The old man roused himself and squinted in the direction of the Wood. "Maybe," he grunted doubtfully.
"We owe her the courtesy, father, and it's not really out of our way."
"All right, Pol," he said, "but just a brief stop. We're months behind Zandramas already."
They crossed the last band of open fields and rode in under the ancient, mossy oaks. The leaves had fallen to the chill winds of winter, and the bare limbs of the huge trees were starkly etched against the sky.
A peculiar change came over Ce'Nedra as they entered the Wood. Although it was still not really warm, she pushed back the hood of her cloak and shook out her coppery curls, causing her tiny, acorn-shaped gold earrings to tinkle musically. Her face became strangely calm, no longer mirroring the sorrow that had marked it since the abduction of her son. Her eyes became soft, almost unfocused. "I have returned," she murmured into the quiet air beneath the spreading trees.
Garion felt, rather than heard, the soft, murmuring response. From all around him he seemed to hear a sibilant sighing, although there was no trace of a breeze. The. sighing was almost like a chorus, joining just below the level of hearing into a quiet, mournful song, a song filled with a gentle regret and at the same time an abiding hope.
"Why are they sad?" Eriond quietly asked Ce'Nedra.
"Because it's winter," she replied. "They mourn the falling of their leaves and regret the fact that the birds have all flown south."
"But spring will come again," he said.
"They know, but winter always saddens them."
Velvet was looking curiously at the little queen.
"Ce'Nedra's background makes her peculiarly sensitive to trees," Polgara explained.
"I didn't know that Tolnedrans were that interested in the out-of-doors."
"She's only half Tolnedran, Liselle. Her love of trees comes from the other side of her heritage."
"I'm a Dryad," Ce'Nedra said simply, her eyes still dreamy. -
"I didn't know that."
"We didn't exactly make an issue of it," Belgarath told her. "We were having trouble enough getting the Alorns to accept a Tolnedran as the Rivan Queen without complicating matters by telling them that she was a nonhuman as well."
They made a simple camp not far from the place where they had been set upon by the hideous mud-men Queen Salmissra had dispatched to attack them so many years before. Because they could not hew limbs from live trees in this sacred wood, they were obliged to make shelters as best they could with what they found lying on the leaf-strewn forest floor, and their fire was of necessity very small. As twilight settled slowly over the silent Wood, Silk looked dubiously at the tiny, flickering flame and then out at the vast darkness moving almost visibly out from among the trees. "I think we're in for a cold night," he predicted.
Garion slept badly. Although he had piled fallen leaves deeply in the makeshift bed he shared with Ce'Nedra, their damp cold seemed to seep through to chill his very bones. He awoke from a fitful doze just as the first pale, misty light seeped in among the trees. He sat up stiffly and was about to throw off his blanket, but stopped, Eriond was sitting on a fallen log on the other side of their long-dead campfire, and sitting beside him was a tawny-haired Dryad.
"The trees say that you are a friend," the Dryad was saying as she absently toyed with a sharp-tipped arrow.
"I'm fond of trees," Eriond replied.
"That's not exactly the way they meant it."
"I know."
Garion carefully pushed his blankets aside and stood up.
The Dryad's hand moved swiftly toward the bow lying at her side, then she stopped. "Oh," she said, "it's you." She looked at him critically. Her eyes were as grey as glass. "You've gotten older, haven't you?"
"It's been quite a few years," he said, trying to remember just exactly where he had seen her before.
A faint hint of a smile touched her lips. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"Well, sort of."
She laughed, then picked up her bow. She set the arrow she was holding to the string and pointed it at him. "Does this help your memory at all?"
He blinked. "Weren't you the one who wanted to kill me?"
"It was only fair, after all. I was the one who caught you, so I should have been the one who got to kill you."
"Do you kill every human you catch?" Eriond asked her.
She lowered her bow. "Well, not every one of them. Sometimes I find other uses for them."
Garion looked at her a bit more closely. "You haven't changed a bit. You still look the same as before."
"I know." Her eyes grew challenging. "And pretty?" she prompted.
"Very pretty."
"What a nice thing for you to say. Maybe I'm glad that I didn't kill you after all. Why don't you and I go someplace, and you can say some more nice things to me?"
"That's enough, Xbel," Ce'Nedra said tartly from her bed of leaves. "He's mine, so don't get any ideas."
"Hello, Ce'Nedra," the tawny-haired Dryad said as calmly as if they had talked together within the past week. "Wouldn't you be willing to share him with one of your own sisters?"
"You wouldn't lend me your comb, would you?"
"Certainly not—but that's entirely different."
"There's no way that I could ever make you understand," Ce'Nedra said, pushing back her blankets and rising to her feet.
"Humans." Xbel sighed. "You all have such funny ideas." She looked speculatively at Eriond, her slim little hand softly touching his cheek. "How about this one? Does it belong to you, too?"
Polgara came out of another one of their makeshift shelters. Her face was calm, although one of her eyebrows was raised. "Good morning, Xbel," she said. "You're up early."
"I was hunting," the Dryad replied. "Does this blond one belong to you, Polgara? Ce'Nedra won't share that one of hers with me, but maybe—" Her hand lingeringly touched Eriond's soft curls.
"No, Xbel," Polgara said firmly.
Xbel sighed again. "None of you are any fun at all," she pouted. Then she stood up. She was as tiny as Ce'Nedra and as slender as a willow. "Oh," she said, "I almost forgot. Xantha says that I'm supposed to take you to her."
"But you got sidetracked, didn't you?" Ce'Nedra added drily.
"The day hasn't even got started yet." The Dryad shrugged.
Then Belgarath and Silk came out into the open area around the cold fire pit; a moment later, Durnik and Toth joined them.