Pawn of Prophecy

seeped amongst the hills, they could hear, not far away, the rushing sound of a river. As all men know, gold is most easily found along the banks of rivers, and so they made quickly toward that sound.
    "Then one of them chanced to look down in the dim light, and behold, the ground at his feet was strewn with gold-lumps and chunks of it. Overcome with greed, he remained silent and loitered behind until his companions were out of sight; then he fell to his knees and began to gather up gold as a child might pick flowers.
    "He heard a sound behind him and he turned. What he saw it is best not to say. Dropping all his gold, he bolted.
    "Now the river they had heard cut through a gorge just about there, and his two companions were amazed to see him run off the edge of that gorge and even continue to run as he fell, his legs churning insubstantial air. Then they turned, and they saw what had been pursuing him.
    "One went quite mad and leaped with a despairing cry into the same gorge which had just claimed his companion, but the third adventurer, the bravest and boldest of all, told himself that no ghost could actually hurt a living man and stood his ground. That, of course, was the worst mistake of all. The ghosts encircled him as he stood bravely, certain that they could not hurt him."
    Mister Wolf paused and drank briefly from his tankard. "And then," the old storyteller continued, "because even ghosts can become hungry, they divided him up and ate him."
    Garion's hair stood on end at the shocking conclusion of Wolf's tale, and he could sense the others at his table shuddering. It was not at all the kind of story they had expected to hear.
    Durnik the smith, who was sitting nearby, had a perplexed expression on his plain face. Finally he spoke. "I would not question the truth of your story for the world," he said to Wolf, struggling with the words, "but if they ate him - the ghosts, I mean - where did it go? I mean -if ghosts are insubstantial, as all men say they are, they don't have stomachs, do they? And what would they bite with?"
    Wolf's face grew sly and mysterious. He raised one finger as if he were about to make some cryptic reply to Durnik's puzzled question, and then he suddenly began to laugh.
    Durnik looked annoyed at first, and then, rather sheepishly, he too began to laugh. Slowly the laughter spread as they all began to understand the joke.
    "An excellent jest, old friend," Faldor said, laughing as hard as any of the others, "and one from which much instruction may be gained. Greed is bad, but fear is worse, and the world is dangerous enough without cluttering it with imaginary hobgoblins." Trust Faldor to twist a good story into a moralistic sermon of some kind.
    "True enough, good Faldor," Wolf said more seriously, "but there are things in this world which cannot be explained away or dismissed with laughter."
    Brill, seated near the fire, had not joined in the laughter.
    "I have never seen a ghost," he said sourly, "nor ever met anyone who has, and I for one do not believe in any kind of magic or sorcery or such childishness." And he stood up and stamped out of the hall almost as if the story had been a kind of personal insult.
    Later, in the kitchen, when Aunt Pol was seeing to the cleaning up and Wolf lounged against one of the worktables with a tankard of beer, Garion's struggle with his conscience finally came into the open. That dry, interior voice informed him most pointedly that concealing what he had seen was not merely foolish, but possibly dangerous as well. He set down the pot he was scrubbing and crossed to where they were. "It might not be important," he said carefully, "but this afternoon, when I was coming back from the garden, I saw Brill following you, Aunt Pol."
    She turned and looked at him. Wolf set down his tankard.
    "Go on, Garion," Aunt Pol said.
    "It was when you went up to talk with Faldor," Garion explained. "He waited until you'd gone up the stairs and Faldor had let you in. Then he sneaked up and listened at the door. I saw him up there when I went to put the spade away."
    "How long has this man Brill been at the farm?" Wolf asked, frowning.
    "He came just last spring," Garion said, "after Breldo got married and moved away."
    "And the Murgo merchant was here at Erastide some months before?"
    Aunt Pol looked at him sharply.
    "You think-" She did not finish.
    "I think it might not be a bad idea if I were to step around and have a few words with friend Brill," Wolf said grimly,