It was pleasant in the dappled shade beneath the spreading limbs of the oak. The lane was lined with low stone walls, mossy and cool. A stile stepped up over one of the walls just there, and a path meandered across the field from it toward a nearby pond, sparkling in the sun.
"We can put the fire down behind one of the walls," Durnik said. "It won"t be seen from the main road that way."
"I"ll get some wood," Garion volunteered, looking at the dead limbs littering the gra.s.s beneath the tree.
They had by now established a sort of routine in the setting up of a night"s encampment. The tents were erected, the horses watered and picketed, and the fire was started all within the s.p.a.ce of an hour. Then Durnik, who had noticed a few telltale circles on the surface of the pond, heated an iron pin in the fire and carefully hammered it into a hook.
"What"s that for?" Garion asked him.
"I thought some fish might be good for supper," the smith said, wiping the hook on the skirt of his leather tunic. He laid it aside then and lifted a second pin out of the fire with a pair of tongs. "Would you like to try your luck too?"
Garion grinned at him.
Barak, who sat nearby combing the snarls out of his beard, looked up rather wistfully. "I don"t suppose you"d have time to make another hook, would you?" he asked.
Durnik chuckled. "It only takes a couple minutes."
"We"ll need bait," Barak said, getting up quickly. "Where"s your spade?"
Not long afterward, the three of them crossed the field to the pond, cut some saplings for poles and settled down to serious fishing.
The fish, it appeared, were ravenous and attacked the worm-baited hooks in schools. Within the s.p.a.ce of an hour nearly two dozen respectable-sized trout lay in a gleaming row on the gra.s.sy bank of the pond.
Aunt Pol inspected their catch gravely when they returned as the sky turned rosy overhead with the setting of the sun. "Very nice," she told them, "but you forgot to clean them."
"Oh," Barak said. He looked slightly pained. "We thought that well, what I mean is - as long as we caught them" He left it hanging.
"Go on," she said with a level gaze.
Barak sighed. "I guess we"d better clean them," he regretfully told Durnik and Garion.
"You"re probably right," Durnik agreed.
The sky had turned purple with evening, and the stars had begun to come out when they sat down to eat. Aunt Pol had fried the trout to a crisp, golden brown, and even the sulky little princess found nothing to complain about as she ate.
After they had finished, they set aside their plates and took up the problem of Ce"Nedra and her flight from Tol Honeth. Jeebers had sunk into such abject melancholy that he could offer little to the discussion, and Ce"Nedra adamantly announced that even if they were to turn her over to the Borunes in the city, she would run away again. In the end, they reached no conclusion.
"We"re in trouble no matter what we do," Silk summed it all up ruefully. "Even if we try to deliver her to her family, there are bound to be some embarra.s.sing questions, and I"m sure she can be counted on to invent a colorful story that will put us in the worst possible light."
"We can talk about it some more in the morning," Aunt Pol said. Her placid tone indicated that she had already made up her mind about something, but she did not elaborate.
Shortly before midnight, Jeebers made his escape. They were all awakened by the thudding of his horse"s hooves as the panic-stricken tutor fled at a gallop toward the walls of Tol Borune.
Silk stood in the flickering light of the dying fire, his face angry. "Why didn"t you stop him?" he asked Hettar, who had been standing watch.
"I was told not to," the leather-clad Algar said with a glance at Aunt Pol.
"It solves the only real problem we had," Aunt Pol explained. "The schoolmaster would only have been excess baggage."
"You knew he was going to run away?" Silk asked.
"Naturally. I helped him to arrive at the decision. He"ll go straight to the Borunes and try to save his own skin by informing them that the princess ran away from the palace on her own and that we have her now."
"You have to stop him then," Ce"Nedra said in a ringing voice. "Go after him! Bring him back!"
"After all the trouble I went to persuading him to leave?" Aunt Pol asked. "Don"t be foolish."
"How dare you speak to me like that?" Ce"Nedra demanded. "You seem to forget who I am."
"Young lady," Silk said urbanely, "I think you"d be amazed at how little Polgara"s concerned about who you are."
"Polgara?" Ce"Nedra faltered. "The Polgara? I thought you said that she was your sister."
"I lied," Silk confessed. "It"s a vice I have."
"You"re not an ordinary merchant," the girl accused him.
"He"s Prince Kheldar of Drasnia," Aunt Pol said. "The others have a similar eminence. I"m sure you can see how little your t.i.tle impresses us. We have our own t.i.tles, so we know how empty they are."
"If you"re Polgara, then he must be-" The princess turned to stare at Mister Wolf, who had seated himself on the lowest step of the stile to pull on his shoes.
"Yes," Aunt Pol said. "He doesn"t really look the part, does he?"
"What are you doing in Tolnedra?" Ce"Nedra asked in a stunned voice. "Are you going to use magic of some kind to control the outcome of the succession?"
"Why should we?" Mister Wolf said, getting to his feet. "Tolnedrans always seem to think that their politics shake the whole world, but the rest of the world"s really not all that concerned about who gains the throne in Tol Honeth. We"re here on a matter of much greater urgency." He looked off into the darkness in the direction of Tol Borune. "It will take Jeebers a certain amount of time to convince the people in the city that he"s not a lunatic," he said, "but it would probably be a good idea if we left the area. I imagine we"d better stay away from the main highway."
"That"s no problem," Silk a.s.sured him.
"What about me?" Ce"Nedra asked.
"You wanted to go to the Wood of the Dryads," Aunt Pol told her. "We"re going in that direction anyway, so you"ll stay with us. We"ll see what Queen Xantha says when we get you there."
"Am I to consider myself a prisoner then?" the princess asked stifliy.
"You can if it makes you feel better, dear," Aunt Pol said. She looked at the tiny girl critically in the flickering firelight. "I"m going to have to do something about your hair, though. What did you use for dye? It looks awful."
Chapter Nineteen.
THEY MOVED RAPIDLY SOUTH for the next few days, traveling frequently at night to avoid the mounted patrols of legionnaires who were beating the countryside in their efforts to locate Ce"Nedra.
"Maybe we should have hung on to Jeebers," Barak muttered sourly after one near-brush with the soldiers. "He"s roused every garrison from here to the border. It might have been better to have dropped him off in some isolated place or something."
"That "or something" has a certain ring of finality to it, old friend," Silk said with a sharp little grin.
Barak shrugged. "It"s a solution to a problem."
Silk laughed. "You really should try not to let your knife do all your thinking for you. That"s the one quality we find least attractive in our Cherek cousins."
"And we find this compulsion to make clever remarks which seems to overwhelm our Drasnian brothers now and then almost equally unattractive," Barak told him coolly.
"Nicely put," Silk said with mock admiration.
They rode on, watchful, always ready to hide or to run. During those days they relied heavily on Hettar"s curious ability. Since the patrols searching for them were inevitably mounted, the tall, hawk-faced Algar swept their surroundings with his mind, searching for horses. The warnings he could thus provide usually gave them sufficient notice of the approach of the patrols.
"What"s it like?" Garion asked him one cloudy midmorning as they rode along a seldom-used and weed-grown track to which Silk had led them. "I mean being able to hear a horse"s thoughts?"
"I don"t think I can describe it exactly," Hettar answered. "I"ve always been able to do it, so I can"t imagine what it"s like not doing it. There"s a kind of reaching-out in a horse"s mind - a sort of inclusiveness. A horse seems to think "we" instead of "I". I suppose it"s because in their natural condition they"re members of a herd. After they get to know you, they think of you as a herd mate. Sometimes they even forget that you"re not a horse." He broke off suddenly. "Belgarath," he announced sharply, "there"s another patrol coming just beyond that hill over there. Twenty or thirty of them."
Mister Wolf looked about quickly. "Have we got time to reach those trees?" He pointed at a thick stand of scrub maple about a half mile ahead.
"If we hurry."
"Then run!" Wolf ordered, and they all kicked their horses into a sudden burst of speed. They reached the trees just as the first few raindrops of the spring shower that had been threatening all morning pattered on the broad leaves. They dismounted and pushed in among the springy saplings, worming their way back out of sight, leading their horses.
The Tolnedran patrol came over the hilltop and swept down into the shallow valley. The captain in charge of the legionnaires pulled in his horse not far from the stand of maples and dispersed his men with a series of sharp commands. They moved out in small groups, scouting the weedy road in both directions and surveying the surrounding countryside from the top of the next rise. The officer and a civilian in a gray riding cloak remained behind, sitting their horses beside the track.
The captain squinted distastefully up into the sprinkling rain. "It"s going to be a wet day," he said, dismounting and pulling his crimson cloak tighter around him.
His companion also swung down and turned so that the party hiding among the maples was able to see his face. Garion felt Hettar tense suddenly. The man in the cloak was a Murgo.
"Over here, Captain," the Murgo said, leading his horse into the shelter provided by the outspreading limbs of the saplings at the edge of the stand.
The Tolnedran nodded and followed the man in the riding cloak. "Have you had a chance to think over my offer?" the Murgo asked.
"I thought it was only speculation," the captain replied. "We don"t even know that these foreigners are in this quadrant."
"My information is that they"re going south, captain," the Murgo told him. "I think you can be quite certain that they"re somewhere in your quadrant."
"There"s no guarantee that we"ll find them, though," the captain said. "And even if we do, it"d be very difficult to do what you propose."
"Captain," the Murgo explained patiently, "it"s for the safety of the princess, after all. If she"s returned to Tol Honeth, the Vorduvians are going to kill her. You"ve read those doc.u.ments I brought you."
"She"ll be safe with the Borunes," the captain said. "The Vorduvians aren"t going to come into Southern Tolnedra after her."
"The Borunes are only going to turn her over to her father. You"re a Borune yourself. Would you defy an Emperor of your own house?" The captain"s face was troubled.
"Her only hope of safety is with the Horbites," the Murgo pressed.
"What guarantees do I have that she"ll be safe with them?"
"The best guarantee of all - politics. The Horbites are doing everything in their power to block the Grand Duke Kador on his march to the throne. Since he wants the princess dead, the Horbites naturally want to keep her alive. It"s the only way really to insure her safety - and you become a wealthy man in the process." He jingled a heavy purse suggestively.
The captain still looked doubtful.
"Suppose we double the amount," the Murgo said in a voice that almost purred.
The captain swallowed hard. "It is for her safety, isn"t it?"
"Of course it is."
"It"s not as if I were betraying the House of Borune."
"You"re a patriot, Captain," the Murgo a.s.sured the officer with a cold smile.
Aunt Pol was holding Ce"Nedra"s arm quite firmly as they crouched together among the trees. The tiny girl"s face was outraged, and her eyes were blazing.
Later, after the legionnaires and their Murgo friend had departed, the princess exploded. "How dare they?" she raged. "And for money!"
"That Tolnedran politics for you," Silk said as they led their horses out of the stand of saplings into the drizzly morning.
"But he"s a Borune," she protested, "a member of my own family."
"A Tolnedran"s first loyalty is to his purse," Silk told her. "I"m surprised you haven"t discovered that by now, your Highness."
A few days later they topped a hill and saw the Wood of the Dryads spreading like a green smudge on the horizon. The showers had blown off, and the sun was very bright.
"We"ll be safe once we reach the Wood," the princess told them. "The legions won"t follow us there."
"What"s to stop them?" Garion asked her.
"The treaty with the Dryads," she said. "Don"t you know anything?"
Garion resented that.
"There"s no one about," Hettar reported to Mister Wolf. "We can go now or wait for dark."
"Let"s make a run for it," Wolf said. "I"m getting tired of dodging patrols." They started down the hill at a gallop toward the forest lying ahead of them.
There seemed to be none of the usual brushy margin which usually marked the transition from fields to woodlands. The trees simply began. When Wolf led them beneath those trees, the change was as abrupt as if they had suddenly gone inside a house. The Wood itself was a forest of incredible antiquity. The great oaks spread so broadly that the sky was almost never visible. The forest floor was mossy and cool, and there was very little undergrowth. It seemed to Garion that they were all quite tiny under the vast trees, and there was a strange, hushed quality about the wood. The air was very still, and there was a hum of insects and, from far overhead, a chorus of birdsong.
"Strange," Durnik said, looking around, "I don"t see any sign of woodcutters."
"Woodcutters?" Ce"Nedra gasped. "In here? They wouldn"t dare come into this wood."
"The wood is inviolate, Durnik," Mister Wolf explained. "The Borune family has a treaty with the Dryads. No one has touched a tree here for over three thousand years."
"This is a curious place," Mandorallen said, looking around a bit uncomfortably. "Me thinks I feel a presence here - a presence not altogether friendly."
"The Wood is alive," Ce"Nedra told him. "It doesn"t really like strangers - but don"t worry, Mandorallen, you"re safe as long as you"re with me." She sounded quite smug about it.
"Are you sure the patrols won"t follow us?" Durnik asked Mister Wolf. "Jeebers knew we were coming here, after all, and I"m sure he told the Borunes."