Magician's Gambit Part 19

Silk gave him a disgusted look, then glanced up at the scudding gray clouds overhead. He jumped across the glowing coals of their fire and went over to where Belgarath sat staring into the icy river. "We're going to have to get off this bar, Belgarath," he urged. "The weather's going bad on us again, and we'll all freeze to death if we stay out here in the middle of the river tonight."

"Leave me alone," Belgarath muttered shortly, still staring at the river.

"Polgara?" Silk turned to her.

"Just stay away from him for a while," she told him. "Go find a sheltered place for us to stay for a few days."

"I'll go with you," Barak offered, hobbling toward his horse.

"You'll stay here," Aunt Pol declared firmly. "You creak like a wagon with a broken axle. I want to have a look at you before you get a chance to damage yourself permanently."

"I know a place," Ce'Nedra said, rising and pulling her cloak about her shoulders. "I saw it when we were coming down the river. I'll show you."

Silk looked inquiringly at Aunt Pol.

"Go ahead," she told him. "It's safe enough now. Nothing else would live in the same valley with an Eldrak."

Silk laughed. "I wonder why? Coming, Princess?" The two of them mounted and rode off through the snow.

"Shouldn't Durnik be coming around?" Garion asked his Aunt.

"Let him sleep," she replied wearily. "He'll have a blinding headache when he wakes up."

"Aunt Pol?"

"Yes?"

"Who was the other wolf?"

"My mother, Poledra."

"But isn't she-"

"Yes. It was her spirit."

"You can do that?" Garion was stunned by the enormity of it.

"Not alone," she said. "You had to help me."

"Is that why I feel so-" It was an effort even to talk.

"It took everything we could both raise to do it. Don't ask so many questions just now, Garion. I'm very tired and I still have many things to do."

"Is Grandfather all right?"

"He'll come around. Mandorallen, come here."

The knight stepped over the coals at the neck of the bar and walked slowly toward her, his hand pressed lightly against his chest.

"You'll have to take off your shirt," she told him. "And please sit down."

About a half hour later Silk and the princess returned. "It's a good spot," Silk reported. "A thicket in a little ravine. Water, shelter - everything we need. Is anybody seriously hurt?"

"Nothing permanent." Aunt Pol was applying a salve to Barak's hairy leg.

"Do you suppose you could hurry, Polgara?" Barak asked. "It's a little chilly for standing around half-dressed."

"Stop being such a baby," she said heartlessly.

The ravine to which Silk and Ce'Nedra led them was a short way back upriver. A small mountain brook trickled from its mouth, and a dense thicket of spindly pines filled it seemingly from wall to wall. They followed the brook for a few hundred yards until they came to a small clearing in the center of the thicket. The pines around the inner edge of the clearing, pressed by the limbs of the others in the thicket, leaned inward, almost touching above the center of the open area.

"Good spot." Hettar looked around approvingly. "How did you find it?"

"She did." Silk nodded at Ce'Nedra.

"The trees told me it was here," she said. "Young pine trees babble a lot." She looked at the clearing thoughtfully. "We'll build our fire there," she decided, pointing at a spot near the brook at the upper end of the clearing, "and set up our tents along the, edge of the trees just back from it. You'll need to pile rocks around the fire and clear away all the twigs from the ground near it. The trees are very nervous about the fire. They promised to keep the wind off us, but only if we keep our fire strictly under control. I gave them my word."

A faint smile flickered across Hettar's hawklike face.

"I'm serious," she said, stamping her little foot.

"Of course, your Highness," he replied, bowing.

Because of the incapacity of the others, the work of sating up the tents and building the firepit fell largely upon Silk and Hettar. Ce'Nedra commanded them like a little general, snapping out her orders in a clear, firm voice. She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.

Garion was sure that it was some trick of the fading light, but the trees almost seemed to draw back when the fire first flared up, though after a while they seemed to lean back in again to arch protectively over the little clearing. Wearily he got to his feet and began to gather sticks and dead limbs for firewood.

"Now," Ce'Nedra said, bustling about the fire in a thoroughly businesslike way, "what would you all like for supper?"

They stayed in their protected little clearing for three days while their battered warriors and Mandorallen's horse recuperated from the encounter with the Eldrak. The exhaustion which had fallen upon Garion when Aunt Pol had summoned all his strength to help call the spirit of Poledra was largely gone after one night's sleep, though he tired easily during the next day. He found Ce'Nedra's officiousness in her domain near the fire almost unbearable, so he pa.s.sed some time helping Durnik hammer the deep crease out of Mandorallen's breastplate; after that, he spent as much time as possible with the horses. He began teaching the little colt a few simple tricks, though he had never attempted training animals before. The colt seemed to enjoy it, although his attention wandered frequently.

The incapacity of Durnik, Barak, and Mandorallen was easy to understand, but Belgarath's deep silence and seeming indifference to all around him worried Garion. The old man appeared to be sunk in a melancholy reverie that he could not or would not shake off.

"Aunt Pol," Garion said finally on the afternoon of the third day, "you'd better do something. We'll be ready to leave soon, and Grandfather has to be able to show us the way. Right now I don't think he even cares where he is."

Aunt Pol looked across at the old sorcerer, who sat on a rock, staring into the fire. "Possibly you're right. Come with me." She led the way around the fire and stopped directly in front of the old man. "All right, father," she said crisply, "I think that's about enough."

"Go away, Polgara," he told her.

"No, father," she replied. "It's time for you to put it away and come back to the real world."

"That was a cruel thing to do, Pol," he said reproachfully.

"To mother? She didn't mind."

"How do you know that? You never knew her. She died when you were born."

"What's that got to do with it?" She looked at him directly. "Father," she declared pointedly, "you of all people should know that mother was extremely strong-minded. She's always been with me, and we know each other very well."

He looked dubious.

"She has her part to play in this just the same as the rest of us do. If you'd been paying attention all these years, you'd have realized that she's never really been gone."

The old man looked around a little guiltily.

"Precisely," Aunt Pol said with just the hint of a barb in her voice. "You really should have behaved yourself, you know. Mother's very tolerant for the most part, but there were times when she was quite vexed with you."

Belgarath coughed uncomfortably.

"Now it's time for you to pull yourself out of this and stop feeling sorry for yourself," she continued crisply.

His eyes narrowed. "That's not entirely fair, Polgara," he replied.

"I don't have time to be fair, father."

"Why did you choose that particular form?" he asked with a hint of bitterness.

"I didn't, father. She did. It's her natural form, after all."

"I'd almost forgotten that," he mused.

"She didn't."

The old man straightened and drew back his shoulders. "Is there any food around?" he asked suddenly.

"The princess has been doing the cooking," Garion warned him. "You might want to think it over before you decide to eat anything she's had a hand in."

The next morning under a still-threatening sky, they struck their tents, packed their gear again, and rode down along the narrow bed of the brook back into the river valley.

"Did you thank the trees, dear?" Aunt Pol asked the princess.

"Yes, Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra replied. "Just before we left."

"That's nice," Aunt Pol said.

The weather continued to threaten for the next two days, and finally the blizzard broke in full fury as they approached a strangely pyramidal peak. The sloping walls of the peak were steep, rising sharply up into the swirling snow, and they seemed to have none of the random irregularities of the surrounding mountains. Though he rejected the idea immediately, Garion could not quite overcome the notion that the curiously angular peak had somehow been constructed - that its shape was the result of a conscious design.

"Prolgu," Belgarath said, pointing at the peak with one hand while he clung to his wind-whipped cloak with the other.

"How do we get up there?" Silk asked, staring at the steep walls dimly visible in the driving snow.

"There's a road," the old man replied. "It starts over there." He pointed to a vast pile of jumbled rock to one side of the peak.

"We'd better hurry then, Belgarath," Barak said. "This storm isn't going to improve much."

The old man nodded and moved his horse into the lead. "When we get up there," he shouted back to them over the sound of the shrieking wind, "we'll find the city. It's abandoned, but you may see a few things lying about-broken pots, some other things. Don't touch any of them. The Ulgos have some peculiar beliefs about Prolgu. It's a very holy place to them, and everything there is supposed to stay just where it is."

"How do we get down into the caves?" Barak asked.

"The Ulgos will let us in," Belgarath a.s.sured him. "They already know we're here."

The road that led to the mountaintop was a narrow ledge, inclining steeply up and around the sides of the peak. They dismounted before they started up and led their horses. The wind tugged at them as they climbed, and the driving snow, more pellets than flakes, stung their faces.

It took them two hours to wind their way to the top, and Garion was numb with cold by the time they got there. The wind seemed to batter at him, trying to pluck him off the ledge, and he made a special point of staying as far away from the edge as possible.

Though the wind had been brutal on the sides of the peak, once they reached the top it howled at them with unbroken force. They pa.s.sed through a broad, arched gate into the deserted city of Prolgu with snow swirling about them and the wind shrieking insanely in their ears.

There were columns lining the empty streets, tall, thick columns reaching up into the dancing snow. The buildings, all unroofed by time and the endless progression of the seasons, had a strange, alien quality about them. Accustomed to the rigid rectangularity of the structures in the other cities he had seen, Garion was unprepared for the sloped corners of Ulgo architecture. Nothing seemed exactly square. The complexity of the angles teased at his mind, suggesting a subtle sophistication that somehow just eluded him. There was a ma.s.siveness about the construction that seemed to defy time, and the weathered stones sat solidly, one atop the other, precisely as they had been placed thousands of years before.

Durnik seemed also to have noticed the peculiar nature of the structures, and his expression was one of disapproval. As they all moved behind a building to get out of the wind and to rest for a moment from the exertions of the climb, he ran his hand up one of the slanted corners. "Hadn't they ever heard of a plumb line?" he muttered critically.

"Where do we go to find the Ulgos?" Barak asked, pulling his bearskin cloak even tighter about him.

"It isn't far," Belgarath answered.

They led their horses back out into the blizzard-swept streets, past the strange, pyramidal buildings.

"An eerie place," Mandorallen said, looking around him. "How long hath it been abandoned thus?"

"Since Torak cracked the world," Belgarath replied. "About five thousand years."

They trudged across a broad street through the deepening snow to a building somewhat larger than the ones about it and pa.s.sed inside through a wide doorway surmounted by a huge stone lintel. Inside, the air hung still and calm. A few flakes of snow drifted down through the silent air, sifting through the narrow opening at the top where the roof had been and lightly dusting the stone floor.

Belgarath moved purposefully to a large black stone in the precise center of the floor. The stone was cut in such a way as to duplicate the truncated pyramidal shape of the buildings in the city, angling up to a flat surface about four feet above the floor. "Don't touch it," he warned them, carefully stepping around the stone.

"Is it dangerous?" Barak asked.

"No," Belgarath said. "It's holy. The Ulgos don't want it profaned. They believe that UL himself placed it here." He studied the floor intently, sc.r.a.ping away the thin dusting of snow with his foot in several places. "Let's see." He frowned slightly. Then he uncovered a single flagstone that seemed a slightly different color from those surrounding it. "Here we are," he grunted. "I always have to look for it. Give me your sword, Barak."

Wordlessly the big man drew his sword and handed it to the old sorcerer.

Belgarath knelt beside the flagstone he'd uncovered and rapped sharply on it three times with the pommel of Barak's heavy sword. The sound seemed to echo hollowly from underneath.

The old man waited for a moment, then repeated his signal. Nothing happened.

A third time Belgarath hammered his three measured strokes on the echoing flagstone. A slow grinding sound started in one corner of the large chamber.

"What's that?" Silk demanded nervously.

"The Ulgos," Belgarath replied, rising to his feet and dusting off his knees. "They're opening the portal to the caves."

The grinding continued and a line of faint light appeared suddenly about twenty feet out from the east wall of the chamber. The line became a crack and then slowly yawned wider as a huge stone in the floor tilted up, rising with a ponderous slowness. The light from below seemed very dim.

"Belgarath," a deep voice echoed from beneath the slowly tilting stone, "Yad ho, groja UL. "

"Yad ho, groja UL. dad mar ishum, " Belgarath responded formally. "Peed mo, Belgarath. Mar ishum Ulgo, " the unseen speaker said.

"What was that?" Garion asked in perplexity.