“I don’t quite follow that, Pol,” Durnik said.
“She blundered.” Polgara shrugged. “If only one person has a nightmare, he’ll probably try to shrug it off and he certainly won’t mention it on the morning of the meeting. Zandramas
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sent nightmares to all of us, though. This conversation probably wouldn’t have taken place if she hadn’t.”
“It’s nice to know that she can stumble, too,” Belgarath said. “All right then, we know that she’s been tampering with us. The best way to defeat that tactic is to put those nightmares out of our minds.”
“And to be particularly wary if we start seeing things that shouldn’t be there,” Polgara added.
SUk and the wolf came back down the stairs to the cabin. “WeVe got absolutely beautiful weather this morning,” he reported happily, bending slightly to scratch the pup’s ears.
“Wonderful,” Sadi murmured dryly. Sadi was carefully anointing his small dagger with a fresh coating of poison. He was wearing a stout leather jerkin and leather boots that reached to midthigh. Back in Sthiss Tor, Sadi had appeared, despite his slender frame, to be soft, even in some peculiar way dabby. Now, however, he looked lean and tough. A year or more without drugs and widi an enforced regimen of hard exercise had changed him a great deal.
“It’s perfect,” Silk told him. “We have fog this morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “a nice, wet, gray fog almost thick enough to walk on. That fog would be a burglar’s delight. *’
“Trust Silk to think of that.” Duraik smiled. The smith wore his usual clothing, but he had given Toth his axe, while he himself carried the dreadful sledge with which he had driven off the demon Nahaz.
“The prophecies are leading us around by the noses again,” Beldin said irritably, ‘ ‘but at least it appears that we made the right decision last night. A good thick fog makes sneaking almost inevitable.” Beldin looked the same as always, tattered, dirty, and very ugly.
“Maybe they’re just trying to help,” Velvet suggested. Velvet had shocked them all when she had entered the cabin a half hour earlier. She wore tight-fitting leather clothing not unlike that normally worn by the Nadrak dancer, Vella. It was a peculiarly masculine garb and bleakly businesslike. “They’ve done a great deal to assist Zandramas. Maybe it’s our turn to get a little help.”
“Is she right?” Garion asked the awareness that shared his mind. “Are you and your opposite helping us far a change?”
“Don’t be silly, Garion. Nobody’s been helping anybody. That’s forbidden at this particular stage of the game.”
“Where did the fog come from then?”
“Where does fog usually come from?”
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“How would I know ? ”
“I didn’t think so. Ask Beldin. He can probably tell you. The fog out there is perfectly natural.”
“Liselle,” Garion said, “I just checked with my friend. The fog isn’t the result of any playing around. It’s a natural result of the storm.”
“How disappointing,” she said.
Ce’Nedra had risen that morning fully intent on wearing a Dryad tunic. Garion had adamantly rejected that idea, however. She wore instead a simple gray wool dress with no petticoats to hinder her movements. She was quite obviously stripped down for action. Garion was fairly certain that she had at least one knife concealed somewhere in her clothing. “Why don’t we get started?” she demanded.
“Because it’s still dark, dear,” Polgara explained patiently. “We have to wait for at least a little bit of light.” Polgara and her mother wore almost identical plain dresses, Polgara’s gray and Poledra’s brown.
“Garion,” Poledra said then, “why don’t you step down to the galley and tell them that we’ll have breakfast now? We should all eat something, since I doubt that we’ll have time or maybe even the need for lunch.” Poledra sat at Belgarath’s side, and the two of them were almost unconsciously holding hands. Gar-ion was a bit offended at her suggestion. He was a king, after all, not an errand boy. Then he realized just how silly that particular thought was. He started to rise.
“I’ll go, Garion,” Eriond said. It was almost as if the blond young man had seen into his friend’s thoughts. Eriond wore the same simple brown peasant clothes he always wore, and he had nothing even resembling a weapon.
As the young man went out through the cabin door, Garion had an odd thought. Why was he paying so much attention to the appearance of each of his companions? He had seen them all before, and for the most part, he had seen the clothing they wore this morning so many times that the garments should not even have registered on his mind. Then, with dreadful certainty, he knew. One of them was going to die today, and he was fixing mem all in his mind so that he could remember for the rest of his life the one who was to make that sacrifice. He looked at Zakath. His Mallorean friend had shaved off his short beard. His slightly olive skin was no longer pale, but tanned and healthy-looking save for the now-lighter patch on his chin and jaw. He wore simple clothing much like Garion’s own, since as
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soon as they reached the reef, the two of them would be putting on their armor.
Toth, his face impassive, was dressed as always—a loincloth, sandals, and that unbleached wool blanket slung across one shoulder. He did not, however, have his heavy staff. Instead, Durnik’s axe lay in his lap.
The Seeress of Kell was unchanged. Her hooded white robe gleamed, and her blindfold, unwrinkted and unchanged, smoothly covered her eyes. Idly Garion wondered if she removed the cloth when she slept. A chilling thought came to him then. What if the one they would lose today was going to be Cyradis? She had sacrificed everything for her task. Surely the two prophecies could not be so cruel as to require one last, supreme sacrifice from this slender girt.
Belgarath, of course, was unchanged and unchangeable. He still wore the mismatched boots, patched hose, and rust-colored tunic he had worn when he had appeared at Faldor’s farm as Mister Wolf the storyteller. The one difference about the old man was the fact that he did not hold a tankard in his free hand. At supper the previous evening, he had almost absently drawn himself one that brimmed with foaming ale. Poledra, just as absently, had firmly removed it from his hand and had emptied it out a porthole. Garion strongly suspected that Belgarath’s drinking days had come rather abruptly to an end. He decided that it might be refreshing to have a long conversation with his grandfather when the old man was completely sober.
They ate their breakfast with hardly any conversation, since mere was nothing more to say. Ce’Nedra dutifully fed the puppy, then looked rather sadly at Garion. “Take care of him, please,” she said.
There was no point in arguing with her on that score. The idea that she would not survive this day was so firmly fixed in her mind that no amount of talking would erase it. “You might want to give him to Geran,” she added. “Every boy should have a dog, and caring for him will teach our son responsibility.”
“I never had a dog,” Garion said.
“That was unkind of you, Aunt Pol,” Ce’Nedra said, lapsing unconsciously—or perhaps not—into that form of address.
“He wouldn’t have had time to look after one, Ce’Nedra,” Polgara replied. “Our Garion has had a very busy life.”
“Let’s hope that it gets less so when this is all over,” Garion said.
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After they had eaten, Captain Kresca entered the cabin carrying a map. “This isn’t very precise,” he apologized. “As I said last night, I was never able to take very accurate soundings around that peak. We can inch our way to within a few hundred yards of the beach, and then we’ll have to take to the longboat. This fog is going to make it even more complicated, I’m afraid.”
“Is there a beach along the east side of the peak?” Belgarath asked him.
“A very shallow one,” Kresca replied. “The neap tide should expose a bit more of it, though.”
“Good. There are a few things we’ll need to take ashore with us.” Belgarath pointed at the two stout canvas bags holding the armor Garion and Zakath would wear.
“I’ll have some men stow them in the boat for you.”
“When can we get started?” Ce’Nedra asked impatiently.
“Another twenty minutes or so, little lady.”
“So long?”
He nodded. “Unless you can figure out a way to make the sun come up early.”
Ce’Nedra looked quickly at Belgarath.
“Never mind,” he told her.
“Captain,” Poledra said, “could you have someone look after our pet?” She pointed at the wolf. “He’s a bit overenthu-siastic sometimes, and we wouldn’t want him to start howling at the wrong time.”