The Belgariad 5: Enchanter's End Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

immediately covered all the doors to cut off an escape for those inside.
    "Malloreans!" Belgarath snapped. "Make for the trees!" And he drove his heels into his horse's flanks.
    They galloped across the weedy, stump-cluttered clearing that surrounded the village, toward the edge of the forest and safety, but there was no outcry or pursuit. The tavern appeared to contain enough fish to fill the Mallorean net. From a safe vantage point beneath spreading tree limbs, Garion, Silk, and Belgarath watched as a disconsolate-looking string of Nadraks, chained together at the ankle, were led out of the tavern into the red dust of the street to stand under the watchful eyes of the Mallorean recruiters.
    "It looks like our friend has joined the army, after all," Silk observed.
    "Better him than us," Belgarath replied. "We might be just a little out of place in the middle of an Angarak horde." He squinted at the ruddy disk of the setting sun. "Let's move out. We've got a few hours before dark. It looks as if military service might be contagious in this vicinity, and I wouldn't want to catch it."
     
     
Chapter Three
    THE FOREST OF Nadrak was unlike the Arendish forest lying far to the south. The differences were subtle, and it took Garion several days to put his finger on them. For one thing, the trails they followed had no sense of permanence about them. They were so infrequently traveled that they were not beaten into the loamy soil of the forest floor. In the Arendish forest, the marks of man were everywhere, but here man was an intruder, merely passing through. Moreover, the forest in Arendia had definite boundaries, but this ocean of trees went on to the farthest edge of the continent, and it had stood so since the beginning of the world.
    The forest teemed with life. Tawny deer flickered among the trees, and vast, shaggy bison, with curved black horns shiny as onyx, grazed in clearings. Once a bear, grumbling and muttering irritably, lumbered across the trail in front of them. Rabbits scurried through the undergrowth and partridges exploded into flight from underfoot with a heartstopping thunder of wings. The ponds and streams abounded with fish, muskrat, otter, and beaver. There were also, they soon discovered, smaller forms of life. The mosquitoes seemed only slightly smaller than sparrows, and there was a nasty little brown fly that bit anything that moved.
    The sun rose early and set late, dappling the dark forest floor with golden light. Although it was midsummer now, it was never exactly hot, and the air was rich with that smell of urgent growth common to the lands of the north, where summer was short and winter very long.
    Belgarath seemed not to sleep at all once they entered the forest. Each evening, as Silk and Garion wearily rolled themselves in their blankets, the old sorcerer threaded his way back into the shadowy trees and disappeared. Once, several hours past dusk on a night filled with starlight, Garion awoke briefly and heard the loping touch of paws skittering lightly across a leaf carpeted clearing; even as he drifted back to sleep, he understood. The great silver wolf who was his grandfather roamed the night, scouring the surrounding forest for any hint of pursuit or danger.
    The old man's nocturnal roamings were as silent as smoke, but they did not pass unnoticed. Early one morning, before the sun rose and while the trees were still hazy and half obscured by ground fog, several shadowy shapes drifted among the dark trunks and stopped not far away. Garion, who had just risen and was preparing to stir up the fire, froze half bent over. As he slowly straightened, he could feel eyes on him, and his skin prickled peculiarly. Perhaps ten feet away stood a huge, dark gray wolf. The wolf's expression was serious, and its eyes were as yellow as sunlight. There was an unspoken question in those golden eyes, and Garion realized that he understood that question.
    "One wonders why you are doing that?"
    "Doing what?" Garion