Mulger glared at the rat-faced little man helplessly, then turned abruptly and rode back to keep company with his mules.
“Aren’t you pushing it a little?” Belgarath suggested, lifting his head from the apparent doze in which he usually rode. “If you irritate him enough, he’ll denounce you to the border guards, and we’ll never get into Gar og Nadrak.”
“Mulger’s not going to say a word, old friend,” Silk assured him. “If he does, he’ll be held for investigation, too, and there’s not a merchant alive who doesn’t have a few things concealed in his packs that aren’t supposed to be there.”
“Why don’t you just leave him alone?” Belgarath asked.
“It gives me something to do,” Silk replied with a shrug. “Otherwise I’d have to look at the scenery, and eastern Drasnia bores me.”
Belgarath grunted sourly, pulled his gray hood up over his head, and settled back into his nap.
Garion returned to his melancholy thoughts. The gorse bushes which covered the rolling moors had a depressing gray-green color to them, and the North Caravan Route wound like a dusty white scar across them. The sky had been overcast for nearly two weeks, though there was no hint of moisture in the clouds. They plodded along through a dreary, shadowless world toward the stark mountains looming on the horizon ahead.
It was the unfairness of it all that upset Garion the most. He had never asked for any of this. He did not want to be a sorcerer. He did not want to be the Rivan King. He was not even sure that he really wanted to marry Princess Ce’Nedra – although he was of two minds about that. The little Imperial Princess could be – usually when she wanted something – absolutely adorable. Most of the time, however, she did not want anything, and her true nature emerged. If he had consciously sought any of this, he could have accepted the duty which lay on him with a certain amount of resignation. He had been given no choice in the matter, though, and he found himself wanting to demand of the uncaring sky, “Why me?”
He rode on beside his dozing grandfather with only the murmuring song of the Orb of Aldur for company, and even that was a source of irritation. The Orb, which stood on the pommel of the great sword strapped to his back, sang to him endlessly with a kind of silly enthusiasm. It might be all ver well for the Orb to exult about the meeting with Torak, but it was Garion who was going to have to face the Dragon-God of Angarak, and it was Garion who was going to have to do all the bleeding. He felt that the unrelieved cheerfulness of the Orb was – all things considered – in very poor taste, to say the least.
The border between Drasnia and Gar og Nadrak straddled the North Caravan Route in a narrow, rocky gap where two garrisons, one Drasnian and one Nadrak, faced each other across a simple gate that consisted of a single, horizontal pole. By itself, the pole was an insubstantial barrier. Symbolically, however, it was more intimidating than the gates of Vo Mimbre or Tol Honeth. On one side of the gate stood the West; on the other, the East. With a single step, one could move from one world into a totally different one, and Garion wished with all his being that he did not have to take that step.
As Silk had predicted, Mulger said nothing about his suspicions to either the Drasnian pikemen or the leather-clad Nadrak soldiers at the border, and they passed without incident into the mountains of Gar og Nadrak. Once it passed the border, the caravan route climbed steeply up a narrow gorge beside a swiftly tumbling mountain stream. The rock walls of the gorge were sheer, black, and oppressive. The sky overhead narrowed to a dirty gray ribbon, and the clanging mule bells echoed back from the rocks to accompany the rush and pounding gurgle of the stream.
Belgarath awoke and looked around, his eyes alert. He gave Silk a quick, sidelong glance that cautioned the little man to keep his mouth shut, then cleared his throat. “We want to thank you, worthy Mulger, and to wish you good luck in your dealings here.”
Mulger looked at the old sorcerer sharply, his eyes questioning. “We’ll be leaving you at the head of this gorge,” Belgarath continued smoothly, his face bland. “Our business is off that way.” He gestured rather vaguely.
Mulger grunted. “I don’t want to know anything about it,” he declared.
“You don’t, really,” Belgarath assured him. “And please don’t take Ambar’s remarks too seriously. He has a comic turn of mind and he says things he doesn’t always mean, because he enjoys irritating people. Once you get to know him, he’s not quite so bad.”
Mulger gave Silk a long, hard look and let it pass without comment. “Good luck in whatever it is you’re doing,” he said grudgingly, forced to say it more out of courtesy than out of any genuine good feeling. “You and the young man weren’t bad traveling companions.”
“We are in your debt, worthy Mulger,” Silk added with mocking extravagance. “Your hospitality has been exquisite.”
Mulger looked directly at Silk again. “I don’t really like you, Ambar,” he said bluntly. “Why don’t we just let it go at that?”
“I’m crushed.” Silk grinned at him.
“Let it lie,” Belgarath growled.
“I made every effort to win him over,” Silk protested.
Belgarath turned his back on him.
“I really did.” Silk appealed to Garion, his eyes brimming with mock sincerity.
“I don’t believe you either,” Garion told him.
Silk sighed. “Nobody understands me,” he complained. Then he laughed and rode on up the gorge, whistling happily to himself.
At the head of the gorge, they left Mulger and struck off to the left of the caravan route through a jumble of rock and stunted trees. At the crest of a stony ridge, they stopped to watch the slow progress of the mules until they were out of sight.
“Where are we headed?” Silk asked, squinting up at the clouds scudding past overhead. “I thought we were going to Yar Gurak.”
“We are,” Belgarath replied, scratching at his beard, “but we’ll circle around and come at the town from the other side. Mulger’s opinions make traveling with him just a bit chancy. He might let something slip at the wrong time. Besides, Garion and I have something to take care of before we get there.” The old man looked around. “Over there ought to do,” he said, pointing at a shallow green dale, concealed on the far side of the ridge. He led them down into the dale and dismounted.
Silk, leading their single packhorse, pulled up beside a small pool of spring water and tied the horses to a dead snag standing at its edge.
“What is it that we have to do, Grandfather?” Garion asked, sliding out of his saddle.
“That sword of yours is a trifle obvious,” the old man told him. “Unless we want to spend the whole trip answering questions, we’re going to have to do something about it.”
“Are you going to make it invisible?” Silk asked hopefully.
“In a manner of speaking,” Belgarath answered. “Open your mind to the Orb, Garion. Just let it talk to you.”
Garion frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Just relax. The Orb will do the rest. It’s very excited about you, so don’t pay too much attention to it if it starts making suggestions. It has a severely limited understanding of the real world. Just relax and let your mind sort of drift. I’ve got to talk to it, and I can only do that through you. It won’t listen to anybody else.”
Garion leaned back against a tree; in a moment he found his mind filled with all manner of peculiar images. The world he perceived in that imagining was tinged over with a faint blue haze, and everything seemed angular, as if constructed out of the flat planes and sharp edges of a crystal. He caught a vivid picture of himself, flaming sword in hand, riding at great speed with whole hordes of faceless men fleeing out of his path. Belgarath’s voice sounded sharply in his mind then. “Stop that.” The words, he realized, were not directed at him, but instead at the Orb itself. Then the old man’s voice dropped to a murmur, instructing, explaining something. The responses of that other, crystalline awareness seemed a trifle petulant; but eventually there seemed to be an agreement of some kind, and then Garion’s mind cleared.
Belgarath was shaking his head with a rueful expression. “It’s almost like talking to a child sometimes,” he said. “It has no conception of numbers, and it can’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of the word danger.”
“It’s still there,” Silk noted, sounding a bit disappointed. “I can still see the sword.”