Queen of Sorcery

hill beside the Great West Road some days before.
    The baron was a solid-looking man in a green surcoat, and his hair and beard were touched with white. His eyes were deep-set, and there seemed to be a great sadness in them. "Mandorallen," he said, warmly embracing the younger knight. "Thou art unkind to absent thyself from us for so long."
    "Duty, my Lord," Mandorallen replied in a subdued voice. "Come, Nerina," the baron told his wife, "greet our friend."
    The Baroness Nerina was much younger than her husband. Her hair was dark and very long. She wore a rose-colored gown, and she was beautiful-though, Garion thought, no more so than any of a half dozen others he had seen at the Arendish court.
    "Dear Mandorallen," she said, kissing the knight with a brief, chaste embrace, "we have missed thee at Vo Ebor."
    "And the world is desolate for me that I must be absent from its wellloved halls."
    Sir Andorig had bowed and then discreetly departed, leaving Garion standing awkwardly near the door.
    "And who is this likely-appearing lad who accompanies thee, my son?" the baron asked.
    "A Sendarian boy," Mandorallen responded. "His name is Garion. He and diverse others have joined with me in a perilous quest."
    "Joyfully I greet my son's companion," the baron declared.
    Garion bowed, but his mind raced, attempting to find some legitimate excuse to leave. The situation was terribly embarrassing, and he did not want to stay.
    "I must wait upon the king," the baron announced. "Custom and courtesy demand that I present myself to him as soon as possible upon my arrival at his court. Wilt thou, Mandorallen, remain here with my baroness until I return?"
    "I will, my Lord."
    "I'll take you to where the king is meeting with my aunt and my grandfather, sir," Garion offered quickly.
    "Nay, lad," the baron demurred. "Thou too must remain. Though I have no cause for anxiety, knowing full well the fidelity of my wife and my dearest friend, idle tongues would make scandal were they left together unattended. Prudent folk leave no possible foundation for false rumor and vile innuendo."
    "I'll stay then, sir," Garion replied quickly.
    "Good lad," the baron approved. Then, with eyes that seemed somehow haunted, he quietly left the room.
    "Wilt thou sit, my Lady?" Mandorallen asked Nerina, pointing to a sculptured bench near a window.
    "I will," she said. "Our journey was fatiguing."
    "It is a long way from Vo Ebor," Mandorallen agreed, sitting on another bench. "Didst thou and my Lord find the roads passable?"
    "Perhaps not yet so dry as to make travel enjoyable," she told him. They spoke at some length about roads and weather, sitting not far from each other, but not so close that anyone chancing to pass by the open door could have mistaken their conversation for anything less than innocent. Their eyes, however, spoke more intimately. Garion, painfully embarrassed, stood looking out a window, carefully choosing one that kept him in full view of the door.
    As the conversation progressed, there were increasingly long pauses, and Garion cringed inwardly at each agonizing silence, afraid that either Mandorallen or the Lady Nerina might in the extremity of their hopeless love cross that unspoken boundary and blurt the one word, phrase, or sentence which would cause restraint and honor to crumble and turn their lives into disaster. And yet a certain part of his mind wished that the word or phrase or sentence might be spoken and that their love could flame, however briefly.
    It was there, in that quiet sunlit chamber, that Garion passed a small crossroad. The prejudice against Mandorailen that Lelldorin's unthinking partisanship had instilled in him finally shattered and fell away. He felt a surge of feelings - not pity, for they would not have accepted pity, but compassion rather. More than that, there was the faint beginning of an understanding of the honor and towering pride which, though utterly selfless, was the foundation of that tragedy which had existed in Arendia for uncounted centuries.
    For perhaps a half hour more Mandorallen and the Lady Nerina sat, speaking hardly at all now, their eyes lost in each other's faces while Garion, near to tears, stood his enforced watch over them. And then Durnik came to tell them that Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf were getting ready to leave.

Part Two - TOLNEDRA

Chapter Twelve
    A BRASSY CHORUS OF HORNS saluted them from the battlements of Vo Mimbre as they rode out of the city accompanied by twoscore armored