The sun had long since abandoned the north, and the moon had wandered away, so I can’t really give you any idea of how long it took us to make it across – probably not as long as it seemed, since I reverted to the form of the wolf and I could keep going for a long time without slowing down. Moreover, my malicious running of the Alorns had conditioned them to the point that they could almost keep up with me.
Anyway, we finally reached the coast of Mallorea – just in time as it turned out, because a three-day blizzard came up almost as soon as we hit the beach. We took shelter under a mountainous pile of driftwood to wait out the storm. Dras turned out to be very useful at that point. He took his battle-axe to that jumble of logs and limbs and hollowed us out a very comfortable den near the center of the pile. We built a fire and gradually thawed out.
During one of his visits to the Vale, Beldin had sketched me out a rough map of Mallorea, and I spent a great deal of time hunched over that map while the blizzard was busy drifting about eight feet of snow over our shelter. ‘How far is your bridge up the coast from where we crossed?’ I asked Riva when the wind began to subside.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Fifty leagues or so, I guess.’
‘You’re a lot of help, Riva,’ I told him sourly. I stared at the map again. Beldin hadn’t known about the bridge, of course, so he hadn’t drawn it in, and he also hadn’t included a scale, so all I could do was guess. ‘As closely as I can make it out, we’re approximately due west of Cthol Mishrak,’ I told my friends.
‘Approximately?’ Bear-shoulders asked.
‘This map isn’t all that good. It gives me a general idea of where the city is, but that’s about all. When the wind dies down a bit more, we’ll scout around. Cthol Mishrak’s on a river, and there’s a swamp north of that river. If we find a swamp inland, we’ll know that we’re fairly close.’
‘And if we don’t?’
‘Then we’ll have to go looking for it – or the river.’
Cherek squinted at my map. We could be north of the swamp, Belgarath,’ he objected.’ – or south of the river, for that matter. We could end up wandering around up here until summer time.’
‘Have you got anything better to do?’
‘Well, no, but –’
‘Let’s not start worrying until we find out what’s lying inland. Your auguries say this is your lucky year, so maybe we’ve come ashore in the right place.’
‘But you don’t believe in auguries.’
‘No, but you do. Maybe that’s all it takes. If you think you’re lucky, you probably are.’
‘I suppose I didn’t think of that,’ he said, his face suddenly brightening. You can convince an Alorn of almost anything if you talk fast enough.
We rolled up in our furs and slept at that point. There really wasn’t anything else to do, unless we wanted to sit around and watch Dras play with his dice. Drasnians love to gamble, but I got much more entertainment from dreaming about my wife.
I can’t be sure how long I slept, but some time later, Riva shook me awake. ‘I think you’d better reset that sense of direction of yours, Belgarath,’ he said accusingly.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I just went outside to see if the wind had died. The sun’s coming up.’
I sat up quickly. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Go wake up your father and brothers,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got a little light for a while. Let’s take advantage of it to have a look inland. Tell them not to bother breaking down our camp. We’ll go take a look and then come back. I want it to be dark again before we start out.’
There were rounded mounds backing the beach where we’d sat out the storm, and once we got to them, Dras negligently hit the snow-covered side of one of them with his axe. ‘Sand,’ he reported. That sounded promising.
We topped the dunes and gazed out over a scrubby forest that looked almost like a jungle dotted here and there with broad clearings.
‘What do you think?’ Cherek asked me. ‘It looks sort of boggy. It’s frozen, of course, and knee-deep in snow, but those clearings would be open water in the summer if it is that swamp.’
‘Let’s go look,’ I said, squinting nervously at the fading ‘dawn’ along the southern horizon. ‘We’d better hurry if we want to reach it before it gets dark again.’
We trotted down the back-side of the dune and out among the gnarled, stunted trees. When we got to one of those clearings, I kicked the snow out of the way and had a look. ‘Ice,’ I said with a certain satisfaction. ‘Chop a hole in it, Dras. I need to have a look at the water.’
‘You’re dulling the edge of my axe, Belgarath,’ he complained.
‘You can sharpen it again. Start chopping.’
He muttered a few choice oaths, bunched those enormous shoulders, and began to chop ice.
‘Harder, Dras,’ I urged him. ‘I want to get down to water before the light goes.’
He began to chop harder and faster, sending splinters and chunks of ice in all directions. After several minutes, water began to seep up from the bottom of the hole.
I suppressed an urge to dance with glee. The water was brown. ‘That’s enough,’ I told the huge man. I knelt, scooped up a handful of water and tasted it. ‘Brackish,’ I announced. ‘It’s swamp-water, all right. It looks as if your auguries were right, Cherek. This is your lucky year. Let’s go back to the beach and have some breakfast.’
Algar fell in beside me as we started back. ‘I’d say it’s your lucky year too, Belgarath,’ he murmured quietly. ‘Father would have been a little grumpy if we’d missed that swamp.’
‘I can’t possibly lose, Algar,’ I replied gaily. ‘When we get back to the beach, I’ll borrow your brother’s dice and roll the main all day long.’
‘I don’t play dice. What are you talking about?’
‘It’s a game called hazard,’ I explained. ‘You’re supposed to call a number before your first roll. If it comes up, you win. That number’s called “the main”.’
‘And if it doesn’t come up, you lose?’
‘It’s a little more complicated than that. Have Dras show you.’
‘I’ve got better things to do with my money, Belgarath, and I’ve heard stories about my brother’s dice.’
‘You don’t think he’d cheat you, do you? You are his brother.’
‘If there was money involved, Dras would cheat our own mother.’
You see what I mean about Drasnians?
We returned to our den, and Riva cooked an extensive breakfast. Cooking is a chore that nobody really likes – except for my daughter, of course
