King of the Murgos

  ‘Belgarath? Are you in here?’ It was Silk’s voice.

  ‘Back here,’ Belgarath answered. ‘Keep your voice down.’

  ‘We’ve got trouble,’ the little man said, coming to the back of the library to join them. ‘Eriond is missing.’

  ‘What?’ Garion exclaimed.

  ‘He slipped out when none of us was watching.’

  Belgarath slammed his fist down on the table and swore. ‘What’s the matter with that boy?’ he burst out.

  Silk pushed back the hood of the Grolim robe he wore. ‘Polgara was going to go looking for him, but Durnik and I talked her out of it. I said I’d come and find you instead.’

  ‘We’d better find him,’ the old man said, rising to his feet. ‘Pol will only wait for so long before she starts acting on her own. We’d better split up. We can cover more ground that way.’ He led them to the door of the library, glanced out quickly, and then went out into the hall. ‘Don’t do anything unusual,’ he cautioned Garion in a whisper. ‘There are Grolims in this place with enough talent to hear you if you start making any noise.’

  Garion nodded.

  ‘And check back with the others from time to time. We won’t accomplish much if one of us finds Eriond and then has to go looking for the other two. Let’s go.’ He moved quickly off down the dimly lighted hallway.

  ‘How did he manage to slip past Aunt Pol?’ Garion whispered to Silk as the two of them went side by side back the way they had come.

  ‘Ce’Nedra had a bout of hysterics,’ Silk replied. ‘The sacrifices upset her. Polgara had her in one of the cells trying to calm her down. That’s when Eriond slipped out.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ Garion demanded, the sinking fear that had been with him since Prolgu returning with sudden force.

  ‘I think so. Polgara gave her something, and she’s sleeping.’ Silk carefully looked around a corner. ‘I’ll go this way,’ he whispered. ‘Be careful.’ He moved off on silent feet.

  Garion stood waiting for his friend to get well out of sight, then cautiously stepped out into the next corridor, folding his hands on his chest and lowering his cowled head in an imitation of Grolim piety. What could Eriond possibly be thinking of? The sheer irresponsibility of the boy’s act made Garion want to pound his fist against the wall. He moved down the corridor, trying his best not to do anything that might look suspicious and carefully cracking open each door he came to.

  ‘What is it?’ a harshly accented voice demanded from inside a dark room when he opened the door.

  ‘Sorry, brother,’ Garion muttered, trying to imitate the thickly accented Angarak speech, ‘wrong door.’ He quickly closed it again and went on down the corridor, moving as fast as he dared.

  The door behind him was suddenly yanked open, and a half-dressed Grolim stepped out, his face angry. ‘You there,’ he shouted after Garion, ‘stop!’

  Garion threw a quick look over his shoulder and was around the corner into the broad central corridor of the Temple in two steps.

  ‘Come back here!’ the Grolim shouted, and Garion heard his bare feet slapping on the flagstone floor as he ran in pursuit. Garion swore and then took a gamble. He yanked open the first door that presented itself and darted inside. A quick glance told him that the room was empty, and he closed the door and set his ear against its panel to listen.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ he heard someone demand from the corridor outside.

  ‘Someone just tried to come into my cell.’ Garion recognized the outraged voice of the Grolim upon whom he had just intruded.

  There was a sly chuckle. ‘Perhaps you should have waited to see what she wanted.’

  ‘It was a man.’

  There was a pause. ‘Well,’ the first voice said. ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. You’d better go put on some clothes. If Chabat catches you in the hall in your undergarments, she might get some peculiar ideas.’

  ‘I’m going to look for this intruder. There’s something very strange going on here. Will you help me?’

  ‘Why not? I haven’t got anything better to do.’

  From far up the corridor Garion heard a slow, groaning chant and the sound of many shuffling feet.

  ‘Quick,’ one of the voices outside the door warned, ‘back down this side passage. If they see us, they’ll insist that we join them.’

  Garion heard their scurrying feet as they dodged back out of sight. Carefully, he opened the door a crack and peered out. The slow shuffling march and the deep-toned chanting came nearer. A line of Grolims, the cowls of their hoods raised and with their hands clasped in front of them, came into view moving at a ceremonial pace along the torchlit corridor toward the very heart of the Temple. He waited in the dark room for them to pass, and then, on a sudden impulse so strong that he moved without even thinking, he boldly opened the door, stepped out into the corridor, and fell in at the end of the column.

  The slow, rhythmic march continued on down the broad hallway, and the reek of burning flesh grew stronger in Garion’s nostrils as the file which he had joined approached the Sanctum. Then, chanting even louder, they passed through the arched doorway into the vaulted Sanctum itself.

  The ceiling was very high, lost in smoky shadows. On the wall facing the door hung that polished steel mask—the calm, beautiful replica of the unblemished face of the God Torak. Under that uncaring mask stood the black altar with bright rivulets of fresh blood streaking its sides. There stood the glowing brazier, awaiting the next quivering heart to be offered up to the long-dead God; and there the fire pit yawned for the body of the next butchered victim.

  Shaking himself, Garion dodged quickly out of sight behind a column standing to one side of the doorway and stood sweating and trembling for several moments, struggling to control his emotions. Better perhaps than any man alive, he knew the full meaning of this awful place. Torak was dead. He himself had felt the faltering beat of the stricken God’s heart thrilling down the blazing length of Iron-grip’s sword, sunk deep in his enemy’s chest. The slaughter that had drenched this foul place with blood in the years since that awful night was senseless, empty—homage paid to a maimed and demented God who had died weeping fire and crying piteously to the indifferent stars. A slow burning rage began to build up in his chest, filling his mouth with a fiery taste as bitter as gall. Unbidden, his will began to clench itself as he envisioned the shattering of the mask and the altar and the sudden destruction of this filthy place.

  ‘That’s not why you’re here, Belgarion!’ the voice in his mind cracked.

  Slowly, as if, were he to release it all at once, it might destroy the entire city, Garion relaxed his will. Time enough to crush this horror later. Right now, he had to find Eriond. Cautiously, he poked his head around the column which concealed him. A priest with the purple-lined hood of his robe pushed back had just entered from the far side of the Sanctum. In his hands he carried a dark red cushion, and gleaming on that cushion lay a long, cruel knife. He faced the image of his dead God and reverently lifted the cushion and the knife in supplication. ‘Behold the instrument of thy will, Dragon God of Angarak,’ he intoned, ‘and behold him whose heart is to be offered unto thee.’

  Four Grolims dragged a naked, screaming slave into the Sanctum, ignoring his helpless struggles and panic-stricken pleas for mercy. Without thinking, Garion reached over his shoulder for his sword.

  ‘Stop that!’ the voice commanded.

  ‘No! I’m not going to let it happen!’

  ‘It won’t happen. Now get your hand off your sword!’

  ‘No chance!’ Garion said aloud, drawing his blade and lunging around the pillar. And then as if he had suddenly been turned to stone, he found that he could not move so much as an eyelash. ‘Let go of me!’ he grated.

  ‘No! You’re here to watch this time, not to act. Now stand there and keep your eyes open.’

  Garion stared in sudden disbelief as Eriond, his
pale blond curls gleaming in the cruel light of the Temple, entered by way of the same door through which the slave had just been dragged. The young man’s face bore an expression of almost regretful determination as he entered and walked directly toward the astonished priest. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quite firmly, ‘but you can’t do this any more.’

  ‘Seize this desecrator,’ the priest at the altar shouted. ‘It shall be his heart which shall sizzle in the coals!’

  A dozen Grolims leaped to their feet, but suddenly froze, caught in the same stasis which locked Garion’s muscles.

  ‘This can’t continue,’ Eriond said in that same determined voice. ‘I know how much it means to all of you, but it just can’t go on. Someday—very soon, I think—you’ll all understand.’

  There was no sound, no rushing surge such as Garion had come to expect, but the yawning fire pit before the altar suddenly roared to a furnace note, sending leaping flames and glowing sparks shooting upward to lick at the very vaults of the ceiling. The suffocatingly hot Sanctum suddenly cooled as if a cleansing breeze had just swept through it. Then the seething fire guttered briefly like a dying candle—and went out. The glowing brazier at the side of the altar also flared into blinding incandescence, and its steel body grew suddenly soft, drooping and sagging as it began to collapse under its own weight. With a flicker, it also went out.

  The priest dropped his knife in horror and leaped to the stillglowing brazier. Irrationally, he put forth his hands as if he would force the softened metal back into its original shape, but he howled in pain as the red-hot steel seared deeply into his flesh.

  Eriond regarded the dead fires with a look of satisfaction, then turned to the stunned Grolims still holding the naked slave. ‘Let that man go,’ he told them.

  They stared at him.

  ‘You might as well,’ Eriond said almost conversationally. ‘You can’t sacrifice him without the fires, and the fires won’t burn any more. No matter what you do, you won’t ever be able to start them again.’

  ‘Done!’ the voice in Garion’s mind said in a tone of such exultation that it buckled his knees.

  The burned priest, still moaning and cradling his charred hands at his chest, raised his ashen face. ‘Seize him!’ he shrieked, pointing at Eriond with a blackened hand. ‘Seize him and take him to Chabat!’

  Chapter Twelve

  There was no longer any need for stealth. Alarm bells rang in every quarter of the Temple, and frightened Grolims scurried this way and that, shouting contradictory orders to each other. Garion ran among them, desperately looking for Belgarath and Silk.

  As he rounded a corner, a wild-faced Grolim caught him by the arm. ‘Were you there in the Sanctum when it happened?’ he demanded.

  ‘No,’ Garion lied, trying to free his arm.

  ‘They say that he was ten feet tall, and that he blasted a dozen priests into nothingness before he extinguished the fires.’

  ‘Oh?’ Garion said, still trying to free himself from the Grolim’s grasp.

  ‘Some people say that it was Belgarath the Sorcerer himself.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Who else would have that much power?’ The Grolim stopped suddenly, his eyes going very wide. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ he asked in a trembling voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Sanctum will have to be rededicated, and that requires Grolim blood. Dozens of us will have to die before the Sanctum is purified.’

  ‘I really have to go,’ Garion told him, tugging at the arm the man held fast in both hands.

  ‘Chabat will wade to the hips in our blood,’ the priest moaned hysterically, ignoring Garion’s words.

  There was really no choice. Things were much too urgent for diplomacy. Garion feigned a frightened expression as he looked past the babbling Grolim’s shoulder. ‘Is that her coming?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  The Grolim turned his head to look in fright back over his shoulder. Garion carefully measured him and then smashed his fist into the unprotected side of the terrified man’s face. The Grolim slammed back against the wall, his eyes glazed and vacant. Then he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

  ‘Neat,’ Silk said from a dark doorway a few yards up the hall, ‘but the reason for it escapes me.’

  ‘I couldn’t get loose from him,’ Garion explained, bending to take hold of the unconscious man. He dragged him into a shadowy alcove and propped him up in a sitting position. ‘Have you got any idea where Grandfather is?’

  ‘He’s in here,’ Silk replied, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the door behind him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Let’s get in out of sight.’

  They went through the doorway to find Belgarath seated on the edge of a table. ‘What’s going on out there?’ he demanded.

  ‘I found Eriond.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘No, not really. He went into the Sanctum just as the Grolims were about to sacrifice a slave and put out the fires.’

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘I think it was him. I was there and I know that it wasn’t me. He just walked in and told them that they couldn’t sacrifice people any more, and then the fires went out. Grandfather, he didn’t make a sound when he did it—no surge, no noise, nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure it was him? I mean—it wasn’t something natural?’

  Garion shook his head. ‘No. The fires flared up and then went out like blown-out candles. There were other things going on, too. The voice talked to me and I couldn’t even move a muscle. The Grolims who were dragging the slave to the altar just let him go when Eriond told them to. Then he told them all that they won’t ever be able to relight the fires.’

  ‘Where’s the boy now?’

  ‘They’re taking him to Chabat.’

  ‘Couldn’t you stop them?’

  ‘I was told not to.’ Garion tapped his forehead.

  ‘I should have expected that,’ Belgarath said irritably. ‘We’d better go warn Pol and the others. We may have to free Eriond and then fight our way out of here.’ He opened the door, looked out into the hallway, and motioned Garion and Silk to follow him.

  Polgara’s face was deathly pale when the three of them re-entered the room where she and the others were waiting. ‘You didn’t find him,’ she said. It was not exactly a question.

  ‘Garion did,’ Belgarath replied.

  She turned to Garion. ‘Why isn’t he with you, then?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m afraid the Grolims have him, Aunt Pol.’

  ‘We’ve got a problem here, Pol,’ Belgarath said gravely. ‘From what Garion says, Eriond went into the Sanctum and put out the fires.’

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed.

  Garion spread his hands helplessly. ‘He just walked in and made the fires go out. The Grolims seized him and they’re taking him to Chabat.’

  ‘This is very serious, Belgarath,’ Sadi said. ‘Those fires are supposed to burn perpetually. If the Grolims believe that the boy was responsible, he’s in very great danger.’

  ‘I know,’ the old man agreed.

  ‘All right, then,’ Durnik said quietly. ‘We’ll just have to go take him away from them.’ He stood up, and Toth silently joined him.

  ‘But our ship is almost ready,’ Sadi protested. ‘We could be out of here with no one the wiser.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do about that now.’ Belgarath’s face was grimly determined.

  ‘Let me see if I can salvage something out of this mess before any of you do anything irreversible,’ Sadi pleaded. ‘There’ll always be time for more direct action if I can’t talk our way out of this.’

  Garion looked around. ‘Where’s Ce’Nedra?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Polgara replied. ‘Liselle’s with her.’

  ‘Is she all right? Silk said that she was upset. She isn’t sick again, is she?’

  ‘No, Garion. It was the sounds coming from the Sanctum. She couldn’t t
olerate them.’

  A heavy fist suddenly pounded on the bolted door. Garion jumped and instinctively reached for his sword. ‘Open up in there!’ a harsh voice commanded from outside.

  ‘Quickly,’ Sadi hissed, ‘all of you get back into your cells and try to look as if you’ve been sleeping when you come out.’

  They hurried back into the cells and waited breathlessly while the thin eunuch went to the door and unbolted it. ‘What’s the matter, reverend sirs?’ he asked mildly as the Grolims burst into the room with drawn weapons.

  ‘You have been summoned to an audience with the Hierarch, slaver,’ one of them snarled. ‘You and all your servants.’

  ‘We’re honored,’ Sadi murmured.

  ‘You’re not being honored. You’re to be interrogated. I’d advise you to speak the truth, because Agachak has the power to pull you very slowly out of your skin if you lie to him.’

  ‘What an unpleasant notion. Has the Hierarch returned from the Drojim Palace then?’

  ‘Word has been sent to him of the monstrous crime one of your servants has committed.’

  ‘Crime? What crime?’

  The Grolim ignored him. ‘On Chabat’s orders, you are all to be confined until Agachak returns to the Temple.’

  Garion and the others were roughly shaken out of their feigned sleep and marched through the smoky corridors and down a narrow flight of stone steps into the basement. Unlike the rooms above, these cells were secured with barred iron doors, and the narrow halls had about them that peculiar sour odor that permeates prisons and dungeons the world over. One of the Grolims opened a barred door and gestured for them to enter.

  ‘Is this really necessary, good Priest?’ Sadi protested.

  The Grolim put his hand threateningly on his sword hilt.

  ‘Calm yourself, sir,’ Sadi said. ‘I was merely asking.’

  ‘Inside! Now!’

  They all filed into the cell, and the black-robed priest slammed the door behind them. The sound of the key grating in the lock seemed very loud for some reason.

  ‘Garion,’ Ce’Nedra said in a frightened little voice, ‘what’s happening? Why are they doing this?’