"You know," Beldin said to Belgarath, "I think he's right. This isn't the first time the prophecy's tampered with things in order to get the job done. That business about the 'purpose of all her days' simply means that Zith was born for one thing—to bite Harakan. Once she'd done that, things went back to normal again." Then the hunchback looked at Eriond. "How is it that you remembered exactly what she said? We were all fairly excited there in Urvon's throne room."

"I always try to remember what people say," Eriond replied. "It may not always make sense at the time they say it, but sooner or later it always seems to fit together."

"This is a strange boy, Belgarath," Beldin said.

"We’ve noticed that on occasion."

"Is it really possible?" Sadi asked the old sorcerer. "That sort of intervention, I mean?"

"That's the wrong question to ask my grandfather." Garion laughed. "He doesn't believe that anything's impossible."

Silk was standing a safe distance away from Zith and her new brood. His eyebrow was raised slightly. "Congratulations, Zith," he said finally to the little green mother. Then be looked sternly at the others. "This is all very nice, I suppose," he added, "but if anybody calls them little nippers, I'll just scream."

They had bathed and gone to bed, but Ce'Nedra was restless, and she tossed and turned. Suddenly she sat up. "I wonder if that milk's still warm," she murmured. She tossed back the blanket and padded on little bare feet to the door. "Do you want some, too?" she asked Garion.

"No, thanks all the same, dear."

"It would help you sleep."

"I'm not the one who's having trouble sleeping."

She stuck her tongue out at him and went out into the hallway. When she returned a few moments later with her glass of milk, she was stifling a naughty little giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asked her.

"I saw Silk."

"So?"

"He didn't see me, but I saw him. He was going into a bedroom."

"He can go in and out of his bedroom if he wants to."

She giggled again and hopped into bed. "That's the point, Garion," she said. "It wasn't his bedroom."

"Oh." Garion coughed in embarrassment. "Drink your milk."

"I listened at the door for a moment," she said. "Don't you want to hear what they were saying?"

"Not particularly, no."

The rain had passed on through, although there were still rumbles of thunder far to the west, and jagged sheets of lightning raked the western horizon. Garion awoke suddenly and sat upright in bed. There was a different kind of rumble outside, and it was occasionally accompanied by a shrill bellowing noise. He slipped softly out of bed and went out onto the balcony that encircled the farmyard. A long line of torches was slowly moving out there in the darkness, perhaps a half mile to the west. Garion peered out through the tag end of the storm, then began to form up the image of the wolf in his mind. This was definitely something that needed to be investigated.

The torches moved at a peculiarly slow pace as Garion loped closer to them, he noticed that they seemed much higher than they would have been if the torchbearers were mounted on horses. The slow rumbling sound and the peculiar bellowing continued. Then he stopped beside a bramble thicket and sat down on his haunches to watch and listen. A long line of huge grey beasts was plodding through the night in a northeasterly direction. Garion had seen the image, at least, of an elephant on the Isle of Verkat in Cthol Murgos when his Aunt Pol had routed the mad hermit in the forest. An image of an elephant is one thing, however, but the reality is quite something else. They were enormous, far larger than any animal Garion had ever seen, and there was a kind of ponderous implacability about their steady pace. Their foreheads and flanks were covered with skirts of chain mail, and Garion shuddered inwardly at the thought of such vast weight, though the elephants moved as if the mail were as insubstantial as cobwebs. Their sail-like ears swayed as they walked, and their pendulous trunks drooped down before them. Occasionally, one of them would curl his trunk up, touching it to his forehead, and give vent to a shattering trumpet sound.

Men in crude body armor were mounted on the huge, plodding beasts. One, bearing a torch, sat cross-legged atop each huge neck. Those riding behind were armed with javelins, slings, and short-limbed bows. At the head of the column, riding astride the neck of a beast fully a yard taller than the ones in his wake, was a man wearing the black robe of a Grolim.

Garion rose and slunk closer, his careful paws making no sound in the rain-wet grass. Although he was certain that the elephants could easily catch his scent, he reasoned that beasts so large would pay little attention to a predator who posed no real threat to them. In the presence of such immensity, he felt small, even flealike. He did not particularly like the feeling. His own bulk approached two hundred pounds, but an elephant's weight was measured in tons, not in pounds.

He ranged on silent paws along the column, maintaining a distance of perhaps fifty yards and keeping his nose and eyes alert. His attention was concentrated on the black-robed Grolim astride the neck of the lead animal. The elephants moved on, and Garion trotted alongside the column, maintaining his distance.

Then there appeared in the track ahead of the lead elephant a figure robed in shiny black satin that gleamed in the torchlight. The column halted, and Garion slunk closer. The satin-robed figure pushed back her hood with a hand that seemed filled with swirling light. At Ashaba and again in Zamad, Garion had briefly seen the face of his son's abductor, but the confrontations with the Darshivan sorceress had been so charged with danger and dread that he had not really had time to let the features of the Child of Dark register on his memory. Now, slinking still closer, he looked upon her torchlit face.

Her features were regular, even beautiful. Her hair was a lustrous black, and her skin was very nearly as pale as that of Garion's cousin Adara. The similarity ended there, however. Zandramas was a Grolim, and her dark eyes had that peculiar angularity common to all Angaraks, her nose was lightly aquiline, and her forehead was broad and unlined. Her chin was pointed, which made her face seem oddly triangular.

"I have been awaiting thee, Naradas," she said in her harshly accented voice. "Where hast thou been?"

"Forgive me, mistress," the Grolim astride the neck of the massive lead bull apologized. "The herdsmen were farther south than we had been told." He pushed back his hood. His face was cruel, and his white eyes gleamed in the flickering torchlight. "How fares the struggle with the Disciple's minions?"