“I may need it in a minute,” Silk replied. “Start talking, Javelin, and you’d better make it very convincing, or I’ll have your guts in a pile right between your feet.”
“You seem upset.”
“You noticed. How clever of you.”
“I did what I did for a very specific reason.”
“Wonderful. I thought you were just amusing yourself.”
“I can do without the sarcasm, Silk. You should know by now that I never do anything without a reason. You can put your mind at rest about Liselle. She’s probably already been released.”
“Released?”
“Escaped, actually. There were a dozen of cultists hiding in those woods. Your eyes must be going bad on you if you didn’t see them. Anyway, by now, every prisoner we crucified has been released and is on the way to safety back in the mountains.”
“Exactly what is this all about, Javelin?”
“It’s really very simple. We’ve been trying for years to get someone into the upper echelons of the Bear-cult. They have just rescued a genuine heroine -a martyr to the cause. Liselle’s clever enough to use that to work her way into their higher councils.”
“How did she get here in the first place?”
Javelin shrugged. “She put on a mail shirt, and I slipped her on board Trellheim’s ship. After the fighting was nearly over, I just slipped her in with the other prisoners.”
“Won’t the others who were just rescued say that she was never in the city?” Garion asked.
“No, your Majesty, I don’t think so,” Javelin replied. “She’s going to say that she lived in the northeast quarter of Jarviksholm. The others we crucified all came from the southwest quarter. Jarviksholm is a fairly good-sized town. Nobody could really say for sure that she wasn’t there all along.”
“I still can’t believe that you would actually do that to her,” Silk said.
“It took a fair amount of convincing and a great deal of fast talking on her part to persuade me,” Javelin admitted.
Silk stared at him.
“Oh, yes,” Javelin said. “Hadn’t you guessed? The whole thing was her idea in the first place.”
Suddenly Garion heard a hollow rushing sound, and a moment later Ce’Nedra’s voice came to him quite clearly.
“Garion!”
she cried out in anguish.”Garion, come home immediately! Someone has stolen our baby!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Polgara looked at Garion critically as they stood together in a high, open meadow above the still-burning city of Jarviksholm while the pale light of dawn washed the stars out of the sky. “Your wing feathers are too short,” she told him.
Garion made the feathers longer.
“Much better,” she said. Then her look became intense, and she also shimmered into the shape of a speckled falcon, “I’ve never liked these hard feathers,” she murmured, clicking her hooked beak. Then she looked at Garion, her golden eyes fierce. “Try to remember everything I told you, dear. We won’t go too high on your first flight.” She spread her wings, took a few short steps with her taloned feet, and lifted herself effortlessly into the air.
Garion tried to imitate what she had just done and drove himself beak-first into the turf.
She swooped back in. “You have to use your tail, too, Garion,” she said. “The wings give the power, but the tail gives direction. Try it again.” The second attempt was a bit smoother. He actually flew for about fifty yards before he crashed into a tree.
“That was very nice, dear. Just try to watch where you’re going.”
Garion shook his head, trying to clear the ringing from his ears and the speckles of light from in front of his eyes.
“Straighten your feathers, dear, and let’s try it again.”
“It’s going to take months for me to learn this, Aunt Pol. Wouldn’t it just be faster to sail to Riva on theSeabird?”
“No, dear,” she said firmly. “You just need a bit of practice, that’s all.” His third attempt was somewhat more successful. He was beginning to get the knack of coordinating his wings and, tail, but he still felt clumsy and he seemed to do a great deal of clawing ineffectually at the air.
“Garion, don’t fight with it. Let it lift you.”
They circled the meadow several times in the shadowless luminosity of dawn. Garion could see the smoke rising black from the city and the burned-out shipyards in the harbor as he followed Polgara in a steady upward spiral. As his confidence increased, he began to feel a fierce exhilaration. The rush of cool morning air through his feathers was intoxicating, and he found that he could lift himself higher and higher almost effortlessly. By the time the sun was fully up, the air was no longer an enemy, and he had begun to master the hundreds of minute muscular adjustments necessary to get the greatest possible efficiency out of his feathers.
Belgarath swooped in to join them with Durnik not far behind. “How’s he doing?” the fierce-looking falcon asked Polgara.
“He’s almost ready, father.”
Good. Let him practice for another fifteen minutes or so, and then we’ll get started. There’s a column of warm air rising off that lake over there. That always makes it easier.” He tilted on one wing and veered away in a long, smooth arc.
“This is really very fine, Pol,” Durnik said. “I should have learned how to do this years ago.”
When they moved into the column of air rising from the surface of the warm waters of the lake, Garion learned the secret of effortless flight. With his wings spread and unmoving, he let the air lift him up and up. Objects on the far below shrank as he rose higher and higher. Jarviksholm now looked like a toy village, and its harbor was thick with miniature ships. The hills and forests were bright green in the morning sunshine. The sea was azure, and the snowfields on the higher peaks were so intensely white that they almost hurt his eyes.
“How high would you say we are?” he heard Durnik ask Belgarath.
“Several thousand feet.”
“It’s sort of like swimming, isn’t it? It doesn’t really matter how deep the water is, because you’re only using the top of it anyway.”
“I never really thought of it that way.” Belgarath looked over at Aunt Pol. “This should be high enough”, he said in the shrill, falcon’s whistle. “Let’s go to Riva.” The four of them beat steadily southwest, leaving the Cherek coast behind and flying out over the Sea of the Winds. For a time, a following breeze aided them, but at the breeze dropped, and they had to work for every mile. Garion’s shoulders ached, and the unaccustomed effort of flying made the muscles in his chest burn. Grimly, he flew below him he could see the miles-long waves on the Sea of the Winds, looking from this height almost like ripples the surface in the afternoon sunlight.
The sun was low over the western horizon when the rocky coast of the Isle of the Winds came into view. They flew southward along the east coast and spiraled down at last toward the uplifted towers and battlements of the Citadel, grim and gray over the city of Riva.
A sentry, leaning idly on his spear atop the highest parapet, startled as the four speckled falcons swooped in to around him, and his eyes bulged with astonishment as they shimmered into human form. “Y-your Majesty,” he stammered to Garion, awkwardly trying to bow and hold on to his spear at the same time.
“What happened here?” Garion demanded.
“Someone has abducted your son, Sire,” the sentry reported. “We’ve sealed off the island, but we haven’t caught him yet.”
“Let’s go down,” Garion said to the others. “I want to talk to Ce’Nedra.” But that, of course, was nearly impossible. As soon as Garion entered the blue-carpeted royal apartment, she flew into his arms and collapsed in a storm of hysterical weeping. He could feel her tiny body trembling violently against him, and her fingers dug into his arms as she clung to him.
“Ce’Nedra,” he pleaded with her, “you’ve got to stop. You have to tell us what happened.”
“He’s gone, Garion,” she wailed. “S-somebody came into the n-nursery and t-took him!” She began to cry again.
Ariana, Lelldorin’s blond Mimbrate wife, stood not far away, and the dark-haired Adara stood at the window, looking on with a grieved expression.
“Why don’t you see what you can do, Pol,” Belgarath said quietly. “Try to get her calmed down. I’ll need to talk to her -but probably later. Right now, I think the rest of us should go talk to Kail.”
Polgara had gravely removed her cloak, folded it carefully, and laid it across the back of a chair. “All right, father,” she replied. She came over and gently took the sobbing little queen out of Garion’s arms. “It’s all right, Ce’Nedra,” she said soothingly. “We’re here now. We’ll take care of everything.”