The Belgariad, Vol. 2 (4 page)

"I'm sure she'd be fascinated by that last observation, old friend," Silk said slyly.

"I don't know that it's necessary to repeat it to her, Silk."

"You never know." Silk laughed. "I might need something from you someday."

"That's disgusting."

"I know." Silk grinned and looked around. "Your friend took quite a bit of trouble to look you up," he suggested. "What was behind it?"

"He wanted to warn me."
"That things were tense in Gar og Nadrak? We knew that already."

"His warning was a great deal more urgent than that."

"He didn't sound very urgent."

"That's because you don't know him."

"Grandfather," Garion said suddenly, "how did he manage to see my sword? I thought we'd taken care of that."

"He sees everything, Garion. He could glance once at a tree and tell you ten years later exactly how many leaves were on it."

"Is he a sorcerer?"

"Not as far as I know. He's just a strange old man who likes the mountains. He doesn't know what's going on because he doesn't want to know. If he really wanted to, he could probably find out everything that's happening in the world."

"He could make a fortune as a spy, then," Silk mused.

"He doesn't want a fortune. Isn't that obvious? Any time he needs money, he just goes back to that river bar he mentioned."

"But he said he'd forgotten how to find it," Garion protested.

Belgarath snorted. "He's never forgotten anything in his life." Then his eyes grew distant. "There are a few people like him in the world - people who have no interest whatsoever in what other people are doing.

Maybe that's not such a bad trait. If I had my life to live over, I might not mind doing it his way." He looked around then, his eyes very alert. "Let's take that path over there," he suggested, pointing at a scarcely visible track angling off across an open meadow, littered with bits of log bleached white by sun and weather. "If what he says is true, I think we'll want to avoid any large settlements. That path comes out farther north where there aren't so many people."

Not long afterward the terrain began to slope downward, and the three of them moved along briskly, riding down out of the mountains toward the vastness of the forest of Nadrak. The peaks around them subsided into forested foothills. Once they topped a rise, they were able to look out at the ocean of trees lying below.

The forest stretched to the horizon and beyond, dark green beneath a blue sky. A faint breeze was blowing, and the sigh of its passage through the mile upon mile of trees below had a kind of endless sadness to it, a regretful memory of summers past and springs that would never come again.

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 shingles 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 finishing 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 attitude 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 cluster 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 passing 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 circumstances, have assumed 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 passing 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."

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 passing 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, shaggy bison, with curved black horns shiny 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.