It really wasn’t much of a flower. It was a kind of pale lavender color, and it was distinctly lopsided. It was quite small, and its petals were not very firmly attached. Its fragrance, however, was sweet with all the promise of summer. Garion felt very strange as he wordlessly handed the flower to his cousin. The sound of it had not been that rushing noise he’d always associated with sorcery, but rather was very much like the bell-tone he’d heard in the glowing cave when he’d given life to the colt. And when he had begun to focus his will, he had not drawn anything from his surroundings. It had all come from within him, and there had been a deep and peculiar love in it.
“lt’s lovely,” Adara said, holding the little flower gently in her cupped hands and inhaling its fragrance. Her dark hair fell across her cheek, hiding her face from him. Then she lifted her chin, and Garion saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “It seems to help,” she said, “for a little while, anyway ”
“What’s wrong, Adara?”
She did not answer, but looked out across the dun-brown plain.
“Who’s Ce’Nedra?” she asked suddenly. “I’ve heard the others mention her ”
“Ce’Nedra? She’s an Imperial Princess – the daughter of Itan Horune of Tolnedra.”
“What’s she like?”
“Very small – she’s part Dryad – and she has red hair and green eyes and a bad temper. She’s a spoiled little brat, and she doesn’t like me very much.”
“But you could change that, couldn’t you?” Adara laughed and wiped at the tears.
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“All you’d have to do is-” She made a vague kind of gesture.
“Oh.” He caught her meaning. “No, we can’t do very much with other people’s thoughts and feelings. What I mean is – well, there’s nothing to get hold of. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Adara looked at him for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, alarmed.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s not important.”
“It is important. Why are you crying?”
“I’d hoped – when I first heard that you were a sorcerer – and then when you made this flower, I thought you could do anything. I thought that maybe you might be able to do something for me.”
“I’ll do anything you ask, Adara. You know that.”
“But you can’t, Garion. You just said so yourself.”
“What was it that you wanted me to do?”
“I thought that perhaps you might be able to make somebody fall in love with me. Isn’t that a foolish idea?”
“Who?” She looked at him with a quiet dignity, her eyes still full of tears. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You can’t do anything about it, and neither can I. It was just a foolish notion, and I know better now. Why don’t we just forget that I ever said anything?” She rose to her feet. “Let’s go back now. It’s not nearly as nice a day as I’d thought, and I’m starting to get cold.”
They remounted and rode in silence back toward the looming walls of the Stronghold. They did not speak any more. Adara did not wish to talk, and Garion did not know what to say.
Behind them, forgotten, lay the flower he had created. Protected by the slope and faintly warmed by the winter sun, the flower that had never existed before swelled with silent, vegetative ecstasy and bore its fruit. A tiny seed pod at its heart opened, scattering infinitesimal seeds that sifted down to the frozen earth through the stalks of winter grass, and there they lay, awaiting spring.
Chapter Eight
THE ULGO GIRLS had pale skin, white-blond hair and huge, dark eyes. Princess Ce’Nedra sat in the midst of them like a single red rose in a garden of lilies. They watched her every move with a sort of gentle astonishment as if overwhelmed by this vibrant little stranger who had quite suddenly become the center of their lives. It was not merely her coloring, though that was astonishing enough. Ulgos by nature were a serious, reserved people, seldom given to laughter or outward displays of emotion. Ce’Nedra, however, lived as always on the extreme outside of her skin. They watched, enthralled, the flicker and play of mood and emotion across her exquisite little face. They blushed and giggled nervously at her outrageous and often wicked little jokes. She drew them into confidences, and each of the dozen or so who had become her constant companions had at one time or another opened her heart to the little princess.
There were bad days, of course, days when Ce’Nedra was out of sorts, impatient, willful, and when she drove the gentle-eyed Ulgo girls from her with savage vituperation, sending them fleeing in tears from her unexplained tantrums. Later, though they all resolved after such stormy outbursts never to go near her again, they would hesitantly return to find her smiling and laughing as if nothing at all had happened.
It was a difficult time for the princess. She had not fully realized the implications of her unhesitating acquiescence to the command of UL when he had told her to remain behind in the caves while the others journeyed to Rak Cthol. For her entire life, Ce’Nedra had been at the center of events, but here she was, shunted into the background, forced to endure the tedious passage of hours spent doing nothing but waiting. She was not emotionally constructed for waiting, and the outbursts that scattered her companions like startled doves were at least in part generated by her enforced inactivity.
The wild swings of her moods were particularly trying for the Gorim. The frail, ancient holy man had lived for centuries a life of quiet contemplation, and Ce’Nedra had exploded into the middle of that quiet like a comet. Though sometimes tried to the very limits of his patience, he endured the fits of bad temper, the storms of weeping, the unexplained outbursts – and just as patiently her sudden exuberant displays of affection when she would throw her arms about his neck and cover his startled face with kisses.
On those days when Ce’Nedra’s mood was congenial, she gathered her companions among the columns on the shore of the Gorim’s island to talk, laugh, and play the little games she had invented, and the dim silent cavern was filled with the babble and laughter of adolescent girls. When her mood was pensive, she and the Gorim sometimes took short walks to view the strange splendors of this subterranean world of cave and gallery and cavern beneath the abandoned city of Prolgu. To the unpracticed eye, it might have appeared that the princess was so involved in her own emotional pyrotechnics that she was oblivious to anything around her, but such was not the case. Her complex little mind was quite capable of observing, analyzing, and questioning; even in the very midst of an outburst. To the Gorim’s surprise, he found her mind quick and retentive. When he told her the stories of his people, she questioned him closely, moving always to the meaning that lay behind the stories.
The princess made many discoveries during those talks. She discovered that the core of Ulgo life was religion, and that the moral and theme of all their stories was the duty of absolute submission to the will of UL. A Tolnedran might quibble or even try to strike bargains with his God. Nedra expected it, and seemed to enjoy the play of offer and counteroffer as much as did his people. The Ulgo mind, however, was incapable of such casual familiarity.
“We were nothing,” the Gorim explained. “Less than nothing. We had no place and no God, but wandered outcast in the world until UL consented to become our God. Some of the zealots have even gone so far as to suggest that if one single Ulgo displeases our God, he will withdraw himself from us. I don’t pretend to know the mind of UL entirely, but I don’t think he’s quite that unreasonable. Still, he didn’t really want to be our God in the first place, so it’s best probably not to offend him.”
“He loves you, ” Ce’Nedra pointed out quickly. “Anyone could see that in his face when he came to us that time.”
The Gorim looked doubtful. “I hope I haven’t disappointed him too much.”
“Don’t be silly,” the princess said airily. “Of course he loves you. Everyone in the whole world loves you.” Impulsively, as if to prove her point, she kissed his pale cheek fondly.
The Gorim smiled at her. “Dear child,” he observed, “your own heart is so open that you automatically assume that everyone loves those whom you love. It’s not always that way, I’m afraid. There are a good number of people in our caves who aren’t all that fond of me.”