The moon had risen late that night and shone brightly on the frostsilvered stones outside the inn. Durnik had hitched the horses to the wagons and had led them out of the stable.
"We"ll lead the horses out to the road," Wolf said very quietly. "I see no need of rousing the villagers as we pa.s.s."
Silk again took the lead, and they moved slowly out of the innyard. The fields beyond the village were white with frost, and the pale, smoky-looking moonlight seemed to have leeched all color from them.
"As soon as we"re well out of earshot," Wolf said, climbing up into his wagon, "let"s put some significant distance between us and this place. The wagons are empty, and a little run won"t hurt the horses."
"Truly," Silk agreed.
They all mounted their wagons and set off at a walk. The stars glittered overhead in the crisp, cold sky. The fields were very white in the moonlight, and the clumps of trees back from the road very dark.
Just as they went over the first hilltop, Garion looked back at the dark cl.u.s.ter of houses in the valley behind. A single flicker of light came from a window somewhere, a lone, golden pinpoint that appeared and then vanished.
"Someone"s awake back there," he told Silk. "I just saw a light."
"Some early riser perhaps," Silk suggested. "But then again, perhaps not." He shook the reins slightly, and the horses increased their pace. He shook them again, and they began to trot.
"Hang on, boy," he instructed, reached forward and slapped the reins down smartly on the rumps of the horses.
The wagon bounced and clattered fearfully behind the running team, and the bitterly chill air rushed at Garion"s face as he clung to the wagon seat.
At full gallop the three wagons plunged down into the next valley, rushing between the frost-white fields in the bright moonlight, leaving the village and its single light far behind.
By the time the sun rose, they had covered a good four leagues, and Silk reined in his steaming horses. Garion felt battered and sore from the wild ride over the iron-hard roads and was glad for the chance to rest. Silk handed him the reins and jumped down from the wagon. He walked back and spoke briefly to Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol, then returned to the wagon.
"We turn off at that lane just ahead," he told Garion as he ma.s.saged his fingers.
Garion offered him the reins.
"You drive," Silk told him. "My hands are frozen stiff. Just let the horses walk."
Garion clucked at the horses and shook the reins slightly. Obediently, the team started out again.
"The lane circles around to the back of that hill," Silk said, pointing with his chin since his hands were tucked inside his tunic. "On the far side there"s a copse of fir trees. We"ll stop there to rest the horses."
"Do you think we"re being followed?" Garion asked.
"This"ll be a good time to find out," Silk said.
They rounded the hill and drove on down to where the dark firs bordered the road. Then Garion turned the horses and moved in under the shadowy trees.
"This will do fine," Silk said, getting down. "Come along."
"Where are we going?"
"I want to have a look at that road behind us," Silk said. "We"ll go up through the trees to the top of the hill and see if our back trail has attracted any interest."
And he started up the hill, moving quite rapidly but making absolutely no sound as he went. Garion floundered along behind him, his feet cracking the dead twigs underfoot embarra.s.singly until he began to catch the secret of it. Silk nodded approvingly once, but said nothing.
The trees ended just at the crest of the hill, and Silk stopped there. The valley below with the dark road pa.s.sing through it was empty except for two deer who had come out of the woods on the far side to graze in the frosty gra.s.s.
"We"ll wait a while," Silk said. "If Brill and his hireling are following, they shouldn"t be far behind."
He sat on a stump and watched the empty valley.
After a while, a cart moved slowly along the road toward Winold. It looked tiny in the distance, and its pace along the scar of the road seemed very slow.
The sun rose a bit higher, and they squinted into its full morning brightness.
"Silk," Garion said finally in a hesitant tone.
"Yes, Garion?"
"What"s this all about?" It was a bold question to ask, but Garion felt he knew Silk well enough now to ask it.
"All what?"
"What we"re doing. I"ve heard a few things and guessed a few more, but it doesn"t really make any sense to me."
"And just what have you guessed, Garion?" Silk asked, his small eyes very bright in his unshaven face.
"Something"s been stolen-something very important - and Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol - and the rest of us - are trying to get it back."
"All right," Silk said. "That much is true."
"Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol are not at all what they seem to be," Garion went on.
"No," Silk agreed, "they aren"t."
"I think they can do things that other people can"t do," Garion said, struggling with the words. "Mister Wolf can follow this thing - whatever it is - without seeing it. And last week in those woods when the Murgos pa.s.sed, they did something - I don"t even know how to describe it, but it was almost as if they reached out and put my mind to sleep. How did they do that? And why?"
Silk chuckled.
"You"re a very observant lad," he said. Then his tone became more serious. "We"re living in momentous times, Garion. The events of a thousand years and more have all focused on these very days. The world, I"m told, is like that. Centuries pa.s.s when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again."
"I think that if I had my choice, I"d prefer one of those quiet centuries," Garion said glumly.
"Oh, no," Silk said, his lips drawing back in a ferretlike grin. "Now"s the time to be alive - to see it all happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure."
Garion let that pa.s.s.
"What is this thing we"re following?" he asked.
"It"s best if you don"t even know its name," Silk told him seriously, "or the name of the one who stole it. There are people trying to stop us; and what you don"t know, you can"t reveal."
"I"m not in the habit of talking to Murgos," Garion said stiffly.
"It"s not necessary to talk to them," Silk said. "There are some among them who can reach out and pick the thoughts right out of your mind."
"That isn"t possible," Garion said.
"Who"s to say what"s possible and what isn"t?" Silk asked. And Garion remembered a conversation he had once had with Mister Wolf about the possible and the impossible.
Silk sat on the stump in the newly risen sun looking thoughtfully down into the still-shadowy valley, an ordinary-looking little man in ordinary-looking tunic and hose and a rough brown shoulder cape with its hood turned up over his head.
"You were raised as a Sendar, Garion," he said, "and Sendars are solid, practical men with little patience for such things as sorcery and magic and other things that can"t be seen or touched. Your friend, Durnik, is a perfect Sendar. He can mend a shoe or fix a broken wheel or dose a sick horse, but I doubt that he could bring himself to believe in the tiniest bit of magic."
"I am a Sendar," Garion objected. The hint implicit in Silk"s observation struck at the very center of his sense of his own ident.i.ty.
Silk turned and looked at him closely.
"No," he said, "you aren"t. I know a Sendar when I see one just as I can recognize the difference between an Arend and a Tolnedran or a Cherek and an Algar. There"s a certain set of the head, a certain look about the eyes of Sendars that you don"t have. You"re not a Sendar."
"What am I then?" Garion challenged.
"I don"t know," Silk said with a puzzled frown, "and that"s very unusual, since I"ve been trained to know what people are. It may come to me in time, though."
"Is Aunt Pol a Sendar?" Garion asked.
"Of course not." Silk laughed.
"That explains it then," Garion said. "I"m probably the same thing she is."
Silk looked sharply at him.
"She"s my father"s sister, after all," Garion said. "At first I thought it was my mother she was related to, but that was wrong. It was my father; I know that now."
"That"s impossible," Silk said flatly.
"Impossible?"
"Absolutely out of the question. The whole notion"s unthinkable."
"Why?"
Silk chewed at his lower lip for a moment. "Let"s go back to the wagons," he said shortly.
They turned and went down through the dark trees with the bright morning sunlight slanting on their backs in the frosty air.
They rode the back lanes for the rest of the day. Late in the afternoon when the sun had begun to drop into a purple bank of clouds toward the west, they arrived at the farm where they were to pick up Mingan"s hams. Silk spoke with the stout farmer and showed him the piece of parchment Mingan had given them in Darine.
"I"ll be glad to get rid of them," the farmer said. "They"ve been occupying storage s.p.a.ce I sorely need."
"That"s frequently the case when one has dealings with Tolnedrans," Silk observed. "They"re gifted at getting a bit more than they pay foreven if it"s only the free use of someone else"s storage sheds."
The farmer glumly agreed.
"I wonder," Silk said as if the thought had just occurred to him, "I wonder if you might have seen a friend of mine - Brill by name? A medium-sized man with black hair and beard and a cast to one eye?"
"Patched clothes and a sour disposition?" the stout farmer asked.
"That"s him," Silk said.
"He"s been about the area," the farmer said, "looking - or so he said - for an old man and a woman and a boy. He said that they stole some things from his master and that he"d been sent to find them."
"How long ago was that?" Silk asked.
"A week or so," the farmer said.
"I"m sorry to have missed him," Silk said. "I wish I had the leisure to look him up."
"I can"t for my life think why," the farmer said bluntly. "To be honest with you, I didn"t care much for your friend."
"I"m not overfond of him myself," Silk agreed, "but the truth is that he owes me some money. I could quite easily do without Brill"s companionship, but I"m lonesome for the money, if you take my meaning."
The farmer laughed.
"I"d take it as a kindness if you happened to forget that I asked after him," Silk said. "He"ll likely be hard enough to find even if he isn"t warned that I"m looking for him."
"You can depend on my discretion," the stout man said, still laughing. "I have a loft where you and your wagoneers can put up for the night, and I"d take it kindly if you"d sup with my workers in the dining hall over there."
"My thanks," Silk said, bowing slightly. "The ground"s cold, and it"s been some time since we"ve eaten anything but the rough fare of the road."
"You wagoneers lead adventuresome lives," the stout man said almost enviously. "Free as birds with always a new horizon just beyond the next hilltop."
"It"s much overrated," Silk told him, "and winter"s a thin time for birds and wagoneers both."
The farmer laughed again, clapped Silk on the shoulder and then showed him where to put up the horses.
The food in the stout farmer"s dining hall was plain, but there was plenty; and the loft was a bit drafty, but the hay was soft. Garion slept soundly. The farm was not Faldor"s, but it was familiar enough, and there was that comforting sense of having walls about him again that made him feel secure.
The following morning, after a solid breakfast, they loaded the wagons with the Tolnedran"s salt-crusted hams and bade the farmer a friendly good-bye.
The clouds that had begun to bank up in the west the evening before had covered the sky during the night, and it was cold and gray as they set out for Muros, fifty leagues to the south.
Chapter Nine.
THE ALMOST TWO WEEKS it took them to reach Muros were the most uncomfortable Garion had ever spent. Their route skirted the edge of the foothills through rolling and spa.r.s.ely settled country, and the sky hung gray and cold overhead. There were occasional spits of snow, and the mountains loomed black against the skyline to the east.
It seemed to Garion that he would never be warm again. Despite Durnik"s best efforts to find dry firewood each night, their fires always seemed pitifully small, and the great cold around them enormously large. The ground upon which they slept was always frozen, and the chill seemed actually to seep into Garion"s bones.
His education in the Drasnian secret language continued and he became, if not adept, at least competent by the time they pa.s.sed Lake Camaar and began the long, downhill grade that led to Muros.