"I wanted to thank you, Mandorallen," Garion said finally, struggling with it a little.

"For what, lad?"

"You knew whom I was protecting when I told the King about Nachak, didn't you?"

"Naturally," the knight replied in a rather offhand way.

"You could have told the king,- actually it was your duty to tell him, wasn't it?"

"But thou hadst given thy pledge."

"You hadn't, though."

"Thou art my companion, lad. Thy pledge is as binding upon me as it is upon thee. Didst thou not know that?"

Garion was startled by Mandorallen's words. The exquisite involvement of Arendish ethics were beyond his grasp. "So you fought for me instead."

Mandorallen laughed easily. "Of course," he answered, "though I must confess to thee in all honesty, Garion, that my eagerness to stand as thy champion grew not entirely out of friendship. In truth I found the Murgo Nachak offensive and liked not the cold arrogance of his hirelings. I was inclined toward battle before thy need of championing presented itself. Perhaps it is I who should thank thee for providing the opportunity."

"I don't understand you at all, Mandorallen," Garion admitted. "Sometimes I think you're the most complicated man I've ever met."

"I?" Mandorallen seemed amazed. "I am the simplest of men." He looked around then and leaned slightly toward Garion. "I must advise thee to have a care in thy speech with the Countess Vasrana," he warned. "It was that which impelled me to draw thee aside."

"Who?"

"The comely young lady with whom thou wert speaking. She considers herself the greatest beauty in the kingdom and is seeking a husband worthy of her."

"Husband?" Garion responded in a faltering voice.

"Thou art fair game, lad. Thy blood is n.o.ble beyond measure by reason of thy kinship to Belgarath. Thou wouldst be a great prize for the countess."

"Husband?" Garion quavered at.in, his knees beginning to tremble. "Me?"

"I know not how things stand in misty Sendaria," Mandorallen declared, "but in Arendia thou art of marriageable age. Guard well thy speech, lad. The most innocent remark can be viewed as a promise, should a n.o.ble choose to take it so."

Garion swallowed hard and looked around apprehensively. After that he did his best to hide. His nerves, he felt, were not up to any more shocks.

The Countess Vasrana, however, proved to be a skilled huntress. With appalling determination she tracked him down and pinned him in another embrasure with smoldering eyes and heaving bosom. "Now perchance we may continue our most interesting discussion, Lord Garion," she purred at him.

Garion was considering flight when Aunt Pol, accompanied by a now radiant Queen Mayaserana, reentered the throne room. Mandorallen spoke briefly to her, and she immediately crossed to the spot where the violet-eyed countess held Garion captive.

"Garion, dear," she said as she approached. "It's time for your medicine."

"Medicine?" he replied, confused.

"A most forgetful boy," she told the countess. "Probably it was all the excitement, but he knows that if he doesn't take the potion every three hours, the madness will return."

"Madness?" the Countess Vasrana repeated sharply.

"The curse of his family," Aunt Pol sighed. "They all have it-all the male children. The potion works for a while, but of course it's only temporary. We'll have to find some patient and self sacrificing lady soon, so that he can marry and father children before his brains begin to soften. After that his poor wife will be doomed to spend the rest of her days caring for him." She looked critically at the young countess. "I wonder," she said. "Could it be possible that you are as yet unbetrothed? You appear to be of a suitable age." She reached out and briefly took hold of Vasrana's rounded arm. "Nice and strong," she said approvingly. "I'll speak to my father, Lord Belgarath, about this immediately."

The countess began to back away, her eyes wide.

"Come back," Aunt Pol told her. "His fits won't start for several minutes yet."

The girl fled.

"Can't you ever stay out of trouble?" Aunt Pol demanded of Garion, leading him firmly away.

"But I didn't say anything," he objected.

Mandorallen joined them, grinning broadly. "I perceive that thou hast routed our predatory countess, my Lady. I should have thought she would prove more persistent."

"I gave her something to worry about. It dampened her enthusiasm for matrimony."

"What matter didst thou discuss with our queen?" he asked. "I have not seen her smile so in years."

"Mayaserana's had a problem of a female nature. I don't think you'd understand."

"Her inability to carry a child to term?"

"Don't Arends have anything better to do than gossip about things that don't concern them? Why don't you go find another fight instead of asking intimate questions?"

"The matter is of great concern to us all, my Lady," Mandorallen apologized. "If our queen does not produce an heir to the throne, we stand in danger of dynastic war. All Arendia could go up in flames."

"There aren't going to be any flames, Mandorallen. Fortunately I arrived in time - though it was very close. You'll have a crown prince before winter."

"Is it possible?"

"Would you like all the details?" she asked pointedly. "I've noticed that men usually prefer not to know about the exact mechanics involved in childbearing."

Mandorallen's face slowly flushed. "I will accept thy a.s.surances, Lady Polgara," he replied quickly.

"I'm so glad."

"I must inform the king," he declared.

"You must mind your own business, Sir Mandorallen. The queen will tell Korodullin what he needs to know. Why don't you go clean off your armor? You look as if you just walked through a slaughterhouse."

He bowed, still blushing, and moved away.

"Men!" she said to his retreating back. Then she turned back to Garion. "I hear that you've been busy."

"I had to warn the king," he replied.

"You seem to have an absolute genius for getting mixed up in this sort of thing. Why didn't you tell me - or your grandfather."

"I promised that I wouldn't say anything."

"Garion," she said firmly, "under our present circ.u.mstances, secrets are very dangerous. You knew that what Lelldorin told you was important, didn't you?"

"I didn't say it was Lelldorin."

She gave him a withering look. "Garion, dear," she told him bluntly, "don't ever make the mistake of thinking that I'm stupid."

"I didn't," he floundered. "I wasn't. I - Aunt Pol, I gave them my word that I wouldn't tell anybody."

She sighed. "We've got to get you out of Arendia," she declared. "The place seems to be affecting your good sense. The next time you feel the urge to make one of these startling public announcements, talk it over with me first, all right?"

"Yes, ma'am," he mumbled, embarra.s.sed.

"Oh, Garion, what am I ever going to do with you?" Then she laughed fondly and put her arm about his shoulder and everything was all right again.

The evening pa.s.sed uneventfully after that. The banquet was tedious, and the toasts afterward interminable as each Arendish n.o.ble arose in turn to salute Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol with flowery and formal speeches. They went to bed late, and Garion slept fitfully, troubled by nightmares of the hot-eyed countess pursuing him through endless, flower-strewn corridors.

They were up early the next morning, and after breakfast Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf spoke privately with the king and queen again. Garion, still nervous about his encounter with the Countess Vasrana, stayed close to Mandorallen. The Mimbrate knight seemed best equipped to help him avoid any more such adventures. They waited in an antechamber to the throne room, and Mandorallen in his blue surcoat explained at length an intricate tapestry which covered one entire wall.

About midmorning Sir Andorig, the dark-haired knight Mister Wolf had ordered to spend his days caring for the tree in the plaza, came looking for Mandorallen. "Sir Knight," he said respectfully, "the Baron of Vo Ebor hath arrived from the north accompanied by his lady. They have asked after thee and besought me that I should seek thee out for them."

"Thou art most kind, Sir Andorig," Mandorallen replied, rising quickly from the bench where he had been sitting. "Thy courtesy becomes thee greatly."

Andorig sighed. "Alas that it was not always so. I have this past night stood vigil before that miraculous tree which Holy Belgarath commended to my care. I thus had leisure to consider my life in retrospect. I have not been an admirable man. Bitterly I repent my faults and will strive earnestly for amendment."

Wordlessly, Mandorallen clasped the knight's hand and then followed him down a long hallway to a room where the visitors waited.

It was not until they entered the sunlit room that Garion remembered that the wife of the Baron of Vo Ebor was the lady to whom Mandorallen had spoken on that windswept hill beside the Great West Road some days before.

The baron was a solid-looking man in a green surcoat, and his hair and beard were touched with white. His eyes were deep-set, and there seemed to be a great sadness in them. "Mandorallen," he said, warmly embracing the younger knight. "Thou art unkind to absent thyself from us for so long."

"Duty, my Lord," Mandorallen replied in a subdued voice. "Come, Nerina," the baron told his wife, "greet our friend."

The Baroness Nerina was much younger than her husband. Her hair was dark and very long. She wore a rose-colored gown, and she was beautiful-though, Garion thought, no more so than any of a half dozen others he had seen at the Arendish court.

"Dear Mandorallen," she said, kissing the knight with a brief, chaste embrace, "we have missed thee at Vo Ebor."

"And the world is desolate for me that I must be absent from its wellloved halls."

Sir Andorig had bowed and then discreetly departed, leaving Garion standing awkwardly near the door.

"And who is this likely-appearing lad who accompanies thee, my son?" the baron asked.

"A Sendarian boy," Mandorallen responded. "His name is Garion. He and diverse others have joined with me in a perilous quest."

"Joyfully I greet my son's companion," the baron declared.

Garion bowed, but his mind raced, attempting to find some legitimate excuse to leave. The situation was terribly embarra.s.sing, and he did not want to stay.

"I must wait upon the king," the baron announced. "Custom and courtesy demand that I present myself to him as soon as possible upon my arrival at his court. Wilt thou, Mandorallen, remain here with my baroness until I return?"

"I will, my Lord."

"I'll take you to where the king is meeting with my aunt and my grandfather, sir," Garion offered quickly.

"Nay, lad," the baron demurred. "Thou too must remain. Though I have no cause for anxiety, knowing full well the fidelity of my wife and my dearest friend, idle tongues would make scandal were they left together unattended. Prudent folk leave no possible foundation for false rumor and vile innuendo."

"I'll stay then, sir," Garion replied quickly.

"Good lad," the baron approved. Then, with eyes that seemed somehow haunted, he quietly left the room.

"Wilt thou sit, my Lady?" Mandorallen asked Nerina, pointing to a sculptured bench near a window.

"I will," she said. "Our journey was fatiguing."

"It is a long way from Vo Ebor," Mandorallen agreed, sitting on another bench. "Didst thou and my Lord find the roads pa.s.sable?"

"Perhaps not yet so dry as to make travel enjoyable," she told him. They spoke at some length about roads and weather, sitting not far from each other, but not so close that anyone chancing to pa.s.s by the open door could have mistaken their conversation for anything less than innocent. Their eyes, however, spoke more intimately. Garion, painfully embarra.s.sed, stood looking out a window, carefully choosing one that kept him in full view of the door.

As the conversation progressed, there were increasingly long pauses, and Garion cringed inwardly at each agonizing silence, afraid that either Mandorallen or the Lady Nerina might in the extremity of their hopeless love cross that unspoken boundary and blurt the one word, phrase, or sentence which would cause restraint and honor to crumble and turn their lives into disaster. And yet a certain part of his mind wished that the word or phrase or sentence might be spoken and that their love could flame, however briefly.

It was there, in that quiet sunlit chamber, that Garion pa.s.sed a small crossroad. The prejudice against Mandorailen that Lelldorin's unthinking partisanship had instilled in him finally shattered and fell away. He felt a surge of feelings - not pity, for they would not have accepted pity, but compa.s.sion rather. More than that, there was the faint beginning of an understanding of the honor and towering pride which, though utterly selfless, was the foundation of that tragedy which had existed in Arendia for uncounted centuries.

For perhaps a half hour more Mandorallen and the Lady Nerina sat, speaking hardly at all now, their eyes lost in each other's faces while Garion, near to tears, stood his enforced watch over them. And then Durnik came to tell them that Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf were getting ready to leave.

Part Two - TOLNEDRA

Chapter Twelve.

A BRa.s.sY CHORUS OF HORNS saluted them from the battlements of Vo Mimbre as they rode out of the city accompanied by twoscore armored knights and by King Korodullin himself. Garion glanced back once and thought he saw the Lady Nerina standing upon the wall above the arched gate, though he could not be sure. The lady did not wave, and Mandorallen did not look back. Garion, however, very nearly held his breath until Vo Mimbre was out of sight.

It was midafternoon by the time they reached the ford which crossed the River Arend into Tolnedra, and the bright sun sparkled on the river. The sky was very blue overhead, and the colored pennons on the lances of the escorting knights snapped in the breeze. Garion felt a desperate urgency, an almost unbearable necessity to cross the river and to leave Arendia and the terrible things that had happened there behind.

"Hail and farewell, Holy Belgarath," Korodullin said at the water's edge. "I will, as thou hast advised me, begin my preparations. Arendia will be ready. I pledge my life to it."

"And I'll keep you advised of our progress from time to time," Mister Wolf said.

"I will also examine the activities of the Murgos within my kingdom," Korodullin said. "If what thou hast told me should prove true, as I doubt not that it shall, then I will expell them from Arendia. I will seek them out, one and all, and harry them out of the land. I will make their lives a burden and an affliction to them for sowing discord and contention among my subjects."

Wolf grinned at him. "That's an idea that appeals to me. Murgos are an arrogant people, and a little affliction now and then teaches them humility." He reached out and took the king's hand. "Good-bye, Korodullin. I hope the world's happier next time we meet."

"I will pray that it may be so," the young king said.