“A thousand years!”
“At least. In your case, maybe two thousand. You seem to have this extraordinary luck. You always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I won’t do it again, Grandfather,” Garion promised fervently, shuddering at the thought of towering ice walls creeping inexorably across the world.
Belgarath gave him a long, hard look and then let the matter drop. Later, when he had regained his composure, he lounged in a chair by the fire with a tankard of ale in one hand. Garion knew his Grandfather well enough to be aware of the fact that ale mellowed the old man’s disposition and he had prudently sent for some as soon as the initial explosion had subsided. “How are your studies going, boy?” the old sorcerer asked.
“I’ve been a little pressed for time lately, Grandfather,” Garion replied guiltily.
Belgarath gave him a long, cold stare, and Garion could clearly see the mottling on his neck that indicated that the old man’s interior temperature was rising again.
“I’m sorry Grandfather,” he apologized quickly. “From now on, I’llmake the time to study.”
Belgarath’s eyes widened slightly. “Don’t do that,” he said quickly. “You got into enough trouble fooling around with the weather. If you start in on time, not even the Gods could predict the outcome.”
“I didn’t exactly mean it that way, Grandfather.”
“Say what you mean, then. This isn’t a good area for misunderstandings, you know.” He turned his attention then to Errand. “What are you doing here, boy?” he asked.
“Durnik and Polgara are here,” Errand replied. “They thought I ought to come along.”
“Polgara’s here?” Belgarath seemed surprised.
“I asked her to come,” Garion told him. “There’s a little bit of a problem she’s fixing for me -at least Ithink she’s fixing it. She’s been acting sort of mysterious.”
“She overdramatizes things sometimes. Exactly what is this problem she’s working on?”
” Uh- ” Garion glanced at Errand, who sat watching the two of them with polite interest. Garion flushed slightly.
“It -uh- has to do with the -uh- heir to the Rivan Throne,” he explained delicately.
“What’s the problem there?” Belgarath demanded obtusely “You’rethe heir to the Rivan Throne.”
“No, I mean the next one.”
“I still don’t see any problem.”
“Grandfather, thereisn’t one -not yet, at least.”
“Thereisn’t? What have you been doing, boy?”
“Never mind,” Garion said, giving up.
When spring arrived at last, Polgara’s attention to the two embracing oak-trees became all-consuming. She went to the garden at least a dozen times a day to examine every twig meticulously for signs of budding. When at last the twig ends began to swell, a look of strange satisfaction became apparent on her face. Once again she and the two young women, Ce’Nedra and Xera, began puttering in the garden.
Garion found all these botanical pastimes baffling -even a little irritating. He had, after all, asked Aunt Pol to come to Riva to deal with a much more serious problem.
Xera returned home to the Wood of the Dryads at the first break in the weather. Not long afterward, Aunt Pol calmly announced that she and Durnik and Errand would also be leaving soon. “We’ll take father with us,” she declared, looking disapprovingly over at the old sorcerer, who was drinking ale and bantering outrageously with Brand’s niece, the blushing Lady Arell.
“Aunt Pol,” Garion protested, “what about that little -uh- difficulty Ce’Nedra and I were having?”
“What about it, dear?”
“Aren’t you going to do something about it?”
“I did, Garion,” she replied blandly.
“Aunt Pol, you spent all your time in that garden.”
“Yes, dear. I know.”
Garion brooded about the whole matter for several weeks after they had all left. He even began to wonder if he had somehow failed to explain fully the problem or if Aunt Pol had somehow misunderstood.
When spring was in full flower and the meadows rising steeply behind the city had turned bright green, touched here and there with vibrantly colored patches of wildflowers, Ce’Nedra began behaving peculiarly. He frequently found her seated in their garden, looking with an odd, tender expression at her oak trees, and quite often she was gone from the Citadel entirely, to return at the end of the day in the company of Lady Arell all bedecked with wildflowers.
Before each meal, she took a sip from a small, silver flagon and made a dreadful face.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” he asked her curiously one morning.
“It’s a sort of a tonic,” she replied, shuddering. “It has oak buds in it and it tastes absolutely vile.”
“Aunt Pol made it for you.”
“How did you know that?”
“Her medicines always taste awful.”
“Mmm,” she said absently. Then she gave him a long look. “Are you going to be very busy today?”
“Not really. Why?”
“I thought that we might stop by the kitchen, pick up some meat, bread, and cheese, and then go spend a day out in the forest.”
“In the forest? What for?”
“Garion,” she said almost crossly, “I’ve been cooped up in this dreary old castle all winter. I’d like some fresh air and sunshine -and the smell of trees and wildflowers around me instead of damp stone.”
“Why don’t you ask Arell to go with you? I probably shouldn’t really be gone all day.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “You just said you didn’t have anything important to do.”
“You never know. Something might come up.”
“It can wait,” she said from between clenched teeth.
Garion shot her a quick glance, recognized the danger signals, and then replied as mildly as he could, “I suppose you’re right, dear. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t have a little outing together. We could ask Arell -and maybe Kail- if they’d like to join us.”
“No. Garion,” she said quite firmly.
“No?”
“Definitely not.”
And so it was that, shortly after breakfast, the Rivan King, hand in hand with his little queen, left the Citadel with a well-stocked basket, crossed the broad meadow behind the city, and strolled into the sunlight-dappled shade beneath the evergreens that mounted steeply toward the glistening, snow-capped peaks that formed the spine of the island.
Once they entered the woods, all traces of discontent dropped away from Ce’Nedra’s face. She picked wildflowers as they wandered among the tall pines and firs and wove them into a garland for herself. The morning sun slanted down through the limbs high overhead, dappling the mossy forest floor with golden light and blue shadows. The resinous smell of the tall evergreens was a heady perfume, and birds swooped and spiraled among the tall, columnlike trunks, caroling to greet the sun.
After a time, they found a glade, a mossy, open clearing embraced by trees, where a brook gurgled and murmured over shining stones to drop into a gleaming forest pool and where a single, soft-eyed deer stood to drink. The deer raised her head from the water swirling about her delicate brown legs, looked at them quite unafraid, and then picked her way back into the forest, her hooves clicking on the stones and her tail flicking.
“Oh, this is just perfect,” Ce’Nedra declared with a soft little smile on her face. She sat on a round boulder and began to unlace her shoes.
Garion put down the basket and stretched, feeling the cares of the past several weeks slowly draining out of him.
“I’m glad you thought of this,” he said, sprawling comfortably on the sun-warmed moss. “It’s really a very good idea.”
“Naturally”‘ she said. “All my ideas are good ones.”
“I don’t know if I’d gothat far.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Ce’Nedra,” he said.
“‘What?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something. All the Dryads have names that begin with an X, don’t they? Xera, Xantha -like that.”
“It’s our custom,” she replied, continuing to work on her shoelaces.
“Why doesn’t yours, then? Begin with an X, I mean?”
“It does.” She pulled off one of her shoes. “Tolnedrans just pronounce it a little differently, that’s all. So they spell it that way. Dryads don’t read or write very much, so they don’t worry too much about spelling.”
“X’Nedra?”
“That’s fairly close. Make the X a little softer, though.”
“You know, I’ve been wondering about that for the longest time.”
“Why didn’t you ask, then?”
“I don’t know. I just never got around to it.”
“There’s a reason for everything, Garion,” she told him, “but you’ll never find it out if you don’t ask.”
“Now you sound just like Aunt Pol.”
“Yes, dear. I know.” She smiled, pulled off her other shoe and wriggled her toes contentedly.
“Why barefoot?” he asked idly.
“I like the feel of the moss on my feet -and I think that in a little bit I might go swimming.”
“It’s too cold. That brook comes right out of a glacier.”
“A little cold water won’t hurt me.” She shrugged. Then, almost as if responding to a dare, she stood up and began to take off her clothes.