‘Some distance back in the woods from that dead tree,’ she replied.
He nodded. ‘I’ll go talk with him,’ he said. He loped his horse on ahead and reined in beside the dead tree. ‘We know you’re back there, friend,’ he called pleasantly. ‘We don’t mean you any harm, but why don’t you come out in the open where we can see you?’
There was a long pause.
‘Come along now,’ Silk called. ‘Don’t be shy.’
‘Have you got any demons with you?’ The voice sounded fearful.
‘Do I look like the sort of fellow who’d be consorting with demons?’
‘You won’t kill me, will you?’
‘Of course not. We only want to talk with you, that’s all.’
There was another long, fearful pause. ‘Have you got anything to eat?’ The voice was filled with a desperate need.
‘I think we can spare a bit.’
The hidden man thought about that. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’m coming out. Remember that you promised not to kill me.’ Then there was a crashing in the bushes, and a Mallorean soldier came stumbling out into the road. His red tunic was in shreds, he had lost his helmet, and the remains of his boots were tied to his legs with leather thongs. He had quite obviously neither shaved nor bathed for at least a month. His eyes were wild and his head twitched on his neck uncontrollably. He stared at Silk with a terrified expression.
‘You don’t look to be in very good shape, friend,’ Silk said to him. ‘Where’s your unit?’
‘Dead, all dead, and eaten by the demons.’ The soldier’s eyes were haunted. ‘Were you at Akkad?’ he asked in a terrified voice. ‘Were you there when the demons came?’
‘No, friend. We just came up from Venna.’
‘You said that you had something for me to eat.’
‘Durnik,’ Silk called, ‘could you bring some food for this poor fellow?’
Durnik rode to the pack horse carrying their stores and took out some bread and dried meat. Then he rode on ahead to join Silk and the fear-crazed soldier.
‘Were you at Akkad when the demons came?’ the fellow asked him.
Durnik shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m with him.’ He pointed at Silk. Then he handed the fellow the bread and meat.
The soldier snatched them and began to wolf them down in huge bites.
‘What happened at Akkad?’ Silk asked.
‘The demons came,’ the soldier replied, still cramming food into his mouth. Then he stopped, his eyes fixed on Durnik with an expression of fright. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ he demanded.
Durnik stared at him. ‘No, man,’ he replied in a sick voice.
‘Thank you.’ The soldier sat down at the roadside and continued to eat.
Garion and the others slowly drew closer, not wanting to frighten the skittish fellow off.
‘What did happen at Akkad?’ Silk pressed. ‘We’re going in that direction, and we’d sort of like to know what to expect.’
‘Don’t go there,’ the soldier said, shuddering. ‘It’s horrible—horrible. The demons came through the gates with howling Karands all around them. The Karands started hacking people to pieces and then they fed the pieces to the demons. They cut off both my captain’s arms and then his legs as well, and then a demon picked up what was left of him and ate his head. He was screaming the whole time.’ He lowered his chunk of bread and fearfully stared at Ce’Nedra. ‘Lady, are you going to kill me?’ he demanded.
‘Certainly not!’ she replied in a shocked voice.
‘If you are, please don’t let me see it when you do. And please bury me someplace where the demons won’t dig me up and eat me.’
‘She’s not going to kill you,’ Polgara told him firmly.
The man’s wild eyes filled with a kind of desperate longing. ‘Would you do it then, Lady?’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t stand the horror any more. Please kill me gently—the way my mother would—and then hide me so that the demons won’t get me.’ He put his face into his shaking hands and began to cry.
‘Give him some more food, Durnik,’ Belgarath said, his eyes suddenly filled with compassion. ‘He’s completely mad, and there’s nothing else we can do for him.’
‘I think I might be able to do something, Ancient One,’ Sadi said. He opened his case and took out a vial of amber liquid. ‘Sprinkle a few drops of this on the bread you give him, Goodman,’ he said to Durnik. ‘It will calm him and give him a few hours of peace.’
‘Compassion seems out of character for you, Sadi,’ Silk said.
‘Perhaps,’ the eunuch murmured, ‘but then, perhaps you don’t fully understand me, Prince Kheldar.’
Durnik took some more bread and meat from the pack for the hysterical Mallorean soldier, sprinkling them liberally with Sadi’s potion. Then he gave them to the poor man, and they all rode slowly past and on down the road. After they had gone a ways, Garion heard him calling after them. ‘Come back! Come back! Somebody—anybody—please come back and kill me. Mother, please kill me!’
Garion’s stomach wrenched with an almost over-powering sense of pity. He set his teeth and rode on, trying not to listen to the desperate pleas coming from behind.
They circled to the north of Akkad that afternoon, bypassing the city and returning to the road some two leagues beyond. The pull of the sword Garion held on the pommel of his saddle confirmed the fact that Zandramas had indeed passed this way and had continued on along this road toward the northeast and the relative safety of the border between Katakor and Jenno.
They camped in the forest a few miles north of the road that night and started out once more early the following morning. The road for a time stretched across open fields. It was deeply rutted and still quite soft at the shoulders.
‘Karands don’t take road maintenance very seriously,’ Silk observed, squinting into the morning sun.
‘I noticed that,’ Durnik replied.
‘I thought you might have.’
Some leagues farther on, the road they were following reentered the forest, and they rode along through a cool, damp shade beneath towering evergreens.
Then, from somewhere ahead they heard a hollow, booming sound.
‘I think we might want to go rather carefully until we’re past that,’ Silk said quietly.
‘What is that sound?’ Sadi asked.
‘Drums. There’s a temple ahead.’
‘Out here in the forest?’ The eunuch sounded surprised. ‘I thought that the Grolims were largely confined to the cities.’
‘This isn’t a Grolim Temple, Sadi. It has nothing to do with the worship of Torak. As a matter of fact, the Grolims used to burn these places whenever they came across them. They were a part of the old religion of the area.’
‘Demon worship, you mean?’
Silk nodded. ‘Most of them have been long abandoned, but every so often you come across one that’s still in use. The drums are a fair indication that the one just ahead is still open for business.’
‘Will we be able to go around them?’ Durnik asked.
‘It shouldn’t be much trouble,’ the little man replied. ‘The Karands burn a certain fungus in their ceremonial fires. The fumes have a peculiar effect on one’s senses.’
‘Oh?’ Sadi said with a certain interest.
‘Never mind,’ Belgarath told him. ‘That red case of yours has quite enough in it already.’
‘Just scientific curiosity, Belgarath.’
‘Of course.’
‘What are they worshiping?’ Velvet asked. ‘I thought that the demons had all left Karanda.’
Silk was frowning. ‘The beat isn’t right,’ he said.
‘Have you suddenly become a music critic, Kheldar?’ she asked him.
He shook his head. ‘I’ve come across these places before, and the drumming’s usually pretty frenzied when they’re holding their rites. That beat up ahead is too measured. It’s almost as if they’re waiting for something.’
Sadi shrugged.
‘Let them wait,’ he said. ‘It’s no concern of ours, is it?’
‘We don’t know that for sure, Sadi,’ Polgara told him. She looked at Belgarath. ‘Wait here, father,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll go on ahead and take a look.’
‘It’s too dangerous, Pol,’ Durnik objected.
She smiled. ‘They won’t even pay any attention to me, Durnik.’ She dismounted and walked a short way up the path. Then, momentarily, she was surrounded with a kind of glowing nimbus, a hazy patch of light that had not been there before. When the light cleared, a great snowy owl hovered among the trees and then ghosted away on soft, silent wings.
‘For some reason that always makes my blood run cold,’ Sadi murmured.
They waited while the measured drumming continued. Garion dismounted and checked his cinch strap. Then he walked about a bit, stretching his legs.
It was perhaps ten minutes later when Polgara returned, drifting on white wings under the low-hanging branches. When she resumed her normal shape, her face was pale and her eyes were filled with loathing. ‘Hideous!’ she said. ‘Hideous!’
‘What is it, Pol?’ Durnik’s voice was concerned.
‘There’s a woman in labor in that temple.’
‘I don’t know that a temple is the right sort of place for that, but if she needed shelter—’ The smith shrugged.
‘The temple was chosen quite deliberately,’ she replied. ‘The infant that’s about to be born isn’t human.’
‘But—’
‘It’s a demon.’
Ce’Nedra gasped.
Polgara looked at Belgarath. ‘We have to intervene, father,’ she told him. ‘This must be stopped.’
‘How can it be stopped?’ Velvet asked in perplexity. ‘I mean, if the woman’s already in labor . . .’ She spread her hands.
‘We may have to kill her,’ Polgara said bleakly. ‘Even that may not prevent this monstrous birth. We may have to deliver the demon child and then smother it.’
‘No!’ Ce’Nedra cried. ‘It’s just a baby! You can’t kill it.’
‘It’s not that kind of baby, Ce’Nedra. It’s half human and half demon. It’s a creature of this world and a spawn of the other. If it’s allowed to live, it won’t be possible to banish it. It will be a perpetual horror.’
‘Garion!’ Ce’Nedra cried. ‘You can’t let her.’
‘Polgara’s right, Ce’Nedra,’ Belgarath told her. ‘The creature can’t be allowed to live.’
‘How many Karands are gathered up there?’ Silk asked.
‘There are a half dozen outside the temple,’ Polgara replied. ‘There may be more inside.’
‘However many they are, we’re going to have to dispose of them,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for the birth of what they believe is a God, and they’ll defend the newborn demon to the death.’
‘All right, then,’ Garion said bleakly, ‘let’s go oblige them.’
‘You’re not condoning this?’ Ce’Nedra exclaimed.
‘I don’t like it,’ he admitted, ‘but I don’t see that we’ve got much choice.’ He looked at Polgara. ‘There’s absolutely no way it could be sent back to the place where demons originate?’ he asked her.
‘None whatsoever,’ she said flatly. ‘This world will be it’s home. It wasn’t summoned and it has no master. Within two years, it will be a horror such as this world has never seen. It must be destroyed.’
‘Can you do it, Pol?’ Belgarath asked her.
‘I don’t have any choice, father,’ she replied. ‘I have to do it.’
‘All right, then,’ the old man said to the rest of them.
‘We have to get Pol inside that temple—and that means dealing with the Karands.’
Silk reached inside his boot and pulled out his dagger. ‘I should have sharpened this,’ he muttered, looking ruefully at his jagged blade.
‘Would you like to borrow one of mine?’ Velvet asked him.
‘No, that’s all right, Liselle,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got a couple of spares.’ He returned the knife to his boot and drew another from its place of concealment at the small of his back and yet a third from its sheath down the back of his neck.
Durnik lifted his axe from its loop at the back of his saddle. His face was unhappy. ‘Do we really have to do this, Pol?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Durnik. I’m afraid we do.’
He sighed. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go get it over with.’
They started forward, riding at a slow walk to avoid alerting the fanatics ahead.
The Karands were sitting around a large, hollowed-out section of log, pounding on it with clubs in rhythmic unison. It gave forth a dull booming sound. They were dressed in roughly tanned fur vests and cross-tied leggings of dirty sackcloth. They were raggedly bearded, and their hair was matted and greasy. Their faces were hideously painted, but their eyes seemed glazed and their expressions slack-lipped.
‘I’ll go first,’ Garion muttered to the others.
‘Shouting a challenge, I suppose,’ Silk whispered.
‘I’m not an assassin, Silk,’ Garion replied quietly. ‘One or two of them might be rational enough to run, and that means a few less we’ll have to kill.’
‘Suit yourself, but expecting rationality from Karands is irrational all by itself.’
Garion quickly surveyed the clearing. The wooden temple was constructed of half-rotten logs, sagging badly at one end and surmounted along its ridgepole by a line of mossy skulls staring out vacantly. The ground before the building was hard-packed dirt, and there was a smoky firepit not far from the drummers.
‘Try not to get into that smoke,’ Silk cautioned in a whisper. ‘You might start to see all sorts of peculiar things if you inhale too much of it.’
Garion nodded and looked around. ‘Are we all ready?’ he asked in a low voice.
They nodded.
‘All right then.’ He spurred Chretienne into the clearing. ‘Throw down your weapons!’ he shouted at the startled Karands.
Instead of obeying, they dropped their clubs and seized up a variety of axes, spears, and swords, shrieking their defiance.
‘You see?’ Silk said.
Garion clenched his teeth and charged, brandishing his sword. Even as he thundered toward the fur-clad men, he saw four others come bursting out of the temple.
Even with these reinforcements, however, the men on foot were no match for Garion and his mounted companions. Two of the howling Karands fell beneath Iron-grip’s sword on Garion’s first charge, and the one who tried to thrust at his back with a broad-bladed spear fell in a heap as Durnik brained him with his axe. Sadi caught a sword thrust with a flick of his cloak and then, with an almost delicate motion, dipped his poisoned dagger into the swordsman’s throat. Using his heavy staff like a club, Toth battered two men to the ground, the sound of his blows punctuated by the snapping of bones. Their howls of frenzy turned to groans of pain as they fell. Silk launched himself from his saddle, rolled with the skill of an acrobat, and neatly ripped open one fanatic with one of his daggers while simultaneously plunging the other into the chest of a fat man who was clumsily trying to wield an axe. Chretienne whirled so quickly that Garion was almost thrown from his saddle as the big stallion trampled a Karand into the earth with his steel-shod hooves.
The lone remaining fanatic stood in the doorway of the crude temple. He was much older than his companions, and his face had been tattooed into a grotesque mask. His only weapon was a skull-surmounted staff, and he was brandishing it at them even as he shrieked an incantation. His words broke off suddenly, however, as Velvet hurled one of her knives at him with a smooth underhand cast. The wizard gaped down in amazement at the hilt of her knife protruding from his chest. Then he slowly toppled over backward.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the groans of the two men Toth had crippled. And then a harsh scream came from the temple—a woman’s scream.
Garion jumped from his saddle, stepped over the body in the doorway
and looked into the large, smoky room.
A half-naked woman lay on the crude altar against the far wall. She had been bound to it in a spread-eagle position and she was partially covered by a filthy blanket. Her features were distorted, and her belly grossly, impossibly distended. She screamed again and then spoke in gasps.
‘Nahaz! Margrash Klat Grichak! Nahaz!’
‘I’ll deal with this, Garion,’ Polgara said firmly from behind him. ‘Wait outside with the others.’
‘Were there any others in there?’ Silk asked him as he came out.
‘Just the woman. Aunt Pol’s with her.’ Garion suddenly realized that he was shaking violently.
‘What was that language she was speaking?’ Sadi asked, carefully cleaning his poisoned dagger.
‘The language of the demons,’ Belgarath replied. ‘She was calling out to the father of her baby.’
‘Nahaz?’ Garion asked, his voice startled.
‘She thinks it was Nahaz,’ the old man said. ‘She could be wrong—or maybe not.’
From inside the temple the woman screamed again.
‘Is anybody hurt?’ Durnik asked.
‘They are,’ Silk replied, pointing at the fallen Karands. Then he squatted and repeatedly plunged his daggers into the dirt to cleanse the blood off them.
‘Kheldar,’ Velvet said in a strangely weak voice. ‘Would you get my knife for me?’ Garion looked at her and saw that her face was pale and that her hands were trembling slightly. He realized then that this self-possessed young woman was perhaps not quite so ruthless as he had thought.
‘Of course, Liselle,’ Silk replied in a neutral tone. The little man quite obviously also understood the cause of her distress. He rose, went to the doorway, and pulled the knife out of the wizard’s chest. He wiped it carefully and returned it to her. ‘Why don’t you go back and stay with Ce’Nedra?’ he suggested. ‘We can clean up here.’
‘Thank you, Kheldar,’ she said, turned her horse, and rode out of the clearing.
‘She’s only a girl,’ Silk said to Garion in a defensive tone. ‘She is good, though,’ he added with a certain pride.
‘Yes,’ Garion agreed. ‘Very good.’ He looked around at the twisted shapes lying in heaps in the clearing. ‘Why don’t we drag all these bodies over behind the temple?’ he suggested. ‘This place is bad enough without all of this.’