‘Do you really like surprises?’

‘A surprise is better than living with this sense of dread. My nerves aren’t what they used to be.’

‘You’re too high-strung sometimes. Look at all the entertainment you’re getting out of anticipation.’

‘I’m terribly disappointed in you, Garion. I thought you were a nice, sensible boy.’

‘What did I say?’

‘Anticipation. In this situation, that’s just another word for “worry”, and worry isn’t good for anybody.’

‘It’s just a way to get us ready in case something happens.’

‘I’m always ready, Garion. That’s how I’ve managed to live so long, but right now I feel almost as tightly wound as a lute string.’

‘Try not to think about it.’

‘Of course,’ Silk retorted sarcastically. ‘But doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the warning? Aren’t we supposed to think about it?’

The sun had not come up yet when Sadi came back to their camp, moving very quietly and going from tent to tent with a whispered warning. ‘There’s somebody out there,’ he warned after he had scratched on the flap of Garion’s tent.

Garion rolled out from under his blankets, his hand automatically reaching for his sword. He paused then. The old gold-hunter had warned them against the shedding of blood. Was this the event for which they had been waiting? But were they supposed to obey the prohibition, or to step over it in response to some higher need? There was not time now to stand locked in indecision, however. Sword in hand, Garion rushed from the tent.

The light had that peculiar steely tint that comes from a colorless sky before the sun rises. It cast no shadows and what lay beneath the broad-spread oaks was not so much darkness as it was a fainter light. Garion moved quickly, his feet avoiding almost on their own the windrows of years-old dead leaves and the fallen twigs and branches which littered the floor of this ancient forest.

Zakath stood atop the knoll, holding his sword.

‘Where are they?’ Garion’s voice was not so much a whisper as a breath.

‘They were coming up from the south,’ Zakath whispered back.

‘How many?’

‘It’s hard to say.’

‘Are they trying to sneak up on us?’

‘It didn’t really look that way. The ones we saw could have hidden back there among the trees, but they just came walking through the forest.’

Garion peered out into the growing light. And then he saw them. They were dressed all in white – robes or long smocks – and they made no attempts at concealment. Their movements were deliberate and seemed to have a placid, unhurried calm about them. They came in single file, each following the one in front at a distance of about ten yards. There was something hauntingly familiar about the way they moved through the forest.

‘All they need are the torches,’ Silk said from directly behind Garion. The little man made no attempt to keep his voice down.

‘Be still!’ Zakath hissed.

‘Why? They know we’re here.’ Silk laughed a caustic little laugh. ‘Remember that time on the Isle of Verkat?’ he said to Garion. ‘You and I spent a half hour or so crawling through the wet grass following Vard and his people, and I’m absolutely sure now that they knew we were there all the time. We could have just walked along behind them and saved ourselves all the discomfort.’

‘What are you talking about, Kheldar?’ Zakath demanded in a hoarse whisper.

‘This is another of Belgarath’s repetitions,’ Silk shrugged. ‘Garion and I have been through it before.’ He sighed ruefully. ‘Life is going to get terribly boring if nothing new ever happens.’ Then he raised his voice to a shout. ‘We’re over here,’ he called to the white-robed figures out in the forest.

‘Are you mad?’ Zakath exclaimed.

‘Probably not, but then crazy people never really know, do they? Those people are Dals, and I seriously doubt that any Dal has ever hurt anybody since the beginning of time.’

The leader of the strange column halted at the foot of the knoll and pushed back the cowl of his white robe. ‘We have been awaiting you,’ he announced. ‘The Holy Seeress has sent us to see you safely to Kell.’

CHAPTER FOUR

KING KHEVA OF DRASNIA was irritable that morning. He had overheard a conversation the previous evening between his mother and an emissary of King Anheg of Cherek, and his irritation grew out of a sort of moral dilemma. To reveal to his mother that he had been eavesdropping would of course be quite out of the question, and so he could not discuss with her what he had heard until she broached the subject herself. It seemed quite unlikely that she would do so, and so Kheva was at an impasse.

It should be stated here that King Kheva was not really the sort of boy who would normally intrude on his mother’s privacy. He was basically a decent lad. But he was also a Drasnian. There is a national trait among Drasnians which, for want of a better term, might be called curiosity. All people were curious to a certain degree, but in Drasnians the trait was quite nearly compulsive. Some contend that it was their innate curiosity which has made spying their national industry. Others maintain with equal vigor that generations of spying had honed the Drasnian’s natural curiosity to a fine edge. The debate was much like the endless argument about the chicken and the egg, and almost as pointless. Quite early in life, Kheva had trailed unobtrusively along behind one of the official court spies and thereby discovered the closet hidden behind the east wall of his mother’s sitting room. Periodically he would slip into that closet in order to keep track of affairs of state and any other matters of interest. He was the king, after all, and thus he had a perfect right to the information. He reasoned that by spying, he could obtain it while sparing his mother the inconvenience of passing it on to him. Kheva was a considerate boy.

The conversation in question had concerned the mysterious disappearance of the Earl of Trellheim, his ship Seabird and a number of other individuals, including Trellheim’s son Unrak.

Barak, Earl of Trellheim, was considered in some quarters to be an unreliable sort, and his companions in this vanishing were, if anything, even worse. The Alorn kings were disquieted by the potential for disaster represented by Barak and his cohorts roaming loose in the Gods only knew what ocean.

What concerned young King Kheva, however, was not so much random disasters as it was the fact that his friend Unrak had been invited to participate while he had not. The injustice of that rankled. The fact that he was a king seemed to automatically exclude him from anything that could even remotely be considered hazardous. Everyone went out of his way to keep Kheva safe and secure, but Kheva did not want to be kept safe and secure. Safety and security were boring, and Kheva was at an age where he would go to any lengths to avoid boredom.