"I've never found anyone to teach me," Garion said. "Faldor reads, I think, but no one else at the farm knows how."
"Nonsense," Wolf snorted. "I'll speak to your Aunt about it. She's been neglecting her responsibility. She should have taught you years ago."
"Can Aunt Pol read?" Garion asked, stunned.
"Of course she can," Wolf said, leading the way into the tavern. "She says she finds little advantage in it, but she and I had that particular argument out, many years ago." The old man seemed quite upset by Garion's lack of education.
Garion, however, was far too interested in the smoky interior of the tavern to pay much attention. The room was large and dark with a low, beamed ceiling and a stone floor strewn with rushes. Though it was not cold, a fire burned in a stone pit in the center of the room, and the smoke rose errantly toward a chimney set above it on four square stone pillars. Tallow candles guttered in clay dishes on several of the long, stained tables, and there was a reek of wine and stale beer in the air.
"What have you to eat?" Wolf demanded of a sour, unshaven man wearing a grease-spotted apron.
"We've a bit of a joint left," the man said, pointing at a spit resting to one side of the fire pit. "Roasted only day before yesterday. And meat porridge fresh yesterday morning, and bread no more than a week old."
"Very well," Wolf said, sitting down. "And I'll have a pot of your best ale and milk for the boy."
"Milk?" Garion protested.
"Milk," Wolf said firmly.
"You have money?" the sour-looking man demanded.
Wolf jingled his purse, and the sour man looked suddenly less sour.
"Why is that man over there sleeping?" Garion asked, pointing at a snoring villager sitting with his head down on one of the tables.
"Drunk," Wolf said, scarcely glancing at the snoring man.
"Shouldn't someone take care of him?"
"He'd rather not be taken care of."
"Do you know him?"
"I know of him," Wolf said, "and many others like him. I've occasionally been in that condition myself."
"Why?"
"It seemed appropriate at the time."
The roast was dry and overdone, the meat porridge was thin and watery, and the bread was stale, but Garion was too hungry to notice. He carefully cleaned his plate as he had been taught, then sat as Mister Wolf lingered over a second pot of ale.
"Quite splendid," he said, more to be saying something than out of any real conviction. All in all he found that Upper Gralt did not live up to his expectations.
"Adequate." Wolf shrugged. "Village taverns are much the same the world over. I've seldom seen one I'd hurry to revisit. Shall we go?" He laid down a few coins, which the sour-looking man snatched up quickly, and led Garion back out into the afternoon sunlight.
"Let's find your Aunt's spice merchant," he said, "and then see to a night's lodging-and a stable for our horse." They set off down the street, leaving horse and cart beside the tavern.
The house of the Tolnedran spice merchant was a tall, narrow building in the next street. Two swarthy, thick-bodied men in short tunics lounged in the street at his front door near a fierce-looking black horse wearing a curious armored saddle. The two men stared with dull-eyed disinterest at passers-by in the lane.
Mister Wolf stopped when he caught sight of them.
"Is something wrong?" Garion asked.
"Thulls," Wolf said quietly, looking hard at the two men.
"What?"
"Those two are Thulls," the old man said. "They usually work as porters for the Murgos."
"What are Murgos?"
"The people of Cthol Murgos," Wolf said shortly. "Southern Angaraks."
"The ones we beat at the battle of Vo Mimbre?" Garion asked. "Why would they be here?"
"The Murgos have taken up commerce," Wolf said, frowning. "I hadn't expected to see one of them in so remote a village. We may as well go in. The Thulls have seen us, and it might look strange if we turned now and went back. Stay close to me, boy, and don't say anything."
They walked past the two heavyset men and entered the spice merchant's shop.
The Tolnedran was a thin, baldheaded man wearing a brown, belted gown that reached to the floor. He was nervously weighing several packets of pungent-smelling powder which lay on the counter before him.
"Good day to you," he said to Wolf. "Please have patience. I'll be with you shortly." He spoke with a slight lisp that Garion found peculiar.
"No hurry," Wolf said in a wheezy, cracking voice. Garion looked at him sharply and was astonished to see that his friend was stooped and that his head was nodding foolishly.
"See to their needs," the other man in the shop said shortly. He was a dark, burly man wearing a chain-mail shirt and a short sword belted to his waist. His cheekbones were high, and there were several savagelooking scars on his face. His eyes looked curiously angular, and his voice was harsh and thickly accented.
"No hurry," Wolf said in his wheezy cackle.
"My business.here will take some time," the Murgo said coldly, "and I prefer not to be rushed. Tell the merchant here what you need, old man."
"My thanks, then," Wolf cackled. "I have a list somewhere about me." He began to fumble foolishly in his pockets. "My master drew it up. I do hope you can read it, friend merchant, for I cannot." He finally found the list and presented it to the Tolnedran.
The merchant glanced at the list. "This will only take a moment," he told the Murgo.
The Murgo nodded and stood staring stonily at Wolf and Garion. His eyes narrowed slightly, and his expression changed. "You're a seemly appearing boy," he said to Garion. "What's your name?"
Until that moment, in his entire life, Garion had been an honest and truthful boy, but Wolf's manner had opened before his eyes an entire world of deception and subterfuge. Somewhere in the back of his mind he seemed to hear a warning voice, a dry, calm voice advising him that the situation was dangerous and that he should take steps to protect himself. He hesitated only an instant before telling his first deliberate lie. He allowed his mouth to drop open and his face to assume an expression of vacantheaded stupidity. "Rundorig, your Honor," he mumbled.
"An Arendish name," the Murgo said, his eyes narrowing even more. "You don't look like an Arend."
Garion gaped at him.