As they sat, a she-wolf padded quietly from out of the bushes at the edge of the brook, stopped, and sat on her haunches to look at them. There was about the she-wolf a peculiar blue nimbus, a soft glow that seemed to emanate from her thick fur.
The normal reaction of a horse to the presence or even the scent of a wolf would have been blind panic, but the stallion returned the blue wolf’s gaze calmly, with not even so much as a hint of a tremor.
The boy knew who the wolf was, but he was surprised to meet her here. “Good morning,” he said politely to her.
“It’s a pleasant day, isn’t it?” The wolf seemed to shimmer in the same way that Beldin shimmered as he assumed the shape of the hawk. When the air around her cleared, there stood in the animal’s place a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes and a faintly amused smile on her lips. Though her gown was a plain brown such as one might see on any peasant woman, she wore it in a regal manner which any queen in jeweled brocade might envy. “Do you always greet wolves with such courtesy?” she asked him.
“I haven’t met many wolves,” he replied, “but I was fairly certain who you were.”
“Yes, I suppose you would have been, at that.”
Errand slid own off the horse’s back.
“Doeshe know where you are this morning?”
“Belgarath? Probably not. He’s talking with Beltira and Belkira, so the horse and I just came out to look at someplace new.”
“It would be best perhaps if you didn’t go too much farther into the Ulgo mountains,” she advised. “There are creatures in these hills that are quite savage.”
He nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Will you do something for me?” she asked quite directly.
“If I can.”
“Speak to my daughter.”
“Of course.”
“Tell Polgara that there is a great evil in the world and a great danger.”
“Zandramas?” Errand asked.
“Zandramas is a part of it, but the Sardion is at the center of the evil. It must be destroyed. Tell my husband and my daughter to warn Belgarion. His task is not yet finished.”
“I’ll tell them,” Errand promised, “but couldn’t you just as easily tell Polgara yourself?”
The tawny-haired woman looked off down the shady ravine. “No,” she replied sadly. “It causes her too much pain when I appear to her.”
“Why is that?”
“It reminds her of all the lost years and brings back all the anguish of a young girl who had to grow up without her mother to guide her. All of that comes back to her each time she sees me.”
“You’ve never told her then? Of the sacrifice you were asked to make?”
She looked at him penetratingly. “How is it that you know what even my husband and Polgara do not?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “Ido, though -just as I know that you didnot die.”
“And will you tell Polgara that?”
“Not if you’d rather I didn’t.”
She sighed. “Someday, perhaps, but not yet. I think it’s best if she and her father aren’t aware of it. My task still lies ahead of me and it’s a thing I can face best without any distractions.”
“Whatever you wish,” Errand said politely.
“We’ll meet again,” she told him. “Warn them about the Sardion. Tell them not to become so caught up in the search for Zandramas that they lose sight of that. It is from the Sardion that the evil stems. And be a trifle wary of Cyradis when next you meet her. She means you no ill, but she has her own task as well and she will do what she must to complete it.”
“I will, Poledra,” he promised.
“Oh,” she said, almost as an afterthought, “there’s someone waiting for you just up ahead there.” She gestured toward the long tongue of a rock-strewn ridge thrusting out into the grassy Vale. “He can’t see you yet, but he’s waiting.” Then she smiled, shimmered back into the form of the blue-tinged wolf, and loped away without a backward glance.
Curiously, Errand remounted and rode up out of the ravine and continued on southward, skirting the higher hills that rose toward the glistening white peaks of the land of the Ulgos as he rode toward the ridge. Then, as his eyes searched the rocky slope, he caught a momentary flicker of sunlight reflected from something shiny in the middle of a brushy outcrop halfway up the slope. Without hesitation, he rode in that direction.
The man who sat among the thick bushes wore a peculiar shirt of mail, constructed of overlapping metal scales. He was short but had powerful shoulders, and his eyes were veiled with a gauzy strip of cloth that was not so much a blindfold as it was a shield against the bright sunlight.
“Is that you, Errand?” the veiled man asked in a harsh-sounding voice.
“Yes,” Errand replied. “I haven’t seen you in along time, Relg.”
“I need to talk with you,” the harsh-voiced zealot said. “Can we get back out of the light?”
“Of course.” Errand slid down off his horse and followed the Ulgo through the rustling bushes to a cave mouth running back into the hillside. Relg stooped slightly under the overhanging rock and went. inside. “I thought I recognized you,” he said as Errand joined him in the cool dimness within the cave, “but I couldn’t be sure out there in all that light.” He untied the cloth from across his eyes and peered at the boy. “You’ve grown.”
Errand smiled. “It’s been a few years. How is Taiba?”
“She has given me a son,” Relg said, almost in a kind of wonder. “A very special son.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“When I was younger and filled with the notion of my own sanctity, UL spoke to me in my soul. He told me that the child who will be the new Gorim would come to Ulgo through me. In my pride I thought that he meant that I was to seek out the child and reveal him. How could I know that what he meant was a much simpler thing? It is my son that he spoke of. The mark is on my son -myson!” There was an awed pride in the zealot’s voice.
“UL’s ways are not the ways of men.”
“How truly you speak.”
“And are you happy?”
“My life is filled,” Relg said simply. “But now I have another task. Our aged Gorim has sent me to seek out Belgarath. It is urgent that he come with me to Prolgu.”
“He’s not very far away,” Errand said. He looked at Relg and saw how, even in this dim cave, the zealot kept his eyes squinted almost shut to protect them from the light. “I have a horse,” he said. “I can go and bring him back here in a few hours, if you want. That way you won’t have to go out into the sunlight.”
Relg gave him a quick, grateful look and then nodded. “Tell him that hemust come. The Gorim must speak with him.”
“I will,” Errand promised. Then he turned and left the cave.
“What doeshe want?” Belgarath demanded irritably when Errand told him that Relg wanted to see him.
“He wants you to go with him to Prolgu,” Errand replied. “The Gorim wants to see you -the old one.”
“Theold one? Is there a new one?”
Errand nodded. “Relg’s son,” he said.
Belgarath stared at Errand for a moment and then he suddenly began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“It appears that UL has a sense of humor,” the old man chortled. “I wouldn’t have suspected that of him.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“It’s a very long story”‘ Belgarath said, still laughing. “I guess that, if the Gorim wants to see me, we’d better go.”
“You want me to go along?”
“Polgara would skin me alive if I left you here alone. Let’s get started.”
Errand led the old man back across the Vale to the ridgeline in the foothills and the cave where Relg waited. It took a few minutes to explain to the young horse that he was supposed to go back to Belgarath’s tower alone. Errand spoke with him at some length, and it finally appeared that the animal had grasped the edges, at least, of the idea.
The trip through the dark galleries to Prolgu took several days. For most of the way, Errand felt that they were groping along blindly; but for Relg, whose eyes were virtually useless in open daylight, these lightless passageways were home, and his sense of direction was unerring. And so it was that they came at last to the faintly lighted cavern with its shallow glass-clear lake and the island rising in the center where the aged Gorim awaited them.
“Yad ho,
Belgarath,” the saintly old man in his white robe called when they reached the shore of the subterranean lake,”Groja UL.”