Pawn of Prophecy

Val Alorn was unlike any Sendarian city. Its walls and buildings were so incredibly ancient that they seemed more like natural rock formations than the construction of human hands. The narrow, crooked streets were clogged with snow, and the mountains behind the city loomed high and white against the dark sky.

Several horse-drawn sleighs awaited them at the wharf with savagelooking drivers and shaggy horses stamping impatiently in the packed snow. There were fur robes in the sleighs, and Garion drew one of them about him as he waited for Barak to conclude his farewells to Greldik and the sailors.

"Let's go," Barak told the driver as he climbed into the sleigh. "See if you can't catch up with the others."

"If you hadn't talked so long, they wouldn't be so far ahead, Lord Barak," the driver said sourly.

"That's probably true," Barak agreed.

The driver grunted, touched his horses with his whip, and the sleigh started up the street where the others had already disappeared. Fur-clad Cherek warriors swaggered up and down the narrow streets, and many of them bellowed greetings to Barak as the sleigh passed. At one corner their driver was forced to halt while two burly men, stripped to the waist in the biting cold, wrestled savagely in the snow in the center of the street to the encouraging shouts of a crowd of onlookers.

"A common pastime," Barak told Garion. "Winter's a tedious time in Val Alorn."

"Is that the palace ahead?" Garion asked.

Barak shook his head. "The temple of Belar," he said. "Some men say that the Bear-God resides there in spirit. I've never seen him myself, though, so I can't say for sure."

Then the wrestlers rolled out of the way, and they continued.

On the steps of the temple an ancient woman wrapped in ragged woolen robes stood with a long staff clutched in one honey hand and her stringy hair wild about her face. "Hail, Lord Barak," she called in a cracked voice as they passed. "Thy Doom still awaits thee."

"Stop the sleigh," Barak growled at the driver, and he threw off his fur robe and jumped to the ground. "Martje," he thundered at the old woman. "You've been forbidden to loiter here. If I tell Anheg that you've disobeyed him, he'll have the priests of the temple burn you for a witch."

The old woman cackled at him, and Garion noted with a shudder that her eyes were milk-white blankness.

"The fire will not touch old Martje," she laughed shrilly. "That is not the Doom which awaits her."

"Enough of dooms," Barak said. "Get away from the temple."

"Martje sees what she sees," the old woman said. "The mark of thy Doom is still upon thee, great Lord Barak. When it comes to thee, thou shalt remember the words of old Martje." And then she seemed to look at the sleigh where Garion sat, though her milky eyes were obviously blind. Her expression suddenly changed from malicious glee to one strangely awestruck.

"Hail, greatest of Lords," she crooned, bowing deeply. "When thou comest into throe inheritance, remember that it was old Martje who first greeted thee."

Barak started toward her with a roar, but she scurried away, her staff tapping on the stone steps.

"What did she mean?" Garion asked when Barak returned to the sleigh.

"She's a crazy woman," Barak replied, his face pale with anger. "She's always lurking around the temple, begging and frightening gullible housewives with her gibberish. If Anheg had any sense, he'd have had her driven out of the city or burned years ago." He climbed back into the sleigh. "Let's go," he growled at the driver.

Garion looked back over his shoulder as they sped away, but the old blind woman was nowhere in sight.

Chapter Thirteen

THE PALACE OF KING ANHEG Of Cherek was a vast, brooding structure near the center of Val Alorn. Huge wings, many of them crumbled into decay with unpaned windows staring emptily at the open sky through collapsed roofs, stretched out from the main building in all directions. So far as Garion could tell there was no plan to the palace whatsoever. It had, it seemed, merely grown over the three thousand years and more that the kings of Cherek had ruled there."Why is so much of it empty and broken down like that?" he asked Barak as their sleigh whirled into the snow-packed courtyard.

"What some kings build, other kings let fall down," Barak said shortly. "It's the way of kings." Barak's mood had been black since their encounter with the blind woman at the temple.

The others had all dismounted and stood waiting.

"You've been away from home too long if you can get lost on the way from the harbor to the palace," Silk said pleasantly.

"We were delayed," Barak grunted.

A broad, ironbound door at the top of the wide steps that led up to the palace opened then as if someone behind it had been waiting for them all to arrive. A woman with long flaxen braids and wearing a deep scarlet cloak trimmed with rich fur stepped out onto the portico at the top of the stairs and stood looking down at them. "Greetings, Lord Barak, Earl of Trellheim and husband," she said formally.

Barak's face grew even more somber. "Merel," he acknowledged with a curt nod.

"King Anheg granted me permission to greet you, my Lord," Barak's wife said, "as is my right and my duty."

"You've always been most attentive to your duties, Merel," Barak said. "Where are my daughters?"

"At Trellheim, my Lord," she said. "I didn't think it would be a good idea for them to travel so far in the cold." There was a faintly malicious note in her voice.

Barak sighed. "I see," he said.

"Was I in error, my Lord?" Merel asked.

"Let it pass," Barak said.

"If you and your friends are ready, my Lord," she said, "I'll escort you to the throne room."

Barak went up the stairs, briefly and rather formally embraced his wife, and the two of them went through the wide doorway.

"Tragic," the Earl of Seline murmured, shaking his head as they all went up the stairs to the palace door.

"Hardly that," Silk said. "After all, Barak got what he wanted, didn't he?"

"You're a cruel man, Prince Kheldar," the earl said.

"Not really," Silk said. "I'm a realist, that's all. Barak spent all those years yearning after Merel, and now he's got her. I'm delighted to see such steadfastness rewarded. Aren't you?"

The Earl of Seline sighed.

A party of mailed warriors joined them and escorted them through a maze of corridors, up broad stairs and down narrow ones, deeper and deeper into the vast pile.