"No—to that girl. She had a marrying sort of expression on her face when they left."

"I think it's sweet," Ce'Nedra sniffed.

"Sweet? I think it's revolting." He looked around. "If we're going around the south end of the lake, we'd better get started."

They galloped south along the lake shore through the long, golden-slanting beams of afternoon sunlight until they were a couple of leagues from the place where Urgit and Prala had so abruptly left them. Then Silk, ranging once again ahead of them, crested a hill and motioned them to come ahead, but cautiously.

"What is it?" Belgarath asked when they joined him.

"There's something else burning up ahead," the little man reported. "I didn't get too close, but it looks like an isolated farmstead."

"Let's go look," Durnik said to Toth, and the two of them rode off in the direction of the smudge of smoke lying low on the horizon to the east.

"I'd certainly like to know if Urgit's doing all right," Silk said with a worried frown.

"You really like him, don't you?" Velvet asked him.

"Urgit? Yes, I think I do. We're very much alike in many ways." He looked at her. "I suppose that you're going to mention all of this in your report to Javelin?"

"Naturally."

"I really wish you wouldn't, you know."

"Why on earth not?"

"I'm not entirely sure. It's just that for some reason I don't think I want Drasnian Intelligence using my relationship to the King of Cthol Murgos for its own advantage. I think I want to keep it private."

A silver twilight was settling over the lake when Durnik and Toth returned with grim faces. "It was a Murgo farmstead," Durnik reported. "Some Malloreans had been there. I don't think they were regular troops—probably deserters of some kind. They looted and burned, and regular troops don't usually do that, if they've got officers around to control them. The house is gone, but the barn is still partially intact."

"Is there enough of it left to shelter us for the night?" Garion wanted to know.

Durnik looked dubious, then shrugged. "The roofs still mostly there."

"Is something wrong?" Belgarath asked him.

Durnik made a small gesture and then walked away until he was out of earshot of the rest. Garion and Belgarath followed him.

"What's the matter, Durnik?" Belgarath asked.

'The barn's good enough to give us shelter," the smith said quietly, "but I think you ought to know that those Mallorean deserters impaled everybody on the farmstead. I don't think you want the ladies to see that. It isn't very pleasant."

"Is there someplace where you can get the bodies under cover?" the old man asked.

"I'll see what we can do," Durnik sighed. "Why do people do that sort of thing?"

"Ignorance, usually. An ignorant man falls back on brutality out of a lack of imagination. Go with them, Garion. They might need some help. Wave a torch to let us know when you get finished."

The fact that it was nearly dark helped a little. Garion was unable to see the faces of the people on the stakes. There was a sod-roofed cellar at the back of the still-smoldering house, and they put the bodies there. Then Garion took up a torch and walked some distance from the house to signal to Belgarath. The barn was dry, and the fire Durnik built in a carefully cleared area on the stone floor soon warmed it.

"This is actually pleasant," Ce'Nedra declared with a smile as she looked around at the dancing shadows on the walls and rafters. She sat on a pile of fragrant hay and bounced tentatively a few times. "And this will make wonderful beds. I hope we can find a place like this every night."

Garion walked over to the door and looked out, not trusting himself to answer. He had grown up on a farm not really all that much different from this one, and the thought of a band of marauding soldiers swooping down on Faldor's farm, burning and killing, filled him with a vast outrage. A sudden image rose in his mind. The shadowy faces of the dead Murgos hanging on those stakes might very well have been the faces of his childhood friends, and that thought shook him to the very core of his being. The dead here had been Murgos, but they had also been farmers, and he felt a sudden kinship with them. The savagery that had befallen them began to take on the aspect of a personal affront, and dark thoughts began to fill his mind.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By morning it was raining again, a drizzly sort of rain that made the surrounding countryside hazy and indistinct. They rode out from the ruins of the farmstead, dressed again in their slaver's robes, and turned northward along the eastern shore of the lake.Garion rode in silence, his thoughts as somber as the leaden waters of the lake lying to his left. The rage he had felt the previous evening had settled into an icy resolve. Justice, he had been told, was an abstraction, but he was determined that, should the Mallorean deserters responsible for the atrocity at the farm ever cross his path, he would turn the abstract into an immediate reality. He knew that Belgarath and Polgara did not approve of the sort of thing he had in mind, so he kept his peace and contemplated the idea of vengeance, if not justice.

When they reached the muddy road coming in off the northern end of the lake and stretching out toward the southeast and the city of Rak Cthaka, they found it clogged with a horde of terrified civilians, dressed for the most part in ragged clothing and carrying bundles of what few possessions they had been able to salvage.

"I think we'll stay off the road," Belgarath decided. "We could never make any time through that mob."

"Are we going on to Rak Cthaka?" Sadi asked him.

Belgarath looked at the crowd streaming along the road. "I don't think you could find a raft in Rak Cthaka right now, much less a ship. Let's go on into the forest and work our way south through the trees. I don't much like staying out in the open in hostile territory, and fishing villages are better places to hire boats than the piers of a major city."

"Why don't you and the others ride on," Silk suggested. "I'd like to ask a few questions."

Belgarath grunted. "That might not be a bad idea. Just don't be too long at it. I'd like to reach the Great Southern Forest sometime before the end of winter, if I can possibly manage it."

"I'll go with him, Grandfather," Garion offered. "I need to get my mind off some things I've seen lately, anyway."

The two of them rode through the knee-high grass toward the broad stream of frightened refugees fleeing southward. "Garion," Silk said, reining in his horse, "isn't that a Sendar—the one pushing the wheelbarrow?"