Queen of Sorcery

took a long time to kill my parents. I remember that my mother screamed once, near the end." The Algar's face was as bleak as rock, and his flat, quiet voice made his story seem that much more dreadful.
    "After my parents were dead, the Murgos tied a rope around my feet and dragged me behind one of their horses," he continued. "When the rope finally broke, they thought I was dead, and they all rode off. They were laughing about it as I recall. Cho-Hag found me a couple of days later."
    As clearly as if he had been there, Garion had a momentary picture of a child, dreadfully injured and alone, wandering in the emptiness of eastern Algaria with only grief and a terrible hatred keeping him alive.
    "I killed my first Murgo when I was ten," Hettar went on in the same flat voice. "He was trying to escape from us, and I rode him down and put a javelin between his shoulders. He screamed when the javelin went through him. That made me feel better. Cho-Hag thought that if he made me watch the Murgo die, it might cure me of the hatred. He was wrong about that, though." The tall Algar's face was expressionless, and his wind-whipped scalp lock tossed and flowed out behind him. There was a kind of emptiness about him as if he were devoid of any feeling but that one driving compulsion.
    For an instant Garion dimly understood what Mister Wolf had been driving at when he had warned about the danger of becoming obsessed with a desire for revenge, but he pushed the notion out of his mind. If Hettar could live with it, so could he. He felt a sudden fierce admiration for this lonely hunter in black leather.
    Mister Wolf was deep in conversation with Mandorallen, and the two of them loitered until Hettar and Garion caught up with them. For a time they rode along together.
    "It is our nature," the knight in his gleaming armor was saying in a melancholy voice. "We are over-proud, and it is our pride that dooms our poor Arendia to internecine war."
    "That can be cured," Mister Wolf said.
    "How?" Mandorallen asked. "It is in our blood. I myself am the most peaceful of men, but even I am subject to our national disease. Moreover, our divisions are too great, too buried in our history and our souls to be purged away. The peace will not last, my friend. Even now Asturian arrows sing in the forests, seeking Mimbrate targets, and Mimbre in reprisal burns Asturian houses and butchers hostages. War is inevitable, I fear."
    "No," Wolf disagreed, "it's not."
    "How may it be prevented?" Mandorallen demanded. "Who can cure our insanity?"
    "I will, if I have to," Wolf told him quietly, pushing back his gray hood.
    Mandorallen smiled wanly. "I appreciate thy good intentions, Belgarath, but that is impossible, even for thee."
    "Nothing is actually impossible, Mandorallen," Wolf answered in a matter-of fact voice. "Most of the time I prefer not to interfere with other people's amusements, but I can't afford to have Arendia going up in flames just now. If I have to, I'll step in and put a stop to any more foolishness."
    "Hast thou in truth such power?" Mandorallen asked somewhat wistfully as if he could not quite bring himself to believe it.
    "Yes," Wolf replied prosaically, scratching at his short white beard, "as a matter of fact, I do."
    Mandorallen's face grew troubled, even a bit awed at the old man's quiet statement, and Garion found his grandfather's declaration profoundly disturbing. If Wolf could actually stop a war single-handedly, he'd have no difficulty at all thwarting Garion's own plans for revenge. It was something else to worry about.
    Then Silk rode back toward them. "The Great Fair's just ahead," the rat-faced man announced. "Do we want to stop, or should we go around it.
    "We might as well stop," Wolf decided. "It's almost evening, and we need some supplies."
    "The horses could use some rest, too," Hettar said. "They're starting to complain."
    "You should have told me," Wolf said, glancing back at the pack train.
    "They're not really in bad shape yet," Hettar informed him, "but they're starting to feel sorry for themselves. They're exaggerating of course, but a little rest wouldn't hurt them."
    "Exaggerating?" Silk sounded shocked. "You don't mean to say that horses can actually lie, do you?"
    Hettar shrugged. "Of course. They lie all the time. They're very good at it."
    For a moment Silk looked outraged at the thought, and then he suddenly laughed. "Somehow that restores my faith in the order of the universe," he declared.
    Wolf looked