Garion slept very little during the remainder of that rainy night. His pulse still raced with excitement, and he lay under his blankets beside Ce’Nedra, living and reliving his encounter with the dragon. It was only toward the tag end of the night that he became calm enough to consider an idea that had come to him in the midst of the fight. He had enjoyed it. He had actually enjoyed a struggle that should have terrified him; the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this was not the first time that this had happened. As far back as his early childhood, this same wild excitement had filled him each time he had been in danger.
The solid good sense of his Sendarian upbringing told him that this enthusiasm for conflict and peril was probably an unhealthy outgrowth of his Alorn heritage and that he should strive to keep it rigidly controlled, but deep inside he knew that he would not. He had finally found the answer to the plaintive “Why me?” which he had voiced so often in the past. He was inevitably chosen for these dreadful, frightening tasks because he was perfectly suited for them.
“It’s what I do,” he muttered to himself. “Any time there’s something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would even consider trying it, they send for me.”
“What was that, Garion?” Ce’Nedra murmured drowsily.
“Nothing, dear,” he replied. “I was just thinking out loud. Go back to sleep.”
“Ummm,” she murmured and snuggled closer to him, filling his nostrils with the warm fragrance of her hair.
Dawn crept slowly under the overspreading limbs of the sodden forest with a kind of growing paleness. The persistent drizzle joined with a morning mist rising from the forest floor to form a kind of damp, gray cloud enveloping the dark trunks of fir and spruce.
Garion awoke from a half doze and saw the shadowy forms of Durnik and Toth standing quietly beside the cold fire pit at the front of the shelter. He slipped out from under the blankets, moving carefully to avoid waking his sleeping wife, and pulled on his clammy boots. Then he stood up, pulled on his cloak, and moved out from under the tent canvas to join them.
He looked up toward the gloomy morning sky. “Still raining, I see,” he noted in that quiet tone people use when they rise before the sun.
Durnik nodded. “At this time of year it probably won’t blow over for a week or so.” He opened the leather pouch at his hip and took out his wad of tinder. “I suppose we’d better get a fire going,” he said.
Toth, huge and silent, went over to the side of their shelter, picked up two leather water bags and started down the steep slope toward the spring. Despite his enormous size, he made almost no sound as he moved through the fog-shrouded bushes.
Durnik knelt by the fire pit and carefully heaped dry twigs in the center. Then he laid his ball of tinder beside the twigs and took out his flint and steel.
“Is Aunt Pol still asleep?” Garion asked him.
“Dozing. She says that it’s very pleasant to lie in a warm bed while somebody else builds up the fire.” Durnik smiled gently.
Garion also smiled. “That’s probably because for all those years she was usually the first one up.” He paused. “Is she still unhappy about last night?” he asked.
“Oh,” Durnik said, bending over the pit and striking at his flint with his steel, “I think she’s regained her composure a bit.” His flint and steel made a subdued clicking sound; with each click a shower of bright, lingering sparks spilled down into the pit. One of them fell glowing onto the tinder, and the smith gently blew on it until a tiny tongue of orange flame rose from the center. Then he carefully moved the tinder under the twigs, and the flame grew and spread with a dry crackling. “There we are,” he said, brushing the fire from the tinder and returning it to his pouch along with his flint and steel.
Garion knelt beside him and began snapping a dry branch into short lengths.
“You were very brave last night, Garion,” Durnik said as the two of them fed the small fire.
“I think the word is insane,” Garion replied wryly. “Would anybody in his right mind try to do something like that? I think the trouble is that I’m usually right in the middle of those things before I give any thought to how dangerous they are. Sometimes I wonder if Grandfather wasn’t right. Maybe Aunt Pol did drop me on my head when I was a baby.”
Durnik chuckled softly. “I sort of doubt it,” he said. “She’s very careful with children and other breakable things.”
They added more branches to the fire until they had a cheerful blaze going, and then Garion stood up. The firelight reflected back from the fog with a soft, ruddy glow that had about it a kind of hazy unreality, as if, all unaware, they had inadvertently crossed the boundaries of the real world sometime during the night and entered the realms of magic and enchantment.
As Toth came back up from the spring with the two dripping waterbags, Polgara emerged from their shelter, brushing her long, dark hair. For some reason the single white lock above her left brow seemed almost incandescent this morning. “It’s a very nice fire, dear,” she said, kissing her husband. Then she looked at Garion. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“What? Oh, yes. I’m fine.”
“No cuts or bruises or singes you might have overlooked last night?”
“No. I seem to have gotten through it without a scratch.” He hesitated. “Were you really upset last night, Aunt Pol— with Eriond and me, I mean?”
“Yes, Garion, I really was—but that was last night. What would you like for breakfast this morning?”
Some time later, as the pale dawn crept steadily under the trees, Silk stood shivering on one side of the fire pit with his hands stretched out to the flames and his eyes suspiciously
. fixed on the bubbling pot Aunt Pol had set on a flat rock at the very edge of the fire. “Gruel?” he asked. “Again?”
“Hot porridge,” Aunt Pol corrected, stirring the contents of the pot with a long-handled wooden spoon.
“They’re the same thing, Polgara.”
“Not really. Gruel is thinner.”
“Thick or thin, it’s all the same.”
She looked at him with one raised eyebrow. “Tell me, Prince Kheldar, why are you always so disagreeable in the morning?”
“Because I detest mornings. The only reason there’s such a thing as morning in the first place is to keep night and afternoon from bumping into each other.”
“Perhaps one of my tonics might sweeten your blood.”
His eyes grew wary. “Ah—no. Thanks all the same, Polgara. Now that I’m all the way awake, I feel much better.”
“I’m so glad for you. Now, do you suppose you could move away a bit? I’m going to need that side of the fire for the bacon.”
“Anything you say.” And he turned and went quickly back into the shelter.
Belgarath, who was lounging on top of his blankets, looked at the little man with an amused expression. “For a supposedly intelligent man, you do have a tendency to blunder from time to time, don’t you?” he asked. “You should have learned by now not to bother Pol when she’s cooking.”
Silk grunted and picked up his moth-eaten fur cape. “I think I’ll go check the horses,” he said. “Do you want to come along?”
Belgarath cast an appraising eye at Polgara’s dwindling supply of firewood. “That might not be a bad idea,” he agreed, rising to his feet.
“I'll go with you,” Garion said. “I’ve got a few kinks I’d like to work out. I think I slept on a stump last night.” He slung the loop of his sword belt across one shoulder and followed the other two out of the shelter.
“It’s sort of hard to believe that it really happened, isn’t it?” Silk murmured when they reached the clearing. “The dragon, I mean. Now that it’s daylight, everything looks so prosaic.”
“Not quite,” Garion said, pointing at the scaly chunk of the dragon’s tail lying on the far edge of the clearing. The tip end of it was still twitching slightly.
Silk nodded. “That is the sort of thing you wouldn’t ordinarily run across on a casual morning stroll.” He looked at Belgarath. “Is she likely to bother us again?” he asked. “This is going to be a very nervous journey if we have to keep looking back over our shoulders every step of the way. Is she at all vindictive?”
“How do you mean?” the old man asked him.
“Well, Garion did kind of cut her tail off, after all. Do you think she might take it personally?”
“Not usually,” Belgarath replied. “She doesn’t really have that much in the way of a brain.” He frowned thoughtfully. “What bothers me is that there was something about the whole encounter that was all wrong.”
“Even the idea of it was wrong,” Silk shuddered.
Belgarath shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I can’t be sure if I imagined it or not, but she seemed to be looking specifically for one of us.”
“Eriond?” Garion suggested.
“It sort of seemed that way, didn’t it? But when she found him, she looked almost as if he frightened her. And what did he mean by those peculiar things he said to her?”
“Who knows?” Silk shrugged. “He’s always been a strange boy. I don’t think he lives in the same world with the rest of us.”
“But why was the dragon so afraid of Garion’s sword?”
“That sword frightens whole armies, Belgarath. The fire alone is pretty terrifying.”
“She likes fire, Silk. I’ve seen her try to be coy and seductive for the benefit of a burning barn, and one time she flew around for a week making calves’ eyes at a forest fire.
There’s something about last night that keeps nagging at me.”
Eriond came out of the thicket where the horses were picketed, walking carefully around the dripping bushes.
“Are they all right?” Garion asked.
“The horses? They’re fine, Belgarion. Is breakfast almost ready?”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Silk replied sourly.
“Polgara’s really a very good cook, Kheldar,” Eriond assured him earnestly.
“Not even the best cook in the world can do very much with porridge.”
Eriond’s eyes brightened. “She’s making porridge? I love porridge.”
Silk gave him a long look, then turned sadly to Garion. “You see how easily the young are corrupted?” he observed. “Just give them the faintest hint of a wholesome upbringing, and they’re lost forever.” He squared his shoulders. “All right,” he said grimly, “let’s go get it over with.”
After breakfast, they broke down their night’s encampment and set out through the soft drizzle falling from the weeping sky. It was about noon when they reached a wide swath of cleared land, a stretch of bushy, stump-dotted ground perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, and in the center of that swath lay. a wide, muddy road.
“The high road from Muros,” Silk said with some satisfaction.
“Why did they cut down all the trees?” Eriond asked him.
“They used to have trouble with robbers lying in ambush right beside the road. The cleared space on each side gives travelers a sporting chance to get away.”
They rode out from under the dripping trees and across the weed-grown clearing to the muddy road. “Now we should be able to make better time,” Belgarath said, nudging his horse into a trot.
They followed the road south for several hours, moving at a steady canter. As they rode down out of the forested foothills, the trees gave way to roiling grasslands. They crested a hilltop and reined in to give their steaming mounts a brief rest. Somewhat to the northwest they saw the dark border of the great Arendish forest, hazy in the misty drizzle, and not far ahead the grim, gray-walled pile of Mimbrate castle brooding down on the grasslands lying below.
Ce’Nedra sighed as she stared out over the sodden plain and at the fortress that seemed to hold in its very stones all the stiff-necked, wary suspicion that was at the core of Arendish society.
“Are you all right?” Garion asked her, fearful that her sigh might signify a return to that bleak melancholy which she had so recently shaken off.
“There’s something so mournful about Arendia,” she replied. “All those thousands of years of hatred and grief, and what did they prove? Even that castle seems to be weeping.”
“That’s just the rain, Ce’Nedra,” he said carefully.
“No,” she sighed again. “It’s more than that.”
The road from Muros was a muddy yellow scar, stretching between fields of browned, drooping grasses as it wound down to the Arendish plain, and for the next several days they rode past great, rearing Mimbrate castles and through dirty thatch and wattle villages where acrid wood smoke hung in the chill air like a miasma and the hopeless expressions on the faces of the ragged serfs bespoke lives lived out in misery and despair. They stopped each night in mean, shabby wayside inns reeking of spoiled food and unwashed bodies.
On the fourth day, they crested a hill and looked down at the garish sprawl of the Great Arendish Fair, standing at the junction of the high road from Muros and the Great West Road. The tents and pavilions spread for a league or more in every direction in a gaudy profusion of blue and red and yellow beneath a weeping gray sky, and pack-trains going to and from that great commercial center crawled across the plain like streams of ants.
Silk pushed his shabby hat back from his face. “Maybe I’d better go down and take a quick look around before we all ride in,” he said. “We’ve been out of touch for a while, and it might not hurt to get the feel of things.”
“All right,” Belgarath agreed, “but no chicanery.”
“Chicanery?”
“You know what I mean, Silk. Keep your instincts under control.”
“Trust me, Belgarath.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Silk laughed and thumped his heels to his horse’s flanks.
The rest of them rode at a walk down the long slope as Silk galloped on ahead toward that perpetually temporary tent-city standing in its sea of mud. As they approached the fair, Garion could hear a cacophonous tumult filling the air— a sort of bawling clamor of thousands of voices shouting all at once. There was also a myriad of scents—of spices and cooking food, of rare perfumes, and of horse corrals.
Belgarath drew in his mount. “Let’s wait here for Silk,” he said. “I don’t want to blunder into anything.”
They sat their horses to one side of the road in the chill rain, watching the slow crawl of pack trains slipping and sliding up the muddy road toward them.
About three-quarters of an hour later, Silk came pounding back up the hill. “I think we might want to approach carefully,” he said, his pointed face serious.
“What’s the matter?” Belgarath asked.
“I ran into Delvor,” Silk replied, “and he told me that there’s an Angarak merchant who’s been asking questions about us.”
“Maybe we should just bypass the fair, then,” Durnik suggested.
Silk shook his head. “I think we ought to find out a little bit more about this curious Angarak. Delvor’s offered to put us up in his tents for a day or so, but it might not be a bad idea if we circle the fair and come in from the south. We can join one of the caravans coming up from Tol Honeth. That way we won’t be quite so obvious.”
Belgarath considered it, squinting up at the rainy sky. “All right,” he decided. “I don’t want to waste too much time, but I don’t like the idea of someone following us, either. Let’s go see what Delvor can tell us.”
They rode in a wide half circle through the rain-drenched grass and reached the muddy track of the Great West Road a mile or so south of the fair. A half-dozen Tolnedran merchants wrapped in rich fur cloaks rode at the head of a string of creaking wagons, and Garion and his friends unobtrusively fell in at the tail end of their column as the gradual darkening of the sky announced the approach of a dreary, rain-swept evening.
The narrow lanes lying between the tents and pavilions seethed with merchants from all parts of the world. The soupy mud was ankle-deep, churned by the hooves of hundreds of horses and the feet of brightly dressed men of trade, who bawled and shouted and haggled with each other, ignoring the mud and rain. Torches and lanterns hung at the sides of open-fronted booths made of canvas, where treasures of incalculable worth stood in curious proximity to brass pots and cheap tin plates.
“It’s this way,” Silk said, turning into a side lane. “Delvor’s tents are a few hundred yards on up ahead.”
“Who’s Delvor?” Ce’Nedra asked Garion as they rode past a noisy tavern pavilion.
“A friend of Silk’s. We met him the last time we were here. I think he’s a member of Drasnian Intelligence.”
She sniffed. “Aren’t all Drasnians members of the intelligence service?”
He grinned. “Probably,” he agreed.
Delvor was waiting for them in front of his blue and white striped pavilion. Silk’s friend had changed very little in the years since Garion had last seen him. He was as bald as an egg, and his expression was still as shrewd and cynical as it had been before. He wore a fur-trimmed cloak pulled tightly about his shoulders, and his bald head gleamed wetly in the rain. “My servants will care for your horses,” he told them as they dismounted. “Let’s get in out of sight before too many people see you.”
They followed him into his warm, well-lighted pavilion, and he carefully tied down the tent flap behind them. The pavilion was very nearly as comfortable-looking as a well-appointed house. There were chairs and divans and a large, polished table set with a splendid supper. The floors and walls were carpeted in blue, oil lamps hung on chains from the ceiling, and in each corner there was an iron brazier filled with glowing coals. Delvor’s servants all wore sober livery and they wordlessly took the dripping cloaks from Garion and his friends and carried them through a canvas partition to an adjoining tent.
“Please,” Delvor said politely, “seat yourselves. I took the liberty of having a bit of supper prepared.”
Silk looked around as they all sat down at the table. “Opulent,” he noted.
Delvor shrugged. “A little planning—and quite a bit of money. A tent doesn’t have to be uncomfortable.”
“And it’s portable,” Silk added. “If one has to leave someplace in a hurry, a tent can be folded up and taken along. That’s hard to do with a house.”
“There’s that, too,” Delvor admitted blandly. “Please eat, my friends. I know the kind of accommodations—and meals—that are offered in the inns here in Arendia.”
The supper that had been set for them was as fine as one that might have come to the table of a nobleman. A heap of smoking chops lay on a silver platter, and there were boiled onions and peas and carrots swimming in a delicate cheese sauce. The bread was of the finest white, still steaming hot from the oven, and there was a wide selection of excellent wines.
“Your cook appears to be a man of some talent, Delvor,” Polgara noted.
“Thank you, my Lady,” he replied. “He costs me a few dozen extra crowns a year and he’s got a foul temper, but I think he’s worth the expense and aggravation.”
“What’s this about a curious Angarak merchant?” Belgarath asked, helping himself to a couple of the chops.
“He rode into the fair a few days ago with a half-dozen servants, but no pack horses or wagons. Their horses looked hard-ridden, as if he and his men had come here in a hurry. Since he arrived, he hasn’t done any business at all. He and his people have spent all their time asking questions.”
“Are they specifically asking for us?”
“Not by name, Ancient One, but the way they’ve been describing you didn’t leave much doubt. He’s been offering money for information—quite a bit of money.”
“What kind of Angarak is he?”
“He claims to be a Nadrak, but if he’s a Nadrak, I’m a Thull. I think he’s a Malloreon. He’s about medium height and build, clean-shaven and soberly dressed. About the only tiling unusual about him is his eyes. They seem to be completely white—except for the pupils. There’s no color to them at all.”
Aunt Pol raised her head quickly. “Blind?” she asked.
“Blind? No, I don’t think so. He seems to be able to see where he’s going. Why do you ask, my Lady?”
“What you just described is the result of a very rare condition,” she replied. “Most of the people who suffer from it are Wind.”
“If we’re going to ride out of here without having him about ten minutes behind us, we’re going to need some kind of distraction to delay him,” Silk said, toying with a crystal goblet. He looked at his friend. “I don’t suppose you still have any of those lead coins you hid in that Murgo tent the last time we were here, do you?”
“I’m afraid not, Silk. I had to go through customs at the Tolnedran border a few months ago. I didn’t think it would be wise to have the customs people find that kind of thing in my packs, so I buried them under a tree.”
“Lead coins?” Ce’Nedra said with a puzzled look. “What could you possibly buy with coins made of lead?”
“They’re gilded, your Majesty,” Delvor told her. “They look exactly like Tolnedran gold crowns.”
Ce’Nedra’s face suddenly went pale. “That’s horrible!” she gasped.
Delvor’s face mirrored his puzzlement at the vehemence of her reaction.
“Her Majesty is a Tolnedran, Delvor,” Silk reminded him, “and counterfeit money strikes at the very core of a Tolnedran’s being. I think it has something to do with their religion.”
“I don’t find that particularly amusing, Prince Kheldar,” Ce’Nedra said tartly.
After supper they talked for a while longer, the comfortable talk of people who are warm and well-fed, and then Delvor led them into an adjoining tent that had been partitioned off into sleeping chambers. Garion fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow and he awoke the following morning feeling more refreshed than he had in weeks. He dressed quietly to avoid waking Ce’Nedra and went out into the main pavilion.
Silk and Delvor sat at the table talking quietly. “There’s a great deal of ferment going on here in Arendia,” Delvor was saying. “The news of the campaign against the Bear-cult in the Alorn kingdoms has stirred the blood of all the young hotheads—both Mimbrate and Asturian. The thought of a fight someplace that they weren’t invited to attend fills young Arends with anguish.”
“There’s nothing new about that,” Silk said. “Good morning, Garion.”
“Gentlemen,” Garion said politely, pulling up a chair.
“Your Majesty,” Delvor greeted him. Then he turned back to Silk. “The thing that concerns everybody more than the casual belligerence of the young nobles, though, is the unrest that’s arisen among the serfs.”
Garion remembered the miserable hovels in the villages they had passed in the last few days and the hopeless looks on the faces of their inhabitants. “They have reason enough for discontent, don’t you think?” he said.
“I’d be the first to agree, your Majesty,” Delvor said, “and it’s not the first time it’s happened. This time, though, it’s a little more serious. The authorities have been finding caches of weapons—fairly sophisticated ones. A serf with a pitchfork isn’t much of a match for an armored Mimbrate knight. A serf with a crossbow, however, is an altogether different matter. There have been several incidents—and some reprisals.”
“How could serfs get those kinds of weapons?” Garion asked him. “Most of the time they don’t even have enough to eat. How could they possibly afford to buy crossbows?”
“They’re coming in from outside the country,” Delvor told him. “We haven’t been able to pinpoint the source yet, but it’s fairly obvious that somebody wants to make sure that the Arendish nobility is too busy at home to get involved in anything anyplace else.”
“Kal Zakath, perhaps?” Silk suggested.
“It’s entirely possible,” Delvor agreed. “There’s no question that the emperor of Mallorea has global ambitions, and turmoil in the Kingdoms of the West would be his best ally if he decides to turn his armies northward after he finally kills King Urgit.”
Garion groaned. “That’s all I need,” he said, “one more thing to worry about.”
When the others joined them in the main pavilion, Delvor’s servants brought in a huge breakfast. There were whole platters of eggs, heaps of bacon and sausage, and plate after plate of fruit and rich pastries.
“Now this is what I call a breakfast,” Silk said enthusiastically.
Polgara gave him a cool look. “Go ahead and say it, Prince Kheldar,” she said. “I’m sure that you have all sorts of interesting observations to make.”
“Would I say anything about that excellent gruel you offer us every morning, dear lady?” he asked with exaggerated innocence.
“Not if you’re at all concerned about your health, you wouldn’t,” Ce’Nedra said sweetly.
One of the servants entered the tent with an offended expression on his face. “There’s an obnoxious, filthy hunch- back outside, Delvor,” he reported. “He has the foulest mouth I’ve ever run across and he’s demanding to be let in. Do you want us to chase him off?”
“Oh, that would be Uncle Beldin,” Polgara said.
“You know him?” Delvor seemed surprised.
“I’ve known him since I was a baby,” she replied. “He’s not really as bad as he seems—once you get used to him.” She frowned slightly. “You probably ought to let him come in,” she advised. “He can be terribly unpleasant when people irritate him.”
“Belgarath,” Beldin growled, roughly pushing his way past the protesting servant, “is this all the farther you’ve come? I thought you’d be in Tol Honeth by now.”
“We had to stop at Prolgu to see the Gorim,” Belgarath replied mildly.
“This isn’t a grand tour, you blockhead,” Beldin snapped irritably. The little hunchback was as filthy as ever. The wet rags he wore for clothes were tied to his body here and there with lengths of rotten twine. His hair was matted and had twigs and bits of straw clinging to it. His hideous face was as black as a thundercloud as he stumped to the table on his short, gnarled legs and helped himself to a bit of sausage.
“Please try to be civil, uncle,” Aunt Pol said.
“Why?” He pointed at a small pot standing on the table. “What’s in that?”
“Jam,” Delvor replied, looking slightly intimidated.
“Interesting,” Beldin said. He dipped one dirty hand into the pot and began feeding gobs of jam into his mouth. “Not bad,” he said, licking his fingers.
“There’s bread right there, uncle,” Aunt Pol said pointedly.
“I don’t like bread,” he grunted, wiping his hand on his clothes.
“Did you manage to catch up with Harakan?” Belgarath asked him.
Beldin retorted with a number of expletives that made Ce’Nedra’s face blanch. “He gave me the slip again. I don’t have the time to waste chasing him, so I’ll have to forgo the pleasure of splitting him up the middle.” He dipped his hand into the jam pot again.
“If we run across him, we’ll take care of it for you,” Silk offered.
“He’s a sorcerer, Kheldar. If you get in his way, he’ll hang your guts on a fence.”
“I was going to let Garion do it.”
Beldin set down the empty jam pot and belched.
“Can I offer you anything else?” Delvor asked him.
“No, thanks all the same, but I’m full now.” He turned back to Belgarath. “Were you planning to get as far as Tol Honeth before summer?”
“We’re not really that far behind, Beldin,” Belgarath protested.
Beldin made an indelicate sound. “Keep your eyes open on the way south,” he advised. “There’s a Malloreon who’s been asking questions about you and the others. He’s been hiring people all up and down the Great West Road.”
Belgarath looked at him sharply. “Could you get any kind of name?”
“He uses several. The one that crops up most often is Naradas.”
“Have you got any idea of what he looks like?” Silk asked.
“About all I’ve been able to pick up is the fact that he’s got funny eyes. From what I’ve been told, they’re all white.”
“Well,” Delvor said, “well, well, well.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beldin asked him.
“The man with white eyes is right here in the fair. He’s been asking questions here, too.”
“That makes it fairly easy, then. Have somebody go run a knife into his back.”
Belgarath shook his head. “The legionnaires who police the fair get excited when unexplained bodies start showing up,” he said.
Beldin shrugged. “Rap him on the head with something, then drag him a few miles out onto the plain. Cut his throat and dump him in a hole. He probably won’t sprout until spring.” He looked over at Polgara with a sly grin creasing his ugly face. “If you keep nibbling on that pastry, girl, you’re going to spread. You’re chubby enough already.”
“Chubby?”
“That’s all right, Pol. Some men like girls with fat bottoms.”
“Why don’t you wipe the jam out of your beard, uncle?”
“I’m saving it for lunch.” He scratched one armpit.
“Lice again?” she asked coolly.
“It’s always possible. I don’t mind a few lice, though. They’re better company than most people I know.”
“Where are you going now?” Belgarath asked him.
“Back to Mallorea. I want to root around in Darshiva for a while and see what I can dig up about Zandramas.”
Delvor had been looking at the grimy little man with a speculative squint. “Were you planning to leave immediately, Master Beldin?” he asked.
“Why?”
“I’d like a word with you in private, if you’ve got a few moments.”
“Secrets, Delvor?” Silk asked.
“Not really, old boy. I’ve got a sort of an idea, but I’d like to get it a bit more developed before I tell you about it.” He turned back to the hunchback. “Why don’t we take a little stroll, Master Beldin? I have a notion that might appeal to you, and it really won’t take very long.”
Beldin’s look was curious. “All right,” he agreed, and the two of them went outside into the drizzling morning.
“What was that all about?” Garion asked Silk.
“It’s an irritating habit Delvor picked up at the Academy. He likes to pull off clever ploys without any advance warning. That way he can sit around afterward and bask in everyone’s stunned admiration.” The little man looked at the table. “I believe I’ll have just a bit more of that sausage,” he said, “and maybe a few more eggs. It’s a long way to Tol Honeth, and I’d like to put in a buffer against all that gruel.”
Polgara looked at Ce’Nedra. “Have you ever noticed that when some people find a notion they think is funny, they tend to keep playing with it long past the point where it bores everyone else to tears?”
Ce’Nedra looked at Silk with a sly little twinkle in her eyes. “I’ve noticed that, Lady Polgara. Do you suppose it might be the result of a limited imagination?”
“I’m sure that has something to do with it, dear.” Aunt Polgara looked at Silk with a serene smile. “Now, did you want to play some more, Kheldar?”
“Ah—no, Polgara. I don’t really think so.”
It was shortly before noon when Delvor and Beldin returned, each with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. “It was a truly masterful performance, Master Beldin,” Delvor congratulated the little hunchback as they entered.
“Child’s play.” Beldin shrugged deprecatingly. “People inevitably believe that a deformed body houses a defective brain. I’ve used that to my advantage many times.”
“I’m sure they’ll tell us what this is all about eventually,” Silk said.
“It wasn’t too complicated, Silk,” Delvor told him. “You’ll be able to leave now without any worries about that curious Malloreon.”
“Oh?”
“He was trying to buy information,” Delvor shrugged, “so we sold him some, and he left—at a full gallop.”
“What sort of information did you sell him?”
“It went sort of like this,” Beldin said. He stooped a bit more, deliberately exaggerating his deformity, and his face took on an expression of vapid imbecility. “An’ it please yer honor,” he said in a squeaky voice dripping with servile stupidity, “I hears that you wants to find some people an’ that you says you’ll pay to know where they be. I seed the people yer lookin fer, an’ I kin tell you where they was—if you gimme enough money. How much was you willin’ to pay?”
Delvor laughed delightedly. “Naradas swallowed it whole. I took Master Beldin to him and told him that I’d found someone who knew about the people he was looking for. We agreed to a price, and then your friend here gulled him completely.”
“Which way did you send him?” Belgarath asked.
“North.” Beldin shrugged. “I told him that I’d seen you camped by the roadside up in the Arendish forest—that one of the members of your party had fallen sick and that you’d stopped to nurse him back to health.”
“Wasn’t he at all suspicious?” Silk asked.
Delvor shook his head. “The thing that makes people suspicious is help that comes for no particular reason. I gave Naradas every reason to believe that I was sincere. I cheated Master Beldin—outrageously. Naradas gave him a few silver coins for his information. My price, however, was much higher.”
“Brilliant,” Silk murmured admiringly.
“There’s something you ought to know about White Eyes, though,” Beldin told Belgarath. “He’s a Malloreon Grolim. I didn’t probe into him too hard, because I didn’t want him to catch what I was doing, but I was able to get that much. He’s got a great deal of power, so watch out for him.”
“Did you find out whom he’s working for?”
Beldin shook his head. “I pulled back as soon as I found out what he was.” The hunchback’s face grew bleak. “Be careful about this one, Belgarath. He’s very dangerous.”
Belgarath’s face grew grim. “So am I, Beldin,” he said.
“I know, but there are some things you won’t do. Naradas doesn’t feel that kind of restraint.”