Pawn of Prophecy

clear and looked around for the dark, shadowless rider, but the figure had vanished. He tried to get up, but the world suddenly spun around him, and he fainted.
    When he awoke, he was in his own bed with his head wrapped in bandages.
    Aunt Pol stood beside his bed, her eyes blazing. "You stupid boy!" she cried. "What were you doing in that pond?"
    "Rafting," Garion said, trying to make it sound quite ordinary.
    "Rafting?" she said. "Rafting? Who gave you permission?"
    "Well-" he said uncertainly. "We just "
    "You just what?"
    He looked at her helplessly.
    And then with a low cry she took him in her arms and crushed him to her almost suffocatingly.
    Briefly Garion considered telling her about the strange, shadowless figure that had watched his struggles in the pond, but the dry voice in his mind that sometimes spoke to him told him that this was not the time for that. He seemed to know somehow that the business between him and the man on the black horse was something very private, and that the time would inevitably come when they would face each other in some kind of contest of will or deed. To speak of it now to Aunt Pol would involve her in the matter, and he did not want that. He was not sure exactly why, but he did know that the dark figure was an enemy, and though that thought was a bit frightening, it was also exciting. There was no question that Aunt Pol could deal with this stranger, but if she did, Garion knew that he would lose something very personal and for some reason very important. And so he said nothing.
    "It really wasn't anything all that dangerous, Aunt Pol," he said instead, rather lamely. "I was starting to get the idea of how to swim. I'd have been all right if I hadn't hit my head on that log."
    "But of course you did hit your head," she pointed out.
    "Well, yes, but it wasn't that serious. I'd have been all right in a minute or two."
    "Under the circumstances I'm not sure you had a minute or two," she said bluntly.
    "Well-" he faltered, and then decided to let it drop.
    That marked the end of Garion's freedom. Aunt Pol confined him to the scullery. He grew to know every dent and scratch on every pot in the kitchen intimately. He once estimated gloomily that he washed each one twenty-one times a week. In a seeming orgy of messiness, Aunt Pol suddenly could not even boil water without dirtying at least three or four pans, and Garion had to scrub every one. He hated it and began to think quite seriously of running away.
    As autumn progressed and the weather began to deteriorate, the other children were also more or less confined to the compound as well, and it wasn't so bad. Rundorig, of course, was seldom with them anymore since his man's size had made him - even more than Garion - subject to more and more frequent labor.
    When he could, Garion slipped away to be with Zubrette and Doroon, but they no longer found much entertainment in leaping into the hay or in the endless games of tag in the stables and barns. They had reached an age and size where adults rather quickly noticed such idleness and found tasks to occupy them. Most often they would sit in some out of the way place and simply talk - which is to say that Garion and Zubrette would sit and listen to the endless flow of Doroon's chatter. That small, quick boy, as unable to be quiet as he was to sit still, could seemingly talk for hours about a half dozen raindrops, and his words tumbled out breathlessly as he fidgeted.
    "What's that mark on your hand, Garion?" Zubrette asked one rainy day, interrupting Doroon's bubbling voice.
    Garion looked at the perfectly round, white patch on the palm of his right hand.
    "I've noticed it too," Doroon said, quickly changing subjects in midsentence. "But Garion grew up in the kitchen, didn't you, Garion? It's probably a place where he burned himself when he was little - you know, reached out before anyone could stop him and put his hand on something hot. I'll bet his Aunt Pol really got angry about that, because she can get angrier faster than anybody else I've ever seen, and she can really-"
    "It's always been there," Garion said, tracing the mark on his palm with his left forefinger. He had never really looked closely at it before. It covered the entire palm of his hand and had in certain light a faint silvery sheen.
    "Maybe it's a birthmark," Zubrette suggested.
    "I'll bet that's it," Doroon said quickly. "I saw a man once that had a big purple one on the side of his face-one of those wagoneers that