“My Lord,” she stated gravely, “I’ve been bathing winter or summer for more years than you could possibly imagine.”
“Let her bathe, Reldegen,” Mister Wolf urged. “Her temper deteriorates quite noticeably when she thinks she’s getting dirty.”
“A bath wouldn’t hurt you either, Old Wolf,” Aunt Pol retorted tartly. “You’re starting to get a bit strong from the downwind side.”
Mister Wolf looked a bit injured.
Much later, after they had eaten their fill of venison, gravy-soaked bread, and rich cherry tarts, Aunt Pol excused herself and went with a maidservant to oversee the preparation of her bath. The men all lingered at the table over their wine cups, their faces washed with the golden light of the many candles in Reldegen’s dining hall.
“Let me show you to your rooms,” Torasin suggested to Lelldorin and Garion, pushing back his chair and casting a look of veiled contempt across the table at Berentain.
They followed him from the room and up a long flight of stairs toward the upper stories of the house. “I don’t want to offend you, Tor,” Lelldorin said as they climbed, “but your cousin has some peculiar ideas.”
Torasin snorted. “Berentain’s a jackass. He thinks he can impress the Mimbrates by imitating their speech and by fawning on them.” His dark face was angry in the light of the candle he carried to light their way.
“Why should he want to?” Lelldorin asked.
“He’s desperate for some kind of holding he can call his own,” Torasin replied. “My mother’s brother has very little land to leave him. The fat idiot’s all calf eyed over the daughter of one of the barons in his district, and since the baron won’t even consider a landless suitor, Berentain’s trying to wheedle an estate from the Mimbrate governor. He’d swear fealty to the ghost of Kal Torak himself, if he thought it would get him land.”
“Doesn’t he realize that he hasn’t got a chance?” Lelldorin inquired. “There are too many land-hungry Mimbrate knights around the governor for him to even think of granting an estate to an Asturian.”
“I’ve told him the same thing myself,” Torasin declared with scathing contempt, “but there’s no reasoning with him. His behavior degrades our whole family.”
Lelldorin shook his head commiseratingly as they reached an upper hall. He looked around quickly then. “I have to talk with you, Tor,” he blurted, his voice dropping to a whisper.
Torasin looked at him sharply.
“My father’s committed me to Belgarath’s service in a matter of great importance,” Lelldorin hurried on in that same hushed voice. “I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, so you and the others will have to kill Korodullin without me.”
Torasin’s eyes went wide with horror. “We’re not alone, Lelldorin!” he said in a strangled voice.
“I’ll go down to the other end of the hall,” Garion said quickly.
“No,” Lelldorin replied firmly, taking hold of Garion’s arm. “Garion’s my friend, Tor. I have no secrets from him.”
“Lelldorin, please,” Garion protested. “I’m not an Asturian – I’m not even an Arend. I don’t want to know what you’re planning.”
“But you will know, Garion, as proof of my trust in you,” Lelldorin declared. “Next summer, when Korodullin journeys to the ruined city of Vo Astur to hold court there for the six weeks that maintain the fiction of Arendish unity, we’re going to ambush him on the highway.”
“Lelldorin!” Torasin gasped, his face turning white.
But Lelldorin was already plunging on. “It won’t be just a simple ambush, Garion. This will be a master stroke at Mimbre’s heart. We’re going to ambush him in the uniforms of Tolnedran legionnaires and cut him down with Tolnedran swords. Our attack will force Mimbre to declare war on the Tolnedran Empire, and Tolnedra will crush Mimbre like an eggshell. Mimbre will be destroyed, and Asturia will be free!”
“Nachak will have you killed for this, Lelldorin,” Torasin cried. “We’ve all been sworn to secrecy on a blood oath.”
“Tell the Murgo that I spit on his oath,” Lelldorin said hotly. “What need have Asturian patriots for a Murgo henchman?”
“He’s providing us with gold, you blockhead!” Torasin raged, almost beside himself. “We need his good red gold to buy the uniforms, the swords, and to strengthen the backbones of some of our weaker friends.”
“I don’t need weaklings with me,” Lelldorin said intensely. “A patriot does what he does for love of his country-not for Angarak gold.”
Garion’s mind was moving quickly now. His moment of stunned amazement had passed. “There was a man in Cherek,” he recalled. “The Earl of Jarvik. He also took Murgo gold and plotted to kill a king.”
The two stared at him blankly.
“Something happens to a country when you kill its king,” Garion explained. “No matter how bad the king is or how good the people are who kill him, the country falls apart for a while. Everything is confused, and there’s nobody to point the country in any one direction. Then, if you start a war between that country and another one at the same time, you add just that much more confusion. I think that if I were a Murgo, that’s exactly the kind of confusion I’d want to see in all the kingdoms of the West.”
Garion listened to his own voice almost in amazement. There was a dry, dispassionate quality in it that he instantly recognized. From the time of his earliest memories that voice had always been there – inside his mind – occupying some quiet, hidden corner, telling him when he was wrong or foolish. But the voice had never actively interfered before in his dealings with other people. Now, however, it spoke directly to these two young men, patiently explaining.
“Angarak gold isn’t what it seems to be,” he went on. “There’s a kind of power in it that corrupts you. Maybe that’s why it’s the color of blood. I’d think about that before I accepted any more red gold from this Murgo Nachak. Why do you suppose he’s giving you gold and helping you with this plan of yours? He’s not an Asturian, so patriotism couldn’t have anything to do with it, could it? I’d think about that, too.”
Lelldorin and his cousin looked suddenly troubled.
“I’m not going to say anything about this to anybody,” Garion said. “You told me about it in confidence, and I really wasn’t supposed to hear about it anyway. But remember that there’s a lot more going on in the world right now than what’s happening here in Arendia. Now I think I’d like to get some sleep. If you’ll show me where my bed is, I’ll leave you to talk things over all night, if you’d like.”
All in all, Garion thought he’d handled the whole thing rather well. He’d planted a few doubts at the very least. He knew Arends well enough by now to realize that it probably wouldn’t be enough to turn these two around, but it was a start.
Chapter Four
THE FOLLOWING MORNING they rode out early while the mist still hung among the trees. Count Reldegen, wrapped in a dark cloak, stood at his gate to bid them farewell; and Torasin, standing beside his father, seemed unable to take his eyes off Garion’s face. Garion kept his expression as blank as possible. The fiery young Asturian seemed to be filled with doubts, and those doubts might keep him from plunging headlong into something disastrous. It wasn’t much, Garion realized, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
“Come back soon, Belgarath,” Reldegen said. “Sometime when you can stay longer. We’re very isolated here, and I’d like to know what the rest of the world’s doing. We’ll sit by the fire and talk away a month or two.
Mister Wolf nodded gravely. “Maybe when this business of mine is over, Reldegen.” Then he turned his horse and led the way across the wide clearing that surrounded Reldegen’s house and back once again into the gloomy forest.
“The count’s an unusual Arend,” Silk said lightly as they rode along. “I think I actually detected an original thought or two in him last evening.”
“He’s changed a great deal,” Wolf agreed.
“He sets a good table,” Barak said. “I haven’t felt this full since I left Val Alorn.”
“You should,” Aunt Pol told him. “You ate the biggest part of one deer by yourself.”
“You’re exaggerating, Polgara,” Barak said.
“But not by very much,” Hettar observed in his quiet voice. Lelldorin had pulled his horse in beside Garion’s, but he had not spoken. His face was as troubled as his cousin’s had been. It was obvious that he wanted to say something and just as obvious that he didn’t know how to begin.
“Go ahead,” Garion said quietly. “We’re good enough friends that I’m not going to be upset if it doesn’t come out exactly right.”
Lelldorin looked a little sheepish.
“Am I really that obvious?”