Guardians of the West

likely," the old man replied, "but if Yarblek here gets carried away, it might go a little too far, and you can't get answers out of a dead man."
    "But afterward?" Yarblek asked eagerly.
    "I don't really care what you do with him afterward."
    The next day, Garion was in a small, curtained-off area in the main tent going over his maps and his carefully organized lists, trying to determine if there was anything he had overlooked. He had begun of late to feel as if the entire army were resting directly on his shoulders.
    "Garion," Ce'Nedra said, entering his cubicle, "some friends have arrived."
    He looked up.
    "Brand's three sons," she told him, "and that glass blower Joran." Garion frowned. "What are they doing here?" he asked. "I told them all to stay at Riva."
    They say that they've got something important to tell you."
    He sighed. "You'd better have them come in, then."
    Brand's three gray-cloaked sons and the serious-faced Joran entered and bowed. Their clothes were mud-spattered, and their faces weary. "We are not deliberately disobeying your orders, Belgarion," Kail assured him quickly, "but we discovered something very important that you have to know."
    "Oh? What's that?"
    " After you left Riva with the army, your Majesty," Kail's older brother Verdan explained, "we decided to go over the west coast of the island inch by inch. We thought there might be some clues that we overlooked in our first search."
    "Besides," Brin added, "we didn't have anything else to do."
    "Anyway," Verdan continued, "we finally found the ship those Chereks had used to come to the island."
    Their ship?" Garion asked, suddenly sitting up. "I thought that whoever it was who abducted my son used it to get off the island."
    Verdan shook his head. "The ship had been deliberately sunk, your Majesty. They filled it with rocks and then chopped holes in the bottom. We sailed right over it five times until a calm day when there wasn't any surf. It was lying on the bottom in about thirty feet of water."
    "How did the abductor get off the island, then?"
    "We had that same thought, Belgarion," Joran said. "It occurred to us that, in spite of everything, the abductor might still be on the Isle of the Winds. We started searching. That's when we found the shepherd."
    "Shepherd?"
    "He'd been alone with his flock up in the meadows on the western side of the Isle," Kail explained. "He was completely unaware of what had happened in the city. Anyway, we asked him if he had seen anything unusual at about the time Prince Geran was taken from the Citadel, and he said that he had seen a ship sail into a cove on the West coast at about that time and that somebody carrying something wrapped in a blanket got on board. Then the ship put out to sea, leaving the others behind. Belgarion, it was the same cove where the trail the Orb was following ended."
    "Which way did the ship go?"
    "South,"
    "There's one other thing, Belgarion," Joran added. "The shepherd was positive that the ship was Nyissan."
    "Nyissan?"
    "He was absolutely certain. He even described the snake banner she was flying."
    Garion got quickly to his feet. "Wait here," he told them. Then he went to the flap in the partition. "Grandfather, Aunt Pol, could you step in here for a moment?"
    "What is it, dear?" Polgara asked as she and the old sorcerer came into Garion's makeshift office, with Silk trailing curiously behind.
    "Tell them," Garion said to Kail.
    Quickly, Brand's second son repeated what they had just told Garion.
    "Salmissra?" Polgara suggested to her father.
    "Not necessarily, Pol. Nyissa is full of intrigue, and the Queen isn't behind it all -particularly after what you did to her." He frowned. "Why would a Cherek abandon one of his own boats to ride aboard a Nyissan scow? That doesn't make sense."
    "That's another question we'll have to ask Ulfgar, once we get our hands on him," Silk said.
    At dawn the next morning, a large body of troops comprised of elements from all the forces gathered for the siege began to march across the valley to the south of the city toward the steep hill and Rheon. They carried scaling ladders and battering rams in plain sight to make the defenders believe that this was a major assault.
    In the quarter of the city occupied by Garion's troops, however, Silk led a sizeable detachment of men through the dawn murk across the rooftops to clear away the cult archers and the smeared men with their boiling pitch pots occupying those houses on either side of the hastily