The Seeress of Kell Read online

  ‘I doubt it, and I certainly hope not.’ He looked at Belgarath. ‘I think you’d better go down a mile or so and make camp.’

  ‘It’s early yet.’

  ‘No. Actually it’s late. That afternoon sun is quite warm – even up here. All this snow’s starting to get soft. I’ve seen three avalanches already. If you make a wrong guess up here, you might get down a lot quicker than you want to.’

  ‘Interesting point there. We’ll get down out of this pass and set up for the night.’

  ‘I’ll go on ahead.’ Beldin crouched and spread his arms. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come along, Pol?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  He left a ghostly chuckle behind him as he soared away.

  They set up for the night on a ridge line. Although it exposed them to the constant wind, it was free from the danger of avalanche. Garion slept poorly that night. The wind which raked the exposed ridge set the taut canvas of the tent he shared with Ce’Nedra to thrumming, and the noise intruded itself upon him as he tried again and again to drift off. He shifted restlessly.

  ‘Can’t you sleep either?’ Ce’Nedra said in the chill darkness.

  ‘It’s the wind,’ he replied.

  ‘Try not to think about it.’

  ‘I don’t have to think about it. It’s like trying to sleep inside a big drum.’

  ‘You were very brave this morning, Garion. I was terrified when I heard about that monster.’

  ‘We’ve dealt with monsters before. After a while, you get used to it.’

  ‘My, aren’t we getting blasé?’

  ‘It’s an occupational trait. All of us mighty heroes have it. Fighting a monster or two before breakfast helps to sharpen the appetite.’

  ‘You’ve changed, Garion.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Yes, you have. When I first met you, you’d never have said anything like that.’

  ‘When you first met me, I took everything very seriously.’

  ‘Don’t you take what we’re doing seriously?’ She said it almost accusingly.

  ‘Of course I do. It’s the little incidental things along the way I sort of shrug off. There’s not much point in worrying about something after it’s already over, is there?’

  ‘Well, as long as neither of us can sleep anyway—’ And she drew him to her and kissed him rather seriously.

  The temperature plunged that night, and when they arose, the snow, which had been dangerously soft the previous afternoon, had frozen, and they were able to proceed with little danger of avalanche. Because this side of the summit had taken the full force of the wind during the blizzard, the caravan track had little snow on it, and they made good time going down. By mid afternoon they passed the last of the snow and rode down into a world of spring. The meadows were steep and lush and speckled with wildflowers bending in the mountain breeze. Brooks, which came directly out of the faces of glaciers, purled and danced over gleaming stones, and soft-eyed deer watched in gentle astonishment as Garion and the others rode by.

  A few miles below the snow line, they began to see herds of sheep grazing with witless concentration, consuming grass and wildflowers with indiscriminate appetite. The shepherds who watched them all wore simple white smocks, and they sat on hillocks or rocks in dreamy contemplation while their dogs did all the work.

  The she-wolf trotted sedately beside Chretienne. Her ears twitched occasionally, however, and she watched the sheep, her tawny eyes intent.

  ‘One advises against it, little sister,’ Garion said to her in the language of wolves.

  ‘One was not really considering it,’ she replied. ‘One has encountered these beasts before – and the man-things and dog-things which guard them. It is not difficult to take one of them, but the dog-things grow excited when one does, and their barking disturbs one’s meal.’ Her tongue lolled out in a wolfish sort of grin. ‘One could make the beasts run, however. All things should know to whom the forest belongs.’

  ‘The pack-leader would disapprove, one is afraid.’

  ‘Ah,’ she agreed. ‘Perhaps the pack-leader takes himself too seriously. One has observed that quality in him.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Zakath asked curiously.

  ‘She was thinking about chasing the sheep,’ Garion replied, ‘not necessarily to kill any of them but just to make them run. I think it amuses her.’

  ‘Amuses? That’s an odd thing to say about a wolf.’

  ‘Not really. Wolves play a great deal, and they have a very refined sense of humor.’

  Zakath’s face grew thoughtful. ‘You know something, Garion?’ he said. ‘Man thinks he owns the world, but we share it with all sorts of creatures who are indifferent to our overlordship. They have their own societies, and I suppose even their own cultures. They don’t even pay any attention to us, do they?’

  ‘Only when we inconvenience them.’

  ‘That’s a crushing blow to the ego of an emperor.’ Zakath smiled wryly. ‘We’re the two most powerful men on earth, and wolves look upon us as no more than a minor inconvenience.’

  ‘It teaches us humility,’ Garion agreed. ‘Humility is good for the soul.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  It was evening when they reached the shepherds’ encampment. Since a sheep-camp is a more or less permanent thing, it is usually more well-organized than the hasty encampments of travelers. The tents were larger, for one thing, and they were stretched over pole frames. The tents lined either side of a street made of logs laid tightly side by side. The corrals for the shepherds’ horses were at the lower end of the street, and a log dam had backed up a mountain brook to form a sparkling little pond that provided water for the sheep and horses. The shadows of evening were settling over the little valley where the camp lay, and blue columns of smoke rose straight up from the cookfires into the calm and windless air.

  A tall, lean fellow with a deeply tanned face, snowy white hair, and the simple white smock that seemed to be the common garb of these shepherds came out of one of the tents as Garion and Zakath reined in just outside the camp. ‘We have been advised of your coming,’ he said. His voice was very deep and quiet. ‘Will you share our evening meal with us?’ Garion looked at him closely, noting his resemblance to Vard, the man whom they had met on the Isle of Verkat, half a world away. There could be no question now that the Dals and the slave race in Cthol Murgos were related.

  ‘We would be honored,’ Zakath responded to the invitation. ‘We do not wish to impose, however.’

  ‘It is no imposition. I am Burk. I will have some of my men care for your mounts.’

  The others rode up and stopped.

  ‘Welcome all,’ Burk greeted them. ‘Will you step down? The evening meal is almost ready, and we have set aside a tent for your use.’ He looked gravely at the she-wolf and inclined his head to her. It was evident that her presence did not alarm him.

  ‘Your courtesy is most becoming,’ Polgara said, dismounting, ‘and your hospitality is quite unexpected this far from civilization.’

  ‘Man carries his civilization with him, Lady,’ Burk replied.

  ‘We have an injured man with us,’ Sadi told him, ‘a poor traveler we came across on our way over the mountain. We gave him what aid we could, but our business is pressing, and I’m afraid our pace is aggravating his injuries.’

  ‘You may leave him with us, and we will care for him.’ Burk looked critically at the drugged priest slumped in his saddle. ‘A Grolim,’ he noted. ‘Is your destination perhaps Kell?’

  ‘We have to stop there,’ Belgarath said cautiously.

  ‘This Grolim would not be able to go with you then.’

  ‘We’ve heard about that,’ Silk said, swinging down from his horse. ‘Do they really go blind when they try to go to Kell?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. We have such a one here in our camp with us now. We found him wandering in the forest when we were bringing the sheep up to summer pasture.’

  Belgarath’s
eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Do you suppose I might be able to talk with him?’ he asked. ‘I’ve made a study of such things, and I’m always eager to get additional information.’

  ‘Of course,’ Burk agreed. ‘He’s in that last tent on the right.’

  ‘Garion, Pol, come along,’ the old man said tersely and started along the log street. Oddly, the she-wolf accompanied them.

  ‘Why the sudden curiosity, father?’ Polgara asked when they were out of earshot.

  ‘I want to find out just how effective this curse the Dals have laid around Kell really is. If it’s something that can be overcome, we might run into Zandramas when we get there after all.’

  They found the Grolim sitting on the floor in his tent. The harsh angularity of his face had softened, and his sightless eyes had lost the burning fanaticism common to all Grolims. His face instead was filled with a kind of wonder.

  ‘How is it with you, friend?’ Belgarath asked him gently.

  ‘I am content,’ the Grolim replied. The word seemed peculiar coming from the mouth of a priest of Torak.

  ‘Why is it that you tried to approach Kell? Didn’t you know about the curse?’

  ‘It is not a curse. It is a blessing.’

  ‘A blessing?’

  ‘I was ordered by the Sorceress Zandramas to try to reach the holy city of the Dals,’ the Grolim continued. ‘She told me that I would be exalted should I be successful.’ He smiled gently. ‘It was in her mind, I think, to test the strength of the enchantment to determine if it might be safe for her to attempt the journey.’

  ‘I gather that it wouldn’t be.’

  ‘That is difficult to say. Great benefit might come to her if she tried.’

  ‘I’d hardly call going blind a benefit.’

  ‘But I am not blind.’

  ‘I thought that’s what the enchantment was all about.’

  ‘Oh, no. I cannot see the world around me, but that is because I see something else – something that fills my heart with joy.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I see the face of God, my friend, and will until the end of my days.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS ALWAYS there. Even when they were in deep, cool forests they could feel it looming over them, still and white and serene. The mountain filled their eyes, their thoughts, and even their dreams. Silk grew increasingly irritable as they rode day after day toward that gleaming white enormity. ‘How can anyone possibly get anything done in this part of the world with that thing there filling up half the sky?’ he burst out one sunny afternoon.

  ‘Perhaps they ignore it, Kheldar,’ Velvet said sweetly.

  ‘How can you ignore something that big?’ he retorted. ‘I wonder if it knows how ostentatious – and even vulgar – it is.’

  ‘You’re being irrational,’ she said. ‘The mountain doesn’t care how we feel about it. It’s going to be there long after we’re all gone.’ She paused. ‘Is that what bothers you, Kheldar? Coming across something permanent in the middle of a transient life?’

  ‘The stars are permanent,’ he pointed out. ‘So’s dirt, for that matter, but they don’t intrude the way that beast does.’ He looked at Zakath. ‘Has anybody ever climbed to the top of it?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would anybody want to?’

  ‘To beat it. To reduce it.’ Silk laughed. ‘That’s even more irrational, isn’t it?’

  Zakath, however, was looking speculatively at the looming presence that filled the southern sky. ‘I don’t know, Kheldar,’ he said. ‘I’ve never considered the possibility of fighting a mountain before. It’s easy to beat men. To beat a mountain, though – now that’s something else.’

  ‘Would it care?’ Eriond asked. The young man so seldom spoke that he seemed at times to be as mute as Toth. He had of late, however, seemed even more withdrawn. ‘The mountain might even welcome you.’ He smiled gently. ‘I’d imagine it gets lonesome. It could even want to share what it sees with anyone brave enough to go up there and look.’

  Zakath and Silk exchanged a long, almost hungry look. ‘You’d need ropes,’ Silk said in a neutral sort of tone.

  ‘And probably certain kinds of tools as well,’ Zakath added. ‘Things that would dig into the ice and hold you while you climbed up higher.’

  ‘Durnik could figure those out for us.’

  ‘Will you two stop that?’ Polgara said tartly. ‘We have other things to think about right now.’

  ‘Just speculation, Polgara,’ Silk said lightly. ‘This business of ours won’t last forever, and when it’s over – well, who knows?’

  They were all subtly changed by the mountain. Speech seemed less and less necessary, and they all thought long thoughts, which, during quiet times around the campfire at night, they tried to share with each other. It became somehow a time of cleansing and healing, and they all grew closer together as they approached that solitary immensity.

  One night Garion awoke with a light as bright as day in his eyes. He slipped out from under the blankets and turned back the flap of the tent. A full moon had arisen, and it filled the world with a pale luminescence. The mountain stood stark and white against the starry blackness of the night sky, glowing with a cool incandescence that seemed almost alive.

  A movement caught his eye. Aunt Pol emerged from the tent she shared with Durnik. She wore a white robe that seemed almost a reflection of the moon-washed mountain. She stood for a moment in silent contemplation, then turned slightly. ‘Durnik,’ she murmured softly, ‘come and look.’

  Durnik emerged from the tent. He was bare-chested, and his silver amulet glittered in the moonlight. He put his arm about Polgara’s shoulders, and the two of them stood drinking in the beauty of this most perfect of nights.

  Garion was about to call out to them, but something stayed his tongue. The moment they were sharing was too private to be intruded upon. After quite some time, Aunt Pol whispered something to her husband, and, smiling, the two of them turned and went hand in hand back into their tent.

  Quietly, Garion let the tent flap drop and went back to his blankets.

  Slowly, as they continued in a generally southwesterly direction, the forest changed. When they were still in the mountains, the trees had been evergreens interspersed here and there with aspens. As they approached the lowlands at the base of the huge mountain, they increasingly came across groves of beech and elm. And then at last they entered a forest of ancient oaks.

  As they rode beneath the spreading branches in sun-dappled shade, Garion was sharply reminded of the Wood of the Dryads in southern Tolnedra. One glance at his little wife’s face revealed that the similarity was not lost on her either. A kind of dreamy contentment came over her, and she seemed to be listening to voices only she could hear.

  It was about noon on a splendid summer day that they overtook another traveler, a white-bearded man dressed in clothing made from deer-skin. The handles of the tools protruding from the lumpy bundle on the back of his pack mule proclaimed him to be a gold hunter, one of those vagrant hermits who haunt wildernesses the world over. He was riding a shaggy mountain pony so stumpy that its rider’s feet nearly touched the ground on either side. ‘I thought I heard somebody coming up from behind,’ the gold-hunter said as Garion and Zakath, both in their mail shirts and helmets, drew alongside him. ‘Don’t see many in these woods – what with the curse and all.’

  ‘I thought the curse only worked on Grolims,’ Garion said.

  ‘Most believe it doesn’t pay to take chances. Where are you bound?’

  ‘To Kell,’ Garion replied. There was no real point in making a secret of it.

  ‘I hope you’ve been invited. The folk at Kell don’t welcome strangers who just take it upon themselves to go there.’

  ‘They know we’re coming.’

  ‘Oh. It’s all right then. Strange place, Kell, and strange people. Of course living right under that mountain the way they do would make anybody strange after a while. If it’s all right, I’ll ride
along with you as far as the turn-off to Balasa a couple miles on up ahead.’

  ‘Feel free,’ Zakath told him. ‘Aren’t you missing a good time to be looking for gold, though?’

  ‘Got myself caught up in the mountains last winter,’ the old fellow replied. ‘Supplies ran out on me. Besides, I get hungry for talk now and then. The pony and the mule listen pretty good, but they don’t answer very well, and the wolves up there move around so much that you can’t hardly get a conversation started with them.’ He looked at the she-wolf and then astonishingly spoke to her in her own language. ‘How is it with you, mother?’ he asked. His accent was abominable, and he spoke haltingly, but his speech was undeniably that of a wolf.

  ‘How remarkable,’ she said with some surprise. Then she responded to the ritual greeting. ‘One is content.’

  ‘One is pleased to hear that. How is it that you go with the man-things?’

  ‘One has joined their pack for a certain time.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘How did you manage to learn the language of wolves?’ Garion asked in some amazement.

  ‘You recognized it, then.’ The old fellow sounded pleased about that for some reason. He leaned back in his saddle. ‘Spent most of my life up there where the wolves are,’ he explained. ‘It’s only polite to learn the language of your neighbors.’ He grinned. ‘To be honest about it, though, at first I couldn’t make much out of it, but if you listen hard enough, it starts to come to you. Spent a winter in a den with a pack of them about five years back. That helped quite a bit.’

  ‘They actually let you live with them?’ Zakath asked.

  ‘It took them a while to get used to me,’ the old man admitted, ‘but I made myself useful, so they sort of accepted me.’

  ‘Useful?’

  ‘The den was a little crowded, and I got them there tools.’ He jerked his thumb at his pack mule. ‘I dug the den out some larger, and they seemed to appreciate it. Then, after a while, I took to watching over the pups while the rest was out hunting. Good pups they was, too. Playful as kittens. Some time later I tried to make up to a bear. Never had much luck with that. Bears are a stand-offish bunch. They keep to theirselves most of the time, and deer are just too skittish to try to make friends with. Give me wolves every time.’