Garion left hurriedly.
Ten minutes later a sobbing little girl stumbled out of the kitchen. Aunt Pol stood in the doorway looking after her with eyes as hard as ice.
“Did you thrash her?” Garion asked hopefully.
Aunt Pol withered him with a glance. “Of course not,” she said. “You don’t thrash girls.”
“I would have,” Garion said, disappointed. “What did you do to her?”
“Don’t you have anything to do?” Aunt Pol asked.
“No,” Garion said, “not really.”
That, of course, was a mistake.
“Good,” Aunt Pol said, finding one of his ears. “It’s time you started to earn your way. You’ll find some dirty pots in the scullery. I’d like to have them scrubbed.”
“I don’t know why you’re angry with me,” Garion objected, squirming. “It wasn’t my fault that Doroon went up that tree.”
“The scullery, Garion,” she said. “Now.”
The rest of that spring and the early part of the summer were quiet. Doroon, of course, could not play until his arm mended, and Zubrette had been so shaken by whatever it was that Aunt Pol had said to her that she avoided the two other boys. Garion was left with only Rundorig to play with, and Rundorig was not bright enough to be much fun. Because there was really nothing else to do, the boys often went into the fields to watch the hands work and listen to their talk.
As it happened, during that particular summer the men on Faldor’s farm were talking about the Battle of Vo Mimbre, the most cataclysmic event in the history of the west. Garion and Rundorig listened, enthralled, as the men unfolded the story of how the hordes of Kal Torak had quite suddenly struck into the west some five hundred years before.
It had all begun in 4865, as men reckoned time in that part of the world, when vast multitudes of Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls had struck down across the mountains of the eastern escarpment into Drasnia, and behind them in endless waves had come the uncountable numbers of the Malloreans.
After Drasnia had been brutally crushed, the Angaraks had turned southward onto the vast grasslands of Algaria and had laid siege to that enormous fortress called the Algarian Stronghold. The siege had lasted for eight years until finally, in disgust, Kal Torak had abandoned it. It was not until he turned his army westward into Ulgoland that the other kingdoms became aware that the Angarak invasion was directed not only against the Alorns but against all of the west. In the summer of 4875 Kal Torak had come down upon the Arendish plain before the city of Vo Mimbre, and it was there that the combined armies of the west awaited him.
The Sendars who participated in the battle were a part of the force under the leadership of Brand, the Rivan Warder. That force, consisting of Rivans, Sendars and Asturian Arends, assaulted the Angarak rear after the left had been engaged by Algars, Drasnians and Ulgos; the right by Tolnedrans and Chereks; and the front by the legendary charge of the Mimbrate Arends. For hours the battle had raged until, in the center of the field, Brand had met in a single combat with Kal Torak himself. Upon that duel had hinged the outcome of the battle.
Although twenty generations had passed since that titanic encounter, it was still as fresh in the memory of the Sendarian farmers who worked on Faldor’s farm as if it had happened only yesterday. Each blow was described, and each feint and parry. At the final moment, when it seemed that he must inevitably be overthrown, Brand had removed the covering from his shield, and Kal Torak, taken aback by some momentary confusion, had lowered his guard and had been instantly struck down.
For Rundorig, the description of the battle was enough to set his Arendish blood seething. Garion, however, found that certain questions had been left unanswered by the stories.
“Why was Brand’s shield covered?” he asked Cralto, one of the older hands.
Cralto shrugged. “It just was,” he said. “Everyone I’ve ever talked with about it agrees on that.”
“Was it a magic shield?” Garion persisted.
“It may have been,” Cralto said, “but I’ve never heard anyone say so. All I know is that when Brand uncovered his shield, Kal Torak dropped his own shield, and Brand stabbed his sword into Kal Torak’s head through the eye, or so I am told.”
Garion shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How would something like that have made Kal Torak afraid?”
“I can’t say,” Cralto told him. “I’ve never heard anyone explain it.”
Despite his dissatisfaction with the story, Garion quite quickly agreed to Rundorig’s rather simple plan to re-enact the duel. After a day or so of posturing and banging at each other with sticks to simulate swords, Garion decided that they needed some equipment to make the game more enjoyable. Two kettles and two large pot lids mysteriously disappeared from Aunt Pol’s kitchen; and Garion and Rundorig, now with helmets and shields, repaired to a quiet place to do war upon each other.
It was all going quite splendidly until Rundorig, who was older, taller and stronger, struck Garion a resounding whack on the head with his wooden sword. The rim of the kettle cut into Garion’s eyebrow, and the blood began to flow. There was a sudden ringing in Garion’s ears, and a kind of boiling exaltation surged up in his veins as he rose to his feet from the ground.
He never knew afterward quite what happened. He had only sketchy memories of shouting defiance at Kal Torak in words which sprang to his lips and which even he did not understand. Rundorig’s familiar and somewhat foolish face was no longer the face before him but rather was replaced by something hideously maimed and ugly. In a fury Garion struck at that face again and again with fire seething in his brain.
And then it was over. Poor Rundorig lay at his feet, beaten senseless by the enraged attack. Garion was horrified at what he had done, but at the same time there was the fiery taste of victory in his mouth.
Later, in the kitchen, where all injuries on the farm were routinely taken, Aunt Pol tended their wounds with only minimal comments about them. Rundorig seemed not to be seriously hurt, though his face had begun to swell and turn purple in several places and he had difficulty focusing his eyes at first. A few cold cloths on his head and one of Aunt Pol’s potions quickly restored him.
The cut on Garion’s brow, however, required a bit more attention. She had Durnik hold the boy down and then she took needle and thread and sewed up the cut as calmly as she would have repaired a rip in a sleeve, all the while ignoring the howls from her patient. All in all, she seemed much more concerned about the dented kettles and battered pot lids than about the war wounds of the two boys.
When it was over, Garion had a headache and was taken up to bed.
“At least I beat Kal Torak,” he told Aunt Pol somewhat drowsily.
She looked at him sharply.
“Where did you hear about Torak?” she demanded.
“It’s Kal Torak, Aunt Pol,” Garion explained patiently.
“Answer me.”
“The farmers were telling stories-old Cralto and the others-about Brand and Vo Mimbre and Kal Torak and all the rest. That’s what Rundorig and I were playing. I was Brand and he was Kal Torak. I didn’t get to uncover my shield, though. Rundorig hit me on the head before we got that far.”
“I want you to listen to me, Garion,” Aunt Pol said, “and I want you to listen carefully. You are never to speak the name of Torak again.”
“It’s Kal Torak, Aunt Pol,” Garion explained again, “not just Torak.”
Then she hit him – which she had never done before. The slap across his mouth surprised him more than it hurt, for she did not hit very hard.
“You will never speak the name of Torak again. Neverl” she said. “This is important, Garion. Your safety depends on it. I want your promise.”
“You don’t have to get so angry about it,” he said in an injured tone.
“Promise.”
“All right, I promise. It was only a game.”
“A very foolish one,” Aunt Pol said. “You might have killed Rundorig.”
“What about me?” Garion protested.
“You were never in any danger,” she told him. “Now go to sleep.”
And as he dozed fitfully, his head light from his injury and the strange, bitter drink his aunt had given him, he seemed to hear her deep, rich voice saying, “Garion, my Garion, you’re too young yet.” And later, rising from deep sleep as a fish rises toward the silvery surface of the water, he seemed to hear her call, “Father, I need you.” Then he plunged again into a troubled sleep, haunted by a dark figure of a man on a black horse who watched his every movement with a cold animosity and something that hovered very near the edge of fear; and behind that dark figure he had always known to be there but had never overtly acknowledged, even to Aunt Pol, the maimed and ugly face he had briefly seen or imagined in the fight with Rundorig loomed darkly, like the hideous fruit of an unspeakable evil tree.