Castle of Wizardry

  "I was starting to worry about that," Silk said to Belgarath, "but it looks as if they found our trail after all."

  "Let's hope they don't lose it again," the old man replied.

  "Not too likely, really. I made it pretty obvious."

  "Murgos can be a bit undependable sometimes."

  Belgarath seemed to have recovered almost completely, but Garion noted a weary slump to his shoulders and was glad that they did not plan to ride all night.

  The mountains into which they rode were as arid and rocky as the ones lying to the north had been. There were looming cliffs and patches of alkali on the ground and a bitingly cold wind that seemed to wail endlessly through the rocks and to tug at the coarse-woven Murgo robes that disguised them. They pushed on until they were well into the mountains; then, several hours before dawn, they stopped to rest and to wait for the sun to rise.

  When the first faint light appeared on the eastern horizon, Silk rode out and located a rocky gap passing to the northwest between two ocherous cliff faces. As soon as he returned, they saddled their horses again and moved out at a trot.

  "We can get rid of these now, I think," Belgarath said, pulling off his Murgo robe.

  "I'll take them," Silk suggested as he reined in. "The gap's just ahead there." He pointed. "I'll catch up in a couple of hours."

  "Where are you going?" Barak asked him.

  "I'll leave a few miles more of false trail," Silk replied. "Then I'll double back and make sure that you haven't left any tracks. It won't take long."

  "You want some company?" the big man offered.

  Silk shook his head. "I can move faster alone."

  "Be careful."

  Silk grinned. "I'm always careful." He took the Murgo garments from them and rode off to the west.

  The gap into which they rode appeared to be the bed of a stream that had dried up thousands of years before. The water had cut down through the rock, revealing layer upon layer of red, brown, and yellow stone lying in bands, one atop the other. The sound of their horses' hooves was very loud as they clattered along between the cliffs, and the wind whistled as it poured through the cut.

  Taiba drew her horse in beside Garion's. She was shivering and she had the cloak he had given her pulled tightly ahout her shoulders. "Is it always this cold?" she asked, her large, violet eyes very wide.

  "In the wintertime," he replied. "I imagine it's pretty hot here in the summer."

  "The slave pens were always the same," she told him. "We never knew what season it was."

  The twisting streambed made a sharp bend to the right, and they rode into the light of the newly risen sun. Taiba gasped.

  "What's wrong?" Garion asked her quickly.

  "The light," she cried, covering her face with her hands. "It's like fire in my eyes."

  Relg, who rode directly in front of them, was also shielding his eyes. He looked back over his shoulder at the Marag woman. "Here," he said. He took one of the veils he usually bound across his eyes when they were in direct sunlight and handed it back to her. "Cover your face with this until we're back into the shadows again." His voice was peculiarly neutral.

  "Thank you," Taiba said, binding the cloth across her eyes. "I didn't know that the sun could be so bright."

  "You'll get used to it," Relg told her. "It just takes some time. Try to protect your eyes for the first few days." He seemed about to turn and ride on, then he looked at her curiously. "Haven't you ever seen the sun before?" he asked her.

  "No," she replied. "Other slaves told me about it, though. The Murgos don't use women on their work gangs, so I was never taken out of the pens. It was always dark down there."

  "It must have been terrible." Garion shuddered.

  She shrugged. "The dark wasn't so bad. It was the light we were afraid of. Light meant that the Murgos were coming with torches to take someone to the Temple to be sacrificed."

  The trail they followed turned again, and they rode out of the bright glare of sunlight. "Thank you," Taiba said to Relg, removing the veil from her eyes and holding it out to him.

  "Keep it," he told her. "You'll probably need it again." His voice seemed oddly subdued, and his eyes had a strange gentleness in them. As he looked at her, the haunted expression crept back over his face.

  Since they had left Rak Cthol, Garion had covertly watched these two. He knew that Relg, despite all his efforts, could not take his eyes off the Marag woman he had been forced to rescue from her living entombment in the caves. Although Relg still ranted about sin continually, his words no longer carried the weight of absolute conviction; indeed quite often, they seemed to be little more than a mechanical repetition of a set of formulas. Occasionally, Garion had noted, even those formulas had faltered when Taiba's deep violet eyes had turned to regard the Ulgo's face. For her part, Taiba was quite obviously puzzled. Relg's rejection of her simple gratitude had humiliated her, and her resentment had been hot and immediate. His constant scrutiny, however, spoke to her with a meaning altogether different from the words coming from his lips. His eyes told her one thing, but his mouth said something else. She was baffled by him, not knowing whether to respond to his look or his words.

  "You've lived your whole life in the dark, then?" Relg asked her curiously.

  "Most of it," she replied. "I saw my mother's face once - the day the Murgos came and took her to the Temple. I was alone after that. Being alone is the worst of it. You can bear the dark if you aren't alone."

  "How old were you when they took your mother away?"

  "I don't really know. I must have been almost a woman, though, because not long after that the Murgos gave me to a slave who had pleased them. There were a lot of slaves in the pens who did anything the Murgos wanted, and they were rewarded with extra food - or with women. I cried at first; but in time I learned to accept it. At least I wasn't alone any more."

  Relg's face hardened, and Taiba saw the expression. "What should I have done?" she asked him. "When you're a slave, your body doesn't belong to you. They can sell you or give you to anybody they want to, and there's nothing you can do about it."

  "There must have been something."

  "Such as what? I didn't have any kind of weapon to fight with -or to kill myself with - and you can't strangle yourself." She looked at Garion. "Did you know that? Some of the slaves tried it, but all you do is fall into unconsciousness, and then you start to breathe again. Isn't that curious?"

  "Did you try to fight?" It seemed terribly important to Relg for some reason.

  "What would have been the point? The slave they gave me to was stronger than I. He'd have just hit me until I did what he wanted."

  "You should have fought," Relg declared adamantly. "A little pain is better than sin, and giving up like that is sin."

  "Is it? If somebody forces you to do something and there's no possible way to avoid it, is it really sin?"

  Relg started to answer, but her eyes, looking directly into his face, seemed to stop up his tongue. He faltered, unable to face that gaze. Abruptly he turned his mount and rode back toward the pack animals.

  "Why does he fight with himself so much?" Taiba asked.

  "He's completely devoted to his God," Garion explained. "He's afraid of anything that might take away some of what he feels he owes to UL."

  "Is this UL of his really that jealous?"

  "No, I don't think so, but Relg does."

  Taiba pursed her lips into a sensual pout and looked back over her shoulder at the retreating zealot. "You know," she said, "I think he's actually afraid of me." She laughed then, that same low, wicked little laugh, and lifted her arms to run her fingers through the glory of her midnight hair. "No one's ever been afraid of me before - not ever. I think I rather like it. Will you excuse me?" She turned her horse without waiting for a reply and quite deliberately rode back after the fleeing Relg.

  Garion thought about it as he rode on through the narrow, twisting canyon. He realized that there was a strength in Taiba that none of them h
ad suspected, and he finally concluded that Relg was in for a very bad time.

  He trotted on ahead to speak to Aunt Pol about it as she rode with her arms about Errand.

  "It's really none of your business, Garion," she told him. "Relg and Taiba can work out their problems without any help from you."

  "I was just curious, that's all. Relg's tearing himself apart, and Taiba's all confused about him. What's really going on between them, Aunt Pol?"

  "Something very necessary," she replied.

  "You could say that about nearly everything that happens, Aunt Pol." It was almost an accusation. "You could even say that the way Ce'Nedra and I quarrel all the time is necessary too, couldn't you?"

  She looked slightly amused. "It's not exactly the same thing, Garion," she answered, "but there's a certain necessity about that too."

  "That's ridiculous," he scoffed.

  "Is it really? Then why do you suppose the two of you go out of your way so much to aggravate each other?"

  He had no answer for that, but the entire notion worried him. At the same time the very mention of Ce'Nedra's name suddenly brought her sharply into his mind, and he realized that he actually missed her. He rode along in silence beside Aunt Pol for a while, feeling melancholy. Finally he sighed.

  "And why so great a sigh?"

  "It's all over, isn't it?"

  "What's that?"

  "This whole thing. I mean - we've recovered the Orb. That's what this was all about, wasn't it?"

  "There's more to it than that, Garion - much more - and we're not out of Cthol Murgos yet, are we?"

  "You're not really worried about that, are you?" But then, as if her question had suddenly uncovered some lingering doubts in his own mind, he stared at her in sudden apprehension. "What would happen if we didn't?" he blurted. "If we didn't make it out, I mean. What would happen to the West if we didn't get the Orb back to Riva?"

  "Things would become unpleasant."

  "There'd be a war, wouldn't there? And the Angaraks would win, and there'd be Grolims everywhere with their knives and their altars." The thought of Grolims marching up to the gates of Faldor's farm outraged him.

  "Don't go borrowing trouble, Garion. Let's worry about one thing at a time, shall we?"

  "But what if-"

  "Garion," she said with a pained look, "don't belabor the 'what ifs,' please. If you start that, you'll just worry everybody to death."

  "You say 'what if' to grandfather all the time," he accused.

  "That's different," she replied.

  They rode hard for the next several days through a series of passes with the dry, bitter chill pressing at them like some great weight. Silk rode back often to look for any signs of pursuit, but their ruse seemed to have fooled the Murgos. Finally, about noon on a cold, sunless day when the wind was kicking up dust clouds along the horizon, they reached the broad, arid valley through which the south caravan route wound. They took cover behind a low hill while Silk rode on ahead to take a quick look.

  "Thinkest thou that Taur Urgas hath joined in the search for us?" Mandorallen, dressed again in his armor, asked Belgarath.

  "It's hard to say for sure," the old sorcerer replied. "He's a very unpredictable man."

  "There's a Murgo patrol headed east on the caravan route," Silk reported when he returned. "It will be another half hour or so until they're out of sight."

  Belgarath nodded.

  "Do you think we'll be safe once we cross over into Mishrak ac Thull?" Durnik asked.

  "We can't count on it," Belgarath replied. "Gethel, the king of the Thulls, is afraid of Taur Urgas, so he wouldn't make any kind of fuss about a border violation if Taur Urgas decided to follow us."

  They waited until the Murgos had crossed a low ridge to the east and then moved out again.

  For the next two days they rode steadily to the northwest. The terrain grew less rocky after they crossed into the land of the Thulls, and they saw the telltale dust clouds far behind them that spoke of mounted Murgo search parties. It was late in the afternoon of a murky day when they finally reached the top of the eastern escarpment.

  Barak glanced back over his shoulder at the dust clouds behind them, then pulled his horse in beside Belgarath's. "Just how rough is the ground leading down into the Vale?" he asked.

  "It's not the easiest trail in the world."

  "Those Murgos are less than a day behind us, Belgarath. If we have to pick our way down, they'll be on top of us before we make it."

  Belgarath pursed his lips, squinting at the dust clouds on the southern horizon. "Perhaps you're right," he said. "Maybe we'd better think this through." He raised his hand to call a halt. "It's time to make a couple of decisions," he told the rest of them. "The Murgos are a little closer than we really want them to be. It takes two to three days to make the descent into the Vale, and there are places where one definitely doesn't want to be rushed."

  "We could always go on to that ravine we followed coming up," Silk suggested. "It only takes a half day to go down that way."

  "But Lord Hettar and the Algar clans of King Cho-Hag await us in the Vale," Mandorallen objected. "Were we to go on, would we not lead the Murgos down into undefended country?"

  "Have we got any choice?" Silk asked him.

  "We could light fires along the way," Barak suggested. "Hettar will know what they mean."

  "So would the Murgos," Silk said. "They'd ride all night and be right behind us every step of the way down."

  Belgarath scratched sourly at his short white beard. "I think we're going to have to abandon the original plan," he decided. "We have to take the shortest way down, and that means the ravine, I'm afraid. We'll be on our own once we get down, but that can't be helped."

  "Surely King Cho-Hag will have scouts posted along the foot of the escarpment," Durnik said, his plain face worried.

  "We can hope so," Barak replied.

  "All right," Belgarath said firmly, "we'll use the ravine. I don't altogether like the idea, but our options seem to have been narrowed a bit. Let's ride."

  It was late afternoon when they reached the shallow gully at the top of the steep notch leading down to the plain below. Belgarath glanced once down the precipitous cut and shook his head. "Not in the dark," he decided. "Can you see any signs of the Algars?" he asked Barak, who was staring out at the plain below.

  "I'm afraid not," the red-bearded man answered. "Do you want to light a fire to signal them?"

  "No," the old man replied. "Let's not announce our intentions."

  "I will need a small fire, though," Aunt Pol told him. "We all need a hot meal."

  "I don't know if that's wise, Polgara," Belgarath objected.

  "We'll have a hard day tomorrow, father," she said firmly. "Durnik knows how to build a small fire and keep it hidden."

  "Have it your own way, Pol," the old man said in a resigned tone of voice.

  "Naturally, father."

  It was cold that night, and they kept their fire small and well sheltered. As the first light of dawn began to stain the cloudy sky to the east, they rose and prepared to descend the rocky cut toward the plain below.

  "I'll strike the tents," Durnik said.

  "Just knock them down," Belgarath told him. He turned and nudged one of the packs thoughtfully with his foot. "We'll take only what we absolutely have to have," he decided. "We're not going to have the time to waste on these."

  "You're not going to leave them?" Durnik sounded shocked.

  "They'll just be in the way, and the horses will be able to move faster without them."

  "But - all of our belongings!" Durnik protested.

  Silk also looked a bit chagrined. He quickly spread out a blanket and began rummaging through the packs, his quick hands bringing out innumerable small, valuable items and piling them in a heap on the blanket.

  "Where did you get all those?" Barak asked him.

  "Here and there," Silk replied evasively.

  "You stole them, didn't you?"

&n
bsp; "Some of them," Silk admitted. "We've been on the road for a long time, Barak."

  "Do you really plan to carry all of that down the ravine?" Barak asked, curiously eyeing Silk's treasures.

  Silk looked at the heap, mentally weighing it. Then he sighed with profound regret. "No," he said, "I guess not." He stood up and scattered the heap with his foot. "It's all very pretty though, isn't it? Now I guess I'll have to start all over again." He grinned then. "It's the stealing that's fun, anyway. Let's go down." And he started toward the top of the steeply descending streambed that angled sharply down toward the base of the escarpment.

  The unburdened horses were able to move much more rapidly, and they all passed quite easily over spots Garion remembered painfully from the upward climb weeks before. By noon they were more than halfway down.

  Then Polgara stopped and raised her face. "Father," she said calmly, "they've found the top of the ravine."

  "How many of them?"

  "It's an advance patrol - no more than twenty."

  Far above them they heard a sharp clash of rock against rock, and then, after a moment, another. "I was afraid of that," Belgarath said sourly.

  "What?" Garion asked.

  "They're rolling rocks down on us." The old man grimly hitched up his belt. "All right, the rest of you go on ahead. Get down as fast as you can.

  "Are you strong enough, father?" Aunt Pol asked, sounding concerned. "You still haven't really recovered, you know."

  "We're about to find out," the old man replied, his face set. "Move - all of you." He said it in a tone that cut off any possible argument. As they all began scrambling down over the steep rocks, Garion lagged farther and farther behind. Finally, as Durnik led the last packhorse over a jumble of broken stone and around a bend, Garion stopped entirely and stood listening. He could hear the clatter and slide of hooves on the rocks below and, from above, the clash and bounce of a large stone tumbling over the ravine, coming closer and closer. Then there was a familiar surge and roaring sound. A rock, somewhat larger than a man's head, went whistling over him, angling sharply up out of the cut to fall harmlessly far out on the tumbled debris at the floor of the escarpment. Carefully Garion began climbing back up the ravine, pausing often to listen.