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“I’D change first,” he offered. “Then you can use me as a model to make sure you get the shape right.”
“I know what a hawk looks like, uncle.”
“Of course you do, Pol. I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“You’re too kind.”
It felt very strange to make a shape other than dial of a wolf. Garion looked himself over carefully, making frequent comparisons to Beldin, who perched fierce-eyed and magnificent on a branch overhead.
“Good enough,” Beldin told him, “but next time make your tail feathers a little fuller. You need them to steer with.”
“All right, gentlemen,” Polgara said from a nearby limb, “let’s get started.”
“I’ll lead,” Beldin said. “IVe had more practice at this. If we hit a downdraft, sheer away from the mountain. You don’t want to get banged up against those rocks. *’ He spread his wings, flapped a few times, and flew off.
The only time Garion had been aloft before had been on the long flight from Jarviksholm to Riva after Geran had been abducted. He had flown that time as a speckled falcon. The blue-banded hawk was a much bigger bird, and flying over mountain terrain was much different from flying over the vast open expanse of the Sea of the Winds. The air currents eddied and swirled around the rocks, making them unpredictable and even dangerous.
The three hawks spiraled upward on a rising column of air. It was an effortless way to fly, and Garion began to understand Beldin’s intense joy in flight.
He also discovered that his eyes were incredibly sharp. Every detail on the mountainside stood out as if it were directly in front of him. He could see insects and the individual petals of wildflowers. His talons twitched involuntarily when a small mountain rodent scurried across a rockfall.
“Pay attention to what we’re here for, Garion,” he heard Aunt Pol’s voice in the silences of his mind.
“But—” The yearning to plummet down with his talons spread wide was almost irresistible.
“No buts, Garion. You’ve already had breakfast. Just leave the poor little creature alone.”
“You’re taking all the fun out of it for him, Pol,” Garion heard Beldin protest.
“We’re not here to have fun, uncle. Lead on.”
The buffeting was sudden, and it took Garion by surprise. A
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violent downdraft hurled him toward a rocky slope, and it was only at the last instant that he was able to veer away from certain disaster. The downdraft pushed him this way and that, wrenching at his wings, and it was suddenly accompanied by a pelting rainstorm, huge, icy drops that pounded at him like large wet hammers.
“It isn’t natural, Garion!” Aunt Pol’s voice came to him sharply. He looked around desperately, but he could not see her.
“Where are you?” he called out.
“Never mind that! Use the Orb! The Dais are trying to keep us away!”
Garion was not entirely positive that the Orb could hear him in that strange place to which it went when he changed form, but he had no choice but to try. The driving rain and howling wind currents made settling to earth and resuming his own shape unthinkable. “Make it stop!” he called out to the stone, “the wind, the rain, all of it!”
The surge he felt when the Orb unleashed its power sent him staggering through the air, flapping his wings desperately to hold his balance. The air around him seemed suddenly bright blue.
And then the turbulence and the rain that had accompanied it were gone, and the column of warm air was back, rising undisturbed into the summer air.
He had lost at least a thousand feet in the downdraft, and he saw Aunt Pol and Beldin, each over a mile away in opposite directions. As he began again to spiral upward, he saw that they also were rising and veering through the air toward him. “Stay on your guard,” Aunt Pol’s voice told him. “Use the Orb to muffle anything else they try to throw at us.”
It took them only a few minutes to regain the height they had lost, and they continued upward over forests and rockslides until they reached that region on the flanks of the mountain above the tree line and below the eternal snows. It was an area of steep meadows with grass and wildflowers nodding in the mountain breeze.
“There!” Beldin’s voice seemed to crackle. “It’s a trail.”
“Are you sure it’s not just a game trail, uncle?” Polgara asked him.
“It’s too straight, Pol. A deer couldn’t walk in a straight line if his life depended on it. That trail is man-made. Let’s see where it goes.” He tilted on one wing and swooped down toward the well-traveled track stretching up one of the meadows toward a gap in a rocky ridge. At the upper end of the meadow,
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he flared his wings. “Let’s go down,” he told them. “It might be better if we follow the rest of the way on foot.”
Aunt Pol and Garion followed him down, and the three of them blurred back into their own forms. “It was touch and go there for a while,” Beldin said. “I came within a few feet of bending my beak on a rockslide.” He looked critically at Pol-gara. “Would you like to revise your theory about the Dais not hurting anybody?”
“We’ll see.”
“I wish I had my sword,” Garion said. “If we run into trouble, we’re pretty much defenseless.”
“I don’t know if your sword would be much use against the kind of trouble we’re likely to come up against,” Beldin told him. “Don’t lose contact with the Orb, though. Let’s see where this goes.” He started up the steep trail toward the ridge.
The gap in the ridge was a narrow pass between two large boulders. Toth stood in the center of the trail, mutely blocking their way.
Polgara looked him coolly in the face. “We will go to the place of the seers, Toth. It is foreordained.”
Toth’s eyes grew momentarily distant. Then he nodded and stepped aside for them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The cavern was vast, and there was a city inside. The city looked much like Kell, thousands of feet below, except, of course, for the absence of lawns and gardens. It was dim, since the blindfolded seers needed no light, and the eyes of their mute guides had, Garion surmised, become adjusted to the faint light.
There were few people abroad in those shadowy streets, and those they saw as Toth led them into the city paid no attention to them. Beldin was muttering to himself as he stumped along.
“What is it, uncle?” Polgara asked him.
“Have you ever noticed how much some people are slaves to convention?” he replied.
“I don’t quite see what you’re getting at.”
“This town is inside a cave, but they still put roofs on the houses. Isn’t that sort of an absurdity? It isn’t going to rain in here.”
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“But it will get cold—particulaily in the winter. If a house has no roof, it’s a little hard to keep the heat in, wouldn’t you say?” He frowned. “I guess I didn’t think of that,” he admitted. The house to which Toth led them was in the very center of this strange subterranean city. Although it was no different from those around it, its location hinted that the inhabitant was of some importance. Toth entered without knocking and led them to the simple room where Cyradis sat waiting for them, her pale young face illuminated by a single candle.
“You have reached us more quickly than we had expected,” she said. In a peculiar way her voice was different from the way it had sounded in their previous meetings. Garion uneasily felt that the seeress was speaking in more than one voice, and the result was startlingly choral.
“You knew that we could come, then?” Polgara asked her. “Of course. It was but a question of time before you would complete your threefold task.” “Task?”
“It was but a simple endeavor for one as powerful as thou art, Polgara, but it was a necessary test.” “I don’t seem to recall—”
“As I told thee, it was so simple that doubtless thou hast forgotten it.”
“Remind us,” Beldin said gruffly.
“Of course, gentle Beldin.” She smiled. “You have found this place; you have subdued the elements to reach it; and Polgara hath spoken correctly the words that gained you entry.” “More riddles,” he said sourly.
“A riddle is sometimes the surest way to make the mind receptive.” He grunted.
“It was necessary for the riddle to be solved and the tasks to be completed ere I could reveal to you that which must be revealed.” She rose to her feet. “Let us depart from this place then, and go down even unto Kell. My guide and dear companion will bear the great book that must be delivered into the hands of Ancient Belgarath.”