There was a man in a sea coat talking alone with Silk in the second floor sitting room when Garion, Belgarath, and Beldin returned. The man was stocky. He had silver-shot hair and beard and he wore a large gold earring in his left ear.
“Ah, there you are,” Silk said, looking up as the three them entered. The rat-faced little man had changed clothes and now wore plain doublet and hose of a nondescript brown. “This is Captain Kadian. He’s the one who took our friends to the mainland.” He looked back at the seaman. “Why don’t you tell them what you just told me?” he suggested.
“If you want me to, your Highness,” Kadian agreed. He that rusty sort of voice seafaring men often have—the result of bad weather and strong drink, Garion surmised.
He took a swallow from the silver tankard he was holding. “Well, sir,” he began, “it was three days ago when it happened. I’d just come up from Bashad in Gandahar. It’s down by the mouth of the Magan.” He made a face. “It’s an unhealthy sort of a place—all swamps and jungles. Anyhow, I’d carried a cargo of ivory up here for the Consortium, and we’d just off-loaded, so I was sort of looking around for a cargo. A ship doesn’t make any money for her owner when she’s tied up to a wharf, y’know. I went to a certain tavern I know of. The tavern keeper’s an old friend of mine—we was shipmates when we was younger—and he sort of keeps his ear to the ground for me. Well sir, I no sooner got there and set myself down, when my friend, he comes over to me and he asks me if I’d be interested in a short, easy voyage at a good price. I says to him that I’m always interested in that kind of proposition, but that I’d want to know what kind of cargo was involved before I made up my mind. There’s some things I don’t like to carry—cattle, for instance. They can dirty up the hold of a ship to the point where it takes weeks to get it clean again. Well, my friend, he says to me that there wouldn’t be no cargo involved at all. It was just some people as wanted passage to the mainland. I says that it wouldn’t hurt none to talk with them, and so he takes me into this room in the back of the tavern where four people was sitting at a table—two men, a woman, and a little boy. One of the men was dressed in expensive clothes—a nobleman of some kind, I think—but it was the other one as did all the talking.”
“Was there anything unusual about that one?” Silk prompted.
“I was just getting to that. He was wearing ordinary clothes, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. At first I thought he was blind—because of his eyes, you understand—but it seems that he can see well enough, even though his eyes don’t have no color at all. I had a ship’s cook one time, and one of his eyes was the same way. Foul-tempered sort he was, and a real poor excuse for a cook. Well sir, this man with the funny eyes, he says that he and his friends had to get to Peldane in a hurry, but that they sort of wanted it kept quiet that they was going there. Then he asks me if I knows of a place outside of die town of Selda where I could put them on the beach with no one the wiser, and I says that I did.” He pulled his nose slyly. “Just about any man as owns a ship knows of a few places like that-customs people being what they are an’ all. I sort of had my suspicions up by now. People who want to end a voyage on a lonely beach someplace are usually up to no good. Now, I figure that what a man does is his own concern, but if he gets me mixed up in it, it starts being my business real quick. I can get into trouble enough on my own without no help from others.” He paused and took a long drink from his tankard and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Like I say, I had my suspicions about these people by now and I was just about to tell them that I wasn’t really interested in the proposition, but then the woman, she says something I didn’t hear to the one as was doing the talking. She was wearing a kind of long cloak or robe of some kind made out of black satin. She kept the hood of it up the whole time, so I never saw her face, but she was keeping a real tight grip on the little boy. Anyhow, the one with the white eyes, he pulls out a purse and spills it out on the table, and that purse was full of gold, my friends, more than I’d make in a dozen voyages along these coasts. That put a whole new light on the situation, let me tell you. Well sir, to make it short, we struck the bargain right then and there, and I asks them when they wanted to leave, and the fellow as was doing the talking, he says they’d come down to my ship just as soon as it gets dark. I saw right off that my suspicions wasn’t too far off the mark. You don’t find very many as is honest who want to sail out of a harbor in the dark of night, but we’d already struck our bargain, and I had his purse tucked under my belt, so it was too late to back out. We sailed that very night and got to the coast of Peldane on the next afternoon.”
“Tell them about the fog,” Silk said intently.
“I was just about to, your Highness,” Kadian said. “That coast down there is sunk in fog almost all spring, and the day we got there wasn’t no exception. It was thicker than a wool cloak, but the people in Selda, they’re used to it, so they always lights beacons on the city walls to guide ships into their harbor on foggy days. I took my bearings on those beacons and I didn’t have no trouble finding the beach I wanted. We hove to a few hundred yards offshore, and I sent my passengers toward the beach in a small boat with my bo’sun in charge. We hung a lantern from the mainmast to guide him back through the fog, and I put some men to banging on pots and pans to help him And the way. Anyhow, after some time passed, we could hear the sound of the oarlocks out there in the fog near the beach, and we knowed the bo’sun’s coming back. And then, all of a sudden, I seen the light of a fire coming through the fog all sort of misty, like. I heard some screaming, and then everything got quiet. We waited for a bit, but the bo’sun, he never came back. I didn’t like the smell of things, so I ordered the anchor up, and we sort of eased on back out to sea. I don’t know what happened and I wasn’t going to stay around to find out. There was things going on that made me real nervous.”
“Oh,” Beldin said, “such as what?”
“Well sir, one time in the main cabin, this woman as the white-eyed man and the aristocrat had with them, she reached out to take hold of the little boy, him acting kind of restless and all, and I seen her hand. Now, it might have been bad light in the cabin or some such—I don’t spend all that much on lamp oil or candles. But—and strike me blind if I’m wrong—it seemed to me that there was sparkles under the skin of her hand.”
“Sparkles?” Belgarath asked him.
“Yes, sir. I seen it with my own eyes, and they was moving—all these little tiny sparkles moving around in her flesh, almost like fireflies on a summer’s evening.”
“As if all the starry universe were contained therein?” Beldin asked intently, quoting from the obscure passage in the Ashabine Oracles.
“Now that you put it that way, that’s exactly how it was,” Kadian agreed. “I knowed right off that these wasn’t no ordinary folks and, after I seen that fire in the fog, I didn’t really want to stay around to find out just how un-ordinary they was.”
“That might just have saved your life, Captain,” Belgarath told him. “Have you ever heard of Zandramas?”
“The witch? Everybody’s heard of her.”
“I think she was your glittering passenger, and Zandramas is a firm believer in the old notion that dead people can’t tell stories. So far as we know, she’s drowned three ships and fed several people to the lions. I expect it was only the fog that saved you. If she’d have been able to see you, you wouldn’t be here now.”
Captain Kadian swallowed hard.
“Do you need any more?” Silk asked.
“No,” Belgarath replied. “I think that covers everything.” He looked at the captain. “We thank you, Kadian. Can you sketch us a map of the beach where you dropped off these passengers of yours?”
“I can indeed,” Kadian replied bleakly. “Is it in your mind to chase down the witch?”
“We were sort of thinking along those lines, yes.”
“When you burn her, throw on a few logs of wood in memory of my bo’sun and his oarsmen.”
“You have my word on that, Captain,” Garion told him.
“Green logs,” Kadian added. “They don’t burn so fast.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.”
Silk stood up and handed the captain a leather pouch.
Kadian bounced it on his palm a few times, and it gave forth a jingling sound. “You’re very generous, your Highness,” he said, also rising to his feet. “Is there pen and ink handy? I’ll draw you that chart.”
“Right over on that table,” Silk said, pointing.
The captain nodded and crossed the room.
“Where’s Aunt Pol,” Garion asked, “and the others?”
“They’re changing clothes,” Silk replied. “I sent word to our ship just as soon as one of Vetter’s men came back and told us that they’d found Captain Kadian. She’s waiting in the harbor for us right now.” He looked closely at Gar-ion. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked. “You’re looking a little pale.”
“I got a message that had some bad news in it.”
Silk gave Belgarath a puzzled look.
“We found the Ashabine Oracles,” the old man explained tersely. “Torak left a message for Garion on the last page. It wasn’t very pleasant. We can talk about it once we get on board ship.”
Captain Kadian came back holding a sheet of parchment.
“This is Selda,” he said, pointing at his drawing. “There’s a headland to the south, and the beach I was telling you about is just south of that. I can’t tell you exactly where the witch landed because of the fog, but this place marked with the X should be fairly close.”
“Thanks again, Captain,” Silk said.
“My pleasure, your Highness, and good hunting.” Kadian turned and left the room with the rolling gait of a man who spends little time on shore.
It was only a few moments later when Polgara and the others joined them. Ce’Nedra and Velvet were both wearing plain gray dresses much like the one Polgara always wore when she was traveling. Gray, Garion noticed, was not a good color for Ce’Nedra. It made her skin look very pale, and the only touch of color about her was her flaming wealth of copper-colored hair.
Durnik and the other men—except for Toth, who still wore only his unbleached blanket and loincloth—were dressed in the same nondescript brown that Silk wore.
“Well, father?” Polgara asked as she entered, “did you find what we wanted?”
He nodded. “Why don’t we talk about that after we get on board ship, though? We’ve done what we came to do in Melcena and we can talk while our ship’s moving.” He led the way out and down the stairs.
It was a silvery evening. The full moon had risen early and it filled the streets of Melcena with its pale light. Candles glowed golden in the windows of the houses they passed, and hundreds of lanterns winked from the rigging of the ships anchored in the harbor. Garion rode in silence, his melancholy thoughts still on the dreadful communication Torak had left for him thousands of years ago.
They boarded their ship quickly and went immediately below to the cramped cabin beneath the aft deck.
“All right,” Belgarath said to them after Durnik had closed the door, “we found the Oracles and we also found the place where the Sardion was kept until just about the time of the battle of Vo Mimbre.”
“That was a profitable trip, wasn’t it?” Silk noted. “Is Senji really as old as they say?”
Beldin grunted. “Older.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that he’s a sorcerer?” Ce’Nedra asked. Perhaps it was the somber gray dress, but she seemed a bit disconsolate as she sat on an ornately carved bench under a swinging oil lamp.
Belgarath nodded. “He’s not very good at it, but he does the ability, yes.”
“Who was his instructor?” Polgara wanted to know. She sat down beside Ce’Nedra and laid one arm affectionately across the little queen’s shoulders.
“Nobody,” Belgarath said with a certain disgust. “Would you believe that he just stumbled over it on his own?”
“Did you look into that?”
“Yes. Beldin’s got a theory. He can explain it to you. At any rate, the Sardion was brought to the university here several thousand years ago. They kept it in a museum, don’t think anybody knew what it really was. Then, about five hundred years ago, one of the scholars stole it and took it around the southern tip of Gandahar and sailed off in the general direction of the Dalasian Protectorates. Nobody knows for sure what happened to it after that. Anyway, Senji had an unmutilated copy of the Ashabine Oracles.”
“What did it say?” Velvet asked intently.
“A great deal. We found out why Zandramas abducted Geran.”
“As a sacrifice?” she said.
“Only in an obscure sense of the word. If the Dark Prophecy wins out, Geran is going to be the new God of Igarak.”
“My baby?” Ce’Nedra exclaimed.
“He won’t be your baby any more, I’m afraid,” the old man told her bleakly. “He’ll be Torak.”
“Or worse,” Beldin added. “He’ll have the Orb in one hand and the Sardion in the other. He’ll have dominion over everything that exists, and I don’t think he’ll be a kindly god.”
“We have to stop her!” Ce’Nedra cried. “We can’t let this happen!”
“I think that’s the general idea, your Majesty,” Sadi told her.
“What else did it say, father?” Polgara asked.
“It said something about Zandramas that’s a little obscure. For some reason her body’s being gradually taken by some kind of light. The sea captain who carried her to Selda caught a glimpse of her hand and he said that there are moving lights under her skin. The Oracles said it was going to happen.”
“What does it mean?” Durnik asked.
“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Belgarath admitted. He looked at Garion and moved his fingers slightly. —I don’t think we need to tell Ce’Nedra what the book said about her, do you?—
Garion shook his head.
“Anyway, we’re going to have to go to Kell.”
“Kell?” Polgara’s voice was startled. “What for?”
“The location of the place we’re looking for is in the copy of the Mallorean Gospels the seers keep there. If we go to Kell, we can get to this meeting place before Zandramas does.”
“That might be a nice change,” Silk said. “I’m getting a little tired of tagging along behind her.”
“But we’ll lose the trail,” Ce’Nedra protested.
“Little girl,” Beldin said to her gruffly, “if we know where Zandramas is going, we won’t need the trail. We can just go directly to the Place Which Is No More and wait for her to show up.”
Polgara’s arm curled more tightly about Ce’Nedra’s shoulders in a protective fashion. “Be gentle with her, uncle. She was brave enough to kiss you at the archduke’s house, and I’d imagine that was quite a shock to her sensibilities.”
“Very funny, Pol.” The ugly hunchback dropped heavily into a chair and scratched vigorously at one armpit.
“Was there anything else, father?” Polgara asked.
“Torak wrote something to Garion,” Belgarath replied. “It was fairly bleak, but it appears that even he knew how bad things would get if Zandramas succeeds. He told Garion to stop her at all costs.”
“I was going to do that anyway,” Garion said quietly. “I didn’t need any suggestions from Torak.”
“What are we going to be up against in Peldane?” Belgarath asked Silk.
“More of what we ran into in Voresebo and Rengel, I’d imagine.”
“What’s the fastest way to get to Kell?” Durnik asked.
“It’s in the Protectorate of Likandia,” Silk replied, “and the shortest way there is right straight across Peldane and Darshiva and then down through the mountains.”
“What about Gandahar?” Sadi asked. “We could avoid all that unpleasantness if we sailed south and went through there.” Somehow Sadi looked peculiar in hose and a belted tunic. Once he had discarded his iridescent robe, he seemed more like an ordinary man and less like a eunuch. His scalp, however, was freshly shaved.
Silk shook his head. “It’s all jungle down in Gandahar, Sadi,” he said. “You have to chop your way through.”
“Jungles aren’t all that bad, Kheldar.”
“They are if you’re in a hurry.”
“Could you send for those soldiers of yours?” Velvet asked.
“It’s possible, I suppose,” Silk answered, “but I’m not sure they’d be all that much help. Vetter says that Darshiva’s crawling with Grolims and Zandramas’ troops, and Peldane’s been in chaos for years. My troops are good, but not that good.” He looked at Belgarath. “I’m afraid you’re going to get more burrs in your fur, old friend.”
“Are we just going to ignore the trail, then,” Garion asked, “and make straight for Kell?”
Belgarath tugged at one earlobe. “I've got a suspicion that the trail is going to lead in the general direction of Kell anyway,” he said. “Zandramas read the Ashabine Oracles, too, you know, and she knows that Kell’s the only place where she can get the information she needs.”
“Will Cyradis let her look at the Gospels?” Durnik asked.
“Probably. Cyradis is still neutral and she’s not likely to show any favoritism.”
Garion rose to his feet. “I think I’ll go up on deck, Grandfather,” he said. “I’ve got some thinking to do, and sea air helps to clear my head.”
The lights of Melcena twinkled low on the horizon behind em, and the moon laid a silvery path across the surface of the sea. The ship’s captain stood at the tiller on the aft deck, his hands steady and sure.
“Isn’t it a little hard to know which way you’re going at night?” Garion asked him.
“Not at all,” the captain replied. He pointed up toward the night sky. “Seasons come and go, but the stars never change.”
“Well,” Garion said, “we can hope, I guess.” Then he walked forward to stand in the bow of the ship.
The night breeze that blew down the strait between Melcena and the mainland was erratic, and the sails first bellied and then fell slack, their booming sounding like a funeral drum. That sound fitted Garion’s mood. For a long time he stood toying with the end of a knotted rope and looking out over the moon-touched waves, not so much thinking as simply registering the sights and sounds and smells around him.
He knew she was there. It was not merely the fragrance he had known since his earliest childhood, but also the calm sense of her presence. With a peculiar kind of abstraction he sought back through his memories. He had, it seemed, always known exactly where she was. Even on the darkest of nights he could have started from sleep in a strange room in some forgotten town and pointed unerringly to the place where she was. The captain of this ship was guided by the lights in the sky, but the star that had led Garion for his entire life was not some far-distant glimmer on the velvet throat of night. It was much closer, and much more constant.
“What’s troubling you, Garion?” she asked, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“I could hear his voice, Aunt Pol—Torak’s voice. He hated me thousands of years before I was even born. He even knew my name.”
“Garion,” she said very calmly, “the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.”
“I didn’t want them to, Aunt Pol.”
“There are those of us who aren’t given that option, Garion. There are things that have to be done and certain people who have to do them. It’s as simple as that.”
He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. “Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?”
“Can you possibly think of anyone else you’d trust to deal with these matters, Garion?”
He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. “No,” he sighed, “I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn’t even consulted.”
“Neither was I, Garion,” she answered. “But we didn’t have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born in us.” She put her arms around him and drew him close. “I’m so very proud of you, my Garion,” she said.
He laughed a bit wryly. “I suppose I didn’t turn out too badly after all,” he conceded. “I can get my shoes on the right feet at least.”
“And you have no idea how long that took to explain to you,” she replied with a light laugh. “You were a good boy, Garion, but you’d never listen. Even Rundorig would listen. He didn’t usually understand, but at least he’d listen.”
“I miss him sometimes. Him and Doroon and Zubrette.” Garion paused. “Did they ever get married? Rundorig and Zubrette, I mean?”
“Oh, yes. Years and years ago, and Zubrette is up to her waist in children—five or so. I used to get a message every autumn, and I’d have to go back to Faldor’s farm to deliver her newest baby.”
“You did that?” He was amazed.
“I certainly wouldn’t have let anyone else do it. Zubrette and I disagreed about certain things, but I’m still very fond of her.”
“Is she happy?”
“I think she is, yes. Rundorig’s easy to manage, and she has all those children to keep her mind occupied.” She looked at him critically. “Are you a little less moody now?” she asked.
“I feel better,” he replied. “I always feel better when you’re around.”
“That’s nice.”
He remembered something. “Did Grandfather get a chance to tell you what the Oracles said about Ce’Nedra?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on her. Why don’t we go below now? The next few weeks might be hectic, so let’s get all the sleep we can while we have the chance.”
The coast of Peldane was engulfed in fog just as Captain Kadian had predicted, but the beacon fires burning on the walls of Selda provided reference points, and they were able to feel their way carefully along the coast until the ship’s captain estimated that they were near the beach shown on Kadian’s chart.
“There’s a fishing village about a mile south of here, your Highness,” the captain advised Silk. “It’s deserted now, because of all the troubles in the area, but there’s a dock there—or at least there was the last time I sailed past this coast. We should be able to unload your horses there.”
“Excellent, Captain,” Silk replied.
They crept along through the fog until they reached the deserted village and its shaky-looking dock. As soon as Chretienne reached the shore, Garion saddled him, then mounted and rode slowly back along the beach with Iron-grip’s sword resting on the pommel of his saddle. After he had gone perhaps a mile and a half, he felt the familiar pull. He turned and rode back.
The others had also saddled their horses and led them to the edge of the fog-shrouded fishermen’s village. Their ship was moving slowly out to sea, a dim shape in the fog with red and green lanterns marking her port and starboard sides and with a lone sailor astride her bowsprit blowing a melancholy foghorn to warn other ships away.
Garion dismounted and led his big gray stallion to where the others waited.
“Did you find it?” Ce’Nedra asked intently in a hushed little voice. Garion had noticed that for some reason, fog always made people speak quietly.
“Yes,” he replied. Then he looked at his grandfather. “Well?” he asked. “Do we just ignore the trail and take the shortest route to Kell or what?”
Belgarath scratched at his beard and looked first at Beldin, then at Polgara. “What do you think?” he asked them.
“The trail was going inland, wasn’t it?” Beldin asked Garion.
Garion nodded.
“Then we don’t have to make the decision yet,” the hunchback said. “As long as Zandramas is going in the same direction we want to go, we can keep on following her. If she changes direction later on, then we can decide.”
“It makes sense, father,” Polgara agreed.
“All right, we’ll do it that way, then.” The old man looked around. “This fog should hide us just as well as darkness would. Let’s go pick up the trail, and then Garion, Pol, and I can scout on ahead.” He squinted up into the murky sky. “Can anybody make a guess about the time?”
“It’s about midafternoon, Belgarath,” Durnik told him after a momentary consultation with Toth.
“Let’s go find out which way she’s going, then.”
They rode along the beach, following Chretienne’s tracks until they reached the spot where Garion’s sword swung in his hand to point inland.
“We should be able to gain some time on her,” Sadi noted.
“Why’s that?” Silk asked him.
“She came ashore in a small boat,” the eunuch replied, “so she didn’t have horses.”
“That’s no real problem for her, Sadi,” Polgara told him. “She’s a Grolim, and she can communicate with her underlings over long distances. I’m sure she was on horseback within an hour of the time her foot touched the sand.”
The eunuch sighed. “I forget about that from time to time,” he admitted. “It’s very convenient for us to have that advantage, but not nearly so convenient when the other side has it, too.”
Belgarath swung down from his horse. “Come along, Garion. You, too, Pol. We might as well get started.” He looked over at Durnik. “We’ll stay in close touch,” he told the smith. “This fog could make things a little tricky.”
“Right,” Durnik agreed.
Garion took Polgara’s arm to help her through the soft sand and followed his grandfather up the beach to the line of driftwood at the high-water mark.
“This should do it,” the old man decided. “Let’s make the change here, and then Garion and I can scout on ahead. Pol, try to keep the others more or less in sight. I don’t want them straying.”
“Yes, father,” she said even as she began to shimmer and change.
Garion formed the image in his mind, pulled in his will, and once again felt that curious melting sensation. He looked himself over carefully as he always did. On one occasion he’d made the change in a hurry and had forgotten his tail. A tail does not mean very much to a two-legged animal, but it is distinctly necessary for a four-legged one.
“Stop admiring yourself,” he heard Belgarath's voice in the silences of his mind. “We’ve got work to do.”
“I was just making sure that I had everything, Grandfather.”
“Let’s go. You won’t be able to see very much in the fog, so use your nose.”
Polgara was perched sedately on a bone-white limb jutting up from a driftwood log. She was meticulously preening her snowy feathers with her hooked beak.
Belgarath and Garion effortlessly hurdled over the driftwood and loped off into the fog. “It’s going to be a wet day,” Garion noted soundlessly as he ran alongside the great silver wolf.
“Your fur won’t melt.”
“I know, but my paws get cold when they’re wet.”
“I’ll have Durnik make you some little booties.”
“That would be absolutely ridiculous, Grandfather,” Garion said indignantly. Even though he had only recently made the change, the wolf’s enormous sense of decorum and propriety had already begun to permeate his consciousness.
“There are some people just ahead,” Belgarath said, sniffing at the air. “Tell your aunt.”
They separated and moved off into the tall, fog-wet marsh grass. “Aunt Pol.” Garion cast the words into the foggy silence around him.
“Yes, dear?”
“Tell Durnik and the others to rein in. There are some strangers up ahead.”
“All right, Garion. Be careful.”
Garion slunk low to the ground through the wet grass, setting each paw down carefully.
“Will it never lift?” he heard a voice somewhere off to his left demand irritably.
“The local people say that it’s always foggy around here in the spring,” another voice replied.
“It’s not spring.”
“It is here. We’re south of the line. The seasons are reversed.”
“That’s a stupid sort of thing.”
“It wasn’t my idea. Talk to the Gods if you want to register a complaint.”
There was a long silence. “Have the Hounds found anything yet?” the first voice asked.
“It’s very hard to sniff out a trail after three days—even for the Hounds—and all the wet from this fog isn’t making it any easier.”
Garion froze. “Grandfather!” he hurled the thought into the fog.
“Don’t shout.”
“There are two men talking just up ahead. They have some of the Hounds with them. I think they’re trying to find the trail, too.”
“Pol.” The old man’s thought seemed to crackle. “Come up here.”
“Yes, father.”
It was no more than a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. Then in the murky fog overhead, Garion heard the single stroke of soft wings.
“There are some men over there to the left,” Belgarath’s voice reported. “I think they might be Grolims. Have a look, but be careful.”
“All right,” she replied. There was another soft wing beat in the fog. Again there was that interminable wait.
Then her voice came back quite clearly. “You’re right, father,” she said. “They’re Chandim.”
A muttered oath came out of the stillness. “Urvon,” Belgarath’s voice said.
“And probably Nahaz as well,” Polgara added.
“This complicates things,” the old man said. “Let’s go back and talk with the others. We might have to make the decision sooner than Beldin thought.”