterical weeping. He could feel her tiny body trembling violently against him, and her fingers dug into his arms as she clung to him. ‘Ce’Nedra,’ he pleaded with her, ‘you’ve got to stop. You have to tell us what happened.’

  ‘He’s gone, Garion,’ she wailed. ‘S-somebody came into the n-nursery and t-took him!’ She began to cry again.

  Ariana, Lelldorin’s blond Mimbrate wife, stood not far away, and the dark-haired Adara stood at the window, looking on with a grieved expression.

  ‘Why don’t you see what you can do, Pol,’ Belgarath said quietly. ‘Try to get her calmed down. I’ll need to talk to her—but probably later. Right now, I think the rest of us should go talk to Kail.’

  Polgara had gravely removed her cloak, folded it carefully, and laid it across the back of a chair. ‘All right, father,’ she replied. She came over and gently took the sobbing little queen out of Garion’s arms. ‘It’s all right, Ce’Nedra,’ she said soothingly. ‘We’re here now. We’ll take care of everything.’

  Ce’Nedra clung to her. ‘Oh, Lady Polgara,’ she cried.

  ‘Have you given her anything?’ Aunt Pol asked Ariana.

  ‘Nay, my Lady Polgara,’ the blond girl replied. ‘I feared that in her distraught condition those potions which most usually have a calming effect might do her injury.’

  ‘Let me have a look at your medicine kit.’

  ‘At once, Lady Polgara.’

  ‘Come along,’ Belgarath said to Garion and Durnik, a steely glint coming into his eyes. ‘Let’s go find Kail and see if we can get to the bottom of this.’

  They found Kail sitting wearily at a table in his father’s office. Spread before him was a large map of the island, and he was pouring over it intently.

  ‘It happened sometime yesterday morning, Belgarion,’ he said gravely after they had exchanged the briefest of greetings. ‘It was before daybreak. Queen Ce’Nedra looked in on the prince a few hours past midnight, and everything was fine. A couple of hours later, he was gone.’

  ‘What have you done so far?’ Belgarath asked him.

  ‘I ordered the island sealed,’ Kail replied, ‘and t
hen we searched the Citadel from one end to the other. Whoever took the prince was nowhere in the fortress, but no ship has arrived or departed since I gave that order, and the harbor master reports that nobody sailed after midnight yesterday. So far as I know the abductor has not left the Isle of the Winds.’

  ‘Good,’ Garion said, a sudden hope welling up in him.

  ‘At the moment, I have troops searching house by house in the city, and ships are patrolling every inch of the coastline. The island is completely sealed off.’

  ‘Have you searched the forests and mountains?’ the old man asked.

  ‘We want to finish the search of the city first,’ Kail said. ‘Then we’ll seal the city and move the troops out into the surrounding countryside.’

  Belgarath nodded, staring at the map. ‘We want to move carefully,’ he said. ‘Let’s not back this child stealer into a corner—at least not until we have my great-grandson safely back where he belongs.’

  Kail nodded his agreement. ‘The safety of the prince is our primary concern,’ he said.

  Polgara quietly entered the room. ‘I gave her something that will make her sleep,’ she said, ‘and Ariana’s watching her. I don’t think it would do any good to try to question her just yet, and sleep is what she needs right now.’

  ‘You’re probably right, Aunt Pol,’ Garion said, ‘but I’m not going to sleep—not until I find what happened to my son.’

  Early the following morning, they gathered again in Kail’s orderly study to pore once again over the map. Garion was about to ask Kail about the search of the city, but he stopped as he felt a sudden tug of the great sword strapped across his back. Absently, still staring at the yellowed parchment map on Kail’s desk, he adjusted the strap. It tugged at him again, more insistently this time.

  ‘Garion,’ Durnik said curiously, ‘does the Orb sometimes glow like that when you aren’t actually holding the sword?’

  Garion looked over his shoulder at the flaring Orb. ‘What’s it doing that for?’ he asked, baffled.

  The next tug nearly jerked him off his feet. ‘Grandfather,’ he said, a bit alarmed.