"I thought we were going to take lodgings for the night."

"That's changed now. Come along, boy. It's time for us to leave."

The horse was very tired, and he moved slowly up the long hill out of Upper Gralt as the sun went down ahead of them.

"Why wouldn't you let me keep the Angarak penny, Mister Wolf?" Garion persisted. The subject still puzzled him.

"There are many things in this world that seem to be one thing and are in fact another," Wolf said somewhat grimly. "I don't trust Angaraks, and I particularly don't trust Murgos. It would be just as well, I think, if you never had in your possession anything that bears the likeness of Torak."

"But the war between the west and the Angaraks has been over for five hundred years now," Garion objected."All men say so."

"Not all men," Wolf said. "Now take that robe out of the back of the cart and cover up. Your Aunt would never forgive me if you should take a chill."

"I will if you think I should," Garion said, "but I'm not a bit cold and not at all sleepy. I'll keep you company as we go."

"That'll be a comfort, boy," Wolf said.

"Mister Wolf," Garion said after some time, "did you know my mother and father?"

"Yes," Wolf said quietly.

"My father's dead too, isn't he?"

"I'm afraid so."

Garion sighed deeply. "I thought so," he said. "I wish I'd known them. Aunt Pol says I was only a baby when-" He couldn't bring himself to say it. "I've tried to remember my mother, but I can't."

"You were very small," Wolf said.

"What were they like?" Garion asked.

Wolf scratched at his beard. "Ordinary," he said. "So ordinary you wouldn't look twice at either one of them."

Garion was offended by that. "Aunt Pol says my mother was very beautiful," he objected.

"She was."

"Then how can you say she was ordinary?"

"She wasn't prominent or important," Wolf said. "Neither was your father. Anyone who saw them thought that they were just simple village people - a young man with a young wife and their baby - that's all anyone ever saw. That's all anyone was ever supposed to see."

"I don't understand."

"It's very complicated."

"What was my father like?"

"Medium size," Wolf said. "Dark hair. A very serious young man. I liked him."

"Did he love my mother?"

"More than anything."

"And me?"

"Of course."

"What kind of place did they live in?"

"It was a small place," Wolf said, "a little village near the mountains, a long way from any main roads. They had a cottage at the end of the street. It was a small, solid little house. Your father built it himself - he was a stonecutter. I used to stop by there once in a while when I was in the neighborhood." The old man's voice droned on, describing the village and the house and the two who lived there. Garion listened, not even realizing it when he fell asleep.

It must have been very late, almost on toward dawn. In a half drowse, the boy felt himself lifted from the cart and carried up a flight of stairs. The old man was surprisingly strong. Aunt Pol was there - he knew that without even opening his eyes. There was a particular scent about her that he could have found in a dark room.

"Just cover him up," Mister Wolf said softly to Aunt Pol. "Best not to wake him just now."

"What happened?" Aunt Pol asked, her voice as soft as the old man's.

"There was a Murgo in town-at your spice merchant's. He asked questions and he tried to give the boy an Angarak penny."

"In Upper Gralt? Are you certain he was only a Murgo?"

"It's impossible to tell. Not even I can distinguish between Murgo and Grolim with any certainty."

"What happened to the coin?"

"I was quick enough to get it. I gave the boy a Sendarian penny instead. If our Murgo was a Grolim, we'll let him follow me. I'm sure I can give him several months of entertainment."

"You'll be leaving, then?" Aunt Pol's voice seemed somehow sad.

"It's time," Wolf said. "Right now the boy is safe enough here, and I must be abroad. There are things afoot I must see to. When Murgos begin to appear in remote places, I begin to worry. We have a great responsibility and a great care placed upon us, and we mustn't allow ourselves to become careless."

"Will you be gone long?" Aunt Pol asked.

"Some years, I expect. There are many things I must look into and many people I'll have to see."

"I'll miss you," Aunt Pol said softly.

He laughed. "Sentimentality, Pol?" he said dryly. "That's hardly in character."

"You know what I mean. I'm not suited for this task you and the others have given me. What do I know about the raising of small boys?"

"You're doing well," Wolf said. "Keep the boy close, and don't let his nature drive you into hysterics. Be careful; he lies like a champion."

"Garion?" Her voice was shocked.

"He lied to the Murgo so well that even I was impressed."

"Garion?"

"He's also started asking questions about his parents," Wolf said.

"How much have you told him?"

"Very little. Only that they're dead."

"Let's leave it at that for now. There's no point in telling him things he isn't old enough to cope with yet."

Their voices went on, but Garion drifted off into sleep again, and he was almost sure that it was all a dream.

But the next morning when he awoke, Mister Wolf was gone.

Chapter Four.

THE SEASONS TURNED, as seasons will. Summer ripened into autumn; the blaze of autumn died into winter; winter grudgingly relented to the urgency of spring; and spring bloomed into summer again.

With the turning of the seasons the years turned, and Garion imperceptibly grew older.

As he grew, the other children grew as well - all except poor Doroon, who seemed doomed to be short and skinny all his life. Rundorig sprouted like a young tree and was soon almost as big as any man on the farm. Zubrette, of course, did not grow so tall, but she developed in other ways which the boys began to find interesting.

In the early autumn just before Garion's fourteenth birthday, he came very close to ending his career. In response to some primal urge all children have - given a pond and a handy supply of logs - they had built a raft that summer. The raft was neither very large nor was it particularly well-built. It had a tendency to sink on one end if the weight aboard it were improperly distributed and an alarming habit of coming apart at unexpected moments.

Quite naturally it was Garion who was aboard the raft - showing off - on that fine autumn day when the raft quite suddenly decided once and for all to revert to its original state. The bindings all came undone, and the logs began to go their separate ways.

Realizing his danger only at the last moment, Garion made a desperate effort to pole for sh.o.r.e, but his haste only made the disintegration of his craft more rapid. In the end he found himself standing on a single log, his arms windmilling wildly in a futile effort to retain his balance. His eyes, desperately searching for some aid, swept the marshy sh.o.r.e. Some distance up the slope behind his playmates he saw the familiar figure of the man on the black horse. The man wore a dark robe, and his burning eyes watched the boy's plight. Then the spiteful log rolled under Garion's feet, and he toppled and fell with a resounding splash.

Garion's education, unfortunately, had not included instruction in the art of swimming; and while the water was not really very deep, it was deep enough.

The bottom of the pond was very unpleasant, a kind of dark, weedy ooze inhabited by frogs, turtles and a singularly unsavory-looking eel that slithered away snakelike when Garion plunged like a sinking rock into the weeds. Garion struggled, gulped water and launched himself with his legs toward the surface again. Like a broaching whale, he rose from the depths, gasped a couple of quick, sputtering breaths and heard the screams of his playmates. The dark figure on the slope had not moved, and for a single instant every detail of that bright afternoon was etched on Garion's mind. He even observed that, although the rider was in the open under the full glare of the autumn sun, neither man nor horse cast any shadow. Even as his mind grappled with that impossibility, he sank once more to the murky bottom.

It occurred to him as he struggled, drowning, amongst the weeds that if he could launch himself up in the vicinity of the log, he might catch hold of it and so remain afloat. He waved off a startled-looking frog and plunged upward again. He came up, unfortunately, directly under the log. The blow on the top of his head filled his eyes with light and his ears with a roaring sound, and he sank, no longer struggling, back toward the weeds which seemed to reach up for him.

And then Durnik was there. Garion felt himself lifted roughly by the hair toward the surface and then towed by that same convenient handle toward sh.o.r.e behind Durnik's powerfully churning strokes. The smith pulled the semiconscious boy out onto the bank, turned him over and stepped on him several times to force the water out of his lungs.

Garion's ribs creaked.

"Enough, Durnik," he gasped finally. He sat up, and the blood from the splendid cut on top of his head immediately ran into his eyes. He wiped the blood clear and looked around for the dark, shadowless rider, but the figure had vanished. He tried to get up, but the world suddenly spun around him, and he fainted.

When he awoke, he was in his own bed with his head wrapped in bandages.

Aunt Pol stood beside his bed, her eyes blazing. "You stupid boy!" she cried. "What were you doing in that pond?"

"Rafting," Garion said, trying to make it sound quite ordinary.

"Rafting?" she said. "Rafting? Who gave you permission?"

"Well-" he said uncertainly. "We just "

"You just what?"

He looked at her helplessly.

And then with a low cry she took him in her arms and crushed him to her almost suffocatingly.

Briefly Garion considered telling her about the strange, shadowless figure that had watched his struggles in the pond, but the dry voice in his mind that sometimes spoke to him told him that this was not the time for that. He seemed to know somehow that the business between him and the man on the black horse was something very private, and that the time would inevitably come when they would face each other in some kind of contest of will or deed. To speak of it now to Aunt Pol would involve her in the matter, and he did not want that. He was not sure exactly why, but he did know that the dark figure was an enemy, and though that thought was a bit frightening, it was also exciting. There was no question that Aunt Pol could deal with this stranger, but if she did, Garion knew that he would lose something very personal and for some reason very important. And so he said nothing.

"It really wasn't anything all that dangerous, Aunt Pol," he said instead, rather lamely. "I was starting to get the idea of how to swim. I'd have been all right if I hadn't hit my head on that log."

"But of course you did hit your head," she pointed out.

"Well, yes, but it wasn't that serious. I'd have been all right in a minute or two."

"Under the circ.u.mstances I'm not sure you had a minute or two," she said bluntly.

"Well-" he faltered, and then decided to let it drop.

That marked the end of Garion's freedom. Aunt Pol confined him to the scullery. He grew to know every dent and scratch on every pot in the kitchen intimately. He once estimated gloomily that he washed each one twenty-one times a week. In a seeming orgy of messiness, Aunt Pol suddenly could not even boil water without dirtying at least three or four pans, and Garion had to scrub every one. He hated it and began to think quite seriously of running away.

As autumn progressed and the weather began to deteriorate, the other children were also more or less confined to the compound as well, and it wasn't so bad. Rundorig, of course, was seldom with them anymore since his man's size had made him - even more than Garion - subject to more and more frequent labor.

When he could, Garion slipped away to be with Zubrette and Doroon, but they no longer found much entertainment in leaping into the hay or in the endless games of tag in the stables and barns. They had reached an age and size where adults rather quickly noticed such idleness and found tasks to occupy them. Most often they would sit in some out of the way place and simply talk - which is to say that Garion and Zubrette would sit and listen to the endless flow of Doroon's chatter. That small, quick boy, as unable to be quiet as he was to sit still, could seemingly talk for hours about a half dozen raindrops, and his words tumbled out breathlessly as he fidgeted.

"What's that mark on your hand, Garion?" Zubrette asked one rainy day, interrupting Doroon's bubbling voice.

Garion looked at the perfectly round, white patch on the palm of his right hand.

"I've noticed it too," Doroon said, quickly changing subjects in midsentence. "But Garion grew up in the kitchen, didn't you, Garion? It's probably a place where he burned himself when he was little - you know, reached out before anyone could stop him and put his hand on something hot. I'll bet his Aunt Pol really got angry about that, because she can get angrier faster than anybody else I've ever seen, and she can really-"

"It's always been there," Garion said, tracing the mark on his palm with his left forefinger. He had never really looked closely at it before. It covered the entire palm of his hand and had in certain light a faint silvery sheen.

"Maybe it's a birthmark," Zubrette suggested.

"I'll bet that's it," Doroon said quickly. "I saw a man once that had a big purple one on the side of his face-one of those wagoneers that comes by to pick up the turnip crop in the fall - anyway, the mark was all over the side of his face, and I thought it was a big bruise at first and thought that he must have been in an awful fight - those wagoneers fight all the time - but then I saw that it wasn't really a bruise but - like Zubrette just said - it was a birthmark. I wonder what causes things like that."

That evening, after he'd gotten ready for bed, he asked his Aunt about it.

"What's this mark, Aunt Pol?" he asked, holding his hand up, palm out.

She looked up from where she was brushing her long, dark hair.

"It's nothing to worry about," she told him.

"I wasn't worried about it," he said. "I just wondered what it was. Zubrette and Doroon think it's a birthmark. Is that what it is?"