"What's that supposed to mean?" Garion asked silently, but there was no answer. He shrugged and picked Errand up to avoid any chance collision between horse and child. The colt stood staring at the two of them, its eyes wide as if in amazement; when Garion turned to carry Errand back to the wagon, it trotted alongside, sniffing and even nuzzling at the child. Garion wordlessly handed Errand up to Aunt Pol and looked her full in the face. She said nothing as she took the child, but her expression told him plainly that something very important had just happened.

As he turned to remount his horse, he felt that someone was watching him, and he turned quickly toward the group of riders that had accompanied Queen Silar from the Stronghold. Just behind the queen was a tall girl mounted on a roan horse. She had long, dark brown hair, and the eyes she had fixed on Garion were gray, calm, and very serious. Her horse pranced nervously, and she calmed him with a quiet word and a gentle touch, then turned to gaze openly at Garion again. He had the peculiar feeling that he ought to know her.

The wagon creaked as Durnik shook the reins to start the team, and they all followed King Cho-Hag and Queen Silar through a narrow gate into the Stronghold. Garion saw immediately that there were no buildings inside the towering fortress. Instead there was a maze of stone walls perhaps twenty feet high twisting this way and that without any apparent plan.

"But where is thy city, your Majesty?" Mandorallen asked in perplexity.

"Inside the walls themselves," King Cho-Hag replied. "They're thick enough and high enough to give us all the room we could possibly need."

"What purpose hath all this, then?"

"It's just a trap." The king shrugged. "We permit attackers to break through the gates, and then we deal with them in here. We want to go this way." He led them along a narrow alleyway.

They dismounted in a courtyard beside the vast wall. Barak and Hettar unhooked the latches and swung the side of the wagon down. Barak tugged thoughtfully at his beard as he looked at the sleeping Belgarath. "It would probably disturb him less if we just took him inside bed and all," he suggested.

"Right," Hettar agreed, and the two of them climbed up into the wagon to lift out the sorcerer's bed.

"Just don't bounce him around," Polgara cautioned. "And don't drop him."

"We've got him, Polgara," Barak assured her. "I know you might not believe it, but we're almost as concerned about him as you are."

With the two big men carrying the bed, they passed through an arched doorway into a wide, torch-lighted corridor and up a flight of stairs, then along another hallway to another flight.

"Is it much farther?" Barak asked. Sweat was running down his face into his beard. "This bed isn't getting any lighter, you know."