Pawn of Prophecy

down." He patted the bench beside him.
    Garion sat down and pulled his cloak around him.
    "Let's see," Wolf said, scratching thoughtfully at his beard, "where do we start?" He pondered for a moment. "Your family's very old, Garion," he said finally, "and like so many old families, it has a certain number of enemies."
    "Enemies?" Garion was startled. That particular idea hadn't occurred to him before.
    "It's not uncommon," Wolf said. "When we do something someone else doesn't like, they tend to hate us. The hatred builds up over the years until it turns into something almost like a religion. They hate not only us, but everything connected with us. Anyway, a long time ago your family's enemies became so dangerous that your Aunt and I decided that the only way we could protect the family was to hide it."
    "You aren't telling me everything," Garion said.
    "No," said Wolf blandly, "I'm not. I'm telling you as much as it's safe for you to know right now. If you knew certain things, you'd act differently, and people would notice that. It's safer if you remain ordinary for a while longer."
    "You mean ignorant," Garion accused.
    "All right, ignorant then. Do you want to hear the story, or do you want to argue?"
    "I'm sorry," Garion said.
    "It's all right," Wolf said, patting Garion's shoulder. "Since your Aunt and I are related to your family in rather a special way, we were naturally interested in your safety. That's why we hid your people."
    "Can you actually hide a whole family?" Garion asked.
    "It's never been that big a family," Wolf said. "It seems, for one reason or another, to be a single, unbroken line - no cousins or uncles or that kind of thing. It's not all that hard to hide a man and wife with a single child. We've been doing it for hundreds of years now. We've hidden them in Tolnedra, Riva, Cherek, Drasnia - all kinds of places. They've lived simple lives - artisans mostly, sometimes ordinary peasants - the kind of people nobody would ever look at twice. Anyway, everything had gone well until about twenty years ago. We moved your father, Geran, from a place in Arendia to a little village in eastern Sendaria, about sixty leagues southeast of Darine, up in the mountains. Geran was a stonecutter - didn't I tell you that once before?"
    Garion nodded. "A long time ago," he said. "You said you liked him and used to visit him once in a while. Was my mother a Sendar then?"
    "No," Wolf said. "Ildera as an Algar, actually - the second daughter of a Clan Chief. Your Aunt and I introduced her to Geran whenthey were about the right age. The usual sort of thing happened, and they got married. You were born a year or so afterward."
    "When was the fire?" Garion asked.
    "I'm getting to that," Wolf said. One of the enemies of your family had been looking for your people for a long time."
    "How long?"
    "Hundreds of years, actually."
    "That means he was a sorcerer, too, doesn't it?" Garion asked. "I mean, only sorcerers live for that long, don't they?"
    "He has certain capabilities along those linesm" Wolf admitted. "Sorcerer is a misleading term, though. It's not the sort of thing we actually call ourselves. Other people do, but we don't exactly think of it that way. It's a convenient term for people who don't really understand what it's all about. Anyway, your Aunt and I happened to be away when this enemy finally tracked down Geran and Ildera. He came to their house very early one morning while they were still sleeping and he sealed up the doors and windows. And then he set it on fire."
    "I thought you said the house was made of stone."
    "It was," Wolf said, "but you can make stone burn if you really want to. The fire just has to be hotter, that's all. Geran and Ildera knew there was no way they could get out of the burning building, but Geran managed to knock one of the stones out of the wall, and Ildera pushed you out through the hole. The one who started the fire was waiting for that. He picked you up and started out of the village. We could never be sure exactly what he had in mind - either he was going to kill you, or maybe he was going to keep you for some reason of his own. At any rate, that's when I got there. I put out the fire, but Geran and Ildera were already dead. Then I went after the one who'd stolen you."
    "Did you kill him?" Garion demanded fiercely.
    "I try not to do that more than I have to," Wolf said. "It disrupts the natural course of events too much. I had some other ideas at the time - much more