Belgarath’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you suppose I might be able to talk with him?” he asked. “I’ve made a study of such things, and I’m always eager to get additional information.”
“Of course,” Burk agreed. “He’s in the last tent on the right.”
“Garion, Pot, come along,” die old man said tersely and started along the log street. Oddly, the she-wolf accompanied them.
“Why the sudden curiosity, father?” Polgara asked when they were out of earshot.
“I want to find out just how effective this curse the Dais have laid around Kell really is. If it’s something that can be overcome, we might run into Zandramas when we get there after all.”
They found the Grolim sitting on the floor in his tent. The harsh angularity of his face had softened, and his sightless eyes had lost the burning fanaticism common to all Grolims. His face instead was filled with a kind of wonder.
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“How is it with you, friend?” Belgarath asked him gently.
“I am content,” the Grolim replied. The word seemed peculiar coming from the mouth of a priest of Torak.
“Why is it that you tried to approach Kell? Didn’t you know about the curse?”
“It is not a curse. It is a blessing.”
“A blessing?”
“I was ordered by the Sorceress Zandramas to try to reach the holy city of the Dais,” the Grolim continued. “She told me mat I would be exalted should I be successful.” He smiled gently. “It was in her mind, I think, to test the strength of the enchantment to determine if it might be safe for her to attempt the journey.”
“I gather that it wouldn’t be.”
“That is difficult to say. Great benefit might come to her if she tried.”
“I’d hardly call going blind a benefit.”
“But I am not blind.”
“I thought that’s what die enchantment was all about.”
“Oh, no. I cannot see the world around me, but that is because I see something else—something that fills my heart with
joy.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I see the face of God, ray friend, and will until the end of my days.”
CHAPTER THREE
It was always there. Even when they were in deep, cool forests they could feel it looming over them, still and white and serene. The mountain filled their eyes, their thoughts, and even their dreams. Silk grew increasingly irritable as they rode day after day toward that gleaming white enormity. “How can anyone possibly get anything done in this part of the world with that thing there filling up half the sky?” he burst out one sunny afternoon.
“Perhaps they ignore it, Kheldar,” Velvet said sweetly.
“How can you ignore something that big?” he retorted. “I wonder if it knows how ostentatious—and even vulgar—it is.”
“You’re being irrational,” she said. “The mountain doesn’t care how we feel about it. It’s going to be there long after we’re all gone.” She paused. “Is that what bothers you, Kheldar? Coming across something permanent in the middle of a transient life?”
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“The stars are permanent,” he pointed out- “So’s dirt, for that matter, but they don’t intrude the way that beast does.” He looked at Zakath. “Has anybody ever climbed to the top of it?” he asked.
“Why would anybody want to?”
“To beat it. To reduce it.” Silk laughed. “That’s even more irrational, isn’t it?”
Zakath, however, was looking speculatively at the looming presence that filled die southern sky. “I don’t know, Kheldar,” he said. “I’ve never considered the possibility of fighting a mountain before. It’s easy to beat men. To beat a mountain, though—now that’s something else.”
“Would it care?” Eriond asked. The young man so seldom spoke that he seemed at times to be as mute as Toth. He had of late, however, seemed even more withdrawn. “The mountain might even welcome you.” He smiled gently. “I’d imagine it gets lonesome. It could even want to share what it sees with anyone brave enough to go up there and look.”
Zakath and Silk exchanged a long, almost hungry look. “You’d need ropes,” Silk said in a neutral sort of tone.
“And probably certain kinds of tools, as well,” Zakath added. “Things that would dig into the ice and hoid you while you climbed up higher.”
“Durnik could figure those out for us.”
‘ ‘Will you two stop that?” Polgara said tartly.’ ‘We have other things to think about right now.”
“Just speculation, Polgara,” Silk said lightly. “This business of ours won’t last forever, and when it’s over—well, who knows?”
They were all subtly changed by the mountain. Speech seemed less and less necessary, and they all thought long thoughts, which, during quiet times around the campfire at night, they tried to share with each other. It became somehow a time of cleansing and healing, and they ah” grew closer together as they approached that solitary immensity.
One night Garion awoke with a light as bright as day in his eyes. He slipped out from under the blankets and turned back the flap of the tent. A full moon had arisen, and it filled the world with a pale luminescence. The mountain stood stark and white against the starry blackness of the night sky, glowing with a cool incandescence that seemed almost alive.
A movement caught his eye. Aunt Pol emerged from the tent she shared with Durnik. She wore a white robe that seemed
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almost a reflection of the moon-washed mountain. She stood for a moment in silent contemplation, then turned slightly. “Dur-nik,” she murmured softly, “come and look.”
Durnik emerged from the tent. He was bare-chested, and his silver amulet glittered in the moonlight. He put his arm about Polgara’s shoulders, and the two of them stood drinking in the beauty of this most perfect of nights.
Garion was about to call out to them, but something stayed his tongue. The moment they were sharing was too private to be intruded upon. After quite some time, Aunt Pol whispered something to her husband, and, smiling, the two of them turned and went hand in hand back into their tent.
Quiedy Garion let the tent flap drop and went back to his blankets.
Slowly, as they continued in a generally southwesterly direction, the forest changed. When they were still in the mountains, the trees had been evergreens interspersed here and there with aspens. As they approached the lowlands at the base of the huge mountain, they increasingly came across groves of beech and elm. And then at last they entered a forest of ancient oaks.
As they rode beneath the spreading branches in sun-dappled shade, Garion was sharply reminded of the Wood of the Dryads in southern Tolnedra. One glance at his little wife’s face revealed that the similarity was not lost on her either. A kind of dreamy contentment came over her, and she seemed to be listening to voices that only she could hear.
It was about noon on a splendid summer day that they overtook another traveler, a white-bearded man dressed hi clothing made from deerskin. The handles of the tools protruding from the lumpy bundle on the back of his pack mule proclaimed him to be a gold hunter, one of those vagrant hermits who haunt wildernesses the world over. He was riding a shaggy mountain pony so stumpy that its rider’s feet nearly touched the ground on either side. “I thought I heard somebody coming up from behind,” the gold hunter said as Garion and Zakath, both in their mail shirts and helmets, drew alongside him. “Don’t see many in these woods—what with the curse and all.”
“I thought the curse only worked on Grolims,” Garion said.
“Most believe it doesn’t pay to take chances. Where are you bound?”
“To Kell,” Garion replied. There was no real point in making a secret of it.
“I hope youVe been invited. The folk at Kell don’t welcome strangers who just take it upon themselves to go there.”
“They know we’re coming.”
“Oh. It’s all right then. Strange place, Kell, and strange people. Of course living right under that mountain the way they do would make anybody strange after a while. If it’s all right, I’ll ride along with you as far as the tumoff to Balasa a couple miles on up ahead.”
“Feel free,” Zakath told him. “Aren’t you missing a good time to be looking for gold, though?”
‘ ‘Got myself caught up in the mountains last winter,” the old fellow replied. “Supplies ran out on me. Besides, I get hungry for talk now and then. The pony and the mule listen pretty good, but they don’t answer very well, and the wolves up there move around so much that you can’t hardly get a conversation started with them.” He looked at the she-wolf and then astonishingly spoke to her in her own language. “How is it with you, mother?” he asked. His accent was abominable, and he spoke haltingly, but his speech was undeniably that of a wolf.