Magician's Gambit

19

They had been in the darkness for days. The single dim light Relg carried could only provide a point of reference, something to follow. The darkness pressed against Garion’s face, and he stumbled along the uneven floor with one hand thrust out in front of him to keep himself from banging his head into unseen rocks. It was not only the musty smelling darkness, however. He could sense the oppressive weight of the mountains above him and on all sides. The stone seemed to push in on him; he was closed in, sealed up in miles of solid rock. He fought continually with the faint, fluttering edges of panic and he often clenched his teeth to keep from screaming.

There seemed to be no purpose to the twisting, turning route Relg followed. At the branching of passageways, his choices seemed random, but always he moved with steady confidence through the dark, murmuring caves where the memory of sounds whispered in the dank air, voices out of the past echoing endlessly, whispering, whispering. Relg’s air of confidence as he led them was the only thing that kept Garion from giving in to unreasoning panic.

At one point the zealot stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Silk asked sharply, his voice carrying that same faint edge of panic that Garion felt gnawing at his own awareness.

“I have to cover my eyes here,” Relg replied. He was wearing a peculiarly fashioned shirt of leaf mail, a strange garment formed of overlapping metal scales, belted at the waist and with a snug-fitting hood that left only his face exposed. From his belt hung a heavy, hook-pointed knife, a weapon that made Garion cold just to look at it. He drew a piece of cloth out from under his mail shirt and carefully tied it over his face.

“Why are you doing that?” Durnik asked him.

“There’s a vein of quartz in the cavern just ahead,” Relg told him. “It reflects sunlight down from the outside. The light is very bright.”

“How can you tell which way to go if you’re blindfolded?” Silk protested.

“The cloth isn’t that thick. I can see through it well enough. Let’s go.

They rounded a corner in the gallery they were following, and Garion saw light ahead. He resisted an impulse to run toward it. They moved on, the hooves of the horses Hettar was leading clattering on the stone floor. The lighted cavern was huge, and it was filled with a glittering crystal light. A gleaming band of quartz angled across the ceiling, illuminating the cavern with a blazing radiance. Great points of stone hung like icicles from the ceiling, and other points rose from the floor to meet them. In the center of the cavern another underground lake stretched, its surface rippled by a tiny waterfall trickling down into its upper end with an endless tinkling sound that echoed in the cave like a little silver bell and joined harmoniously with the faint, remembered sigh of the singing of the Ulgos miles behind. Garion’s eyes were dazzled by color that seemed to be everywhere. The prisms in the crystalline quartz twisted the light, breaking it into colored fragments and filling the cave with the multihued light of the rainbow. Garion found himself quite suddenly wishing that he could show the dazzling cave to Ce’Nedra, and the thought puzzled him.

“Hurry,” Relg urged them, holding one hand across his brow as if to further shade his already veiled eyes.

“Why not stop here?” Barak suggested. “We need some rest, and this looks like a good place.”

“It’s the worst place in all the caves,” Relg told him. “Hurry.”

“Maybe you like the dark,” Barak said, “but the rest of us aren’t that fond of it.” He looked around at the cave.

“Protect your eyes, you fool,” Relg snapped.

“I don’t care for your tone, friend.”

“You’ll be blind once we get past this place if you don’t. It’s taken your eyes two days to get used to the dark. You’ll lose all of that if you stay here too long.”

Barak stared hard at the Ulgo for a moment. Then he grunted and nodded shortly. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand.” He reached out to put his hand on Relg’s shoulder in apology.

“Don’t touch me!” Relg cried, shrinking away from the big hand.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just don’t touch me—not ever.” Relg hurried on ahead.

“What’s the matter with him?” Barak demanded.

“He doesn’t want you to defile him,” Belgarath explained.

“Defile him? Defile him?”

“He’s very concerned about his personal purity. The way he sees it, any kind of touch can soil him.”

“Soil? He’s as dirty as a pig in a wallow.”

“It’s a different kind of dirt. Let’s move on.”

Barak strode along behind the rest of them, grumbling and sputtering in outrage. They moved into another dark passageway, and Garion looked longingly back over his shoulder at the fading light from the glowing cavern behind. Then they rounded a corner and the light was gone.

There was no way to keep track of time in the murmuring darkness. They stumbled on, pausing now and then to eat or to rest, though Garion’s sleep was filled with nightmares about mountains crushing in on him. He had almost given up all hope of ever seeing the sky again when the first faint cobweb touch of moving air brushed his cheek. It had been, as closely as he could judge, five days since they had left the last dimly lighted gallery of the Ulgos behind and plunged into this eternal night. At first he thought the faint hint of warmer air might only be his imagination, but then he caught the scent of trees and grass in the musty air of the cave, and he knew that somewhere ahead there lay an opening—a way out.

The touch of warmer outside air grew stronger, and the smell of grass began to fill the passageway along which they crept. The floor began to slope upward, and imperceptibly it grew less dark. It seemed somehow that they moved up out of endless night toward the light of the first morning in the history of the world. The horses, plodding along at the rear, had also caught the scent of fresh air, and their pace quickened. Relg, however, moved slower, and then slower still. Finally he stopped altogether. The faint metallic rustling of his leaf mail shirt spoke loudly for him. Relg was trembling, bracing himself for what lay ahead. He bound his veil across his face again, mumbling something over and over in the snarling language of the Ulgos, fervent, almost pleading. Once his eyes were covered, he moved on again, reluctantly, his feet almost dragging.

Then there was golden light ahead. The mouth of the passageway was a jagged, irregular opening with a stiff tangle of limbs sharply outlined in front of it. With a sudden clatter of little hooves, the colt, ignoring Hettar’s sharp command, bolted for the opening and plunged out into the light.

Belgarath scratched at his whiskers, squinting after the little animal. “Maybe you’d better take him and his mother with you when we separate,” he said to Hettar. “He seems to have a little trouble taking things seriously, and Cthol Murgos is a very serious place.”

Hettar nodded gravely.

“I can’t,” Relg blurted suddenly, turning his back to the light and pressing himself against the rock wall of the passageway. “I can’t do it.”

“Of course you can,” Aunt Pol said comfortingly to him. “We’ll go out slowly so you can get used to it a little at a time.”

“Don’t touch me,” Relg replied almost absently.

“That’s going to get very tiresome,” Barak growled.

Garion and the rest of them pushed ahead eagerly, their hunger for light pulling at them. They shoved their way roughly through the tangle of bushes at the mouth of the cave and, blinking and shading their eyes, they emerged into the sunlight. The light at first stabbed Garion’s eyes painfully; but after a few moments, he found that he could see again. The partially concealed entrance to the caves was near the midpoint of a rocky hillside. Behind them, the snow-covered mountains of Ulgo glittered in the morning sun, outlined against the deep blue sky, and a vast plain spread before them like a sea. The tall grass was golden with autumn, and the morning breeze touched it into long, undulating waves. The plain reached to the horizon, and Garion felt as if he had just awakened from a nightmare.

Just inside the mouth of the cave behind them, Relg knelt with his back to the light, praying and beating at his shoulders and chest with his fists.

“Now what’s he doing?” Barak demanded.

“It’s a kind of purification ritual,” Belgarath explained. “He’s trying to purge himself of all unholiness and draw the essence of the caves into his soul. He thinks it may help to sustain him while he’s outside.”

“How longs he going to be at it?”

“About an hour, I’d imagine. It’s a fairly complicated ritual.”

Relg stopped praying long enough to bind a second veil across his face on top of the first one.

“If he wraps any more cloth around his head, he’s likely to smother,” Silk observed.

“I’d better get started,” Hettar said, tightening the straps on his saddle. “Is there anything else you wanted me to tell Cho-Hag?”

“Tell him to pass the word along to the others about what’s happened so far,” Belgarath answered. “Things are getting to the point where I’d like everybody to be more or less alert.”

Hettar nodded.

“Do you know where you are?” Barak asked him.

“Of course.” The tall man looked out at the seemingly featureless plain before him.

“It’s probably going to take us at least a month to get to Rak Cthol and back,” Belgarath advised. “If we get a chance, we’ll light signal fires on top of the eastern escarpment before we start down. Tell Cho-Hag how important it is for him to be waiting for us. We don’t want Murgos blundering into Algaria. I’m not ready for a war just yet.”

“We’ll be there,” Hettar replied, swinging up into his saddle. “Be careful in Cthol Murgos.” He turned his horse and started down the hill toward the plain with the mare and the colt tagging along behind him. The colt stopped once to look back at Garion, gave a forlorn little whinny, then turned to follow his mother.

Barak shook his head sombrely. “I’m going to miss Hettar,” he rumbled.

“Cthol Murgos wouldn’t be a good place for Hettar,” Silk pointed out. “We’d have to put a leash on him.”

“I know that.” Barak sighed. “But I’ll miss him all the same.”

“Which direction do we take?” Mandorallen asked, squinting out at the grassland.

Belgarath pointed to the southeast. “That way. We’ll cross the upper end of the Vale to the escarpment and then go through the southern tip of Mishrak ac Thull. The Thulls don’t put out patrols as regularly as the Murgos do.”

“Thulls don’t do much of anything unless they have to,” Silk noted. “They’re too preoccupied with trying to avoid Grolims.”

“When do we start?” Durnik asked.

“As soon as Relg finishes his prayers,” Belgarath replied.

“We’ll have time for breakfast then,” Barak said dryly.

They rode all that day across the flat grassland of southern Algaria beneath the deep blue autumn sky. Relg, wearing an old hooded tunic of Durnik’s over his mail shirt, rode badly, with his legs sticking out stiffly. He seemed to be concentrating more on keeping his face down than on watching where he was going.

Barak watched sourly, with disapproval written plainly on his face. “I’m not trying to tell you your business, Belgarath,” he said after several hours, “but that one’s going to be trouble before we’re finished with this.”

“The light hurts his eyes, Barak,” Aunt Pol told the big man, “and he’s not used to riding. Don’t be so quick to criticize.”

Barak clamped his mouth shut, his expression still disparaging.

“At least we’ll be able to count on his staying sober,” Aunt Pol observed primly. “Which is more than I can say about some members of this little group.”

Barak coughed uncomfortably.

They set up for the night on the treeless bank of a meandering stream. Once the sun had gone down, Relg seemed less apprehensive, though he made an obvious point of not looking directly at the driftwood fire. Then he looked up and saw the first stars in the evening sky. He gaped up at them in horror, his unveiled face breaking out in a glistening sweat. He covered his head with his arms and collapsed face down on the earth with a strangled cry.

“Relg!” Garion exclaimed, jumping to the stricken man’s side and putting his hands on him without thinking.

“Don’t touch me,” Relg gasped automatically.

“Don’t be stupid. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“The sky,” Relg croaked in despair. “The sky! It terrifies me!”

“The sky?” Garion was baffled. “What’s wrong with the sky?” He looked up at the familiar stars.

“There’s no end to it,” Relg groaned. “It goes up forever.”

Quite suddenly Garion understood. In the caves he had been afraid unreasoningly afraid—because he had been closed in. Out here under the open sky, Relg suffered from the same kind of blind terror. Garion realized with a kind of shock that quite probably Relg had never been outside the caves of Ulgo in his entire life. “It’s all right,” he assured him comfortingly. “The sky can’t hurt you. It’s just up there. Don’t pay any attention to it.”

“I can’t bear it.”

“Don’t look at it.”

“I still know it’s there—all that emptiness.”

Garion looked helplessly at Aunt Pol. She made a quick gesture that told him to keep talking. “It’s not empty,” he floundered. “It’s full of things—all kinds of things—clouds, birds, sunlight, stars—”

“What?” Relg lifted his face up out of his hands. “What are those?”

“Clouds? Everyone knows what—” Garion stopped. Obviously Relg did not know what clouds were. He’d never seen a cloud in his life. Garion tried to rearrange his thoughts to take that into account. It was not going to be easy to explain. He took in a deep breath. “All right. Let’s start with clouds, then.”

It took a long time, and Garion was not really sure that Relg understood or if he was simply clinging to the words to avoid thinking about the sky. After clouds, birds were a bit easier, although feathers were very hard to explain.

“UL spoke to you,” Relg interrupted Garion’s description of wings. “He called you Belgarion. Is that your name?”

“Well—” Garion replied uncomfortably. “Not really. Actually my name is Garion, but I think the other name is supposed to be mine too sometime later, I believe—when I’m older.”

“UL knows all things,” Relg declared. “If he called you Belgarion, that’s your true name. I will call you Belgarion.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“My God rebuked me,” Relg groaned, his voice sunk into a kind of sick self loathing. “I have failed him.”

Garion couldn’t quite follow that. Somehow, even in the midst of his panic, Relg had been suffering the horrors of a theological crisis. He sat on the ground with his face turned away from the fire and his shoulders slumped in an attitude of absolute despair.

“I’m unworthy,” he said, his voice on the verge of a sob. “When UL spoke in the silence of my heart, I felt that I had been exalted above all other men, but now I am lower than dirt.”

In his anguish he began to beat the sides of his head with his fists.

“Stop that!” Garion said sharply. “You’ll hurt yourself. What’s this all about?”

“UL told me that I was to reveal the child to Ulgo. I took his words to mean that I had found special grace in his eyes.”

“What child are we talking about?”

“The child. The new Gorim. It’s UL’s way to guide and protect his people. When an old Gorim’s work is done, UL places a special mark upon the eyes of the child who is to succeed him. When UL told me that I had been chosen to bring the child to Ulgo, I revealed his words to others, and, they revered me and asked me to speak to them in the words of UL. I saw sin and corruption all around me and I denounced it, and the people listened to me—but the words were mine, not UL’s. In my pride, I presumed to speak for UL. I ignored my own sins to accuse the sins of others.” Relg’s voice was harsh with fanatic self accusation. “I am filth,” he declared, “an abomination. UL should have raised his hand against me and destroyed me.”

“That’s forbidden,” Garion told him without thinking.

“Who has the power to forbid anything to UL?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that unmaking is forbidden—even to the Gods. It’s the very first thing we learn.”

Relg looked up sharply, and Garion knew instantly that he had made a dreadful mistake. “You know the secrets of the Gods?” the fanatic demanded incredulously.

“The fact that they’re Gods doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Garion replied. “The rule applies to everybody.”

Relg’s eyes burned with a sudden hope. He drew himself up onto his knees and bowed forward until his face was in the dirt. “Forgive me my sin,” he intoned.

“What?”

“I have exalted myself when I was unworthy.”

“You made a mistake—that’s all. Just don’t do it anymore. Please get up, Relg.”

“I’m wicked and impure.”

“You?”

“I’ve had impure thoughts about women.”

Garion flushed with embarrassment. “We all have those kinds of thoughts once in a while,” he said with a nervous cough.

“My thoughts are wicked—wicked,” Relg groaned with guilt. “I burn with them.”

“I’m sure that UL understands. Please get up, Relg. You don’t have to do this.”

“I have prayed with my mouth when my mind and heart were not in my prayers.”

“Relg—”

“I have sought out hidden caves for the joy of finding them rather than to consecrate them to UL. I have this defiled the gift given me by my God.”

“Please, Relg—”

Relg began to beat his head on the ground. “Once I found a cave where the echoes of UL’s voice lingered. I did not reveal it to others, but kept the sound of UL’s voice for myself.”

Garion began to become alarmed. The fanatic Relg was working himself into a frenzy.

“Punish me, Belgarion,” Relg pleaded. “Lay a hard penance on me for my iniquity.”

Garion’s mind was very clear as he answered. He knew exactly what he had to say. “I can’t do that, Relg,” he said gravely. “I can’t punish you—any more than I can forgive you. If you’ve done things you shouldn’t have, that’s between you and UL. If you think you need to be punished, you’ll have to do it yourself. I can’t. I won’t.”

Relg lifted his stricken face out of the dirt and stared at Garion. Then with a strangled cry he lurched to his feet and fled wailing into the darkness.

“Garion!” Aunt Pol’s voice rang with that familiar note.

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested almost automatically.

“What did you say to him?” Belgarath demanded.

“He said that he’d committed all kinds of sins,” Garion explained. “He wanted me to punish him and forgive him.”

“So?”

“I couldn’t do that, Grandfather.”

“What’s so hard about it?”

Garion stared at him.

“All you had to do was lie to him a little. Is that so difficult?”

“Lie? About something like that?” Garion was horrified at the thought.

“I need him, Garion, and he can’t function if he’s incapacitated by some kind of religious hysteria. Use your head, boy.”

“I can’t do it, Grandfather,” Garion repeated stubbornly. “It’s too important to him for me to cheat him about it.”

“You’d better go find him, father,” Aunt Pol said.

Belgarath scowled at Garion. “You and I aren’t finished with this yet, boy,” he said, pointing an angry finger. Then, muttering irritably to himself, he went in search of Relg.

With a cold certainty Garion suddenly knew that the journey to Cthol Murgos was going to be very long and uncomfortable.

20

Though summer that year had lingered in the lowlands and on the plains of Algaria, autumn was brief. The blizzards and squalls they had encountered in the mountains above Maragor and again among the peaks of Ulgo had hinted that winter would be early and severe, and there was already a chill to the nights as they rode day after day across the open grassland toward the eastern escarpment.

Belgarath had recovered from his momentary fit of anger over Garion’s failure to deal with Relg’s attack of guilt, but then, with inescapable logic, he had placed an enormous burden squarely on Garion’s shoulders. “For some reason he trusts you,” the old man observed, “so I’m going to leave him entirely in your hands. I don’t care what you have to do, but keep him from flying apart again.”

At first, Relg refused to respond to Garion’s efforts to draw him out; but after a while, one of the waves of panic caused by the thought of the open sky above swept over the zealot, and he began to talk—haltingly at first but then finally in a great rush. As Garion had feared, Relg’s favorite topic was sin. Garion was amazed at the simple things that Relg considered sinful. Forgetting to pray before a meal, for example, was a major transgression. As the fanatic’s gloomy catalogue of his faults expanded, Garion began to perceive that most of his sins were sins of thought rather than of action. The one matter that kept cropping up again and again was the question of lustful thoughts about women. To Garion’s intense discomfort, Relg insisted on describing these lustful thoughts extensively.

“Women are not the same as we are, of course,” the zealot confided one afternoon as they rode together. “Their minds and hearts are not drawn to holiness the way ours are, and they set out deliberately to tempt us with their bodies and draw us into sin.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” Garion asked carefully.

“Their hearts are filled with lust,” Relg declared adamantly. “They take particular delight in tempting the righteous. I tell you truly, Belgarion, you would not believe the subtlety of the creatures. I have seen the evidence of this wickedness in the soberest of matrons—the wives of some of my most devout followers. They’re forever touching—brushing as if by accident—and they take great pains to allow the sleeves of their robes to slip up brazenly to expose their rounded arms—and the hems of their garments always seem to be hitching up to display their ankles.”

“If it bothers you, don’t look,” Garion suggested.

Relg ignored that. “I have even considered banning them from my presence, but then I thought that it might be better if I kept my eyes on them so that I could protect my followers from their wickedness. I thought for a time that I should forbid marriage among my followers, but some of the older ones told me that I might lose the young if I did that. I still think it might not be a bad idea.”

“Wouldn’t that sort of eliminate your followers altogether?” Garion asked him. “I mean, if you kept it up long enough? No marriage, no children. You get my point?”

“That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet,” Relg admitted.

“And what about the child—the new Gorim? If two people are supposed to get married so they can have a child—that particular, special child—and you persuade them not to, aren’t you interfering with something that UL wants to happen?”

Relg drew in a sharp breath as if he had not considered that. Then he groaned. “You see? Even when I’m trying my very hardest, I always seem to stumble straight into sin. I’m cursed, Belgarion, cursed. Why did UL choose me to reveal the child when I am so corrupt?”

Garion quickly changed the subject to head off that line of thought. For nine days they crossed the endless sea of grass toward the eastern escarpment, and for nine days the others, with a callousness that hurt Garion to the quick, left him trapped in the company of the ranting zealot. He grew sulky and frequently cast reproachful glances at them, but they ignored him.

Near the eastern edge of the plain, they crested a long hill and stared for the first time at the immense wall of the eastern escarpment, a sheer basalt cliff rising fully a mile above the rubble at its base and stretching off into the distance in either direction.

“Impossible,” Barak stated flatly. “We’ll never be able to climb that.”

“We won’t have to,” Silk told him confidently. “I know a trail.”

“A secret trail, I suppose?”

“Not exactly a secret,” Silk replied. “I don’t imagine too many people know about it, but it’s right out in plain sight—if you know where to look. I had occasion to leave Mishrak ac Thull in a hurry once, and I stumbled across it.”

“One gets the feeling that you’ve had occasion to leave just about every place in a hurry at one time or another.”

Silk shrugged. “Knowing when it’s time to run is one of the most important things people in my profession ever learn.”

“Will the river ahead not prove a barrier?” Mandorallen asked, looking at the sparkling surface of the Aldur River lying between them and the grim, black cliff. He was running his fingertips lightly over his side, testing for tender spots.

“Mandorallen, stop that,” Aunt Pol told him. “They’ll never heal if you keep poking at them.”

“Me thinks, my Lady, that they are nearly whole again,” the knight replied. “Only one still causes me any discomfort.”

“Well, leave it alone.”

“There’s a ford a few miles upstream,” Belgarath said in answer to the question. “The river’s down at this time of year, so we won’t have any difficulty crossing.” He started out again, leading them down the gradual slope toward the Aldur.

They forded late that afternoon and pitched their tents on the far side. The next morning they moved out to the foot of the escarpment.

“The trail’s just a few miles south,” Silk told them, leading the way along the looming black cliff.

“Do we have to go up along the face of it?” Garion asked apprehensively, craning his neck to look up the towering wall.

Silk shook his head. “The trail’s a streambed. It cuts down through the cliff. It’s a little steep and narrow, but it will get us safely to the top.”

Garion found that encouraging.

The trail appeared to be little more than a crack in the stupendous cliff, and a trickle of water ran out of the opening to disappear into the jumble of rocky debris along the base of the escarpment.

“Are you sure it goes all the way to the top?” Barak asked, eyeing the narrow chimney suspiciously.

“Trust me,” Silk assured him.

“Not if I can help it.”

The trail was awful, steep and strewn with rock. At times it was so narrow that the packhorses had to be unloaded before they could make it through and they had to be literally manhandled up over basalt boulders that had fractured into squares, almost like huge steps. The trickle of water running down the cut made everything slick and muddy. To make matters even worse, thin, high clouds swept in from the west and a bitterly cold draft spilled down the narrow cut from the arid plains of Mishrak ac Thull, lying high above.

It took them two days, and by the time they reached the top, a mile or so back from the brink of the escarpment, they were all exhausted.

“I feel as if somebody’s been beating me with a stick,” Barak groaned, sinking to the ground in the brushy gully at the top of the cut. “A very big, dirty stick.”

They all sat on the ground among the prickly thornbushes in the gully, recovering from the dreadful climb. “I’ll have a look around,” Silk said after only a few moments. The small man had the body of an acrobat—supple, strong, and quick to restore itself. He crept up to the rim of the gully, ducking low under the thornbushes and worming his way the last few feet on his stomach to peer carefully over the top. After several minutes, he gave a low whistle, and they saw him motion sharply for them to join him.

Barak groaned again and stood up. Durnik, Mandorallen, and Garion also got stiffly to their feet.

“See what he wants,” Belgarath told them. “I’m not ready to start moving around just yet.”

The four of them started up the slope through the loose gravel toward the spot where Silk lay peering out from under a thornbush, crawling the last few feet as he had done.

“What’s the trouble?” Barak asked the little man as they came up beside him.

“Company,” Silk replied shortly, pointing out over the rocky, arid plain lying brown and dead under the flat gray sky.

A cloud of yellow dust, whipped low to the ground by the stiff, chill wind, gave evidence of riders.

“A patrol?” Durnik asked in a hushed voice.

“I don’t think so,” Silk answered. “Thulls aren’t comfortable on horses. They usually patrol on foot.”

Garion peered out across the arid waste. “Is that somebody out in front of them?” he asked, pointing at a tiny, moving speck a half mile or so in front of the riders.

“Ah,” Silk said with a peculiar kind of sadness.

“What is it?” Barak asked. “Don’t keep secrets, Silk. I’m not in the mood for it.”

“They’re Grolims,” Silk explained. “The one they’re chasing is a Thull trying to escape being sacrificed. It happens rather frequently.”

“Should Belgarath be warned?” Mandorallen suggested.

“It’s probably not necessary,” Silk replied. “The Grolims around here are mostly low-ranking. I doubt that any of them would have any skill at sorcery.”

“I’ll go tell him anyway,” Durnik said. He slid back away from the edge of the gully, rose, and went back down to where the old man rested with Aunt Pol and Relg.

“As long as we stay out of sight, we’ll probably be all right,” Silk told them. “It looks as if there are only three of them, and they’re concentrating on the Thull.”

The running man had moved closer. He ran with his head down and his arms pumping at his sides.

“What happens if he tries to hide here in the gully?” Barak asked.

Silk shrugged. “The Grolims will follow him.”

“We’d have to take steps at that point, wouldn’t we?” Silk nodded with a wicked little smirk.

“We could call him, I suppose,” Barak suggested, loosening his sword in its sheath.

“The same thought had just occurred to me.”

Durnik came back up the slope, his feet crunching in the gravel.

“Wolf says to keep an eye on them,” he reported, “but he says not to do anything unless they actually start into the gully.”

“What a shame!” Silk sighed regretfully.

The running Thull was clearly visible now. He was a thick-bodied man in a rough tunic, belted at the waist. His hair was shaggy and mudcolored, and his face was contorted into an expression of brutish panic. He passed the place where they hid, perhaps thirty paces out on the flats, and Garion could clearly hear his breath whistling in his throat as he pounded past. He was whimpering as he ran—an animal-like sound of absolute despair.

“They almost never try to hide,” Silk said in a soft voice tinged with pity. “All they do is run.” He shook his head.

“They’ll overtake him soon,” Mandorallen observed. The pursuing Grolims wore black, hooded robes and polished steel masks.

“We’d better get down,” Barak advised.

They all ducked below the gully rim. A few moments later, the three horses galloped by, their hooves thudding on the hard earth.

“They’ll catch him in a few more minutes,” Garion said. “He’s running right for the edge. He’ll be trapped.”

“I don’t think so,” Silk replied somberly.

A moment later they heard a long, despairing shriek, fading horribly into the gulf below.

“I more or less expected that,” Silk said.

Garion’s stomach wrenched at the thought of the dreadful height of the escarpment.

“They’re coming back,” Barak warned. “Get down.”

The three Grolims rode back along the edge of the gully. One of them said something Garion could not quite hear, and the other two laughed.

“The world might be a brighter place with three less Grolims in it,” Mandorallen suggested in a grim whisper.

“Attractive thought,” Silk agreed, “but Belgarath would probably disapprove. I suppose it’s better to let them go. We wouldn’t want anybody looking for them.”

Barak looked longingly after the three Grolims, then sighed with deep regret.

“Let’s go back down,” Silk said.

They all turned and crawled back down into the brushy gully. Belgarath looked up as they returned. “Are they gone?”

“They’re riding off,” Silk told him.

“What was that cry?” Relg asked.

“Three Grolims chased a Thull off the edge of the escarpment,” Silk replied.

“Why?”

“He’d been selected for a certain religious observance, and he didn’t want to participate.”

“He refused?” Relg sounded shocked. “He deserved his fate then.”

“I don’t think you appreciate the nature of Grolim ceremonies, Relg,” Silk said.

“One must submit to the will of one’s God,” Relg insisted. There was a sanctimonious note to his voice. “Religious obligations are absolute.”

Silk’s eyes glittered as he looked at the Ulgo fanatic. “How much do you know about the Angarak religion, Relg?” he asked.

“I concern myself only with the religion of Ulgo.”

“A man ought to know what he’s talking about before he makes judgments.”

“Let it lie, Silk,” Aunt Pol told him.

“I don’t think so, Polgara. Not this time. A few facts might be good for our devout friend here. He seems to lack perspective.” Silk turned back to Relg. “The core of the Angarak religion is a ritual most men find repugnant. Thulls devote their entire lives to avoiding it. That’s the central reality of Thullish life.”

“An abominable people.” Relg’s denunciation was harsh.

“No. Thulls are stupid—even brutish—but they’re hardly abominable. You see, Relg, the ritual we’re talking about involves human sacrifice.”

Relg pulled the veil from his eyes to stare incredulously at the rat-faced little man.

“Each year two thousand Thulls are sacrificed to Torak,” Silk went on, his eyes boring into Relg’s stunned face. “The Grolims permit the substitution of slaves, so a Thull spends his whole life working in order to get enough money to buy a slave to take his place on the altar if he’s unlucky enough to be chosen. But slaves die sometimes—or they escape. If a Thull without a slave is chosen, he usually tries to run. Then the Grolims chase him—they’ve had a lot of practice, so they’re very good at it. I’ve never heard of a Thull actually getting away.”

“It’s their duty to submit,” Relg maintained stubbornly, though he seemed a bit less sure of himself.

“How are they sacrificed?” Durnik asked in a subdued voice. The Thull’s willingness to hurl himself off the escarpment had obviously shaken him.

“It’s a simple procedure,” Silk replied, watching Relg closely. “Two Grolims bend the Thull backward over the altar, and a third cuts his heart out. Then they burn the heart in a little fire. Torak isn’t interested in the whole Thull. He only wants the heart.”

Relg flinched at that.

“They sacrifice women, too,” Silk pressed. “But women have a simpler means of escape. The Grolims won’t sacrifice a pregnant woman—it confuses their count—so Thullish women try to stay pregnant constantly. That explains why there are so many Thulls and why Thullish women are notorious for their indiscriminate appetite.”

“Monstrous.” Relg gasped. “Death would be better than such vile corruption.”

“Death lasts for a long time, Relg,” Silk said with a cold little smile. “A little corruption can be forgotten rather quickly if you put your mind to it. That’s particularly true if your life depends on it.”

Relg’s face was troubled as he struggled with the blunt description of the horror of Thullish life. “You’re a wicked man,” he accused Silk, though his voice lacked conviction.

“I know,” Silk admitted.

Relg appealed to Belgarath. “Is what he says true?”

The sorcerer scratched thoughtfully at his beard. “He doesn’t seem to have left out very much,” he replied. “The word religion means different things to different people, Relg. It depends on the nature of one’s God. You ought to try to get that sorted out in your mind. It might make some of the things you’ll have to do a bit easier.”

“I think we’ve just about exhausted the possibilities of this conversation, father,” Aunt Pol suggested, “and we have a long way to go.”

“Right,” he agreed, getting to his feet.

They rode down through the arid jumble of rock and scrubby bushes that spread across the western frontier of the land of the Thulls. The continual wind that swept up across the escarpment was bitterly cold, though there were only a few patches of thin snow lying beneath the somber gray sky.

Relg’s eyes adjusted to the subdued light, and the clouds appeared to quiet the panic the open sky had caused him. But this was obviously a difficult time for him. The world here above ground was alien, and everything he encountered seemed to shatter his preconceptions. It was also a time of personal religious turmoil, and the crisis goaded him into peculiar fluctuations of speech and action. At one moment he would sanctimoniously denounce the sinful wickedness of others, his face set in a stern expression of righteousness; and in the next, he would be writhing in an agony of self loathing, confessing his sin and guilt in an endless, repetitious litany to any who would listen. His pale face and huge, dark eyes, framed by the hood of his leaf mail shirt, contorted in the tumult of his emotions. Once again the others—even patient, good-hearted Durnik—drew away from him, leaving him entirely to Garion. Relg stopped often for prayers and obscure little rituals that always seemed to involve a great deal of groveling in the dirt.

“It’s going to take us all year to get to Rak Cthol at this rate,” Barak rumbled sourly on one such occasion, glaring with open dislike at the ranting fanatic kneeling in the sand beside the trail.

“We need him,” Belgarath replied calmly, “and he needs this. We can live with it if we have to.”

“We’re getting close to the northern edge of Cthol Murgos,” Silk said, pointing ahead at a low range of hills. “We won’t be able to stop like this once we cross the border. We’ll have to ride as hard as we can until we get to the South Caravan Route. The Murgos patrol extensively, and they disapprove of side trips. Once we get to the track, we’ll be all right, but we don’t want to be stopped before we get there.”

“Will we not be questioned even on the caravan route, Prince Kheldar?” Mandorallen asked. “Our company is oddly assorted, and Murgos are suspicious.”

“They’ll watch us,” Silk admitted, “but they won’t interfere as long as we don’t stray from the track. The treaty between Taur Urgas and Ran Borune guarantees freedom of travel along the caravan route, and no Murgo alive would be foolish enough to embarrass his king by violating it. Taur Urgas is very severe with people who embarrass him.”

They crossed into Cthol Murgos shortly after noon on a cold, murky day and immediately pushed into a gallop. After about a league or so, Relg began to pull in his horse.

“Not now, Relg,” Belgarath told him sharply. “Later.”

“But—”

“UL’s a patient God. He’ll wait. Keep going.”

They galloped on across the high, barren plain toward the caravan route, their cloaks streaming behind them in the biting wind. It was midafternoon when they reached the track and reined in. The South Caravan Route was not precisely a road, but centuries of travel had clearly marked its course. Silk looked around with satisfaction. “Made it,” he said. “Now we become honest merchants again, and no Murgo in the world is going to interfere with us.” He turned his horse eastward then and led the way with a great show of confidence. He squared his shoulders, seeming to puff himself up with a kind of busy self importance, and Garion knew that he was making mental preparations involved in assuming a new role. When they encountered the well-guarded packtrain of a Tolnedran merchant moving west, Silk had made his transition and he greeted the merchant with the easy camaraderie of a man of trade.

“Good day, Grand High Merchant,” he said to the Tolnedran, noting the other’s marks of rank. “If you can spare a moment, I thought we might exchange information about the trail. You’ve come from the east, and I’ve just come over the route to the west of here. An exchange might prove mutually beneficial.”

“Excellent idea,” the Tolnedran agreed. The Grand High Merchant was a stocky man with a high forehead and wore a fur-lined cloak pulled tightly about him to ward off the icy wind.

“My name is Ambar,” Silk said. “From Kotu.”

The Tolnedran nodded in polite acknowledgement. “Kalvor,” he introduced himself, “of Tol Horb. You’ve picked a hard season for the journey east, Ambar.”

“Necessity,” Silk said. “My funds are limited, and the cost of winter lodgings in Tol Honeth would have devoured what little I have.”

“The Honeths are rapacious,” Kalvor concurred. “Is Ran Borune still alive?”

“He was when I left.”

Kalvor made a face. “And the squabble over the succession goes on?”

Silk laughed. “Oh, yes.”

“Is that swine Kador from Tol Vordue still dominant?”

“Kador fell upon hard times, I understand. I heard that he made an attempt on the life of Princess Ce’Nedra. I imagine that the Emperor’s going to take steps to remove him from the race.”

“What splendid news,” Kalvor said, his face brightening.

“How’s the trail to the east?” Silk asked.

“There’s not much snow,” Kalvor told him. “Of course there never is in Cthol Murgos. It’s a very dry kingdom. It’s cold, though. It’s bitter in the passes. What about the mountains in eastern Tolnedra?”

“It was snowing when we came through.”

“I was afraid of that,” Kalvor said with a gloomy look.

“You probably should have waited until spring, Kalvor. The worst part of the trip’s still ahead of you.”

“I had to get out of Rak Goska.” Kalvor looked around almost as if expecting to see someone listening. “You’re headed toward trouble, Ambar,” he said seriously.

“Oh?”

“This is not the time to go to Rak Goska. The Murgos have gone insane there.”

“Insane?” Silk said with alarm.

“There’s no other explanation. They’re arresting honest merchants on the flimsiest charges you ever heard of, and everyone from the West is followed constantly. It’s certainly not the time to take a lady to that place.”

“My sister,” Silk replied, glancing at Aunt Pol. “She’s invested in my venture, but she doesn’t trust me. She insisted on coming along to make sure I don’t cheat her.”

“I’d stay out of Rak Goska,” Kalvor advised.

“I’m committed now,” Silk said helplessly. “I don’t have any other choice, do I?”

“I’ll tell you quite honestly, Ambar, it’s as much as a man’s life is worth to go to Rak Goska just now. A good merchant I know was actually accused of violating the women’s quarters in a Murgo household.”

“Well, I suppose that happens sometimes. Murgo women are reputed to be very handsome.”

“Ambar,” Kalvor said with a pained expression, “the man was seventy-three years old.”

“His sons can be proud of his vitality then.” Silk laughed. “What happened to him?”

“He was condemned and impaled,” Kalvor said with a shudder. “The soldiers rounded us all up and made us watch. It was ghastly.”

Silk frowned. “There’s no chance that the charges were true?”

“Seventy-three years old, Ambar,” Kalvor repeated. “The charges were obviously false. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that Taur Urgas is trying to drive all western merchants out of Cthol Murgos. Rak Goska simply isn’t safe for us any more.”

Silk grimaced. “Who can ever say what Taur Urgas is thinking?”

“He profits from every transaction in Rak Goska. He’d have to be insane to drive us out deliberately.”

“I’ve met Taur Urgas,” Silk said grimly. “Sanity’s not one of his major failings.” He looked around with a kind of desperation on his face. “Kalvor, I’ve invested everything I own and everything I can borrow in this venture. If I turn back now, I’ll be ruined.”

“You could turn north after you get through the mountains,” Kalvor suggested. “Cross the river into Mishrak ac Thull and go to Thull Mardu.”

Silk made a face. “I hate dealing with Thulls.”

“There’s another possibility,” the Tolnedran said. “You know where the halfway point between Tol Honeth and Rak Goska is?”

Silk nodded.

“There’s always been a Murgo resupply station there—food, spare horses, other necessities. Anyway, since the troubles in Rak Goska, a few enterprising Murgos have come out there and are buying whole caravan loads—horses and all. Their prices aren’t as attractive as the prices in Rak Goska, but it’s a chance for some profit, and you don’t have to put yourself in danger to make it.”

“But that way you have no goods for the return journey,” Silk objected. “Half the profit’s lost if you come back with nothing to sell in Tol Honeth.”

“You’d have your life, Ambar,” Kalvor said pointedly. He looked around again nervously, as if expecting to be arrested. “I’m not coming back to Cthol Murgos,” he declared in a firm voice. “I’m as willing as any man to take risks for a good profit, but all the gold in the world isn’t worth another trip to Rak Goska.”

“How far is it to the halfway point?” Silk asked, seemingly troubled.

“I’ve ridden for three days since I left there,” Kalvor replied. “Good luck, Ambar—whatever you decide.” He gathered up his reins. “I want to put a few more leagues behind me before I stop for the night. There may be snow in the Tolnedran mountains, but at least I’ll be out of Cthol Murgos and out from under the fist of Taur Urgas.” He nodded briefly and moved off to the west at a fast trot, with his guards and his packtrain following after him.

21

The south caravan route wound through a series of high, arid valleys that ran in a generally east-west direction. The surrounding peaks were high—higher probably than the mountains to the west, but their upper slopes were only faintly touched with snow. The clouds overhead turned the sky a dirty slate-gray, but what moisture they held did not fall on this desiccated wilderness of sand, rock, and scrubby thorn. Though it did not snow, it was nonetheless bitterly cold. The wind blew continually, and its edge was like a knife.

They rode east, making good time.

“Belgarath,” Barak said back over his shoulder, “there’s a Murgo on that ridgeline ahead just to the south of the track.”

“I see him.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Watching us. He won’t do anything as long as we stay on the caravan route.”

“They always watch like that,” Silk stated. “The Murgos like to keep a close watch on everybody in their kingdom.”

“That Tolnedran—Kalvor,” Barak said. “Do you think he was exaggerating?”

“No,” Belgarath replied. “I’d guess that Taur Urgas is looking for an excuse to close the caravan route and expel all the westerners from Cthol Murgos.”

“Why?” Durnik asked.

Belgarath shrugged. “The war is coming. Taur Urgas knows that a good number of the merchants who take this route to Rak Goska are spies. He’ll be bringing armies up from the south soon, and he’d like to keep their numbers and movements a secret.”

“What manner of army could be gathered from so bleak and uninhabited a realm?” Mandorallen asked.

Belgarath looked around at the high, bleak desert. “This is only the little piece of Cthol Murgos we’re permitted to see. It stretches a thousand leagues or more to the south, and there are cities down there that no westerner has ever seen—we don’t even know their names. Here in north, the Murgos play a very elaborate game to conceal the real Cthol Murgos.”

“Is it thy thought then that the war will come soon?”

“Next summer perhaps,” Belgarath replied. “Possibly the summer following.”

“Are we going to be ready?” Barak asked.

“We’re going to try to be.”

Aunt Pol made a brief sound of disgust.

“What’s wrong?” Garion asked her quickly.

“Vultures,” she said. “Filthy brutes.”

A dozen heavy-bodied birds were flapping and squawking over something on the ground to one side of the caravan track.

“What are they feeding on?” Durnik asked. “I haven’t seen any animals of any kind since we left the top of the escarpment.”

“A horse, probably—or a man,” Silk said. “There’s nothing else up here.”

“Would a man be left unburied?” the smith asked.

“Only partially,” Silk told him. “Sometimes certain brigands decide that the pickings along the caravan route might be easy. The Murgos give them plenty of time to realize how wrong they were.”

Durnik looked at him questioningly.

“The Murgos catch them,” Silk explained, “and then they bury them up to the neck and leave them. The vultures have learned that a man in that situation is helpless. Often they get impatient and don’t bother to wait for the man to finish dying before they start to eat.”

“That’s one way to deal with bandits,” Barak said, almost approvingly. “Even a Murgo can have a good idea once in a while.”

“Unfortunately, Murgos automatically assume that anybody who isn’t on the track itself is a bandit.”

The vultures brazenly continued to feed, refusing to leave their dreadful feast as the party passed no more than twenty yards from their flapping congregation. Their wings and bodies concealed whatever it was they were feeding on, a fact for which Garion was profoundly grateful. Whatever it was, however, was not very large.

“We should stay quite close to the track when we stop for the night, then,” Durnik said, averting his eyes with a shudder.

“That’s a very good idea, Durnik,” Silk agreed.

The information the Tolnedran merchant had given them about the makeshift fair at the halfway point proved to be accurate. On the afternoon of the third day, they came over a rise and saw a cluster of tents surrounding a solid stone building set to one side of the caravan track. The tents looked small in the distance and they billowed and flapped in the endless wind that swept down the valley.

“What do you think?” Silk asked Belgarath.

“It’s late,” the old man replied. “We’re going to have to stop for the night soon anyway, and it would look peculiar if we didn’t stop.”

Silk nodded.

“We’re going to have to try to keep Relg out of sight, though,” Belgarath continued. “Nobody’s going to believe we’re ordinary merchants if they see an Ulgo with us.”

Silk thought a moment. “We’ll wrap him in a blanket,” he suggested, “and tell anybody who asks that he’s sick. People stay away from sick men.”

Belgarath nodded. “Can you act sick?” he asked Relg.

“I am sick,” the Ulgo said without any attempt at humor. “Is it always this cold up here?” He sneezed.

Aunt Pol pulled her horse over beside his and reached out to put her hand on his forehead.

“Don’t touch me.” Relg cringed away from her hand.

“Stop that,” she told him. She briefly touched his face and looked at him closely. “He’s coming down with a cold, father,” she announced. “As soon as we get settled, I’ll give him something for it. Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked the fanatic.

“I will endure what UL chooses to send me,” Relg declared. “It’s his punishment for my sins.”

“No,” she told him flatly. “It has nothing to do with sin or punishment. It’s a cold—nothing more.”

“Am I going to die?” Relg asked calmly.

“Of course not. Haven’t you ever had a cold before?”

“No. I’ve never been sick in my life.”

“You won’t be able to say that again,” Silk said lightly, pulling a blanket out of one of the packs and handing it to him. “Wrap this around your shoulders and pull it up over your head. Try to look like you’re suffering.”

“I am,” Relg said, starting to cough.

“But you have to look like it,” Silk told him. “Think about sin—that ought to make you look miserable.”

“I think about sin all the time,” Relg replied, still coughing.

“I know,” Silk said, “but try to think about it a little harder.”

They rode down the hill toward the collection of tents with the dry, icy wind whipping at them as they rode. Very few of the assembled merchants were outside their tents, and those who were moved quickly about their tasks in the biting chill.

“We should stop by the resupply station first, I suppose,” Silk suggested, gesturing toward the square stone building squatting among the tents. “That would look more natural. Let me handle things.”

“Silk, you mangy Drasnian thief!” a coarse voice roared from a nearby tent.

Silk’s eyes widened slightly, and then he grinned. “I seem to recognize the squeals of a certain Nadrak hog,” he said, loud enough to be heard by the man in the tent.

A rangy Nadrak in a belted, ankle-length, black felt overcoat and a snug-fitting fur cap strode out of the tent. He had coarse, black hair and a thin, scraggly beard. His eyes had the peculiar angularity to them that was a characteristic of all Angaraks; but unlike the dead eyes of the Murgos, this Nadrak’s eyes were alive with a kind of wary friendship. “Haven’t they caught you yet, Silk?” he demanded raucously. “I was sure that by now someone would have peeled off your hide.”

“Drunk as usual, I see.” Silk grinned viciously. “How many days has it been this time, Yarblek?”

“Who counts?” The Nadrak laughed, swaying slightly on his feet. “What are you doing in Cthol Murgos, Silk? I thought your fat king needed you in Gar og Nadrak.”

“I was getting to be a little too well-known on the streets of Yar Nadrak,” Silk replied. “It was getting to the point that people were avoiding me.”

“Now I wonder just why that could be,” Yarblek retorted with heavy sarcasm. “You cheat at trade, you switch dice, you make free with other men’s wives, and you’re a spy. That shouldn’t be any reason for men not to admire your good points—whatever they are.”

“Your sense of humor’s as overpowering as ever, Yarblek.”

“It’s my only failing,” the slightly tipsy Nadrak admitted. “Get down off that horse, Silk. Come inside my tent and we’ll get drunk together. Bring your friends.” He lurched back inside the tent.

“An old acquaintance,” Silk explained quickly, sliding out of his saddle.

“Can he be trusted?” Barak asked suspiciously.

“Not entirely, but he’s all right. He’s not a bad fellow, really—for a Nadrak. He’ll know everything that’s going on, and if he’s drunk enough, we might be able to get some useful information out of him.”

“Get in here, Silk,” Yarblek roared from inside his gray felt tent.

“Let’s see what he has to say,” Belgarath said.

They all dismounted, tied their horses to a picket line at the side of the Nadrak’s tent, and trooped inside. The tent was large, and the floor and walls were covered with thick crimson carpets. An oil lamp hung from the ridgepole, and an iron brazier shimmered out waves of heat.

Yarblek was sitting cross-legged on the carpeting at the back of the tent, with a large black keg conveniently beside him. “Come in. Come in,” he said brusquely. “Close the flap. You’re letting out all the heat.”

“This is Yarblek,” Silk said by way of introduction, “an adequate merchant and a notorious drunkard. We’ve known each other for a long time now.”

“My tent is yours.” Yarblek hiccuped indifferently. “It’s not much of a tent, but it’s yours anyway. There are cups over there in that pile of things by my saddle—some of them are even clean. Let’s all have a drink.”

“This is Mistress Pol, Yarblek,” Silk introduced her.

“Good-looking woman,” Yarblek observed, looking at her boldly. “Forgive me for not getting up, Mistress, but I feel a bit giddy at the moment—probably something I ate.”

“Of course,” she agreed with a dry little smile. “A man should always be careful about what he puts in his stomach.”

“I’ve made that exact point myself a thousand times.” He squinted at her as she pulled back her hood and unfastened her cape. “That’s a remarkably handsome woman, Silk,” he declared. “I don’t suppose you’d care to sell her.”

“You couldn’t afford me, Yarblek,” she told him without seeming to take the slightest offense.

Yarblek stared at her and then roared with laughter. “By One-Eye’s nose, I’d bet that I couldn’t, at that—and you’ve probably got a dagger somewhere under your clothes, too. You’d slice open my belly if I tried to steal you, wouldn’t you?”

“Naturally.”

“What a woman!” Yarblek chortled. “Can you dance, too?”

“Like you’ve never seen before, Yarblek,” she replied. “I could turn your bony to water.”

Yarblek’s eyes burned. “After we all get drunk, maybe you’ll dance for us.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a hint of promise. Garion was stunned at this uncharacteristic boldness. It was obviously the way Yarblek expected a woman to behave, but Garion wondered just when Aunt Pol had learned the customs of the Nadraks so well that she could respond without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

“This is Mister Wolf,” Silk said, indicating Belgarath.

“Never mind names.” Yarblek waved his hand. “I’d just forget them anyway.” He did, however, look rather shrewdly at each of them. “As a matter of fact,” he continued, sounding suddenly not nearly as drunk as he appeared, “it might be just as well if I didn’t know your names. What a man doesn’t know, he can’t reveal, and you’re too well-mixed a group to be in stinking Cthol Murgos on honest business. Fetch yourselves cups. This keg is almost full, and I’ve got another chilling out back of the tent.”

At Silk’s gesture, they each took a cup from the heap of cookware piled beside a well-worn saddle and joined Yarblek on the carpet near the keg.

“I’d pour for you like a proper host,” Yarblek told them, “but I spill too much that way. Dip out your own.”

Yarblek’s ale was a very dark brown and had a rich, almost fruity flavor.

“Interesting taste,” Barak said politely.

“My brewer chops dried apples into his vats,” the Nadrak replied. “It smooths out some of the bite.” He turned to Silk. “I thought you didn’t like Murgos.”

“I don’t.”

“What are you doing in Cthol Murgos, then?”

Silk shrugged. “Business.”

“Whose? Yours or Rhodar’s?”

Silk winked at him.

“I thought as much. I wish you luck, then. I’d even offer to help, but I’d probably better keep my nose out of it. Murgos distrust us even more than they distrust you Alorns—not that I can really blame them. Any Nadrak worth the name would go ten leagues out of his way for the chance to cut a Murgo’s throat.”

“Your affection for your cousins touches my heart.” Silk grinned.

Yarblek scowled. “Cousins!” he spat. “If it weren’t for the Grolims, we’d have exterminated the whole cold-blooded race generations ago.” He dipped out another cup of ale, lifted it and said, “Confusion to the Murgos.”

“I think we’ve found something we can drink to together,” Barak said with a broad smile. “Confusion to the Murgos.”

“And may Taur Urgas grow boils on his behind,” Yarblek added. He drank deeply, scooped another cupful of ale from the open keg and drank again. “I’m a little drunk,” he admitted.

“We’d never have guessed,” Aunt Pol told him.

“I like you, girl.” Yarblek grinned at her. “I wish I could afford to buy you. I don’t suppose you’d consider running away?”

She sighed a mocking little sigh. “No,” she refused. “I’m afraid not. That gives a woman a bad reputation, you know.”

“Very true,” Yarblek agreed owlishly. He shook his head sadly. “As I was saying,” he went on, “I’m a little drunk. I probably shouldn’t say anything about this, but it’s not a good time for westerners to be in Cthol Murgos—Alorns particularly. I’ve been hearing some strange things lately. Word’s been filtering out of Rak Cthol that Murgoland is to be purged of outsiders. Taur Urgas wears the crown and plays king in Rak Goska, but the old Grolim at Rak Cthol has his hand around Taur Urgas’ heart. The king of the Murgos knows that one squeeze from Ctuchik will leave his throne empty.”

“We met a Tolnedran a few leagues west of here who said the same sort of thing,” Silk said seriously. “He told us that merchants from the West were being arrested all over Rak Goska on false charges.”

Yarblek nodded. “That’s only the first step. Murgos are always predictable—they have so little imagination. Taur Urgas isn’t quite ready to offend Ran Borune openly by butchering every western merchant in the kingdom, but it’s getting closer. Rak Goska’s probably a closed city by now. Taur Urgas is free to turn his attention to the outlands. I’d imagine that’s why he’s coming here.”

“He’s what?” Silk’s face paled visibly.

“I thought you knew,” Yarblek told him. “Taur Urgas is marching toward the frontier with his army behind him. My guess is that he plans to close the border.”

“How far away is he?” Silk demanded.

“I was told that he was seen this morning not five leagues from here,” Yarblek said. “What’s wrong?”

“Taur Urgas and I have had some serious fallings out,” Silk answered quickly, his face filled with consternation. “I can’t be here when he arrives.” He jumped to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Belgarath asked quickly.

“Some place safe. I’ll catch up with you later.” He turned then and bolted out of the tent. A moment later they heard the pounding of his horse’s hooves.

“Do you want me to go with him?” Barak asked Belgarath.

“You’d never catch him.”

“I wonder what he did to Taur Urgas,” Yarblek mused. He chuckled then. “It must have been something pretty awful, the way the little thief ran out of here.”

“Is it safe for him to go away from the caravan track?” Garion asked, remembering the vultures at their grisly feast beside the trail.

“Don’t worry about Silk,” Yarblek replied confidently.

From a great distance away, a slow thudding sound began to intrude itself. Yarblek’s eyes narrowed with hate. “It looks like Silk left just in time,” he growled.

The thudding became louder and turned into a hollow, booming sound. Dimly, behind the booming, they could hear a kind of groaning chant of hundreds of voices in a deep, minor key.

“What’s that?” Durnik asked.

“Taur Urgas,” Yarblek answered and spat. “That’s the war song of the king of the Murgos.”

“War?” Mandorallen demanded sharply.

“Taur Urgas is always at war,” Yarblek replied with heavy contempt.

“Even when there isn’t anybody to be at war with. He sleeps in his armor, even in his own palace. It makes him smelly, but all Murgos stink anyway, so it doesn’t really make any difference. Maybe I’d better go see what he’s up to.” He got heavily to his feet. “Wait here,” he told them. “This is a Nadrak tent, and there are certain courtesies expected between Angaraks. His soldiers won’t come in here, so you’ll be safe as long as you stay inside.” He lurched toward the door of the tent, an expression of icy hatred on his face.

The chanting and the measured drumbeats grew louder. Shrill fifes picked up a discordant, almost jigging accompaniment, and then there was a sudden blaring of deep-throated horns.

“What do you think, Belgarath?” Barak rumbled. “This Yarblek seems like a good enough fellow, but he’s still an Angarak. One word from him, and we’ll have a hundred Murgos in here with us.”

“He’s right, father,” Aunt Pol agreed. “I know Nadraks well enough to know that Yarblek wasn’t nearly as drunk as he pretended to be.”

Belgarath pursed his lips. “Maybe it isn’t too good an idea to gamble all that much on the fact that Nadraks despise Murgos,” he conceded. “We might be doing Yarblek an injustice, but perhaps it would be better just to slip away before Taur Urgas has time to put guards around the whole place anyway. There’s no way of knowing how long he’s going to stay here; and once he settles in, we might have trouble leaving.”

Durnik pulled aside the red carpeting that hung along the back wall, reached down, and tugged out several tent pegs. He lifted the canvas. “I think we can crawl out here.”

“Let’s go, then,” Belgarath decided.

One by one, they rolled out of the tent into the chill wind.

“Get the horses,” Belgarath said quietly. He looked around, his eyes narrowing. “That gully over there.” He pointed at a wash opening out just beyond the last row of tents. “If we keep the tents between us and the main caravan track, we should be able to get into it without being seen. Most likely everybody here’s going to be watching the arrival of Taur Urgas.”

“Would the Murgo king know thee, Belgarath?” Mandorallen asked.

“He might. We’ve never met, but my description’s been noised about in Cthol Murgos for a long time now. It’s best not to take any chances.”

They led their horses along the back of the tents and gained the cover of the gully without incident.

“This wash comes down off the back side of that hill there.” Barak pointed. “If we follow it, we’ll be out of sight all the way, and once we get the hill between us and the camp, we’ll be able to ride away without being seen.”

“It’s almost evening.” Belgarath looked up at the lowering sky. “Let’s go up a ways and then wait until after dark.”

They moved on up the gully until they were behind the shoulder of the hill.

“Better keep an eye on things,” Belgarath said.

Barak and Garion scrambled up out of the gully and moved at a crouch to the top of the hill, where they lay down behind a scrubby bush. “Here they come,” Barak muttered.

A steady stream of grim-faced Murgo soldiers marched eight abreast into the makeshift fair to the cadenced beat of great drums. In their midst, astride a black horse and under a flapping black banner, rode Taur Urgas. He was a tall man with heavy, sloping shoulders and an angular, merciless face. The thick links of his mail shirt had been dipped in molten red gold, making it almost appear as if he were covered with blood. A thick metal belt encircled his waist, and the scabbard of the sword he wore on his left hip was jewel-encrusted. A pointed steel helmet sat low over his black eyebrows, and the blood-red crown of Cthol Murgos was riveted to it. A kind of chain-mail hood covered the back and sides of the king’s neck and spread out over his shoulders.

When he reached the open area directly in front of the square stone supply post, Taur Urgas reined in his horse. “Wine!” he commanded. His voice, carried by the icy wind, seemed startlingly close. Garion squirmed a bit lower under the bush.

The Murgo who ran the supply post scurried inside and came back out, carrying a flagon and a metal goblet. Taur Urgas took the goblet, drank, and then slowly closed his big fist around it, crushing it in his grip. Barak snorted with contempt.

“What was that about?” Garion whispered.

“Nobody drinks from a cup once Taur Urgas has used it,” the red-bearded Cherek replied. “If Anheg behaved like that, his warriors would dunk him in the bay at Val Alorn.”

“Have you the names of all foreigners here?” the king demanded of the Murgo storekeeper, his wind-carried voice distinct in Garion’s ears. “As you commanded, dread king,” the storekeeper replied with an obsequious bow. He drew a roll of parchment out of one sleeve and handed it up to his ruler.

Taur Urgas unrolled the parchment and glanced at it. “Summon the Nadrak, Yarblek,” he ordered.

“Let Yarblek of Gar og Nadrak approach,” an officer at the king’s side bellowed.

Yarblek, his felt overcoat flapping stiffly in the wind, stepped forward. “Our cousin from the north,” Taur Urgas greeted him coldly.

“Your Majesty,” Yarblek replied with a slight bow.

“It would be well if you departed, Yarblek,” the king told him. “My soldiers have certain orders, and some of them might fail to recognize a fellow Angarak in their eagerness to obey my commands. I cannot guarantee your safety if you remain, and I would be melancholy if something unpleasant befell you.”

Yarblek bowed again. “My servants and I will leave at once, your Majesty.”

“If they are Nadraks, they have our permission to go,” the king said. “All foreigners, however, must remain. You’re dismissed, Yarblek.”

“I think we got out of that tent just in time,” Barak muttered. Then a man in a rusty mail shirt covered with a greasy brown vest stepped out of the supply post. He was unshaven, and the white of one of his eyes gleamed unwholesomely.

“Brill!” Garion exclaimed. Barak’s eyes went flat.

Brill bowed to Taur Urgas with an unexpected grace. “Hail, Mighty King,” he said. His tone was neutral, carrying neither respect nor fear.

“What are you doing here, Kordoch?” Taur Urgas demanded coldly.

“I’m on my master’s business, dread king,” Brill replied.

“What business would Ctuchik have in a place like this?”

“Something personal, Great King,” Brill answered evasively.

“I like to keep track of you and the other Dagashi, Kordoch. When did you come back to Cthol Murgos?”

“A few months ago, Mighty Arm of Torak. If I’d known you were interested, I’d have sent word to you. The people my master wants me to deal with know I’m following them, so my movements aren’t secret.”

Taur Urgas laughed shortly, a sound without any warmth. “You must be getting old, Kordoch. Most Dagashi would have finished the business by now.”

“These are rather special people.” Brill shrugged. “It shouldn’t take me much longer, however. The game is nearly over. Incidentally, Great King, I have a gift for you.” He snapped his fingers sharply, and two of his henchmen came out of the building, dragging a third man between them. There was blood on the front of the captive’s tunic, and his head hung down as if he were only semiconscious. Barak’s breath hissed between his teeth.

“I thought you might like a bit of sport,” Brill suggested.

“I’m the king of Cthol Murgos, Kordoch,” Taur Urgas replied coldly. “I’m not amused by your attitude and I’m not in the habit of doing chores for the Dagashi. If you want him dead, kill him yourself.”

“This would hardly be a chore, your Majesty,” Brill said with an evil grin. “The man’s an old friend of yours.” He reached out, roughly grasped the prisoner’s hair, and jerked his head up for the king to see.

It was Silk. His face was pale, and a deep cut on one side of his forehead trickled blood down the side of his face.

“Behold the Drasnian spy Kheldar.” Brill smirked. “I make a gift of him to your Majesty.”

Taur Urgas began to smile then, his eyes lighting with a dreadful pleasure. “Splendid,” he said. “You have the gratitude of your king, Kordoch. Your gift is beyond price.” His smile grew broader. “Greetings, Prince Kheldar,” he said, almost purring. “I’ve been waiting for the chance to see you again for a long time now. We have many old scores to settle, don’t we?”

Silk seemed to stare back at the Murgo king, but Garion could not be sure if he were conscious enough even to comprehend what was happening to him.

“Abide here a bit, Prince of Drasnia,” Taur Urgas gloated. “I’ll want to give some special thought to your final entertainment, and I’ll want to be sure you’re fully awake to appreciate it. You deserve something exquisite, I think—probably lingering—and I certainly wouldn’t want to disappoint you by rushing into it.”

22

Barak and Garion slid back down into the gully with the gravel rattling down the steep bank around them.

“They’ve got Silk,” Barak reported quietly. “Brill’s there. It looks as if he and his men caught Silk while he was trying to leave. They turned him over to Taur Urgas,”

Belgarath stood up slowly, a sick look on his face. “Is he—” He broke off.

“No,” Barak answered. “He’s still alive. It looks as if they roughed him up a little, but he seemed to be all right.”

Belgarath let out a long, slow breath. “That’s something, anyway.”

“Taur Urgas seemed to know him,” Barak continued. “It sounded as if Silk had done something that offended the king pretty seriously, and Taur Urgas looks like the kind of man who holds grudges.”

“Are they holding him someplace where we can get to him?” Durnik asked.

“We couldn’t tell,” Garion answered. “They all talked for a while, and then several soldiers took him around behind that building down there. We couldn’t see where they took him from there.”

“The Murgo who runs the place said something about a pit,” Barak added.

“We have to do something, father,” Aunt Pol said.

“I know, Pol. We’ll come up with something.” He turned to Barak again. “Haw many soldiers did Taur Urgas bring with him?”

“A couple of regiments at least. They’re all over the place down there.”

“We can translocate him, father,” Aunt Pol suggested.

“That’s a long way to lift something, Pol,” he objected. “Besides, we’d have to know exactly where he’s being held.”

“I’ll find that out.” She reached up to unfasten her cloak.

“Better wait until after dark,” he told her. “There aren’t many owls in Cthol Murgos, and you’d attract attention in the daylight. Did Taur Urgas have any Grolims with him?” he asked Garion.

“I think I saw a couple.”

“That’s going to complicate things. Translocation makes an awful noise. We’ll have Taur Urgas right on our heels when we leave.”

“Do you have any other ideas, father?” Aunt Pol asked.

“Let me work on it,” he replied. “At any rate, we can’t do anything until it gets dark.”

A low whistle came from some distance down the gully.

“Who’s that?” Barak’s hand went to his sword.

“Ho, Alorns.” It was a hoarse whisper.

“Methinks it is the Nadrak Yarblek,” Mandorallen said.

“How did he know we’re here?” Barak demanded.

There was the crunching sound of footsteps, in the gravel, and Yarblek came around a bend in the gully. His fur cap was low over his face, and the collar of his felt overcoat was pulled up around his ears. “There you are,” he said, sounding relieved.

“Are you alone?” Barak’s voice was heavy with suspicion.

“Of course I’m alone,” Yarblek snorted. “I told my servants to go on ahead. You certainly left in a hurry.”

“We didn’t feel like staying to greet Taur Urgas,” Barak replied.

“It’s probably just as well. I’d have had a great deal of trouble getting you out of that mess back there. The Murgo soldiers inspected every one of my people to be sure they were all Nadraks before they’d let me leave. Taur Urgas has Silk.”

“We know,” Barak said. “How did you find us?”

“You left the pegs pulled up at the back of my tent, and this hill’s the closest cover on this side of the fair. I guessed which way you’d go, and you left a track here and there to confirm it.” The Nadrak’s coarse face was serious, and he showed no signs of his extended bout at the ale barrel. “We’re going to have to get you out of here,” he said. “Taur Urgas will be putting out patrols soon, and you’re almost in his lap.”

“We must rescue our companion first,” Mandorallen told him.

“Silk? You’d better forget that. I’m afraid my old friend has switched his last pair of dice.” He sighed. “I liked him, too.”

“He’s not dead, is he?” Durnik’s voice was almost sick.

“Not yet,” Yarblek replied, “but Taur Urgas plans to correct that when the sun comes up in the morning. I couldn’t even get close enough to that pit to drop a dagger to him so he could open a vein. I’m afraid his last morning’s going to be a bad one.”

“Why are you trying to help us?” Barak asked bluntly.

“You’ll have to excuse him, Yarblek,” Aunt Pol said. “He’s not familiar with Nadrak customs.” She turned to Barak. “He invited you into his tent and offered you his ale. That makes you the same as his brother until sunrise tomorrow.”

Yarblek smiled briefly at her. “You seem to know us quite well, girl,” he observed. “I never got to see you dance, did I?”

“Perhaps another time,” she replied.

“Perhaps so.” He squatted and pulled a curved dagger from beneath his overcoat. He smoothed a patch of sand with his other hand and began sketching rapidly with his dagger point. “The Murgos are going to watch me,” he said, “so I can’t add half a dozen or so more people to my party without having them all over me. I think the best thing would be for you to wait here until dark. I’ll move out to the east and stop a league or so on up the caravan track. As soon as it gets dark, you slip around and catch up with me. We’ll work something out after that.”

“Why did Taur Urgas tell you to leave?” Barak asked him.

Yarblek looked grim. “There’s going to be a large accident tomorrow. Taur Urgas will immediately send an apology to Ran Borune—something about inexperienced troops chasing a band of brigands and mistaking honest merchants for bandits. He’ll offer to pay reparation, and things will all be smoothed over. Pay is a magic word when you’re dealing with Tolnedrans.”

“He’s going to massacre the whole camp?” Barak sounded stunned.

“That’s his plan. He wants to clean all the westerners out of Cthol Murgos and he seems to think that a few such accidents will do the job for him.”

Relg had been standing to one side, his large eyes lost in thought. Suddenly he stepped across the gully to where Yarblek’s sketch was. He smoothed it out of the sand. “Can you show me exactly where this pit in which they’re holding our friend is located?” he asked.

“It won’t do you any good,” Yarblek told him. “It’s guarded by a dozen men. Silk’s got quite a reputation, and Taur Urgas doesn’t want him to get away.”

“Just show me,” Relg insisted.

Yarblek shrugged. “We’re here on the north side.” He roughed in the fair and the caravan route. “The supply station is here.” He pointed with his dagger. “The pit’s just beyond it at the base of that big hill on the south side.”

“What kind of walls does it have?”

“Solid stone.”

“Is it a natural fissure in the rock, or has it been dug out?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I need to know.”

“I didn’t see any tool marks,” Yarblek replied, “and the opening at the top is irregular. It’s probably just a natural hole.”

Relg nodded. “And the hill behind it—is it rock or dirt?”

“Mostly rock. All of stinking Cthol Murgos is mostly rock.”

Relg stood up. “Thank you,” he said politely.

“You’re not going to be able to tunnel through to him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Yarblek said, also standing and brushing the sand off the skirts of his overcoat. “You don’t have time.”

Belgarath’s eyes were narrowed with thought. “Thanks, Yarblek,” he said. “You’ve been a good friend.”

“Anything to irritate the Murgos,” the Nadrak said. “I wish I could do something for Silk.”

“Don’t give up on him yet.”

“There isn’t much hope, I’m afraid. I’d better be going. My people will wander off if I’m not there to watch them.”

“Yarblek,” Barak said, holding out his hand, “someday we’ll have to get together and finish getting drunk.”

Yarblek grinned at him and shook his hand. Then he turned and caught Aunt Pol in a rough embrace. “If you ever get bored with these Alorns, girl, my tent flap is always open to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Yarblek,” she replied demurely.

“Luck,” Yarblek told them. “I’ll wait for you until midnight.” Then he turned and strode off down the gully.

“That’s a good man there,” Barak said. “I think I could actually get to like him.”

“We must make plans for Prince Kheldar’s rescue,” Mandorallen declared, beginning to take his armor out of the packs strapped to one of the horses. “All else failing, we must of necessity resort to main force.”

“You’re backsliding again, Mandorallen,” Barak said.

“That’s already been taken care of,” Belgarath told them.

Barak and Mandorallen stared at him.

“Put your armor away, Mandorallen,” the old man instructed the knight. “You’re not going to need it.”

“Who’s going to get Silk out of there?” Barak demanded.

“I am,” Relg answered quietly. “How much longer is it going to be before it gets dark?”

“About an hour. Why?”

“I’ll need some time to prepare myself.”

“Have you got a plan?” Durnik asked.

Relg shrugged. “There isn’t any need. We’ll just circle around until we’re behind that hill on the other side of the encampment. I’ll go get our friend, and then we can leave.”

“Just like that?” Barak asked.

“More or less. Please excuse me.” Relg started to turn away.

“Wait a minute. Shouldn’t Mandorallen and I go with you?”

“You wouldn’t be able to follow me,” Relg told him. He walked up the gully a short distance. After a moment, they could hear him muttering his prayers.

“Does he think he can pray him out of that pit?” Barak sounded disgusted.

“No,” Belgarath replied. “He’s going to go through the hill and carry Silk back out. That’s why he was asking Yarblek all those questions.”

“He’s going to what?”

“You saw what he did at Prolgu—when he stuck his arm into the wall?”

“Well, yes, but ”

“It’s quite easy for him, Barak.”

“What about Silk? How’s he going to pull him through the rock?”

“I don’t really know. He seems quite sure he can do it, though.”

“If it doesn’t work, Taur Urgas is going to have Silk roasting over a slow fire first thing tomorrow morning. You know that, don’t you?”

Belgarath nodded somberly.

Barak shook his head. “It’s unnatural,” he grumbled.

“Don’t let it upset you so much,” Belgarath advised.

The light began to fade, and Relg continued to pray, his voice rising and falling in formal cadences. When it was fully dark, he came back to where the others waited. “I’m ready,” he said quietly. “We can leave now.”

“We’ll circle to the west,” Belgarath told them. “We’ll lead the horses and stay under cover as much as we can.”

“It will take us a couple hours,” Durnik said.

“That’s all right. It will give the soldiers time to settle down. Pol, see what the Grolims Garion saw are up to.”

She nodded, and Garion felt the gentle push of her probing mind. “It’s all right, father,” she stated after a few moments. “They’re preoccupied. Taur Urgas has them conducting services for him.”

“Let’s go, then,” the old man said.

They moved carefully down the gully, leading the horses. The night was murky, and the wind bit at them as they came out from between the protecting gravel banks. The plain to the east of the fair was dotted with a hundred fires whipping in the wind and marking the vast encampment of the army of Taur Urgas.

Relg grunted and covered his eyes with his hands.

“What’s wrong?” Garion asked him.

“Their fires,” Relg said. “They stab at my eyes.”

“Try not to look at them.”

“My God has laid a hard burden on me, Belgarion.” Relg sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. “I’m not meant to be out in the open like this.”

“You’d better have Aunt Pol give you something for that cold. It will taste awful, but you’ll feel better after you drink it.”

“Perhaps,” Relg said, still shielding his eyes from the dim flicker of the Murgo watch fires.

The hill on the south side of the fair was a low outcropping of granite. Although eons of constant wind had covered it for the most part with a thick layer of blown sand and dirt, the rock itself lay solid beneath its covering mantle. They stopped behind it, and Relg began carefully to brush the dirt from a sloping granite face.

“Wouldn’t it be closer if you started over there?” Barak asked quietly.

“Too much dirt,” Relg replied.

“Dirt or rock—what’s the difference?”

“A great difference. You wouldn’t understand.” He leaned forward and put his tongue to the granite face, seeming actually to taste the rock. “This is going to take a while,” he said. He drew himself up, began to pray, and slowly pushed himself directly into the rock.

Barak shuddered and quickly averted his eyes.

“What ails thee, my Lord?” Mandorallen asked.

“It makes me cold all over just watching that,” Barak replied.

“Our new friend is perhaps not the best of companions,” Mandorallen said, “but if his gift succeeds in freeing Prince Kheldar, I will embrace him gladly and call him brother.”

“If it takes him very long, we’re going to be awfully close to this spot when morning comes and Taur Urgas finds out that Silk’s gone,” Barak mentioned.

“We’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” Belgarath told him. The night dragged by interminably. The wind moaned and whistled around the rocks on the flanks of the stony hill, and the sparse thornbushes rustled stiffly. They waited. A growing fear oppressed Garion as the hours passed. More and more, he became convinced that they had lost Relg as well as Silk. He felt that same sick emptiness he had felt when it had been necessary to leave the wounded Lelldorin behind back in Arendia. He realized, feeling a bit guilty about it, that he hadn’t thought about Lelldorin in months. He began to wonder how well the young hothead had recovered from his wound—or even if he had recovered. His thoughts grew bleaker as the minutes crawled.

Then, with no warning—with not even a sound—Relg stepped out of the rock face he had entered hours before. Astride his broad back and clinging desperately to him was Silk. The rat-faced little man’s eyes were wide with horror, and his hair seemed to be actually standing on end.

They all crowded around the two, trying to keep their jubilation quiet, conscious of the fact that they were virtually on top of an army of Murgos.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” Relg said, jerking his shoulders uncomfortably until Silk finally slid off his back. “There’s a different kind of rock in the middle of the hill. I had to make certain adjustments.”

Silk stood, gasping and shuddering uncontrollably. Finally he turned on Relg. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he blurted. “Not ever.”

“What’s the trouble?” Barak asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I had feared we had lost thee, my friend,” Mandorallen said, grasping Silk’s hand.

“How did Brill catch you?” Barak asked.

“I was careless. I didn’t expect him to be here. His men threw a net over me as I was galloping through a ravine. My horse fell and broke his neck.”

“Hettar’s not going to like that.”

“I’ll cut the price of the horse out of Brill’s skin—someplace close to the bone, I think.”

“Why does Taur Urgas hate you so much?” Barak asked curiously.

“I was in Rak Goska a few years ago. A Tolnedran agent made a few false charges against me—I never found out exactly why. Taur Urgas sent some soldiers out to arrest me. I didn’t particularly feel like being arrested, so I argued with the soldiers a bit. Several of them died during the argument—those things happen once in a while. Unfortunately, one of the casualties was Taur Urgas’ oldest son. The king of the Murgos took it personally. He’s very narrow-minded sometimes.”

Barak grinned. “He’ll be terribly disappointed in the morning when he finds out that you’ve left.”

“I know,” Silk replied. “He’ll probably take this part of Cthol Murgos apart stone by stone trying to find me.”

“I think it’s time we left,” Belgarath agreed.

“I thought you’d never get around to that,” Silk said.

23

They rode hard through the rest of the night and for most of the following day. By evening their horses were stumbling with exhaustion, and Garion was as numb with weariness as with the biting cold.

“We’ll have to find shelter of some kind,” Durnik said as they reined in to look for a place to spend the night. They had moved up out of the series of connecting valleys through which the South Caravan Route wound and had entered the ragged, barren wilderness of the mountains of central Cthol Murgos. It had grown steadily colder as they had climbed into that vast jumble of rock and sand, and the endless wind moaned among the treeless crags. Durnik’s face was creased with fatigue, and the gritty dust that drove before the wind had settled into the creases, etching them deeper. “We can’t spend the night in the open,” he declared. “Not with this wind.”

“Go that way,” Relg said, pointing toward a rockfall on the steep slope they were climbing. His eyes were squinted almost shut, though the sky was still overcast and the fading daylight was pale. “There’s shelter there—a cave.”

They had all begun to look at Relg in a somewhat different light since his rescue of Silk. His demonstration that he could, when necessary, take decisive action made him seem less an encumbrance and more like a companion. Belgarath had finally convinced him that he could pray on horseback just as well as he could on his knees, and his frequent devotions no longer interrupted their journey. His praying thus had become less an inconvenience and more a personal idiosyncrasy—somewhat like Mandorallen’s archaic speech or Silk’s sardonic witticisms.

“You’re sure there’s a cave?” Barak asked him.

Relg nodded. “I can feel it.”

They turned and rode toward the rockfall. As they drew closer, Relg’s eagerness became more obvious. He pushed his horse into the lead and nudged the tired beast into a trot, then a canter. At the edge of the rockslide, he swung down from his horse, stepped behind a large boulder, and disappeared.

“It looks as if he knew what he was talking about,” Durnik observed. “I’ll be glad to get out of this wind.”

The opening to the cave was narrow, and it took some pushing and dragging to persuade the horses to squeeze through; but once they were inside, the cave widened out into a large, low-ceilinged chamber.

Durnik looked around with approval. “Good place.” He unfastened his axe from the back of his saddle. “We’ll need firewood.”

“I’ll help you,” Garion said.

“I’ll go, too,” Silk offered quickly. The little man was looking around at the stone walls and ceiling nervously, and he seemed obviously relieved as soon as the three of them were back outside.

“What’s wrong?” Durnik asked him.

“After last night, closed-in places make me a little edgy,” Silk replied.

“What was it like?” Garion asked him curiously. “Going through stone, I mean?”

Silk shuddered. “It was hideous. We actually seeped into the rock. I could feel it sliding through me.”

“It got you out, though,” Durnik reminded him.

“I think I’d almost rather have stayed,” Silk shuddered again. “Do we have to talk about it?”

Firewood was difficult to find on that barren mountainside and even more difficult to cut. The tough, springy thornbushes resisted the blows of Durnik’s axe tenaciously. After an hour, as darkness began to close in on them, they had gathered only three very scanty armloads.

“Did you see anybody?” Barak asked as they reentered the cave.

“No,” Silk replied.

“Taur Urgas is probably looking for you.”

“I’m sure of it.” Silk looked around. “Where’s Relg?”

“He went back into the cave to rest his eyes,” Belgarath told him. “He found water—ice actually. We’ll have to thaw it before we can water the horses.”

Durnik’s fire was tiny, and he fed it with twigs and small bits of wood, trying to conserve their meager fuel supply. It proved to be an uncomfortable night.

In the morning Aunt Pol looked critically at Relg. “You don’t seem to be coughing any more,” she told him. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, being careful not to look directly at her. The fact that she was a woman seemed to make him terribly uncomfortable, and he tried to avoid her as much as possible.

“What happened to that cold you had?”

“I don’t think it could go through the rock. It was gone when I brought him out of the hillside last night.”

She looked at him gravely. “I’d never thought of that,” she mused. “No one’s ever been able to cure a cold before.”

“A cold isn’t really that serious a thing, Polgara,” Silk told her with a pained look. “I’ll guarantee you that sliding through rock is never going to be a popular cure.”

It took them four days to cross the mountains to reach the vast basin Belgarath referred to as the Wasteland of Murgos and another half day to make their way down the steep basalt face to the black sand of the floor.

“What hath caused this huge depression?” Mandorallen asked, looking around at the barren expanse of scab-rock, black sand and dirty gray salt flats.

“There was an inland sea here once,” Belgarath replied. “When Torak cracked the world, the upheaval broke away the eastern edge and all the water drained out.”

“That must have been something to see,” Barak said.

“We had other things on our minds just then.”

“What’s that?” Garion asked in alarm, pointing at something sticking out of the sand just ahead of them. The thing had a huge head with a long, sharp-toothed snout. Its eye sockets, as big as buckets, seemed to stare balefully at them.

“I don’t think it has a name,” Belgarath answered calmly. “They lived in the sea before the water escaped. They’ve all been dead now for thousands of years.”

As they passed the dead sea monster, Garion could see that it was only a skeleton. Its ribs were as big as the rafters of a barn, and its vast, bleached skull larger than a horse. The vacant eye sockets watched them as they rode past.

Mandorallen, dressed once again in full armor, stared at the skull. “A fearsome beast,” he murmured.

“Look at the size of the teeth,” Barak said in an awed voice. “It could bite a man in two with one snap.”

“That happened a few times,” Belgarath told him, “until people learned to avoid this place.”

They had moved only a few leagues out into the wasteland when the wind picked up, scouring along the black dunes under the slate-gray sky. The sand began to shift and move and then, as the wind grew even stronger, it began to whip off the tops of the dunes, stinging their faces.

“We’d better take shelter,” Belgarath shouted over the shrieking wind. “This sandstorm’s going to get worse as we move out farther from the mountains.”

“Are there any caves around?” Durnik asked Relg.

Relg shook his head. “None that we can use. They’re all filled with sand.”

“Over there.” Barak pointed at a pile of scab-rock rising from the edge of a salt flat. “If we go to the leeward side, it will keep the wind off us.”

“No,” Belgarath shouted. “We have to stay to the windward. The sand will pile up at the back. We could be buried alive.”

They reached the rock pile and dismounted. The wind tore at their clothing, and the sand billowed across the wasteland like a vast, black cloud.

“This is poor shelter, Belgarath,” Barak roared, his beard whipping about his shoulders. “How long is this likely to last?”

“A day—two days—sometimes as long as a week.”

Durnik had bent to pick up a piece of broken scab-rock. He looked at it carefully, turning it over in his hands. “It’s fractured into square pieces,” he said, holding it up. “It will stack well. We can build a wall to shelter us.”

“That will take quite a while,” Barak objected.

“Did you have something else to do?”

By evening they had the wall up to shoulder height, and by anchoring the tents to the top of it and higher up on the side of the rock-pile, they were able to get in out of the worst of the wind. It was crowded, since they had to shelter the horses as well, but at least it was out of the storm.

They huddled in their cramped shelter for two days with the wind shrieking insanely around them and the taut tent canvas drumming overhead. Then, when the wind finally blew itself out and the black sand began to settle slowly, the silence seemed almost oppressive.

As they emerged, Relg glanced up once, then covered his face and sank to his knees, praying desperately. The clearing sky overhead was a bright, chilly blue. Garion moved over to stand beside the praying fanatic. “It will be all right, Relg,” he told him. He reached out his hand without thinking.

“Don’t touch me,” Relg said and continued to pray.

Silk stood, beating the dust and sand out of his clothing. “Do these storms come up often?” he asked.

“It’s the season for them,” Belgarath replied.

“Delightful,” Silk said sourly.

Then a deep rumbling sound seemed to come from deep in the earth beneath them, and the ground heaved. “Earthquake!” Belgarath warned sharply. “Get the horses out of there!”

Durnik and Barak dashed back inside the shelter and led the horses out from behind the trembling wall and onto the salt flat.

After several moments the heaving subsided.

“Is Ctuchik doing that?” Silk demanded. “Is he going to fight us with earthquakes and sandstorms?”

Belgarath shook his head. “No. Nobody’s strong enough to do that. That’s what’s causing it.” He pointed to the south. Far across the wasteland they could make out a line of dark peaks. A thick plume was rising from one of them, towering into the air, boiling up in great black billows as it rose. “Volcano,” the old man said. “Probably the same one that erupted last summer and dropped all the ash on Sthiss Tor.”

“A fire-mountain?” Barak rumbled, staring at the great cloud that was growing up out of the mountaintop. “I’ve never seen one before.”

“That’s fifty leagues away, Belgarath,” Silk stated. “Would it make the earth shake even here?”

The old man nodded. “The earth’s all one piece, Silk. The force that’s causing that eruption is enormous. It’s bound to cause a few ripples. I think we’d better get moving. Taur Urgas’ patrols will be out looking for us again, now that the sandstorm’s blown over.”

“Which way do we go?” Durnik asked, looking around, trying to get his bearings.

“That way.” Belgarath pointed toward the smoking mountain.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Barak grumbled.

They rode at a gallop for the rest of the day, pausing only to rest the horses. The dreary wasteland seemed to go on forever. The black sand had shifted and piled into new dunes during the sandstorm, and the thick-crusted salt flats had been scoured by the wind until they were nearly white. They passed a number of the huge, bleached skeletons of the sea monsters which had once inhabited this inland ocean. The bony shapes appeared almost to be swimming up out of the black sand, and the cold, empty eye sockets seemed somehow hungry as they galloped past.

They stopped for the night beside another shattered outcropping of scab-rock. Although the wind had died, it was still bitterly cold, and firewood was scanty.

The next morning as they set out again, Garion began to smell a strange, foul odor. “What’s that stink?” he asked.

“The Tarn of Cthok,” Belgarath replied. “It’s all that’s left of the sea that used to be here. It would have dried out centuries ago, but it’s fed by underground springs.”

“It smells like rotten eggs,” Barak said.

“There’s quite a bit of sulfur in the ground water around here. I wouldn’t drink from the lake.”

“I wasn’t planning to.” Barak wrinkled his nose.

The Tarn of Cthok was a vast, shallow pond filled with oily-looking water that reeked like all the dead fish in the world. Its surface steamed in the icy air, and the wisps of steam gagged them with the dreadful stink. When they reached the southern tip of the lake, Belgarath signalled for a halt. “This next stretch is dangerous,” he told them soberly. “Don’t let your horses wander. Be sure you stay on solid rock. Ground that looks firm quite often won’t be, and there are some other things we’ll need to watch out for. Keep your eyes on me and do what I do.

When I stop, you stop. When I run, you run.” He looked thoughtfully at Relg. The Ulgo had bound another cloth across his eyes, partially to keep out the light and partially to hide the expanse of the sky above him.

“I’ll lead his horse, Grandfather,” Garion offered.

Belgarath nodded. “It’s the only way, I suppose.”

“He’s going to have to get over that eventually,” Barak said.

“Maybe, but this isn’t the time or place for it. Let’s go.” The old man moved forward at a careful walk.

The region ahead of them steamed and smoked as they approached it. They passed a large pool of gray mud that bubbled and fumed, and beyond it a sparkling spring of clear water, boiling merrily and cascading a scalding brook down into the mud. “At least it’s warmer,” Silk observed.

Mandorallen’s face was streaming perspiration beneath his heavy helmet. “Much warmer,” he agreed.

Belgarath had been riding slowly, his head turned slightly as he listened intently.

“Stop!” he said sharply.

They all reined in.

Just ahead of them another pool suddenly erupted as a dirty gray geyser of liquid mud spurted thirty feet into the air. It continued to spout for several minutes, then gradually subsided.

“Now!” Belgarath barked. “Run!” He kicked his horse’s flanks, and they galloped past the still-heaving surface of the pool, the hooves of their horses splashing in the hot mud that had splattered across their path. When they had passed, the old man slowed again and once more rode with his ear cocked toward the ground.

“What’s he listening for?” Barak asked Polgara.

“The geysers make a certain noise just before they erupt,” she answered.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You don’t know what to listen for.”

Behind them the mud geyser spouted again.

“Garion!” Aunt Pol snapped as he turned to look back at the mud plume rising from the pool. “Watch where you’re going!”

He jerked his eyes back. The ground ahead of him looked quite ordinary.

“Back up,” she told him. “Durnik, get the reins of Relg’s horse.”

Durnik took the reins, and Garion began to turn his mount.

“I said to back up,” she repeated.

Garion’s horse put one front hoof on the seemingly solid ground, and the hoof sank out of sight. The horse scrambled back and stood trembling as Garion held him in tightly. Then, carefully, step by step, Garion backed to the solid rock of the path they followed.

“Quicksand,” Silk said with a sharp intake of his breath.

“It’s all around us,” Aunt Pol agreed. “Don’t wander off the path—any of you.”

Silk stared with revulsion at the hoofprint of Garion’s horse, disappearing on the surface of the quicksand. “How deep is it?”

“Deep enough,” Aunt Pol replied.

They moved on, carefully picking their way through the quagmires and quicksand, stopping often as more geysers—some of mud, some of frothy, boiling water—shot high into the air. By late afternoon, when they reached a low ridge of hard, solid rock beyond the steaming bog, they were all exhausted from the effort of the concentration it had taken to pass through the hideous region.

“Do we have to go through any more like that?” Garion asked.

“No,” Belgarath replied. “It’s just around the southern edges of the Tarn.”

“Can one not go around it, then?” Mandorallen inquired.

“It’s much longer if you do, and the bog helps to discourage pursuit.”

“What’s that?” Relg cried suddenly.

“What’s what?” Barak asked him.

“I heard something just ahead—a kind of click, like two pebbles knocking together.”

Garion felt a quick kind of wave against his face, almost like an unseen ripple in the air, and he knew that Aunt Pol was searching ahead of them with her mind.

“Murgos!” she said.

“How many?” Belgarath asked her.

“Six and a Grolim. They’re waiting for us just behind the ridge.”

“Only six?” Mandorallen said, sounding a little disappointed.

Barak grinned tightly. “Light entertainment.”

“You’re getting to be as bad as he is,” Silk told the big Cherek.

“Thinkest thou that we might need some plan, my Lord?” Mandorallen asked Barak.

“Not really,” Barak replied. “Not for just six. Let’s go spring their trap.”

The two warriors moved into the lead, unobtrusively loosening their swords in their scabbards.

“Has the sun gone down yet?” Relg asked Garion.

“It’s just setting.”

Relg pulled the binding from around his eyes and tugged down the dark veil. He winced and squinted his large eyes almost shut.

“You’re going to hurt them,” Garion told him. “You ought to leave them covered until it gets dark.”

“I might need them,” Relg said as they rode up the ridge toward the waiting Murgo ambush.

The Murgos gave no warning. They rode out from behind a large pile of black rock and galloped directly at Mandorallen and Barak, their swords swinging. The two warriors, however, were waiting for them and reacted without that instant of frozen surprise which might have made the attack successful. Mandorallen swept his sword from its sheath even as he drove his warhorse directly into the mount of one of the charging Murgos. He rose in his stirrups and swung a mighty blow downward, splitting the Murgo’s head with his heavy blade. The horse, knocked off his feet by the impact, fell heavily backward on top of his dying rider. Barak, also charging at the attackers, chopped another Murgo out of the saddle with three massive blows, spattering bright red blood on the sand and rock around them.

A third Murgo sidestepped Mandorallen’s charge and struck at the knight’s back, but his blade clanged harmlessly off the steel armor. The Murgo desperately raised his sword to strike again, but stiffened and slid from his saddle as Silk’s skilfully thrown dagger sank into his neck, just below the ear.

A dark-robed Grolim in his polished steel mask had stepped out from behind the rocks. Garion could quite clearly feel the priest’s exultation turning to dismay as Barak and Mandorallen systematically chopped his warriors to pieces. The Grolim drew himself up, and Garion sensed that he was gathering his will to strike. But it was too late. Relg had already closed on him. The zealot’s heavy shoulders surged as he grasped the front of the Grolim’s robe with his knotted hands. Without apparent effort he lifted and pushed the man back against the flattened face of a house-sized boulder.

At first it appeared that Relg only intended to hold the Grolim pinned against the rock until the others could assist him with the struggling captive, but there was a subtle difference. The set of his shoulders indicated that he had not finished the action he had begun with lifting the man from his feet. The Grolim hammered at Relg’s head and shoulders with his fists, but Relg pushed at him inexorably. The rock against which the Grolim was pinned seemed to shimmer slightly around him.

“Relg—no!” Silk’s cry was strangled.

The dark-robed Grolim began to sink into the stone face, his arms flailing wildly as Relg pushed him in with a dreadful slowness. As he went deeper into the rock, the surface closed smoothly over him. Relg continued to push, his arms sliding into the stone as he sank the Grolim deeper and deeper. The priest’s two protruding hands continued to twitch and writhe, even after the rest of his body had been totally submerged. Then Relg drew his arms out of the stone, leaving the Grolim behind. The two hands sticking out of the rock opened once in mute supplication, then stiffened into dead claws.

Behind him, Garion could hear the muffled sound of Silk’s retching. Barak and Mandorallen had by now engaged two of the remaining Murgos, and the sound of clashing sword blades rang in the chill air. The last Murgo, his eyes wide with fright, wheeled his horse and bolted. Without a word, Durnik jerked his axe free of his saddle and galloped after him. Instead of striking the man down, however, Durnik cut across in front of his opponent’s horse, turning him, driving him back. The panic-stricken Murgo flailed at his horse’s flanks with the flat of his sword, turning away from the grim-faced smith, and plunged at a dead run back up over the ridge with Durnik close behind him.

The last two Murgos were down by then, and Barak and Mandorallen, both wild-eyed with the exultation of battle, were looking around for more enemies.

“Where’s that last one?” Barak demanded.

“Durnik’s chasing him,” Garion said.

“We can’t let him get away. He’ll bring others.”

“Durnik’s going to take care of it,” Belgarath told him.

Barak fretted. “Durnik’s a good man, but he’s not really a warrior. Maybe I’d better go help him.”

From beyond the ridge there was a sudden scream of horror, then another. The third cut off quite suddenly, and there was silence.

After several minutes, Durnik came riding back alone, his face somber.

“What happened?” Barak asked. “He didn’t get away, did he?”

Durnik shook his head. “I chased him into the bog, and he ran into some quicksand.”

“Why didn’t you cut him down with your axe?”

“I don’t really like hitting people,” Durnik replied.

Silk was staring at Durnik, his face still ashen. “So you just chased him into quicksand instead and then stood there and watched him go down? Durnik, that’s monstrous!”

“Dead is dead,” Durnik told him with uncharacteristic bluntness. “When it’s over, it doesn’t really matter how it happened, does it?” He looked a bit thoughtful. “I am sorry about the horse, though.”

24

The next morning they followed the ridgeline that angled off toward the east. The wintry sky above them was an icy blue, and there was no warmth to the sun. Relg kept his eyes veiled against the light and muttered prayers as he rode to ward off his panic. Several times they saw dust clouds far out on the desolation of sand and salt flats to the south, but they were unable to determine whether the clouds were caused by Murgo patrols or vagrant winds.

About noon, the wind shifted and blew in steadily from the south. A ponderous cloud, black as ink, blotted out the jagged line of peaks lying along the southern horizon. It moved toward them with a kind of ominous inexorability, and flickers of lightning glimmered in its sooty underbelly.

“That’s a bad storm coming, Belgarath,” Barak rumbled, staring at the cloud.

Belgarath shook his head. “It’s not a storm,” he replied. “It’s ashfall. That volcano out there is erupting again, and the wind’s blowing the ash this way.”

Barak made a face, then shrugged. “At least we won’t have to worry about being seen, once it starts,” he said.

“The Grolims won’t be looking for us with their eyes, Barak,” Aunt Pol reminded him.

Belgarath scratched at his beard. “We’ll have to take steps to deal with that, I suppose.”

“This is a large group to shield, father,” Aunt Pol pointed out, “and that’s not even counting the horses.”

“I think you can manage it, Pol. You were always very good at it.”

“I can hold up my side as long as you can hold up yours, Old Wolf.”

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to help you, Pol. Ctuchik himself is looking for us. I’ve felt him several times already, and I’m going to have to concentrate on him. If he decides to strike at us, he’ll come very fast. I’ll have to be ready for him, and I can’t do that if I’m all tangled up in a shield.”

“I can’t do it alone, father,” she protested. “Nobody can enclose this many men and horses without help.”

“Garion can help you.”

“Me?” Garion jerked his eyes off the looming cloud to stare at his grandfather.

“He’s never done it before, father,” Aunt Pol pointed out.

“He’s going to have to learn sometime.”

“This is hardly the time or place for experimentation.”

“He’ll do just fine. Walk him through it a time or two until he gets the hang of it.”

“Exactly what is it I’m supposed to do?” Garion asked apprehensively.

Aunt Pol gave Belgarath a hard look and then turned to Garion. “I’ll show you dear,” she said. “The first thing you have to do is stay calm. It really isn’t all that difficult.”

“But you just said—”

“Never mind what I said, dear. Just pay attention.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked doubtfully.

“The first thing is to relax,” she replied, “and think about sand and rock.”

“That’s all?”

“Just do that first. Concentrate.”

He thought about sand and rock.

“No, Garion, not white sand. Black sand—like the sand all around us.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

Belgarath started to laugh.

“Do you want to do this, father?” she demanded crossly. Then she turned back to Garion. “Do it again, dear. Try to get it right this time.”

He fixed it in his mind.

“That’s better,” she told him. “Now, as soon as you get sand and rock firmly in your mind, I want you to sort of push the idea out in a half circle so that it covers your entire right side. I’ll take care of the left.”

He strained with it. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. “Don’t push quite so hard, Garion. You’re wrinkling it, and it’s very hard for me to make the seams match when you do that. Just keep it steady and smooth.”

“I’m sorry.” He smoothed it out.

“How does it look, father?” she asked the old man.

Garion felt a tentative push against the idea he was holding.

“Not bad, Pol,” Belgarath replied. “Not bad at all. The boy’s got talent.”

“Just exactly what are we doing?” Garion asked. In spite of the chill, he felt sweat standing out on his forehead.

“You’re making a shield,” Belgarath told him. “You enclose yourself in the idea of sand and rock, and it merges with the real sand and rock all around us. When Grolims go looking for things with their minds, they’re looking for men and horses. They’ll sweep right past us, because all they’ll see here is more sand and more rock.”

“That’s all there is to it?” Garion was quite pleased with how simple it was.

“There’s a bit more, dear,” Aunt Pol said. “We’re going to extend it now so that it covers all of us. Go out slowly, a few feet at a time.”

That was much less simple. He tore the fabric of the idea several times before he got it pushed out as far as Aunt Pol wanted it. He felt a strange merging of his mind with hers along the center of the idea where the two sides joined.

“I think we’ve got it now, father,” Aunt Pol said.

“I told you he could do it, Pol.”

The purple-black cloud was rolling ominously up the sky toward them, and faint rumbles of thunder growled along its leading edge.

“If that ash is anything like what it was in Nyissa, we’re going to be wandering blind out here, Belgarath,” Barak said.

“Don’t worry about it,” the sorcerer replied. “I’ve got a lock on Rak Cthol. The Grolims aren’t the only ones who can locate things that way. Let’s move out.”

They started along the ridge again as the cloud blotted out the sky overhead. The thunder shocks were a continuous rumble, and lightning seethed in the boiling cloud. The lightning had an arid, crackling quality about it as the billions of tiny particles seethed and churned, building enormous static discharges. Then the first specks of drifting ash began to settle down through the icy air, as Belgarath led them down off the ridge and out onto the sand flats.

By the end of the first hour, Garion found that holding the image in his mind had grown easier. It was no longer necessary to concentrate all his attention on it as it had been at first. By the end of the second hour, it had become no more than tedious. To relieve the boredom of it as they rode through the thickening ashfall, he thought about one of the huge skeletons they had passed when they had first entered the wasteland. Painstakingly he constructed one of them and placed it in the image he was holding. On the whole he thought it looked rather good, and it gave him something to do.

“Garion,” Aunt Pol said crisply, “please don’t try to be creative.”

“What?”

“Just stick to sand. The skeleton’s very nice, but it looks a bit peculiar with only one side.”

“One side?”

“There wasn’t a skeleton on my side of the image—just yours. Keep it simple, Garion. Don’t embellish.”

They rode on, their faces muffled to keep the choking ash out of their mouths and noses. Garion felt a tentative push against the image he was holding. It seemed to flutter against his mind, feeling almost like the wriggling touch of the tadpoles he had once caught in the pond at Faldor’s farm.

“Hold it steady, Garion,” Aunt Pol warned. “That’s a Grolim.”

“Did he see us?”

“No. There—he’s moving on now.” And the fluttering touch was gone.

They spent the night in another of the piles of broken rock that dotted the wasteland. Durnik once again devised a kind of low, hollowed-out shelter of piled rock and anchored-down tent cloth. They took a cold supper of bread and dried meat and built no fire. Garion and Aunt Pol took turns holding the image of empty sand over them like an umbrella. He discovered that it was much easier when they weren’t moving.

The ash was still falling the next morning, but the sky was no longer the inky black it had been the day before. “I think it’s thinning out, Belgarath,” Silk said as they saddled their horses. “If it blows over, we’ll have to start dodging patrols again.”

The old man nodded. “We’d better hurry,” he agreed. “There’s a place I know of where we can hide—about five miles north of the city. I’d like to get there before this ashfall subsides. You can see for ten leagues in any direction from the walls of Rak Cthol.”

“Are the walls so high, then?” Mandorallen asked.

“Higher than you can imagine.”

“Higher even than the walls of Vo Mimbre?”

“Ten times higher—fifty times higher. You’ll have to see it to understand.”

They rode hard that day. Garion and Aunt Pol held their shield of thought in place, but the searching touches of the Grolims came mare frequently now. Several times the push against Garion’s mind was very strong and came without warning.

“They know what we’re doing, father,” Aunt Pol told the old man. “They’re trying to penetrate the screen.”

“Hold it firm,” he replied. “You know what to do if one of them breaks through.”

She nodded, her face grim.

“Warn the boy.”

She nodded again, then turned to Garion. “Listen to me carefully, dear,” she said gravely. “The Grolims are trying to take us by surprise. The best shield in the world can be penetrated if you hit it quickly enough and hard enough. If one of them does manage to break through, I’m going to tell you to stop. When I say stop, I want you to erase the image immediately and put your mind completely away from it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. Just do exactly as I say. If I tell you to stop, pull your thought out of contact with mine instantly. I’ll be doing something that’s very dangerous, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Can’t I help?”

“No, dear. Not this time.”

They rode on. The ashfall grew even thinner, and the sky overhead turned a hazy, yellowish blue. The ball of the sun, pale and round like a full moon, appeared not far above the southwestern horizon.

“Garion, stop!”

What came was not a push but a sharp stab. Garion gasped and jerked his mind away, throwing the image of sand from him. Aunt Pol stiffened, and her eyes were blazing. Her hand flicked a short gesture, and she spoke a single world. The surge Garion felt as her will unleashed was overpowering. With a momentary dismay, he realized that his mind was still linked to hers. The merging that had held the image together was too strong, too complete to break. He felt himself drawn with her as their still joined minds lashed out like a whip. They flashed back along the faint trail of thought that had stabbed at the shield and they found its origin. They touched another mind, a mind filled with the exultation of discovery. Then, sure of her target now, Aunt Pol struck with the full force of her will. The mind they had touched flinched back, trying to break off the contact, but it was too late for that now. Garion could feel the other mind swelling, expanding unbearably. Then it suddenly burst, exploding into gibbering insanity, shattering as horror upon horror overwhelmed it. There was flight then, blind shrieking flight across dark stones of some kind, a flight with the single thought of a dreadful, final escape. The stones were gone, and there was a terrible sense of falling from some incalculable height. Garion wrenched his mind away from it.

“I told you to get clear,” Aunt Pol snapped at him.

“I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t get loose.”

“What happened?” Silk’s face was startled.

“A Grolim broke through,” she replied.

“Did he see us?”

“For a moment. It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.”

“You killed him? How?”

“He forgot to defend himself. I followed his thought back.”

“He went crazy,” Garion said in a choked voice, still filled with the horror of the encounter. “He jumped off something very high. He wanted to jump. It was the only way he could escape from what was happening to him.” Garion felt sick.

“It was awfully noisy, Pol,” Belgarath said with a pained expression.

“You haven’t been that clumsy in years.”

“I had this passenger.” She gave Garion an icy look.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Garion protested. “You were holding on so tight I couldn’t break loose. You had us all tied together.”

“You do that sometimes, Pol,” Belgarath told her. “The contact gets a little too personal, and you seem to want to take up permanent residence. It has to do with love, I imagine.”

“Do you have any idea what they’re talking about?” Barak asked Silk.

“I wouldn’t even want to guess.”

Aunt Pol was looking thoughtfully at Garion. “Perhaps it was my fault,” she admitted finally.

“You’re going to have to let go someday, Pol,” Belgarath said gravely.

“Perhaps—but not just yet.”

“You’d better put the screen back up,” the old man suggested. “They know we’re out here now, and there’ll be others looking for us.”

She nodded. “Think about sand again, Garion.”

The ash continued to settle as they rode through the afternoon, obscuring less and less with each passing mile. They were able to make out the shapes of the jumbled piles of rock around them and a few rounded spires of basalt thrusting up out of the sand. As they approached another of the low rock ridges that cut across the wasteland at regular intervals, Garion saw something dark and enormously high looming in the haze ahead.

“We can hide here until dark,” Belgarath said, dismounting behind the ridge.

“Are we there?” Durnik asked, looking around.

“That’s Rak Cthol.” The old man pointed at the ominous shadow. Barak squinted at it.

“I thought that was just a mountain.”

“It is. Rak Cthol’s built on top of it.”

“It’s almost like Prolgu then, isn’t it?”

“The locations are similar, but Ctuchik the magician lives here. That makes it quite different from Prolgu.”

“I thought Ctuchik was a sorcerer,” Garion said, puzzled. “Why do you keep calling him a magician?”

“It’s a term of contempt,” Belgarath replied. “It’s considered a deadly insult in our particular society.”

They picketed their horses among some large rocks on the back side of the ridge and climbed the forty or so feet to the top, where they took cover to watch and wait for nightfall.

As the settling ash thinned even more, the peak began to emerge from the haze. It was not so much a mountain as a rock pinnacle towering up out of the wasteland. Its base, surrounded by a mass of shattered rubble, was fully five miles around, and its sides were sheer and black as night.

“How high loth it reach?” Mandorallen asked, his voice dropping almost unconsciously into a half whisper.

“Somewhat more than a mile,” Belgarath replied.

A steep causeway rose sharply from the floor of the wasteland to encircle the upper thousand or so feet of the black tower.

“I imagine that took a while to build,” Barak noted.

“About a thousand years,” Belgarath answered. “While it was under construction, the Murgos bought every slave the Nyissans could put their hands on.”

“A grim business,” Mandorallen observed.

“It’s a grim place,” Belgarath agreed.

As the chill breeze blew off the last of the haze, the shape of the city perched atop the crag began to emerge. The walls were as black as the sides of the pinnacle, and black turrets jutted out from them, seemingly at random. Dark spires rose within the walls, stabbing up into the evening sky like spears. There was a foreboding, evil air about the black city of the Grolims. It perched, brooding, atop its peak, looking out over the savage wasteland of sand, rock, and sulfur-reeking bogs that encircled it. The sun, sinking into the banks of cloud and ash along the jagged western rim of the wasteland, bathed the grim fortress above them in a sotty crimson glow. The walls of Rak Cthol seemed to bleed. It was as if all the blood that had been spilled on all the altars of Torak since the world began had been gathered together to stain the dread city above them and that all the oceans of the world would not be enough to wash it clean again.

25

As the last trace of light slid from the sky, they moved carefully down off the ridge and crossed the ash-covered sand toward the rock tower looming above them. When they reached the shattered scree at its base, they dismounted, left the horses with Durnik and climbed up the steeply sloped rubble to the rock face of the basalt pinnacle that blotted out the stars. Although Relg had been shuddering and hiding his eyes a moment before, he moved almost eagerly now. He stopped and then carefully placed his hands and forehead against the icy rock.

“Well?” Belgarath asked after a moment, his voice hushed but carrying a note of dreadful concern: “Was I right? Are there caves?”

“There are open spaces,” Relg replied. “They’re a long way inside.”

“Can you get to them?”

“There’s no point. They don’t go anywhere. They’re just closed-in hollows.”

“Now what?” Silk asked.

“I don’t know,” Belgarath admitted, sounding terribly disappointed. “Let’s try a little farther around,” Relg suggested. “I can feel some echoes here. There might be something off in that direction.” He pointed.

“I want one thing clearly understood right here and now,” Silk announced, planting his feet firmly. “I’m not going to go through any more rock. If there’s going to be any of that, I’ll stay behind.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Barak told him.

Silk shook his head stubbornly. “No passing through rock,” he declared adamantly.

Relg was already moving along the face, his fingers lightly touching the basalt. “It’s getting stronger,” he told them. “It’s large and it goes up.” He moved on another hundred yards or so, and they followed, watching him intently. “It’s right through here,” he said finally, patting the rock face with one hand. “It might be the one we want. Wait here.” He put his hands against the rock and pushed them slowly into the basalt.

“I can’t stand this,” Silk said, turning his back quickly. “Let me know once he’s inside.”

With a kind of dreadful determination, Relg pushed his way into the rock.

“Is he gone yet?” Silk asked.

“He’s going in,” Barak replied clinically. “Only half of him’s still sticking out.”

“Please, Barak, don’t tell me about it.”

“Was it really that bad?” the big man asked.

“You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea.” The rat-faced man was shivering uncontrollably.

They waited in the chill darkness for half an hour or more. Somewhere high above them there was a scream.

“What was that cry?” Mandorallen asked.

“The Grolims are busy,” Belgarath answered grimly. “It’s the season of the wounding—when the Orb burned Torak’s hand and face. A large number of sacrifices are called for at this time of year—usually slaves. Torak doesn’t seem to insist on Angarak blood. As long as it’s human, it seems to satisfy him.”

There was a faint sound of steps somewhere along the cliff, and a few moments later Relg rejoined them. “I found it,” he told them. “The opening’s about a half mile farther along. It’s partially blocked.”

“Does it go all the way up?” Belgarath demanded.

Relg shrugged. “It goes up. I can’t say how far. The only way to find out for sure is to follow it. The whole series of caves is fairly extensive, though.”

“Do we really have any choice, father?” Aunt Pol asked.

“No. I suppose not.”

“I’ll go get Durnik,” Silk said. He turned and disappeared into the darkness.

The rest of them followed Relg until they reached a small hole in the rock face just above the tumbled scree. “We’ll have to move some of this rubble if we’re going to get your animals inside,” he told them.

Barak bent and lifted a large stone block. He staggered under its weight and dropped it to one side with a clatter.

“Quietly!” Belgarath told him.

“Sorry,” Barak mumbled.

For the most part, the stones were not large, but there were a great many of them. When Silk and Durnik joined them, they all fell to clearing the rubble out of the cave mouth. It took them nearly an hour to remove enough rock to make it possible for the horses to squeeze through.

“I wish Hettar was here,” Barak grunted, putting his shoulder against the rump of a balky packhorse.

“Talk to him, Barak,” Silk suggested.

“I am talking.”

“Try it without all the curse words.”

“There’s going to be some climbing involved,” Relg told them after they had pushed the last horse inside and stood in the total blackness of the cave. “As nearly as I can tell, the galleries run vertically, so we’ll have to climb from level to level.”

Mandorallen leaned against one of the walls, and his armor clinked. “That’s not going to work,” Belgarath told him. “You wouldn’t be able to climb in armor anyway. Leave it here with the horses, Mandorallen.”

The knight sighed and began removing his armor.

A faint glow appeared as Relg mixed powders in a wooden bowl from two leather pouches he carried inside his mail shirt.

“That’s better,” Barak approved, “but wouldn’t a torch be brighter?”

“Much brighter,” Relg agreed, “but then I wouldn’t be able to see. This will give you enough light to see where you’re going.”

“Let’s get started,” Belgarath said.

Relg handed the glowing bowl to Barak and turned to lead them up a dark gallery.

After they had gone a few hundred yards, they came to a steep slope of rubble rising up into darkness. “I’ll look,” Relg said and scrambled up the slope out of sight. After a moment or so, they heard a peculiar popping sound, and tiny fragments of rock showered down onto the rubble from above. “Come up now,” Relg’s voice came to them.

Carefully they climbed the rubble until they reached a sheer wall. “To your right,” Relg said, still above them. “You’ll find some holes in the rock you can use to climb up.”

They found the holes, quite round and about six inches deep. “How did you make these?” Durnik asked, examining one of the holes.

“It’s a bit difficult to explain,” Relg replied. “There’s a ledge up here. It leads to another gallery.”

One by one they climbed the rock face to join Relg on the ledge. As he had told them, the ledge led to a gallery that angled sharply upward.

They followed it toward the center of the peak, passing several passageways opening to the sides.

“Shouldn’t we see where they go?” Barak asked after they had passed the third or fourth passageway.

“They don’t go anyplace,” Relg told him. “How can you be sure?”

“A gallery that goes someplace feels different. That one we just passed comes to a blank wall about a hundred feet in.”

Barak grunted dubiously.

They came to another sheer face, and Relg stopped to peer up into the blackness.

“How high is it?” Durnik asked.

“Thirty feet or so. I’ll make some holes so we can climb up.” Relg knelt and slowly pushed one hand into the face of the rock. Then he tensed his shoulder and twisted his arm slightly. The rock popped with a sharp little detonation; when Relg pulled his hand out, a shower of fragments came with it. He brushed the rest of the debris out of the hole he had made, stood up and sank his other hand into the rock about two feet above the first hole.

“Clever,” Silk admired.

“It’s a very old trick,” Relg told him.

They followed Relg up the face and squeezed through a narrow crack at the top. Barak muttered curses as he wriggled through, leaving a fair amount of skin behind.

“How far have we come?” Silk asked. His voice had a certain apprehension in it, and he looked about nervously at the rock which seemed to press in all around them.

“We’re about eight hundred feet above the base of the pinnacle,” Relg replied. “We go that way now.” He pointed up another sloping passageway.

“Isn’t that back in the direction we just came?” Durnik asked.

“The cave zigzags,” Relg told him. “We have to keep following the galleries that lead upward.”

“Do they go all the way to the top?”

“They open out somewhere. That’s all I can tell for sure at this point.”

“What’s that?” Silk cried sharply.

From somewhere along one of the dark passageways, a voice floated out at them, singing. There seemed to be a deep sadness in the song, but the echoes made it impossible to pick out the words. About all they could be sure of was the fact that the singer was a woman.

After a moment, Belgarath gave a startled exclamation.

“What’s wrong?” Aunt Pol asked him.

“Marag!” the old man said. “That’s impossible.”

“I know the song, Pol. It’s a Marag funeral song. Whoever she is, she’s very close to dying.”

The echoes in the twisting passageways made it very difficult to pinpoint the singer’s exact location; but as they moved, the sound seemed to be getting closer.

“Down here,” Silk said finally, stopping with his head cocked to one side in front of an opening.

The singing stopped abruptly. “No closer,” the unseen woman warned sharply. “I have a knife.”

“We’re friends,” Durnik called to her.

She laughed bitterly at that. “I have no friends. You’re not going to take me back. My knife is long enough to reach my heart.”

“She thinks we’re Murgos,” Silk whispered.

Belgarath raised his voice, speaking in a language Garion had never heard before. After a moment, the woman answered haltingly, as if trying to remember words she had not spoken for years.

“She thinks it’s a trick,” the old man told them quietly. “She says she’s got a knife right against her heart, so we’re going to have to be careful.” He spoke again into the dark passageway, and the woman answered him. The language they were speaking was liquid, musical.

“She says she’ll let one of us go to her,” Belgarath said finally. “She still doesn’t trust us.”

“I’ll go,” Aunt Pol told him.

“Be careful, Pol. She might decide at the last minute to use her knife on you instead of herself.”

“I can handle it, father.” Aunt Pol took the light from Barak and moved slowly on down the passageway, speaking calmly as she went. The rest of them stood in the darkness, listening intently to the murmur of voices coming from the passageway, as Aunt Pol talked quietly to the Marag woman. “You can come now,” she called to them finally, and they went down the passageway toward her voice.

The woman was lying beside a small pool of water. She was dressed only in scanty rags, and she was very dirty. Her hair was a lustrous black, but badly tangled, and her face had a resigned, hopeless look on it. She had wide cheekbones, full lips, and huge, violet eyes framed with sooty black lashes. The few pitiful rags she wore exposed a great deal of her pale skin. Relg drew in a sharp breath and immediately turned his back.

“Her name is Taiba,” Aunt Pol told them quietly. “She escaped from the slave pens under Rak Cthol several days ago.”

Belgarath knelt beside the exhausted woman. “You’re a Marag, aren’t you?” he asked her intently.

“My mother told me I was,” she confirmed. “She’s the one who taught me the old language.” Her dark hair fell across one of her pale cheeks in a shadowy tangle.

“Are there any other Marags in the slave pens?”

“A few, I think. It’s hard to tell. Most of the other slaves have had their tongues cut out.”

“She needs food,” Aunt Pol said. “Did anyone think to bring anything?”

Durnik untied a pouch from his belt and handed it to her. “Some cheese,” he said, “and a bit of dried meat.”

Aunt Pol opened the pouch.

“Have you any idea how your people came to be here?” Belgarath asked the slave woman. “Think. It could be very important.”

Taiba shrugged. “We’ve always been here.” She took the food Aunt Pol offered her and began to eat ravenously.

“Not too fast,” Aunt Pol warned.

“Have you ever heard anything about how Marags wound up in the slave pens of the Murgos?” Belgarath pressed.

“My mother told me once that thousands of years ago we lived in a country under the open sky and that we weren’t slaves then,” Taiba replied. “I didn’t believe her, though. It’s the sort of story you tell children.”

“There are some old stories about the Tolnedran campaign in Maragor, Belgarath,” Silk remarked. “Rumors have been floating around for years that some of the legion commanders sold their prisoners to the Nyissan slavers instead of killing them. It’s the sort of thing a Tolnedran would do.”

“It’s a possibility, I suppose,” Belgarath replied, frowning.

“Do we have to stay here?” Relg demanded harshly. His back was still turned, and there was a rigidity to it that spoke his outrage loudly.

“Why is he angry with me?” Taiba asked, her voice dropping wearily from her lips in scarcely more than a whisper.

“Cover your nakedness, woman,” Relg told her. “You’re an affront to decent eyes.”

“Is that all?” She laughed, a rich, throaty sound. “These are all the clothes I have.” She looked down at her lush figure. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with my body. It’s not deformed or ugly. Why should I hide it?”

“Lewd woman!” Relg accused her.

“If it bothers you so much, don’t look,” she suggested.

“Relg has a certain religious problem,” Silk told her dryly.

“Don’t mention religion,” she said with a shudder.

“You see,” Relg snorted. “She’s completely depraved.”

“Not exactly,” Belgarath told him. “In Rak Cthol the word religion means the altar and the knife.”

“Garion,” Aunt Pol said, “give me your cloak.”

He unfastened his heavy wool cloak and handed it to her. She started to cover the exhausted slave woman with it, but stopped suddenly and looked closely at her. “Where are your children?” she asked.

“The Murgos took them,” Taiba replied in a dead voice. “They were two baby girls—very beautiful—but they’re gone now.”

“We’ll get them back for you,” Garion promised impulsively.

She gave a bitter little laugh. “I don’t think so. The Murgos gave them to the Grolims, and the Grolims sacrificed them on the altar of Torak. Ctuchik himself held the knife.”

Garion felt his blood run cold.

“This cloak is warm,” Taiba said gratefully, her hands smoothing the rough cloth. “I’ve been cold for such a long time.” She sighed with a sort of weary contentment.

Belgarath and Aunt Pol were looking at each other across Taiba’s body. “I must be doing something right,” the old man remarked cryptically after a moment. “To stumble across her like this after all these years of searching!”

“Are you sure she’s the right one, father?”

“She almost has to be. Everything fits together too well—right down to the last detail.” He drew in a deep breath and then let it out explosively. “That’s been worrying me for a thousand years.” He suddenly looked enormously pleased with himself. “How did you escape from the slave pens, Taiba?” he asked gently.

“One of the Murgos forgot to lock a door,” she replied, her voice drowsy. “After I slipped out, I found this knife. I was going to try to find Ctuchik and kill him with it, but I got lost. There are so many caves down here—so many. I wish I could kill him before I die, but I don’t suppose there’s much hope for that now.” She sighed regretfully. “I think I’d like to sleep now. I’m so very tired.”

“Will you be all right here?” Aunt Pol asked her. “We have to leave, but we’ll be back. Do you need anything?”

“A little light, maybe.” Taiba sighed. “I’ve lived in the dark all my life. I think I’d like it to be light when I die.”

“Relg,” Aunt Polt said, “make her some light.”

“We might need it ourselves.” His voice was still stiffly offended.

“She needs it more.”

“Do it, Relg,” Belgarath told the zealot in a firm voice.

Relg’s face hardened, but he mixed some of the contents of his two pouches together on a flat stone and dribbled a bit of water on the mixture. The pasty substance began to glow.

“Thank you,” Taiba said simply.

Relg refused to answer or even to look at her.

They went back up the passageway, leaving her beside the small pool with her dim little light. She began to sing again, quite softly this time and in a voice near the edge of sleep.

Relg led them through the dark galleries, twisting and changing course frequently, always climbing. Hours dragged by, though time had little meaning in the perpetual darkness. They climbed more of the sheer faces and followed passageways that wound higher and higher up into the vast rock pillar. Garion lost track of direction as they climbed, and found himself wondering if even Relg knew which way he was going. As they rounded another corner in another gallery, a faint breeze seemed to touch their faces. The breeze carried a dreadful odor with it.

“What’s that stink?” Silk asked, wrinkling his sharp nose.

“The slave pens, most likely,” Belgarath replied. “Murgos are lax about sanitation.”

“The pens are under Rak Cthol, aren’t they?” Barak asked. Belgarath nodded.

“And they open up into the city itself?”

“As I remember it, they do.”

“You’ve done it, Relg,” Barak said, clapping the Ulgo on the shoulder.

“Don’t touch me,” Relg told him.

“Sorry, Relg.”

“The slave pens are going to be guarded,” Belgarath told them. “We’ll want to be very quiet now.”

They crept on up the passageway, being careful where they put their feet. Garion was not certain at what point the gallery began to show evidence of human construction. Finally they passed a partially open iron door. “Is there anybody in there?” he whispered to Silk.

The little man sidled up to the opening, his dagger held low and ready. He glanced in, his head making a quick, darting movement. “Just some bones,” he reported somberly.

Belgarath signalled for a halt. “These lower galleries have probably been abandoned,” he told them in a very quiet voice. “After the causeway was finished, the Murgos didn’t need all those thousands of slaves. We’ll go on up, but be quiet and keep your eyes open.”

They padded silently up the gradual incline of the gallery, passing more of the rusting iron doors, all standing partially ajar. At the top of the slope, the gallery turned back sharply on itself, still angling upward. Some words were crudely lettered on the wall in a script Garion could not recognize. “Grandfather,” he whispered, pointing at the words.

Belgarath glanced at the lettering and grunted. “Ninth level,” he muttered. “We’re still some distance below the city.”

“How far do we go before we start running into Murgos?” Barak rumbled, looking around with his hand on his sword hilt.

Belgarath shrugged slightly. “It’s hard to say. I’d guess that only the top two or three levels are occupied.”

They followed the gallery upward until it turned sharply, and once again there were words written on the wall in the alien script. “Eighth level,” Belgarath translated. “Keep going.”

The smell of the slave pens grew stronger as they progressed upward through the succeeding levels.

“Light ahead,” Durnik warned sharply, just before they turned the corner to enter the fourth level.

“Wait here,” Silk breathed and melted around the corner, his dagger held close against his leg.

The light was dim and seemed to be bobbing slightly, growing gradually brighter as the moments dragged by. “Someone with a torch,” Barak muttered.

The torchlight suddenly flickered, throwing gyrating shadows. Then it grew steady, no longer bobbing. After a few moments, Silk came back, carefully wiping his dagger. “A Murgo,” he told them. “I think he was looking for something. The cells up there are still empty.”

“What did you do with him?” Barak asked.

“I dragged him into one of the cells. They won’t stumble over him unless they’re looking for him.”

Relg was carefully veiling his eyes.

“Even that little bit of light?” Durnik asked him.

“It’s the color of it,” Relg explained.

They rounded the corner into the fourth level and started up again. A hundred yards up the gallery a torch was stuck into a crack in the wall, burning steadily. As they approached it, they could see a long smear of fresh blood on the uneven, littered floor.

Belgarath stopped outside the cell door, scratching at his beard. “What was he wearing?” he asked Silk.

“One of those hooded robes,” Silk replied. “Why?”

“Go get it.”

Silk looked at him briefly, then nodded. He went back into the cell and came out a moment later carrying a black Murgo robe. He handed it to the old man.

Belgarath held up the robe, looking critically at the long cut running up the back. “Try not to put such big holes in the rest of them,” he told the little man.

Silk grinned at him. “Sorry. I guess I got a bit overenthusiastic. I’ll be more careful from now on.” He glanced at Barak. “Care to join me?” he invited.

“Naturally. Coming, Mandorallen?”

The knight nodded gravely, loosening his sword in its sheath. “We’ll wait here, then,” Belgarath told them. “Be careful, but don’t take any longer than you have to.”

The three men moved stealthily on up the gallery toward the third level.

“Can you guess at the time, father?” Aunt Pol asked quietly after they had disappeared.

“Several hours after midnight.”

“Will we have enough time left before dawn?”

“If we hurry.”

“Maybe we should wait out the day here and go up when it gets dark again.”

He frowned. “I don’t think so, Pol. Ctuchik’s up to something. He knows I’m coming—I’ve felt that for the last week—but he hasn’t made a move of his own yet. Let’s not give him any more time than we have to.

“He’s going to fight you, father.”

“It’s long overdue anyway,” he replied. “Ctuchik and I have been stepping around each other for thousands of years because the time was never just exactly right. Now it’s finally come down to this.” He looked off into the darkness, his face bleak. “When it starts, I want you to stay out of it, Pol.”

She looked at the grim-faced old man for a long moment, then nodded. “Whatever you say, father,” she said.

26

The Murgo robe was made of coarse, black cloth and it had a strange red emblem woven into the fabric just over Garion’s heart. It smelled of smoke and of something else even more unpleasant. There was a small ragged hole in the robe just under the left armpit, and the cloth around the hole was wet and sticky. Garion’s skin cringed away from that wetness.

They were moving rapidly up through the galleries of the last three levels of the slave pens with the deep-cowled hoods of the Murgo robes hiding their faces. Though the galleries were lighted by sooty torches, they encountered no guards, and the slaves locked behind the pitted iron doors made no sound as they passed. Garion could feel the dreadful fear behind those doors.

“How do we get up into the city?” Durnik whispered.

“There’s a stairway at the upper end of the top gallery,” Silk replied softly.

“Is it guarded?”

“Not any more.”

An iron-barred gate, chained and locked, blocked the top of the stairway, but Silk bent and drew a slim metal implement from one boot, probed inside the lock for a few seconds, then grunted with satisfaction as the lock clicked open in his hand. “I’ll have a look,” he whispered and slipped out.

Beyond the gate Garion could see the stars and, outlined against them, the looming buildings of Rak Cthol. A scream, agonized and despairing, echoed through the city, followed after a moment by the hollow sound of some unimaginably huge iron gong. Garion shuddered.

A few moments later, Silk slipped back through the gate. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody about,” he murmured softly. “Which way do we go?”

Belgarath pointed. “That way. We’ll go along the wall to the Temple.”

“The Temple?” Relg asked sharply.

“We have to go through it to get to Ctuchik,” the old man replied. “We’re going to have to hurry. Morning isn’t far off.”

Rak Cthol was not like other cities. The vast buildings had little of that separateness that they had in other places. It was as if the Murgos and Grolims who lived here had no sense of personal possession, so that their structures lacked that insularity of individual property to be found among the houses in the cities of the West. There were no streets in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather interconnecting courtyards and corridors that passed between and quite often through the buildings.

The city seemed deserted as they crept silently through the dark courtyards and shadowy corridors, yet there was a kind of menacing watchfulness about the looming, silent black walls around them. Peculiar-looking turrets jutted from the walls in unexpected places, leaning out over the courtyards, brooding down at them as they passed. Narrow windows stared accusingly at them, and the arched doorways were filled with lurking shadows. An oppressive air of ancient evil lay heavily on Rak Cthol, and the stones themselves seemed almost to gloat as Garion and his friends moved deeper and deeper into the dark maze of the Grolim fortress.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Barak whispered nervously to Belgarath.

“I’ve been here before, using the causeway,” the old man told him quietly. “I like to keep an eye on Ctuchik from time to time. We got up those stairs. They’ll take us to the top of the city wall.”

The stairway was narrow and steep, with massive walls on either side and a vaulted roof overhead. The stone steps were worn by centuries of use. They climbed silently. Another scream echoed through the city, and the huge gong sounded its iron note once more.

When they emerged from the stairway, they were atop the outer wall. It was as broad as a highway and encircled the entire city. A parapet ran along its outer edge, marking the brink of the dreadful precipice that dropped away to the floor of the rocky wasteland a mile or more below. Once they emerged from the shelter of the buildings, the chill air bit at them, and the black flagstones and rough-hewn blocks of the outer parapet glittered with frost in the icy starlight.

Belgarath looked at the open stretch lying along the top of the wall ahead of them and at the shadowy buildings looming several hundred yards ahead. “We’d better spread out,” he whispered. “Too many people in one place attract attention in Rak Cthol. We’ll go across here two at a time. Walk—don’t run or crouch down. Try to look as if you belong here. Let’s go.” He started along the top of the wall with Barak at his side, the two of them walking purposefully, but not appearing to hurry. After a few moments, Aunt Pol and Mandorallen followed.

“Durnik,” Silk whispered. “Garion and I’ll go next. You and Relg follow in a minute or so.” He peered at Relg’s face, shadowed beneath the Murgo hood. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“As long as I don’t look up at the sky,” Relg answered tightly. His voice sounded as if it were coming from between clenched teeth.

“Come along, then, Garion,” Silk murmured.

It required every ounce of Garion’s self control to walk at a normal pace across the frosty stones. It seemed somehow that eyes watched from every shadowy building and tower as he and the little Drasnian crossed the open section atop the wall. The air was dead calm and bitterly cold, and the stone blocks of the outer parapet were covered with a lacy filigree of rime frost.

There was another scream from the Temple lying somewhere ahead. The corner of a large tower jutted out at the end of the open stretch of wall, obscuring the walkway beyond.

“Wait here a moment,” Silk whispered as they stepped gratefully into its shadow and he slipped around the jutting corner.

Garion stood in the icy dark, straining his ears for any sound. He glanced once toward the parapet. Far out on the desolate wasteland below, a small fire was burning. It twinkled in the dark like a small red star. He tried to imagine how far away it might be.

Then there was a slight scraping sound somewhere above him. He spun quickly, his hand going to his sword. A shadowy figure dropped from a ledge on the side of the tower several yards over his head and landed with catlike silence on the flagstones directly in front of him. Garion caught a familiar sour, acid reek of stale perspiration.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, Garion?” Brill said quietly with an ugly chuckle.

“Stay back,” Garion warned, holding his sword with its point tow as Barak had taught him.

“I knew that I’d catch you alone someday,” Brill said, ignoring the sword. He spread his hands wide and crouched slightly, his cast eye gleaming in the starlight.

Garion backed away, waving his sword threateningly. Brill bounded to one side, and Garion instinctively followed him with the sword point. Then, so fast that Garion could not follow, Brill dodged back and struck his hand down sharply on the boy’s forearm. Garion’s sword skittered away across the icy flagstones. Desperately, Garion reached for his dagger.

Then another shadow flickered in the darkness at the corner of the tower. Brill grunted as a foot caught him solidly in the side. He fell, but rolled quickly across the stones and came back up onto his feet, his stance wide and his hands moving slowly in the air in front of him.

Silk dropped his Murgo robe behind him, kicked it out of the way, and crouched, his hands also spread wide.

Brill grinned. “I should have known you were around somewhere, Kheldar.”

“I suppose I should have expected you too, Kordoch,” Silk replied. “You always seem to show up.”

Brill flicked a quick hand toward Silk’s face, but the little man easily avoided it. “How do you keep getting ahead of us?” he asked, almost conversationally. “That’s a habit of yours that’s starting to irritate Belgarath.” He launched a quick kick at Brill’s groin, but the cast-eyed man jumped back agilely.

Brill laughed shortly. “You people are too tender-hearted with horses,” he said. “I’ve had to ride quite a few of them to death chasing you. How did you get out of that pit?” He sounded interested. “Taur Urgas was furious the next morning.”

“What a shame.”

“He had the guards flayed.”

“I imagine a Murgo looks a bit peculiar without his skin.”

Brill dove forward suddenly, both hands extended, but Silk sidestepped the lunge and smashed his hand sharply down in the middle of Brill’s back. Brill grunted again, but rolled clear farther out on the stones atop the wall. “You might be just as good as they say,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Try me, Kordoch,” Silk invited, with a nasty grin. He moved out from the wall of the tower, his hands in constant motion. Garion watched the two circling each other with his heart in his mouth.

Grill jumped again, with both feet lashing out, but Silk dove under him. They both rolled to their feet again. Silk’s left hand flashed out, even as he came to his feet, catching Brill high on the head. Brill reeled from the blow, but managed to kick Silk’s knee as he spun away. “Your technique’s defensive, Kheldar,” he grated, shaking his head to clear the effects of Silk’s blow. “That’s a weakness.”

“Just a difference of style, Kordoch,” Silk replied.

Grill drove a gouging thumb at Silk’s eye, but Silk blocked it and slammed a quick counterblow to the pit of his enemy’s stomach. Brill scissored his legs as he fell, sweeping Silk’s legs out from under him. Both men tumbled across the frosty stones and sprang to their feet again, their hands flickering blows faster than Garion’s eyes could follow them.

The mistake was a simple one, so slight that Garion could not even be sure it was a mistake. Brill flicked a jab at Silk’s face that was an ounce or two harder than it should have been and traveled no more than a fraction of an inch too far. Silk’s hands flashed up and caught his opponent’s wrist with a deadly grip and he rolled backward toward the parapet, his legs coiling, even as the two of them fell. Jerked off balance, Brill seemed almost to dive forward. Silk’s legs straightened suddenly, launching the cast-eyed man up and forward with a tremendous heave. With a strangled exclamation Brill clutched desperately at one of the stone blocks of the parapet as he sailed over, but he was too high and his momentum was too great. He hurtled over the parapet, plunging out and down into the darkness below the wall. His scream faded horribly as he fell, lost in the sound of yet another shriek from the Temple of Torak.

Silk rose to his feet, glanced once over the edge, and then came back to where Garion stood trembling in the shadows by the tower wall.

“Silk!” Garion exclaimed, catching the little man’s arm in relief.

“What was that?” Belgarath asked, coming back around the corner.

“Brill,” Silk replied blandly, pulling his Murgo robe back on.

“Again?” Belgarath demanded with exasperation. “What was he doing this time?”

“Trying to fly, last time I saw him.” Silk smirked.

The old man looked puzzled.

“He wasn’t doing it very well,” Silk added.

Belgarath shrugged. “Maybe it’ll come to him in time.”

“He doesn’t really have all that much time.” Silk glanced out over the edge.

From far below—terribly far below—there came a faint, muffled crash; then, after several seconds, another. “Does bouncing count?” Silk asked.

Belgarath made a wry face. “Not really.”

“Then I’d say he didn’t learn in time.” Silk said blithely. He looked around with a broad smile. “What a beautiful night this is,” he remarked to no one in particular.

“Let’s move along,” Belgarath suggested, throwing a quick, nervous glance at the eastern horizon. “It will start to lighten up over there any time now.”

They joined the others in the deep shadows beside the high wall of the Temple some hundred yards farther down the wall and waited tensely for Relg and Durnik to catch up.

“What kept you?” Barak whispered as they waited.

“I met an old friend of ours,” Silk replied quietly. His grin was a flash of white teeth in the shadows.

“It was Brill,” Garion told the rest of them in a hoarse whisper. “He and Silk fought with each other, and Silk threw him over the edge.”

Mandorallen glanced toward the frosty parapet. “ ‘Tis a goodly way down,” he observed.

“Isn’t it, though?” Silk agreed.

Barak chuckled and put his big hand wordlessly on Silk’s shoulder. Then Durnik and Relg came along the top of the wall to join them in the shadows.

“We have to go through the Temple,” Belgarath told them in a quiet voice. “Pull your hoods as far over your faces as you can and keep your heads down. Stay in single file and mutter to yourselves as if you were praying. If anybody speaks to us, let me do the talking; and each time the gong sounds, turn toward the altar and bow.” He led them then to a thick door bound with weathered iron straps. He looked back once to be sure they were all in line, then put his hand to the latch and pushed the door open.

The inside of the Temple glowed with smoky red light, and a dreadful, charnel-house reek filled it. The door through which they entered led onto a covered balcony that curved around the back of the dome of the Temple. A stone balustrade ran along the edge of the balcony, with thick pillars at evenly spaced intervals. The openings between the pillars were draped with the same coarse, heavy cloth from which the Murgo robes were woven. Along the back wall of the balcony were a number of doors, set deep in the stone. Garion surmised that the balcony was largely used by Temple functionaries going to and fro on various errands.

As soon as they started along the balcony, Belgarath crossed his hands on his chest and led them at a slow, measured pace, chanting in a deep, loud voice.

A scream echoed up from below, piercing, filled with terror and agony. Garion involuntarily glanced through the parted drapery toward the altar. For the rest of his life he wished he had not.

The circular walls of the Temple were constructed of polished black stone, and directly behind the altar was an enormous face forged of steel and buffed to minor brightness—the face of Torak and the original of the steel masks of the Grolims. The face was beautiful—there was no question of that—yet there was a kind of brooding evil in it, a cruelty beyond human ability to comprehend the meaning of the word. The Temple floor facing the God’s image was densely packed with Murgos and Grolim priests, kneeling and chanting an unintelligible rumble in a dozen dialects. The altar stood on a raised dais directly beneath the glittering face of Torak. A smoking brazier on an iron post stood at each front corner of the blood-smeared altar, and a square pit opened in the floor immediately in front of the dais. Ugly red flames licked up out of the pit, and black, oily smoke rolled from it toward the dome high above.

A half dozen Grolims in black robes and steel masks were gathered around the altar, holding the naked body of a slave. The victim was already dead, his chest gaping open like the chest of a butchered hog, and a single Grolim stood in front of the altar, facing the image of Torak with raised hands. In his right, he held a tong, curved knife; in his left, a dripping human heart. “Behold our offering, Dragon God of Angarak!” he cried in a huge voice, then turned and deposited the heart in one of the smoking braziers. There was a burst of steam and smoke from the brazier and a hideous sizzle as the heart dropped into the burning coals. From somewhere beneath the Temple floor, the huge iron gong sounded, its vibration shimmering in the air. The assembled Murgos and their Grolim overseers groaned and pressed their faces to the floor.

Garion felt a hand nudge his shoulder. Silk, already turned, was bowing toward the bloody altar. Awkwardly, sickened by the horror below, Garion also bowed.

The six Grolims at the altar lifted the lifeless body of the slave almost contemptuously and cast it into the pit before the dais. Flames belched up and sparks rose in the thick smoke as the body fell into the fire below.

A dreadful anger welled up in Garion. Without even thinking, he began to draw in his will, fully intent upon shattering that vile altar and the cruel image hovering above it into shards and fragments in a single, cataclysmic unleashing of naked force.

“Belgarion!” the voice within his mind said sharply. “Don’t interfere. This isn’t the time. ”

“I can’t stand it,” Garion raged silently. “I’ve got to do something.”

“You can’t. Not now. You’ll rouse the whole city. Unclench your will, Belgarion.”

“Do as he says, Garion,” Aunt Pol’s voice sounded quietly in his mind. The unspoken recognition passed between Aunt Pol’s mind and that strange other mind as Garion helplessly let the anger and the will drain out of him.

“This abomination won’t stand much longer, Belgarion,” the voice assured him. “Even now the earth gathers to rid itself of it.” And then the voice was gone.

“What are you doing up here?” a harsh voice demanded. Garion jerked his eyes away from the hideous scene below. A masked and robed Grolim stood in front of Belgarath, blocking their way.

“We are the servants of Torak,” the old man replied in an accent that perfectly matched the gutturals of Murgo speech.

“All in Rak Cthol are the servants of Torak,” the Grolim said. “You aren’t attending the ritual of sacrifice. Why?”

“We’re pilgrims from Rak Hagga,” Belgarath explained, “only just arrived in the dread city. We were commanded to present ourselves to the Hierarch of Rak Hagga in the instant of our arrival. That stern duty prevents our participation in the celebration.”

The Grolim grunted suspiciously.

“Could the revered priest of the Dragon God direct us to the chambers of our Hierarch? We are unfamiliar with the dark Temple.” There was another shriek from below. As the iron gong boomed, the Grolim turned and bowed toward the altar. Belgarath gave a quick jerk of his head to the rest of them, turned and also bowed.

“Go to the last door but one,” the Grolim instructed, apparently satisfied by their gestures of piety. “It will lead you down to the halls of the Hierarchs.”

“We are endlessly grateful to the priest of the Dark God,” Belgarath thanked him, bowing. They filed past the steel-masked Grolim, their heads down and their hands crossed on their breasts, muttering to themselves as if in prayer.

“Vile!” Relg was strangling. “Obscenity! Abomination!”

“Keep your head down!” Silk whispered. “There are Grolims all around us.”

“As UL gives me strength, I won’t rest until Rak Cthol is laid waste,” Relg vowed in a fervent mutter.

Belgarath had reached an ornately carved door near the end of the balcony, and he swung it open cautiously. “Is the Grolim still watching us?” he whispered to Silk.

The little man glanced back at the priest standing some distance behind them. “Yes. Wait—there he goes. The balcony’s clear now.”

The sorcerer let the door swing shut and stepped instead to the last door on the balcony. He tugged the latch carefully, and the door opened smoothly. He frowned. “It’s always been locked before,” he muttered.

“Do you think it’s a trap?” Barak rumbled, his hand dipping under the Murgo robe to find his sword hilt.

“It’s possible, but we don’t have much choice.” Belgarath pulled the door open the rest of the way, and they all slipped through as another shriek came from the altar. The door slowly closed behind them as the gong shuddered the stones of the Temple. They started down the worn stone steps beyond the door. The stairway was narrow and poorly lighted, and it went down sharply, curving always to the right.

“We’re right up against the outer wall, aren’t we?” Silk asked, touching the black stones on his left.

Belgarath nodded. “The stairs lead down to Ctuchik’s private place.” They continued down until the walls on either side changed from blocks to solid stone.

“He lives below the city?” Silk asked, surprised.

“Yes,” Belgarath replied. “He built himself a sort of hanging turret out from the rock of the peak itself.”

“Strange idea,” Durnik said.

“Ctuchik’s a strange sort of person,” Aunt Pol told him grimly.

Belgarath stopped them. “The stairs go down about another hundred feet,” he whispered. “There’ll be two guards just outside the door to the turret. Not even Ctuchik could change that—no matter what he’s planning.”

“Sorcerers?” Barak asked softly.

“No. The guards are ceremonial more than functional. They’re just ordinary Grolims.”

“We’ll rush them then.”

“That won’t be necessary. I can get you close enough to deal with them, but I want it quick and quiet.” The old man reached inside his Murgo robe and drew out a roll of parchment bound with a strip of black ribbon. He started down again with Barak and Mandorallen close behind him.

The curve of the stairway brought a lighted area into view as they descended. Torches illuminated the bottom of the stone steps and a kind of antechamber hewn from the solid rock. Two Grolims priests stood in front of a plain black door, their arms folded.

“Who approaches the Holy of Holies?” one of them demanded, putting his hand to his sword hilt.

“A messenger,” Belgarath announced importantly. “I bear a message for the Master from the Hierarch of Rak Goska.” He held the rolled parchment above his head.

“Approach, messenger.”

“Praise the name of the Disciple of the Dragon God of Angarak,” Belgarath boomed as he marched down the steps with Mandorallen and Barak flanking him. He reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped in front of the steel-masked guards. “Thus have I performed my appointed task,” he declared, holding out the parchment.

One of the guards reached for it, but Barak caught his arm in a huge fist. The big man’s other hand closed swiftly about the surprised Grolim’s throat.

The other guard’s hand flashed toward his sword hilt, but he grunted and doubled over sharply as Mandorallen thrust a long, needle-pointed poniard up into his belly. With a kind of deadly concentration the knight twisted the hilt of the weapon, probing with the point deep inside the Grolim’s body. The guard shuddered when the blade reached his heart and collapsed with a long, gurgling sigh.

Barak’s massive shoulder shifted, and there was a grating crunch as the bones in the first Grolim’s neck came apart in his deadly grip. The guard’s feet scraped spasmodically on the floor for a moment, and then he went limp.

“I feel better already,” Barak muttered, dropping the body.

“You and Mandorallen stay here,” Belgarath told him. “I don’t want to be disturbed once I’m inside.”

“We’ll see to it,” Barak promised. “What about these?” He pointed at the two dead guards.

“Dispose of them, Relg,” Belgarath said shortly to the Ulgo.

Silk turned his back quickly as Relg knelt between the two bodies and took hold of them, one with each hand. There was a sort of muffled slithering as he pushed down, sinking the bodies into the stone floor.

“You left a foot sticking out,” Barak observed in a detached tone.

“Do you have to talk about it?” Silk demanded.

Belgarath took a deep breath and put his hand to the iron door handle. “All right,” he said to them quietly, “let’s go, then.” He pushed open the door.

27

The wealth of empires lay beyond the black door. Bright yellow coins—gold beyond counting—lay in heaps on the floor; carelessly scattered among the coins were rings, bracelets, chains, and crowns, gleaming richly. Blood-red bars from the mines of Angarak stood in stacks along the wall, interspersed here and there by open chests filled to overflowing with fist-sized diamonds that glittered like ice. A large table sat in the center of the room, littered with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds as big as eggs. Ropes and strings of pearls, pink, rosy gray, and even some of jet held back the deep crimson drapes that billowed heavily before the windows.

Belgarath moved like a stalking animal, showing no sign of his age, his eyes everywhere. He ignored the riches around him and crossed the deep-carpeted floor to a room filled with learning, where tightly rolled scrolls lay in racks reaching to the ceiling and the leather backs of books marched like battalions along dark wooden shelves. The tables in the second room were covered with the curious glass apparatus of chemical experiment and strange machines of brass and iron, all cogs and wheels and pulleys and chains.

In yet a third chamber stood a massive gold throne backed by drapes of black velvet. An ermine cape lay across one arm of the throne, and a scepter and a heavy gold crown lay upon the seat. Inlaid in the polished stones of the floor was a map that depicted, so far as Garion could tell, the entire world.

“What sort of place is this?” Durnik whispered in awe.

“Ctuchik amuses himself here,” Aunt Pol replied with an expression of repugnance. “He has many vices and he likes to keep each one separate.”

“He’s not down here,” Belgarath muttered. “Let’s go up to the next level.” He led them back the way they had come and started up a flight of stone steps that curved along the rounded wall of the turret.

The room at the top of the stairs was filled with horror. A rack stood in the center of it, and whips and flails hung on the walls. Cruel implements of gleaming steel lay in orderly rows on a table near the wallhooks, needle-pointed spikes, and dreadful things with saw-edges that still had bits of bone and flesh caught between their teeth. The entire room reeked of blood.

“You and Silk go ahead, father,” Aunt Pol said. “There are things in the other rooms on this level that Garion, Durnik, and Relg shouldn’t see.”

Belgarath nodded and went through a doorway with Silk behind him. After a few moments they returned by way of another door. Silk’s face looked slightly sick. “He has some rather exotic perversions, doesn’t he?” he remarked with a shudder.

Belgarath’s face was bleak. “We go up again,” he said quietly. “He’s on the top level. I thought he might be, but I needed to be sure.” They mounted another stairway.

As they neared the top, Garion felt a peculiar tingling glow beginning somewhere deep within him, and a sort of endless singing seemed to draw him on. The mark on the palm of his right hand burned.

A black stone altar stood in the first room on the top level of the turret, and the steel image of the face of Torak brooded from the wall behind it. A gleaming knife, its hilt crusted with dried blood, lay on the altar, and bloodstains had sunk into the very pores of the rock. Belgarath was moving quickly now, his face intent and his stride catlike. He glanced through one door in the wall beyond the altar, shook his head and moved on to a closed door in the far wall. He touched his fingers lightly to the wood, then nodded. “He’s in here,” he murmured with satisfaction. He drew in a deep breath and grinned suddenly. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” he said.

“Don’t dawdle, father,” Aunt Pol told him impatiently. Her eyes were steely, and the white lock at her brow glittered like frost.

“I want you to stay out of it when we get inside, Pol,” he reminded her. “You too, Garion. This is between Ctuchik and me.”

“All right, father,” Aunt Pol replied.

Belgarath put out his hand and opened the door. The room beyond was plain, even bare. The stone floor was uncarpeted, and the round windows looking out into the darkness were undraped. Simple candles burned in sconces on the walls, and a plain table stood in the center of the room. Seated at the table with his back to the door sat a man in a hooded black robe who seemed to be gazing into an iron cask. Garion felt his entire body throbbing in response to what was in the casks, and the singing in his mind filled him.

A little boy with pale blond hair stood in front of the table, and he was also staring at the cask. He wore a smudged linen smock and dirty little shoes. Though his expression seemed devoid of all thought, there was a sweet innocence about him that caught at the heart. His eyes were blue, large, and trusting, and he was quite the most beautiful child Garion had ever seen.

“What took you so long, Belgarath?” the man at the table asked, not even bothering to turn around. His voice sounded dusty. He closed the iron box with a faint click. “I was almost beginning to worry about you.”

“A few minor delays, Ctuchik,” Belgarath replied. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“I managed to keep myself occupied. Come in. Come in—all of you.” Ctuchik turned to look at them. His hair and beard were a yellowed white and were very long. His face was deeply lined, and his eyes glittered in their sockets. It was a face filled with an ancient and profound evil. Cruelty and arrogance had eroded all traces of decency or humanity from it, and a towering egotism had twisted it into a perpetual sneer of contempt for every other living thing. His eyes shifted to Aunt Pol. “Polgara,” he greeted her with a mocking inclination of his head. “You’re as lovely as ever. Have you come finally then to submit yourself to the will of my Master?” His leer was vile.

“No, Ctuchik,” she replied coldly. “I came to see justice.”

“Justice?” He laughed scornfully. “There’s no such thing, Polgara. The strong do what they like; the weak submit. My Master taught me that.”

“And his maimed face did not teach you otherwise?”

The High Priest’s face darkened briefly, but he shrugged off his momentary irritation. “I’d offer you all a place to sit and some refreshment, perhaps,” he continued in that same dusty voice, “but you won’t be staying that long, I’m afraid.” He glanced at the rest of them, his eyes noting each in turn. “Your party seems diminished, Belgarath,” he observed. “I hope you haven’t lost any of them along the way.”

“They’re all well, Ctuchik,” Belgarath assured him. “I’m certain that they’ll appreciate your concern, however.”

“All?” Ctuchik drawled. “I see the Nimble Thief and the Man with Two Lives and the Blind Man, but I don’t see the others. Where’s the Dreadful Bear and the Knight Protector? The Horse Lord and the Bowman? And the ladies? Where are they—the Queen of the World and the Mother of the Race That Died?”

“All well, Ctuchik,” Belgarath replied. “All well.”

“How extraordinary. I was almost certain that you’d have lost one or two at least by now. I admire your dedication, old man—to keep intact for all these centuries a prophecy that would have collapsed if one single ancestor had died at the wrong time.” His eyes grew distant momentarily. “Ah,” he said. “I see. You left them below to stand guard. You didn’t have to do that, Belgarath. I left orders that we weren’t to be disturbed.”

The High Priest’s eyes stopped then on Garion’s face. “Belgarion,” he said almost politely. Despite the singing that still thrilled in his veins, Garion felt a chill as the evil force of the High Priest’s mind touched him. “You’re younger than I expected.”

Garion stared defiantly at him, gathering his will to ward off any surprise move by the old man at the table.

“Would you pit your will against mine, Belgarion?” Ctuchik seemed amused. “You burned Chamdar, but he was a fool. You’ll find me a bit more difficult. Tell me, boy, did you enjoy it?”

“No,” Garion replied, still holding himself ready.

“In time you’ll learn to enjoy it,” Ctuchik said with an evil grin. “Watching your enemy writhe and shriek in your mind’s grip is one of the more satisfying rewards of power.” He turned his eyes back to Belgarath. “And so you’ve come at last to destroy me?” he said mockingly.

“If it comes down to that, yes. It’s been a long time coming, Ctuchik.”

“Hasn’t it, though? We’re very much alike, Belgarath. I’ve been looking forward to this meeting almost as much as you have. Yes, we’re very much alike. Under different circumstances, we might even have been friends.”

“I doubt that. I’m a simple man, and some of your amusements are a bit sophisticated for my taste.”

“Spare me that, please. You know as well as I do that we’re both beyond all restriction.”

“Perhaps, but I prefer to choose my friends a bit more carefully.”

“You’re growing tiresome, Belgarath. Tell the others to come up.” Ctuchik raised one eyebrow sardonically. “Don’t you want to have them watch while you destroy me? Think of how sweet their admiration will be.

“They’re fine just where they are,” Belgarath told him.

“Don’t be tedious. Surely you’re not going to deny me the opportunity to pay homage to the Queen of the World.” Ctuchik’s voice was mocking. “I yearn to behold her exquisite perfection before you kill me.”

“I doubt that she’d care much for you, Ctuchik. I’ll convey your respects, however.”

“I insist, Belgarath. It’s a small request—easily granted. If you don’t summon her, I will.”

Belgarath’s eyes narrowed, and then he suddenly grinned. “So that’s it,” he said softly. “I wondered why you’d gone to all the trouble to let us get through so easily.”

“It doesn’t really matter now, you know,” Ctuchik almost purred. “You’ve made your last mistake, old man. You’ve brought her to Rak Cthol, and that’s all I really needed. Your prophecy dies here and now, Belgarath—and you with it, I’d imagine.” The High Priest’s eyes flashed triumphantly, and Garion felt the evil force of Ctuchik’s mind reaching out, searching with a terrible purpose.

Belgarath exchanged a quick look with Aunt Pol and slyly winked. Ctuchik’s eyes widened suddenly as his mind swept through the lower levels of his grim turret and found it empty. “Where is she?” he demanded wildly in a voice that was almost a scream.

“The princess wasn’t able to come with us,” Belgarath replied blandly. “She sends her apologies, though.”

“You’re lying, Belgarath! You wouldn’t have dared to leave her behind. There’s no place in the world where she’d be safe.”

“Not even in the caves of Ulgo?”

Ctuchik’s face blanched. “Ulgo?” he gasped.

“Poor old Ctuchik,” Belgarath said, shaking his head in mock regret. “You’re slipping badly, I’m afraid. It wasn’t a bad plan you had, but didn’t it occur to you to make sure that the princess was actually with us before you let me get this close to you?”

“One of the others will do just as well,” Ctuchik asserted, his eyes blazing with fury.

“No,” Belgarath disagreed. “The others are all unassailable. Ce’Nedra’s the only vulnerable one, and she’s at Prolgu—under the protection of UL himself. You can attempt that if you’d like, but I wouldn’t really advise it.”

“Curse you, Belgarath!”

“Why don’t you just give me the Orb now, Ctuchik?” Belgarath suggested. “You know I can take it away from you if I have to.”

Ctuchik struggled to gain control of himself. “Let’s not be hasty, Belgarath,” he said after a moment. “What are we going to gain by destroying each other? We have Cthrag Yaska in our possession. We could divide the world between us.”

“I don’t want half the world, Ctuchik.”

“You want it all for yourself?” A brief, knowing smile crossed Ctuchik’s face. “So did I—at first—but I’ll settle for half.”

“Actually, I don’t want any of it.”

Ctuchik’s expression became a bit desperate. “What do you want, Belgarath?”

“The Orb,” Belgarath replied inexorably. “Give it to me, Ctuchik.”

“Why don’t we join forces and use the Orb to destroy Zedar?”

“Why?”

“You hate him as much as I do. He betrayed your Master. He stole Cthrag Yaska from you.”

“He betrayed himself, Ctuchik, and I think that haunts him sometimes. His plan to steal the Orb was clever, though.” Belgarath looked thoughtfully at the little boy standing in front of the table, his large eyes fixed on the iron cask. “I wonder where he found this child,” he mused. “Innocence and purity are not exactly the same thing, of course, but they’re very close. It must have cost Zedar a great deal of effort to raise a total innocent. Think of all the impulses he had to suppress.”

“That’s why I let him do it,” Ctuchik said.

The little blond boy, seeming to know that they were discussing him, looked at the two old men, his eyes filled with absolute trust.

“The whole point is that I still have Cthrag Yaska—the Orb,” Ctuchik said, leaning back in his chair and laying one hand on the cask. “If you try to take it, I’ll fight you. Neither of us knows for sure how that would turn out. Why take chances?”

“What good is it doing you? Even if it would submit to you, what then? Would you raise Torak and surrender it to him?”

“I might think about it. But Torak’s been asleep for five centuries now, and the world’s run fairly well without him. I don’t imagine there’s all that much point in disturbing him just yet.”

“Which would leave you in possession of the Orb.”

Ctuchik shrugged. “Someone has to have it. Why not me?”

He was still leaning back in his chair, seeming almost completely at ease. There was no warning movement or even a flicker of emotion across his face as he struck.

It came so quickly that it was not a surge but a blow, and the sound of it was not the now-familiar roaring in the mind but a thunderclap. Garion knew that, had it been directed at him, it would have destroyed him. But it was not directed at him. It lashed instead at Belgarath. For a dreadful instant Garion saw his grandfather engulfed in a shadow blacker than night itself. Then the shadow shattered like a goblet of delicate crystal, scattering shards of darkness as it blew apart. Now grim-faced, Belgarath still faced his ancient enemy.

“Is that the best you can do, Ctuchik?” he asked, even as his own will struck.

A searing blue light suddenly surrounded the Grolim, closing in upon him, seeming to crush him with its intensity. The stout chair upon which he sat burst into chunks and splinters, as if a sudden vast weight had settled down upon it. Ctuchik fell among the fragments of his chair and pushed back the blue incandescence with both hands. He lurched to his feet and answered with flames. For a dreadful instant Garion remembered Asharak, burning in the Wood of the Dryads, but Belgarath brushed the fire away and, despite his once-stated assertion that the Will and Word needed no gesture, he raised his hand and smashed at Ctuchik with lightning.

The sorcerer and the magician faced each other in the center of the room, surrounded by blazing lights and waves of flame and darkness. Garion’s mind grew numb under the repeated detonations of raw energy as the two struggled. He sensed that their battle was only partially visible and that blows were being struck which he could not see—could not even imagine. The air in the turret room seemed to crackle and hiss. Strange images appeared and vanished, flickering at the extreme limits of visibility—vast faces, enormous hands, and things Garion could not name. The turret itself trembled as the two dreadful old men ripped open the fabric of reality itself to grasp weapons of imagination or delusion.

Without even thinking, Garion began to gather his will, drawing his mind into focus. He had to stop it. The edges of the blows were smashing at him and at the others. Beyond thought now, Belgarath and Ctuchik, consumed with their hatred for each other, were unleashing forces that could kill them all.

“Garion! Stay out of it!” Aunt Pol told him in a voice so harsh that he could not believe it was hers. “They’re at the limit. If you throw anything else into it, you’ll destroy them both.” She gestured sharply to the others. “Get back—all of you. The air around them is alive.”

Fearfully, they all backed toward the rear wall of the turret room. The sorcerer and the magician stood no more than a few feet apart now, their eyes blazing and their power surging back and forth in waves. The air sizzled around them, and their robes smoked.

Then Garion’s eyes fell upon the little boy. He stood watching with calm, uncomprehending eyes. He neither started nor flinched at the dreadful sounds and sights that crashed around him. Garion tensed himself to dash forward and yank the child to safety, but at that moment the little boy turned toward the table. Quite calmly, he walked through a sudden wall of green flame that shot up in front of him. Either he did not see the fire, or he did not fear it. He reached the table, stood on his tiptoes and, raising the lid, he put his hand into the iron cask over which Ctuchik had been gloating. He lifted a round, polished, gray stone out of the cask. Garion instantly felt that strange tingling glow again, so strong now that it was almost overwhelming, and his ears filled with the haunting song.

He heard Aunt Pol gasp.

Holding the gray stone in both hands like a ball, the little boy turned and walked directly toward Garion, his eyes filled with trust and the expression on his small face confident. The polished stone reflected the flashing lights of the terrible conflict raging in the center of the room, but there was another light within it as well. Deep within it stood an intense azure glow—a light that neither flickered nor changed, a light that grew steadily stronger as the boy approached Garion. The child stopped and raised the stone in his hands, offering it to Garion. He smiled and spoke a single word, “Errand.”

An instant image filled Garion’s mind, an image of a dreadful fear. He knew that he was looking directly into the mind of Ctuchik. There was a picture in Ctuchik’s mind—a picture of Garion holding the glowing stone in his hand—and that picture terrified the Grolim. Garion felt waves of fear spilling out toward him. Deliberately and quite slowly he reached his right hand toward the stone the child was offering. The mark on his palm yearned toward the stone, and the chorus of song in his mind swelled to a mighty crescendo. Even as he stretched out his hand, he felt the sudden, unthinking, animal panic in Ctuchik.

The Grolim’s voice was a hoarse shriek. “Be not!” he cried out desperately, directing all his terrible power at the stone in the little boy’s hands.

For a shocking instant, a deadly silence filled the turret. Even Belgarath’s face, drawn by his terrible struggle, was shocked and unbelieving.

The blue glow within the heart of the stone seemed to contract. Then it flared again.

Ctuchik, his long hair and beard disheveled, stood gaping in wide-eyed and openmouthed horror. “I didn’t mean it!” he howled. “I didn’t—I—”

But a new and even more stupendous force had already entered the round room. The force flashed no light, nor did it push against Garion’s mind. It seemed instead to pull out, drawing at him as it closed about the horrified Ctuchik.

The High Priest of the Grolims shrieked mindlessly. Then he seemed to expand, then contract, then expand again. Cracks appeared on his face as if he had suddenly solidified into stone and the stone was disintegrating under the awful force welling up within him. Within those hideous cracks Garion saw, not flesh and blood and bone, but blazing energy. Ctuchik began to glow, brighter and brighter. He raised his hands imploringly. “Help me!” he screamed. He shrieked out a long, despairing, “NO!” And then, with a shattering sound that was beyond noise, the Disciple of Torak exploded into nothingness.

Hurled to the floor by that awesome blast, Garion tumbled against the wall. Without thinking, he caught the little boy, who was flung against him like a rag doll. The round stone clattered as it bounced against the rocks of the wall. Garion reached out to catch it, but Aunt Pol’s hand closed on his wrist. “No!” she said. “Don’t touch it. It’s the Orb.”

Garion’s hand froze.

The little boy squirmed out of his grasp and ran after the rolling Orb. “Errand.” He laughed triumphantly as he caught it.

“What happened?” Silk muttered, struggling to his feet and shaking his head.

“Ctuchik destroyed himself,” Aunt Pol replied, also rising. “He tried to unmake the Orb. The Mother of the Gods will not permit unmaking.” She looked quickly at Garion. “Help me with your grandfather.”

Belgarath had been standing almost in the center of the explosion that had destroyed Ctuchik. The blast had thrown him halfway across the room, and he lay in a stunned heap, his eyes glazed and his hair and beard singed.

“Get up, father,” Aunt Pol said urgently, bending over him.

The turret began to shudder, and the basalt pinnacle from which it hung swayed. A vast booming sound echoed up out of the earth. Bits of rock and mortar showered down from the walls of the room as the earth quivered in the aftershock of Ctuchik’s destruction.

In the rooms below, the stout door banged open and Garion heard pounding feet. “Where are you?” Barak’s voice bellowed.

“Up here,” Silk shouted down the stairway.

Barak and Mandorallen rushed up the stone stairs. “Get out of here!” Barak roared. “The turret’s starting to break away from the rock. The Temple up there’s collapsing, and there’s a crack two feet wide in the ceiling where the turret joins the rock.”

“Father!” Aunt Pol said sharply, “you must get up!”

Belgarath stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Pick him up,” she snapped at Barak.

There was a dreadful tearing sound as the rocks that held the turret against the side of the peak began to rip away under the pressures of the convulsing earth.

“There!” Relg said in a ringing voice. He was pointing at the back wall of the turret where the stones were cracking and shattering. “Can you open it? There’s a cave beyond.”

Aunt Pol looked up quickly, focused her eyes on the wall and pointed one finger. “Burst!” she commanded. The stone wall blew back into the echoing cave like a wall of straw struck by a hurricane.

“It’s pulling loose!” Silk yelled, his voice shrill. He pointed at a widening crack between the turret and the solid face of the peak. “Jump!” Barak shouted. “Hurry!”

Silk flung himself across the crack and spun to catch Relg, who had followed him blindly. Durnik and Mandorallen, with Aunt Pol between them, leaped across as the groaning crack yawned wider. “Go, boy!” Barak commanded Garion. Carrying the still-dazed Belgarath, the big Cherek was lumbering toward the opening.

“The child!” the voice in Garion’s mind crackled, no longer dry or disinterested. “Save the child or everything that has ever happened is meaningless!”

Garion gasped, suddenly remembering the little boy. He turned and ran back into the slowly toppling turret. He swept up the boy in his arms and ran for the hole Aunt Pol had blown in the rock.

Barak jumped across, and his feet scrambled for an awful second on the very edge of the far side. Even as he ran, Garion pulled in his strength. At the instant he jumped, he pushed back with every ounce of his will. With the little boy in his arms he literally flew across the awful gap and crashed directly into Barak’s broad back.

The little boy in his arms with the Orb of Aldur cradled protectively against his chest smiled up at him. “Errand?” he asked.

Garion turned. The turret was leaning far out from the basalt wall, its supporting stones cracking, ripping away from the sheer face. Ponderously, it toppled outward. And then, with the shards and fragments of the Temple of Torak hurtling past it, it sheared free of the wall and fell into the awful gulf beneath.

The floor of the cave they had entered was heaving as the earth shuddered and shock after shock reverberated up through the basalt pinnacle. Huge chunks of the walls of Rak Cthol were ripping free and plunging past the cave mouth, flickering down through the red light of the newly risen sun.

“Is everybody here?” Silk demanded, looking quickly around. Then, satisfied that they were all safe, he added, “We’d better get back from the opening a bit. This part of the peak doesn’t feel all that stable.”

“Do you want to go down now?” Relg asked Aunt Pol. “Or do you want to wait until the shaking subsides?”

“We’d better move,” Barak advised. “These caves will be swarming with Murgos as soon as the quake stops.”

Aunt Pol glanced at the half conscious Belgarath and then seemed to gather herself. “We’ll go down,” she decided firmly. “We still have to stop to pick up the slave woman.”

“She’s almost certain to be dead,” Relg asserted quickly. “The earthquake’s probably brought the roof of that cave down on her.”

Aunt Pol’s eyes were flinty as she looked him full in the face.

No man alive could face that gaze for long. Relg dropped his eyes. “All right,” he said sullenly. He turned and led them back into the dark cave with the earthquake rumbling beneath their feet.