The Seeress of Kell

were gone, and the column of warm air was back, rising undisturbed into the summer air.
    He had lost at least a thousand feet in the downdraft, and he saw Aunt Pol and Beldin, each over a mile away in opposite directions. As he began again to spiral upward, he saw that they also were rising and veering through the air toward him.
    "Stay on your guard," Aunt Pol's voice told him. "Use the Orb to muffle anything else they try to throw at us."
    It took them only a few minutes to regain the height they had lost, and they continued upward over forests and rockslides until they reached that region on the flanks of the mountain above the tree line and below the eternal snows. It was an area of steep meadows with grass and wildflowers nodding in the mountain breeze.
    "There!" Beldin's voice seemed to crackle. "It's a trail."
    "Are you sure it's not just a game trail, uncle?" Polgara asked him.
    "It's too straight, Pol. A deer couldn't walk in a straight line if his life depended on it. That trail is man-made. Let's see where it goes." He tilted on one wing and swooped down toward the well-traveled track stretching up one of the meadows toward a gap in a rocky ridge. At the upper end of the meadow, he flared his wings. "Let's go down," he told them. "It might be better if we follow the rest of the way on foot.''
    Aunt Pol and Garion followed him down, and the three of them blurred back into their own forms. "It was touch and go there for a while," Beldin said. "I came within a few feet of bending my beak on a rockslide." He looked critically at Polgara. "Would you like to revise your theory about the Dals not hurting anybody?"
    "We'll see."
    "I wish I had my sword," Garion said. "If we run into trouble, we're pretty much defenseless."
    "I don't know if your sword would be much use against the kind of trouble we're likely to come up against," Beldin told him. "Don't lose contact with the Orb, though. Let's see where this goes." He started up the steep trail toward the ridge.
    The gap in the ridge was a narrow pass between two large boulders. Toth stood in the center of the trail, mutely blocking their way.
    Polgara looked him coolly in the face. "We will go to the place of the seers, Toth. It is foreordained."
    Toth's eyes grew momentarily distant. Then he nodded and stepped aside for them.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The cavern was vast, and there was a city inside. The city looked much like Kell, thousands of feet below, except, of course, for the absence of lawns and gardens. It was dim, since the blindfolded seers needed no light, and the eyes of their mute guides had, Garion surmised, become adjusted to the faint light.
    There were few people abroad in those shadowy streets, and those they saw as Toth led them into the city paid no attention to them. Beldin was muttering to himself as he stumped along.
    "What is it, uncle?" Polgara asked him.
    "Have you ever noticed how much some people are slaves to convention?" he replied.
    "I don't quite see what you're getting at."
    "This town is inside a cave, but they still put roofs on the houses. Isn't that sort of an absurdity? It isn't going to rain in here."
    "But it will get cold—particularly in the winter. If a house has no roof, it's a little hard to keep the heat in, wouldn't you say?"
    He frowned. "I guess I didn't think of that," he admitted. The house to which Toth led them was in the very center of this strange subterranean city. Although it was no different from those around it, its location hinted that the inhabitant was of some importance. Toth entered without knocking and led them to the simple room where Cyradis sat waiting for them, her pale young face illuminated by a single candle.
    "You have reached us more quickly than we had expected," she said. In a peculiar way her voice was different from the way it had sounded in their previous meetings. Garion uneasily felt that the seeress was speaking in more than one voice, and the result was startlingly choral.
    "You knew that we could come, then?" Polgara asked her.
    "Of course. It was but a question of time before you would complete your threefold task."
    "Task?"
    "It was but a simple endeavor for one as powerful as thou art, Polgara, but it was a necessary test."
    "I don't seem to recall—"
    "As I told thee, it was so simple that doubtless thou hast forgotten it."
    "Remind us," Beldin said gruffly.
    "Of course, gentle Beldin." She smiled. "You have found this place; you have subdued the elements to reach it; and Polgara