Part One
MARAGOR
Chapter One
HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, Princess Ce'Nedra, jewel of the House of Borune and the loveliest flower of the Tolnedran Empire, sat cross-legged on a sea chest in the oak-beamed cabin beneath the stern of Captain Greldik's ship, nibbling thoughtfully on the end of a tendril of her coppery hair as she watched the Lady Polgara attend to the broken arm of Belgarath the Sorcerer. The princess wore a short, pale-green Dryad tunic, and there was a smudge of ash on one of her cheeks. On the deck above she could hear the measured beat of the drum that paced the oar strokes of Greldik's sailors as they rowed upstream from the ash-choked city of Sthiss Tor.
It was all absolutely dreadful, she decided. What had begun as merely another move in the interminable game of authority and rebellion against it that she had been playing with her father, the Emperor, for as long as she could remember had suddenly turned deadly serious. She had never really intended for things to go this far when she and Master Jeebers had crept from the Imperial Palace in Tol Honeth that night so many weeks ago. Jeebers had soon deserted her - he had been no more than a temporary convenience, anyway - and now she was caught up with this strange group of grim-faced people from the north in a quest she could not even understand. The Lady Polgara, whose very name sent a chill through the princess, had rather bluntly informed her in the Wood of the Dryads that the game was over and that no evasion, wheedling, or coaxing would alter the fact that she, Princess Ce'Nedra, would stand in the Hall of the Rivan King on her sixteenth birthday - in chains if necessary. Ce'Nedra knew with absolute certainty that Lady Polgara had meant exactly that, and she had a momentary vision of being dragged, clanking and rattling in her chains, to stand in total humiliation in that grim hall while hundreds of bearded Alorns laughed at her. That had to be avoided at any cost. And so it had been that she had accompanied them - not willingly, perhaps - but never openly rebellious. The hint of steel in Lady Polgara's eyes always seemed to carry with it the suggestion of manacles and clinking chains, and that suggestion cowed the princess into obedience far more than all the Imperial power her father possessed had ever been able to do.
Ce'Nedra had only the faintest idea of what these people were doing. They seemed to be following someone or something, and the trail had led them here into the snake-infested swamps of Nyissa. Murgos seemed to be somehow involved, throwing frightful obstacles in their path, and Queen Salmissra also seemed to take an interest, even going so far as to have young Garion abducted.
Ce'Nedra interrupted her musing to look across the cabin at the boy. Why would the queen of Nyissa want him? He was so ordinary. He was a peasant, a scullion, a nobody. He was a nice enough boy, certainly, with rather plain, sandy hair that kept tumbling down across his forehead, making her fingers itch to push it back. He had a nice enough face - in a plain sort of way - and he was somebody she could talk to when she was lonely or frightened, and somebody she could fight with when she felt peevish, since he was only slightly older than she was. But he completely refused to treat her with the respect due her - he probably didn't even know how. Why all this excruciating interest in him? She pondered that, looking thoughtfully at him.
She was doing it again. Angrily she jerked her eyes from his face. Why was she always watching him? Each time her thoughts wandered, her eyes automatically sought out his face, and it wasn't really that exciting a face to look at. She had even caught herself making up excuses to put herself into places where she could watch him. It was stupid!
Ce'Nedra nibbled at her hair and thought and nibbled some more, until once again her eyes went back to their minute study of Garion's features.
"Is he going to be all right?" Barak, the Earl of Trellheim, rumbled, tugging absently at his great red beard as he watched the Lady Polgara put the finishing touches on Belgarath's sling.
"It's a simple break," she replied professionally, putting away her bandages. "And the old fool heals fast."
Belgarath winced as he shifted his newly splinted arm. "You didn't have to be so rough, Pol." His rust-colored old tunic showed several dark mud smears and a new rip, evidence of his encounter with a tree.
"It had to be set, father," she told him. "You didn't want it to heal crooked, did you?"
"I think you actually enjoyed it," he accused.
"Next time you can set it yourself," she suggested coolly, smoothing her gray dress.
"I need a drink," Belgarath grumbled to the hulking Barak.
The Earl of Trellheim went to the narrow door. "Would you have a tankard of ale brought for Belgarath?" he asked the sailor outside.
"How is he?" the sailor inquired.
"Bad-tempered," Barak replied. "And he'll probably get worse if he doesn't get a drink pretty soon."
"I'll go at once," the sailor said.
"Wise decision."
This was yet another confusing thing for Ce'Nedra. The noblemen in their party all treated this shabby-looking old man with enormous respect; but so far as she could tell, he didn't even have a title. She could determine with exquisite precision the exact difference between a baron and a general of the Imperial Legions, between a grand duke of Tolnedra and a crown prince of Arendia, between the Rivan Warder and the king of the Chereks; but she had not the faintest idea where sorcerers fit in. The materially oriented mind of Tolnedra refused even to admit that sorcerers existed. While it was quite true that Lady Polgara, with titles from half the kingdoms of the West, was the most respected woman in the world, Belgarath was a vagabond, a vagrant, frequently a public nuisance. And Garion, she reminded herself, was his grandson.
"I think it's time you told us what happened, father," Lady Polgara was saying to her patient.
"I'd really rather not talk about it," he replied shortly.
She turned to Prince Kheldar, the peculiar little Drasnian nobleman with the sharp face and sardonic wit, who lounged on a bench with an impudent expression on his face. "Well, Silk?" she asked him.
"I'm sure you can see my position, old friend," the prince apologized to Belgarath with a great show of regret. "If I try to keep secrets, she'll only force things out of me - unpleasantly, I imagine."
Belgarath looked at him with a stony face, then snorted with disgust.
"It's not that I want to say anything, you realize."
Belgarath turned away.
"I knew you'd understand."
"The story, Silk!" Barak insisted impatiently. "It's really very simple," Kheldar told him.
"But you're going to complicate it, right?"
"Just tell us what happened, Silk," Polgara said.
The Drasnian sat up on his bench. "It's not really much of a story," he began. "We located Zedar's trail and followed it down into Nyissa about three weeks ago. We had a few encounters with some Nyissan border guards - nothing very serious. Anyway, the trail of the Orb turned east almost as soon as it crossed the border. That was a surprise. Zedar had been headed for Nyissa with so much single-mindedness that we'd both assumed that he'd made some kind of arrangement with Salmissra. Maybe that's what he wanted everybody to think. He's very clever, and Salmissra's notorious for involving herself in things that don't really concern her."
"I've attended to that," Lady Polgara said somewhat grimly.
"What happened?" Belgarath asked her.
"I'll tell you about it later, father. Go on, Silk."
Silk shrugged. "There isn't a great deal more to it. We followed Zedar's trail into one of those ruined cities up near the old Marag border. Belgarath had a visitor there - at least he said he did. I didn't see anybody. At any rate, he told me that something had happened to change our plans and that we were going to have to turn around and come on downriver to Sthiss Tor to rejoin all of you. He didn't have time to explain much more, because the jungles were suddenly alive with Murgos - either looking for us or for Zedar, we never found out which. Since then we've been dodging Murgos and Nyissans both - traveling at night, hiding - that sort of thing. We sent a messenger once. Did he ever get through?"
"The day before yesterday," Polgara replied. "He had a fever, though, and it took a while to get your message from him."
Kheldar nodded. "Anyway, there were Grolims with the Murgos, and they were trying to find us with their minds. Belgarath was doing something to keep them from locating us that way. Whatever it was must have taken a great deal of concentration, because he wasn't paying too much attention to where he was going. Early this morning we were leading the horses through a patch of swamp. Belgarath was sort of stumbling along with his mind on other things, and that was when the tree fell on him."
"I might have guessed," Polgara said. "Did someone make it fall?"
"I don't think so," Silk answered. "It might have been an old deadfall, but I rather doubt it. It was rotten at the center. I tried to warn him, but he walked right under it."
"All right," Belgarath said.
"I did try to warn you."
"Don't belabor it, Silk."
"I wouldn't want them to think I didn't try to warn you," Silk protested.
Polgara shook her head and spoke with a profound note of disappointment in her voice. "Father!"
"Just let it lie, Polgara," Belgarath told her.
"I dug him out from under the tree and patched him up as best I could," Silk went on. "Then I stole that little boat and we started downriver. We were doing fine until all this dust started falling."
"What did you do with the horses?" Hettar asked. Ce'Nedra was a little afraid to this tall, silent Algar lord with his shaved head, his black leather clothing, and his flowing black scalp lock. He never seemed to smile, and the expression on his hawklike face at even the mention of the word "Murgo" was as bleak as stone. The only thing that even slightly humanized him was his overwhelming concern for horses.
"They're all right," Silk assured him. "I left them picketed where the Nyissans won't find them. They'll be fine where they are until we pick them up."
"You said when you came aboard that Ctuchik has the Orb now," Polgara said to Belgarath. "How did that happen?"
The old man shrugged. "Beltira didn't go into any of the details. All he told me was that Ctuchik was waiting when Zedar crossed the border into Cthol Murgos. Zedar managed to escape, but he had to leave the Orb behind."
"Did you speak with Beltira?"
"With his mind," Belgarath answered.
"Did he say why the Master wants us to go to the Vale?"
"No. It probably never occurred to him to ask. You know how Beltira is."
"It's going to take months, father," Polgara objected with a worried frown. "It's two hundred and fifty leagues to the Vale."
"Aldur wants us to go there," he answered. "I'm not going to start disobeying him after all these years."
"And in the meantime, Ctuchik's got the Orb at Rak Cthol."
"It's not going to do him any good, Pol. Torak himself couldn't make the Orb submit to him, and he tried for over two thousand years. I know where Rak Cthol is; Ctuchik can't hide it from me. He'll be there with the Orb when I decide to go take it away from him. I know how to deal with that magician." He said the word "magician" with a note of profound contempt in his voice.
"What's Zedar going to be doing all that time?'
"Zedar's got problems of his own. Beltira says that he's moved Torak from the place where he had him hidden. I think we can depend on him to keep Torak's body as far away from Rak Cthol as he possibly can. Actually, things have worked out rather well. I was getting a little tired of chasing Zedar anyway."
Ce'Nedra found all this a bit confusing. Why were they all so caught up in the movements of a strangely named pair of Angarak sorcerers and this mysterious jewel which everyone seemed to covet? To her, one jewel was much the same as another. Her childhood had been surrounded by such opulence that she had long since ceased to attach much importance to ornaments. At the moment, her only adornment consisted of a pair of tiny gold earrings shaped like little acorns, and her fondness for them arose not so much from the fact that they were gold but rather from the tinkling sound the cunningly contrived clappers inside them made when she moved her head.
All of this sounded like one of the Morn myths she'd heard from a storyteller in her father's court years before. There had been a magic jewel in that, she remembered. It was stolen by the God of the Angaraks, Torak, and rescued by a sorcerer and some Alorn kings who put it on the pommel of a sword kept in the throne room at Riva. It was somehow supposed to protect the West from some terrible disaster that would happen if it were lost. Curious - the name of the sorcerer in the legend was Belgarath, the same as that of this old man.