Queen of Sorcery

"To the king? He'd never believe me."

"Make him believe you. Tell him everything."

Garion shook his head firmly. "I won't tell him your name," he declared, "or Torasin's. You know what he'd do to you if I did."

"We don't matter," Lelldorin insisted, coughing again.

"I'll tell him about Nachak," Garion said stubbornly, "but not about you. Where do I tell him to find the Murgo?"

"He'll know," Lelldorin replied, his voice very weak now. "Nachak's the ambassador to the court at Vo Mimbre. He's the personal representative of Taur Urggs, King of the Murgos."

Garion was stunned at the implications of that.

"He's got all the gold from the bottomless mines of Cthol Murgos at his command," Lelldorin continued. "The plot he gave my friends and me could be just one of a dozen or more all aimed at destroying Arendia. You've got to stop him, Garion. Promise me." The pale young man's eyes were feverish, and his grip on Garion's hand tightened.

"I'll stop him, Lelldorin," Garion vowed. "I don't know how yet, but one way or another, I'll stop him."

Lelldorin sank weakly back on the litter, his strength seeming to run out as if the necessity for extracting that promise had been the only thing sustaining him.

"Good-bye, Lelldorin," Garion said softly, his eyes filling with tears.

"Good-bye, my friend," Lelldorin barely more than whispered, and then his eyes closed, and the hand gripping Garion's went limp. Garion stared at him with a dreadful fear until he saw the faint flutter of his pulse in the hollow of his throat. Lelldorin was still alive - if only barely. Garion tenderly put down his friend's hand and pulled the rough gray blanket up around his shoulders. Then he stood up and walked quickly away with tears running down his cheeks.

The rest of the farewells were brief, and they remounted and rode at a trot toward the Great West Road. There were a few cheers from the serfs and pikemen as they passed, but in the distance there was another sound. The women from the villages had come out to search for their men among the bodies littering the field, and their wails and shrieks mocked the cheers.

With deliberate purpose, Garion pushed his horse forward until he drew in beside Mandorallen. "I have something to say to you," he said hotly. "You aren't going to like it, but I don't really care."

"Oh?" the knight replied mildly.

"I think the way you talked to Lelldorin back there was cruel and disgusting," Garion told him. "You might think you're the greatest knight in the world, but I think you're a loud-mouthed braggart with no more compassion than a block of stone, and if you don't like it, what do you plan to do about it?"

"Ah," Mandorallen said. "That! I think that thou hast misunderstood, my young friend. It was necessary in order to save his life. The Asturian youth is very brave and so gives no thought to himself. Had I not spoken so to him, he would surely have insisted upon continuing with us and would soon have died."

"Died?" Garion scoffed. "Aunt Pol could have cured him."

"It was the Lady Polgara herself who informed me that his life was in danger," Mandorallen replied. "His honor would not permit him to seek proper care, but that same honor prevailed upon him to remain behind lest he delay us." The knight smiled wryly. "He will, I think, be no fonder of me for my words than thou art, but he will be alive, and that's what matters, is it not?"

Garion stared at the arrogant-seeming Mimbrate, his anger suddenly robbed of its target. With painful clarity he realized that he had just made a fool of himself. "I'm sorry," he apologized grudgingly. "I didn't realize what you were doing."

Mandorallen shrugged. "It's not important. I'm frequently misunderstood. As long as I know that my motives are good, however, I'm seldom very concerned with the opinions of others. I'm glad, though, that I had the opportunity to explain this to thee. Thou art to be my companion, and it ill-behooves companions to have misapprehensions about each other."

They rode on in silence as Garion struggled to readjust his thinking. There was, it seemed, much more to Mandorallen than he had suspected.

They reached the highway then and turned south again under a threatening sky.

Chapter Eight

THE ARENDISH PLAIN WAS A VAST, rolling grassland Only sparsely settled. The wind sweeping across the dried grass was raw and chill, and dirty-looking clouds scudded overhead as they rode. The necessity for leaving the injured Lelldorin behind had put them all into a melancholy mood, and for the most part they traveled in silence for the next several days. Garion rode at the rear with Hettar and the packhorses, doing his best to stay away from Mandorallen.Hettar was a silent man who seemed undisturbed by hours of riding without conversation; but after two days of this, Garion made a deliberate effort to draw the hawk-faced Algar out.

"Why is it that you hate Murgos so much, Hettar?" he asked for want of something better to say.

"All Alorns hate Murgos," Hettar answered quietly.

"Yes," Garion admitted, "but it seems to be something personal with you. Why is that?"

Hettar shifted in his saddle, his leather clothing creaking. "They killed my parents," he replied.

Garion felt a sudden shock as the Algar's words struck a responsive note.

"How did it happen?" he asked before he realized that Hettar might prefer not to talk about it.

"I was seven," Hettar told him in an unemotional voice. "We were going to visit my mother's family - she was from a different clan. We had to pass near the eastern escarpment, and a Murgo raiding-party caught us. My mother's horse stumbled, and she was thrown. The Murgos were on us before my father and I could get her back on her horse. They took a long time to kill my parents. I remember that my mother screamed once, near the end." The Algar's face was as bleak as rock, and his flat, quiet voice made his story seem that much more dreadful.

"After my parents were dead, the Murgos tied a rope around my feet and dragged me behind one of their horses," he continued. "When the rope finally broke, they thought I was dead, and they all rode off. They were laughing about it as I recall. Cho-Hag found me a couple of days later."

As clearly as if he had been there, Garion had a momentary picture of a child, dreadfully injured and alone, wandering in the emptiness of eastern Algaria with only grief and a terrible hatred keeping him alive.

"I killed my first Murgo when I was ten," Hettar went on in the same flat voice. "He was trying to escape from us, and I rode him down and put a javelin between his shoulders. He screamed when the javelin went through him. That made me feel better. Cho-Hag thought that if he made me watch the Murgo die, it might cure me of the hatred. He was wrong about that, though." The tall Algar's face was expressionless, and his wind-whipped scalp lock tossed and flowed out behind him. There was a kind of emptiness about him as if he were devoid of any feeling but that one driving compulsion.