Magician's Gambit Part 23

"Careful, Holy Gorim," Silk warned. "The Princess is Tolnedran. If you show her that kind of wealth, she may go into hysterics right before your eyes."

"I don't find that particularly amusing, Prince Kheldar," Ce'Nedra told him in a frosty tone.

"I'm overcome with remorse, your Imperial Highness," he apologized with towering hypocrisy and a florid bow.

In spite of herself, the princess laughed. The rat-faced little Drasnian was so absolutely outrageous that she found it impossible to remain angry with him.

"You'll be as my beloved granddaughter while you stay in Ulgo, Princess," the Gorim told her. "We can walk together beside our silent lakes and explore long forgotten caves. And we can talk. The world outside knows little of Ulgo. It may well be that you will become the very first stranger to understand us."

Ce'Nedra impulsively reached out to take his frail old hand in hers. He was a dear old man. "I'll be honored, Holy Gorim," she told him with complete sincerity.

They stayed that night in comfortable quarters in the Gorim's pyramid-shaped house -though the terms night and day had no meaning in this strange land beneath the earth. The following morning several Ulgos led the horses into the Gorim's cavern, traveling, the princess a.s.sumed, by some longer route than the one the party had followed, and her friends made their preparations to leave. Ce'Nedra sat to one side, feeling terribly alone already. Her eyes moved from face to face as she tried to fix each of them in her memory. When she came at last to Garion, her eyes brimmed.

Irrationally, she had already begun to worry about him. He was so impulsive. She knew that he'd do things that would put him in danger once he was out of her sight. To be sure, Polgara would be there to watch aver him, but it wasn't the same. She felt quite suddenly angry with him for all the foolish things he was going to do and for the worry his careless behavior was going to cause her. She glared at him, wishing that he would do something for which she could scold him.

She had determined that she would not follow them out of the Gorim's house - that she would not stand forlornly at the edge of the water staring after them as they departed - but as they all filed out through the heavy-arched doorway, her resolution crumbled. Without thinking she ran after Garion and caught his arm.

He turned with surprise, and she stretched up on her tiptoes, took his face between her tiny hands and kissed him. "You must be careful," she commanded. Then she kissed him again, spun and ran sobbing back into the house, leaving him staring after her in bafiied astonishment.

Part Four - CTHOL MURGOS

Chapter Nineteen.

THEY HAD BEEN In the darkness for days. The single dim light Relg carried could only provide a point of reference, something to follow. The darkness pressed against Garion's face, and he stumbled along the uneven floor with one hand thrust out in front of him to keep himself from banging his head into unseen rocks. It was not only the musty smelling darkness, however. He could sense the oppressive weight of the mountains above him and on all sides. The stone seemed to push in on him; he was closed in, sealed up in miles of solid rock. He fought continually with the faint, fluttering edges of panic and he often clenched his teeth to keep from screaming.

There seemed to be no purpose to the twisting, turning route Relg followed. At the branching of pa.s.sageways, his choices seemed random, but always he moved with steady confidence through the dark, murmuring caves where the memory of sounds whispered in the dank air, voices out of the past echoing endlessly, whispering, whispering. Relg's air of confidence as he led them was the only thing that kept Garion from giving in to unreasoning panic.

At one point the zealot stopped.

"What's wrong?" Silk asked sharply, his voice carrying that same faint edge of panic that Garion felt gnawing at his own awareness.

"I have to cover my eyes here," Relg replied. He was wearing a peculiarly fashioned shirt of leaf mail, a strange garment formed of overlapping metal scales, belted at the waist and with a snug-fitting hood that left only his face exposed. From his belt hung a heavy, hookppointed knife, a weapon that made Garion cold just to look at it. He drew a piece of cloth out from under his mail shirt and carefully tied it over his face.

"Why are you doing that?" Durnik asked him.

"There's a vein of quartz in the cavern just ahead," Relg told him. "It reflects sunlight down from the outside. The light is very bright."

"How can you tell which way to go if you're blindfolded?" Silk protested.

"The cloth isn't that thick. I can see through it well enough. Let's go.

They rounded a corner in the gallery they were following, and Garion saw light ahead. He resisted an impulse to run toward it. They moved on, the hooves of the horses Hettar was leading clattering on the stone floor. The lighted cavern was huge, and it was filled with a glittering crystal light. A gleaming band of quartz angled across the ceiling, illuminating the cavern with a blazing radiance. Great points of stone hung like icicles from the ceiling, and other points rose from the floor to meet them. In the center of the cavern another underground lake stretched, its surface rippled by a tiny waterfall trickling down into its upper end with an endless tinkling sound that echoed in the cave like a little silver bell and joined harmoniously with the faint, remembered sigh of the singing of the Ulgos miles behind. Garion's eyes were dazzled by color that seemed to be everywhere. The prisms in the crystalline quartz twisted the light, breaking it into colored fragments and filling the cave with the multihued light of the rainbow. Garion found himself quite suddenly wishing that he could show the dazzling cave to Ce'Nedra, and the thought puzzled him.

"Hurry," Relg urged them, holding one hand across his brow as if to further shade his already veiled eyes.

"Why not stop here?" Barak suggested. "We need some rest, and this looks like a good place."

"It's the worst place in all the caves," Relg told him. "Hurry."

"Maybe you like the dark," Barak said, "but the rest of us aren't that fond of it." He looked around at the cave.

"Protect your eyes, you fool," Relg snapped.

"I don't care for your tone, friend."

"You'll be blind once we get past this place if you don't. It's taken your eyes two days to get used to the dark. You'll lose all of that if you stay here too long."

Barak stared hard at the Ulgo for a moment. Then he grunted and nodded shortly. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't understand." He reached out to put his hand on Relg's shoulder in apology.

"Don't touch me!" Relg cried, shrinking away from the big hand.

"What's the matter?"

"Just don't touch me - not ever." Relg hurried on ahead.

"What's the matter with him?" Barak demanded.

"He doesn't want you to defile him," Belgarath explained.

"Defile him? Defile him?"

"He's very concerned about his personal purity. The way he sees it, any kind of touch can soil him."

"Soil? He's as dirty as a pig in a wallow."

"It's a different kind of dirt. Let's move on."

Barak strode along behind the rest of them, grumbling and sputtering in outrage. They moved into another dark pa.s.sageway, and Garion looked longingly back over his shoulder at the fading light from the glowing cavern behind. Then they rounded a corner and the light was gone.

There was no way to keep track of time in the murmuring darkness. They stumbled on, pausing now and then to eat or to rest, though Garion's sleep was filled with nightmares about mountains crushing in on him. He had almost given up all hope of ever seeing the sky again when the first faint cobweb touch of moving air brushed his cheek. It had been, as closely as he could judge, five days since they had left the last dimly lighted gallery of the Ulgos behind and plunged into this eternal night. At first he thought the faint hint of warmer air might only be his imagination, but then he caught the scent of trees and gra.s.s in the musty air of the cave, and he knew that somewhere ahead there lay an opening - a way out.

The touch of warmer outside air grew stronger, and the smell of gra.s.s began to fill the pa.s.sageway along which they crept. The floor began to slope upward, and imperceptibly it grew less dark. It seemed somehow that they moved up out of endless night toward the light of the first morning in the history of the world. The horses, plodding along at the rear, had also caught the scent of fresh air, and their pace quickened. Relg, however, moved slower, and then slower still. Finally he stopped altogether. The faint metallic rustling of his leaf mail shirt spoke loudly for him. Relg was trembling, bracing himself for what lay ahead. He bound his veil across his face again, mumbling something over and over in the snarling language of the Ulgos, fervent, almost pleading. Once his eyes were covered, he moved on again, reluctantly, his feet almost dragging.

Then there was golden light ahead. The mouth of the pa.s.sageway was a jagged, irregular opening with a stiff tangle of limbs sharply outlined in front of it. With a sudden clatter of little hooves, the colt, ignoring Hettar's sharp command, bolted for the opening and plunged out into the light.

Belgarath scratched at his whiskers, squinting after the little animal. "Maybe you'd better take him and his mother with you when we separate," he said to Hettar. "He seems to have a little trouble taking things seriously, and Cthol Murgos is a very serious place."

Hettar nodded gravely.

"I can't," Relg blurted suddenly, turning his back to the light and pressing himself against the rock wall of the pa.s.sageway. "I can't do it."

"Of course you can," Aunt Pol said comfortingly to him. "We'll go out slowly so you can get used to it a little at a time."

"Don't touch me," Relg replied almost absently.

"That's going to get very tiresome," Barak growled.

Garion and the rest of them pushed ahead eagerly, their hunger for light pulling at them. They shoved their way roughly through the tangle of bushes at the mouth of the cave and, blinking and shading their eyes, they emerged into the sunlight. The light at first stabbed Garion's eyes painfully; but after a few moments, he found that he could see again. The partially concealed entrance to the caves was near the midpoint of a rocky hillside. Behind them, the snow-covered mountains of Ulgo glittered in the morning sun, outlined against the deep blue sky, and a vast plain spread before them like a sea. The tall gra.s.s was golden with autumn, and the morning breeze touched it into long, undulating waves. The plain reached to the horizon, and Garion felt as if he had just awakened from a nightmare.

Just inside the mouth of the cave behind them, Relg knelt with his back to the light, praying and beating at his shoulders and chest with his fists.

"Now what's he doing?" Barak demanded.

"It's a kind of purification ritual," Belgarath explained. "He's trying to purge himself of all unholiness and draw the essence of the caves into his soul. He thinks it may help to sustain him while he's outside."

"How longs he going to be at it?"

"About an hour, I'd imagine. It's a fairly complicated ritual."

Relg stopped praying long enough to bind a second veil across his face on top of the first one.

"If he wraps any more cloth around his head, he's likely to smother," Silk observed.

"I'd better get started," Hettar said, tightening the straps on his saddle. "Is there anything else you wanted me to tell Cho-Hag?"

"Tell him to pa.s.s the word along to the others about what's happened so far," Belgarath answered. "Things are getting to the point where I'd like everybody to be more or less alert."

Hettar nodded.

"Do you know where you are?" Barak asked him.

"Of course." The tall man looked out at the seemingly featureless plain before him.

"It's probably going to take us at least a month to get to Rak Cthol and back," Belgarath advised. "If we get a chance, we'll light signal fires on top of the eastern escarpment before we start down. Tell Cho-Hag how important it is for him to be waiting for us. We don't want Murgos blundering into Algaria. I'm not ready for a war just yet."

"We'll be there," Hettar replied, swinging up into his saddle. "Be careful in Cthol Murgos." He turned his horse and started down the hill toward the plain with the mare and the colt tagging along behind him. The colt stopped once to look back at Garion, gave a forlorn little whinny, then turned to follow his mother.

Barak shook his head sombrely. "I'm going to miss Hettar," he rumbled.

"Cthol Murgos wouldn't be a good place for Hettar," Silk pointed out. "We'd have to put a leash on him."

"I know that." Barak sighed. "But I'll miss him all the same."

"Which direction do we take?" Mandorallen asked, squinting out at the gra.s.sland.

Belgarath pointed to the southeast. "That way. We'll cross the upper end of the Vale to the escarpment and then go through the southern tip of Mishrak ac Thull. The Thulls don't put out patrols as regularly as the Murgos do."

"Thulls don't do much of anything unless they have to," Silk noted. "They're too preoccupied with trying to avoid Grolims."

"When do we start?" Durnik asked.

"As soon as Relg finishes his prayers," Belgarath replied.

"We'll have time for breakfast then," Barak said dryly.

They rode all that day across the flat gra.s.sland of southern Algaria beneath the deep blue autumn sky. Relg, wearing an old hooded tunic of Durnik's over his mail shirt, rode badly, with his legs sticking out stifliy. He seemed to be concentrating more on keeping his face down than on watching where he was going.

Barak watched sourly, with disapproval written plainly on his face. "I'm not trying to tell you your business, Belgarath," he said after several hours, "but that one's going to be trouble before we're finished with this."

"The light hurts his eyes, Barak," Aunt Pol told the big man, "and he's not used to riding. Don't be so quick to criticize."

Barak clamped his mouth shut, his expression still disparaging.

"At least we'll be able to count on his staying sober," Aunt Pol observed primly. "Which is more than I can say about some members of this little group."

Barak coughed uncomfortably.

They set up for the night on the treeless bank of a meandering stream. Once the sun had gone down, Relg seemed less apprehensive, though he made an obvious point of not looking directly at the driftwood fire. Then he looked up and saw the first stars in the evening sky. He gaped up at them in horror, his unveiled face breaking out in a glistening sweat. He covered his head with his arms and collapsed face down on the earth with a strangled cry.

"Relg!" Garion exclaimed, jumping to the stricken man's side and putting his hands on him without thinking.

"Don't touch me," Relg gasped automatically.

"Don't be stupid. What's wrong? Are you sick?"

"The sky," Relg croaked in despair. "The sky! It terrifies me!"

"The sky?" Garion was baffled. "What's wrong with the sky?" He looked up at the familiar stars.

"There's no end to it," Relg groaned. "It goes up forever."

Quite suddenly Garion understood. In the caves he had been afraid unreasoningly afraid - because he had been closed in. Out here under the open sky, Relg suffered from the same kind of blind terror. Garion realized with a kind of shock that quite probably Relg had never been outside the caves of Ulgo in his entire life. "It's all right," he a.s.sured him comfortingly. "The sky can't hurt you. It's just up there. Don't pay any attention to it."

"I can't bear it."

"Don't look at it."

"I still know it's there - all that emptiness."

Garion looked helplessly at Aunt Pol. She made a quick gesture that told him to keep talking. "It's not empty," he floundered. "It's full of things - all kinds of things - clouds, birds, sunlight, stars-"

"What?" Relg lifted his face up out of his hands. "What are those?"

"Clouds? Everyone knows what-" Garion stopped. Obviously Relg did not know what clouds were. He'd never seen a cloud in his life. Garion tried to rearrange his thoughts to take that into account. It was not going to be easy to explain. He took in a deep breath. "All right. Let's start with clouds, then."

It took a long time, and Garion was not really sure that Relg understood or if he was simply clinging to the words to avoid thinking about the sky. After clouds, birds were a bit easier, although feathers were very hard to explain.

"UL spoke to you," Relg interrupted Garion's description of wings. "He called you Belgarion. Is that your name?"

"Well-" Garion replied uncomfortably. "Not really. Actually my name is Garion, but I think the other name is supposed to be mine too sometime later, I believe - when I'm older."