Silk stood beside the huge Toth near the picket line. "Where have you been?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper as Garion dismounted.

"We needed some more horses," Garion replied tersely, handing the reins of the captured mounts to Toth.

"Mallorean ones, judging from the saddles," Silk noted. "How did you find them?"

"Their riders were talking as they went by. They seemed to be quite amused by a visit they paid to a Murgo farmstead a few days ago."

"And you didn't even invite me to go along?" Silk accused.

"Sorry," Garion said, "but I had to hurry. I didn't want to lose them in the fog."

"Four of them?" Silk asked, counting horses.

"I couldn't find the other four mounts." Garion shrugged. "These ought to be enough to make up for the ones we lost during the shipwreck, though."

"Eight?" Silk looked a bit startled at that.

"I came on them by surprise. It wasn't much of a fight. Why don't we get some sleep?"

"Uh—Garion," Silk suggested, "it might not be a bad idea for you to wash up before you go back to bed. Ce'Nedra's nerves are a little delicate, and she might be upset, if she wakes up and sees you covered with blood the way you are."

The fog was even thicker the following morning. It was a heavy fog, chill and clinging, lying densely along the river bank and bedewing the tangled limbs of the willow thicket at their backs with strings of pearl like droplets.

"It hides us, at least," Garion observed, still feeling that peculiar remoteness.

"It also hides anybody else who might be out there," Sadi told him, "or any thing. That forest up ahead has a bad reputation."

"Just how big is it?"

"It's probably the largest forest in the world," Sadi replied, lifting a pack up onto a horse's back. "It goes on for hundreds of leagues." He looked curiously down the picket line. "Is it my imagination, or do we have more horses this morning?"

"I happened across a few last night," Garion replied.

After breakfast, they packed up Polgara's cooking utensils, mounted, and started out across the intervening grassland toward the forest lying hidden in the fog.

As Garion rode, he heard Silk and Durnik talking right behind him. "Just what were you doing last night?" Durnik asked directly. "When you found Zith in Liselle's bodice, I mean?"

"She's going to make a report to Javelin when this is all over," Silk replied. "There are some things I'd rather he didn't know. If I can get on friendly terms with her, maybe I can persuade her to overlook those things in her report."

"That's really rather contemptible, you know. She's just a girl."

"Believe me, Durnik, Liselle can take care of herself. The two of us are playing a game. I'll admit that I hadn't counted on Zith, though."

"Do Drasnians always have to play games?"

"Of course. It helps to pass the time. Winters are very long and tedious in Drasnia. The games we play sharpen our wits and make us better at what we do when we aren't playing." The little man raised his voice slightly. "Garion?" he said.

"Yes?"

"Are we avoiding the place where you found those horses last night? We wouldn't want to upset the ladies so soon after breakfast."

"It was over that way." Garion gestured off to the left.

"What's this?" Durnik asked.

"The extra animals came from a group of Mallorean deserters who used to creep up on isolated Murgo farmlands," Silk replied lightly. "Garion saw to it that they won't be needing horses any more."

"Oh," Durnik said. He thought about it for a moment. "Good," he said finally.

The dark trees loomed out of the fog as the company approached the edge of the forest. The leaves had turned brown and clung sparsely to the branches, for winter was not far off. As they rode in under the twisted branches, Garion looked about, trying to identify the trees, but they were of kinds that he did not recognize. They were gnarled into fantastic shapes, and their limbs seemed almost to writhe up and out from their massy trunks, reaching toward the sunless sky. Their gnarled stems were dotted with dark knots, deeply indented in the coarse bark, and those knots seemed somehow to give each tree a grotesque semblance of a distorted human face with wide, staring eyes and a gaping mouth twisted into an expression of unspeakable horror. The forest floor was deep with fallen leaves, blackened and sodden, and the fog hung gray beneath the branches spreading above.

Ce'Nedra drew her cloak more tightly about her and shuddered. "Do we have to go through this forest?" she asked plaintively.

"I thought you liked trees," Garion said.

"Not these." She looked about fearfully. "There's something very cruel about them. They hate each other."

"Hate? Trees?"

"They struggle and push each other, trying to reach the sunlight. I don't like this place, Garion."

"Try not to think about it," he advised.

They pushed deeper and deeper into the gloomy wood, riding in silence for the most part, their spirits sunk low by the pervasive gloom and by the cold antagonism seeping from the strange, twisted trees.

They took a brief, cold lunch, then rode on toward a somber twilight which seemed hardly more than a deepening of the foggy half-dark spread beneath the hateful trees.

"I guess we've gone far enough," Belgarath said finally. "Let's get a fire going and put up the tents."

It might have been only Garion's imagination or perhaps the cry of some hunting bird of prey, but as the first few flickering tongues of flame curled up around the sticks in the fire pit, it seemed that he heard a shriek coming from the trees themselves—a shriek of fear mingled with a dreadful rage. And as he looked around, the distorted semblances of human faces deeply indented in the surrounding tree trunks seemed to move in the flickering light, silently howling at the hated fire.

After they had eaten, Garion walked away from the fire. He still felt strangely numb inside, as if his emotions had been enclosed in some kind of protective blanket. He found that he could no longer even remember the details of last night's encounter, but only brief, vivid flashes of blood spurting in ruddy torchlight, of riders tumbling limply out of their saddles, and of the torch bearer's head flying off into the fog.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Belgarath asked quietly from just behind him.

"Not really, Grandfather. I don't think you'll approve of what I did, so why don't we just let it go at that? There's no way that I could make you understand."




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