They took shelter for the night beside the half-tumbled wall of a ruined village. They built no fire and traded off standing watch. At first light the next morning, they pushed on. The countryside grew more bleak and foreboding with each passing mile.
About midmorning, Beldin swooped in, flared his wings, and settled to earth. He shimmered into his own form and stood waiting for them. ‘There are some troops blocking the road about a mile ahead,’ he announced.
‘Any chance of getting around them?’ Belgarath asked.
‘I doubt it. The country’s pretty flat there, and all the vegetation’s been dead for years.’
‘How many are there?’ Silk asked.
‘Fifteen or so. They’ve got a Grolim with them.’
‘Any idea which side they’re on?’ Belgarath said.
‘They’re not that distinctive.’
‘Do you want me to see if I can talk our way past them?’ Silk offered.
Belgarath looked at Beldin. ‘Are they deliberately blocking the road, or are they just camped on it?’
‘They’ve built a barricade out of dead logs.’
‘That answers that, then. Talk isn’t going to do us any good.’ He mulled it over.
‘We could wait until dark and then slip around them,’ Velvet suggested.
‘We’d lose a whole day that way,’ Belgarath replied. ‘I don’t see any help for it. We’re going to have to go through them. Try not to kill any more of them than you absolutely have to.’
‘That gets right to the point, doesn’t it?’ Zakath said wryly to Garion.
‘There’s no sense in trying to surprise them, I suppose?’ Belgarath asked Beldin.
The dwarf shook his head. ‘They’ll see you coming for at least a half a mile.’ He went to the side of the road, wrenched a half-rotten stump out of the ground, and pounded it against a rock until all the decayed wood had been knocked loose. The gnarled taproot made a fearsome-looking cudgel.
‘Well, I guess we’d better go have a look,’ Belgarath said bleakly.
They rode on to the crest of the hill and looked down the road toward the barricade and the troops standing behind it. Zakath peered at them. ‘Darshivans,’ he said.
‘How can you tell from this distance?’ Silk asked him.
‘By the shape of their helmets.’ The Mallorean narrowed his eyes. ‘Darshivan soldiers are not notoriously brave and they get very little in the way of training. Do you think there might be some way we can lure them out from behind that barricade?’
Garion looked down at the soldiers crouched behind their logs. ‘I’d say they’ve been told not to let anybody past,’ he said. ‘What if we charge them and then at the last minute swing out and around them? They’ll run for their horses. Then we turn around and charge back at them. They’ll be confused and milling around, and we’ll be able to pin them up against their own barricade. It shouldn’t be too hard to put a fair number of them on the ground. The rest should run at that point.’
‘That’s not a bad plan, Garion. You’re quite a tactician. Have you had any formal military training?’
‘No. I just picked it up.’
In a land of brittle, dead trees, a lance was quite out of the question, so Garion strapped his shield to his left arm and drew his sword.
‘All right,’ Belgarath said, ‘let’s give it a try. It might hold down the casualties.’
‘One other thing,’ Silk added. ‘I think we should make a special point of not letting any of them get on a horse. A man on foot can’t go for help very fast. If we run off their horses, we can be out of the area before they can bring in reinforcements.’
‘I’ll take care of that,’ Belgarath said. ‘All right. Let’s go.’
They urged their horses into a gallop and charged down the road toward the barricade, brandishing their weapons. As they pounded down the hill, Garion saw Zakath pulling a curious-looking leather half-glove clad with steel onto his right hand.
Just before they reached the barricade and the alarmed soldiers standing behind it, they veered sharply to the left, then galloped around the obstruction and back onto the road.
‘After them!’ a black-robed Grolim screamed at the startled troops. ‘Don’t let them escape!’
Garion rode on past the soldiers’ picketed horses, then wheeled Chretienne around. He charged back with the others close on his heels and rode full into the face of the confused Darshivans. He did not really want to kill any of them, so he laid about him with the flat of the blade rather than the edge. He put three of them down as he crashed through their ranks; behind him he could hear the sound of blows and cries of pain. The Grolim rose before him, and he could feel the black-robed man drawing in his will. He did not falter, but simply rode the priest down. Then he wheeled again. Toth was laying about him with his heavy staff, and Durnik was busily caving in helmets with the butt of his axe. Zakath, however, was leaned far over in his saddle. He had no weapon in his hand but rather was smashing his metal-clad fist into the faces of the Darshivan soldiers. The glove appeared to be quite effective.
Then, from where the soldiers’ horses were picketed, there came a blood-curdling howl. The great silver wolf was snapping and snarling at the horses. They lunged back in panic, the picket rope snapped, and they fled.
‘Let’s go!’ Garion shouted to his friends, and they galloped once again through the center of the Darshivans and on down the road to rejoin Polgara, Ce’Nedra, Velvet, and Eriond. Belgarath loped after them, then changed into his own form and walked back to his horse.
‘It seems to have worked more or less the way we’d planned,’ Zakath noted. He was panting, and his forehead was dewed with sweat. ‘I seem to be a bit out of condition, though,’ he added.
‘Too much sitting down,’ Silk said. ‘What’s that thing you’ve got on your hand?’
‘It’s called a cestus,’ the Mallorean replied, pulling it off. ‘I’m a little rusty with my sword, so I thought this might work just as well—particularly since Belgarath wanted to keep down the fatalities.’
‘Did we kill anybody?’ Durnik asked.
‘Two,’ Sadi admitted. He held up his small dagger. ‘It’s a little hard to unpoison a knife.’
‘And one other,’ Silk told the smith. ‘He was running up behind you with a spear, so I threw a knife at him.’
‘It couldn’t be helped,’ Belgarath said, ‘Now let’s get out of here.’
They continued at a gallop for several miles, then slowed back to a canter again.
They took shelter that night in a sizeable stand of dead trees. Durnik and Toth dug a shallow pit and built a small fire in it. After the tents were pitched, Garion and Zakath walked to the edge of the trees to keep watch on the road.
‘Is it always like this?’ Zakath asked quietly.
‘Like what?’
‘All this sneaking and hiding?’
‘Usually. Belgarath tries to avoid trouble whenever he can. He doesn’t like to risk people in random skirmishes. Most of the time we’re able to avoid the kind of thing that happened this morning. Silk—and Sadi, too, for that matter—have lied us out of some very tight spots.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Up in Voresebo, Silk bribed our way past a group of soldiers with a pouchful of brass Mallorean halfpennies.’
‘But they’re virtually worthless.’
‘That’s what Silk said, but we were quite a ways past the soldiers before they opened the pouch.’
Then they heard a chilling howl.
‘A wolf?’ Zakath asked. ‘Belgarath again?’
‘No. That wasn’t a wolf. Let’s go back. I think Urvon’s managed to outflank General Atesca.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘That was a Hound.’
Chapter Twenty
They walked carefully through the forest of dead snags, avoiding as best they could the litter of fallen limbs and twigs on the ground. The faint glow from Durnik’s sunken fire guided them, and Garion knew it would serve as a dim beacon for
the Hounds as well. Zakath’s euphoria seemed to have evaporated. His expression now was wary, and he walked with his hand on his sword hilt.
They entered the small clearing where the others were seated around the fire pit. ‘There’s a Hound out there,’ Garion said quietly. ‘It howled once.’
‘Could you make out what it was saying?’ Belgarath asked, his voice tense.
‘I don’t speak its language, grandfather. It seemed to be some kind of a call, though.’
‘Probably to the rest of the pack,’ the old man grunted. ‘The Hounds don’t hunt alone very often.’
‘The glow from our fire is fairly visible,’ Garion pointed out.
‘I’ll take care of that right away,’ Durnik said, starting to shovel dirt into the fire pit.
‘Could you pinpoint the Hound’s location at all?’ Belgarath asked.
‘It was some distance away,’ Garion replied. ‘I think it’s out there on the road.’
‘Following our trail?’ Silk asked.
‘It’s following something. I could pick up that much.’
‘If the Hound is following us, I can divert it with some of that powder I used back at Ashaba,’ Sadi suggested.
‘What do you think?’ Belgarath asked Beldin.
The dwarf squatted on the ground, absently scratching an obscure diagram in the dirt with a broken stick. ‘It wouldn’t work,’ he said finally. ‘The Hounds aren’t entirely dogs, so they’re not going to just blindly follow the one in the lead. Once they pinpoint our location, they’ll spread out and come at us from all sides. We’re going to have to come up with something else.’
‘Fairly soon, I’d think,’ Silk added, looking around nervously.
Polgara removed her blue cloak and handed it to Durnik. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ she said calmly.
‘What have you got in mind, Pol?’ Belgarath asked suspiciously.
‘I haven’t decided yet, Old Wolf. Maybe I’ll just make it up as I go along—the way you do sometimes.’ She drew herself up, and the air around her shimmered with an odd luminescence. She was winging her way off among the dead white trees even before the light had faded.
‘I hate it when she does that,’ Belgarath muttered.
‘You do it all the time,’ Beldin said.
‘That’s different.’
Zakath was staring at the ghostly shape of the disappearing white owl. ‘That’s uncanny.’ He shuddered. Then he looked at Garion. ‘I can’t say that I understand all this concern,’ he confessed. ‘You people—at least some of you—are sorcerers. Can you just . . .?’ He left it hanging.
‘No,’ Garion shook his head.
‘Why not?’
‘It makes too much noise. Not the sort of noise ordinary people can hear—but we can hear it, and so can the Grolims. If we tried to do it that way, we’d have every Grolim in this part of Darshiva down our necks. Sorcery’s an overrated thing, Zakath. I’ll grant you we can do things that other people can’t, but there are so many restrictions on us that sometimes it’s not worth the trouble—unless you’re in a hurry.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Zakath admitted. ‘Are the Hounds as big as they say they are?’
‘Probably even bigger,’ Silk replied. ‘They’re about the size of small horses.’
‘You’re a droll fellow, Kheldar,’ Zakath said, ‘so I think I’d have to see that to believe it.’
‘You’d better hope that you don’t get that close.’
Belgarath looked narrowly at the Mallorean. ‘You don’t believe in very much, do you?’ he asked.
‘What I can see.’ Zakath shrugged. ‘I’ve had most of the belief washed out of me over the years.’
‘That could prove to be a problem,’ the old man said, scratching at his cheek. ‘A time might come when we’ll have to do something in a hurry and we won’t have time for explanations—and you won’t have time to stand around gaping in astonishment. I think this might be a good time to fill you in on a few things.’
‘I’ll listen to you,’ Zakath said. ‘I don’t promise to believe everything you say, though. Go ahead.’
‘I’ll let Garion do it. I want to keep in touch with Pol. Why don’t you two go back to the edge of the woods and keep watch? Garion can fill you in there. Try not to be skeptical just on principle.’
‘We’ll see,’ Zakath replied.
During the next hour, as Garion and Zakath crouched behind a fallen tree at the edge of the woods, the Emperor of Mallorea had his credulity stretched to the limits. Garion spoke in a half whisper even as he kept his eyes and ears alert. He began by briefly sketching in the Book of Alorn, then went on to a few salient points from the Mrin Codex. Then, so far as he knew it, he described the early life of Belgarath the sorcerer. And then he got down to business. He explained the possibilities and the limitations of the Will and the Word, covering such matters as projections, translocation, shape-change, and so on. He covered the mysterious sound that accompanies the use of what common people call sorcery, the exhaustion that comes over a sorcerer after its use, and the single absolute prohibition—that of unmaking. ‘That’s what happened to Ctuchik,’ he concluded. ‘He was so afraid of what would happen if I got my hands on the Orb that he forgot he was stepping over the line when he tried to destroy it.’
Out in the darkness, the Hound howled again, and there was an answering howl from a different direction. ‘They’re getting closer,’ Garion whispered. ‘I hope Aunt Pol hurries.’
Zakath, however, was still mulling over the things Garion had told him. ‘Are you trying to tell me that it was the Orb that killed Ctuchik and not Belgarath?’ he whispered.
‘No. It wasn’t the Orb. It was the universe. Do you really want to get into theology?’
‘I’m even more skeptical in that direction.’
‘That’s the one thing you can’t afford, Zakath,’ Garion said seriously. ‘You have to believe. Otherwise, we’ll fail, and, if we fail, the world fails—forever.’
The Hound howled again, even closer this time.
‘Keep your voice down,’ Garion warned in a tense whisper. ‘The Hounds have very sharp ears.’
‘I’m not afraid of a dog, Garion, no matter how big it is.’
‘That could be a mistake. Being afraid is one of the things that keeps us alive. All right. As closely as I understand it, this is the way it went. UL created the universe.’
‘I thought it was just spun out of nothingness.’
‘It was, but UL was the spinner. Then he joined his thought with the awareness of the universe, and the Seven Gods were born.’
‘The Grolims say it was Torak who made everything.’
‘That’s what Torak wanted them to believe. That’s one of the reasons I had to kill him. He thought he owned the universe and that he was more powerful than UL. He was wrong, and nobody owns the universe. She owns herself, and she makes the rules.’
‘She?’
‘Of course. She’s the mother of everything—you, me, that rock, and even this dead tree we’re hiding behind. We’re all related, I suppose, and the universe won’t permit unmaking.’ Garion pulled off his helmet and scratched at his sweaty hair. He sighed. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Zakath. I know this is coming at you very fast, but we don’t have time for subtlety. For some reason, we’re caught up in this—you and I.’ He smiled wryly. ‘We’re both woefully unsuited for the task, I’m afraid, but our mother needs us. Are you up to it?’
‘I’m up to most things, I suppose,’ Zakath replied in an indifferent tone. ‘Regardless of what Cyradis said back there, I don’t really expect to come out of this alive anyway.’
‘Are you sure you’re not Arendish?’ Garion asked suspiciously. ‘The whole idea is to live, Zakath, not to die. Dying defeats the purpose. Don’t do it. I might need you later on. The voice told me that you’re supposed to be a part of this. I think we’re walking directly into the ultimate horror. You might have to hold me up when we get there.’
‘Voice?’
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‘It’s in here,’ Garion tapped his forehead. ‘I’ll explain that later. You’ve got enough to think about for now.’
‘You hear voices? There’s a name for people who hear voices, you know.’
Garion smiled. ‘I’m not really crazy, Zakath,’ he said. ‘I get a little distracted once in a while, but I’ve still got a fairly firm grip on reality.’
There was a sudden, shocking sound that echoed through Garion’s head like an explosion.
‘What was that?’ Zakath exclaimed.
‘You heard it, too?’ Garion was amazed. ‘You shouldn’t have been able to hear it!’
‘It shook the earth, Garion. Look there.’ Zakath pointed off toward the north where a huge pillar of fire was soaring up toward the murky, starless sky. ‘What is it?’
‘Aunt Pol did something. She’s never that clumsy. Listen!’
The baying of the Hound, which had been coming closer and closer as they had been speaking, had broken off into a series of pained yelps. ‘It probably hurt his ears,’ Garion said. ‘I know it hurt mine.’
The Hound took up his baying again, and his howls were soon joined by others. The sound began to fade off toward the north and the boiling column of fire.
‘Let’s go back,’ Garion said. ‘I don’t think we need to keep watch here any more.’
Belgarath and Beldin were both pale and shaken, and even Durnik seemed awed.
‘She hasn’t done anything that noisy since she was about sixteen,’ Beldin said, blinking in astonishment. He looked suspiciously at Durnik. ‘Have you gone and got her pregnant?’
Even in the faint light from the overcast sky Garion could see his friend blushing furiously.
‘What would that have to do with it?’ Belgarath asked.
‘It’s only a theory of mine,’ Beldin said. ‘I can’t prove it, because Polgara’s the only sorceress I know right now, and she’s never been in that condition.’
‘I’m sure you’ll get around to explaining it—eventually.’
‘It’s not that complicated, Belgarath. A woman’s body gets a little confused when she’s carrying a child. It does some peculiar things to her emotions and her thought processes. Focusing the will takes control and concentration. A pregnant woman might just lose her grip on that sort of thing. You see—’ He went on at some length to describe the physical, emotional, and intellectual changes involved in pregnancy. He spoke in matter-of-fact, even graphic, terms. After a moment, Ce’Nedra and Velvet withdrew, firmly taking Eriond with them. A moment later, Durnik joined them.