Cho-Hag nodded and gestured to a serving man. He spoke briefly to him as Belgarath negligently hung one leg over the arm of his chair and settled in even deeper. The old man was wearing a soft, gray woolen tunic; although it was early, he held a tankard of ale.
"Don't you think you're overdoing that a bit?" Aunt Pol asked him, looking pointedly at the tankard.
"I have to regain my strength, Pol," he explained innocently, "and strong ale restores the blood. You seem to forget that I'm still practically an invalid."
"I wonder how much of your invalidism's coming out of Cho-Hag's ale-barrel," she commented. "You looked terrible when you came down this morning."
"I'm feeling much better now, though." He smiled, taking another drink.
"I'm sure you are. Yes, Garion?"
"Adara wants me to go riding with her," Garion said. "I - that is, she - thought I should tell you where I was going."
Queen Silar smiled gently at him. "You've stolen away my favorite lady in waiting, Garion," she told him.
"I'm sorry," Garion quickly replied. "If you need her, we won't go."
"I was only teasing you." The queen laughed. "Go ahead and enjoy your ride."
Relg came into the hall just then, and not far behind him, Taiba. The Marag woman, once she had bathed and been given decent clothes to wear, had surprised them all. She was no longer the hopeless, dirty slave woman they had found in the caves beneath Rak Cthol. Her figure was full and her skin very pale. She moved with a kind of unconscious grace, and King Cho-Hag's clansmen looked after her as she passed, their lips pursed speculatively. She seemed to know she was being watched, and, far from being offended by the fact, it seemed rather to please her and to increase her self confidence. Her violet eyes glowed, and she smiled often now. She was, however, never very far from Relg. At first Garion had believed that she was deliberately placing herself where the Ulgo would have to look at her out of a perverse enjoyment of the discomfort it caused him, but now he was not so sure. She no longer even seemed to think about it, but followed Relg wherever he went, seldom speaking, but always there.
"You sent for me, Belgarath?" Relg asked. Some of the harshness had gone out of his voice, but his eyes still looked peculiarly haunted.
"Ah, Relg," Belgarath said expansively. "There's a good fellow. Come, sit down. Take a cup of ale."
"Water, thank you," Relg replied firmly.
"As you wish." Belgarath shrugged. "I was wondering, do you by any chance know a route through the caves of Ulgo that reaches from Prolgu to the southern edge of the land of the Sendars?"
"That's a very long way," Relg told him.
"Not nearly as long as it would be if we rode over the mountains," Belgarath pointed out. "There's no snow in the caves, and no monsters. Is there such a way?"
"There is," Relg admitted.
"And would you be willing to guide us?" the old man pressed.
"If I must," Relg agreed with some reluctance.
"I think you must, Relg," Belgarath told him.
Relg sighed. "I'd hoped that I could return home now that our journey's almost over," he said regretfully.
Belgarath laughed. "Actually, our journey's only just started, Relg. We have a long way to go yet."
Taiba smiled a slow, pleased little smile at that.
Garion felt a small hand slip into his, and he smiled down at Errand, who had just come into the hall. "Is it all right, Aunt Pol?" he asked. "If I go riding, I mean?"
"Of course, dear," she replied. "Just be careful. Don't try to show off for Adara. I don't want you falling off a horse and breaking anything."
Errand let go of Garion's hand and walked over to where Relg stood.
The knots on the pouch that Durnik had so carefully sealed with lead were undone again, and the little boy took the Orb out and offered it to Relg. "Errand?" he said.
"Why don't you take it, Relg?" Taiba asked the startled man. "No one in the world questions your purity."
Relg stepped back and shook his head. "The Orb is the holy object of another religion," he declared. "It is from Aldur, not UL, so it wouldn't be proper for me to touch it."
Taiba smiled knowingly, her violet eyes intent on the zealot's face. "Errand," Aunt Pol said, "come here."
Obediently he went to her. She took hold of the pouch at his belt and held it open. "Put it away," she told him.
Errand sighed and deposited the Orb in the pouch.
"How does he manage to keep getting this open?" she said half to herself as she examined the strings of the pouch.
Garion and Adara rode out from the Stronghold into the rolling hills to the west. The sky was a deep blue, and the sunlight was very bright. Although the morning was crisp, it was not nearly as cold as it had been for the past week or so. The grass beneath their horses' hooves was brown and lifeless, lying dormant under the winter sky. They rode together without speaking for an hour or so, and finally they stopped and dismounted on the sunny south side of a hill where there was shelter from the stiff breeze. They sat together looking out at the featureless miles of the Algarian plain.
"How much can actually be done with sorcery, Garion?" she asked after a long silence.
He shrugged. "It depends on who's doing it. Some people are very powerful; others can hardly do anything at all."
"Could you-" She hesitated. "Could you make this bush bloom?" She went on quickly, and he knew that was not the question she had originally intended to ask. "Right now, I mean, in the middle of wintertime," she added.
Garion looked at the dry, scrubby bit of gorse, putting the sequence of what he'd have to do together. "I suppose I could," he replied, "but if I did that in the wrong season, the bush wouldn't have any defense against the cold, and it would die."
"It's only a bush, Garion."
"Why kill it?"
She avoided his eyes. "Could you make something happen for me, Garion?" she asked. "Some small thing. I need something to believe in very much just now."
"I can try, I guess." He did not understand her suddenly somber mood. "How about something like this?" He picked up a twig and turned it over in his hands, looking carefully at it. Then he wrapped several strands of dry grass around it and studied it again until he had what he wanted to do firmly in his mind. When he released his will on it, he did not do it all at once, so the change was gradual. Adara's eyes widened as the sorry-looking clump of twig and dry grass was transmuted before her.