Silk, his nose twitching with curiosity, had climbed up onto the bench surrounding the huge table. “There are bowls up here,” he said. “Seven of them-and seven cups. There seems to be some kind of fruit in the bowls.” He began to reach out with one hand.
“Silk!” Mister Wolf told him sharply. “Don’t touch anything.” Silk’s hand froze, and he looked back over his shoulder at the old man, his face startled.
“You’d better come down from there,” Wolf said gravely.
“The door!” Ce’Nedra exclaimed.
They all turned in time to see the massive iron door gently swinging closed. With an oath, Barak leaped toward it, but he was too late. Booming hollowly, it clanged shut just before his hands reached it. The big man turned, his eyes filled with dismay.
“It’s all right, Barak,” Garion told him. “I can open it again.”
Wolf turned then and looked at Garion, his eyes questioning. “How did you know about the cave?” he asked.
Garion floundered helplessly. “I don’t know. I just did. I think I’ve known we were getting close to it for the last day or so.”
“Does it have anything to do with the voice that spoke to Mara?”
“I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to be there just now, and my knowing about the cave seemed to be different somehow, I think it came from me, not him, but I’m not sure how. For some reason, it seems that I’ve always known this place was here – only I didn’t think about it until we started to get near it. It’s awfully hard to explain it exactly.”
Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf exchanged a long glance. Wolf looked as if he were about to ask another question, but just then there was a groan at the far end of the chamber.
“Somebody help me,” Hettar called urgently. One of the horses, her sides distended and her breath coming in short, heaving gasps, stood swaying as if her legs were about to give out from under her. Hettar stood at her side, trying to support her. “She’s about to foal,” he said.
They all turned then and went quickly to the laboring mare. Aunt Pol immediately took charge of the situation, giving orders crisply. They eased the mare to the floor, and Hettar and Durnik began to work with her, even as Aunt Pol filled a small pot with water and set it carefully in the fire. “I’ll need some room,” she told the rest of them pointedly as she opened the bag which contained her jars of herbs.
“Why don’t we all get out of your way?” Barak suggested, looking uneasily at the gasping horse.
“Splendid idea,” she agreed. “Ce’Nedra, you stay here. I’ll need your help.”
Garion, Barak, and Mandorallen moved a few yards away and sat down, leaning back against the glowing wall, while Silk and Mister Wolf went off to explore the rest of the chamber. As he watched Durnik and Hettar with the mare and Aunt Pol and Ce’Nedra by the fire, Garion felt strangely abstracted. The cave had drawn him, there was no question of that, and even now it was exerting some peculiar force on him. Though the situation with the mare was immediate, he seemed unable to focus on it. He had a strange certainty that finding the cave was only the first part of whatever it was that was happening, There was something else he had to do, and his abstraction was in some way a preparation for it.
“It is not an easy thing to confess,” Mandorallen was saying somberly.
Garion glanced at him, “In view of the desperate nature of our quest, however,” the knight continued, “I must openly acknowledge my great failing. It may come to pass that this flaw of mine shall in some hour of great peril cause me to turn and flee like the coward I am, leaving all your lives in mortal danger.”
“You’re making too much of it,” Barak told him.
“Nay, my Lord. I urge that you consider the matter closely to determine if I am fit to continue in our enterprise.” He started to creak to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Barak asked.
“I thought to go apart so that you may freely discuss this matter.”
“Oh, sit down, Mandorallen,” Barak said irritably. “I’m not going to say anything behind your back I wouldn’t say to your face.”
The mare, lying close to the fire with her head cradled in Hettar’s lap, groaned again. “Is that medicine almost ready, Polgara?” the Algar asked in a worried voice.
“Not quite,” she replied. She turned back to Ce’Nedra, who was carefully grinding up some dried leaves in a small cup with the back of a spoon. “Break them up a little finer, dear,” she instructed.
Durnik was standing astride the mare, his hands on her distended belly. “We may have to turn the foal,” he said gravely. “I think it’s trying to come the wrong way.”
“Don’t start on that until this has a chance to work,” Aunt Pol told him, slowly tapping a grayish powder from an earthen jar into her bubbling pot, She took the cup of leaves from Ce’Nedra and added that as well, stirring as she poured.
“I think, my Lord Barak,” Mandorallen urged, “that thou hast not fully considered the import of what I have told thee.”
“I heard you. You said you were afraid once. It’s nothing to worry about. It happens to everybody now and then.”
“I cannot live with it. I live in constant apprehension, never knowing when it will return to unman me.”
Durnik looked up from the mare. “You’re afraid of being afraid?” he asked in a puzzled voice.
“You cannot know what it was like, good friend,” Mandorallen replied.
“Your stomach tightened up,” Durnik told him. “Your mouth was dry, and your heart felt as if someone had his fist clamped around it?”
Mandorallen blinked.
“It’s happened to me so often that I know exactly how it feels.”
“Thou? Thou art among the bravest men I have ever known.”
Durnik smiled wryly. “I’m an ordinary man, Mandorallen,” he said. “Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn’t you know that? We’re afraid of the weather, we’re afraid of powerful men, we’re afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we’re afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we’re even afraid of living. Ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives.”
“How can you bear it?”
“Do we have any choice? Fear’s a part of life, Mandorallen, and it’s the only life we have. You’ll get used to it. After you’ve put it on every morning like an old tunic, you won’t even notice it any more. Sometimes laughing at it helps – a little.”
“Laughing?”
“It shows the fear that you know it’s there, but that you’re going to go ahead and do what you have to do anyway.” Durnik looked down at his hands, carefully kneading the mare’s belly. “Some men curse and swear and bluster,” he continued. “That does the same thing, I suppose. Every man has to come up with his own technique for dealing with it. Personally, I prefer laughing. It seems more appropriate somehow.”
Mandorallen’s face became gravely thoughtful as Durnik’s words slowly sank in. “I will consider this,” he said. “It may be, good friend, that I will owe thee more than my life for thy gentle instruction.”
Once more the mare groaned, a deep, tearing sound, and Durnik straightened and began rolling up his sleeves. “The foal’s going to have to be turned, Mistress Pol,” he said decisively. “And soon, or we’ll lose the foal and the mare both.”
“Let me get some of this into her first,” she replied, quenching her boiling pot with some cold water. “Hold her head,” she told Hettar. Hettar nodded and firmly wrapped his arms around the laboring mare’s head. “Garion,” Aunt Pol said, as she spooned the liquid between the mare’s teeth, “why don’t you and Ce’Nedra go over there where Silk and your grandfather are?”
“Have you ever turned a foal before, Durnik?” Hettar asked anxiously.
“Not a foal, but calves many times. A horse isn’t that much different from a cow, really.”
Barak stood up quickly. His face had a slight greenish cast to it. “I’ll go with Garion and the princess,” he rumbled. “I don’t imagine I’d be much help here.”
“And I will join thee,” Mandorallen declared. His face was also visibly pale. “It were best, I think, to leave our friends ample room for their midwifery.”
Aunt Pol looked at the two warriors with a slight smile on her face, but said nothing.
Garion and the others moved rather quickly away.
Silk and Mister Wolf were standing beyond the huge stone table, peering into another of the circular openings in the shimmering wall. “I’ve never seen fruits exactly like those,” the little man was saying.