"Why didn't Kal Torak just wait until they arrived?" Garion asked.

"You can't stop an army in unfriendly territory, King Belgarion," Colonel Brendig explained. "You have to keep moving, or the local populace destroys all the food and starts coming out at night to cut up your people. You can lose half your army that way."

"Kal Torak didn't want the meeting at Vo Mimbre any more than we did," Belgarath went on. "The column from Rak Hagga got caught in a spring blizzard in the mountains and bogged down for weeks. They finally had to turn back, and Torak was forced to fight at Vo Mimbre without any advantage of numbers, and nobody in his right mind goes into battle that way."

"Thy force should be larger by a quarter than thine adversary's," Mandorallen agreed, "else the outcome must be in doubt."

"By a third," Barak corrected in a rumbling voice. "By half if you can arrange it."

"Then all we're going to do is spread out all over the eastern half of the continent and fight a whole series of little battles?" Garion demanded incredulously. "That could take years - decades. It could go on for a century."

"If it has to," Belgarath told him bluntly. "What did you expect, Garion? A short little ride in the sunshine, a nice easy fight, and then home before winter? I'm afraid it won't be like that. You'd better get used to wearing armor and a sword, because you'll probably be dressed that way for most of the rest of your life. This is likely to be a very long war."

Garion's illusions were crumbling rapidly.

The door to the council room opened, then, and Olban, Brand's youngest son, entered and spoke with his father. The weather had turned blustery, and a spring storm was raking the island. Olban's gray Rivan cloak was dripping as he entered.

Dismayed by the prospect of year after year of campaigning in the East, Garion distractedly stared at the puddle forming around Olban's feet as the young man talked quietly with Brand. Then, out of habit, he lifted his eyes slightly to look at the hem of Olban's cloak. There was a small tear on the left corner of the cloak, and a scrap of cloth seemed to be missing.

Garion stared at the telltale rip for a moment without realizing exactly what it was he saw. Then he went suddenly cold. With a slight start, he jerked his eyes up to look at Olban's face. Brand's youngest son was perhaps Garion's own age, a bit shorter, but more muscular. His hair was pale blond, and his young face was serious, reflecting already the customary Rivan gravity. He seemed to be trying to avoid Garion's eyes, but showed no other sign of nervousness. Once, however, he looked inadvertently at the young king and seemed to flinch slightly as guilt rose clearly into his eyes. Garion had found the man who had tried to kill him.

The conference continued after that, but Garion did not hear any more of it. What was he to do? Had Olban acted alone, or were others involved? Had Brand himself been a part of it? It was so difficult to know what a Rivan was thinking. He trusted Brand, but the big Warder's connection with the Bear-cult gave a certain ambiguity to his loyalties. Could Grodeg be behind all this? Or perhaps a Grolim? Garion remembered the Earl of Jarvik, whose soul had been purchased by Asharak and who had mounted rebellion in Val Alorn. Had Olban fallen perhaps under the spell of the blood-red gold of Angarak as Jarvik had? But Riva was an island, the one place in the world where no Grolim could ever come. Garion discounted the possibility of bribery. In the first place, it was not in the Rivan character. In the second, Olban had not likely ever been in a situation to come into contact with a Grolim. Rather grimly, Garion decided on a course of action.

Lelldorin, of course, had to be kept out of it. The hot-headed young Asturian was incapable of the kind of delicate discretion that seemed to be called for. Lelldorin would reach for his sword, and the whole business would disintegrate rather rapidly after that.

When the conference broke up for the day late that afternoon, Garion went looking for Olban. He did not take a guard with him, but he did wear his sword.

As chance had it, it was in a dim corndor not unlike the one where the assassination attempt had taken place that the young king finally ran Brand's youngest son down. Olban was coming along the passageway in one direction, and Garion was going the other. Olban's face paled slightly when he saw his king, and he bowed deeply to hide his expression. Garion nodded as if intending to pass without speaking, but turned after the two of them had gone by each other. "Olban," he said quietly.

Brand's son turned, a look of dread on his face.

"I noticed that the corner of your cloak is torn," Garion said in an almost neutral tone. "When you take it to have it mended, this might help." He took the scrap of cloth out from under his doublet and of fered it to the pale-faced young Rivan.

Olban stared wide-eyed at him, not moving.

"And as long as we're at it," Garion continued, "you might as well take this, too. I think you dropped it somewhere." He reached inside his doublet again and took out the dagger with its bent point.

Olban started to tremble violently, then he suddenly dropped to his knees. "Please, your Majesty," he begged, "let me kill myself. If my father finds out what I've done, it will break his heart."

"Why did you try to kill me, Olban?" Garion asked.

"For love of my father," Brand's son confessed, tears welling up in his eyes. "He was ruler here in Riva until you came. Your arrival degraded him. I couldn't bear that. Please, your Majesty, don't have me dragged to the scaffold like a common criminal. Give me the dagger and I'll bury it in my heart right here. Spare my father this last humiliation."

"Don't talk nonsense," Garion told him, "and get up. You look silly down there on your knees."

"Your Majesty-" Olban began to protest.

"Oh, be still," Garion told him irritably. "Let me think for a moment." Dimly he began to see the glimmer of an idea. "All right," he said finally, "this is what we're going to do. You're going to take this knife and this wool scrap down to the harbor and throw them into the sea, and then you're going to go on about your life as if this had never happened."

"Your Majesty-"

"I'm not finished. Neither you nor I will ever speak of this again. I don't want any hysterical public confessions, and I absolutely forbid you to kill yourself. Do you understand me, Olban?"

Dumbly the young man nodded.

"I need your father's help too much to have this come out or for him to be distracted by personal tragedy. This did not happen, and that's an end of it. Take these and get out of my sight." He shoved the knife and the wool scrap into Olban's hands. He was suddenly infuriated. The weeks of looking nervously over his shoulder had all been so unnecessary - so useless. "Oh, one other thing, Olban," he added as the stricken young Rivan turned to leave. "Don't throw any more knives at me. If you want to fight, let me know, and we'll go someplace private and cut each other to ribbons, if that's what you want."