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 theSeabird?"
"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 coordinating 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 far below shrank as he rose higher and higher. Jarviksholm 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, and 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 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 below him he could see the miles-long waves on the Sea of the Winds, looking from this height almost like ripples 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, grim and gray over the city of Riva.
A sentry, leaning idly on his spear atop the highest parapet, startled as the four speckled falcons swooped in to 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 on to 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 in jury."
"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 then 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.
Belgarath's expression grew careful. "Garion," he said in a level voice, "I want you to take the sword out of its scabbard. I think the Orb is trying to tell you something."
Garion reached back over his shoulder and drew Irongrip's great sword from its sheath with a steely slither. Without even stopping to think how irrational it might sound, he spoke directly to the glowing stone on the pommel. "I'm awfully busy right now. Can't this wait?"
The answer was a steady pull toward the door. "What is itdoing?" Garion demanded irritably.
"Let's just follow it," Belgarath told him.
Helplessly, Garion followed the powerful urging through the door and out into the torchlit corridor, with the others trailing curiously along behind him. He could sense the peculiarly crystalline awareness of the Orb and feel its overwhelming anger. Not since the dreadful night in Cthol Mishrak when he had faced the maimed God of Angarak had he felt so much outrage emanating from that living stone.
The sword continued to pull him down the corridor, moving faster and faster until he was half running to keep up.
"What's it trying to do, father?" Polgara asked in a puzzled tone. "It's never done anything like this before."
"I'm not sure," the old man replied. "We'll just have to follow it and find out. I think it might be important, though."
Kail stopped briefly in front of a sentry posted in the corridor. "Would you go get my brothers?" he asked the man. "Have them come to the royal apartment."
"Yes sir," the sentry replied, with a quick salute.
Garion stopped at the dark, polished door to the apartment, opened it, and went inside with the sword still pulling at him.
Queen Layla was just in the act of drawing a blanket over the exhausted Adara, who lay asleep on the couch, and she looked up with astonishment. "What on earth-?" she began.
"Hush, Layla," Polgara told her. "Something's happening that we don't quite understand."
Garion steeled himself and went on into the bedroom. Ce'Nedra lay in the bed, tossing and whimpering in her sleep. At her bedside sat Queen Islena and Barak's wife Merel. Ariana dozed in a deep chair near the window. He was only able to give the ladies attending his wife the briefest of glances, however, before the sword pulled him on into the nursery, where the sight of the empty cradle wrenched at his heart. The great sword dipped over the cradle, and the Orb glowed. Then the stone flickered with a pulsating light for a moment.
"I think I'm starting to understand," Belgarath said. "I won't absolutely swear to this, but I think it wants to follow Geran's trail."
"Can it do that?" Durnik asked.
"It can do almost anything, and it's totally committed to the Rivan line. Let it go, Garion. Let's see where it leads you."
In the corridor outside, Kail's two brothers, Verdan and Brin, met them. Verdan, the eldest of the three, was as burly as an ox, and Brin, the youngest, only slightly less so. Both men wore mail shirts and helmets and had heavy broadswords belted to their sides.
"We think that the Orb may be trying to lead us to the prince," Kail explained tersely to them. "We might need you two when we find him." Brin flashed a broad, almost boyish grin. "We'll have the abductor's head on a pole before nightfall, then," he said.
"Let's not be too hasty about removing heads," Belgarath told him. "I want the answers to some questions first."
"One of you stays with Ce'Nedra at all times," Aunt Pol told Queen Layla, who had curiously trailed along behind them. "She'll probably wake up sometime this afternoon. Let Ariana sleep for now. Ce'Nedra might need her when she awakens."
"Of course, Polgara," the plump queen of Sendaria replied.
"And you," Aunt Pol said firmly to Errand, who was just coming down the hall. "I want you to stay in the royal apartment and do exactly what Layla tells you to do."
"But-" he started to protest.
"No buts, Errand. What we have to do might be dangerous, and that's something you haven't quite learned to understand yet."
He sighed. "All right, Polgara," he said disconsolately.
With the Orb on the pommel of the massive sword pulling him along, Garion followed the unseen track of his son's abductor out through one of the side gates with the rest of them close on his heels.
"It seems to want to go toward the mountains," Garion said. "I thought the trail would lead down into the city."
"Don't think, Garion," Polgara told him. "Just go where the Orb leads you."
The trailed across the meadow rising steeply behind the Citadel and then into the forest of dark fir and spruce where Garion and Ce'Nedra had often strolled on their summer outings.
"Are you sure it knows what it' s doing?" Garion asked as he pushed his way through a tangled patch of undergrowth. "There's no path here at all. I don't think anyone would have come this way."
"It's following some kind of trail, Garion," Belgarath assured him. "Just keep up with it."
They struggled through the thick underbrush for an hour or so. Once a covey of grouse exploded from under Garion's feet with a heart-stopping thunder of wings.
"I'll have to remember this place," Brin said to Kail. "The hunting here might be very good."
"We're hunting other game at the moment. Keep your mind on your work."
When they reached the upper edge of the forest, Garion stared up at the steep, rock-strewn meadow rising above the timberline. "Is there a pass of any kind through these mountains?" he asked.
"Off to the left of that big peak," Brin replied, pointing. "I use it when I go out to hunt wild stags, and the shepherds take their flocks through it to the pastures in the interior valleys."
"Also the shepherdesses," Verdan added drily. "Sometimes the game my brother chases doesn't have horns."
Brin threw a quick, nervous glance at Polgara, and a slow blush mounted his cheeks.
"I've always been rather fond of shepherdesses," Belgarath noted blandly. "For the most part, they're gentle, understanding girls -and frequently lonely, aren't they, Brin?"
"That will do, father," Aunt Pol said primly.
It took the better part of the day to go over the pass and through the green meadows lying in the hidden valleys among the mountains beyond. The sun hovered just above the gleaming, almost molten-looking sea on the western side of the Isle when they crested a boulder-covered ridge and started down the long, rocky slope toward the cliffs and the frothy surf pounding endlessly against the western coast.
"Could a ship have landed on this side?" Garion asked Kail as they went downhill.
Kail was puffing noticeably from the strenuous trek across the island and he mopped his streaming face with his sleeve.
"There are a few places where it's possible, Belgarion -if you know what you're doing. It's difficult and dangerous, but itis possible."
Garion's heart sank. "Then he could very well have gotten away," he said.
"I had ships out there, Belgarion," Kail said to him, pointing at the sea. "I sent them out as soon as we found out that the prince had been taken. About the only way someone could have gotten all the way across the island to this side in time to sail away before those ships got around here would be if he could fly."
"We've got him, then," the irrepressible Brin exclaimed, loosening his sword in its scabbard and searching the boulder-strewn slope and the brink of the cliffs with a hunter's trained eye.
"Hold it a second," Durnik said sharply. He lifted his head and sniffed at the onshore breeze. "There's somebody up ahead."
"What?" Garion said, a sudden excitement building up in him.
"I just caught a distinct whiff of somebody who doesn't bathe regularly."
Belgarath's face took on an intense expression. "Pol," he said, "why don't you take a quick look down there?"
She nodded tersely, and her forehead furrowed with concentration. Garion felt and heard the whispered surge as she probed the empty-looking terrain ahead. "Chereks," she said after a moment. "About a dozen of them. They're hiding behind those boulders at the edge of the cliffs. They're watching us and planning an ambush."
"Chereks?" Brin exclaimed. "Why would Chereks want to attack us?" "They're Bear-cultists," she told him, "and nobody knows why those madmen do anything."
"What do we do?" Brin asked in a half whisper.
"An ambusher always has the advantage," Verdan replied, "unless the person about to be ambushed knows that he's there. Then it's the other way around." He looked down the slope grimly, his big hand on his sword hilt.
"Then we just go down there and spring their trap?" Brin asked eagerly.
Kail looked at Belgarath. "What do you think, Ancient One? We have the advantage now. They're going to expect us to be startled when they jump out at us, but we'll be ready for them. We could have half of them down before they realize their mistake."
Belgarath squinted at the setting sun. "Normally, I'd say no," he said. "These little incidental fights aren't usually very productive, but we're losing the light." He turned to Aunt Pol. "Is Geran anywhere in the vicinity?"
"No," she replied. "There's no sign of him."
Belgarath scratched at his beard. "If we leave the Chereks there, they're going to follow us, and I don't think I want them creeping along behind -particularly once it gets dark." His lined old face tightened into a wolfish grin. "All right, let's indulge ourselves."
"Save a few of them, though, father," Polgara said. "I have some questions I'd like answered. And try not to get yourselves hurt, gentlemen. I'm a little tired for surgery today."
"No surgery today, Lady Polgara," Brin promised blithely. "A few funerals, perhaps, but no surgery."
She raised her eyes toward the sky. " Alorns," she sighed.
The ambush did not turn out at all as the hidden Bear-cultists had anticipated. The fur-clad Cherek who leaped at Garion was met in midair by the flaming sword of the Rivan King and was sheared nearly in two at the waist by the great blade. He fell to the suddenly blood-drenched grass, writhing and squealing. Kail coolly split a charging cultist's head while his brothers fell on the startled attackers and savagely but methodically began to hack them to pieces.
One cultist leaped atop a large rock, drawing a bow with his arrow pointed directly at Garion, but Belgarath made a short gesture with his left hand, and the bowman was suddenly hurled backward in a long, graceful arc that carried him out over the edge of the nearby cliff. His arrow went harmlessly into the air as he fell shrieking toward the foamy breakers five hundred feet below.
"Remember, I need a few of them alive!" Polgara sharply reminded them, as the carnage threatened to get completely out of hand.
Kail grunted, then neatly parried the thrust of a desperate Cherek. His big left fist swung in a broad arc and smashed solidly into the side of the Cherek's head, sending him spinning to the turf.
Durnik was using his favorite weapon, a stout cudgel perhaps three feet long. Expertly, he slapped a cultist's sword out of his hand and cracked him sharply alongside the head. The man's eyes glazed, and he tumbled limply to the ground.
Belgarath surveyed the fight, selected a likely candidate and then levitated him about fifty feet into the air. The suspended man was at first apparently unaware of his new location and kept slashing ineffectually at the surrounding emptiness.
The fight was soon over. The last crimson rays of the setting sun mingled with the scarlet blood staining the grass near the edge of the cliff, and the ground was littered with broken swords and scraps of bloody bearskin.
"For some reason, that makes me feel better," Garion declared, wiping his sword on the fallen body of one of the cultists. The Orb, he noted, was also blazing with a kind of fiery satisfaction.
Polgara was coolly inspecting a couple of unconscious survivors. "These two will sleep for a while," she noted, rolling back an eyelid to examine the glazed eye underneath. "Bring that one down, father," she said, pointing at the man Belgarath had suspended in midair, "In one piece, if you can manage it. I'd like to question him."
"Of course, Pol." The old man' s eyes were sparkling, and his grin very nearly split his face.
"Father," she said, "whenare you ever going to grow up?"
"Why, Polgara," he said mockingly, "what a thing to say."
The floating cultist had finally realized his situation and had dropped his sword. He stood trembling on the insubstantial air, with his eyes bulging in terror and his limbs twitching violently. When Belgarath gently lowered him to the ground, he immediately collapsed in a quivering heap.
The old man firmly grasped him by the front of his fur tunic and hauled him roughly into a half -standing position. "Do you know who I am?" he demanded, thrusting his face into that of the cringing captive.
"You-I-"
"Do you?" Belgarath's voice cracked like a whip.
"Yes," the man choked.
"Then you know that if you try to run away, I'll just hang you back up in the air again and leave you there. You know that I can do that, don't you?" "Yes."
"That won't be necessary, father," Polgara said coolly. "This man is going to be very co-operative."
"I will say nothing, witch-woman," the captive declared, though his eyes were still a bit wild.
"Ah, no, my friend," she told him with a chilly little smile. "You will say everything. You'll talk for weeks if I need you to." She gave him a hard stare and made a small gesture in front of his face with her left hand. "Look closely, friend," she said. "Enjoy every single detail."
The bearded Bear-cultist stared at the empty air directly in front of his face, and the blood drained from his cheeks. His eyes started from his head in horror, and he shrieked, staggering back. Grimly, she made a sort of hooking gesture with her still-extended hand, and his retreat stopped instantly. "You can't run away from it," she said, "and unless you talk -right now- it will stand in front of your face until the day you die."
"Take it away!" he begged in an insane shriek. "Please, I'll do anything -anything!"
"I wonder where she learned to do that," Belgarath murmured to Garion. "I could never do it to anybody -and I've tried."
"He'll tell you whatever he knows now, Garion," Polgara said then. "He's aware of what will happen if he doesn't."
"What have you done with my son?" Garion demanded of the terrified man.
The prisoner swallowed hard, and then he straightened defiantly. "He's far beyond your reach now, King of Riva."
The rage welled up in Garion again, and, without thinking, he reached over his shoulder for his sword.
"Garion!" Polgara said sharply.
The cultist flinched back, his face going pale. "Your son is alive," he said hastily. Then a smug look crossed his face. "But the next time you meet him, he will kill you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ulfgar has consulted the oracles. You are not the Rivan King we have awaited for all these centuries. It's the next King of Riva who will unite Aloria and lead us against the kingdoms of the south. It is your son, Belgarion, and he will lead us because he will be raised to share our beliefs."
"Where is my son?" Garion shouted at him.
"Where you will never find him," the prisoner taunted. "We will raise and nurture him in the true faith, as befits an Alorn monarch. And when he is grown, he will come and kill you and take his crown and his sword and his Orb from your usurping hand." The man's eyes were bulging, his limbs shook with religious ecstasy, and there was foam on his lips. "You will die by your own son's hand, Belgarion of Riva," he shrieked, "and King Geran will lead all Alorns against the unbelievers of the south, as Belar commanded."
"We're not getting too far with this line of questioning," Belgarath said. "Let me try for a while." He turned to the wild-eyed captive. "How much do you know about this Ulfgar?" he asked.
"Ulfgar is the Bear-lord, and he has even more power than you, old man."
"Interesting notion," Belgarath murmured. "Have you ever met this master sorcerer -or even seen him, for that matter?"
"Well-" the captive hedged.
"I didn't think so. How did you know he wanted you to come here and abduct Belgarion's son, then?"
The captive bit his lip.
"Answer me!"
"He sent a messenger," the man replied sullenly.
A sudden thought occurred to Garion. "Was this Ulfgar of yours behind the attempt to kill my wife?" he demanded.
"Wife!" The cultist sneered. "No Alorn takes a Tolnedran mongrel to wife. You -Iron-grip's heir- should know that better than any man. Naturally we tried to kill the Tolnedran wench. It was the only way to rid Aloria of the infection you brought here."
"You're starting to irritate me, friend," Garion said bleakly. "Don't do that."
"Let's get back to this messenger," Belgarath said. "You say that the baby is where we can't reach him, but you're still here, aren't you? Could it just possibly be that it was the messenger who was the actual abductor and that you and your friends are merely underlings?"
The cultist's eyes grew wild, and he looked this way and that like a trapped animal. His limbs began to tremble violently .
"I think we're approaching a question that you don't want to answer, friend," Belgarath suggested.
It came almost like a blow. There was a wrenching kind of feeling to it, almost as if someone were reaching inside a skull to twist and crush the brain within. The captive shrieked, gave Belgarath one wild look, then spun, took three quick steps, and hurled himself off the edge of the cliff behind him.
"Question me now!" he shrieked as he plummeted down into the twilight that was rising out of the dark, angry waters surging about the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Then, even as he fell, Garion heard peal upon peal of insane laughter fading horribly as the fanatic dropped away from them.
Aunt Pol started quickly toward the edge, but Belgarath reached out and took her arm. "Let him go, Pol," he said.
"It wouldn't be a kindness to save him now. Someone put something in his mind that crushed out his sanity as soon as he was asked that certain question."
"Who could possibly do that?" she asked.
"I don't know, but I'm certainly going to find out."
The shrieking laughter, still fading, continued to echo up to where they stood. And then it ended abruptly far below.