Guardians of the West

Kail nodded his agreement. "The safety of the prince is our primary concern," he said.

Polgara quietly entered the room. "I gave her something that will make her sleep," she said, "and Ariana's watching her. I don't think it would do any good to try to question her just yet, and sleep is what she needs right now."

"You're probably right, Aunt Pol," Garion said, "but I'm not going to sleep -not until I find what happened to my son."

Early the following morning, they gathered again in Kail's orderly study to pore once again over the map. Garion was about to ask Kail about the search of the city, but he stopped as he felt a sudden tug of the great sword strapped across his back. Absently, still staring at the yellowed parchment map on Kail's desk, he adjusted the strap. It tugged at him again, more insistently this time.

"Garion," Durnik said curiously, "does the Orb sometimes glow like that when you aren't actually holding the sword?"

Garion looked over his shoulder at the flaring Orb.

"What's it doing that for?" he asked, baffled.

The next tug nearly jerked him off his feet. "Grandfather," he said, a bit alarmed.

Belgarath's expression grew careful. "Garion," he said in a level voice, "I want you to take the sword out of its scabbard. I think the Orb is trying to tell you something."

Garion reached back over his shoulder and drew Irongrip's great sword from its sheath with a steely slither. Without even stopping to think how irrational it might sound, he spoke directly to the glowing stone on the pommel. "I'm awfully busy right now. Can't this wait?"

The answer was a steady pull toward the door. "What is it doing?" Garion demanded irritably.

"Let's just follow it," Belgarath told him.

Helplessly, Garion followed the powerful urging through the door and out into the torchlit corridor, with the others trailing curiously along behind him. He could sense the peculiarly crystalline awareness of the Orb and feel its overwhelming anger. Not since the dreadful night in Cthol Mishrak when he had faced the maimed God of Angarak had he felt so much outrage emanating from that living stone.

The sword continued to pull him down the corridor, moving faster and faster until he was half running to keep up.

"What's it trying to do, father?" Polgara asked in a puzzled tone. "It's never done anything like this before."

"I'm not sure," the old man replied. "We'll just have to follow it and find out. I think it might be important, though."

Kail stopped briefly in front of a sentry posted in the corridor. "Would you go get my brothers?" he asked the man. "Have them come to the royal apartment."

"Yes sir," the sentry replied, with a quick salute.

Garion stopped at the dark, polished door to the apartment, opened it, and went inside with the sword still pulling at him.

Queen Layla was just in the act of drawing a blanket over the exhausted Adara, who lay asleep on the couch, and she looked up with astonishment. "What on earth-?" she began.

"Hush, Layla," Polgara told her. "Something's happening that we don't quite understand."

Garion steeled himself and went on into the bedroom. Ce'Nedra lay in the bed, tossing and whimpering in her sleep. At her bedside sat Queen Islena and Barak's wife Merel. Ariana dozed in a deep chair near the window. He was only able to give the ladies attending his wife the briefest of glances, however, before the sword pulled him on into the nursery, where the sight of the empty cradle wrenched at his heart. The great sword dipped over the cradle, and the Orb glowed. Then the stone flickered with a pulsating light for a moment.

"I think I'm starting to understand," Belgarath said. "I won't absolutely swear to this, but I think it wants to follow Geran's trail."

"Can it do that?" Durnik asked.

"It can do almost anything, and it's totally committed to the Rivan line. Let it go, Garion. Let's see where it leads you."

In the corridor outside, Kail's two brothers, Verdan and Brin, met them. Verdan, the eldest of the three, was as burly as an ox, and Brin, the youngest, only slightly less so. Both men wore mail shirts and helmets and had heavy broadswords belted to their sides.

"We think that the Orb may be trying to lead us to the prince," Kail explained tersely to them. "We might need you two when we find him." Brin flashed a broad, almost boyish grin. "We'll have the abductor's head on a pole before nightfall, then," he said.

"Let's not be too hasty about removing heads," Belgarath told him. "I want the answers to some questions first."

"One of you stays with Ce'Nedra at all times," Aunt Pol told Queen Layla, who had curiously trailed along behind them. "She'll probably wake up sometime this afternoon. Let Ariana sleep for now. Ce'Nedra might need her when she awakens."

"Of course, Polgara," the plump queen of Sendaria replied.

"And you," Aunt Pol said firmly to Errand, who was just coming down the hall. "I want you to stay in the royal apartment and do exactly what Layla tells you to do."

"But-" he started to protest.

"No buts, Errand. What we have to do might be dangerous, and that's something you haven't quite learned to understand yet."

He sighed. "All right, Polgara," he said disconsolately.

With the Orb on the pommel of the massive sword pulling him along, Garion followed the unseen track of his son's abductor out through one of the side gates with the rest of them close on his heels.

"It seems to want to go toward the mountains," Garion said. "I thought the trail would lead down into the city."

"Don't think, Garion," Polgara told him. "Just go where the Orb leads you."

The trailed across the meadow rising steeply behind the Citadel and then into the forest of dark fir and spruce where Garion and Ce'Nedra had often strolled on their summer outings.

"Are you sure it knows what it' s doing?" Garion asked as he pushed his way through a tangled patch of undergrowth. "There's no path here at all. I don't think anyone would have come this way."

"It's following some kind of trail, Garion," Belgarath assured him. "Just keep up with it."

They struggled through the thick underbrush for an hour or so. Once a covey of grouse exploded from under Garion's feet with a heart-stopping thunder of wings.

"I'll have to remember this place," Brin said to Kail. "The hunting here might be very good."

"We're hunting other game at the moment. Keep your mind on your work."