By midafternoon the wan dish of the sun had begun to burn through the pervading mist, and Held in returned. “The fog’s completely cleared away about a league west of here,” he told them.
“Are there any signs of movement out there?” Belgarath asked him.
“Some,” Beldin replied. “A few detachments of troops that are all headed north. Otherwise it’s as empty as a merchant’s soul. Sorry, Kheldar, it’s just an old expression.”
“That’s all right, Beldin,” Silk forgave him grandly. “These little slips of the tongue are common in the very elderly.”
Beldin gave him a hard look and then continued. “The villages up ahead all seem to be deserted and mostly in ruins. I’d say that the villagers have fled.” He glanced at the sleeping Melcene. “Who’s your guest?” he asked.
“He’s with the Bureau of Roads,” Belgarath replied. “Silk found him hiding in a cellar.”
“Is he really all that sleepy?”
“Sadi gave him something to calm his nerves.”
“I’d say it worked pretty good. He looks very calm.”
“Would you like something to eat, uncle?” Polgara asked.
“Thanks all the same, Pol, but I had a fat rabbit an hour or so ago.” He looked back at Belgarath. “I think we’ll still want to travel at night,” he advised. “You don’t have whole regiments out there, but mere are enough to give us trouble if they happen to surprise us.”
“Any idea of whose troops they are?”
“I didn’t see any Guardsmen or Karands. I’d guess that they belong to Zandramas—or to the King of Peldane. Whoever they are, they’re going north toward that battle that’s about to begin.”
“All right,” Belgarath said, “we’ll travel at night, then— at least until we get past the soldiers.”
They moved along at a fair rate of speed that night. They had passed the woods, and the watchfires of the soldiers encamped on the plain made them easy to avoid. Then, just before dawn, Belgarath and Garion stopped atop a low hill and looked down at a camp that seemed quite a bit larger than those they had passed earlier. “About a battalion, Grandfather,” Garion surmised. “I think we’ve got a problem here. The country around here’s awfully flat. This is the only hill we’ve seen for miles, and there isn’t very much cover. No matter how we try to hide, their scouts are going to see us. It might be safer if we turned around and went back a ways.”
Belgarath laid back his ears in irritation. “Let’s go back and warn the others,” he growled. He rose to his feet and led Garion back the way they had come.
“There’s no point in taking chances, father,” Polgara said after she had drifted in on silent wings. “The country was more broken a few miles back. We can go back there and find shelter.”
“Were the cooks making breakfast?” Sadi asked.
“Yes,” Garion replied. “I could smell it—some kind of porridge and bacon.”
“They’re not likely to move or send out scouts until after they eat, are they?”
“No,” Garion told him. “Troops get very surly if you make them start marching before you feed them.”
“And were the sentries all wearing the standard military cloak—the ones that look more or less like these?” He plucked at the front of his traveler’s cloak.
“The ones I saw were,” Garion said.
“Why don’t we pay them a visit, Prince Kheldar?” The eunuch suggested.
“What have you got in mind?” Silk asked suspiciously.
“Porridge is so bland, don’t you think? I have a number of things in my case that can spice it up just a bit. We can walk through the encampment like a pair of sentries who’ve just been relieved and go directly to the cook-fires for a bite of breakfast. I shouldn’t have much trouble seasoning the kettles with certain condiments.”
Silk grinned at him.
“No poison,” Belgarath said firmly.
“I hadn’t considered poison, Ancient One,” Sadi protested mildly. “Not out of any sense of morality, mind you. It’s just that soldiers tend to grow suspicious when their messmates turn black in the face and topple over. I have something much more pleasant in mind. The soldiers will all be deliriously happy for a short while, then they’ll fall asleep.”
“For how long?” Silk asked.
“Several days,” Sadi shrugged. “A week at the very most.”
Silk whistled. “Is it dangerous at all?”
“Only if one has a weak heart. I’ve used it on myself on occasion—when I was particularly tired. Shall we go, then?”
“Teaming those two together may have been a moral blunder,” Belgarath mused as the two rogues walked off in darkness toward the twinkling watchfires.
It was about an hour later when the little Drasnian and eunuch returned. “It’s safe now,” Sadi reported. “We go on through their camp. There’s a low range of hills a league or so farther on where we can take shelter until night.”
“Any trouble at all?” Velvet asked.
“Not a bit,” Silk smirked. “Sadi’s very good at that sort of thing.”
“Practice, my dear Kheldar,” the eunuch said deprecatingly. “I've poisoned a fair number of people in my time.” He grinned mirthlessly. “Once I gave a banquet for a group of my enemies. Not a single one of them saw me season the soup course, and Nyissans are very observant when it comes to that sort of thing.”
“Didn’t they get suspicious when you didn’t eat any soup?” Velvet asked curiously.
“But I did, Liselle. I’d spent an entire week dosing myself with the antidote.” He shuddered. “Vile-tasting stuff, as I recall. The poison itself was quite tasty. A number of my guests even complimented me on the soup before they left.” He sighed. “Those were the good old days,” he mourned.
“I think we can reminisce later on,” Belgarath said. “Let’s see if we can reach those hills before the sun gets much higher.”
The soldiers’ encampment was silent, except for an occasional snore. The troops were all smiling happily as they slept.
The following night was cloudy, and the air smelled strongly of incipient rain. Garion and Belgarath had no trouble finding the encampments of the soldiers in their path, and a few overheard snatches of conversation revealed the fact that these troops were members of the royal army of Peldane, and further that they were approaching the impending battle with a great deal of reluctance. About morning, Garion and his grandfather trotted back to rejoin the others with Polgara ghosting just above them on silent wings.
“A sound is still a sound,” Durnik was saying stubbornly to Beldin. The two were riding side by side.
“But if there’s nobody to hear it, how can we call it a sound?” Beldin argued.
Belgarath shook himself into his own form. “The noise in the woods again, Beldin?” he said in a tone of profoundest disgust.
The hunchback shrugged. “You’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Can’t you think of anything new? After we argued the question for a thousand years, I thought you might have gotten tired of it.”
“What’s this?” Polgara asked, walking through the tall grass to join them in the shadowless light of dawn.
“Beldin and Durnik are discussing a very tired old philosophical question.” Belgarath snorted. “If there’s a noise in the woods, and there’s nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise?”
“Of course it is,” she replied calmly.
“How did you reach that conclusion?” Beldin demanded.
“Because there’s no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around—wild animals, mice, insects, birds—and they can all hear.”
“But what if there weren’t? What if the woods are truly empty?”
“Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?” He stared at her in frustration.
“Not only that,” Ce’Nedra added just a bit smugly, “you’re talking about woods, so there are trees there. Trees can hear, too, you know.”
He glared at her. “Why are you all taking sides against me?”
“Because you’re wrong, uncle.” Polgara smiled.
“Wrong, Polgara?” He spluttered. “Me?”
“It happens to everybody once in a while. Why don’t we all have some breakfast?”
The sun rose while they were eating, and Belgarath looked up, squinting into the morning rays. “We haven’t seen any soldiers since midnight,” he said, “and all we’ve seen so far are troops of the army of Peldane. They’re not really .anything to worry about, so I think it’s safe to ride on a e farther this morning.” He looked at Silk. “How far is to the border of Darshiva?”
“Not really all that far, but we haven’t been making very d time. It’s spring, so the nights are getting shorter, and lose time when we have to circle around those troops.”
He frowned. “We might have a bit of a problem at the border, though. We’re going to have to cross the River Magan, and if everyone has fled the area, we could have some trouble finding a boat.”
“Is the Magan really as big as they say?” Sadi asked.
“It’s the biggest river in the world. It runs for a thousand leagues and more, and it’s so wide that you can’t see the far shore.”
Durnik rose to his feet. “I want to check over the horses before we go any farther,” he said. “We’ve been riding them in the dark, and that’s always a little dangerous. We don’t want any of them pulling up lame.”
Eriond and Toth also rose, and the three of them went through the tall grass to the place where the horses were picketed.
“I’ll go on ahead,” Beldin said. “Even if the troops are Peldanes, we still don’t need any surprises.” He changed form and flew off toward the west, spiraling up into the cloudless morning sky.
Garion stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back on his elbows.
“You must be tired,” Ce’Nedra said, sitting beside him and touching his face tenderly.
“Wolves don’t really get that tired,” he told her. “I get the feeling that I could run for a week if I really had to.”
“Well, you don’t have to, so don’t even consider it.”
“Yes, dear.”
Sadi had risen to his feet with his red leather case in his hands. “As long as we’re stopped, I think I’ll find something to feed Zith,” he said. A small frown touched his brow. “You know, Liselle,” he said to Velvet, “I think you were right back in Zamad. She definitely looks as if she’s gained a few ounces.”
“Put her on a diet,” the blond girl suggested.
“I’m not sure about that.” He smiled. “It’s very hard to explain to a snake why you’re starving her, and I wouldn’t want her to get cross with me.”
They rode out not long afterward, following Toth’s gestured directions.
“He says that we can probably find a village south of the big town on the river,” Durnik told them.
“Ferra,” Silk supplied.
“I suppose so. I haven’t looked at a map for a while. Anyway, he says that there are quite a few villages on this side where we might be able to hire a boat to get us across to Darshiva.”
“That’s assuming that they aren’t all deserted,” Silk added.
Durnik shrugged. “We’ll never know until we get there.”
It was a warm morning, and they rode across the rolling grasslands of southern Peldane under cloudless skies. About mid morning, Eriond rode forward and fell in beside Garion. “Do you think Polgara would mind if you and I took a little gallop?” he asked. “Maybe to that hill over there?” He pointed at a large knoll off to the north.
“She probably would,” Garion said, “unless we can come up with a good reason.”
“You don’t think she’d accept the idea that Horse and Chretienne need to run once in a while?”
“Eriond, you’ve known her for a long time. Do you really think she’d listen if we tried to tell her that?”
Eriond sighed. “No, I suppose not.”
Garion squinted at the hilltop. “We really ought to keep an eye out to the north, though,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s where the trouble’s going to break out. We sort of need to know what’s happening up there, don’t we? That hilltop would be a perfect place to have a look.”
“That’s very true, Belgarion.”
“It’s not as if we’d actually be lying to her.”
“I wouldn’t dream of lying to her.”
“Of course not. Neither would I.”
The two young men grinned at each other. “I’ll tell Belgarath where we’re going,” Garion said. “We’ll let him explain it to her.”
“He’s the perfect one to do it,” Eriond agreed.
Garion dropped back and touched his half-dozing grandfather’s shoulder. “Eriond and I are going to ride over to that hill,” he said. “I want to see if there are any signs that the fighting’s started yet.”
“What? Oh, good idea.” Belgarath yawned and closed his eyes again.
Garion motioned to Eriond, and the two of them trotted off into the tall grass at the side of the trail.
“Garion,” Polgara called, “where are you going?”
“Grandfather can explain it, Aunt Pol,” he shouted back. “We’ll catch up again in just a bit.” He looked at Eriond. “Now let’s get out of earshot in a hurry.”
They went north, first at a gallop and then at a dead run with the grass whipping at their horses’ legs. The chestnut and the gray matched stride for stride, plunging along with their heads thrust far forward and their hooves pounding on the thick turf. Garion leaned forward in his saddle, surrendering to the flow and surge of Chretienne’s muscles. Both he and Eriond were laughing with delight when they reined in on the hilltop.
“That was good,” Garion said, swinging down from his saddle. “We don’t get the chance to do that very often any more, do we?”
“Not often enough,” Eriond agreed, also dismounting. “You managed to arrange it very diplomatically, Belgarion.”
“Of course. Diplomacy’s what kings do best.”
“Do you think we fooled her?”
“Us?” Garion laughed. “Fool Aunt Pol? Be serious, Eriond.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Eriond made a wry face. “She’ll probably scold us, won’t she?”
“Inevitably, but the ride was worth a scolding, wasn’t it?”
Eriond smiled. Then he looked around, and his smile faded. “Belgarion,” he said sadly, pointing to the north.
Garion looked. Tall columns of black smoke rose along the horizon. “It looks as if it’s started,” he said bleakly.
“Yes.” Eriond sighed. “Why do they have to do that?”
Garion crossed his arms on Chretienne’s saddle and leaned his chin pensively on them. “Pride, I suppose,” he replied, “and the hunger for power. Revenge, too, sometimes. I guess. Once in Arendia, Lelldorin said that very often it’s because people just don’t know how to stop it, once it’s started.”
“But it’s all so senseless.”
“Of course it is. Arends aren’t the only stupid people on earth. Any time you have two people who both want the same thing badly enough, you’re going to have a fight. If the two people have enough followers, they call it a war. If a couple of ordinary men have that kind of disagreement, there might be a broken nose and some missing teeth, but when you start getting armies involved, people get killed.”
“Are you and Zakath going to have a war, then?”
It was a troubling question, and Garion wasn’t sure he knew the answer. “I don’t really know,” he admitted.
“He wants to rule the world,” Eriond pointed out, “and you don’t want him to. Isn’t that the sort of thing that starts a war?”
“It’s awfully hard to say,” Garion replied sadly. “Maybe if we hadn’t left Mal Zeth when we did, I might have been able to bring him around. But we had to leave, so I lost the chance.” He sighed. “I think it’s finally going to be up to him. Maybe he’s changed enough so that he’ll abandon the whole idea—but then again, maybe he hasn’t. You can never tell with a man like Zakath. I hope he’s given up the notion. I don’t want a war—not with anybody; but I’m not going to bow to him, either. The world wasn’t meant to be ruled by one man—and certainly not by somebody like Zakath.”
“But you like him, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. I wish I could have met him before Taur Urgas ruined his life.” He paused, and his face grew set. “Now there’s a man I’d have rather cheerfully gone to war with. He contaminated the whole world just by living in it.”
“But it wasn’t really his fault. He was insane, and that excuses him.”
“You’re a very forgiving young man, Eriond.”
“Isn’t it easier to forgive than to hate? Until we learn how to forgive, that sort of thing is going to keep on happening.” He pointed at the tall pillars of smoke rising to the north. “Hate is a sterile thing, Belgarion.”
“I know.” Garion sighed. “I hated Torak, but in the end I guess I forgave him—more out of pity than anything else. I still had to kill him, though.”
“What do you think the world would be like if people didn’t kill each other any more?”
“Nicer, probably.”
“Why don’t we fix it that way then?”
“You and I?” Garion laughed. “All by ourselves?”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s impossible, Eriond.”
“I thought you and Belgarath had settled the issue of impossible a long time ago.”
Garion laughed again. “Yes, I suppose we did. All right, let’s drop impossible. Would you accept extremely difficult instead?”
“Nothing that’s really worthwhile should be easy, Belgarion. If it’s easy, we don’t value it; but I’m certain we’ll be able to find an answer.” He said it with such shining confidence in his face that for a moment Garion actually believed that the wild notion might indeed be feasible.
Then he looked out at the ugly columns of smoke again, and the hope died. “I suppose we should go back and let the others know what’s happening out there,” he said.
It was about noon when Beldin returned. “There’s another detachment of troops about a mile ahead,” he told Belgarath. “A dozen or so.”
“Are they going toward that battle to the north?”
“No, I’d say this particular group is running away from it. They look as if they were fairly well mauled recently.”
“Could you tell which side they’re on?”
“That doesn’t really matter, Belgarath. A man gives up his allegiances when he deserts.”
“Sometimes you’re so clever you make me sick.”
“Why don’t you have Pol mix you up something to cure it?”
“How long has that been going on?” Velvet asked Polgara.
“Which was that, dear?”
“That constant wrangling between those two?”
Polgara closed her eyes and sighed. “You wouldn’t believe it, Liselle. Sometimes I think it started at about the beginning of time.”
The soldiers they encountered were wary, even frightened. They stood their ground, however, with their hands on their weapons. Silk made a quick motion to Garion, and the two of them rode forward at an unthreatening walk.
“Good day, gentlemen,” Silk greeted them conversationally. “What in the world is happening around here?”
“You mean you haven’t heard?” a wiry fellow with a bloody bandage around his head asked.
“I haven’t found anybody to tell me,” Silk replied. “What happened to all the people who used to live in this part of Peldane? We haven’t seen a soul in the last four days.”
“They all fled,” the bandaged man told him. “The ones who were still alive did, at any rate.”
“What were they fleeing from?”
“Zandramas,” the fellow replied with a shudder. “Her army marched into Peldane about a month ago. We tried to stop them, but they had Grolims with them, and ordinary troops can’t do much against Grolims.”
“That’s the truth, certainly. What’s all that smoke up to the north?”
“There’s a big battle going on.” The soldier sat down on the ground and began to unwind the bloodstained bandage from around his head.
“It’s not like any battle I’ve ever seen,” another soldier supplied. His left arm was in a sling, and he looked as if he had just spent several days lying in the mud. “I’ve been in a few wars, but nothing like this. When you’re a soldier, you takes your chances—swords and arrows and spears and the like, y’know—but when they starts throwing horrors at me, I begins to feel it’s time to find another line of work.”
“Horrors?” Silk asked him.
“They’s got demons with ‘em, friend—both sides of ‘em has—monstrous big demons with snaky arms and fangs and claws and suchlike.”
“You’re not serious!”
“I seen ‘em with my own eyes. You ever seen a man get et alive? Makes your hair stand on end, it does.”
“I don’t quite follow this,” Silk confessed. “Who’s involved in this battle? I mean, ordinary armies don’t keep tame demons with them to help with the fighting.”
“That’s the honest truth,” the muddy man agreed. “A ordinary soldier’s likely to leave the service if they expect him to march alongside something mat looks at him as if he was something to eat. I never did get the straight of it, though.” He looked at the man with the wounded head. “Did you ever find out who was fighting, Corporal?”
The corporal was wrapping a clean bandage around his head. “The captain told us before he got killed,” he said.
“Maybe you’d better start at the beginning,” Silk said. “I’m a little confused about this.”
“Like I told you,” the corporal said, “about a month ago the Darshivans and their Grolims invaded Peldane. Me and my men are in the Royal Army of Peldane, so we tried to hold them back. We slowed them some on the east bank of the Magan, but then the Grolims come at us, and we had to retreat. Then we heard that there was another army coming down out of the north—Karands and soldiers in armor and more Grolims. We figured that we was really in for it at that point, but as it turns out, this new army isn’t connected with the Darshivans. It seems that it’s working for some High Grolim from way off to the west. Well, this Grolim, he sets up along the coast and don’t come inland at all. It’s like he’s waiting for something. We had our hands full with the Darshivans, so we wasn’t too interested in what it was he was waiting for. We was doing a lot of what our officers called ‘maneuvering’—which is officer talk for running away.”
“I take it that the Grolim finally decided to come inland after all,” Silk observed.
“He surely did, friend. He surely did. It was just a few days ago when he struck inland just as straight as a tight string. Either he knew exactly where he was going or he was following something, I don’t know exactly which. Anyway, the Darshivans, they stopped chasing us and rushed in to try to block his way, and that’s when he called in the demons Vurk here was talking about. At first, the demons charged right through the Darshivans, but then their Grolims—or maybe it was Zandramas herself—they conjured up their demons, and that’s when the big fight commenced. The demons, they went at each other for all they was worth and they trampled over anybody unlucky enough to get in the way. There we was, caught right in the middle of it all and getting trampled on by first one set of demons and then the other. That’s when me and Vurk and these others put our heads together and decided to find out what the weather’s like in Gandahar.”
“Hot this time of year,” Silk told him.
“Not near as hot as it is north of here, friend. You ever see a demon breathe fire? I seen one of them armored soldiers get roasted alive right inside his chain mail. Then the demon picked him out of his armor piece by piece and et him while he was still smoking.” The corporal knotted the ends of his fresh bandage. “That ought to hold it,” he said, rising to his feet again. He looked up into the noon sky, squinting slightly. “We can make some more miles before the sun goes down, Vurk,” he said to his muddy friend. “Get the men ready to march. If that battle starts to spread out, we could get caught in the middle of it again, and none of us want that.”
“I’ll do ‘er, Corporal,” Vurk replied.
The corporal looked at Silk again, his eyes narrowed appraisingly. “You and your friends are welcome to come along,” he offered. “A few men on horseback might be a help in case we run into trouble.”
“Thanks all the same, Corporal,” Silk declined, “but I think we’ll ride over to the Magan and see if we can find a boat. We could be at the mouth of the river in a week or so.”
“I’d advise riding hard, then, my friend. Demons can run awful fast when they’re hungry.”
Silk nodded. “Good luck in Gandahar, Corporal,” he added.
“I think I’ll stop being a corporal,” the fellow said ruefully. “The pay wasn’t bad, but the work’s getting dangerouser and dangerouser, and all the pay in the world won’t do a man much good once he takes up residence inside a demon.” He turned to his friend. “Let’s move out, Vurk,” he ordered.
Silk wheeled his horse and rode back to where the others were waiting, Garion close behind him.
“It’s more or less what we thought,” the little man reported, dismounting. “The battle up north is between Urvon and Zandramas, and both sides have demons now.”
“She went that far?” Polgara asked incredulously.
“She didn’t really have that much choice, Polgara,” Silk told her. “Nahaz was leading his hordes of demons into the ranks of her troops, and her army was being decimated. She had to do something to stop him. Being captured by a demon is no joke—not even for the Child of Dark.”
“All right,” Durnik said soberly, “what do we do now?”
“The corporal in charge of those troops made an interesting suggestion,” Silk told him.
“Oh? What was that?”
“He recommended that we get out of Peldane as fast as we possibly can.”
“Corporals usually have good sense,” Durnik noted. “Why don’t we follow his advice?”
“I was hoping someone would say that,” Silk agreed.