“What happened?” Aunt Pol asked, her voice as soft as the old man’s.
“There was a Murgo in town-at your spice merchant’s. He asked questions and he tried to give the boy an Angarak penny.”
“In Upper Gralt? Are you certain he was only a Murgo?”
“It’s impossible to tell. Not even I can distinguish between Murgo and Grolim with any certainty.”
“What happened to the coin?”
“I was quick enough to get it. I gave the boy a Sendarian penny instead. If our Murgo was a Grolim, we’ll let him follow me. I’m sure I can give him several months of entertainment.”
“You’ll be leaving, then?” Aunt Pol’s voice seemed somehow sad.
“It’s time,” Wolf said. “Right now the boy is safe enough here, and I must be abroad. There are things afoot I must see to. When Murgos begin to appear in remote places, I begin to worry. We have a great responsibility and a great care placed upon us, and we mustn’t allow ourselves to become careless.”
“Will you be gone long?” Aunt Pol asked.
“Some years, I expect. There are many things I must look into and many people I’ll have to see.”
“I’ll miss you,” Aunt Pol said softly.
He laughed. “Sentimentality, Pol?” he said dryly. “That’s hardly in character.”
“You know what I mean. I’m not suited for this task you and the others have given me. What do I know about the raising of small boys?”
“You’re doing well,” Wolf said. “Keep the boy close, and don’t let his nature drive you into hysterics. Be careful; he lies like a champion.”
“Garion?” Her voice was shocked.
“He lied to the Murgo so well that even I was impressed.”
“Garion?”
“He’s also started asking questions about his parents,” Wolf said.
“How much have you told him?”
“Very little. Only that they’re dead.”
“Let’s leave it at that for now. There’s no point in telling him things he isn’t old enough to cope with yet.”
Their voices went on, but Garion drifted off into sleep again, and he was almost sure that it was all a dream.
But the next morning when he awoke, Mister Wolf was gone.
Chapter Four
THE SEASONS TURNED, as seasons will. Summer ripened into autumn; the blaze of autumn died into winter; winter grudgingly relented to the urgency of spring; and spring bloomed into summer again.
With the turning of the seasons the years turned, and Garion imperceptibly grew older.
As he grew, the other children grew as well – all except poor Doroon, who seemed doomed to be short and skinny all his life. Rundorig sprouted like a young tree and was soon almost as big as any man on the farm. Zubrette, of course, did not grow so tall, but she developed in other ways which the boys began to find interesting.
In the early autumn just before Garion’s fourteenth birthday, he came very close to ending his career. In response to some primal urge all children have – given a pond and a handy supply of logs – they had built a raft that summer. The raft was neither very large nor was it particularly well-built. It had a tendency to sink on one end if the weight aboard it were improperly distributed and an alarming habit of coming apart at unexpected moments.
Quite naturally it was Garion who was aboard the raft – showing off – on that fine autumn day when the raft quite suddenly decided once and for all to revert to its original state. The bindings all came undone, and the logs began to go their separate ways.
Realizing his danger only at the last moment, Garion made a desperate effort to pole for shore, but his haste only made the disintegration of his craft more rapid. In the end he found himself standing on a single log, his arms windmilling wildly in a futile effort to retain his balance. His eyes, desperately searching for some aid, swept the marshy shore. Some distance up the slope behind his playmates he saw the familiar figure of the man on the black horse. The man wore a dark robe, and his burning eyes watched the boy’s plight. Then the spiteful log rolled under Garion’s feet, and he toppled and fell with a resounding splash.
Garion’s education, unfortunately, had not included instruction in the art of swimming; and while the water was not really very deep, it was deep enough.
The bottom of the pond was very unpleasant, a kind of dark, weedy ooze inhabited by frogs, turtles and a singularly unsavory-looking eel that slithered away snakelike when Garion plunged like a sinking rock into the weeds. Garion struggled, gulped water and launched himself with his legs toward the surface again. Like a broaching whale, he rose from the depths, gasped a couple of quick, sputtering breaths and heard the screams of his playmates. The dark figure on the slope had not moved, and for a single instant every detail of that bright afternoon was etched on Garion’s mind. He even observed that, although the rider was in the open under the full glare of the autumn sun, neither man nor horse cast any shadow. Even as his mind grappled with that impossibility, he sank once more to the murky bottom.
It occurred to him as he struggled, drowning, amongst the weeds that if he could launch himself up in the vicinity of the log, he might catch hold of it and so remain afloat. He waved off a startled-looking frog and plunged upward again. He came up, unfortunately, directly under the log. The blow on the top of his head filled his eyes with light and his ears with a roaring sound, and he sank, no longer struggling, back toward the weeds which seemed to reach up for him.
And then Durnik was there. Garion felt himself lifted roughly by the hair toward the surface and then towed by that same convenient handle toward shore behind Durnik’s powerfully churning strokes. The smith pulled the semiconscious boy out onto the bank, turned him over and stepped on him several times to force the water out of his lungs.
Garion’s ribs creaked.
“Enough, Durnik,” he gasped finally. He sat up, and the blood from the splendid cut on top of his head immediately ran into his eyes. He wiped the blood clear and looked around for the dark, shadowless rider, but the figure had vanished. He tried to get up, but the world suddenly spun around him, and he fainted.
When he awoke, he was in his own bed with his head wrapped in bandages.
Aunt Pol stood beside his bed, her eyes blazing. “You stupid boy!” she cried. “What were you doing in that pond?”
“Rafting,” Garion said, trying to make it sound quite ordinary.
“Rafting?” she said. “Rafting? Who gave you permission?”
“Well-” he said uncertainly. “We just ”
“You just what?”
He looked at her helplessly.
And then with a low cry she took him in her arms and crushed him to her almost suffocatingly.
Briefly Garion considered telling her about the strange, shadowless figure that had watched his struggles in the pond, but the dry voice in his mind that sometimes spoke to him told him that this was not the time for that. He seemed to know somehow that the business between him and the man on the black horse was something very private, and that the time would inevitably come when they would face each other in some kind of contest of will or deed. To speak of it now to Aunt Pol would involve her in the matter, and he did not want that. He was not sure exactly why, but he did know that the dark figure was an enemy, and though that thought was a bit frightening, it was also exciting. There was no question that Aunt Pol could deal with this stranger, but if she did, Garion knew that he would lose something very personal and for some reason very important. And so he said nothing.
“It really wasn’t anything all that dangerous, Aunt Pol,” he said instead, rather lamely. “I was starting to get the idea of how to swim. I’d have been all right if I hadn’t hit my head on that log.”
“But of course you did hit your head,” she pointed out.
“Well, yes, but it wasn’t that serious. I’d have been all right in a minute or two.”
“Under the circumstances I’m not sure you had a minute or two,” she said bluntly.
“Well-” he faltered, and then decided to let it drop.
That marked the end of Garion’s freedom. Aunt Pol confined him to the scullery. He grew to know every dent and scratch on every pot in the kitchen intimately. He once estimated gloomily that he washed each one twenty-one times a week. In a seeming orgy of messiness, Aunt Pol suddenly could not even boil water without dirtying at least three or four pans, and Garion had to scrub every one. He hated it and began to think quite seriously of running away.