Castle of Wizardry

told her one thing, but his mouth said something else. She was baffled by him, not knowing whether to respond to his look or his words.
    "You've lived your whole life in the dark, then?" Relg asked her curiously.
    "Most of it," she replied. "I saw my mother's face once - the day the Murgos came and took her to the Temple. I was alone after that. Being alone is the worst of it. You can bear the dark if you aren't alone."
    "How old were you when they took your mother away?"
    "I don't really know. I must have been almost a woman, though, because not long after that the Murgos gave me to a slave who had pleased them. There were a lot of slaves in the pens who did anything the Murgos wanted, and they were rewarded with extra food - or with women. I cried at first; but in time I learned to accept it. At least I wasn't alone any more."
    Relg's face hardened, and Taiba saw the expression. "What should I have done?" she asked him. "When you're a slave, your body doesn't belong to you. They can sell you or give you to anybody they want to, and there's nothing you can do about it."
    "There must have been something."
    "Such as what? I didn't have any kind of weapon to fight with -or to kill myself with - and you can't strangle yourself." She looked at Garion. "Did you know that? Some of the slaves tried it, but all you do is fall into unconsciousness, and then you start to breathe again. Isn't that curious?"
    "Did you try to fight?" It seemed terribly important to Relg for some reason.
    "What would have been the point? The slave they gave me to was stronger than I. He'd have just hit me until I did what he wanted."
    "You should have fought," Relg declared adamantly. "A little pain is better than sin, and giving up like that is sin."
    "Is it? If somebody forces you to do something and there's no possible way to avoid it, is it really sin?"
    Relg started to answer, but her eyes, looking directly into his face, seemed to stop up his tongue. He faltered, unable to face that gaze. Abruptly he turned his mount and rode back toward the pack animals.
    "Why does he fight with himself so much?" Taiba asked.
    "He's completely devoted to his God," Garion explained. "He's afraid of anything that might take away some of what he feels he owes to UL."
    "Is this UL of his really that jealous?"
    "No, I don't think so, but Relg does."
    Taiba pursed her lips into a sensual pout and looked back over her shoulder at the retreating zealot. "You know," she said, "I think he's actually afraid of me." She laughed then, that same low, wicked little laugh, and lifted her arms to run her fingers through the glory of her midnight hair. "No one's ever been afraid of me before - not ever. I think I rather like it. Will you excuse me?" She turned her horse without waiting for a reply and quite deliberately rode back after the fleeing Relg.
    Garion thought about it as he rode on through the narrow, twisting canyon. He realized that there was a strength in Taiba that none of them had suspected, and he finally concluded that Relg was in for a very bad time.
    He trotted on ahead to speak to Aunt Po1 about it as she rode with her arms about Errand.
    "It's really none of your busincss, Garion," she told him. "Relg and Taiba can work out their problems without any help from you."
    "I was just curious, that's all. Relg's tearing himself apart, and Taiba's all confused about him. What's really going on between them, Aunt Pol?"
    "Something very necessary," she replied.
    "You could say that about nearly everything that happens, Aunt Pol." It was almost an accusation. "You could even say that the way Ce'Nedra and I quarrel all the time is necessary too, couldn't you?"
    She looked slightly amused. "It's not exactly the same thing, Garion," she answered, "but there's a certain necessity about that too."
    "That's ridiculous," he scoffed.
    "Is it really? Then why do you suppose the two of you go out of your way so much to aggravate each other?"
    He had no answer for that, but the entire notion worried him. At the same time the very mention of Ce'Nedra's name suddenly brought her sharply into his mind, and he realized that he actually missed her. He rode along in silence beside Aunt Pol for a while, feeling melancholy. Finally he sighed.
    "And why so great a sigh?"
    "It's all over, isn't it?"
    "What's that?"
    "This whole thing. I mean - we've recovered the Orb. That's what this was all about, wasn't it?"
    "There's more to it than that, Garion - much more - and we're not out of