‘My,’ Sadi said mildly, ‘weren’t there a lot of them?’
‘Will you three stop congratulating yourselves and go bolt those doors again?’ Belgarath said.
Silk grinned and slipped out the door. He came back a few minutes later, frowning. ‘We’ve got a bit of a problem,’ he said. ‘The guards at the main door seem to have a strong sense of duty. They haven’t left their posts.’
‘Great diversion, Silk,’ Belgarath said sarcastically.
‘Toth and I can deal with them,’ Durnik said confidently. He went to the box beside the fireplace and picked up a stout chunk of oak firewood.
‘That might be just a bit direct, dear,’ Polgara murmured. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to kill them, and sooner or later they’ll wake up and run straight to Zakath. I think we’ll need to come up with something a little more sneaky.’
‘I don’t care much for that word, Pol,’ he said stiffly.
‘Would “diplomatic” put a better light on it?’
He thought about it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not really. It means the same thing, doesn’t it?’
‘Well,’ she conceded, ‘yes, probably. But it sounds nicer, doesn’t it?’
‘Polgara,’ the smith said firmly. It was the first time Garion had ever heard him use her full name. ‘I’m not trying to be unreasonable, but how can we face the world if we lie and cheat and sneak every time we go around a corner? I mean—really, Pol.’
She looked at him. ‘Oh, my Durnik,’ she said, ‘I love you.’ She threw her arms about her husband’s neck with a sort of girlish exuberance. ‘You’re too good for this world, do you know that?’
‘Well,’ he said, slightly abashed by a show of affection that he obviously believed should be kept very private, ‘it’s a matter of decency, isn’t it?’
‘Of course, Durnik,’ she agreed in an oddly submissive tone. ‘Whatever you say.’
‘What are we going to do about the guards?’ Garion asked.
‘I can manage them, dear.’ Polgara smiled. ‘I can arrange it so that they won’t see or hear a thing. We’ll be able to leave with no one the wiser—assuming that father knows what he’s talking about.’
Belgarath looked at her, then suddenly winked. ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘Durnik, bring the horses inside.’
‘Inside?’ the smith looked startled.
Belgarath nodded. ‘We have to take them down into the cellar.’
‘I didn’t know that this wing had a cellar,’ Silk said.
‘Neither does Zakath,’ Belgarath smirked. ‘Or Brador.’
‘Garion,’ Ce’Nedra said sharply.
Garion turned to see a shimmering in the center of the room. Then the blindfolded form of Cyradis appeared.
‘Make haste,’ she urged them. ‘Ye must reach Ashaba ’ere the week is out.’
‘Ashaba?’ Silk exclaimed. ‘We have to go to Calida. A man named Mengha is raising demons there.’
‘That is of no moment, Prince Kheldar. The demons are thy least concern. Know, however, that the one called Mengha also journeys toward Ashaba. He will be caught up in one of the tasks which must be completed ’ere the meeting of the Child of Light and the Child of Dark can come to pass in the Place Which Is No More.’ She turned her blindfolded face toward Garion. ‘The time to complete this task is at hand, Belgarion of Riva, and shouldst those of thy companions upon whom the task hath been laid fail in its accomplishment, the world is lost. I pray thee, therefore, go to Ashaba.’ And then she vanished.
There was a long silence as they all stared at the spot where she had stood.
‘That’s it, then,’ Belgarath said flatly. ‘We go to Ashaba.’
‘If we can get out of the palace,’ Sadi murmured.
‘We’ll get out. Leave that to me.’
‘Of course, Ancient One.’
The old man led them out into the hallway, down the stairs, and along the main corridor toward the stout door leading to the rest of the palace.
‘Just a moment, father,’ Polgara said. She concentrated for a moment, the white lock at her brow glowing. Then Garion felt the surge of her will. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘The guards are asleep now.’
The old man continued on down the corridor. ‘Here we are,’ he said, stopping before a large tapesty hanging on the marble wall. He reached behind the tapestry, took hold of an age-blackened iron ring, and pulled. There was a squeal of protesting metal and then a solid-sounding clank. ‘Push on that side,’ he said, gesturing toward the far end of the tapestry.
Garion went on down a few steps and set his shoulder to the tapestry. There was a metallic shriek as the covered marble slab turned slowly on rusty iron pivots set top and bottom in its precise center.
‘Clever,’ Silk said, peering into the dark, cobweb-choked opening beyond the slab. ‘Who put it here?’
‘A long time ago one of the Emperors of Mallorea was a bit nervous about his position,’ the old man replied. ‘He wanted to have a quick way out of the palace in case things started to go wrong. The passageway’s been forgotten, so nobody’s likely to follow us. Let’s go bring out our packs and other belongings. We won’t be coming back.’
It took about five minutes for them to pile their things in front of the tapestry-covered panel, and by then Durnik, Toth, and Eriond were leading the horses along the marble corridor with a great clatter of hooves.
Garion stepped to the corner and peered around it at the main door. The two guards were standing rigidly, their faces blank and their eyes glassy and staring. Then he walked back to join the others. ‘Someday you’ll have to show me how to do that,’ he said to Polgara, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder toward the two comatose soldiers.
‘It’s very simple, Garion,’ she told him.
‘For you, maybe,’ he said. Then a thought suddenly came to him. ‘Grandfather,’ he said with a worried frown, ‘if this passage of yours comes out in the city, won’t we be worse off than we were here in the palace? There’s plague out there, you know, and all the gates are locked.’
‘It doesn’t come out inside Mal Zeth,’ the old man replied. ‘Or so I’ve been told.’
Out on the palace grounds the sounds of fighting intensified.
‘They seem very enthusiastic, don’t they?’ Sadi murmured in a self-congratulatory way.
‘Well, now,’ a familiar lilting voice came up out of the cellar beyond the panel. ‘Will ye stand there for hours pattin’ yerselves on the backs an’ allowin’ the night to fly by with nothin’ more accomplished at all? We’ve miles and miles to go, don’t y’ know? An’ we won’t get out of Mal Zeth this month unless we make a start, now will we?’
‘Let’s go,’ Belgarath said shortly.
The horses were reluctant to enter the dark, musty place behind the marble panel, but Eriond and Horse confidently went through with Garion’s big gray, Chretienne, close behind; and the other animals somewhat skittishly followed.
It was not really a cellar, Garion realized. A flight of shallow stairs led down to what could be more properly described as a rough stone passageway. The horses had some difficulty negotiating the stairs, but eventually, following Eriond, Horse, and Chretienne, they reached the bottom.
At the top of the stairs the giant Toth pushed the hidden panel shut again, and the latch made an ominously heavy clank as it closed.
‘One moment, father,’ Polgara said. In the close and musty-smelling darkness, Garion felt the faint surge of her will. ‘There,’ she said. ‘The soldiers are awake again, and they don’t even know that we’ve been here.’
At the bottom of the stairs the comic juggler, Feldegast, stood holding a well-shielded lantern. ‘’Tis a fine night fer a little stroll,’ he observed. ‘Shall we be off, then?’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Belgarath said to him.
‘How could ye possibly doubt me, old man?’ the comedian said with an exaggerated expression of injury. ‘I’m the very soul of circumspection, don’t y’ know.’ He
made a faint grimace. ‘There’s only one teensy-weensy little problem. It seems that a certain portion of this passageway collapsed in on itself a while back, so we’ll be forced to go through the streets up above for a triflin’ bit of a way.’
‘Just how triflin’—trifling?’ Belgarath demanded. He glared at the impudent comedian. ‘I wish you’d stop that,’ he said irritably. ‘What possessed you to resurrect a dialect that died out two thousand years ago?’
‘’Tis a part of me charm, Ancient Belgarath. Any man at all kin throw balls in the air an’ catch ’em again, but it’s the way a performer talks that sets the tone of his act.’
‘You two have met before, I take it?’ Polgara said with one raised eyebrow.
‘Yer honored father an’ me are old, old friends, me dear Lady Polgara,’ Feldegast said with a sweeping bow. ‘I know ye all by his description. I must admit, however, that I’m overcome altogether by yer unearthly beauty.’
‘This is a rare rogue you’ve found, father,’ she said with a peculiar smile on her face. ‘I think I could grow to like him.’
‘I don’t really advise it, Pol. He’s a liar and a sneak and he has uncleanly habits. You’re evading the question, Feldegast—if that’s what you want to call yourself. How far do we have to go through the streets?’
‘Not far at all, me decrepit old friend—a half a mile perhaps until the roof of the passage is stout enough again to keep the pavin’ stones where they belong instead of on the top of our heads. Let’s press on, then. ‘Tis a long, long way to the north wall of Mal Zeth, an’ the night is wearin’ on.’
‘Decrepit?’ Belgarath objected mildly.
‘Merely me way of puttin’ things, Ancient One,’ Feldegast apologized. ‘Be sure that I meant no offense.’ He turned to Polgara. ‘Will ye walk with me, me girl? Ye’ve got an absolutely ravishin’ fragrance about ye that quite takes me breath away. I’ll walk along beside ye, inhalin’ and perishin’ with sheer delight.’
Polgara laughed helplessly and linked her arm with that of the outrageous little man.
‘I like him,’ Ce’Nedra murmured to Garion as they followed along through the cobwebby passageway.
‘Yer supposed to, me girl,’ Garion said in a not altogether perfect imitation of the juggler’s brogue. ‘’Tis a part of his charm, don’t y’ know?’
‘Oh, Garion,’ she laughed, ‘I love you.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’
She gave him an exasperated look and then punched him in the shoulder with her little fist.
‘Ouch.’
‘Did I hurt you?’ she asked, taking his arm in sudden concern.
‘I think I can stand it, dear,’ he replied. ‘We noble heroes can bear all sorts of things.’
They followed Feldegast’s lantern for a mile or more with the horses clattering along behind them through the cobweb-draped passageway. Occasionally they heard the rumble of the dead-carts bearing their mournful freight through the streets above. Here in the musty darkness, however, there was only the sound of the furtive skittering of an occasional errant mouse and the whisperlike tread of watchful spiders moving cautiously across the vaulted ceiling.
‘I hate this,’ Silk said to no one in particular. ‘I absolutely hate it.’
‘That’s all right, Kheldar,’ Velvet replied, taking the little man’s hand. ‘I won’t let anything hurt you.’
‘Thanks awfully,’ he said, though he did not remove his hand from hers.
‘Who’s there?’ The voice came from somewhere ahead.
‘’Tis only me, good Master Yarblek,’ Feldegast replied. ‘Me an’ a few lost, strayed souls tryin’ to find their way on this dark, dark night.’
‘Do you really enjoy him all that much?’ Yarblek said sourly to someone else.
‘He’s the delight of my life,’ Vella’s voice came through the darkness. ‘At least with him I don’t have to look to my daggers every minute to defend my virtue.’
Yarblek sighed gustily. ‘I had a feeling that you were going to say something like that,’ he said.
‘My lady,’ Vella said, making an infinitely graceful curtsy to Polgara as the sorceress and the juggler, arm in arm, moved up to the place where a moss-grown rockfall blocked the passageway.
‘Vella,’ Polgara responded in an oddly Nadrak accent. ‘May your knives always be bright and keen.’ There was a strange formality in her greeting, and Garion knew that he was hearing an ancient ritual form of address.
‘And may you always have the means at hand to defend your person from unwanted attentions,’ the Nadrak dancing girl responded automatically, completing the ritual.
‘What’s happening up above?’ Belgarath asked the felt-coated Yarblek.
‘They’re dying,’ Yarblek answered shortly, ‘whole streets at a time.’
‘Have you been avoiding the city?’ Silk asked his partner.
Yarblek nodded. ‘We’re camped outside the gates,’ he said. ‘We got out just before they chained them shut. Dolmar died, though. When he realized that he had the plague, he got out an old sword and fell on it.’
Silk sighed. ‘He was a good man—a little dishonest, maybe, but a good man all the same.’
Yarblek nodded sadly. ‘At least he died clean,’ he said. Then he shook his head. ‘The stairs up to the street are over here,’ he said, pointing off into the darkness. ‘It’s late enough so that there’s nobody much abroad—except for the dead-carts and the few delirious ones stumbling about and looking for a warm gutter to die in.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘The quicker we can get through those streets up there, the quicker we can get back underground where it’s safe.’
‘Does the passage go all the way to the city wall?’ Garion asked him.
Yarblek nodded. ‘And a mile or so beyond,’ he said. ‘It comes out in an old stone quarry.’ He looked at Feldegast. ‘You never did tell me how you found out about it,’ he said.
‘’Tis one of me secrets, good Master Yarblek,’ the juggler replied. ‘No matter how honest a man might be, it’s always good to know a quick way out of town, don’t y’ know.’
‘Makes sense,’ Silk said.
‘You ought to know,’ Yarblek replied. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They led the horses to a flight of stone stairs reaching up into the darkness beyond the circle of light from Feldegast’s lantern and then laboriously hauled the reluctant animals up the stairway, one step at a time. The stairway emerged in a rickety shed with a straw-littered floor. After the last horse had been hauled up, Feldegast carefully lowered the long trap door again and scuffed enough straw over it to conceal it. ‘’Tis a useful sort of thing,’ he said, pointing downward toward the hidden passage, ‘but a secret’s no good at all if just anybody kin stumble over it.’
Yarblek stood at the door peering out into the narrow alleyway outside.
‘Anybody out there?’ Silk asked him.
‘A few bodies,’ the Nadrak replied laconically. ‘For some reason they always seem to want to die in alleys.’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘All right, let’s go, then.’
They moved out into the alley, and Garion kept his eyes averted from the contorted bodies of the plague victims huddled in corners or sprawled in the gutters.
The night air was filled with smoke from the burning city, the reek of burning flesh, and the dreadful smell of decay.
Yarblek also sniffed, then grimaced. ‘From the odor, I’d say that the dead-carts have missed a few,’ he said. He led the way to the mouth of the alley and peered out into the street. ‘It’s clear enough,’ he grunted. ‘Just a few looters picking over the dead. Come on.’
They went out of the alley and moved along a street illuminated by a burning house. Garion saw a furtive movement beside the wall of another house and then made out the shape of a raggedly dressed man crouched over a sprawled body. The man was roughly rifling through the plague victim’s clothes. ‘Won’t he catch it?’ he asked Yarblek, pointing at the l
ooter.
‘Probably.’ Yarblek shrugged. ‘I don’t think the world’s going to miss him very much if he does, though.’
They rounded a corner and entered a street where fully half the houses were on fire. A dead-cart had stopped before one of the burning houses, and two rough-looking men were tossing bodies into the fire with casual brutality.
‘Stay back!’ one of the men shouted to them. ‘There’s plague here!’
‘There’s plague everywhere in this mournful city, don’t y’ know,’ Feldegast replied. ‘But we thank ye fer yer warnin’ anyway. We’ll just go on by on the other side of the street, if ye don’t mind.’ He looked curiously at the pair. ‘How is it that yer not afraid of the contagion yerselves?’ he asked.
‘We’ve already had it,’ one replied with a short laugh. ‘I’ve never been so sick in my life, but at least I didn’t die from it—and they say you can only catch it once.’
‘’Tis a fortunate man y’ are, then,’ Feldegast congratulated him.
They moved on past the rough pair and on down to the next corner.
‘We go this way,’ Feldegast told them.
‘How much farther is it?’ Belgarath asked him.
‘Not far, an’ then we’ll be back underground where it’s safe.’
‘You might feel safe underground,’ Silk said sourly, ‘but I certainly don’t.’
Halfway along the street Garion saw a sudden movement in one of the deeply inset doorways, and then he heard a feeble wail. He peered at the doorway. Then, one street over, a burning house fell in on itself, shooting flame and sparks high into the air. By that fitful light he was able to see what was in the shadows. The crumpled figure of a woman lay huddled in the doorway, and seated beside the body was a crying child, not much more than a year old. His stomach twisted as he stared at the horror before his eyes.
Then, with a low cry, Ce’Nedra darted toward the child with her arms extended.
‘Ce’Nedra!’ he shouted, trying to shake his hand free of Chretienne’s reins, ‘No!’
But before he could move in pursuit, Vella was already there. She caught Ce’Nedra by the shoulder and spun her around roughly. ‘Ce’Nedra!’ she snapped. ‘Stay away!’