"Truly, my Lord," Lelldorin agreed with a show of sadness that was a trifle overdone. "Much have I argued that selfsame point with those who speak endlessly of Mimbrate oppression and overweening arrogance. My appeals for reason and dutiful respect for His Majesty, our Lord King, however, are greeted with derision and cold despite." He sighed.

"Thy wisdom becomes thee, young Lelldorin," the knight approved. "Regrettably, I must detain thee and thy companions in order that we may verify certain details."

"Sir Knight!" Silk protested vigorously. "A change in the weather could destroy the value of my merchandise in Tol Honeth. I pray you, don't delay me."

"I regret the necessity, good merchant," the knight replied, "but Asturia is filled with dissemblers and plotters. I can permit none to pa.s.s without meticulous examination."

There was a stir at the rear of the Mimbrate column. In single file, resplendent in burnished breastplates, plumed helmets and crimson capes, a half a hundred Tolnedran legionnaires rode slowly along the flank of the armored knights.

"What seems to be the problem here?" the legion commander, a lean, leather-faced man of forty or so, asked politely as he stopped not far from Silk's horse.

"We do not require the a.s.sistance of the legions in this matter," the knight said coldly. "Our orders are from Vo Mimbre. We are sent to help restore order in Asturia and we were questioning these travelers to that end."

"I have a great respect for order, Sir Knight," the Tolnedran replied, "but the security of the highway is my responsibility." He looked inquiringly at Silk.

"I am Radek of Boktor, Captain," Silk told him, "a Drasnian merchant bound for Tol Honeth. I have doc.u.ments, if you wish to see them."

"Doc.u.ments are easily forged," the knight declared.

"So they are," the Tolnedran agreed, "but to save time I make it a practice to accept all doc.u.ments at face value. A Drasnian merchant with goods in his packs has a legitimate reason to be on an Imperial Highway, Sir Knight. There's no reason to detain him, is there?"

"We seek to stamp out banditry and rebellion," the knight a.s.serted hotly.

"Stamp away," the captain said, "but off the highway, if you don't mind. By treaty the Imperial Highway is Tolnedran territory. What you do once you're fifty yards back in the trees is your affair; what happens on this road is mine. I'm certain that no true Mimbrate knight would want to humiliate his king by violating a solemn agreement between the Arendish crown and the Emperor of Tolendra, would he?"

The knight looked at him helplessly.

"I think you should proceed, good merchant," the Tolnedran told Silk. "I know that all Tol Honeth awaits your arrival breathlessly." Silk grinned at him and bowed fioridly in his saddle. Then he gestured to the others and they all rode slowly past the fuming Mimbrate knight. After they had pa.s.sed, the legionnaires closed ranks across the highway, effectively cutting off any pursuit.

"Good man there," Barak said. "I don't think much of Tolnedrans ordinarily, but that one's different."

"Let's move right along," Mister Wolf said. "I'd rather not have those knights doubling back on us after the Tolnedrans leave."

They pushed their horses into a gallop and rode on, leaving the knights behind, arguing heatedly with the legion commander in the middle of the road.

They stayed that night at a thick-walled Tolnedran hostel, and for perhaps the first time in his life Garion bathed without the insistence or even the suggestion of his Aunt. Though he had not had the chance to become directly involved in the fight in the clearing the night before, he felt somehow as if he were spattered with blood or worse. He had not before realized how grotesquely men could be mutilated in close fighting. Watching a living man disembowled or brained had filled him with a kind of deep shame that the ultimate inner secrets of the human body could be so grossly exposed. He felt unclean. He removed his clothing in the chilly bathhouse and even, without thinking, the silver amulet Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol had given him, and then he entered the steaming tub where he scrubbed at his skin with a coa.r.s.e brush and strong soap, much harder than even the most meticulous obsession with personal cleanliness would have required.

For the next several days they moved southward at a steady pace, stopping each night at the evenly s.p.a.ced Tolnedran hostels where the presence of the hard-faced legionnaires was a continual reminder that all the might of Imperial Tolnedra guaranteed the safety of travelers who sought refuge there.

On the sixth day after the fight in the forest, however, Lelldorin's horse pulled up lame. Durnik and Hettar, under Aunt Pol's supervision, spent several hours brewing poultices over a small fire by the roadside and applying steaming compresses to the animal's leg while Wolf fumed at the delay. By the time the horse was fit to continue, they all realized that there was no chance to reach the next hostel before dark.

"Well, Old Wolf," Aunt Pol said after they had remounted, "what now? Do we ride on at night, or do we try to take shelter in the forest again?"

"I haven't decided," Wolf answered shortly.

"If I remember right, there's a village not far ahead," Lelldorin, now mounted on an Algar horse, stated. "It's a poor place, but I think it has an inn - of sorts."

"That sounds ominous," Silk said. "What exactly do you mean by 'of sorts'?"

"The Lord of this demesne is notoriously greedy," Lelldorin replied. "His taxes are crushing, and his people have little left for themselves. The inn isn't good."

"We'll have to chance it," Wolf decided, and led them off at a brisk trot. As they approached the village, the heavy clouds began to clear off, and the sun broke through wanly.

The village was even worse than Lelldorin's description had led them to believe. A half dozen ragged beggars stood in the mud on the outskirts, their hands held out imploringly and their voices shrill. The houses were nothing more than rude hovels oozing smoke from the pitiful fires within. Scrawny pigs rooted in the muddy streets, and the stench of the place was awful.

A funeral procession slogged through the mud toward the burial ground on the other side of the village. The corpse, carried on a board, was wrapped in a ragged brown blanket, and the richly robed and cowled priests of Chaldan, the Arendish G.o.d, chanted an age-old hymn that had much to do with war and vengeance, but little to do with comfort. The widow, a whimpering infant at her breast, followed the body, her face blank and her eyes dead.

The inn smelled of stale beer and half-rotten food. A fire had destroyed one end of the common room, charring and blackening the lowbeamed ceiling. The gaping hole in the burned wall was curtained off with a sheet of rotting canvas. The fire pit in the center of the room smoked, and the hard-faced innkeeper was surly. For supper he offered only bowls of watery gruel - a mixture of barley and turnips.

"Charming," Silk said sardonically, pushing away his untouched bowl. "I'm a bit surprised at you, Lelldorin. Your pa.s.sion for correcting wrongs seems to have overlooked this place. Might I suggest that your next crusade include a visit to the Lord of this demesne? His hanging seems long overdue."

"I hadn't realized it was so bad," Lelldorin replied in a subdued voice. He looked around as if seeing certain things for the first time. A kind of sick horror began to show itself in his transparent face.

Garion, his stomach churning, stood up. "I think I'll go outside," he declared.

"Not too far," Aunt Pol warned.

The air outside was at least somewhat cleaner, and Garion picked his way carefully toward the edge of the village, trying to avoid the worst of the mud.

"Please, my Lord," a little girl with huge eyes begged, "have you a crust of bread to spare?"

Garion looked at her helplessly. "I'm sorry." He fumbled through his clothes, looking for something to give her, but the child began to cry and turned away.

In the stump-dotted field beyond the stinking streets, a ragged boy about Garion's own age was playing a wooden flute as he watched a few scrubby cows. The melody he played was heartbreakingly pure, drifting unnoticed among the hovels squatting in the slanting rays of the pale sun. The boy saw him, but did not break off his playing. Their eyes met with a kind of grave recognition, but they did not speak.

At the edge of the forest beyond the field, a dark-robed and hooded man astride a black horse came out of the trees and sat watching the village. There was something ominous about the dark figure, and something vaguely familiar as well. It seemed somehow to Garion that he should know who the rider was, but, though his mind groped for a name, it tantalizingly eluded him. He looked at the figure at the edge of the woods for a long time, noticing without even being aware of it that though the horse and rider stood in the full light of the setting sun, there was no shadow behind them. Deep in his mind something tried to shriek at him, but, all bemused, he merely watched. He would not say anything to Aunt Pol or the others about the figure at the edge of the woods because there was nothing to say; as soon as he turned his back, he would forget.

The light began to fade, and, because he had begun to shiver, he turned to go back to the inn with the aching song of the boy's flute soaring toward the sky above him.

Chapter Six.

DESPITE THE PROMISE Of the brief Sunset, the next day dawned cold and murky with a chill drizzle that wreathed down among the trees and made the entire forest sodden and gloomy. They left the inn early and soon entered a part of the wood that seemed more darkly foreboding than even the ominous stretches through which they had previously pa.s.sed. The trees here were enormous, and many vast, gnarled oaks lifted their bare limbs among the dark firs and spruces. The forest floor was covered with a kind of gray moss that looked diseased and unwholesome.

Lelldorin had spoken little that morning, and Garion a.s.sumed that his friend was still struggling with the problem of Nachak's scheme. The young Asturian rode along, wrapped in his heavy green cloak, his reddish-gold hair damp and dispirited-looking in the steady drizzle. Garion pulled in beside his friend, and they rode silently for a while. "What's troubling you, Lelldorin?" he asked finally.

"I think that all my life I've been blind, Garion," Lelldorin replied.

"Oh? In what way?" Garion said it carefully, hoping that his friend had finally decided to tell Mister Wolf everything.

"I saw only Mimbre's oppression of Asturia. I never saw our own oppression of our own people."

"I've been trying to tell you that," Garion pointed out. "What made you see it finally?"

"That village where we stayed last night," Lelldorin explained. "I've never seen so poor and mean a place - or people crushed into such hopeless misery. How can they bear it?"

"Do they have any choice?"

"My father at least looks after the people on his land," the young man a.s.serted defensively. "No one goes hungry or without shelter - but those people are treated worse than animals. I've always been proud of my station, but now it makes me ashamed." Tears actually stood in his eyes.

Garion was not sure how to deal with his friend's sudden awakening. On the one hand, he was glad that Lelldorin had finally seen what had always been obvious; but on the other, he was more than a little afraid of what this newfound perception might cause his mercurial companion to leap into.

"I'll renounce my rank," Lelldorin declared suddenly, as if he had been listening to Garion's thoughts, "and when I return from this quest, I'll go among the serfs and share their lives - their sorrows."

"What good will that do? How would your suffering in any way make theirs less?"

Lelldorin looked up sharply, a half dozen emotions chasing each other across his open face. Finally he smiled, but there was a determination in his blue eyes. "You're right, of course," he said. "You always are. It's amazing how you can always see directly to the heart of a problem, Garion."

"Just what have you got in mind?" Garion asked a little apprehensively.

"I'll lead them in revolt. I'll sweep across Arendia with an army of serfs at my back." His voice rang as his imagination fired with the idea.

Garion groaned. "Why is that always your answer to everything, Lelldorin?" he demanded. "In the first place, the serfs don't have any weapons and they don't know how to fight. No matter how hard you talk, you'd never get them to follow you. In the second place, if they did, every n.o.bleman in Arendia would join ranks against you. They'd butcher your army; and afterward, things would be ten times worse. In the third place, you'd just be starting another civil war; and that's exactly what the Murgos want."

Lelldorin blinked several times as Garion's words sank in. His face gradually grew mournful again. "I hadn't thought of that," he confessed.

"I didn't think you had. You're going to keep making these mistakes as long as you keep carrying your brain in the same scabbard with your sword, Lelldorin."

Lelldorin hushed at that, and then he laughed ruefully. "That's a pointed way of putting it, Garion," he said reproachfully.

"I'm sorry," Garion apologized quickly. "Maybe I should have said it another way."

"No," Lelldorin told him. "I'm an Arend. I tend to miss things if they aren't said directly."

"It's not that you're stupid, Lelldorin," Garion protested. "That's a mistake everyone makes. Arends aren't stupid - they're just impulsive."

"All this was more than just impulsiveness," Lelldorin insisted sadly, gesturing out at the damp moss lying under the trees.

"This what?" Garion asked, looking around.

"This is the last stretch of forest before we come out on the plains of central Arendia," Lelldorin explained. "It's the natural boundary between Mimbre and Asturia."

"The woods look the same as all the rest," Garion observed, looking around.

"Not really," Lelldorin said somberly. "This was the favorite ground for ambush. The floor of this forest is carpeted with old bones. Look there." He pointed.

At first it seemed to Garion that what his friend indicated was merely a pair of twisted sticks protruding from the moss with the twigs at their ends entangled in a scrubby bush. Then, with revulsion, he realized that they were the greenish bones of a human arm, the fingers clutched at the bush in a last convulsive agony. Outraged, he demanded, "Why didn't they bury him?"

"It would take a thousand men a thousand years to gather all the bones that lie here and commit them to earth," Lelldorin intoned morbidly. "Whole generations of Arendia rest here - Mimbrate, Wacite, Asturian. All lie where they fell, and the moss blankets their endless slumber."

Garion shuddered and pulled his eyes away from the mute appeal of that lone arm rising from the sea of moss on the floor of the forest. The curious lumps and hummocks of that moss suggested the horror which lay moldering beneath. As he raised his eyes, he realized that the uneven surface extended as far as he could see, "How long until we reach the plain?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"Two days, probably."

"Two days? And it's all like this?"

Lelldorin nodded.

"Why?" Garion's tone was harsher, more accusing than he'd intended.

"At first for pride - and honor," Lelldorin replied. "Later for grief and revenge. Finally it was simply because we didn't know how to stop. As you said before, sometimes we Arends aren't very bright."

"But always brave," Garion answered quickly.

"Oh yes," Lelldorin admitted. "Always brave. It's our national curse."

"Belgarath," Hettar said quietly from behind them, "the horses smell something."

Mister Wolf roused himself from the doze in which he usually rode. "What?"

"The horses," Hettar repeated. "Something out there's frightening them."

Wolf's eyes narrowed and then grew strangely blank. After a moment he drew in a sharp breath with a muttered curse.

"Algroths," he swore.

"What's an Algroth?" Durnik asked.

"A non-human-somewhat distantly related to Trolls."

"I saw a Troll once," Barak said. "A big ugly thing with claws and fangs."

"Will they attack us?" Durnik asked.

"Almost certainly." Wolf's voice was tense. "Hettar, you're going to have to keep the horses under control. We don't dare get separated."

"Where did they come from?" Lelldorin asked. "There aren't any monsters in this forest."

"They come down out of the mountains of Ulgo sometimes when they get hungry," Wolf answered. "They don't leave survivors to report their presence."

"You'd better do something, father," Aunt Pol said. "They're all around us."

Lelldorin looked quickly around as if getting his bearings. "We're not far from Elgon's tor," he offered. "We might be able to hold them off if we get there."

"Elgon's tor?" Barak said. He had already drawn his heavy sword.

"It's a high hillock covered with boulders," Lelldorin explained. "It's almost like a fort. Elgon held it for a month against a Mimbrate army."

"Sounds promising," Silk said. "It would get us out of the trees at least." He looked nervously around at the forest looming about them in the drizzling rain.

"Let's try for it," Wolf decided. "They haven't worked themselves up to the point of attacking yet, and the rain's confusing their sense of smell."

A strange barking sound came from back in the forest.