Garion looked. There was a pale flicker back among the trees. A man on a white horse was riding in their direction, leaning far over in his saddle and looking intently at the ground as he rode.
“If he’s any kind of tracker at all, it will take us a week to shake him off,” Silk said disgustedly.
Somewhere, far off among the trees to their right, a wolf howled. “Let’s keep going,” Belgarath told them.
They galloped on then, plunging down the far side of the rise, threading their way among the trees, The thud of their horses’ hoofs was a muffled drumming on the thick loam of the forest floor, and clots of half decayed debris spattered out behind them as they fled.
“We’re leaving a trail as wide as a house,” Silk shouted to Belgarath.
“That can’t be helped for now,” the old man replied. “We need some more distance before we start playing games with the tracks.”
Another howl drifted mournfully through the forest, from the left this time. It seemed a bit closer than the first had been.
They rode on for another quarter of an hour and then they suddenly heard a great babble of confusion to the rear. Men were shouting with alarm, and horses squealed in panic. Garion could also hear savage growls. At Belgarath’s signal, they slowed their horses to listen. The terrified squeals of horses rang sharply through the trees, punctuated by their riders’ curses and frightened shouts. A chorus of howls rose from all around. The forest seemed suddenly full of wolves. The pursuit behind them disintegrated as the horses of the Nadrak reward hunters bolted with screams of sheer panic in all directions.
With a certain grim satisfaction, Belgarath listened to the fading sounds behind them. Then, his tongue lolling from his mouth, a huge, dark-furred wolf trotted out of the woods about thirty yards away, stopped, and dropped to his haunches, his yellow eyes gazing intently at them.
“Keep a tight grip on your reins,” Belgarath instructed quietly, stroking the neck of his suddenly wild-eyed mount.
The wolf did not say anything, but merely sat and watched. Belgarath returned that steady gaze quite calmly, then finally nodded once in acknowledgment. The wolf rose, turned, and started off into the trees. He stopped once, glanced back over his shoulder at them, and raised his muzzle to lift the deep, bell-toned howl that summoned the other members of his pack to return to their interrupted hunt. Then, with a flicker he was gone, and only the echo of his howl remained.
Chapter Four
THEY RODE EAST for the next several days, gradually descending into a broad, marshy valley where the undergrowth was denser and the air noticeably more humid. A brief summer shower rolled in one afternoon, accompanied by great, ripping crashes of thunder, a deluge of pounding rain, and winds that howled among the trees, bending and tossing them and tearing leaves and twigs from the underbrush to whirl and fly among the dark trunks. The storm soon passed, however, and the sun came out again. After that, the weather continued fair, and they made good time.
Garion felt a peculiar sense of incompleteness as he rode and he sometimes caught himself looking around for missing friends. The long journey in search of the Orb had established a sort of pattern in his mind, a sense of rightness and wrongness, and this trip felt wrong. Barak was not with them, for one thing, and the big, red-bearded Cherek’s absence made Garion feel oddly insecure. He also missed the hawkfaced, silent Hettar and the armored form of Mandorallen riding always at the front, with the silver-and-blue pennon snapping from the tip of his lance. He was painfully lonely for Durnik the smith and he even missed Ce’Nedra’s spiteful bickering. What had happened at Riva became less and less real to him, and all the elaborate ceremony that had attended his betrothal to the impossible little princess began to fade in his memory, like some half forgotten dream.
It was one evening, however, after the horses had been picketed and supper was over and they had rolled themselves in their blankets to sleep, that Garion, staring into the dying embers of their fire, came at last to face the central vacancy that had entered his life. Aunt Pol was not with them, and he missed her terribly. Since childhood, he had felt that, so long as Aunt Pol was nearby, nothing could really go wrong that she could not fix. Her calm, steady presence had been the one thing to which he had always clung. As clearly as if she stood before him, Garion could see her face, her glorious eyes, and the white lock at her brow; the sudden loneliness for her was as sharp as the edge of a knife.
Everything felt wrong without her. Belgarath was here, certainly, and Garion was fairly sure that his grandfather could deal with any purely physical dangers, but there were other, less obvious perils that the old man either did not consider or chose to ignore. To whom could Garion turn when he was afraid, for example? Being afraid was not the sort of thing that endangered life or limb, but it was still an injury of sorts and sometimes a deeper and more serious kind of injury. Aunt Pol had always been able to banish his fears, but now she was not here, and Garion was afraid and he could not even admit it. He sighed and pulled his blankets more closely about him and slowly drifted into a troubled sleep.
It was about noon some days later when they reached the east fork of the River Cordu, a broad, dirty brown flow running through a brushy valley in a generally southerly direction toward the capital at Yar Nadrak. The pale green, waist-high brush extended back several hundred yards from either bank of the river and was silt-smeared by the high waters of the spring runoff. The sultry air above the brush was alive with clouds of gnats and mosquitoes.
A sullen boatman ferried them across to the village standing on the far bank. As they led their horses off onto the ferry landing, Belgarath spoke quietly. “I think we’ll want to change direction here,” he told them. “Let’s split up. I’ll go pick up supplies, and the two of you go find the town tavern. See if you can get some information about passes leading up through the north range into the lands of the Morindim. The sooner we get up there, the better. The Malloreans seem to be getting the upper hand here and they could clamp down without much warning. I don’t want to have to start explaining my every move to Mallorean Grolims – not to mention the fact that there’s a great deal of interest in Silk’s whereabouts just now.”
Silk rather glumly agreed. “I’d like to get that matter straightened out, but I don’t suppose we really have the time, do we?”
“No, not really. The summer is very, very short up north, and the crossing to Mallorea is unpleasant, even in the best weather. When you get to the tavern, tell everybody that we want to try our luck in the gold fields of the north range. There’s bound to be somebody around who’ll want to show off his familiarity with trails and passes-particularly if you offer to buy him a few drinks.”
“I thought you said you knew the way,” Silk protested.
“I know one way – but it’s a hundred leagues east of here. Let’s see if there’s something a little closer. I’ll come by the tavern after I get the supplies.” The old man mounted and went off up the dirt street, leading their packhorse behind him.
Silk and Garion had little trouble finding someone in the smelly tavern willing to talk about trails and passes. Quite to the contrary, their first question sparked a general debate.
“That’s the long way around, Besher,” one tipsy gold hunter interrupted another’s detailed description of a mountain pass. “You go left at the falls of the stream. It saves you three days.”
“I’m telling this, Varn,” Besher retorted testily, banging his fist down on the scarred table. “You can tell them about the way you go when I’m finished.”
“It’ll take you all day just like that trail you’re so fond of. They want to go look for gold, not admire scenery.” Varn’s long, stubbled jaw thrust out belligerently.
“Which way do we go when we get to the long meadow up on top?” Silk asked quickly, trying to head off the hostilities.
“You go right,” Besher declared, glaring at Varn.
Varn thought about that as if looking for an excuse to disagree. Finally he reluctantly nodded. “Of course that’s the only way you can go,” he added, “but once you get through the juniper grove, you turn left.” He said it in the tone of a man anticipating contradiction.