King of The Murgos

into the pit. One of them fell glowing onto the tinder, and the smith gently blew on it until a tiny tongue of orange flame rose from the center. Then he carefully moved the tinder under the twigs, and the flame grew and spread with a dry crackling. "There we are," he said, brushing the fire from the tinder and returning it to his pouch along with his flint and steel.
    Garion knelt beside him and began snapping a dry branch into short lengths.
    "You were very brave last night, Garion," Durnik said as the two of them fed the small fire.
    "I think the word is insane," Garion replied wryly. "Would anybody in his right mind try to do something like that? I think the trouble is that I'm usually right in the middle of those things before I give any thought to how dangerous they are. Sometimes I wonder if Grandfather wasn't right. Maybe Aunt Pol did drop me on my head when I was a baby."
    Durnik chuckled softly. "I sort of doubt it," he said. "She's very careful with children and other breakable things."
    They added more branches to the fire until they had a cheerful blaze going, and then Garion stood up. The firelight reflected back from the fog with a soft, ruddy glow that had about it a kind of hazy unreality, as if, all unaware, they had inadvertently crossed the boundaries of the real world sometime during the night and entered the realms of magic and enchantment.
    As Toth came back up from the spring with the two dripping water bags, Polgara emerged from their shelter, brushing her long, dark hair. For some reason the single white lock above her left brow seemed almost incandescent this morning. "It's a very nice fire, dear," she said, kissing her husband. Then she looked at Garion. "Are you all right?" she asked him.
    "What? Oh, yes. I'm fine."
    "No cuts or bruises or singes you might have overlooked last night?"
    "No. I seem to have gotten through it without a scratch." He hesitated. "Were you really upset last night, Aunt Pol— with Eriond and me, I mean?"
    "Yes, Garion, I really was—but that was last night. What would you like for breakfast this morning?"
    Some time later, as the pale dawn crept steadily under the trees, Silk stood shivering on one side of the fire pit with his hands stretched out to the flames and his eyes suspiciously fixed on the bubbling pot Aunt Pol had set on a flat rock at the very edge of the fire. "Gruel?" he asked. "Again?"
    "Hot porridge," Aunt Pol corrected, stirring the contents of the pot with a long-handled wooden spoon.
    "They're the same thing, Polgara."
    "Not really. Gruel is thinner."
    "Thick or thin, it's all the same."
    She looked at him with one raised eyebrow. "Tell me, Prince Kheldar, why are you always so disagreeable in the morning?"
    "Because I detest mornings. The only reason there's such a thing as morning in the first place is to keep night and afternoon from bumping into each other."
    "Perhaps one of my tonics might sweeten your blood."
    His eyes grew wary. "Ah—no. Thanks all the same, Polgara. Now that I'm all the way awake, I feel much better."
    "I'm so glad for you. Now, do you suppose you could move away a bit? I'm going to need that side of the fire for the bacon."
    "Anything you say." And he turned and went quickly back into the shelter.
    Belgarath, who was lounging on top of his blankets, looked at the little man with an amused expression. "For a supposedly intelligent man, you do have a tendency to blunder from time to time, don't you?" he asked. "You should have learned by now not to bother Pol when she's cooking."
    Silk grunted and picked up his moth-eaten fur cape. "I think I'll go check the horses," he said. "Do you want to come along?"
    Belgarath cast an appraising eye at Polgara's dwindling supply of firewood. "That might not be a bad idea," he agreed, rising to his feet.
    'I'll go with you," Garion said. "I've got a few kinks I'd like to work out. I think I slept on a stump last night." He slung the loop of his sword belt across one shoulder and followed the other two out of the shelter.
    "It's sort of hard to believe that it really happened, isn't it?" Silk murmured when they reached the clearing. "The dragon, I mean. Now that it's daylight, everything looks so prosaic."
    "Not quite," Garion said, pointing at the scaly chunk of the dragon's tail lying on the far edge of the clearing. The tip end of it was still twitching slightly.
    Silk nodded. "That is the sort of thing you wouldn't ordinarily run across on a casual morning stroll." He looked at