“And so did you?” Belgarath asked her.
“For a moment, father. They let me catch a glimpse of it. There are parts of it that are blocked off, though.”
“We might have guessed that,” Beldin said, scowling. “They’re not going to provide access to anything that would
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give us the slightest advantage. They’ve been perched on that fence since the beginning of time.”
Polgara sighed again and sat on a low divan.
“Are you all right, Pol?” Durnik asked with some concern.
“I’m fine, Durnik,” she replied. “It’s just that for a moment I saw something I’ve never experienced before, and then they asked me to leave.”
Silk’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you think they’d object if we left this house and had a look around?”
“No. They won’t mind.”
“I’d say that’s our next step then,” the little man suggested. “We know that the Dais are the ones who are going to make the final choice—at least Cyradis is—but this oversoul of theirs is probably going to provide her some direction.”
“That’s a very interesting term, Kheldar,” Beldin noted.
“What is?”
“Oversoul. How did you come up with it?”
“I’ve always had a way with words.”
“There may be some hope for you after all. Someday we’ll have to have a long talk.”
“I shall place myself at your disposal, Beldin,” Silk said with a florid bow. “Anyway,” he continued, “since the Dais are going to decide things, I think we ought to get to know them better. If they’re leaning in the wrong direction, maybe we can sway them back.”
“Typically devious,” Sadi murmured, “but probably not a bad idea. We should split up, though. We’ll be able to cover more ground that way.”
“Right after breakfast,” Belgarath agreed.
“But, Grandfather,” Garion protested, impatient to be off.
“I’m hungry, Garion, and I don’t think well when I’m hungry-”
“That might explain a lot,” Beldin noted blandly. “We should
have fed you more often when you were younger.”
“You can be terribly offensive sometimes, do you know that?”
“Why, yes, as a matter of fact I do.” The same group of young women brought breakfast to them, and Velvet drew aside the large-eyed girl with the glossy brown hair and spoke with her briefly. Then the blond girl returned to the table. “Her name is Onatel,” she reported, “and she’s invited Ce’Nedra and me to visit the place where she and the other
young women work. Young women talk a great deal, so we might pick up something useful.”
“Wasn’t Onatel the name of that seeress we met on the Isle of Verkat?” Sadi asked.
“It’s a common name among Dalasian women,” Zakath told him. “Onatel was one of their most honored seeresses.”
“But the Isle of Verkat is in Cthol Murgos,” Sadi pointed out.
“It’s not all that strange,” Belgarath said. “We’ve had some fairly strong hints that the Dais and the slave race of Cthol Murgos are closely related and keep in more or less constant contact. This is just some additional confirmation.”
The morning sun was warm and bright as they emerged from the house and strolled off in various directions. Garion and Zak-ath had removed their armor and left their swords behind, al-though Garion prudently carried the Orb in a pouch tied to his belt. The two of them walked across a dewy lawn toward a group of larger buildings near the center of the city.
“You’re always very careful with that stone, aren’t you, Gar-ion?” Zakath asked.
“I’m not sure that careful is the exact word,” Garion replied, “but then again, maybe it is—in a broader sense. You see, die Orb is very dangerous, and I don’t want it hurting people by accident.”
“What does it do?”
“I’m not really sure. IVe never seen it do anything to anybody—except possibly Torak—but that might have been the sword.”
“And you’re the only one in the world who can touch the Orb?”
“Hardly. Eriond carried it around for a couple of years. He kept trying to give it to people. They were mostly Alorns, so they knew better than to take it.”
“Then you and Eriond are the only people who can touch it?”
“My son can,” Garion said. “I put his hand on it right after he was born. It was very happy to meet him.”
“A stone? Happy?”
“It’s not like other stones.” Garion smiled. “It can be a little silly now and then. It gets carried away by its own enthusiasm. I have to be very careful about what I think sometimes. If it decides I really want something, it might just take independent action.” He laughed. “Once I was speculating about the time
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when Torak cracked the world, and it proceeded to tell me how to patch it.”
“You’re not serious!”
“Oh, yes. It has no conception of the word ‘impossible.’ If I really wanted it to, it could probably spell out my name in stars.” He felt a small twitch in the pouch at his belt. “Stop that!” he said sharply to the Orb. “That was just an example, not a request.”
Zakath was staring at him.
“Wouldn’t that look grotesque?” Garion said wryly. ” *Bel-garion’ running from horizon to horizon across the night sky?”
“You know something, Garion,” Zakath said. “I’ve always believed that someday you and I would go to war with each other. Would you be terribly disappointed if I decided not to show up?”
“I think I could bear it.” Garion grinned at him. “If nothing else, I could always start without you. You could drop by from time to time to see how things were going. Ce’Nedra can fix you supper. Of course, she’s not a very good cook, but we all have to make a few sacrifices, don’t we?”
They looked at each other for a moment and then burst out laughing. The process that had begun at Rak Urga with the quixotic Uigit was now complete. Garion realized with a certain amount of satisfaction that he had taken the first few steps toward ending five thousand years of unrelenting hatred between Alorn and Angarak.
The Dais paid little attention to them as they strolled along marble streets and past sparkling fountains. The inhabitants of Kell went about their activities quietly and contemplatively, their eyes lost in thought. They spoke but little, since speech among them was largely unnecessary.
“It’s an eerie sort of place, isn’t it?” Zakath observed. “I’m not used to cities where nobody does anything.”
“Oh, they’re doing something, all right.”
“You know what I mean. There aren’t any shops, and nobody’s even out sweeping the streets.”
“It is a little odd, I suppose.” Garion looked around. “What’s even odder is that we haven’t seen a single seer since we got here. I thought this was the place where they lived.”
“Maybe they stay indoors.”
“That’s possible, I suppose.”
Their morning stroll gained them little information. They tried occasionally to strike up conversations with the white-robed cit-
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izens, and although the Dais were unfailingly polite, they volunteered little in the way of talk. They answered questions that were put to them, and that was about all.
“Frustrating, wasn’t it?” Silk said when he and Sadi returned to the house that had been assigned to them. “I’ve never met a group of people so disinterested in talk. I couldn’t even find anybody willing to discuss the weather.”
“Did you happen to see which way Ce’Nedra and Liselle went?” Garion asked him.
“Someplace over on the other side of town, I think. I imagine they’ll come back when those young women bring us our lunch.”
Garion looked around at the others. “Did anybody happen to see any of the seers?” he asked.
“They aren’t here,” Polgara told him. She sat by a window mending one of Durnik’s tunics. ‘ ‘One old woman told me they have a special place. It’s not in the city.”
“How did you manage to get an answer out of her?” Silk asked.
“I was fairly direct. You have to push the Dais a bit when you want information.”
As Silk had predicted, Velvet and Ce’Nedra returned with the young women who were bringing their meals to them.
“You have a brilliant wife, Belgarion,” Velvet said after the Dalasian women had left. “She sounded for all the world as if there weren’t a brain in her head. She spent the morning babbling.”
“Babbling?” Ce’Nedra objected.
“Weren’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so, but ‘babbling’ is such an unflattering word.”
“I presume there was a reason for it?” Sadi suggested.
“Of course,” Ce’Nedra said. “I saw fairly soon that those girls weren’t going to be very talkative, so I filled up the spaces. They began to loosen up after a bit. I talked so that Liselle could watch their faces.” She smiled smugly. “It worked out fairly well, even if I do say it myself.”
“Did you get anything out of them?” Polgara asked.