“Eld?” Mandorallen protested.
“I’m only teasing, Mandorallen.” She laughed. “Put away your sword. No one else wants to play with you today.”
They bade farewell to Mandorallen, Lelldorin, and Relg, who intended to return to Taiba and their children in Maragor from Vo Mimbre.
“Mandorallen!” King Anheg bellowed as they rode away from the city. “When winter gets here, come up to Val Alorn, and we’ll take Barak and go boar-hunting.”
“I surely will, your Majesty,” Mandorallen promised from the battlements.
“I like that man,” Anheg said expansively.
They took ship again and sailed north to the city of Sendar to advise King Fulrach of the Accords of Dal Perivor. Silk and Velvet were to sail north on Seabird with Barak and Anheg, and the rest of them planned a leisurely ride across the mountains to Algaria and from thence down into the Vale.
The farewells at wharfside were brief, in part because they would all see each other again shortly, and in part because none of mem wanted to appear overemotional. Garion took his leave of Silk and Barak in particular with a great deal of reluctance. The two oddly matched men had been his companions for more than half his life, and the prospect of being separated from them
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caused him an obscure kind of pain. The earthshaking adventures were over now, and things would not ever really be the same.
“Do you think you can stay out of trouble now?” Barak asked him gruffly, obviously feeling the same way. “It upsets Mere! when she wakes up in the morning to find that she’s been sharing her bed with a bear.”
“I’ll do my best,” Garion promised.
“Do you remember what I told you that time just outside Winold—when it was so frosty that morning?” Silk asked.
Garion frowned, trying to remember.
“I said that we were living in momentous times, and that now was the time to be alive to share in those events.”
“Oh, yes, now I remember.”
“IVe had some time to think about it, and I believe I’d like to reconsider.” Silk grinned suddenly, and Garion knew that the little man did not mean one word he said.
“We’ll see you at the Alorn Council later this summer, Gar-ion,” Anheg shouted across the rail as Seabird prepared to de-pan. “It’s at your place this year. Maybe if we work on it, we can teach you to sing properly.”
They left the city of Sendar early the next morning and took the high road to Muros. Although it was not, strictly speaking, necessary, Garion had decided to see his friends al! home. The gradual eroding of their company as they had sailed north had been depressing, and Garion was not quite ready yet to be separated from all of them.
They rode across Sendaria in late-spring sunshine, crossed the mountains into Algaria, and reached the Stronghold a week or so later. King Cho-Hag was overjoyed at the outcome of the meeting at Korim, and startled at the results of the impromptu conference at Dal Perivor. Because Cho-Hag was far more stable than the brilliant but sometimes erratic Anheg, Belgarath and Garion went into somewhat greater detail about the astonishing elevation of Eriond.
‘ ‘He always was a strange boy,’ * Cho-Hag mused in his deep, quiet voice when they had finished, “but then, this entire series of events had been strange. WeVe been privileged to live in important times, my friends.”
“We have indeed,” Belgarath agreed. “Let’s hope that things quiet down now—for a while, at least.”
‘ ‘Father,” Hettar said then,’ ‘King Urgit of the Murgos asked me to convey his appreciation to you.”
“You met the Murgo King? And we’re not at war?” Cho-Hag was amazed.
“Urgit’s not like any other Murgo youVe ever met, Father,” Hettar told him. “He wanted to thank you for killing Taur Urgas.”
“That’s a novel sentiment coming from a son.”
Garion explained Urgit’s peculiar background, and the normally reserved King of Algaria burst out in peal after peal of laughter. “I knew Prince Kheldar’s father,” he said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing he would have done.”
The ladies were gathered about Geran and about Adara’s growing brood of children. Garion’s cousin was at the ungainly stage of her pregnancy, and she sat most of the time now with a dreamy smile on her face as she listened to the inexorable changes nature was imposing on her body. The revelation of the dual pregnancies of Ce’Nedra and Polgara filled Adara and Queen Silar with wonder, and Poledra sat among them, smiling mysteriously. Poledra, Garion was sure, knew far more than she was revealing.
After about ten days, Durnik grew restless. “WeVe been away from home a long while, Pol,” he said one morning. “There’s still time to put in a crop, and I’m sure we’ll need to tidy up a bit—mend fences, check the roof, that sort of thing.”
“Anything you say, dear,” she agreed placidly. Pregnancy had notably altered Polgara. Nothing seemed to upset her now.
On the day of their departure, Garion went down to the courtyard to saddle Chretienne. Although there were plenty of Algar clansmen here in the Stronghold who would have been more than willing to have performed the task for him, he feigned a desire to attend to it himself. The others were engaged in extended farewells, and Garion knew that about one more goodbye right now would probably reduce him to tears.
“That’s a very good horse, Garion.”
It was his cousin Adara. Her face had the serenity that pregnancy bestows upon women, and looking at her convinced Garion once again just how lucky Hettar really was. Since he had first met her, there had always been a special bond and a special kind of love between Garion and Adara. “Zakath gave him to me,” he replied. If they confined their conversation to the subject of horses, he was fairly certain that he’d be able to keep his emotions under control.
Adara, however, was not there to talk about horses. She put one hand gently to the back of his neck and kissed him. “Farewell, my kinsman,” she said softly.
“Good-bye, Adara,” he said, his voice growing thick. “Good-bye.”
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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
King Belgarion of Riva, Overlord of the West, Lord of the Western Sea, Godslayer, and general all-round hero, had an extended argument with his co-ruler, Queen Ce’Nedra of Riva, Imperial Princess of the Tolnedran Empire and Jewel of the House of Borune. The subject of their discussion hinged on the question of just who should have the privilege of carrying Crown Prince Geran, Heir to the Throne of Riva, hereditary Keeper of the Orb, and, until recently, the Child of Dark. The conversation lasted for quite some time as the royal pair rode with their family from the Stronghold of the Algars to the Vale of Aldur.
Ultimately, albeit somewhat reluctantly, Queen Ce’Nedra relented. As Belgarath the Sorcerer had predicted, Queen Ce’Nedra’s arms had at last grown tired of continually carrying her young son, and she relinquished him with some relief.
“Make sure he doesn’t fall off,” she warned her husband.
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“Yes, dear,” Garion replied, settling his son on Chretienne’s ;;neck just in front of the saddle.
“And don’t let him get sunburned.”
Now that he had been rescued from Zandramas, Geran was a good-natured little boy. He spoke in half phrases, his small fece very serious as he tried to explain things to his father. Very importantly, he pointed out deer and rabbits as they rode south, and he dozed from time to time, resting his blond, curly head against his father’s chest in absolute contentment. He was restive one morning, however, and Garion, without really thinking about it, removed the Orb from the pommel of his sword and gave it to his son to play with. Geran was delighted, and with a kind of bemused wonder he held die glowing jewel between his hands to stare with fascination into its depths. Often he would hold it to his ear to listen by the hour to its song. The Orb, it appeared, was even more delighted than the little boy.
“That’s really very disturbing, Garion,” Beldin chided. “YouVe turned the most powerful object in the universe into a child’s plaything.”
“It’s his, after all—or it will be. They ought to get to know each other, wouldn’t you say?”
“What if he loses it?”
“Beldin, do you really think the Orb can be lost?”
The game, however, came rather abruptly to an end when Poledra reined in her horse beside the Overlord of the West.
“He’s too young to be doing this sort of thing, Garion,” she said reprovingly. She reached out her arm and a curiously twisted and knotted stick appeared in her hand. “Put the Orb away, Garion,” she said. “Give him this to play with instead.”
“That’s the stick with only one end, isn’t it?” he said suspiciously, remembering the toy Belgarath had once shown him in the cluttered tower—the toy that had occupied Aunt Pol’s mind during her babyhood.