"Oh, that," Eriond smiled. "But the fire wasn't real." He looked around at the rest of them. "Didn't you all know that?" he asked, looking slightly surprised. "It was only an illusion. That's all that evil ever really is—an illusion. I'm sorry if any of you were worried, but I didn't have time to explain."

Aunt Pol stared at the unperturbed young man for a moment, then turned her eyes on Garion, who stood still holding his burning sword. "And you—you—" Words somehow failed her. Slowly she sank her face into her trembling hands. "Two of them!" she said in a terrible voice. "Two of them! I don't think I can stand this—not two of them."

Durnik looked at her gravely, then handed his axe to the giant Toth. He stepped over and put his arm about her shoulders. "There, there," he said. For a moment she seemed to resist, but then she suddenly buried her face in his shoulder. "Come along now, Pol," he said soothingly and gently turned her around to walk her back to their shelter. "Things won't seem nearly so bad in the morning."

CHAPTER THREE

Garion slept very little during the remainder of that rainy night. His pulse still raced with excitement, and he lay under his blankets beside Ce'Nedra, living and reliving his encounter with the dragon. It was only toward the tag end of the night that he became calm enough to consider an idea that had come to him in the midst of the fight. He had enjoyed it. He had actually enjoyed a struggle that should have terrified him; the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this was not the first time that this had happened. As far back as his early childhood, this same wild excitement had filled him each time he had been in danger.The solid good sense of his Sendarian upbringing told him that this enthusiasm for conflict and peril was probably an unhealthy outgrowth of his Alorn heritage and that he should strive to keep it rigidly controlled, but deep inside he knew that he would not. He had finally found the answer to the plaintive "Why me?" which he had voiced so often in the past. He was inevitably chosen for these dreadful, frightening tasks because he was perfectly suited for them.

"It's what I do," he muttered to himself. "Any time there's something so ridiculously dangerous that no rational human being would even consider trying it, they send for me."

"What was that, Garion?" Ce'Nedra murmured drowsily.

"Nothing, dear," he replied. "I was just thinking out loud. Go back to sleep."

"Um mm," she murmured and snuggled closer to him, filling his nostrils with the warm fragrance of her hair.

Dawn crept slowly under the overspreading limbs of the sodden forest with a kind of growing paleness. The persistent drizzle joined with a morning mist rising from the forest floor to form a kind of damp, gray cloud enveloping the dark trunks of fir and spruce.

Garion awoke from a half doze and saw the shadowy forms of Durnik and Toth standing quietly beside the cold fire pit at the front of the shelter. He slipped out from under the blankets, moving carefully to avoid waking his sleeping wife, and pulled on his clammy boots. Then he stood up, pulled on his cloak, and moved out from under the tent canvas to join them.

He looked up toward the gloomy morning sky. "Still raining, I see," he noted in that quiet tone people use when they rise before the sun.

Durnik nodded. "At this time of year it probably won't blow over for a week or so." He opened the leather pouch at his hip and took out his wad of tinder. "I suppose we'd better get a fire going," he said.

Toth, huge and silent, went over to the side of their shelter, picked up two leather water bags and started down the steep slope toward the spring. Despite his enormous size, he made almost no sound as he moved through the fog-shrouded bushes.

Durnik knelt by the fire pit and carefully heaped dry twigs in the center. Then he laid his ball of tinder beside the twigs and took out his flint and steel.

"Is Aunt Pol still asleep?" Garion asked him.

"Dozing. She says that it's very pleasant to lie in a warm bed while somebody else builds up the fire." Durnik smiled gently.

Garion also smiled. "That's probably because for all those years she was usually the first one up." He paused. "Is she still unhappy about last night?" he asked.

"Oh," Durnik said, bending over the pit and striking at his flint with his steel, "I think she's regained her composure a bit." His flint and steel made a subdued clicking sound; with each click a shower of bright, lingering sparks spilled down into the pit. One of them fell glowing onto the tinder, and the smith gently blew on it until a tiny tongue of orange flame rose from the center. Then he carefully moved the tinder under the twigs, and the flame grew and spread with a dry crackling. "There we are," he said, brushing the fire from the tinder and returning it to his pouch along with his flint and steel.

Garion knelt beside him and began snapping a dry branch into short lengths.

"You were very brave last night, Garion," Durnik said as the two of them fed the small fire.

"I think the word is insane," Garion replied wryly. "Would anybody in his right mind try to do something like that? I think the trouble is that I'm usually right in the middle of those things before I give any thought to how dangerous they are. Sometimes I wonder if Grandfather wasn't right. Maybe Aunt Pol did drop me on my head when I was a baby."

Durnik chuckled softly. "I sort of doubt it," he said. "She's very careful with children and other breakable things."

They added more branches to the fire until they had a cheerful blaze going, and then Garion stood up. The firelight reflected back from the fog with a soft, ruddy glow that had about it a kind of hazy unreality, as if, all unaware, they had inadvertently crossed the boundaries of the real world sometime during the night and entered the realms of magic and enchantment.

As Toth came back up from the spring with the two dripping water bags, Polgara emerged from their shelter, brushing her long, dark hair. For some reason the single white lock above her left brow seemed almost incandescent this morning. "It's a very nice fire, dear," she said, kissing her husband. Then she looked at Garion. "Are you all right?" she asked him.

"What? Oh, yes. I'm fine."

"No cuts or bruises or singes you might have overlooked last night?"

"No. I seem to have gotten through it without a scratch." He hesitated. "Were you really upset last night, Aunt Pol— with Eriond and me, I mean?"

"Yes, Garion, I really was—but that was last night. What would you like for breakfast this morning?"