Castle of Wizardry

that led toward Darine, some forty leagues distant.
    The fields of northern Sendaria had begun to sprout that first green blush that lay on damp earth like a faint jade mist and more than anything announced spring. A few fleecy clouds scampered across the blue of the sky, and, though the wind was gusty, the sun warmed the air. The road opened before them, stretching across the verdant fields; and though their mission was deadly serious, Garion almost wanted to shout out of pure exuberance.
    In two more days they reached Darine.
    "Do you want to take ship here?" Silk asked Belgarath as they crested the hill up which they had come so many months before with their three wagonloads of turnips. "We could be in Kotu inside a week."
    Belgarath scratched at his beard, looking out at the expanse of the Gulf of Cherek, glittering in the afternoon sun. "I don't think so," he decided. He pointed at several lean Cherek warboats patrolling just outside Sendarian territorial waters.
    "The Chereks are always moving around out there," Silk replied. "It might have nothing whatsoever to do with us."
    "Polgara's very persistent," Belgarath said. "She can't leave Riva herself as long as so many things are afoot there, but she can send people out to look for us. Let's avoid any possible trouble if we can. We'll go along the north coast and then on up through the fens to Boktor."
    Silk gave him a look of profound distaste. "It will take a lot longer," he objected.
    "We aren't in all that great a hurry," Belgarath remarked blandly. "The Alorns are beginning to mass their armies, but they still need more time, and it's going to take a while to get the Arends all moving in the same direction."
    "What's that got to do with it?" Silk asked him.
    "I have plans for those armies, and I'd like to start them moving before we cross into Gar og Nadrak if possible and certainly before we get to Mallorea. We can afford the time it will take to avoid any unpleasantness with the people Polgara's sent out to find us."
    And so they detoured around Darine and took the narrow, rocky road that led along the cliffs where the waves crashed and boomed and foamed, beating themselves to fragments against the great rocks of the north coast.
    The mountains of eastern Sendaria ran down into the Gulf of Cherek along that forbidding shore, and the road, which twisted and climbed and dropped steeply again, was not good. Silk grumbled every mile of the way.
    Garion, however, had other worries. The decision he had made after reading the Mrin Codex had seemed quite logical at the time, but logic was scant comfort now. He was deliberately riding toward Mallorea to face Torak in a duel. The more he thought about it, the more insane it seemed. How could he possibly hope to defeat a God? He brooded about that as they rode eastward along the rocky coast, and his mood became as unpleasant as Silk's.
    After about a week, the cliffs became lower, and the land more gently rolling. From the top of the last of the eastern foothills, they looked out and saw what appeared to be a vast, flat plain, dark-green and very damp-looking.
    "Well, there they are," Silk sourly informed Belgarath.
    "What's got you so bad-tempered?" the old man asked him.
    "One of the main reasons I left Drasnia in the first place was to avoid the possibility of ever being obliged to go anywhere near the fens," Silk replied crisply. "Now you propose to drag me lengthwise through the whole soggy, stinking expanse of them. I'm bitterly disappointed in you, old friend, and it's altogether possible that I'll never forgive you for this."
    Garion was frowning at the marshland spread out below. "That wouldn't be Drasnia, would it?" he asked. "I thought that Drasnia was farther north."
    "It's Algaria, actually," Belgarath told him. "The beginning of Aldurfens. Up beyond the mouths of the Aldur River is the Drasnian border. They call it Mrin marsh up there, but it's all the same swamp. It goes on for another thirty leagues or so beyond Kotu at the mouth of the Mrin River."
    "Most people just call it the fens and let it go at that," Silk observed. "Most people have sense enough to stay out of it," he added pointedly.
    "Quit complaining so much," Belgarath told him bluntly. "There are fishermen along this coast. We'll buy a boat."
    Silk's eyes brightened. "We can go up along the coast then," he suggested.
    "That wouldn't be very prudent," Belgarath disagreed, "not with Anheg's fleet scouring the Gulf of Cherek, looking for