Magician's Gambit

13

The following morning they turned northwest and rode toward the stark, white peaks of the mountains of Ulgo, glittering in the morning sun above the lush meadows of the Vale.

“Snow up there,” Barak observed. “It could be a difficult trip.”

“It always is,” Hettar told him.

“Have you been to Prolgu before?” Durnik asked.

“A few times. We keep communications open with the Ulgos. Our visits are mostly ceremonial.”

Princess Ce’Nedra had been riding beside Aunt Pol, her tiny face troubled. “How can you stand him, Lady Polgara?” she burst out finally. “He’s so ugly.”

“Who’s that, dear?”

“That awful dwarf.”

“Uncle Beldin?” Aunt Pol looked mildly surprised. “He’s always been like that. You have to get to know him, that’s all.”

“But he says such terrible things to you.”

“It’s the way he hides his real feelings,” Aunt Pol explained. “He’s a very gentle person, really, but people don’t expect that—coming from him. When he was a child, his people drove him out because he was so deformed and hideous. When he finally came to the Vale, our Master saw past the ugliness to the beauty in his mind.”

“But does he have to be so dirty?”

Aunt Pol shrugged slightly. “He hates his deformed body, so he ignores it.” She looked at the princess, her eyes calm. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to judge things by appearances, Ce’Nedra,” she said, “and it’s usually wrong. Uncle Beldin and I are very fond of each other. That’s why we take the trouble to invent such elaborate insults. Compliments would be hypocrisy—he is, after all, very ugly.”

“I just don’t understand.” Ce’Nedra sounded baffled.

“Love can show itself in many strange ways,” Aunt Pol told her. Her tone was offhand, but the look she directed at the tiny princess was penetrating.

Ce’Nedra flickered one quick look at Garion, and then averted her eyes, blushing slightly.

Garion considered the exchange between his Aunt Pol and the princess as he rode. It was quite obvious that Aunt Pol had been telling the little girl something important, but whatever it was escaped him.

They rode for several days across the Vale and then moved up into the foothills which clustered along the flanks of the ragged peaks that formed the land of the Ulgos. Once again the seasons changed as they rode. It was early autumn as they crested the first low range, and the valleys beyond were aflame with crimson leaves. At the top of a second, higher range, the trees had been swept bare, and the wind had the first bite of winter in it as it whistled down from the peaks. The sky grew overcast, and tendrils of cloud seeped down the rocky gorges above them. Spits of intermittent snow and rain pelted them as they climbed higher up the rocky slopes.

“I suppose we’d better begin keeping an eye out for Brill,” Silk said hopefully one snowy afternoon. “It’s about time for him to show up again.”

“Not very likely,” Belgarath replied. “Murgos avoid Ulgoland even more than they avoid the Vale. Ulgos dislike Angaraks intensely.”

“So do Alorns.”

“Ulgos can see in the dark, though,” the old man told him. “Murgos who come into these mountains tend not to wake up from their first night’s sleep up here. I don’t think we need to worry about Brill.”

“Pity,” Silk remarked with a certain disappointment.

“It won’t hurt to keep our eyes open, though. There are worse things than Murgos in the mountains of Ulgo.”

Silk scoffed. “Aren’t those stories exaggerated?”

“No. Not really.”

“The region abounds with monsters, Prince Kheldar,” Mandorallen assured the little man. “Some years back, a dozen foolish young knights of my acquaintance rode into these mountains to test their bravery and prowess against the unseemly beasts. Not one returned.”

When they crested the next ridge, the full force of a winter gale struck them. Snow, which had grown steadily heavier as they climbed, drove horizontally in the howling wind.

“We’ll have to take cover until this blows over, Belgarath,” Barak shouted above the wind, fighting to keep his flapping bearskin cape around him.

“Let’s drop down into this next valley,” Belgarath replied, also struggling with his cloak. “The trees down there should break the wind.”

They crossed the ridge and angled down toward the pines clustered at the bottom of the basin ahead. Garion pulled his cloak tighter and bowed his head into the shrieking wind.

The thick stand of sapling pine in the basin blocked the force of the gale, but the snow swirled about them as they reined in.

“We’re not going to get much farther today, Belgarath,” Barak declared, trying to brush the snow out of his beard. “We might as well hole up here and wait for morning.”

“What’s that?” Durnik asked sharply, cocking his head to one side.

“The wind,” Barak shrugged.

“No. Listen.”

Above the howling of the wind, a shrill whinnying sound came to them.

“Look there.” Hettar pointed.

Dimly they saw a dozen horselike animals crossing the ridge behind them. Their shapes were blurred by the thickly falling snow, and their line as they moved seemed almost ghostly. On a rise just above them stood a huge stallion, his mane and tail tossing in the wind. His neigh was almost a shrill scream.

“Hrulgin!” Belgarath said sharply.

“Can we outrun them?” Silk asked hopefully.

“I doubt it,” Belgarath replied. “Besides, they’ve got our scent now. They’ll dog our trail from here to Prolgu if we try to run.”

“Then we must teach them to fear our trail and avoid it,” Mandorallen declared, tightening the straps on his shield. His eyes were very bright.

“You’re falling back into your old habits, Mandorallen,” Barak observed in a grumpy voice.

Hettar’s face had assumed that curiously blank expression it usually did when he was communicating with his horses. He shuddered finally, and his eyes went sick with revulsion.

“Well?” Aunt Pol asked him.

“They aren’t horses,” he began.

“We know that, Hettar,” she replied. “Can you do anything with them? Frighten them off perhaps?”

He shook his head. “They’re hungry, Polgara,” he told her, “and they have our scent. The herd stallion seems to have much more control over them than he would if they were horses. I might be able to frighten one or two of the weaker ones—if it weren’t for him.”

“Then we’ll have to fight them all,” Barak said grimly, buckling on his shield.

“I don’t think so,” Hettar replied, his eyes narrowing. “The key seems to be the stallion. He dominates the whole herd. I think that if we kill him, the rest will turn and run.”

“All right,” Barak said, “we try for the stallion then.”

“We might want to make some kind of noise,” Hettar suggested. “Something that sounds like a challenge. That might make him come out to the front to answer it. Otherwise, we’ll have to go through the whole herd to get to him.”

“Mayhap this will provoke him,” Mandorallen said. He lifted his horn to his lips and blew a brassy note of ringing defiance that was whipped away by the gale.

The stallion’s shrill scream answered immediately.

“It sounds as if it’s working,” Barak observed. “Blow it again, Mandorallen.”

Mandorallen sounded his horn again, and again the stallion shrilled his reply. Then the great beast plunged down from the ridgetop and charged furiously through the herd toward them. When he reached the forefront, he shrieked again and reared up on his hind legs, his front claws flashing in the snowy air.

“That did it,” Barak barked. “Let’s go!” He jammed his spurs home, and his big gray leaped forward, spraying snow behind him. Hettar and Mandorallen swept out to flank him, and the three plunged forward through the thickly falling snow toward the screaming Hrulga stallion. Mandorallen set his lance as he charged, and a strange sound drifted back on the wind as he thundered toward the advancing Hrulgin. Mandorallen was laughing.

Garion drew his sword and pulled his horse in front of Aunt Pol and Ce’Nedra. He realized that it was probably a futile gesture, but he did it anyway.

Two of the Hrulgin, perhaps at the herd stallion’s unspoken command, bounded forward to cut off Barak and Mandorallen while the stallion himself moved to meet Hettar as if recognizing the Algar as the greatest potential danger to the herd. As the first Hrulga reared, his fangs bared in a catlike snarl and his clawed feet widespread, Mandorallen lowered his lance and drove it through the snarling monster’s chest. Bloody froth burst from the Hrulga’s mouth, and he toppled over backward, clawing the broken shaft of Mandorallen’s lance into splinters as he fell.

Barak caught a clawed swipe on his shield and split open the head of the second Hrulga with a vast overhand swing of his heavy sword. The beast collapsed, his convulsions churning the snow.

Hettar and the herd stallion stalked each other in the swirling snow. They moved warily, circling, their eyes locked on each other with a deadly intensity. Suddenly the stallion reared and lunged all in one motion, his great forelegs wide and his claws outspread. But Hettar’s horse, his mind linked with his rider’s, danced clear of the furious charge. The Hrulga spun and charged again, and once again Hettar’s horse jumped to one side. The infuriated stallion screamed his frustration and lunged in, his claws flailing. Hettar’s horse sidestepped the enraged beast, then darted in, and Hettar launched himself from his saddle and landed on the stallion’s back. His long, powerful legs locked about the Hrulga’s ribs and his right hand gathered a great fistful of the animal’s mane.

The stallion went mad as he felt for the first time in the entire history of his species the weight of a rider on his back. He plunged and reared and shrieked, trying to shake Hettar off. The rest of the herd, which had been moving to the attack, faltered and stared in uncomprehending horror at the stallion’s wild attempts to dislodge his rider. Mandorallen and Barak reined in, dumbfounded, as Hettar rode the raging stallion in circles through the blizzard. Then, grimly, Hettar slid his left hand down his leg and drew a long, broad dagger from his boot. He knew horses, and he knew where to strike.

His first thrust was lethal. The churned snow turned red. The stallion reared one last time, screaming and with blood pouring out of his mouth, and then he dropped back to stand on shuddering legs. Slowly his knees buckled and he toppled to one side. Hettar jumped clear.

The herd of Hrulgin turned and fled, squealing, back into the blizzard.

Hettar grimly cleaned his dagger in the snow and resheathed it in his boot. Briefly he laid one hand on the dead stallion’s neck, then turned to look through the trampled snow for the sabre he had discarded in his wild leap onto the stallion’s back.

When the three warriors returned to the shelter of the trees, Mandorallen and Barak were staring at Hettar with a look of profound respect.

“It’s a shame they’re mad,” the Algar said with a distant look on his face. “There was a moment just a moment—when I almost got through to him, and we moved together. Then the madness came back, and I had to kill him. If they could be tamed—” He broke off and shook his head. “Oh, well.” He shrugged regretfully.

“You wouldn’t actually ride something like that?” Durnik’s voice was shocked.

“I’ve never had an animal like that under me,” Hettar said quietly. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it was like.” The tall man turned and walked some distance away and stood staring out into the swirling snow.

They set up for the night in the shelter of the pines. The next morning the wind had abated, although it was still snowing heavily when they set out again. The snow was already knee-deep, and the horses struggled as they climbed.

They crossed yet another ridge and started down into the next valley. Silk looked dubiously around at the thick-falling snow settling through the silent air. “If it gets much deeper, we’re going to bog down, Belgarath,” he said glumly. “Particularly if we have to keep climbing like this.”

“We’ll be all right now,” the ald man assured him. “We follow a series of valleys from here. They lead right up to Prolgu, so we can avoid the peaks.”

“Belgarath,” Barak said back over his shoulder from his place in the lead, “there are some fresh tracks up here.” He pointed ahead at a line of footprints plowed through the new snow across their path.

The old man moved ahead and stopped to examine the tracks. “Algroth,” he said shortly. “We’d better keep our eyes open.”

They rode warily down into the valley where Mandorallen paused long enough to cut himself a fresh lance.

“I’d be a little dubious about a weapon that keeps breaking,” Barak observed as the knight remounted.

Mandorallen shrugged, his armor creaking. “There are always trees about, my Lord,” he replied.

Back among the pines that carpeted the valley floor, Garion heard a familiar barking.

“Grandfather,” he warned.

“I hear them,” Belgarath answered.

“How many, do you think?” Silk asked.

“Perhaps a dozen,” Belgarath said.

“Eight,” Aunt Pol corrected firmly.

“If they are but eight, will they dare attack?” Mandorallen asked. “Those we met in Arendia seemed to seek courage in numbers.”

“Their lair’s in this valley, I think,” the old man replied. “Any animal tries to defend its lair. They’re almost certain to attack.”

“We must seek them out, then,” the knight declared confidently.

“Better to destroy them now on ground of our own choosing than to be surprised in some ambush.”

“He’s definitely backsliding,” Barak observed sourly to Hettar.

“He’s probably right this time, though,” Hettar replied.

“Have you been drinking, Hettar?” Barak asked suspiciously.

“Come, my Lords,” Mandorallen said gaily. “Let us rout the brutes so that we may continue our journey unmolested.” He plowed off through the snow in search of the barking Algroths.

“Coming, Barak?” Hettar invited as he drew his sabre.

Barak sighed. “I guess I’d better,” he answered mournfully. He turned to Belgarath. “This shouldn’t take long. I’ll try to keep our bloodthirsty friends out of trouble.”

Hettar laughed.

“You’re getting to be as bad as he is,” Barak accused as the two of them moved into a gallop in Mandorallen’s wake.

Garion and the others sat waiting tensely in the sifting snowfall. Then the barking sounds off in the woods suddenly turned into yelps of surprise. The sound of blows began to ring through the trees, and there were shrieks of pain and shouts as the three warriors called to each other. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, they came galloping back with the deep snow spraying out from their horses’ hooves.

“Two of them got away,” Hettar reported regretfully.

“What a shame,” Silk replied.

“Mandorallen,” Barak said with a pained look, “you’ve picked up a bad habit somewhere. Fighting’s a serious business, and all this giggling and laughing of yours smacks of frivolity.”

“Doth it offend thee, my Lord?”

“It’s not so much that it offends me, Mandorallen. It’s more a distraction. It breaks my concentration.”

“I shall strive to moderate my laughter in future, then.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“How did it go?” Silk asked.

“It wasn’t much of a fight,” Barak replied. “We caught them completely by surprise. I hate to admit it, but our chortling friend there was right for once.”

Garion thought about Mandorallen’s changed behavior as they rode on down the valley. Back at the cave where the colt had been born, Durnik had told Mandorallen that fear could be conquered by laughing at it, and, though Durnik had probably not meant it in precisely that way, Mandorallen had taken his words quite literally. The laughter which so irritated Barak was not directed at the foes he met, but rather at the enemy within him. Mandorallen was laughing at his own fear as he rode to each attack.

“It’s unnatural,” Barak was muttering to Silk. “That’s what bothers me so much. Not only that, it’s a breach of etiquette. If we ever get into a serious fight, it’s going to be terribly embarrassing to have him giggling and carrying on like that. What will people think?”

“You’re making too much of it, Barak,” Silk told him. “Actually, I think it’s rather refreshing.”

“You think it’s what?”

“Refreshing. An Arend with a sense of humor is a novelty, after all sort of like a talking dog.”

Barak shook his head in disgust. “There’s absolutely no point in ever trying to discuss anything seriously with you, Silk, do you know that? The compulsion of yours to make clever remarks turns everything into a joke.”

“We all have our little shortcomings,” Silk admitted blandly.

14

The snow gradually slackened throughout the rest of the day and by evening only a few solitary flakes drifted down through the darkening air as they set up for the night in a grove of dense spruces. During the night, however, the temperature fell, and the air was bitterly cold when they arose the next morning.

“How much farther to Prolgu?” Silk asked, standing close to the fire with his shivering hands stretched out to its warmth.

“Two more days,” Belgarath replied.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider doing something about the weather?” the little man asked hopefully.

“I prefer not to do that unless I absolutely have to,” the old man told him. “It disrupts things over a very wide area. Besides, the Gorim doesn’t like us to tamper with things in his mountains. The Ulgos have reservations about that sort of thing.”

“I was afraid you might look at it that way.”

Their route that morning twisted and turned so often that by noon Garion was completely turned around. Despite the biting cold, the sky was overcast, a solid lead-gray. It seemed somehow as if the cold had frozen all color from the world. The sky was gray; the snow was a flat, dead white; and the tree trunks were starkly black. Even the rushing water in the streams they followed flowed black between snow-mounded banks. Belgarath moved confidently, pointing their direction as each succeeding valley intersected with another.

“Are you sure?” the shivering Silk asked him at one point. “We’ve been going upstream all day, now you say we go down.”

“We’ll hit another valley in a few miles. Trust me, Silk. I’ve been here before.”

Silk pulled his heavy cloak tighter. “It’s just that I get nervous on unfamiliar ground,” he objected, looking at the dark water of the river they followed.

From far upstream came a strange sound, a kind of mindless hooting that was almost like laughter. Aunt Pol and Belgarath exchanged a quick look.

“What is it?” Garion asked.

“Rock-wolf,” Belgarath answered shortly.

“It doesn’t sound like a wolf.”

“It isn’t.” The old man looked around warily. “They’re scavengers for the most part and, if it’s just a wild pack, they probably won’t attack. It’s too early in the winter for them to be that desperate. If it’s one of the packs that has been raised by the Eldrakyn, though, we’re in for trouble.” He stood up in his stirrups to look ahead. “Let’s pick up the pace a bit,” he called to Mandorallen, “and keep your eyes open.”

Mandorallen, his armor glittering with frost, glanced back, nodded, and moved out at a trot, following the seething black water of the mountain river.

Behind them the shrill, yelping laughter grew louder.

“They’re following us, father,” Aunt Pol said.

“I can hear that.” The old man began searching the sides of the valley with his eyes, his face creased with a worried frown. “You’d better have a look, Pol. I don’t want any surprises.”

Aunt Pol’s eyes grew distant as she probed the thickly forested sides of the valley with her mind. After a moment, she gasped and then shuddered. “There’s an Eldrak out there, father. He’s watching us. His mind is a sewer.”

“They always are,” the old man replied. “Could you pick up his name?”

“Grul.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. I knew we were getting close to his range.” He put his fingers to his lips and whistled sharply.

Barak and Mandorallen halted to wait while the rest caught up with them. “We’ve got trouble,” Belgarath told them all seriously. “There’s an Eldrak out there with a pack of rock-wolves. He’s watching us right now. It’s only a question of time until he attacks.”

“What’s an Eldrak?” Silk asked.

“The Eldrakyn are related to Algroths and Trolls, but they’re more intelligent—and much bigger.”

“But only one?” Mandorallen asked.

“One’s enough. I’ve met this one. His name is Grul. He’s big, quick, and as cruel as a hook-pointed knife. He’ll eat anything that moves, and he doesn’t really care if it’s dead or not before he starts to eat.”

The hooting laughter of the rock-wolves drew closer.

“Let’s find an open place and build a fire,” the old man said. “The rock-wolves are afraid of fire, and there’s no point in fighting with them and Grul if we don’t have to.”

“There?” Durnik suggested, pointing to a broad, snow-covered bar protruding out into the dark water of the river. The bar was joined to the near bank by a narrow neck of gravel and sand.

“It’s defensible, Belgarath,” Barak approved, squinting at the bar. “The river will keep them off our backs, and they can only come at us across that one narrow place.”

“It will do,” Belgarath agreed shortly. “Let’s go.”

They rode out onto the snow-covered bar and quickly scraped an area clear with their feet while Durnik worked to build a fire under a large, gray driftwood snag that half blocked the narrow neck of the bar. Within a few moments, orange flames began to lick up around the snag. Durnik fed the fire with sticks until the snag was fully ablaze. “Give me a hand,” the smith said, starting to pile larger pieces of wood on the fire. Barak and Mandorallen went to the jumbled mass of driftwood piled against the upstream edge of the gravel and began hauling limbs and chunks of log to the fire. At the end of a quarter of an hour they had built a roaring bonfire that stretched across the narrow neck of sand, cutting them off completely from the dark trees on the riverbank.

“It’s the first time I’ve been warm all day.” Silk grinned, backing up to the fire.

“They’re coming,” Garion warned. Back among the dark tree trunks, he had caught a few glimpses of furtive movements.

Barak peered through the flames. “Big brutes, aren’t they?” he observed grimly.

“About the size of a donkey,” Belgarath confirmed.

“Are you sure they’re afraid of fire?” Silk asked nervously.

“Most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

“Once in a while they get desperate—or Grul could drive them toward us. They’d be more afraid of him than of the fire.”

“Belgarath,” the weasel-faced little man objected, “sometimes you’ve got a nasty habit of keeping things to yourself.”

One of the rock-wolves came out onto the riverbank just upstream from the bar and stood sniffing the air and looking nervously at the fire. Its forelegs were noticeably longer than its hind ones, giving it a peculiar, half erect stance, and there was a large, muscular hump across its shoulders. Its muzzle was short, and it seemed snub-faced, almost like a cat. Its coat was a splotchy black and white, marked with a pattern hovering somewhere between spots and stripes. It paced nervously back and forth, staring at them with a dreadful intensity and yelping its high-pitched, hooting laugh. Soon another came out to join it, and then another. They spread out along the bank, pacing and hooting, but staying well back from the fire.

“They don’t look like dogs exactly,” Durnik said.

“They’re not,” Belgarath replied. “Wolves and dogs are related, but rock-wolves belong to a different family.”

By now ten of the ugly creatures lined the bank, and their hooting rose in a mindless chorus.

Then Ce’Nedra screamed, her face deathly pale and her eyes wide with horror.

The Eldrak shambled out of the trees and stood in the middle of the yelping pack. It was about eight feet tall and covered with shaggy black fur. It wore an armored shirt that had been made of large scraps of chain-mail tied together with thongs; over the mail, also held in place with thongs, was a rusty breastplate that appeared to have been hammered out with rocks until it was big enough to fit around the creature’s massive chest. A conical steel helmet, split up the back to make it fit, covered the brute’s head. In its hand the Eldrak held a huge, steelwrapped club, studded with spikes. It was the face, however, that had brought the scream to Ce’Nedra’s lips. The Eldrak had virtually no nose, and its lower jaw jutted, showing two massive, protruding tusks. Its eyes were sunk in deep sockets beneath a heavy ridge of bone across its brow, and they burned with a hideous hunger.

“That’s far enough, Grul,” Belgarath warned the thing in a cold, deadly voice.

“’Grat come back to Grul’s mountains?” the monster growled. Its voice was deep and hollow, chilling.

“It talks?” Silk gasped incredulously.

“Why are you following us, Grul?” Belgarath demanded.

The creature stared at them, its eyes like fire. “Hungry, ’Grat,” it growled.

“Go hunt something else,” the old man told the monster.

“Why? Horses here—men. Plenty to eat.”

“But not easy food, Grul,” Belgarath replied.

A hideous grin spread across Grul’s face. “Fight first,” he said, “then eat. Come ’Grat. Fight again.”

“Grat?” Silk asked.

“He means me. He can’t pronounce my name—it has to do with the shape of his jaw.”

“You fought that thing?” Barak sounded stunned.

Belgarath shrugged. “I had a knife up my sleeve. When he grabbed me, I sliced him open. It wasn’t much of a fight.”

“Fight!” Grul roared. He hammered on his breastplate with his huge fist. “Iron,” he said. “Come, ’Grat. Try to cut Grul’s belly again. Now Grul wear iron—like men wear.” He began to pound on the frozen ground with his steel-shod club. “Fight!” he bellowed. “Come, ’Grat. Fight!”

“Maybe if we all go after him at once, one of us might get in a lucky thrust,” Barak said, eyeing the monster speculatively.

“Thy plan is flawed, my Lord,” Mandorallen told him. “We must lose several companions should we come within range of that club.”

Barak looked at him in astonishment. “Prudence, Mandorallen? Prudence from you?”

“It were best, I think, should I undertake this alone,” the knight stated gravely. “My lance is the only weapon that can seek out the monster’s life with safety.”

“There’s something to what he says,” Hettar agreed.

“Come fight!” Grul roared, still beating on the ground with his club.

“All right,” Barak agreed dubiously. “We’ll distract him then—come at him from two sides to get his attention. Then Mandorallen can make his charge.”

“What about the rock-wolves?” Garion asked.

“Let me try something,” Durnik said. He took up a burning stick and threw it, spinning and flaring, at the nervous pack surrounding the monster. The rock-wolves yelped and shied quickly away from the tumbling brand. “They’re afraid of the fire, all right,” the smith said. “I think that if we all throw at once and keep throwing, their nerve will break and they’ll run.”

They all moved to the fire.

“Now!” Durnik shouted sharply. They began throwing the blazing sticks as fast as they could. The rock-wolves yelped and dodged, and several of them screamed in pain as the tumbling firebrands singed them.

Grul roared in fury as the pack dodged and scurried around his feet, trying to escape the sudden deluge of fire. One of the singed beasts, maddened by pain and fright, tried to leap at him. The Eldrak jumped out of its way with astonishing agility and smashed the rock-wolf to the ground with his great club.

“He’s quicker than I thought,” Barak said. “We’ll have to be careful.”

“They’re running!” Durnik shouted, throwing another fiery stick. The pack had broken under the rain of burning brands and turned to flee howling back into the woods, leaving the infuriated Grul standing alone on the riverbank, hammering at the snow-covered ground with his spiked club. “Come fight!” he roared again. “Come fight!” He advanced one huge step and smashed his club at the snow again.

“We’d better do whatever we’re going to do now,” Silk said tensely. “He’s getting himself worked up. We’ll have him out here on the bar with us in another minute or two.”

Mandorallen nodded grimly and turned to mount his charger.

“Let the rest of us distract him first,” Barak said. He drew his heavy sword. “Let’s go!” he shouted and leaped over the fire. The others followed him, spreading out in a half circle in front of the towering Grul. Garion reached for his sword.

“Not you,” Aunt Pol snapped. “You stay here.”

“But ”

“Do as I say.”

One of Silk’s daggers, skillfully thrown from several yards away, sank into Grul’s shoulder while the creature was advancing on Barak and Durnik. Grul howled and turned to charge Silk and Hettar, swinging his vast club. Hettar dodged, and Silk danced back out of reach. Durnik began pelting the monster with fist-sized rocks from the riverbank. Grul turned back, raging now, with flecks of foam dripping from his pointed tusks.

“Now, Mandorallen!” Barak shouted.

Mandorallen couched his lance and spurred his warhorse. The huge armored animal leaped forward, its hooves churning gravel, jumped the fire, and bore down on the astonished Grul. For a moment it looked as if their plan might work. The deadly, steel-pointed lance was leveled at Grul’s chest, and it seemed that nothing could stop it from plunging through his huge body. But the monster’s quickness again astonished them all. He leaped to one side and smashed his spiked club down on Mandorallen’s lance, shattering the stout wood.

The force of Mandorallen’s charge, however, could not be stopped. Horse and man crashed into the great brute with a deafening impact. Grul reeled back, dropping his club, tripping, falling with Mandorallen and his warhorse on top of him.

“Get him!” Barak roared, and they all dashed forward to attack the fallen Grul with swords and axes. The monster, however, levered his legs under Mandorallen’s thrashing horse and thrust the big animal off. A great, flailing fist caught Mandorallen in the side, throwing him for several yards. Durnik spun and dropped, felled by a glancing blow to the head even as Barak, Hettar, and Silk swarmed over the fallen Grul.

“Father!” Aunt Pol cried in a ringing voice.

There was suddenly a new sound directly behind Garion—first a deep, rumbling snarl followed instantly by a hair-raising howl. Garion turned quickly and saw the huge wolf he had seen once before in the forests of northern Arendia. The old gray wolf bounded across the fire and entered the fight, his great teeth flashing and tearing.

“Garion, I need you!” Aunt Pol was shaking off the panic-stricken princess and pulling her amulet out of her bodice. “Take out your medallion—quickly!”

He did not understand, but he drew his amulet out from under his tunic. Aunt Pol reached out, took his right hand, and placed the mark on his palm against the figure of the owl on her own talisman; at the same time, she took his medallion in her other hand. “Focus your will,” she commanded.

“On what?”

“On the amulets. Quickly!”

Garion brought his will to bear, feeling the power building in him tremendously, amplified somehow by his contact with Aunt Pol and the two amulets. Polgara closed her eyes and raised her face to the leaden sky. “Mother!” she cried in a voice so loud that the echo rang like a trumpet note in the narrow valley.

The power surged out of Garion in so vast a rush that he collapsed to his knees, unable to stand. Aunt Pol sank down beside him.

Ce’Nedra gasped.

As Garion weakly raised his head, he saw that there were two wolves attacking the raging Grul—the gray old wolf he knew to be his grandfather, and another, slightly smaller wolf that seemed surrounded by a strange, flickering blue light.

Grul had struggled to his feet and was laying about him with his huge fists as the men attacking him chopped futilely at his armored body. Barak was flung out of the fight and fell to his hands and knees, shaking his head groggily. Grul brushed Hettar aside, his eyes alight with dreadful glee as he lunged toward Barak with both huge arms raised. But the blue wolf leaped snarling at his face. Grul swung his fist and gaped with astonishment as it passed directly through the flickering body. Then he shrieked with pain and began to topple backward as Belgarath, darting in from behind to employ the wolf’s ancient tactic, neatly hamstrung him with great, ripping teeth. The towering Grul, howling, fell and struck the earth like some vast tree.

“Keep him down!” Barak roared, stumbling to his feet and staggering forward.

The wolves were ripping at Grul’s face, and he flailed his arms, trying to beat them away. Again and again his hands passed through the body of the strange, flickering blue wolf. Mandorallen, his feet spread wide apart and holding the hilt of his broadsword with both hands, chopped steadily at the monster’s body, his great blade shearing long rents in Grul’s breastplate. Barak swung huge blows at Grul’s head, his sword striking sparks from the rusty steel helmet. Hettar crouched at one side, eyes intent, sabre ready, waiting. Grul raised his arm to ward off Barak’s blows, and Hettar lunged, thrusting his sabre through the exposed armpit and into the huge chest. A bloody froth spouted from Grul’s mouth as the sabre ripped through his lungs. He struggled to a half sitting position.

Then Silk, who had lurked just at the edge of the fight, darted in, set the point of his dagger against the back of Grul’s neck and smashed a large rock against the dagger’s pommel. With a sickening crunch, the dagger drove through bone, angling up into the monster’s brain. Grul shuddered convulsively. Then he collapsed.

In the moment of silence that followed, the two wolves looked at each other across the monster’s dead face. The blue wolf seemed to wink once; in a voice which Garion could hear quite clearly—a woman’s voice—she said, “How remarkable.” With a seeming smile and one last flicker, she vanished.

The old gray wolf raised his muzzle and howled, a sound of such piercing anguish and loss that Garion’s heart wrenched within him.

Then the old wolf seemed to shimmer, and Belgarath knelt in his place. He rose slowly to his feet and walked back toward the fire, tears streaming openly down his grizzled cheeks.

15

“Is he going to be all right?” Barak asked anxiously, hovering over the still unconscious Durnik as Aunt Pol examined the large purple contusion on the side of the smith’s face.

“It’s nothing serious,” she replied in a voice seeming to droop with a great weariness.

Garion sat nearby with his head in his hands. He felt as if all the strength had been wrenched out of his body.

Beyond the heaped coals of the rapidly dying bonfire, Silk and Hettar were struggling to remove Mandorallen’s dented breastplate. A deep crease running diagonally from shoulder to hip gave mute evidence of the force of Grul’s blow and placed so much stress on the straps beneath the shoulder plates that they were almost impossible to unfasten.

“I think we’re going to have to cut them,” Silk said.

“I pray thee, Prince Kheldar, avoid that if possible,” Mandorallen answered, wincing as they wrenched at the fastenings. “Those straps are crucial to the fit of the armor, and are most difficult to replace properly.”

“This one’s coming now,” Hettar grunted, prying at a buckle with a short iron rod. The buckle released suddenly and the taut breastplate rang like a softly struck bell.

“Now I can get it,” Silk said, quickly loosening the other shoulder buckle.

Mandorallen sighed with relief as they pulled off the dented breastplate. He took a deep breath and winced again.

“Tender right here?” Silk asked, putting his fingers lightly to the right side of the knight’s chest. Mandorallen grunted with pain, and his face paled visibly. “I think you’ve got some cracked ribs, my splendid friend,” Silk told him. “You’d better have Polgara take a look.”

“In a moment,” Mandorallen said. “My horse?”

“He’ll be all right,” Hettar replied. “A strained tendon in his right foreleg is all.”

Mandorallen let out a sigh of relief. “I had feared for him.”

“I feared for us all there for a while,” Silk said. “Our oversized playmate there was almost more than we could handle.”

“Good fight, though,” Hettar remarked.

Silk gave him a disgusted look, then glanced up at the scudding gray clouds overhead. He jumped across the glowing coals of their fire and went over to where Belgarath sat staring into the icy river. “We’re going to have to get off this bar, Belgarath,” he urged. “The weather’s going bad on us again, and we’ll all freeze to death if we stay out here in the middle of the river tonight.”

“Leave me alone,” Belgarath muttered shortly, still staring at the river.

“Polgara?” Silk turned to her.

“Just stay away from him for a while,” she told him. “Go find a sheltered place for us to stay for a few days.”

“I’ll go with you,” Barak offered, hobbling toward his horse.

“You’ll stay here,” Aunt Pol declared firmly. “You creak like a wagon with a broken axle. I want to have a look at you before you get a chance to damage yourself permanently.”

“I know a place,” Ce’Nedra said, rising and pulling her cloak about her shoulders. “I saw it when we were coming down the river. I’ll show you.”

Silk looked inquiringly at Aunt Pol.

“Go ahead,” she told him. “It’s safe enough now. Nothing else would live in the same valley with an Eldrak.”

Silk laughed. “I wonder why? Coming, Princess?” The two of them mounted and rode off through the snow.

“Shouldn’t Durnik be coming around?” Garion asked his Aunt.

“Let him sleep,” she replied wearily. “He’ll have a blinding headache when he wakes up.”

“Aunt Pol?”

“Yes?”

“Who was the other wolf?”

“My mother, Poledra.”

“But isn’t she—”

“Yes. It was her spirit.”

“You can do that?” Garion was stunned by the enormity of it.

“Not alone,” she said. “You had to help me.”

“Is that why I feel so—” It was an effort even to talk.

“It took everything we could both raise to do it. Don’t ask so many questions just now, Garion. I’m very tired and I still have many things to do.”

“Is Grandfather all right?”

“He’ll come around. Mandorallen, come here.”

The knight stepped over the coals at the neck of the bar and walked slowly toward her, his hand pressed lightly against his chest.

“You’ll have to take off your shirt,” she told him. “And please sit down.”

About a half hour later Silk and the princess returned. “It’s a good spot,” Silk reported. “A thicket in a little ravine. Water, shelter—everything we need. Is anybody seriously hurt?”

“Nothing permanent.” Aunt Pol was applying a salve to Barak’s hairy leg.

“Do you suppose you could hurry, Polgara?” Barak asked. “It’s a little chilly for standing around half-dressed.”

“Stop being such a baby,” she said heartlessly.

The ravine to which Silk and Ce’Nedra led them was a short way back upriver. A small mountain brook trickled from its mouth, and a dense thicket of spindly pines filled it seemingly from wall to wall. They followed the brook for a few hundred yards until they came to a small clearing in the center of the thicket. The pines around the inner edge of the clearing, pressed by the limbs of the others in the thicket, leaned inward, almost touching above the center of the open area.

“Good spot.” Hettar looked around approvingly. “How did you find it?”

“She did.” Silk nodded at Ce’Nedra.

“The trees told me it was here,” she said. “Young pine trees babble a lot.” She looked at the clearing thoughtfully. “We’ll build our fire there,” she decided, pointing at a spot near the brook at the upper end of the clearing, “and set up our tents along the, edge of the trees just back from it. You’ll need to pile rocks around the fire and clear away all the twigs from the ground near it. The trees are very nervous about the fire. They promised to keep the wind off us, but only if we keep our fire strictly under control. I gave them my word.”

A faint smile flickered across Hettar’s hawklike face.

“I’m serious,” she said, stamping her little foot.

“Of course, your Highness,” he replied, bowing.

Because of the incapacity of the others, the work of sating up the tents and building the firepit fell largely upon Silk and Hettar. Ce’Nedra commanded them like a little general, snapping out her orders in a clear, firm voice. She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.

Garion was sure that it was some trick of the fading light, but the trees almost seemed to draw back when the fire first flared up, though after a while they seemed to lean back in again to arch protectively over the little clearing. Wearily he got to his feet and began to gather sticks and dead limbs for firewood.

“Now,” Ce’Nedra said, bustling about the fire in a thoroughly businesslike way, “what would you all like for supper?”

They stayed in their protected little clearing for three days while their battered warriors and Mandorallen’s horse recuperated from the encounter with the Eldrak. The exhaustion which had fallen upon Garion when Aunt Pol had summoned all his strength to help call the spirit of Poledra was largely gone after one night’s sleep, though he tired easily during the next day. He found Ce’Nedra’s officiousness in her domain near the fire almost unbearable, so he passed some time helping Durnik hammer the deep crease out of Mandorallen’s breastplate; after that, he spent as much time as possible with the horses. He began teaching the little colt a few simple tricks, though he had never attempted training animals before. The colt seemed to enjoy it, although his attention wandered frequently.

The incapacity of Durnik, Barak, and Mandorallen was easy to understand, but Belgarath’s deep silence and seeming indifference to all around him worried Garion. The old man appeared to be sunk in a melancholy reverie that he could not or would not shake off.

“Aunt Pol,” Garion said finally on the afternoon of the third day, “you’d better do something. We’ll be ready to leave soon, and Grandfather has to be able to show us the way. Right now I don’t think he even cares where he is.”

Aunt Pol looked across at the old sorcerer, who sat on a rock, staring into the fire. “Possibly you’re right. Come with me.” She led the way around the fire and stopped directly in front of the old man. “All right, father,” she said crisply, “I think that’s about enough.”

“Go away, Polgara,” he told her.

“No, father,” she replied. “It’s time for you to put it away and come back to the real world.”

“That was a cruel thing to do, Pol,” he said reproachfully.

“To mother? She didn’t mind.”

“How do you know that? You never knew her. She died when you were born.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” She looked at him directly. “Father,” she declared pointedly, “you of all people should know that mother was extremely strong-minded. She’s always been with me, and we know each other very well.”

He looked dubious.

“She has her part to play in this just the same as the rest of us do. If you’d been paying attention all these years, you’d have realized that she’s never really been gone.”

The old man looked around a little guiltily.

“Precisely,” Aunt Pol said with just the hint of a barb in her voice. “You really should have behaved yourself, you know. Mother’s very tolerant for the most part, but there were times when she was quite vexed with you.”

Belgarath coughed uncomfortably.

“Now it’s time for you to pull yourself out of this and stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she continued crisply.

His eyes narrowed. “That’s not entirely fair, Polgara,” he replied.

“I don’t have time to be fair, father.”

“Why did you choose that particular form?” he asked with a hint of bitterness.

“I didn’t, father. She did. It’s her natural form, after all.”

“I’d almost forgotten that,” he mused.

“She didn’t.”

The old man straightened and drew back his shoulders. “Is there any food around?” he asked suddenly.

“The princess has been doing the cooking,” Garion warned him. “You might want to think it over before you decide to eat anything she’s had a hand in.”

The next morning under a still-threatening sky, they struck their tents, packed their gear again, and rode down along the narrow bed of the brook back into the river valley.

“Did you thank the trees, dear?” Aunt Pol asked the princess.

“Yes, Lady Polgara,” Ce’Nedra replied. “Just before we left.”

“That’s nice,” Aunt Pol said.

The weather continued to threaten for the next two days, and finally the blizzard broke in full fury as they approached a strangely pyramidal peak. The sloping walls of the peak were steep, rising sharply up into the swirling snow, and they seemed to have none of the random irregularities of the surrounding mountains. Though he rejected the idea immediately, Garion could not quite overcome the notion that the curiously angular peak had somehow been constructed—that its shape was the result of a conscious design.

“Prolgu,” Belgarath said, pointing at the peak with one hand while he clung to his wind-whipped cloak with the other.

“How do we get up there?” Silk asked, staring at the steep walls dimly visible in the driving snow.

“There’s a road,” the old man replied. “It starts over there.” He pointed to a vast pile of jumbled rock to one side of the peak.

“We’d better hurry then, Belgarath,” Barak said. “This storm isn’t going to improve much.”

The old man nodded and moved his horse into the lead. “When we get up there,” he shouted back to them over the sound of the shrieking wind, “we’ll find the city. It’s abandoned, but you may see a few things lying about—broken pots, some other things. Don’t touch any of them. The Ulgos have some peculiar beliefs about Prolgu. It’s a very holy place to them, and everything there is supposed to stay just where it is.”

“How do we get down into the caves?” Barak asked.

“The Ulgos will let us in,” Belgarath assured him. “They already know we’re here.”

The road that led to the mountaintop was a narrow ledge, inclining steeply up and around the sides of the peak. They dismounted before they started up and led their horses. The wind tugged at them as they climbed, and the driving snow, more pellets than flakes, stung their faces.

It took them two hours to wind their way to the top, and Garion was numb with cold by the time they got there. The wind seemed to batter at him, trying to pluck him off the ledge, and he made a special point of staying as far away from the edge as possible.

Though the wind had been brutal on the sides of the peak, once they reached the top it howled at them with unbroken force. They passed through a broad, arched gate into the deserted city of Prolgu with snow swirling about them and the wind shrieking insanely in their ears.

There were columns lining the empty streets, tall, thick columns reaching up into the dancing snow. The buildings, all unroofed by time and the endless progression of the seasons, had a strange, alien quality about them. Accustomed to the rigid rectangularity of the structures in the other cities he had seen, Garion was unprepared for the sloped corners of Ulgo architecture. Nothing seemed exactly square. The complexity of the angles teased at his mind, suggesting a subtle sophistication that somehow just eluded him. There was a massiveness about the construction that seemed to defy time, and the weathered stones sat solidly, one atop the other, precisely as they had been placed thousands of years before.

Durnik seemed also to have noticed the peculiar nature of the structures, and his expression was one of disapproval. As they all moved behind a building to get out of the wind and to rest for a moment from the exertions of the climb, he ran his hand up one of the slanted corners. “Hadn’t they ever heard of a plumb line?” he muttered critically.

“Where do we go to find the Ulgos?” Barak asked, pulling his bearskin cloak even tighter about him.

“It isn’t far,” Belgarath answered.

They led their horses back out into the blizzard-swept streets, past the strange, pyramidal buildings.

“An eerie place,” Mandorallen said, looking around him. “How long hath it been abandoned thus?”

“Since Torak cracked the world,” Belgarath replied. “About five thousand years.”

They trudged across a broad street through the deepening snow to a building somewhat larger than the ones about it and passed inside through a wide doorway surmounted by a huge stone lintel. Inside, the air hung still and calm. A few flakes of snow drifted down through the silent air, sifting through the narrow opening at the top where the roof had been and lightly dusting the stone floor.

Belgarath moved purposefully to a large black stone in the precise center of the floor. The stone was cut in such a way as to duplicate the truncated pyramidal shape of the buildings in the city, angling up to a flat surface about four feet above the floor. “Don’t touch it,” he warned them, carefully stepping around the stone.

“Is it dangerous?” Barak asked.

“No,” Belgarath said. “It’s holy. The Ulgos don’t want it profaned. They believe that UL himself placed it here.” He studied the floor intently, scraping away the thin dusting of snow with his foot in several places. “Let’s see.” He frowned slightly. Then he uncovered a single flagstone that seemed a slightly different color from those surrounding it. “Here we are,” he grunted. “I always have to look for it. Give me your sword, Barak.”

Wordlessly the big man drew his sword and handed it to the old sorcerer.

Belgarath knelt beside the flagstone he’d uncovered and rapped sharply on it three times with the pommel of Barak’s heavy sword. The sound seemed to echo hollowly from underneath.

The old man waited for a moment, then repeated his signal. Nothing happened.

A third time Belgarath hammered his three measured strokes on the echoing flagstone. A slow grinding sound started in one corner of the large chamber.

“What’s that?” Silk demanded nervously.

“The Ulgos,” Belgarath replied, rising to his feet and dusting off his knees. “They’re opening the portal to the caves.”

The grinding continued and a line of faint light appeared suddenly about twenty feet out from the east wall of the chamber. The line became a crack and then slowly yawned wider as a huge stone in the floor tilted up, rising with a ponderous slowness. The light from below seemed very dim.

“Belgarath,” a deep voice echoed from beneath the slowly tilting stone, “Yad ho, groja UL. ”

“Yad ho, groja UL. dad mar ishum,” Belgarath responded formally. “Peed mo, Belgarath. Mar ishum Ulgo,” the unseen speaker said.

“What was that?” Garion asked in perplexity.

“He invited us into the caves,” the old man said. “Shall we go down now?”

16

IT took all of Hettar’s force of persuasion to start the horses moving down the steeply inclined passageway that led into the dimness of the caves of Ulgo. Their eyes rolled nervously as they took step after braced step down the slanting corridor, and they all flinched noticeably as the grinding stone boomed shut behind them. The colt walked so close to Garion that they frequently bumped against each other, and Garion could feel the little animal’s trembling with every step.

At the end of the corridor two figures stood, each with his face veiled in a kind of filmy cloth. They were short men, shorter even than Silk, but their shoulders seemed bulky beneath their dark robes. Just beyond them an irregularly shaped chamber opened out, faintly lighted by a dim, reddish glow.

Belgarath moved toward the two, and they bowed respectfully to him as he approached. He spoke with them briefly, and they bowed again, pointing toward another corridor opening on the far side of the chamber. Garion nervously looked around for the source of the faint red light, but it seemed lost in the strange, pointed rocks hanging from the ceiling.

“We go this way,” Belgarath quietly told them, crossing the chamber toward the corridor the two veiled men had indicated to him.

“Why are their faces covered?” Durnik whispered.

“To protect their eyes from the light when they opened the portal.”

“But it was almost dark inside that building up there,” Durnik objected.

“Not to an Ulgo,” the old man replied.

“Don’t any of them speak our language?”

“A few—not very many. They don’t have much contact with outsiders. We’d better hurry. The Gorim is waiting for us.”

The corridor they entered ran for a short distance and then opened abruptly into a cavern so vast that Garion could not even see the other side of it in the faint light that seemed to pervade the caves.

“How extensive are these caverns, Belgarath?” Mandorallen asked, somewhat awed by the immensity of the place.

“No one knows for sure. The Ulgos have been exploring the caves since they came down here, and they’re still finding new ones.”

The passageway they had followed from the portal chamber had emerged high up in the wall of the cavern near the vaulted roof, and a broad ledge sloped downward from the opening, running along the sheer wall. Garion glanced once over the edge. The cavern floor was lost in the gloom far below. He shuddered and stayed close to the wall after that.

As they descended, they found that the huge cavern was not silent. From what seemed infinitely far away there was the cadenced sound of chanting by a chorus of deep male voices, the words blurred and confused by the echoes reverberating from the stone walls and seeming to die off, endlessly repeated. Then, as the last echoes of the chant faded, the chorus began to sing, their song strangely disharmonic and in a mournful, minor key. In a peculiar fashion, the disharmony of the first phrases echoing back joined the succeeding phrases and merged with them, moving inexorably toward a final harmonic resolution so profound that Garion felt his entire being moved by it. The echoes merged as the chorus ended its song, and the caves of Ulgo sang on alone, repeating that final chord over and over.

“I’ve never heard anything like that,” Ce’Nedra whispered softly to Aunt Pol.

“Few people have,” Polgara replied, “though the sound lingers in some of these galleries for days.”

“What were they singing?”

“A hymn to UL. It’s repeated every hour, and the echoes keep it alive. These caves have been singing that same hymn for five thousand years now.”

There were other sounds as well, the scrape of metal against metal, snatches of conversation in the guttural language of the Ulgos, and an endless chipping sound, coming, it seemed, from a dozen places.

“There must be a lot of them down there,” Barak observed, peering over the edge.

“Not necessarily,” Belgarath told him. “Sound lingers in these caves, and the echoes keep coming back over and over again.”

“Where does the light come from?” Durnik asked, looking puzzled. “I don’t see any torches.”

“The Ulgos grind two different kinds of rock to powder,” Belgarath replied. “When you mix them, they give off a glow.”

“It’s pretty dim light,” Durnik observed, looking down toward the floor of the cavern.

“Ulgos don’t need all that much light.”

It took them almost half an hour to reach the cavern floor. The walls around the bottom were pierced at regular intervals with the openings of corridors and galleries radiating out into the solid rock of the mountain. As they passed, Garion glanced down one of the galleries. It was very long and dimly lighted with openings along its walls and a few Ulgos moving from place to place far down toward the other end.

In the center of the cavern lay a large, silent lake, and they skirted the edge of it as Belgarath moved confidently, seeming to know precisely where he was going. Somewhere from far out on the dim lake, Garion heard a faint splash, a fish perhaps or the sound of a dislodged pebble from far above falling into the water. The echo of the singing they had heard when they entered the cavern still lingered, curiously loud in some places and very faint in others.

Two Ulgos waited for them near the entrance to one of the galleries. They bowed and spoke briefly to Belgarath. Like the men who had met them in the portal chamber, both were short and heavy-shouldered. Their hair was very pale and their eyes large and almost black.

“We’ll leave the horses here,” Belgarath said. “We have to go down some stairs. These men will care for them.”

The colt, still trembling, had to be told several times to stay with his mother, but he finally seemed to understand. Then Garion hurried to catch up to the others, who had already entered the mouth of one of the galleries.

There were doors in the walls of the gallery they followed, doors opening into small cubicles, some of them obviously workshops of one kind or another and others just as obviously arranged for domestic use. The Ulgos inside the cubicles continued at their tasks, paying no attention to the party passing in the gallery. Some of the pale-haired people were working with metal, some with stone, a few with wood or cloth. An Ulgo woman was nursing a small baby.

Behind them in the cavern they had first entered, the sound of the chanting began again. They passed a cubicle where seven Ulgos, seated in a circle, were reciting something in unison.

“They spend a great deal of time in religious observances,” Belgarath remarked as they passed the cubicle. “Religion’s the central fact of Ulgo life.”

“Sounds dull,” Barak grunted.

At the end of the gallery a flight of steep, worn stairs descended sharply, and they went down, their hands on the wall to steady themselves.

“It would be easy to get turned around down here,” Silk observed. “I’ve lost track of which direction we’re going.”

“Down,” Hettar told him.

“Thanks,” Silk replied dryly.

At the bottom of the stairs they entered another cavern, once again high up in the wall, but this time the cavern was spanned by a slender bridge, arching across to the other side. “We cross that,” Belgarath told them and led them out onto the bridge that arched through the half light to the other side.

Garion glanced down once and saw a myriad of gleaming openings dotting the cavern walls far below. The openings did not appear to have any systematic arrangement, but rather seemed scattered randomly. “There must be a lot of people living here,” he said to his grandfather.

The old man nodded. “It’s the home cave of one of the major Ulgo tribes,” he replied.

The first disharmonic phrases of the ancient hymn to UL drifted up to them as they neared the other end of the bridge. “I wish they’d find another tune,” Barak muttered sourly. “That one’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“I’ll mention that to the first Ulgo I meet,” Silk told him lightly. “I’m sure they’ll be only too glad to change songs for you.”

“Very funny,” Barak said.

“It probably hasn’t occurred to them that their song isn’t universally admired.”

“Do you mind?” Barak asked acidly.

“They’ve only been singing it for five thousand years now.”

“That’ll do, Silk,” Aunt Pol told the little man.

“Anything you say, great lady,” Silk answered mockingly.

They entered another gallery on the far side of the cavern and followed it until it branched. Belgarath firmly led them to the left.

“Are you sure?” Silk asked. “I could be wrong, but it seems like we’re going in a circle.”

“We are.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to explain that.”

“There’s a cavern we wanted to avoid, so we had to go around it.”

“Why did we have to avoid it?”

“It’s unstable. The slightest sound there might bring the roof down.”

“Oh.”

“That’s one of the dangers down here.”

“You don’t really need to go into detail, old friend,” Silk said, looking nervously at the roof above. The little man seemed to be talking more than usual, and Garion’s own sense of oppression at the thought of all the rock surrounding him gave him a quick insight into Silk’s mind. The sense of being closed in was unbearable to some men, and Silk, it appeared, was one of them. Garion glanced up also, and seemed to feel the weight of the mountain above pressing down firmly on him. Silk, he decided, might not be the only one disturbed by the thought of all that dreadful mass above them.

The gallery they followed opened out into a small cavern with a glass-clear lake in its center. The lake was very shallow and it had a white gravel bottom. An island rose from the center of the lake, and on the island stood a building constructed in the same curiously pyramidal shape as the buildings in the ruined city of Prolgu far above. The building was surrounded by a ring of columns, and here and there benches were carved from white stone. Glowing crystal globes were suspended on long chains from the ceiling of the cavern about thirty feet overhead, and their light, while still faint, was noticeably brighter than that in the galleries through which they had passed. A white marble causeway crossed to the island, and a very old man stood at its end, peering across the still water toward them as they entered the cavern.

“Yad ho, Belgarath,” the old man called. “Groja UL. ”

“Gorim,” Belgarath replied with a formal bow. “Yad ho, groja UL.” He led them across the marble causeway to the island in the center of the lake and warmly clasped the old man’s hand, speaking to him in the guttural Ulgo language.

The Gorim of Ulgo appeared to be very old. He had long, silvery hair and beard, and his robe was snowy white. There was a kind of saintly serenity about him that Garion felt immediately, and the boy knew, without knowing how he knew, that he was approaching a holy man—perhaps the holiest on earth.

The Gorim extended his arms fondly to Aunt Pol, and she embraced him affectionately as they exchanged the ritual greeting, “Yad ho, groja UL.”

“Our companions don’t speak your language, old friend,” Belgarath said to the Gorim. “Would it offend you if we conversed in the language of the outside?”

“Not at all, Belgarath,” the Gorim replied. “UL tells us that it’s important for men to understand one another. Come inside, all of you. I’ve had food and drink prepared for you.” As the old man looked at each of them, Garion noticed that his eyes, unlike those of the other Ulgos he had seen, were a deep, almost violet blue. Then the Gorim turned and led them along a path to the doorway of the pyramid-shaped building.

“Has the child come yet?” Belgarath asked the Gorim as they passed through the massive stone doorway.

The Gorim sighed. “No, Belgarath, not yet, and I am very weary. There’s hope at each birth. But after a few days, the eyes of the child darken. It appears that UL is not finished with me yet.”

“Don’t give up hope, Gorim,” Belgarath told his friend. “The child will come—in UL’s own time.”

“So we are told.” The Gorim sighed again. “The tribes are growing restless, though, and there’s bickering—and worse—in some of the farther galleries. The zealots grow bolder in their denunciations, and strange aberrations and cults have begun to appear. Ulgo needs a new Gorim. I’ve outlived my time by three hundred years.”

“UL still has work for you,” Belgarath replied. “His ways are not ours, Gorim, and he sees time in a different way.”

The room they entered was square but had, nonetheless, the slightly sloping walls characteristic of Ulgo architecture. A stone table with low benches on either side sat in the center of the room, and there were a number of bowls containing fruit sitting upon it. Among the bowls sat several tall flasks and round crystal cups. “I’m told that winter has come early to our mountains,” the Gorim said to them. “The drink should help to warm you.”

“It’s chilly outside,” Belgarath admitted.

They sat down on the benches and began to eat. The fruit was tangy and wild-tasting, and the clear liquid in the flasks was fiery and brought an immediate warm glow that radiated out from the stomach.

“Forgive us our customs, which may seem strange to you,” the Gorim said, noting that Barak and Hettar in particular approached the meal of fruit with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “We are a people much tied to ceremony. We begin our meals with fruit in remembrance of the years we spent wandering in search of UL. The meat will come in due time.”

“Where do you obtain such food in these caves, Holy One?” Silk asked politely.

“Our gatherers go out of the caves at night,” the Gorim replied. “They tell us that the fruits and grains they bring back with them grow wild in the mountains, but I suspect that they have long since taken up the cultivation of certain fertile valleys. They also maintain that the meat they carry down to us is the flesh of wild cattle, taken in the hunt, but I have my doubts about that as well.” He smiled gently. “I permit them their little deceptions.”

Perhaps emboldened by the Gorim’s geniality, Durnik raised a question that had obviously been bothering him since he had entered the city on the mountaintop above. “Forgive me, your Honor,” he began, “but why do your builders make everything crooked? What I mean is, nothing seems to be square. It all leans over.”

“It has to do with weight and support; I understand,” the Gorim replied. “Each wall is actually falling down; but since they’re all falling against each other, none of them can move so much as a finger’s width—and, of course, their shape reminds us of the tents we lived in during our wanderings.”

Durnik frowned thoughtfully, struggling with the alien idea.

“And have you as yet recovered Aldur’s Orb, Belgarath?” the Gorim inquired then, his face growing serious.

“Not yet,” Belgarath replied. “We chased Zedar as far as Nyissa, but when he crossed over into Cthol Murgos, Ctuchik was waiting and took the Orb away from him. Ctuchik has it now—at Rak Cthol.”

“And Zedar?”

“He escaped Ctuchik’s ambush and carried Torak off to Cthol Mishrak in Mallorea to keep Ctuchik from raising him with the Orb.”

“Then you’ll have to go to Rak Cthol.”

Belgarath nodded as an Ulgo servingman brought in a huge, steaming roast, set it on the table, and left with a respectful bow.

“Has anyone found out how Zedar was able to take the Orb without being struck down?” the Gorim asked.

“He used a child,” Aunt Pol told him. “An innocent.”

“Ah.” The Gorim stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Doesn’t the prophecy say, ‘And the child shall deliver up the birthright unto the Chosen One’?”

“Yes,” Belgarath replied.

“Where’s the child now?”

“So far as we know, Ctuchik has him at Rak Cthol.”

“Will you assault Rak Cthol, then?”

“I’d need an army, and it could take years to reduce that fortress. There’s another way, I think. A certain passage in the Darine Codex speaks of caves under Rak Cthol.”

“I know that passage, Belgarath. It’s very obscure. It could mean that, I suppose, but what if it doesn’t?”

“It’s confirmed by the Mrin Codex,” Belgarath said a little defensively.

“The Mrin Codex is even worse, old friend. It’s obscure to the point of being gibberish.”

“I somehow have the feeling that when we look back at it—after all this is over—we’re going to find that the Mrin Codex is the most accurate version of all. I do have certain other verification, however. Back during the time when the Murgos were constructing Rak Cthol, a Sendarian slave escaped and made his way back to the West. He was delirious when he was found, but he kept talking of caves under the mountain before he died. Not only that, Anheg of Cherek found a copy of The Book of Torak that contains a fragment of a very old Grolim prophecy—‘Guard well the temple, above and beneath, for Cthrag Yaska will summon foes down from the air or up from the earth to bear it away again.’ ”

“That’s even more obscure,” the Gorim objected.

“Grolim prophecies usually are, but it’s all I’ve got to work with. If I reject the notion of caves under Rak Cthol, I’ll have to lay siege to the place. It would take all the armies of the West to do that, and then Ctuchik would summon the Angarak armies to defend the city. Everything points to some final battle, but I’d prefer to pick the time and place—and the Wasteland of Murgos is definitely not one of the places I’d choose.”

“You’re leading someplace with this, aren’t you?”

Belgarath nodded. “I need a diviner to help me find the caves beneath Rak Cthol and to lead me up through them to the city.”

The Gorim shook his head. “You’re asking the impossible, Belgarath. The diviners are all zealots—mystics. You’ll never persuade one of them to leave the holy caverns here beneath Prolgu—particularly not now. All of Ulgo is waiting for the coming of the child, and every zealot is firmly convinced that he will be the one to discover the child and reveal him to the tribes. I couldn’t even order one of them to accompany you. The diviners are regarded as holy men, and I have no authority over them.”

“It may not be as hard as you think, Gorim.” Belgarath pushed back his plate and reached for his cup. “The diviner I need is one named Relg.”

“Relg? He’s the worst of the lot. He’s gathered a following and he preaches to them by the hour in some of the far galleries. He believes that he’s the most important man in Ulgo just now. You’ll never persuade him to leave these caves.”

“I don’t think I’ll have to, Gorim. I’m not the one who selected Relg. That decision was made for me long before I was born. Just send for him.”

“I’ll send for him if you want,” the Gorim said doubtfully. “I don’t think he’ll come, though.”

“He’ll come,” Aunt Pol told him confidently. “He won’t know why, but he’ll come. And he will go with us, Gorim. The same power that brought us all together will bring him as well. He doesn’t have any more choice in the matter than we do.”

17

It all seemed so tedious. The snow and cold they had endured on the journey to Prolgu had numbed Ce’Nedra, and the warmth here in the caverns made her drowsy. The endless, obscure talk of Belgarath and the strange, frail old Gorim seemed to pull her toward sleep. The peculiar singing began again somewhere, echoing endlessly through the caves, and that too lulled her. Only a lifetime of training in the involved etiquette of court behavior kept her awake.

The journey had been ghastly for Ce’Nedra. Tol Honeth was a warm city, and she was not accustomed to cold weather. It seemed that her feet would never be warm again. She had also discovered a world filled with shocks, terrors, and unpleasant surprises. At the Imperial Palace in Tol Honeth, the enormous power of her father, the Emperor, had shielded her from danger of any kind, but now she felt vulnerable. In a rare moment of absolute truth with herself, she admitted that much of her spiteful behavior toward Garion had grown out of her dreadful new sense of insecurity. Her safe, pampered little world had been snatched away from her, and she felt exposed, unprotected, and afraid.

Poor Garion, she thought. He was such a nice boy. She felt a little ashamed that he had been the one who’d had to suffer from her bad temper. She promised herself that soon—very soon—she would sit down with him and explain it all. He was a sensible boy, and he’d be sure to understand. That, of course, would immediately patch up the rift which had grown between them.

Feeling her eyes on him, he glanced once at her and then looked away with apparent indifference. Ce’Nedra’s eyes hardened like agates. How dared he? She made a mental note of it and added it to her list of his many imperfections.

The frail-looking old Gorim had sent one of the strange, silent Ulgos to fetch the man he and Belgarath and Lady Polgara had been discussing, and then they turned to more general topics. “Were you able to pass through the mountains unmolested?” the Gorim asked.

“We had a few encounters,” Barak, the big, red-bearded Earl of Trellheim, replied with what seemed to Ce’Nedra gross understatement.

“But thanks to UL you’re all safe,” the Gorim declared piously.

“Which of the monsters are still abroad at this season? I haven’t been out of the caves in years, but as I recall most of them seek their lairs when the snow begins.”

“We encountered Hrulgin, Holy One,” Baron Mandorallen informed him, “and some Algroths. And there was an Eldrak.”

“The Eldrak was troublesome,” Silk said dryly.

“Understandably. Fortunately there aren’t very many Eldrakyn. They’re fearsome monsters.”

“We noticed that,” Silk said.

“Which one was it?”

“Grul,” Belgarath replied. “He and I had met before, and he seemed to hold a grudge. I’m sorry, Gorim, but we had to kill him. There wasn’t any other way.”

“Ah,” the Gorim said with a slight note of pain in his voice. “Poor Grul.”

“I personally don’t miss him very much,” Barak said. “I’m not trying to be forward, Holy One, but don’t you think it might be a good idea to exterminate some of the more troublesome beasts in these mountains?”

“They’re the children of UL, even as we,” the Gorim explained.

“But if they weren’t out there, you could return to the world above,” Barak pointed out.

The Gorim smiled at that. “No,” he said gently. “Ulgo will never leave the caves now. We’ve dwelt here for five millennia and, over the years, we’ve changed. Our eyes could not bear the sunlight now. The monsters above cannot reach us here, and their presence in the mountains keeps strangers out of Ulgo. We’re not at ease with strangers, really, so it’s probably for the best.”

The Gorim was sitting directly across the narrow stone table from Ce’Nedra. The subject of the monsters obviously pained him, and he looked at her for a moment, then gently reached out his frail old hand and cupped her little chin in it, lifting her face to the dim light of the hanging globe suspended above the table. “All of the alien creatures are not monsters,” he said, his large, violet eyes calm and very wise. “Consider the beauty of this Dryad.”

Ce’Nedra was a little startled—not by his touch, certainly, for older people had responded to her flowerlike face with that same gesture for as long as she could remember—but rather by the ancient man’s immediate recognition of the fact that she was not entirely human.

“Tell me, child,” the Gorim asked, “do the Dryads still honor UL?”

She was completely unprepared for the question. “I—I’m sorry, Holy One,” she floundered. “Until quite recently, I’d not even heard of the God UL. For some reason, my tutors have very little information about your people or your God.”

“The princess was raised as a Tolnedran,” Lady Polgara explained. “She’s a Borune—I’m sure you’ve heard of the link between that house and the Dryads. As a Tolnedran, her religious affiliation is to Nedra.”

“A serviceable God,” the Gorim said. “Perhaps a bit stuffy for my taste, but certainly adequate. The Dryads themselves, though—do they still know their God?”

Belgarath coughed a bit apologetically. “I’m afraid not, Gorim. They’ve drifted away, and the eons have erased what they knew of UL. They’re flighty creatures anyway, not much given to religious observances.”

The Gorim’s face was sad. “What God do they honor now?”

“None, actually,” Belgarath admitted. “They have a few sacred groves—a rough idol or two fashioned from the root of a particularly venerated tree. That’s about it. They don’t really have any clearly formulated theology.”

Ce’Nedra found the whole discussion a trifle offensive. Rising to the occasion, she drew herself up slightly and smiled winsomely at the old Gorim. She knew exactly how.to charm an elderly man. She’d practiced for years on her father. “I feel the shortcomings of my education most keenly, Holy One,” she lied. “Since mysterious UL is the hereditary God of the Dryads, I should know him. I hope that someday soon I may receive instruction concerning him. It may be that I—unworthy though I am—can be the instrument of renewing the allegiance of my sisters to their rightful God.”

It was an artful little speech, and on the whole Ce’Nedra was rather proud of it. To her surprise, however, the Gorim was not satisfied to accept a vague expression of interest and let it go at that. “Tell your sisters that the core of our faith is to be found in The Book of Ulgo,” he told her seriously.

“The Book of Ulgo,” she repeated. “I must remember that. As soon as I return to Tol Honeth, I’ll obtain a copy and deliver it to the Wood of the Dryads personally.” That, she thought, should satisfy him.

“I’m afraid that such copies as you’d find in Tol Honeth would be much corrupted,” the Gorim told her. “The tongue of my people is not easily understood by strangers, and translations are difficult.”

Ce’Nedra definitely felt that the dear old man was becoming just a bit tiresome about the whole thing.

“As is so often the case with scriptures,” he was saying, “our Holy Book is bound up in our history. The wisdom of the Gods is such that their instruction is concealed within stories. Our minds delight in the stories, and the messages of the Gods are implanted thus. All unaware, we are instructed even as we are entertained.”

Ce’Nedra was familiar with the theory. Master Jeebers, her tutor, had lectured her tediously concerning it. She cast about rather desperately, trying to find some graceful way to change the subject.

“Our story is very old,” the Gorim continued inexorably. “Would you like to hear it?”

Caught by her own cleverness, Ce’Nedra could only nod helplessly. And so the Gorim began: “At the Beginning of Days when the World was spun out of darkness by the wayward Gods, there dwelt in the silences of the heavens a spirit known only as UL.”

In utter dismay, Ce’Nedra realized that he fully intended to recite the entire book to her. After a few moments of chagrin, however, she began to feel the strangely compelling quality of his story. More than she would have cared to admit, she was moved by the first Gorim’s appeal to the indifferent spirit that appeared to him at Prolgu. What manner of man would thus dare to accuse a God?

As she listened, a faint flicker seemed to tug at the corner of her eye. She glanced toward it and saw a soft glow somewhere deep within the massive rocks that formed one of the walls of the chamber. The glow was peculiarly different from the dim light of the hanging crystal globes.

“Then the heart of Gorim was made glad,” the old man continued his recitation, “and he called the name of the high place where all this had come to pass Prolgu, which is Holy Place. And he departed from Prolgu and returned unto—”

“Ya! Garach tek, Gorim!” The words were spat out in the snarling Ulgo language, and the harsh voice that spoke them was filled with outrage.

Ce’Nedra jerked her head around to look at the intruder. Like all Ulgos, he was short, but his arms and shoulders were so massively developed that he seemed almost deformed. His colorless hair was tangled and unkempt. He wore a hooded leather smock, stained and smeared with some kind of mud, and his large black eyes burned with fanaticism. Crowded behind him were a dozen or more other Ulgos, their faces set in expressions of shock and righteous indignation. The fanatic in the leather smock continued his stream of crackling vituperation.

The Gorim’s face set, but he endured the abuse from the wild-eyed man at the door patiently. Finally, when the fanatic paused for breath, the frail old man turned to Belgarath. “This is Relg,” he said a bit apologetically. “You see what I mean about him? Trying to convince him of anything is impossible.”

“What use would he be to us?” Barak demanded, obviously irritated by the newcomer’s attitude. “He can’t even speak a civilized tongue.”

Relg glared at him. “I speak your language, foreigner,” he said with towering contempt, “but I choose not to defile the holy caverns with its unsanctified mouthings.” He turned back to Gorim. “Who gave you the right to speak the words of the Holy Book to unbelieving foreigners?” he demanded.

The gentle old Gorim’s eyes hardened slightly. “I think that’s about enough, Relg,” he said firmly. “Whatever idiocies you babble in out-of-the-way galleries to those gullible enough to listen is your concern, but what you say to me in my house is mine. I am still Gorim in Ulgo, whatever you may think, and I am not required to answer to you.” He looked past Relg at the shocked faces of the zealot’s followers. “This is not a general audience,” he informed Relg. “You were summoned here; they were not. Send them away.”

“They came to be sure you intended me no harm,” Relg replied stiffly. “I have spoken the truth about you, and powerful men fear the truth.”

“Relg,” the Gorim said in an icy voice, “I don’t think you could even begin to realize how indifferent I am to anything you might have said about me. Now send them away—or would you rather have me do it?”

“They won’t obey you,” Relg sneered. “I am their leader.”

The Gorim’s eyes narrowed, and he rose to his feet. Then he spoke in the Ulgo tongue directly to Relg’s adherents. Ce’Nedra could not understand his words, but she did not really need to. She recognized the tone of authority instantly, and she was a bit startled at how absolutely the saintly old Gorim used it. Not even her father would have dared speak in that tone.

The men crowded behind Relg looked nervously at each other and began to back away, their faces frightened. The Gorim barked one final command, and Relg’s followers turned and fled.

Relg scowled after them and seemed for a moment on the verge of raising his voice to call them back, but apparently thought better of it. “You go too far, Gorim,” he accused. “That authority is not meant to be used in worldly matters.”

“That authority is mine, Relg,” the Gorim replied, “and it’s up to me to decide when it’s required. You’ve chosen to confront me on theological ground, therefore I needed to remind your followers—and you just who I am.”

“Why have you summoned me here?” Relg demanded. “The presence of these unsanctified ones is an affront to my purity.”

“I require your service, Relg,” the Gorim told him. “These strangers go to battle against our Ancient Foe, the one accursed above all others. The fate of the world hangs upon their quest, and your aid is needed.”

“What do I care about the world?” Relg’s voice was filled with contempt. “And what do I care about maimed Torak? I am safe within the hand of UL. He has need of me here, and I will not go from the holy caverns to risk defilement in the lewd company of unbelievers and monsters.”

“The entire world will be defiled if Torak gains dominion over it,” Belgarath pointed out, “and if we fail, Torak will become king of the world.”

“He will not reign in Ulgo,” Relg retorted.

“How little you know him,” Polgara murmured.

“I will not leave the caves,” Relg insisted. “The coming of the child is at hand, and I have been chosen to reveal him to Ulgo and to guide and instruct him until he is ready to become Gorim.”

“How interesting,” the Gorim observed dryly. “Just who was it who advised you of your election?”

“UL spoke to me,” Relg declared.

“Odd. The caverns respond universally to the voice of UL. All Ulgo would have heard his voice.”

“He spoke to me in my heart,” Relg replied quickly.

“What a curious thing for him to do,” the Gorim answered mildly.

“All of this is beside the point,” Belgarath said brusquely. “I’d prefer to have you join us willingly, Relg; but willing or not, you will join us. A power greater than any of us commands it. You can argue and resist as much as you like, but when we leave here, you’ll be going with us.”

Relg spat. “Never! I will remain here in the service of UL and of the child who will become Gorim of Ulgo. And if you try to compel me, my followers will not permit it.”

“Why do we need this blind mole, Belgarath?” Barak asked. “He’s just going to be an aggravation to us. I’ve noticed that men who spend all their time congratulating themselves on their sanctity tend to be very poor companions, and what can this one do that I can’t?”

Relg looked at the red-bearded giant with disdain. “Big men with big mouths seldom have big brains,” he said. “Watch closely, hairy one.” He walked over to the sloping wall of the chamber. “Can you do this?” he asked and slowly pushed his hand directly into the rock as if he were sinking it into water.

Silk whistled with amazement and moved quickly over to the wall beside the fanatic. As Relg pulled his hand out of the rock, Silk reached out to put his own hand on the precise spot. “How did you do that?” he demanded, shoving at the stones.

Relg laughed harshly and turned his back.

“That’s the ability that makes him useful to us, Silk,” Belgarath explained. “Relg’s a diviner. He finds caves, and we need to locate the caves under Rak Cthol. If necessary, Relg can walk through solid rock to find them for us.”

“How could anyone do that?” Silk asked, still staring at the spot where Relg had sunk his hand into the wall.

“It has to do with the nature of matter,” the sorcerer replied. “What we see as solid isn’t really all that impenetrable.”

“Either something’s solid or it’s not,” Silk insisted, his face baffled.

“Solidity’s an illusion,” Belgarath told him. “Relg can slip the bits and pieces that make up his substance through the spaces that exist between the bits and pieces that make up the substance of the rock.”

“Can you do it?” Silk demanded skeptically.

Belgarath shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never had occasion to try. Anyway, Relg can smell caves, and he goes straight to them. He probably doesn’t know himself how he does it.”

“I am led by my sanctity,” Relg declared arrogantly.

“Perhaps that’s it,” the sorcerer agreed with a tolerant smile.

“The holiness of the caves draws me, since I am drawn to all holy things,” Relg rasped on, “and for me to leave the caverns of Ulgo would be to turn my back on holiness and move toward defilement.”

“We’ll see,” Belgarath told him.

The glow in the rock wall which Ce’Nedra had noticed before began to shimmer and pulsate, and the princess seemed to see a dim shape within the rocks. Then, as if the stones were only air, the shape became distinct and stepped out into the chamber. For just a moment, it seemed that the figure was an old man, bearded and robed like the Gorim, although much more robust. Then Ce’Nedra was struck by an overpowering sense of something more than human. With an awed shudder, she realized that she was in the presence of divinity.

Relg gaped at the bearded figure, and he began to tremble violently. With a strangled cry he prostrated himself.

The figure looked calmly at the groveling zealot. “Rise, Relg,” it said in a soft voice that seemed to carry all the echoes of eternity in it, and the caverns outside rang with the sound of that voice. “Rise, Relg, and serve thy God.”

18

Ce’Nedra had received an exquisite education. She had been so thoroughly trained that she knew instinctively all the niceties of etiquette and all the proper forms to be observed upon coming into the presence of an emperor or a king, but the physical presence of a God still baffled and even frightened her. She felt awkward, even gauche, like some ignorant farm girl. She found herself trembling and, for one of the few times in her life, she hadn’t the faintest idea what to do.

UL was still looking directly into Relg’s awe-struck face. “Thy mind hath twisted what I told thee, my son,” the God said gravely. “Thou hast turned my words to make them conform to thy desire, rather than to my will.”

Relg flinched, and his eyes were stricken.

“I told thee that the child who will be Gorim will come to Ulgo through thee,” UL continued, “and that thou must prepare thyself to nurture him and see to his rearing. Did I tell thee to exalt thyself by reason of this?”

Relg began to shake violently.

“Did I tell thee to preach sedition? Or to stir Ulgo against the Gorim whom I have chosen to guide them?”

Relg collapsed. “Forgive me, O my God,” he begged, groveling again on the floor.

“Rise, Relg,” UL told him sternly. “I am not pleased with thee, and throe obeisance offends me, for thy heart is filled with pride. I will bend thee to my will, Relg, or I will break thee. I will purge thee of this overweening esteem thou hast for thyself. Only then wilt thou be worthy of the task to which I have set thee.”

Relg stumbled to his feet, his face filled with remorse. “O my God—” He choked.

“Hearken unto my words, Relg, and obey me utterly. It is my command that thou accompany Belgarath, Disciple of Aldur, and render unto him all aid within thy power. Thou wilt obey him even as if he were speaking in my voice. Dost thou understand this?”

“Yes, O my God,” Relg replied humbly.

“And wilt thou obey?”

“I will do as thou hast commanded me. O my God—though it cost me my life.”

“It shall not cost thee thy life, Relg, for I have need of thee. Thy reward for this shall be beyond thy imagining.”

Relg bowed in mute acceptance.

The God then turned to the Gorim. “Abide yet a while, my son,” he said, “though the years press heavily upon thee. It shall not be long until thy burden shall be lifted. Know that I am pleased with thee.”

The Gorim bowed in acceptance.

“Belgarath,” UL greeted the sorcerer. “I have watched thee at thy task, and I share thy Master’s pride in thee. The prophecy moves through thee and Polgara thy daughter toward that moment we have all awaited.”

Belgarath also bowed. “It’s been a long time, Most Holy,” he replied, “and there were twists and turns to it that none of us could see at the beginning.”

“Truly,” UL agreed. “It hath surprised us all upon occasion. Hath Aldur’s gift to the world come into his birthright as yet?”

“Not entirely, Most Holy,” Polgara answered gravely. “He’s touched the edges of it, however, and what he’s shown us so far gives us hope for his success.”

“Hail then, Belgarion,” UL said to the startled young man. “Take my blessing with thee and know that I will join with Aldur to be with thee when thy great task begins.”

Garion bowed—rather awkwardly, Ce’Nedra noticed. She decided that soon—very soon—she’d have to give him some schooling in such matters. He’d resist, naturally—he was impossibly stubborn—but she knew that if she nagged and badgered him enough, he’d eventually come around. And it was for his own good, after all.

UL seemed to be still looking at Garion, but there was a subtle difference in his expression. It seemed to Ce’Nedra that he was communicating wordlessly to some other presence—something that was a part of Garion and yet not a part of him. He nodded gravely then, and turned his gaze directly upon the princess herself.

“She seems but a child,” he observed to Polgara.

“She’s of a suitable age, Most Holy,” Polgara replied. “She’s a Dryad, and they’re all quite small.”

UL smiled gently at the princess, and she felt herself suddenly glowing in the warmth of that smile. “She is like a flower, is she not?” he said.

“She still has a few thorns, Most Holy,” Belgarath replied wryly, “and a bit of bramble in her nature.”

“We will value her all the more for that, Belgarath. The time wilt come when her fire and her brambles will serve our cause far more than her beauty.” UL glanced once at Garion, and a strange, knowing smile crossed his face. For some reason, Ce’Nedra felt herself beginning to blush, then lifted her chin as if daring the blush to go any further.

“It is to speak with thee that I have come, my daughter,” UL said directly to her then, and his tone and face grew serious. “Thou must abide here when thy companions depart. Do not venture into the kingdom of the Murgos, for if it should come to pass that thou makest this journey unto Rak Cthol, thou shalt surely die, and without thee the struggle against the darkness must fail. Abide here in the safety of Ulgo until thy companions return.”

This was the kind of thing Ce’Nedra completely understood. As a princess, she knew the need for instant submission to authority. Though she had wheedled, coaxed, and teased her father all her life to get her own way, she had seldom directly rebelled. She bowed her head. “I will do as thou hast commanded, Most Holy,” she replied without even thinking of the implications of the God’s words.

UL nodded with satisfaction. “Thus is the prophecy protected,” he declared. “Each of you hath his appointed tasks in this work of ours—and I have mine as well. I will delay you no longer, my children. Fare you all well in this. We will meet again.” Then he vanished.

The sounds of his last words echoed in the caverns of Ulgo. After a moment of stunned silence, the hymn of adoration burst forth again in a mighty chorus, as every Ulgo raised his voice in ecstasy at this divine visitation.

“Belar!” Barak breathed explosively. “Did you feel it?”

“UL has a commanding presence,” Belgarath agreed. He turned to look at Relg, one eyebrow cocked rather whimsically. “I take it you’ve had a change of heart,” he observed.

Relg’s face had gone ashen, and he was still trembling violently. “I will obey my God,” he vowed. “Where he has commanded me, I will go.

“I’m glad that’s been settled,” Belgarath told him. “At the moment he wants you to go to Rak Cthol. He may have other plans for you later, but right now Rak Cthol’s enough to worry about.”

“I will obey you without question,” the fanatic declared, “even as my God has commanded me.”

“Good,” Belgarath replied, and then he went directly to the point. “Is there a way to avoid the weather and the difficulties above?”

“I know a way,” Relg answered. “It’s difficult and long, but it will lead us to the foothills above the land of the horse people.”

“You see,” Silk observed to Barak, “he’s proving useful already.” Barak grunted, still not looking entirely convinced.

“May I know why we must go to Rak Cthol?” Relg asked, his entire manner changed by his meeting with his God.

“We have to reclaim the Orb of Aldur,” Belgarath told him.

“I’ve heard of it,” Relg admitted.

Silk was frowning. “Are you sure you’ll be able to find the caves under Rak Cthol?” he asked Relg. “Those caves won’t be the caverns of UL, you know, and in Cthol Murgos they’re not likely to be holy—quite the opposite, most probably.”

“I can find any cave—anywhere,” Relg stated confidently.

“All right then,” Belgarath continued. “Assuming that all goes well, we’ll go up through the caves and enter the city unobserved. We’ll find Ctuchik and take the Orb away from him.”

“Won’t he try to fight?” Durnik asked.

“I certainly hope so,” Belgarath replied fervently.

Barak laughed shortly. “You’re starting to sound like an Alorn, Belgarath.”

“That’s not necessarily a virtue,” Polgara pointed out.

“I’ll deal with the magician of Rak Cthol when the time comes,” the sorcerer said grimly. “At any rate, once we’ve recovered the Orb, we’ll go back down through the caves and make a run for it.”

“With all of Cthol Murgos hot on our heels,” Silk added. “I’ve had dealings occasionally with Murgos. They’re a persistent sort of people.”

“That could be a problem,” Belgarath admitted. “We don’t want their pursuit gaining too much momentum. If any army of Murgos inadvertently follows us into the West, it will be viewed as an invasion, and that will start a war we aren’t ready for yet. Any ideas?” He looked around.

“Turn them all into frogs,” Barak suggested with a shrug. Belgarath gave him a withering look.

“It was just a thought,” Barak said defensively.

“Why not just stay in the caves under the city until they give up the search?” Durnik offered.

Polgara shook her head firmly. “No,” she said. “There’s a place we have to be at a certain time. We’ll barely make it there as it is. We can’t afford to lose a month or more hiding in some cave in Cthol Murgos.”

“Where do we have to be, Aunt Pol?” Garion asked her.

“I’ll explain later,” she evaded, throwing a quick glance at Ce’Nedra. The princess perceived immediately that the appointment the Lady spoke of concerned her, and curiosity began to gnaw at her. .

Mandorallen, his face thoughtful and his fingers lightly touching the ribs that had been cracked in his encounter with Grul, cleared his throat. “Does there perchance happen to be a map of the region we must enter somewhere nearby, Holy Gorim?” he asked politely.

The Gorim thought for a moment. “I believe I have one somewhere,” he replied. He tapped his cup lightly on the table and an Ulgo servingman immediately entered the chamber. The Gorim spoke briefly to him, and the servingman went out. “The map I recall is very old,” the Gorim told Mandorallen, “and I’m afraid it won’t be very accurate. Our cartographers have difficulty comprehending the distances involved in the world above.”

“The distances do not matter so much,” Mandorallen assured him. “I wish but to refresh my memory concerning the contiguity of certain other realms upon the borders of Cthol Murgos. I was at best an indifferent student of geography as a schoolboy.”

The servingman returned and handed a large roll of parchment to the Gorim. The Gorim in turn passed the roll to Mandorallen.

The knight carefully unrolled the chart and studied it for a moment. “It is as I recalled,” he said. He turned to Belgarath. “Thou hast said, ancient friend, that no Murgo will enter the Vale of Aldur?”

“That’s right,” Belgarath replied.

Mandorallen pointed at the map. “The closest border from Rak Cthol is that which abuts Tolnedra,” he showed them. “Logic would seem to dictate that our route of escape should lie in that direction—toward the nearest frontier.”

“All right,” Belgarath conceded.

“Let us then seem to make all haste toward Tolnedra, leaving behind us abundant evidence of our passage. Then, at some point where rocky ground would conceal signs of our change of direction, let us turn and strike out to the northwest toward the Vale. Might this not confound them? May we not confidently anticipate that they will continue to pursue our imagined course? In time, certainly, they will realize their error, but by then we will be many leagues ahead of them. Pursuing far to our rear, might not the further discouragement of the prohibited Vale cause them to abandon the chase entirely?”

They all looked at the map.

“I like it,” Barak said, effusively slapping one huge hand on the knight’s shoulder.

Mandorallen winced and put his hand to his injured ribs.

“Sorry, Mandorallen,” Barak apologized quickly. “I forgot.”

Silk was studying the map intently. “It’s got a lot to recommend it, Belgarath,” he urged, “and if we angle up to hers” He pointed. “—we’ll come out on top of the eastern escarpment. We should have plenty of time to make the descent, but they’ll definitely want to think twice before trying it. It’s a good mile straight down at that point.”

“We could send word to Cho-Hag,” Hettar suggested. “If a few clans just happened to be gathered at the foot of the escarpment there, the Murgos would think more than twice before starting down.”

Belgarath scratched at his beard. “All right,” he decided after a moment, “we’ll try it that way. As soon as Relg leads us out of Ulgo, you go pay your father a visit, Hettar. Tell him what we’re going to do and invite him to bring a few thousand warriors down to the Vale to meet us.”

The lean Algar nodded, his black scalp lock bobbing. His face, however, showed a certain disappointment.

“Forget it, Hettar,” the old man told him bluntly. “I never had any intention of taking you into Cthol Murgos. There’d be too many opportunities there for you to get yourself in trouble.”

Hettar sighed somewhat mournfully.

“Don’t take it so hard, Hettar,” Silk bantered. “Murgos are a fanatic race. You can be practically certain that a few of them at least will try the descent—no matter what’s waiting for them at the bottom. You’d almost have to make an example of them, wouldn’t you?”

Hettar’s face brightened at that thought.

“Silk,” Lady Polgara said reprovingly.

The little man turned an innocent face to her. “We have to discourage pursuit, Polgara,” he protested.

“Of course,” she replied sarcastically.

“It wouldn’t do to have Murgos infesting the Vale, would it?”

“Do you mind?”

“I’m not really all that bloodthirsty, you know.”

She turned her back on him.

Silk sighed piously. “She always thinks the worst of me.”

By now Ce’Nedra had had sufficient time to consider the implications of the promise she had so unhesitatingly given to UL. The others would soon leave, and she must remain behind. Already she was beginning to feel isolated, cut off from them, as they made plans which did not include her. The more she thought about it, the worse it became. She felt her lower lip beginning to quiver.

The Gorim of the Ulgos had been watching her, his wise old face sympathetic. “It’s difficult to be left behind,” he said gently, almost as if his large eyes had seen directly into her thoughts, “and our caves are strange to you—dark and seemingly filled with gloom.”

Wordlessly she nodded her agreement.

“In a day or so, however,” he continued, “your eyes will become accustomed to the subdued light. There are beauties here which no one from the outside has ever seen. While it’s true that we have no flowers, there are hidden caverns where gems bloom on the floors and walls like wild blossoms. No trees or foliage grow in our sunless world, but I know a cave wall where vines of pure gold twist in ropey coils down from the ceiling and spill out across the floor.”

“Careful, Holy Gorim,” Silk warned. “The Princess is Tolnedran. If you show her that kind of wealth, she may go into hysterics right before your eyes.”

“I don’t find that particularly amusing, Prince Kheldar,” Ce’Nedra told him in a frosty tone.

“I’m overcome with remorse, your Imperial Highness,” he apologized with towering hypocrisy and a florid bow.

In spite of herself, the princess laughed. The rat-faced little Drasnian was so absolutely outrageous that she found it impossible to remain angry with him.

“You’ll be as my beloved granddaughter while you stay in Ulgo, Princess,” the Gorim told her. “We can walk together beside our silent lakes and explore long forgotten caves. And we can talk. The world outside knows little of Ulgo. It may well be that you will become the very first stranger to understand us.”

Ce’Nedra impulsively reached out to take his frail old hand in hers. He was a dear old man. “I’ll be honored, Holy Gorim,” she told him with complete sincerity.

They stayed that night in comfortable quarters in the Gorim’s pyramid-shaped house—though the terms night and day had no meaning in this strange land beneath the earth. The following morning several Ulgos led the horses into the Gorim’s cavern, traveling, the princess assumed, by some longer route than the one the party had followed, and her friends made their preparations to leave. Ce’Nedra sat to one side, feeling terribly alone already. Her eyes moved from face to face as she tried to fix each of them in her memory. When she came at last to Garion, her eyes brimmed.

Irrationally, she had already begun to worry about him. He was so impulsive. She knew that he’d do things that would put him in danger once he was out of her sight. To be sure, Polgara would be there to watch aver him, but it wasn’t the same. She felt quite suddenly angry with him for all the foolish things he was going to do and for the worry his careless behavior was going to cause her. She glared at him, wishing that he would do something for which she could scold him.

She had determined that she would not follow them out of the Gorim’s house—that she would not stand forlornly at the edge of the water staring after them as they departed—but as they all filed out through the heavy-arched doorway, her resolution crumbled. Without thinking she ran after Garion and caught his arm.

He turned with surprise, and she stretched up on her tiptoes, took his face between her tiny hands and kissed him. “You must be careful,” she commanded. Then she kissed him again, spun and ran sobbing back into the house, leaving him staring after her in baffled astonishment.