“Where does the right fork go?” Belgarath asked him.
“Down to the lake,” Silk replied, “Lake Karanda, It’s the biggest lake in the world. When you stand on the shore, it’s like looking at an ocean.”
Garion frowned. “Grandfather,” he said, starting to worry, “Do you think that Zandramas knows that the Orb can follow her?”
“It’s possible, yes.”
“And would she know that it can’t follow her over water?”
“I couldn’t say for sure.”
“But if she does, isn’t it possible that she went to the lake in order to hide her trail from us? She could have sailed out a ways, doubled back, and come ashore just about anyplace. Then she could have struck out in a new direction, and we’d never pick up her trail again.”
Belgarath scratched at his beard, squinting in the sunlight. “Pol,” he said. “Are there any Grolims about?”
She concentrated a bit. “Not in the immediate vicinity, father,” she replied.
“Good. When Zandramas was trying to tamper with Ce’Nedra back at Rak Hagga, weren’t you able to lock your thought with hers for a while?”
“Yes, briefly.”
“She was at Ashaba then, right?”
She nodded.
“Did you get any kind of notion about which direction she was planning to go when she left?”
She frowned. “Nothing very specific, father ‑just a vague hint about wanting to go home.
“Darshiva,” Silk said, snapping his fingers. “We know that Zandramas is a Darshivan name, and Zakath told Garion that it was in Darshiva that she started stirring up trouble.”
Belgarath grunted. “It’s a little thin,” he said. “I’d feel a great deal more comfortable with some confirmation.” He looked at Polgara. “Do you think you could reestablish contact with her ‑even for just a moment? All I need is a direction.”
“I don’t think so, father. I’ll try, but . . .” she shrugged. Then her face grew very calm, and Garion could feel her mind reaching out with a subtle probing. After a few minutes, she relaxed her will. “She’s shielding, father,” she told the old man. “I can’t pick up anything at all.”
He muttered a curse under his breath. “We’ll just have to go on down to the lake and ask a few questions. Maybe somebody saw her.”
“I’m sure they did,” Silk said, “but Zandramas likes to drown sailors, remember? Anyone who saw where she landed is probably sleeping under thirty feet of water.”
“Can you think of an alternative plan?”
“Not offhand, no.”
“Then we go on to the lake.”
As the sun began to sink slowly behind them, they passed a fair‑sized town set perhaps a quarter of a mile back from the road. The inhabitants were gathered outside the palisade surrounding it. They had a huge bonfire going, and just in front of the fire stood a crude, skull-surmounted altar of logs. A skinny man wearing several feathers in his hair and with lurid designs painted on his face and body was before the altar, intoning an incantation at the top of his lungs. His arms were stretched imploringly at the sky, and there was a note of desperation in his voice.
“What’s he doing?” Ce’Nedra asked.
“He’s trying to raise a demon so that the townspeople can worship it,” Eriond told her calmly.
“Garion!” she said in alarm. “Shouldn’t we run?”
“He won’t succeed,” Eriond assured her. “The demon won’t come to him anymore. Nahaz has told them all not to.
The wizard broke off his incantation. Even from this distance, Garion could see that there was a look of panic on his face.
An angry mutter came from the townspeople.
“That crowd is starting to turn ugly,” Silk observed.
“The wizard had better raise his demon on the next try, or he might be in trouble.”
The gaudily painted man with feathers in his hair began the incantation again, virtually shrieking and ranting at the sky. He completed it and stood waiting expectantly.
Nothing happened.
After a moment, the crowd gave an angry roar and surged forward. They seized the cringing wizard and tore his log altar apart. Then, laughing raucously, they nailed his hands and feet to one of the logs with long spikes and, with a great shout, they hurled the log up onto the bonfire.
“Let’s get out of here,” Belgarath said. “Mobs tend to go wild once they’ve tasted blood.” He led them away at a gallop.
They made camp that night in a willow thicket on the banks of a small stream, concealing their fire as best they could.
It was foggy the following morning, and they rode warily with their hands close to their weapons.
“How much farther to the lake?” Belgarath asked as the sun began to burn off the fog.
Silk looked around into the thinning mist. “It’s kind of hard to say. I’d guess a couple more leagues at least.”
“Let’s pick up the pace, then. We’re going to have to find a boat when we get there, and that might take a while.”
They urged their horses into a canter and continued on. The road had taken on a noticeable downhill grade.
“It’s a bit closer than I thought,” Silk called to them. “I remember this stretch of road. We should reach the lake in an hour or so.”
They passed occasional Karands, clad in brown fur for the most part and heavily armed. The eyes of these local people were suspicious, even hostile, but Garion’s mail shirt, helmet, and sword were sufficient to gain the party passage without incident.
By midmorning the gray fog had completely burned off. As they crested a knoll, Garion reined in. Before him there lay an enormous body of water, blue and sparkling in the midmorning sun. It looked for all the world like a vast inland sea, with no hint of a far shore, but it did not have that salt tang of the sea.
“Big, isn’t it?” Silk said, pulling his horse in beside Chretienne. He pointed toward a thatch‑and‑log village standing a mile or so up the lake-shore. A number of fair‑sized boats were moored to a floating dock jutting out into the water. “That’s where I’ve usually hired boats when I wanted to cross the lake.”
“You’ve done business around here, then?”
“Oh, yes. There are gold mines in the mountains of Zamad, and deposits of gem stones up in the forest.”
“How big are those boats?”
“Big enough. We’ll be a little crowded, but the weather’s calm enough for a safe crossing, even if the boat might be a bit overloaded.” Then he frowned. “What are they doing?”
Garion looked at the slope leading down to the village and saw a crowd of people moving slowly down toward the lake-shore. There seemed to be a great deal of fur involved in their clothing in varying shades of red and brown, though many of them wore cloaks all dyed in hues of rust and faded blue. More and more of them came over the hilltop, and other people came out of the village to meet them.
“Belgarath,” the little Drasnian called. “I think we’ve got a problem.”
Belgarath came jolting up to the crest of the knoll at a trot. He looked at the large crowd gathering in front of the village.
“We need to get into that village to hire a boat,” Silk told him. “We’re well enough armed to intimidate a few dozen villagers, but there are two or three hundred people down there now. That could require some fairly serious intimidation.”
“A country fair, perhaps?” the old man asked.
Silk shook his head. “I wouldn’t think so. It’s the wrong time of year for it, and those people don’t have any carts with them.” He swung down from his saddle and went back to the packhorses. A moment or so later, he came back with a poorly tanned red fur vest and a baggy fur hat. He pulled them on, bent over and wrapped a pair of sackcloth leggings about his calves, tying them in place with lengths of cord. “How do I look?” he asked.
“Shabby,” Garion told him.
“That’s the idea. Shab’s in fashion here in Karanda.” He remounted.
“Where did you get the clothes?” Belgarath asked curiously.
“I pillaged one of the bodies back at the temple.” The little man shrugged. “I like to keep a few disguises handy. I’ll go find out what’s happening down there.” He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and galloped down toward the throng gathering near the lakeside village.
“Let’s pull back out of sight,” Belgarath suggested. “I’d rather not attract too much attention.”
They walked their horses down the back side of the knoll and then some distance away from the road to a shallow gully that offered concealment and dismounted there. Garion climbed back up out of the gully on foot and lay down in the tall grass to keep watch.
About a half‑hour later, Silk came loping back over the top of the knoll. Garion rose from the grass and signaled to him.