“He’ll tell you whatever he knows now, Garion,” Polgara said then. “He’s aware of what will happen if he doesn’t.”
“What have you done with my son?” Garion demanded of the terrified man.
The prisoner swallowed hard, and then he straightened defiantly. “He’s far beyond your reach now, King of Riva.”
The rage welled up in Garion again, and, without thinking, he reached over his shoulder for his sword.
“Garion!” Polgara said sharply.
The cultist flinched back, his face going pale. “Your son is alive,” he said hastily. Then a smug look crossed his face. “But the next time you meet him, he will kill you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ulfgar has consulted the oracles. You are not the Rivan King we have awaited for all these centuries. It’s the next King of Riva who will unite Aloria and lead us against the kingdoms of the south. It is your son, Belgarion, and he will lead us because he will be raised to share our beliefs.”
“Where is my son?” Garion shouted at him.
“Where you will never find him,” the prisoner taunted. “We will raise and nurture him in the true faith, as befits an Alorn monarch. And when he is grown, he will come and kill you and take his crown and his sword and his Orb from your usurping hand.” The man’s eyes were bulging, his limbs shook with religious ecstasy, and there was foam on his lips. “You will die by your own son’s hand, Belgarion of Riva,” he shrieked, “and King Geran will lead all Alorns against the unbelievers of the south, as Belar commanded.”
“We’re not getting too far with this line of questioning,” Belgarath said. “Let me try for a while.” He turned to the wild-eyed captive. “How much do you know about this Ulfgar?” he asked.
“Ulfgar is the Bear-lord, and he has even more power than you, old man.”
“Interesting notion,” Belgarath murmured. “Have you ever met this master sorcerer -or even seen him, for that matter?”
“Well-” the captive hedged.
“I didn’t think so. How did you know he wanted you to come here and abduct Belgarion’s son, then?”
The captive bit his lip.
“Answer me!”
“He sent a messenger,” the man replied sullenly.
A sudden thought occurred to Garion. “Was this Ulfgar of yours behind the attempt to kill my wife?” he demanded.
“Wife!” The cultist sneered. “No Alorn takes a Tolnedran mongrel to wife. You -Iron-grip’s heir- should know that better than any man. Naturally we tried to kill the Tolnedran wench. It was the only way to rid Aloria of the infection you brought here.”
“You’re starting to irritate me, friend,” Garion said bleakly. “Don’t do that.”
“Let’s get back to this messenger,” Belgarath said. “You say that the baby is where we can’t reach him, but you’re still here, aren’t you? Could it just possibly be that it was the messenger who was the actual abductor and that you and your friends are merely underlings?”
The cultist’s eyes grew wild, and he looked this way and that like a trapped animal. His limbs began to tremble violently .
“I think we’re approaching a question that you don’t want to answer, friend,” Belgarath suggested.
It came almost like a blow. There was a wrenching kind of feeling to it, almost as if someone were reaching inside a skull to twist and crush the brain within. The captive shrieked, gave Belgarath one wild look, then spun, took three quick steps, and hurled himself off the edge of the cliff behind him.
“Question me now!” he shrieked as he plummeted down into the twilight that was rising out of the dark, angry waters surging about the rocks at the foot of the cliff. Then, even as he fell, Garion heard peal upon peal of insane laughter fading horribly as the fanatic dropped away from them.
Aunt Pol started quickly toward the edge, but Belgarath reached out and took her arm. “Let him go, Pol,” he said.
“It wouldn’t be a kindness to save him now. Someone put something in his mind that crushed out his sanity as soon as he was asked that certain question.”
“Who could possibly do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m certainly going to find out.”
The shrieking laughter, still fading, continued to echo up to where they stood. And then it ended abruptly far below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A sudden summer storm had come howling in off the Great Western Sea two days after the fight on the cliffs and it raked the island with shrieking winds and sheets of rain that rattled against the windows of the council chamber high in the south tower. The bone-thin Javelin, who had arrived with the others aboard theSeabird that morning, slouched in his chair, looking out at the raging storm and thoughtfully tapping his fingers together. “Where did the trail finally lead?” he asked.
“Right down to the water’s edge in a secluded cove,” Garion replied.
“Then I think we’ll have to assume that this abductor made a clean escape with the prince. The timing might have been a little tight, but the men aboard the ships that were patrolling the coast would have been concentrating on the shore line, and a ship that had gotten well out to sea before they arrived could have escaped their notice.”
Barak was piling an armload of logs in the cavernous fireplace. “Why were those others left behind, then?” he asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“We’re talking about Bear-cultists, Barak,” Silk told him. “They’re notsupposed to make sense.”
“There’s a certain logic to it, though,” the Earl of Seline pointed out. “If what the cultist said before he died is true, this Ulfgar has declared war on Belgarion. Isn’t it entirely possible that those men were left behind specifically to waylay him? One way or another, he was certain to follow that trail.”
“There’s still something that doesn’t quite ring true.” Javelin frowned. “Let me think about it for a bit.”
“We can sort out their motives later,” Garion said. “The important thing right now is to find out where they’ve taken my son.”
“Rheon, most likely,” Anheg said. “We’ve destroyed Jarviksholm. Rheon’s the only strong point they’ve got left.”
“That’s not entirely certain, Anheg,” Queen Porenn disagreed. “This scheme to abduct Prince Geran was obviously planned quite some time ago, and you destroyed Jarviksholm only last week. It’s unlikely that the abductors even knew about it. I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that the prince was taken to Cherek.”
Anheg rose and began pacing up and down, a dark scowl on his face. “She’s got a point,” he admitted finally. “These child stealers were Chereks, after all. It’s quite possible that they tried to take him to Jarviksholm, but when they found the city destroyed, they had to go someplace else. We could very well find them holed up in a fishing village somewhere on the west coast.”
“What do we do now, then?” Garion asked helplessly.
“We split up,” King Cho-Hag said quietly. “Anheg turns out all his forces, and they search every village and farm in Cherek. The rest of us go to Rheon and deal with those people there.”
“There’s only one difficulty with that,” Anheg said. “A baby is a baby. How do my men recognize Garion’s son if theydo run across him?” “That’s no real problem, Anheg,” Polgara told him from her chair by the fire where she sat sipping a cup of tea. “Show them your palm, Garion.”
Garion held up his right hand to show the King of Cherek the silvery mark there.
“I’d almost forgotten that,” Anheg grunted. “Does Prince Geran have the same mark?”
“All heirs to the Rivan Throne have that mark on their palms,” she replied. “It’s been that way since the birth of Iron-grip’s first son.”
“All right,” Anheg said. “My men will know what to look for, but will the rest of you have enough men to take Rheon? With the Algar and Drasnian cultists there, Ulfgar’s got quite an army.”
General Brendig rose and went over to a large map tacked up on one of the walls. “If I leave immediately for Sendar, I can put together a sizeable army in a few days. A forced march could put us in Darine within a week.”
“I’ll have ships waiting there to ferry you and your men to Boktor, then,” Anheg promised.
“And I’ll go south and raise the clans,” Hettar said. “We’ll ride straight north to Rheon.”
Garion was also peering at the map. “If Anheg’s ships take me and my troops to Boktor, we can join with the Drasnian pikemen there and march toward Rheon from the west,” he said. “Then the ships can go back to Darine and pick up Brendig.”
“That would save some time,” Brendig agreed.
“With the Rivans and Drasnians, you’re going to have enough troops to encircle Rheon,” Silk said. “You might not have enough men to take the city, but youwill have enough to keep anybody from going in or out. Then all you have to do is sit and wait for Brendig and Hettar. Once they join you, you’ll have an overwhelming force.”