The village was even worse than Lelldorin's description had led them
to believe. A half dozen ragged beggars stood in the mud on the
outskirts, their hands held out imploringly and their voices shrill. The
houses were 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.
Pwrt one arendia 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 replied.
"Oh? In what way?" Garion said it carefully, hoping that his friend had finally decided to tell Mister Wolf everything.
"I saw only Mimbre's oppression of Asturia. I never saw our own oppression of our own people."
"I've been trying to tell you that," Garion pointed out. "What made you see it finally?"
"That village where we stayed last night," Lelldorin explained. "I've
never seen so poor and mean a place - or people crushed into such
hopeless misery. How can they bear it?"
"Do they have any choice?"
"My father at least looks after the people on his land," the young
man asserted defensively. "No one goes hungry or without shelter - but
those people are treated worse than animals. I've always been proud of
my station, but now it makes me ashamed." Tears actually stood in his
eyes.
Garion was not sure how to deal with his friend's sudden awakening.
On the one hand, he was glad that Lelldorin had finally seen what had
always been obvious; but on the other, he was more than a little afraid
of what this newfound perception might cause his mercurial companion to
leap into.
"I'll renounce my rank," Lelldorin declared suddenly, as if he had
been listening to Garion's thoughts, "and when I return from this quest,
I'll go among the serfs and share their lives - their sorrows."
"What good will that do? How would your suffering in any way make theirs less?"
Lelldorin looked up sharply, a half dozen emotions chasing each other
across his open face. Finally he smiled, but there was a determination
in his blue eyes. "You're right, of course," he said. "You always are.
It's amazing how you can always see directly to the heart of a problem,
Garion."
"Just what have you got in mind?" Garion asked a little apprehensively.
"I'll lead them in revolt. I'll sweep across Arendia with an army of
serfs at my back." His voice rang as his imagination fired with the
idea.
Garion groaned. "Why is that always your answer to everything,
Lelldorin?" he demanded. "In the first place, the serfs don't have any
weapons and they don't know how to fight. No matter how hard you talk,
you'd never get them to follow you. In the second place, if they did,
every nobleman in Arendia would join ranks against you. They'd butcher
your army; and afterward, things would be ten times worse. In the third
place, you'd just be starting another civil war; and that's exactly what
the Murgos want."