Queen of Sorcery

nothing more than rude hovels oozing smoke from the pitiful fires within. Scrawny pigs rooted in the muddy streets, and the stench of the place was awful.
    A funeral procession slogged through the mud toward the burial ground on the other side of the village. The corpse, carried on a board, was wrapped in a ragged brown blanket, and the richly robed and cowled priests of Chaldan, the Arendish God, chanted an age-old hymn that had much to do with war and vengeance, but little to do with comfort. The widow, a whimpering infant at her breast, followed the body, her face blank and her eyes dead.
    The inn smelled of stale beer and half-rotten food. A fire had destroyed one end of the common room, charring and blackening the lowbeamed ceiling. The gaping hole in the burned wall was curtained off with a sheet of rotting canvas. The fire pit in the center of the room smoked, and the hard-faced innkeeper was surly. For supper he offered only bowls of watery gruel - a mixture of barley and turnips.
    "Charming," Silk said sardonically, pushing away his untouched bowl. "I'm a bit surprised at you, Lelldorin. Your passion for correcting wrongs seems to have overlooked this place. Might I suggest that your next crusade include a visit to the Lord of this demesne? His hanging seems long overdue."
    "I hadn't realized it was so bad," Lelldorin replied in a subdued voice. He looked around as if seeing certain things for the first time. A kind of sick horror began to show itself in his transparent face.
    Garion, his stomach churning, stood up. "I think I'll go outside," he declared.
    "Not too far," Aunt Pol warned.
    The air outside was at least somewhat cleaner, and Garion picked his way carefully toward the edge of the village, trying to avoid the worst of the mud.
    "Please, my Lord," a little girl with huge eyes begged, "have you a crust of bread to spare?"
    Garion looked at her helplessly. "I'm sorry." He fumbled through his clothes, looking for something to give her, but the child began to cry and turned away.
    In the stump-dotted field beyond the stinking streets, a ragged boy about Garion's own age was playing a wooden flute as he watched a few scrubby cows. The melody he played was heartbreakingly pure, drifting unnoticed among the hovels squatting in the slanting rays of the pale sun. The boy saw him, but did not break off his playing. Their eyes met with a kind of grave recognition, but they did not speak.
    At the edge of the forest beyond the field, a dark-robed and hooded man astride a black horse came out of the trees and sat watching the village. There was something ominous about the dark figure, and something vaguely familiar as well. It seemed somehow to Garion that he should know who the rider was, but, though his mind groped for a name, it tantalizingly eluded him. He looked at the figure at the edge of the woods for a long time, noticing without even being aware of it that though the horse and rider stood in the full light of the setting sun, there was no shadow behind them. Deep in his mind something tried to shriek at him, but, all bemused, he merely watched. He would not say anything to Aunt Pol or the others about the figure at the edge of the woods because there was nothing to say; as soon as he turned his back, he would forget.
    The light began to fade, and, because he had begun to shiver, he turned to go back to the inn with the aching song of the boy's flute soaring toward the sky above him.

Chapter Six
    DESPITE THE PROMISE Of the brief Sunset, the next day dawned cold and murky with a chill drizzle that wreathed down among the trees and made the entire forest sodden and gloomy. They left the inn early and soon entered a part of the wood that seemed more darkly foreboding than even the ominous stretches through which they had previously passed. The trees here were enormous, and many vast, gnarled oaks lifted their bare limbs among the dark firs and spruces. The forest floor was covered with a kind of gray moss that looked diseased and unwholesome.
    Lelldorin had spoken little that morning, and Garion assumed that his friend was still struggling with the problem of Nachak's scheme. The young Asturian rode along, wrapped in his heavy green cloak, his reddish-gold hair damp and dispirited-looking in the steady drizzle. Garion pulled in beside his friend, and they rode silently for a while. "What's troubling you, Lelldorin?" he asked finally.
    "I think that all my life I've been blind, Garion," Lelldorin