"Don't take it so seriously, Durnik," she said lightly. "I've always known that this was the way things have to be."

A large, glistening tear, however, welled into the corner of her eye, and Durnik awkwardly put his work-worn hand on her arm to comfort her. Without knowing why, she threw her arms around his neck, buried her face in his chest, and sobbed.

"There, there," he said, clumsily patting her shaking shoulder. "There, there."

Chapter Three.

GARION DID NOT Sleep well that night. Although he was young and inexperienced, he was not stupid, and Princess Ce'Nedra had been fairly obvious. Over the months since she had joined them, he had seen her att.i.tude toward him change until they had shared a rather specialized kind of friendship. He liked her; she liked him. Everything had been fine up to that point. Why couldn't she just leave it alone? Garion surmised that it probably had something to do with the inner workings of the female mind. As soon as a friendship pa.s.sed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.

He was almost certain that her transparent little game with Mandorallen had been aimed at him, and he wondered if it might not be a good idea to warn the knight to spare him more heartbreak in the future. Ce'Nedra's toying with the great man's affections was little more than the senseless cruelty of a spoiled child. Mandorallen must be warned. His Arendish thick-headedness might easily cause him to overlook the obvious.

And yet, Mandorallen had killed the lion for her. Such stupendous bravery could quite easily have overwhelmed the flighty little princess. What if her admiration and grat.i.tude had pushed her over the line into infatuation? That possibility, coming to Garion as it did in those darkest hours just before dawn, banished all possibility of further sleep. He arose the next morning sandy-eyed and surly and with a terrible worry gnawing at him.

As they rode out through the blue-tinged shadows of early morning with the slanting rays of the newly risen sun gleaming on the treetops above them, Garion fell in beside his grandfather, seeking the comfort of the old man's companionship. It was not only that, however. Ce'Nedra was riding demurely with Aunt Pol just ahead, and Garion felt very strongly that he should keep an eye on her.

Mister Wolf rode in silence, looking cross and irritable, and he frequently dug his fingers under the splint on his left arm.

"Leave it alone, father," Aunt Pol told him without turning around.

"It itches."

"That's because it's healing. Just leave it alone."

He grumbled about that under his breath.

"Which route are you planning to take to the Vale?" she asked him.

"We'll go around by way of Tol Rane," he replied.

"The season's moving on, father," she reminded him. "If we take too long, we'll run into bad weather in the mountains."

"I know that, Pol. Would you rather cut straight across Maragor?"

"Don't be absurd."

"Is Maragor really all that dangerous?" Garion asked.

Princess Ce'Nedra turned in her saddle and gave him a withering look. "Don't you know anything?" she asked him with towering superiority.

Garion drew himself up, a dozen suitable responses to that coming to mind almost at once.

Mister Wolf shook his head warningly. "Just let it pa.s.s," the old man told him. "It's much too early to start in on that just now."

Garion clenched his teeth together.

They rode for an hour or more through the cool morning, and Garion gradually felt his temper improving. Then Hettar rode up to speak with Mister Wolf. "There are some riders coming," he reported.

"How many?" Wolf asked quickly.

"A dozen or more - coming in from the west."

"They could be Tolnedrans."

"I'll see," Aunt Pol murmured. She lifted her face and closed her eyes for a moment. "No," she said. "Not Tolnedrans. Murgos."

Hettar's eyes went flat. "Do we fight?" he asked with a dreadful kind of eagerness, his hand going to his sabre.

"No," Wolf replied curtly. "We hide."

"There aren't really that many of them."

"Never mind, Hettar," Wolf told him. "Silk," he called ahead, "there are some Murgos coming toward us from the west. Warn the others and find us all a place to hide."

Silk nodded curtly and galloped forward.

"Are there any Grolims with them?" the old man asked Aunt Pol.

"I don't think so," she answered with a small frown. "One of them has a strange mind, but he doesn't seem to be a Grolim."

Silk rode back quickly. "There's a thicket off to the right," he told them. "It's big enough to hide in."

"Lets go, then," Wolf said.

The thicket was fifty yards back among the larger trees. It appeared to be a patch of dense brush surrounding a small hollow. The ground in the hollow was marshy, and there was a spring at its center.

Silk had swung down from his horse and was hacking a thick bush off close to the ground with his short sword. "Take cover in here," he told them. "I'll go back and brush out our tracks." He picked up the bush and wormed his way out of the thicket.

"Be sure the horses don't make any noise," Wolf told Hettar. Hettar nodded, but his eyes showed his disappointment.

Garion dropped to his knees and wormed his way through the thick brush until he reached the edge of the thicket; then he sank down on the leaves covering the ground to peer out between the gnarled and stumpy trunks.

Silk, walking backward and swing his bush, was sweeping leaves and twigs from the forest floor over the tracks they had made from the trail to the thicket. He was moving quickly, but was careful to obliterate their trail completely.

From behind them, Garion heard a faint snap and rustle in the leaves, and Ce'Nedra crawled up and sank to the ground at his side. "You shouldn't be this close to the edge of the brush," he told her in a low voice.

"Neither should you," she retorted.

He let that pa.s.s. The princess had a warm, flowerlike smell; for some reason, that made Garion very nervous.

"How far away do you think they are?" she whispered.

"How would I know?"

"You're a sorcerer, aren't you?"

"I'm not that good at it."

Silk finished brushing away the tracks and stood for a moment studying the ground as he looked for any trace of their pa.s.sage he might have missed. Then he burrowed his way into the thicket and crouched down a few yards from Garion and Ce'Nedra.

"Lord Hettar wanted to fight them," Ce'Nedra whispered to Garion. "Hettar always wants to fight when he sees Murgos."

"The Murgos killed his parents when he was very young. He had to watch while they did it."

She gasped. "How awful!"

"If you children don't mind," Silk said sarcastically, "I'm trying to listen for horses."

Somewhere beyond the trail they had just left, Garion heard the thudding sound of horses' hooves moving at a trot. He sank down deeper into the leaves and watched, scarcely breathing.

When the Murgos appeared, there were about fifteen of them, mailshirted and with the scarred cheeks of their race. Their leader, however, was a man in a patched and dirty tunic and with coa.r.s.e black hair. He was unshaven, and one of his eyes was out of line with its fellow. Garion knew him.

Silk drew in a sharp breath with an audible hiss. "Brill," he muttered.

"Who's Brill?" Ce'Nedra whispered to Garion.

"I'll tell you later," he whispered back. "Shush!"

"Don't shush me!" she flared.

A stem look from Silk silenced them.

Brill was talking sharply to the Murgos, gesturing with short, jerky movements. Then he raised his hands with his fingers widespread and stabbed them forward to emphasize what he was saying. The Murgos all nodded, their faces expressionless, and spread out along the trail, facing the woods and the thicket where Garion and the others were hiding. Brill moved farther up the trail. "Keep your eyes open," he shouted to them. "Let's go."

The Murgos started to move forward at a walk, their eyes searching. Two of them rode past the thicket so close that Garion could smell the sweat on their horses' flanks.

"I'm getting tired of that man," one of them remarked to the other.

"I wouldn't let it show," the second one advised.

"I can take orders as well as any man," the first one said, "but that one's beginning to irritate me. I think he would look better with a knife between his shoulder blades."

"I don't think he'd like that much, and it might be a little hard to manage."

"I could wait until he was asleep."

"I've never seen him sleep."

"Everybody sleeps-sooner or later."

"It's up to you," the second replied with a shrug, "but I wouldn't try anything rash - unless you've given up the idea of ever seeing Rak Hagga again."

The two of them moved on out of earshot.

Silk crouched, gnawing nervously at a fingernail. His eyes had narrowed to slits, and his sharp little face was intent. Then he began to swear under his breath.

"What's wrong, Silk?" Garion whispered to him.

"I've made a mistake," Silk answered irntably. "Let's go back to the others." He turned and crawled through the bushes toward the spring at the center of the thicket.

Mister Wolf was seated on a log, scratching absently at his splinted arm. "Well?" he asked, looking up.

"Fifteen Murgos," Silk replied shortly. "And an old friend."

"It was Brill," Garion reported. "He seemed to be in charge."

"Brill?" The old man's eyes widened with surprise.

"He was giving orders and the Murgos were following them," Silk said. "They didn't like it much, but they were doing what he told them to do. They seemed to be afraid of him. I think Brill's something more than an ordinary hireling."

"Where's Rak Hagga?" Ce'Nedra asked. Wolf looked at her sharply.

"We heard two of them talking," she explained. "They said they were from Rak Hagga. I thought I knew the names of all the cities in Cthol Murgos, but I've never heard of that one."

"You're sure they said Rak Hagga?" Wolf asked her, his eyes intent.

"I heard them too," Garion told him. "That was the name they used - Rak Hagga."

Mister Wolf stood up, his face suddenly grim. "We're going to have to hurry then. Taur Urgas is preparing for war."

"How do you know that?" Barak asked him.

"Rak Hagga's a thousand leagues south of Rak Goska, and the southern Murgos are never brought up into this part of the world unless the Murgo king is on the verge of going to war with someone."

"Let them come," Barak said with a bleak smile.

"If it's all the same to you, I'd like to get our business attended to first. I've got to go to Rak Cthol, and I'd prefer not to have to wade through whole armies of Murgos to get there." The old man shook his head angrily. "What is Taur Urgas thinking of?" he burst out. "It's not time yet."

Barak shrugged. "One time's as good as another."

"Not for this war. Too many things have to happen first. Can't Ctuchik keep a leash on that maniac?"

"Unpredictability is part of Taur Urgas' unique charm," Silk observed sardonically. "He doesn't know himself what he's going to do from one day to the next."

"Knowest thou the king of the Murgos?" Mandorallen inquired.

"We've met," Silk replied. "We're not fond of each other."

"Brill and his Murgos should be gone by now," Mister Wolf said. "Let's move on. We've got a long way to go, and time's starting to catch up with us." He moved quickly toward his horse.

Shortly before sundown they went through a high pa.s.s lying in a notch between two mountains and stopped for the night in a little glen a few miles down on the far side.

"Keep the fire down as much as you can, Durnik," Mister Wolf warned the smith. "Southern Murgos have sharp eyes and they can see the light from a fire from miles away. I'd rather not have company in the middle of the night."