Enchanter's End Game Part 2

Some distance up the slope from the forest stood a village, huddled at the side of a vast, open pit that had been gouged, raw and ugly, in the red dirt of the hillside.

"A mine town," Belgarath noted. "Let's nose about a bit and see what's going on."

They rode warily down the hill. As they drew closer, Garion could see that the village had that same temporary kind of appearance he had noticed about Yar Gurak. The buildings were constructed in the same way - unpeeled logs and rough stone - and the low-pitched roofs had large rocks laid on them to keep the s.h.i.+ngles from blowing off during the winter blizzards. Nadraks seemed not to be concerned about the external appearance of their structures; once the walls and roofs were completed, they appeared quite content to move in and devote their attentions to other matters, without attending to those final finis.h.i.+ng touches which gave a house that look of permanence that a Sendar or a Tolnedran would feel absolutely necessary. The entire settlement seemed to reflect an att.i.tude of "good enough" that offended Garion, for some reason.

Some of the miners who lived in the village came out into the dirt streets to watch the strangers ride in. Their black leather clothing was stained red by the earth in which they dug, and their eyes were hard and suspicious. An air of fearful wariness hung over the whole place, seasoned with a touch of defiant bellicosity.

Silk jerked his head toward a large, low building with a crude painting of a cl.u.s.ter of grapes on a sign banging in the breeze by the double doors at the front. A wide, roofed porch surrounded the building, and leather-garbed Nadraks lounged on benches along the porch, watching a dogfight in progress out in the middle of the street.

Belgarath nodded. "But let's go around to the side," he suggested, "in case we have to leave in a hurry."

They dismounted at the side porch, tied their horses to the railing, and went inside.

The interior of the tavern was smoky and dim, since windows seemed to be a rare feature in Nadrak buildings. The tables and benches were rough-hewn, and what light there was came from smoking oil lamps that hung on chains from the rafters. The floor was mud-stained and littered with bits of food. Dogs roamed at will under the tables and benches. The smell of stale beer and unwashed bodies hung heavy in the air, and, though it was only early afternoon, the place was crowded. Many of the men in the large room were already far gone with drink. It was noisy, since the Nadraks lounging at the tables or stumbling about the room seemed all habitually to speak at the top of their voices.

Belgarath pushed his way toward a table in the corner where a solitary man sat bleary-eyed and slack-lipped, staring into his ale cup. "You don't mind if we share the table, do you?" the old man demanded of him in an abrupt manner, sitting down without awaiting a reply.

"Would it do any good if I did?" the man with the cup asked. He was unshaven, and his eyes were pouchy and bloodshot.

"Not much," Belgarath told him bluntly.

"You're new here, aren't you?" The Nadrak looked at the three of them with only a hint of curiosity, trying with some difficulty to focus his eyes.

"I don't really see that it's any of your business," Belgarath retorted rudely.

"You've got a sour mouth for a man past his prime," the Nadrak suggested, flexing his fingers ominously.

"I came here to drink, not fight," Silk declared in a harsh tone. "I might change my mind later, but right now, I'm thirsty." He reached out and caught the arm of a pa.s.sing servingman. "Ale," he ordered. "And don't take all day."

"Keep your hands to yourself," the servingman told him. "Are you with him?" He pointed at the Nadrak they had joined.

"We're sitting with him, aren't we?"

"You want three cups or four?"

"I want one-for now. Bring the others what they want, too. I'll pay for the first time around."

The servingman grunted sourly and pushed his way off through the crowd, pausing long enough to kick a dog out of his way.

Silk's offer seemed to quiet their Nadrak companion's belligerence. "You've picked a bad time to come to town," he told them. "The whole region's crawling with Mallorean recruiters."

"We've been up in the mountains," Belgarath said. "We'll probably go back in a day or so. Whatever's happening down here doesn't interest us very much."

"You'd better take an interest while you're here - unless you'd like to try army life."

"Is there a war someplace?" Silk asked him.

"Likely to beer so they say. Someplace down in Mishrak ac Thull."

Silk snorted. "I've never met a Thull worth fighting."

"It's not the Thulls. It's supposed to be the Alorns. They've got a queen - if you can imagine such a thing - and she's moving to invade the Thulls."

"A queen?" Silk scoffed. "Can't be much of an army, then. Let the Thulls fight her themselves."

"Tell that to the Mallorean recruiters," the Nadrak suggested.

"Did you have to brew that ale?" Silk demanded of the servingman, who was returning with four large cups.

"There are other taverns, friend," the servingman replied. "If you don't like this one, go find another. That'll be twelve pennies."

"Three pennies a cup?" Silk exclaimed.

"Times are hard."

Grumbling, Silk paid him.

"Thanks," the Nadrak they were sitting with said, taking one of the cups.

"Don't mention it," Silk said sourly.

"What are the Malloreans doing here?" Belgarath asked.

"Rounding up everyone who can stand up, see lightning, and hear thunder. They do their recruiting with leg-irons, so it's a little hard to refuse. They've got Grolims with them too, and the Grolims keep their gutting knives out in plain sight as a sort of a hint about what might happen to anybody who objects too much."

"Maybe you were right when you said we picked a bad time to come down out of the mountains," Silk said.

The Nadrak nodded. "The Grolims say that Torak's stirring in his sleep."

"That's not very good news," Silk replied.

"I think we could all drink to that." The Nadrak lifted his ale cup. "You find anything worth digging for up there in the mountains?"

Silk shook his head. "A few traces is all. We've been working the streambeds for free gold. We don't have the equipment to drive shafts back into the rock."

"You'll never get rich squatting beside a creek and sifting gravel."

"We get by." Silk shrugged. "Someday maybe we'll hit a good pocket and we'll be able to pick up enough to buy some equipment."

"And someday maybe it will rain beer, too."

Silk laughed.

"You ever thought about taking in another partner?"

Silk squinted at the unshaven Nadrak. "Have you been up there before?" he asked.

The Nadrak nodded. "Often enough to know that I don't like it - but I think I'd like a stint in the army a lot less."

"Let's have another drink and talk about it," Silk suggested.

Garion leaned back, putting his shoulders against the rough log wall. Nadraks didn't seem to be so bad, once you got past the crudity of their nature, They were a blunt-spoken people and a bit sour-faced, but they did not seem to have that icy animosity toward outsiders he had noted among the Murgos.

He let his mind drift back to what the Nadrak had said about a queen. He quickly dismissed the notion that any of the queens staying at Riva might, under any circ.u.mstances, have a.s.sumed such authority. That left only Aunt Pol. The Nadrak's information could have been garbled a bit; but in Belgarath's absence, Aunt Pol might have taken charge of things - although that was not like her, at all. What could possibly have happened back there to force her to go to such extremes?

As the afternoon wore on, more and more of the men in the tavern grew reeling drunk, and occasional fights broke out - although the fights usually consisted of shoving matches, since few in the room were sober enough to aim a good blow. Their companion drank steadily and eventually laid his head down on his arms and began to snore.

"I think we've got just about everything we can use here," Belgarath suggested quietly. "Let's drift on out. From what our friend here says, I don't think it'd be a good idea to sleep in town."

Silk nodded his agreement, and the three of them rose from the table and made their way through the crowd to the side door.

"Did you want to pick up any supplies?" the little man asked.

Belgarath shook his head. "I have a feeling that we want to get out of here as soon as possible."

Silk gave him a quick look, and the three of them untied their horses, mounted and rode back out into the red dirt street. They moved at a walk to avoid arousing suspicion, but Garion could feel a sort of tense urgency to put this raw, mud-smeared village behind them. There was something threatening in the air, and the golden late afternoon sun seemed somehow shadowed, as if by an unseen cloud. As they were pa.s.sing the last rickety house on the downhill edge of the village, they heard an alarmed shout from somewhere back near the center of town. Garion turned quickly and saw a party of perhaps twenty mounted men in red tunics plunging at a full gallop toward the tavern the three of them had just left. With a practiced skill, the scarlet-clad strangers swung down from their horses and immediately covered all the doors to cut off an escape for those inside.

"Malloreans!" Belgarath snapped. "Make for the trees!" And he drove his heels into his horse's flanks.

They galloped across the weedy, stump-cluttered clearing that surrounded the village, toward the edge of the forest and safety, but there was no outcry or pursuit. The tavern appeared to contain enough fish to fill the Mallorean net. From a safe vantage point beneath spreading tree limbs, Garion, Silk, and Belgarath watched as a disconsolate-looking string of Nadraks, chained together at the ankle, were led out of the tavern into the red dust of the street to stand under the watchful eyes of the Mallorean recruiters.

"It looks like our friend has joined the army, after all," Silk observed.

"Better him than us," Belgarath replied. "We might be just a little out of place in the middle of an Angarak horde." He squinted at the ruddy disk of the setting sun. "Let's move out. We've got a few hours before dark. It looks as if military service might be contagious in this vicinity, and I wouldn't want to catch it."

Chapter Three.

THE FOREST OF Nadrak was unlike the Arendish forest lying far to the south. The differences were subtle, and it took Garion several days to put his finger on them. For one thing, the trails they followed had no sense of permanence about them. They were so infrequently traveled that they were not beaten into the loamy soil of the forest floor. In the Arendish forest, the marks of man were everywhere, but here man was an intruder, merely pa.s.sing through. Moreover, the forest in Arendia had definite boundaries, but this ocean of trees went on to the farthest edge of the continent, and it had stood so since the beginning of the world.

The forest teemed with life. Tawny deer flickered among the trees, and vast, s.h.a.ggy bison, with curved black horns s.h.i.+ny as onyx, grazed in clearings. Once a bear, grumbling and muttering irritably, lumbered across the trail in front of them. Rabbits scurried through the undergrowth and partridges exploded into flight from underfoot with a heartstopping thunder of wings. The ponds and streams abounded with fish, muskrat, otter, and beaver. There were also, they soon discovered, smaller forms of life. The mosquitoes seemed only slightly smaller than sparrows, and there was a nasty little brown fly that bit anything that moved.

The sun rose early and set late, dappling the dark forest floor with golden light. Although it was midsummer now, it was never exactly hot, and the air was rich with that smell of urgent growth common to the lands of the north, where summer was short and winter very long.

Belgarath seemed not to sleep at all once they entered the forest. Each evening, as Silk and Garion wearily rolled themselves in their blankets, the old sorcerer threaded his way back into the shadowy trees and disappeared. Once, several hours past dusk on a night filled with starlight, Garion awoke briefly and heard the loping touch of paws skittering lightly across a leaf carpeted clearing; even as he drifted back to sleep, he understood. The great silver wolf who was his grandfather roamed the night, scouring the surrounding forest for any hint of pursuit or danger.

The old man's nocturnal roamings were as silent as smoke, but they did not pa.s.s unnoticed. Early one morning, before the sun rose and while the trees were still hazy and half obscured by ground fog, several shadowy shapes drifted among the dark trunks and stopped not far away. Garion, who had just risen and was preparing to stir up the fire, froze half bent over. As he slowly straightened, he could feel eyes on him, and his skin p.r.i.c.kled peculiarly. Perhaps ten feet away stood a huge, dark gray wolf. The wolf's expression was serious, and its eyes were as yellow as sunlight. There was an unspoken question in those golden eyes, and Garion realized that he understood that question.

"One wonders why you are doing that?"

"Doing what?" Garion asked politely, responding automatically in the language of wolves.

"Going about in that peculiar form."

"It's necessary to do it."

"Ah." With exquisite courtesy the wolf did not pursue the matter further. "One is curious to know if you don't find it somewhat restricting," he noted however.

"It's not as bad as it looks - once one gets used to it."

The wolf looked unconvinced. He sat down on his haunches. "One has seen the other one several times in the past few darknesses," he said in the manner of wolves, "and one is curious to know why you and he have come into our range."

Garion knew instinctively that his answer to that question was going to be very important. "We are going from one place to another," he replied carefully. "It is not our intention to seek dens or mates in your range or to hunt the creatures that are yours." He could not have explained how he knew what to say.

The wolf seemed satisfied with his response. "One would be pleased if you would present our esteem to the one with fur like frost," he said formally. "One has noted that he is worthy of great respect."

"One would be pleased to give him your words," Garion responded, a bit surprised at how easily the elaborate phrasing came to him.

The wolf lifted his head and sniffed at the air. "It is time for us to hunt," he said. "May you find what you seek."

"May your hunt be successful," Garion returned.

The wolf turned and padded back into the fog, followed by his companions.

"On the whole, you handled that rather well, Garion," Belgarath said from the deep shadows of a nearby thicket.

Garion jumped, a bit startled. "I didn't know you were there," he said.

"You should have," the old man replied, stepping out of the shadows.

"How did he know?" Garion asked. "That I'm a wolf sometimes, I mean?"

"It shows. A wolf is very alert to that sort of thing."

Silk came out from under the tree where he had been sleeping. The little man's step was wary, but his nose twitched with curiosity. "What was that all about?" he asked.

"The wolves wanted to know what we were doing in their territory," Belgarath replied. "They were investigating to see if they were going to have to fight us."

"Fight?" Garion was startled.

"It's customary when a strange wolf enters the hunting range of another pack. Wolves prefer not to fight - it's a waste of energy - but they will, if the situation demands it."

"What happened?" Silk asked. "Why did they just go away like that?"

"Garion convinced them that we were just pa.s.sing through."

"That was clever of him."

"Why don't you stir up the fire, Garion?" Belgarath suggested. "Let's have some breakfast and move on. It's still a long way to Mallorea, and we don't want to run out of good weather."

Later that same day, they rode down into a valley where a collection of log houses and tents stood beside a fair-sized stream at the edge of a meadow.

"Fur traders," Silk explained to Garion, pointing at the rough settlement. "'There are places like this on just about every major stream in this part of the forest." The little man's pointed nose began to twitch, and his eyes grew bright. "A lot of buying and selling goes on in these little towns."