Pawn of Prophecy

have no trouble making acquaintances," he said. "There are places where one may buy food."
    Buy food? Garion had never heard of such a thing before. Anyone who appeared at Faldor's gate at mealtime was invited to the table as a matter of course. The world of the villagers was obviously very different from the world of Faldor's farm.
    "But I don't have any money," he objected.
    "I've enough for us both," Wolf assured him, stopping their horse before a large, low building with a sign bearing a picture of a cluster of grapes hanging just above its door. There were words on the sign, but of course Garion could not read them.
    "What do the words say, Mister Wolf?" he asked.
    "They say that food and drink may be bought inside," Wolf told him, getting down from the cart.
    "It must be a fine thing to be able to read," Garion said wistfully. The old man looked at him, seemingly surprised. "You can't read, boy?" he asked incredulously.
    "I've never found anyone to teach me," Garion said. "Faldor reads, I think, but no one else at the farm knows how."
    "Nonsense," Wolf snorted. "I'll speak to your Aunt about it. She's been neglecting her responsibility. She should have taught you years ago."
    "Can Aunt Pol read?" Garion asked, stunned.
    "Of course she can," Wolf said, leading the way into the tavern. "She says she finds little advantage in it, but she and I had that particular argument out, many years ago." The old man seemed quite upset by Garion's lack of education.
    Garion, however, was far too interested in the smoky interior of the tavern to pay much attention. The room was large and dark with a low, beamed ceiling and a stone floor strewn with rushes. Though it was not cold, a fire burned in a stone pit in the center of the room, and the smoke rose errantly toward a chimney set above it on four square stone pillars. Tallow candles guttered in clay dishes on several of the long, stained tables, and there was a reek of wine and stale beer in the air.
    "What have you to eat?" Wolf demanded of a sour, unshaven man wearing a grease-spotted apron.
    "We've a bit of a joint left," the man said, pointing at a spit resting to one side of the fire pit. "Roasted only day before yesterday. And meat porridge fresh yesterday morning, and bread no more than a week old."
    "Very well," Wolf said, sitting down. "And I'll have a pot of your best ale and milk for the boy."
    "Milk?" Garion protested.
    "Milk," Wolf said firmly.
    "You have money?" the sour-looking man demanded.
    Wolf jingled his purse, and the sour man looked suddenly less sour.
    "Why is that man over there sleeping?" Garion asked, pointing at a snoring villager sitting with his head down on one of the tables.
    "Drunk," Wolf said, scarcely glancing at the snoring man.
    "Shouldn't someone take care of him?"
    "He'd rather not be taken care of."
    "Do you know him?"
    "I know of him," Wolf said, "and many others like him. I've occasionally been in that condition myself."
    "Why?"
    "It seemed appropriate at the time."
    The roast was dry and overdone, the meat porridge was thin and watery, and the bread was stale, but Garion was too hungry to notice. He carefully cleaned his plate as he had been taught, then sat as Mister Wolf lingered over a second pot of ale.
    "Quite splendid," he said, more to be saying something than out of any real conviction. All in all he found that Upper Gralt did not live up to his expectations.
    "Adequate." Wolf shrugged. "Village taverns are much the same the world over. I've seldom seen one I'd hurry to revisit. Shall we go?" He laid down a few coins, which the sour-looking man snatched up quickly, and led Garion back out into the afternoon sunlight.
    "Let's find your Aunt's spice merchant," he said, "and then see to a night's lodging-and a stable for our horse." They set off down the street, leaving horse and cart beside the tavern.
    The house of the Tolnedran spice merchant was a tall, narrow building in the next street. Two swarthy, thick-bodied men in short tunics lounged in the street at his front door near a fierce-looking black horse wearing a curious armored saddle. The two men stared with dull-eyed disinterest at passers-by in the lane.
    Mister Wolf stopped when he caught sight of them.
    "Is something wrong?" Garion asked.
    "Thulls," Wolf said quietly, looking hard at the two men.
    "What?"
    "Those two are Thulls," the old man said. "They usually work as porters for the Murgos."
    "What are Murgos?"
    "The people of Cthol Murgos," Wolf said shortly.