Enchanter's End Game

turned marshy, flattening out into a sea of reeds and bending cattails. At Anheg's orders, a raft piled high with firewood was moored to a dead snag and set afire. Once the blaze was going well, buckets of greenish crystals were hurled into the flames. A thick pillar of green smoke began to climb into the blue sky.
    "I hope Rhodar can see that." The King of Cherek frowned.
    "If he can't, the Algars will," Barak replied. "They'll get word back to him."
    "I just hope he's got enough time left to make his retreat."
    "Me too," Barak said. "But as you say, we'll probably never know."
    King Cho-Hag, Chief of the Clan-Chiefs of Algaria, sat his horse beside King Korodullin of Arendia. The fog was nearly gone now, and only a filmy haze remained. Not far away, the twin sorcerers, Beltira and Belkira, exhausted by their efforts, sat side by side on the ground, their heads bowed and their chests heaving. Cho-Hag shuddered inwardly at the thought of what might have happened if the two saintly old men had not been there. The hideous illusions of the Grolims that had risen from the earth just before the storm had struck terror into the hearts of the bravest warriors. Then the storm, its intensity deafening, had smashed down on the army, and after that had come the choking fog. The two sweet-faced sorcerers, however, had met and overcome each Grolim attack with calm determination. Now the Murgos were coming, and it was time for steel instead of sorcery.
    "I'd let them get a little closer," Cho-Hag advised in his quiet voice as he and Korodullin watched the veritable sea of Murgos advancing against the emplaced ranks of Drasnian pikemen and Tolnedran legionnaires.
    "Art thou sure of thy strategy, Cho-Hag?" the young Arendish King asked with a worried frown. "It hath ever been the custom of the knights of Mimbre to meet an attack head-on. Thy proposal to charge the flanks puzzles me."
    "It will kill more Murgos, Korodullin," Cho-Hag replied, shifting his weak legs in their stirrups. "When your knights charge in from either flank, you'll cut off whole regiments of the enemy. Then we can grind the ones who've been cut off up against the infantry."
    "It is passing strange to me to work thus with foot troops," Korodullin confessed. "I have a vast ignorance of unmounted combat."
    "You aren't alone, my friend," Cho-Hag told him. "It's as alien to me as it is to you. It would be unfair of us, though, not to let the foot troops have a few Murgos, wouldn't it? They did walk a long way, after all."
    The King of Arendia considered that gravely. He was quite obviously incapable of anything remotely resembling humor. "I had not considered that," he confessed. "'Twould be selfish in the extreme of us to deny them some part in the battle, I must agree. How many Murgos dost thou think would be their fair portion?"
    "Oh, I don't know," Cho-Hag replied with a straight face. "A few thousand or so, I imagine. We wouldn't want to appear stingy - but it doesn't do to be over generous, either."
    Korodullin sighed. "It is a difficult line to walk, King Cho-Hag - this fine division between parsimony and foolish prodigality."
    "One of the prices of kingship, Korodullin."
    "Very true, Cho-Hag, very true." The young King of Arendia sighed again and bent all his concentration to the problem of how many of the advancing Murgos he could really afford to give away. "Thinkest thou that two Murgos apiece might content those who fight afoot?" he asked rather hesitantly.
    "Sounds fair to me."
    Korodullin smiled then with happy relief. "Then that is what we shall allot them," he declared. "I have not divided up Murgos before, but it is not nearly so difficult as I had imagined."
    King Cho-Hag began to laugh.
    Lady Ariana put her arms about Lelldorin's shaking shoulders and drew him gently away from the pallet upon which his cousin's body lay.
    "Can't you do something, Ariana?" he pleaded, tears streaming down his face. "Perhaps a bandage of some sort-and a poultice."
    "He is beyond my art, my Lord," Ariana replied gently, "and I share thy sorrow at his death."
    "Don't say that word, Ariana. Torasin can't be dead."
    "I'm sorry, my Lord," she said simply. "He is gone, and none of my remedies or skill can bring him back."
    "Polgara can do it," Lelldorin declared suddenly, an impossible hope leaping into his eyes. "Send for Polgara."
    "I have no one to send, my Lord," Ariana told him, looking around the makeshift tent where she and Taiba and a few others were caring for the