“Oh,” Beldin said, “such as what?”
“Well sir, one time in the main cabin, this woman as the white-eyed man and the aristocrat had with them, she reached out to take hold of the little boy, him acting kind of restless and all, and I seen her hand. Now, it might have been bad light in the cabin or some such—I don’t spend all that much on lamp oil or candles. But—and strike me blind if I’m wrong—it seemed to me that there was sparkles under the skin of her hand.”
“Sparkles?” Belgarath asked him.
“Yes, sir. I seen it with my own eyes, and they was moving—all these little tiny sparkles moving around in her flesh, almost like fireflies on a summer’s evening.”
“As if all the starry universe were contained therein?” Beldin asked intently, quoting from the obscure passage in the Ashabine Oracles.
“Now that you put it that way, that’s exactly how it was,” Kadian agreed. “I knowed right off that these wasn’t no ordinary folks and, after I seen that fire in the fog, I didn’t really want to stay around to find out just how un-ordinary they was.”
“That might just have saved your life, Captain,” Belgarath told him. “Have you ever heard of Zandramas?”
“The witch? Everybody’s heard of her.”
“I think she was your glittering passenger, and Zandramas is a firm believer in the old notion that dead people can’t tell stories. So far as we know, she’s drowned three ships and fed several people to the lions. I expect it was only the fog that saved you. If she’d have been able to see you, you wouldn’t be here now.”
Captain Kadian swallowed hard.
“Do you need any more?” Silk asked.
“No,” Belgarath replied. “I think that covers everything.” He looked at the captain. “We thank you, Kadian. Can you sketch us a map of the beach where you dropped off these passengers of yours?”
“I can indeed,” Kadian replied bleakly. “Is it in your mind to chase down the witch?”
“We were sort of thinking along those lines, yes.”
“When you burn her, throw on a few logs of wood in memory of my bo’sun and his oarsmen.”
“You have my word on that, Captain,” Garion told him.
“Green logs,” Kadian added. “They don’t burn so fast.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.”
Silk stood up and handed the captain a leather pouch.
Kadian bounced it on his palm a few times, and it gave forth a jingling sound. “You’re very generous, your Highness,” he said, also rising to his feet. “Is there pen and ink handy? I’ll draw you that chart.”
“Right over on that table,” Silk said, pointing.
The captain nodded and crossed the room.
“Where’s Aunt Pol,” Garion asked, “and the others?”
“They’re changing clothes,” Silk replied. “I sent word to our ship just as soon as one of Vetter’s men came back and told us that they’d found Captain Kadian. She’s waiting in the harbor for us right now.” He looked closely at Gar-ion. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked. “You’re looking a little pale.”
“I got a message that had some bad news in it.”
Silk gave Belgarath a puzzled look.
“We found the Ashabine Oracles,” the old man explained tersely. “Torak left a message for Garion on the last page. It wasn’t very pleasant. We can talk about it once we get on board ship.”
Captain Kadian came back holding a sheet of parchment.
“This is Selda,” he said, pointing at his drawing. “There’s a headland to the south, and the beach I was telling you about is just south of that. I can’t tell you exactly where the witch landed because of the fog, but this place marked with the X should be fairly close.”
“Thanks again, Captain,” Silk said.
“My pleasure, your Highness, and good hunting.” Kadian turned and left the room with the rolling gait of a man who spends little time on shore.
It was only a few moments later when Polgara and the others joined them. Ce’Nedra and Velvet were both wearing plain gray dresses much like the one Polgara always wore when she was traveling. Gray, Garion noticed, was not a good color for Ce’Nedra. It made her skin look very pale, and the only touch of color about her was her flaming wealth of copper-colored hair.
Durnik and the other men—except for Toth, who still wore only his unbleached blanket and loincloth—were dressed in the same nondescript brown that Silk wore.
“Well, father?” Polgara asked as she entered, “did you find what we wanted?”
He nodded. “Why don’t we talk about that after we get on board ship, though? We’ve done what we came to do in Melcena and we can talk while our ship’s moving.” He led the way out and down the stairs.
It was a silvery evening. The full moon had risen early and it filled the streets of Melcena with its pale light. Candles glowed golden in the windows of the houses they passed, and hundreds of lanterns winked from the rigging of the ships anchored in the harbor. Garion rode in silence, his melancholy thoughts still on the dreadful communication Torak had left for him thousands of years ago.
They boarded their ship quickly and went immediately below to the cramped cabin beneath the aft deck.
“All right,” Belgarath said to them after Durnik had closed the door, “we found the Oracles and we also found the place where the Sardion was kept until just about the time of the battle of Vo Mimbre.”
“That was a profitable trip, wasn’t it?” Silk noted. “Is Senji really as old as they say?”
Beldin grunted. “Older.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that he’s a sorcerer?” Ce’Nedra asked. Perhaps it was the somber gray dress, but she seemed a bit disconsolate as she sat on an ornately carved bench under a swinging oil lamp.
Belgarath nodded. “He’s not very good at it, but he does the ability, yes.”
“Who was his instructor?” Polgara wanted to know. She sat down beside Ce’Nedra and laid one arm affectionately across the little queen’s shoulders.
“Nobody,” Belgarath said with a certain disgust. “Would you believe that he just stumbled over it on his own?”
“Did you look into that?”
“Yes. Beldin’s got a theory. He can explain it to you. At any rate, the Sardion was brought to the university here several thousand years ago. They kept it in a museum, don’t think anybody knew what it really was. Then, about five hundred years ago, one of the scholars stole it and took it around the southern tip of Gandahar and sailed off in the general direction of the Dalasian Protectorates. Nobody knows for sure what happened to it after that. Anyway, Senji had an unmutilated copy of the Ashabine Oracles.”
“What did it say?” Velvet asked intently.
“A great deal. We found out why Zandramas abducted Geran.”
“As a sacrifice?” she said.
“Only in an obscure sense of the word. If the Dark Prophecy wins out, Geran is going to be the new God of Igarak.”
“My baby?” Ce’Nedra exclaimed.
“He won’t be your baby any more, I’m afraid,” the old man told her bleakly. “He’ll be Torak.”
“Or worse,” Beldin added. “He’ll have the Orb in one hand and the Sardion in the other. He’ll have dominion over everything that exists, and I don’t think he’ll be a kindly god.”
“We have to stop her!” Ce’Nedra cried. “We can’t let this happen!”
“I think that’s the general idea, your Majesty,” Sadi told her.
“What else did it say, father?” Polgara asked.
“It said something about Zandramas that’s a little obscure. For some reason her body’s being gradually taken by some kind of light. The sea captain who carried her to Selda caught a glimpse of her hand and he said that there are moving lights under her skin. The Oracles said it was going to happen.”
“What does it mean?” Durnik asked.
“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Belgarath admitted. He looked at Garion and moved his fingers slightly. —I don’t think we need to tell Ce’Nedra what the book said about her, do you?—
Garion shook his head.
“Anyway, we’re going to have to go to Kell.”
“Kell?” Polgara’s voice was startled. “What for?”
“The location of the place we’re looking for is in the copy of the Mallorean Gospels the seers keep there. If we go to Kell, we can get to this meeting place before Zandramas does.”
“That might be a nice change,” Silk said. “I’m getting a little tired of tagging along behind her.”
“But we’ll lose the trail,” Ce’Nedra protested.
“Little girl,” Beldin said to her gruffly, “if we know where Zandramas is going, we won’t need the trail. We can just go directly to the Place Which Is No More and wait for her to show up.”
Polgara’s arm curled more tightly about Ce’Nedra’s shoulders in a protective fashion. “Be gentle with her, uncle. She was brave enough to kiss you at the archduke’s house, and I’d imagine that was quite a shock to her sensibilities.”