Castle of Wizardry

his back and shook his head. "Is that the only word he knows?" he asked Polgara.
    "It seems to be," she replied.
    "I don't quite get the connection," Silk said. "What does he mean by it.
    "He's probably been told that he has an errand to run," she explained, "to steal the Orb. I imagine that Zedar's been telling him that over and over since he was a baby, and the word stuck in his mind."
    "It's a bit disconcerting." Silk was still holding his hands behind his back. "It seems oddly appropriate sometimes."
    "He doesn't appear to think the way we do," she told him. "The only purpose he has in life is to give the Orb to someone - anyone, it would seem." She frowned thoughtfully. "Durnik, why don't you see if you can make him some kind of pouch to carry it in, and we'll fasten it to his waist. Maybe if he doesn't have it right there in his hand all the time, he won't think about it so much."
    "Of course, Mistress Pol," Durnik agreed. "I should have thought of that myself." He went to one of the packs and took out an old, burnscarred leather apron and fashioned a pouch out of a wide piece of leather he cut from it. "Boy," he said when he had finished, "come here."
    The little boy was curiously examining a small, very dry bush at the upper end of the ravine and gave no indication that he knew the smith was calling him.
    "You-Errand!" Durnik said.
    The little boy looked around quickly and smiled as he went to Durnik.
    "Why did you call him that?" Silk asked curiously.
    Durnik shrugged. "He seems to be fond of the word and he answers to it. It will do for a name until we can find something more suitable, I suppose."
    "Errand?" the child asked, offering the Orb to Durnik.
    Durnik smiled at him, bent over and held the mouth of the pouch open. "Put it in here, Errand," he instructed, "and we'll tie it up all nice and safe so you won't lose it."
    The little boy delightedly deposited the Orb in the leather pouch. "Errand," he declared firmly.
    "I suppose so," Durnik agreed. He pulled the drawstring tight and then tied the pouch to the bit of rope the boy wore as a belt. "There we are, Errand. All safe and secure now."
    Errand examined the pouch carefully, tugging at it a few times as if to be sure it was tightly tied. Then he gave a happy little laugh, put his arms about Durnik's neck and kissed his cheek.
    "He's a good lad," Durnik said, looking a trifle embarrassed.
    "He's totally innocent," Aunt Pol told him from where she was examining the sleeping Belgarath. "He has no idea of the difference between good and evil, so everything in the world seems good to him."
    "I wonder what it's like to see the world that way," Taiba mused, gently touching the child's smiling face. "No sorrow; no fear; no pain - just to love everything you see because you believe that everything is good."
    Relg, however, had looked up sharply. The troubled expression that had hovered on his face since he had rescued the trapped slave woman fell away to be replaced by that look of fanatic zeal that it had always worn before. "Monstrous!" he gasped.
    Taiba turned on him, her eyes hardening. "What's so monstrous about happiness?" she demanded, putting her arm about the boy.
    "We aren't here to be happy," he replied, carefully avoiding her eyes.
    "Why are we here then?" she challenged.
    "To serve our God and to avoid sin." He still refused to look at her, and his tone seemed a trifle less certain.
    "Well, I don't have a God," she retorted, "and the child probably doesn't either, so if it's all the same to you, he and I will just concentrate on trying to be happy - and if a bit of sin gets involved in it, so what?"
    "Have you no shame?" His voice was choked.
    "I am what I am," she replied, "and I won't apologize, since I didn't have very much to say about it."
    "Boy," Relg snapped at the child, "come away from her at once."
    Taiba straightened, her face hardening even more, and she faced him defiantly. "What do you think you're going to do?" she demanded.
    "I will fight sin wherever I find it," he declared.
    "Sin, sin, sin!" she flared. "Is that all you ever think about?"
    "It's my constant care. I guard against it every moment."
    She laughed. "How tedious. Can't you think of anything better to do? Oh, I forgot," she added mockingly. "There's all that praying too, isn't there? All that bawling at your God about how vile you are. I think you must bore this UL of yours tremendously sometimes, do you know that?"
    Enraged, Relg raised his fist. "Don't ever speak