spellsinger universe queen of sorcery 3

Everything was changing; that was the whole problem. The core of his

life, the rock upon which his childhood had been built, had always been

Aunt Pol. In the simple world of Faldor's farm she had been Mistress

Pol, the cook, but in the world beyond Faldor's gate she was Polgara the

Sorceress, who had watched the passage of four millennia with a purpose

beyond mortal comprehension.

And Mister Wolf, the old vagabond storyteller, had also changed.

Garion knew now that this old friend was in fact his great-great

grandfather - with an infinite number of additional "greats" added on

for good measure - but that behind that roguish old face there had

always been the steady gaze of Belgarath the Sorcerer, who had watched

and waited as he had looked upon the folly of men and Gods for seven

thousand years. Garion sighed and trudged on through the fog.

Their very names were unsettling. Garion had never wanted to believe

in sorcery or magic or witchcraft. Such things were unnatural, and they

violated his notion of solid, sensible reality. But too many things had

happened to allow him to hold on to his comfortable skepticism any

longer. In a single, shattering instant the last vestiges of his doubt

had been swept away. As he had watched with stunned disbelief, Aunt Pol

had erased the milky stains from the eyes of Martje the witch with a

gesture and a single word, restoring the madwoman's sight and removing

her power to see into the future with a brutal evenhandedness. Garion

shuddered at the memory of Martje's despairing wail. That cry somehow

marked the point at which the world had become less solid, less

sensible, and infinitely less safe.

Uprooted from the only place he had ever known, unsure of the

identities of the two people closest to him, and with his whole

conception of the difference between the possible and the impossible

destroyed, Garion found himself committed to a strange pilgrimage. He

had no idea what they were doing in this shattered city swallowed up in

trees, and not the faintest idea where they would go when they left. The

only certainty that remained to him was the single grim thought to

which he now clung; somewhere in the world there was a man who had crept

through the predawn darkness to a small house in a forgotten village

and had murdered Garion's parents; if it took him the rest of his life,

Garion was going to find that man, and when he found him, he was going

to kill him. There was something strangely comforting in that one solid

fact.

He carefully climbed over the rubble of a house that had fallen

outward into the street and continued his gloomy exploration of the

ruined city. There was really nothing to see. The patient centuries had

erased nearly all of what the war had left behind, and slushy snow and

thick fog hid even those last remaining traces. Garion sighed again and

began to retrace his steps toward the moldering stump of the tower where

they had all spent the previous night.

As he approached, he saw Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol standing together

some distance from the ruined tower, talking quietly. The old man's

rust-colored hood was turned up, and Aunt Pol's blue cloak was drawn

about her. There was a look of timeless regret on her face as she looked

out at the foggy ruins. Her long, dark hair spilled down her back, and

the single white lock at her brow seemed paler than the snow at her

feet.

"There he is now," Mister Wolf said to her as Garion approached them.

She nodded and looked gravely at Garion. "Where have you been?" she asked.

"No place," Garion replied. "I was thinking, that's all."

"I see you've managed to soak your feet."

Garion lifted one of his sodden brown boots and looked down at the

muddy slush clinging to it. "The snow's wetter than I thought," he

apologized.

"Does wearing that thing really make you feel better?" Mister Wolf asked, pointing at the sword Garion always wore now.

"Everybody keeps saying how dangerous Arendia is," Garion explained.

"Besides, I need to get used to it." He shifted the creaking new leather

sword belt around until the wirebound hilt was not so obvious. The

sword had been an Erastide present from Barak, one of several gifts he

had received when the holiday had passed while they were at sea.

"It doesn't really suit you, you know," the old man told him somewhat disapprovingly.

"Leave him alone, father," Aunt Pol said almost absently. "It's his, after all, and he can wear it if he likes."

"Shouldn't Hettar be here by now?" Garion asked, wanting to change the subject.

"He may have run into deep snow in the mountains of Sendaria," Wolf replied. "He'll be here. Hettar's very dependable."

"I don't see why we just didn't buy horses in Camaar."

"They wouldn't have been as good," Mister Wolf answered, scratching

at his short, white beard. "We've got a long way to go, and I don't want

to have to worry about a horse foundering under me somewhere along the

way. It's a lot better to take a little time now than to lose more time

later."

Garion reached back and rubbed at his neck where the chain of the

curiously carved silver amulet Wolf and Aunt Pol had given him for

Erastide had chafed his skin.

"Don't worry at it, dear," Aunt Pol told him.

"I wish you'd let me wear it outside my clothes," he complained. "Nobody can see it under my tunic."

"It has to be next to your skin."

"It's not very comfortable. It looks nice enough, I suppose, but

sometimes it seems cold, and other times it's hot, and once in a while

it seems to be awfully heavy. The chain keeps rubbing at my neck. I

guess I'm not used to ornaments."

"It's not entirely an ornament, dear," she told him. "You'll get used to it in time."

Wolf laughed. "Maybe it will make you feel better to know that it

took your Aunt ten years to get used to hers. I was forever telling her

to put it back on."

"I don't know that we need to go into that just now, father," Aunt Pol answered coolly.

"Do you have one, too?" Garion asked the old man, suddenly curious about it.

"Of course."

"Does it mean something that we all wear them?"

"It's a family custom, Garion," Aunt Pol told him in a tone that

ended the discussion. The fog eddied around them as a chill, damp breeze

briefly swirled through the ruins.

Garion sighed. "I wish Hettar would get here. I'd like to get away from this place. It's like a graveyard."

"It wasn't always this way," Aunt Pol said very quietly.

"What was it like?"

"I was happy here. The walls were high, and the towers soared. We all

thought it would last forever." She pointed toward a rank patch of

winter-browned brambles creeping over the broken stones. "Over there was

a flower-filled garden where ladies in pale yellow dresses used to sit

while young men sang to them from beyond the garden wall. The voices of

the young men were very sweet, and the ladies would sigh and throw

bright red roses over the wall to them. And down that avenue was a

marble-paved square where the old men met to talk of forgotten wars and

long-gone companions. Beyond that there was a house with a terrace where

I used to sit with friends in the evening to watch the stars come out

while a boy brought us chilled fruit and the nightingales sang as if

their hearts were breaking." Her voice drifted off into silence. "But

then the Asturians came," she went on, and there was a different note

then. "You'd be surprised at how little time it takes to tear down

something that took a thousand years to build."