‘Hush now, girl,’ Feldegast warned softly. He jumped to his feet and quickly secured a piece of canvas across the opening of the fireplace, plunging the cave into near-darkness.
Another soulless bellow echoed up the ravine. The sound seemed filled with a dreadful malevolence.
‘Can we put a name to whatever it is?’ Sadi asked in a quiet voice.
‘It’s nothing I’ve ever heard before,’ Durnik assured him.
‘I think I have,’ Belgarath said bleakly. ‘When I was in Morindland, there was a magician up there who thought it was amusing to turn his demon out at night to hunt. It made a sound like that.’
‘What an unsavory practice,’ the eunuch murmured. ‘What do demons eat?’
‘You really wouldn’t want to know,’ Silk replied. He turned to Belgarath. ‘Would you care to hazard a guess at just how big that thing might be?’
‘It varies. From the amount of noise it’s making, though, I’d say that it’s fairly large.’
‘Then it wouldn’t be able to get into this cave, would it?’
‘That’s a gamble I think I’d rather not take.’
‘It can sniff out our tracks, I assume?’
The old man nodded.
‘Things are definitely going to pieces here, Belgarath. Can you do anything at all to drive it off?’ The little man turned to Polgara. ‘Or perhaps you, Polgara. You dealt with the demon Chabat raised back in the harbor at Rak Urga.’
‘I had help, Silk,’ she reminded him. ‘Aldur came to my aid.’
Belgarath began to pace up and down, scowling at the floor.
‘Well?’ Silk pressed.
‘Don’t rush me,’ the old man growled. ‘I might be able to do something,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but if I do, it’s going to make so much noise that every Grolim in Katakor is going to hear it—and probably Zandramas as well. We’ll have the Chandim or her Grolims hot on our heels all the way to Ashaba.’
‘Why not use the Orb?’ Eriond suggested, looking up from the bridle he was repairing.
‘Because the Orb makes even more noise than I do. If Garion uses the Orb to chase off a demon, they’re going to hear it in Gandahar all the way on the other side of the continent.’
‘But it would work, wouldn’t it?’
Belgarath looked at Polgara.
‘I thank he’s right, father,’ she said. ‘A demon would flee from the Orb—even if it were fettered by its master. An unfettered demon would flee even faster.’
‘Can you think of anything else?’ he asked her.
‘A God,’ she shrugged. ‘All demons—no matter how powerful—flee from the Gods. Do you happen to know any Gods?’
‘A few,’ he replied, ‘but they’re busy right now.’
Another shattering bellow resounded through the mountains. It seemed to come from right outside the cave.
‘It’s time for some kind of decision, old man,’ Silk said urgently.
‘It’s the noise the Orb makes that bothers you?’ Eriond asked.
‘That and the light. That blue beacon that lights up every time Garion draws the sword attracts a lot of attention, you know.’
‘You aren’t all suggesting that I fight a demon, are you?’ Garion demanded indignantly.
‘Of course not,’ Belgarath snorted. ‘Nobody fights a demon—nobody can. All we’re discussing is the possibility of driving it off.’ He began to pace up and down again, scuffing his feet in the sand. ‘I hate to announce our presence here,’ he muttered.
Outside, the demon bellowed again, and the huge granite slab partially covering the cave-mouth began to grate back and forth as if some huge force were rocking it to try to move it aside.
‘Our options are running out, Belgarath,’ Silk told him. ‘And so is our time. If you don’t do something quickly, that thing’s going to be in here with us.’
‘Try not to pinpoint our location to the Grolims,’ Belgarath said to Garion.
‘You really want me to go out there and do it?’
‘Of course I do. Silk was right. Time’s run out on us.’
Garion went to his bunk and fished his mail shirt out from under it.
‘You won’t need that. It wouldn’t do any good anyway.’
Garion reached over his shoulder and drew his great sword. He set its point in the sand and peeled the soft leather sheath from its hilt. ‘I think this is a mistake,’ he declared. Then he reached out and put his hand on the Orb.
‘Let me, Garion,’ Eriond said. He rose, came over, and covered Garion’s hand with his own.
Garion gave him a startled look.
‘It knows me, remember?’ the young man explained, ‘and I’ve got a sort of an idea.’
A peculiar tingling sensation ran through Garion’s hand and arm, and he became aware that Eriond was communing with the Orb in a manner even more direct than he himself was capable of. It was as if during the months that the boy had been the bearer of the Orb, the stone had in some peculiar way taught him its own language.
There was a dreadful scratching coming from the mouth of the cave, as if huge talons were clawing at the stone slab.
‘Be careful out there,’ Belgarath cautioned. ‘Don’t take any chances. Just hold up the sword so that it can see it. The Orb should do the rest.’
Garion sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, moving toward the cave mouth with Eriond directly behind him.
‘Where are you going?’ Polgara asked the blond young man.
‘With Belgarion,’ Eriond replied. ‘We both need to talk with the Orb to get this right. I’ll explain it later, Polgara.’
The slab at the cave mouth was rocking back and forth again. Garion ducked quickly out from behind it and ran several yards up the ravine with Eriond on his heels. Then he turned and held up the sword.
‘Not yet,’ Eriond warned. ‘It hasn’t seen us.’
There was an overpoweringly foul odor in the ravine, and then, as Garion’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, he saw the demon outlined against the clouds rolling overhead. It was enormous, its shoulders blotting out half the sky. It had long, pointed ears like those of a vast cat, and its dreadful eyes burned with a green fire that cast a fitful glow across the floor of the ravine.
It bellowed and reached toward Garion and Eriond with a great, scaly claw.
‘Now, Belgarion,’ Erion said quite calmly.
Garion lifted his arms, holding his sword directly in front of him with its point aimed at the sky, and then he released the curbs he had placed on the Orb.
He was not in the least prepared for what happened. A huge noise shook the earth and echoed off nearby mountains, causing giant trees miles away to tremble. Not only did the great blade take fire, but the entire sky suddenly shimmered an intense sapphire blue as if it had been ignited. Blue flame shot from horizon to horizon, and the vast sound continued to shake the earth.
The demon froze, its vast, tooth-studded muzzle turned upward to the flaming blue sky in terror. Grimly, Garion advanced on the thing, still holding his burning sword before him. The beast flinched back from him, trying to shield its face from the intense blue light. It screamed as if suddenly gripped by an intolerable agony. It stumbled back, falling and scrambling to its feet again. Then it took one more look at the blazing sky, turned, and fled howling back down the ravine with a peculiar loping motion as all four of its claws tore at the earth.
‘That is your idea of quiet?’ Belgarath thundered from the cave mouth. ‘And what’s all that?’ He pointed a trembling finger at the still-illuminated sky.
‘It’s really all right, Belgarath,’ Eriond told the infuriated old man. ‘You didn’t want the sound to lead the Grolims to us, so we just made it general through the whole region. Nobody could have pinpointed its source.’
Belgarath blinked. Then he frowned for a moment. ‘What about all the light?’ he asked in a more mollified tone of voice.
‘It’s more or less the same with that,’ Eriond explained calmly. ‘If you’ve
got a single blue fire in the mountains on a dark night, everybody can see it. If the whole sky catches on fire, though, nobody can really tell where it’s coming from.’
‘It does sort of make sense, Grandfather,’ Garion said.
‘Are they all right, father?’ Polgara asked from behind the old man.
‘What could possibly have hurt them? Garion can level mountains with that sword of his. He very nearly did, as a matter of fact. The whole Karandese range rang like a bell.’ He looked up at the still-flickering sky. ‘Can you turn that off?’ he asked.
‘Oh,’ Garion said. He reversed his sword and resheathed it in the scabbard strapped across his back. The fire in the sky died.
‘We really had to do it that way, Belgarath,’ Eriond continued. ‘We needed the light and the sound to frighten off the demon and we had to do it in such a way that the Grolims couldn’t follow it, so—’ He spread both hands and shrugged.
‘Did you know about this?’ Belgarath asked Garion.
‘Of course, Grandfather,’ Garion lied.
Belgarath grunted. ‘All right. Come back inside,’ he said.
Garion bent slightly toward Eriond’s ear. ‘Why didn’t you tell me what we were going to do?’ he whispered.
‘There wasn’t really time, Belgarion.’
‘The next time we do something like that, take time. I almost dropped the sword when the ground started shaking under me.’
‘That wouldn’t have been a good idea at all.’
‘I know.’
A fair number of rocks had been shaken from the ceiling of the cave and lay on the sandy floor. Dust hung thickly in the air.
‘What happened out there?’ Silk demanded in a shaky voice.
‘Oh, not much,’ Garion replied in a deliberately casual voice. ‘We just chased it away, that’s all.’
‘There wasn’t really any help for it, I guess,’ Belgarath said, ‘but just about everybody in Katakor knows that something’s moving around in these mountains, so we’re going to have to start being very careful.’
‘How much farther is it to Ashaba?’ Sadi asked him.
‘About a day’s ride.’
‘Will we make it in time?’
‘Only just. Let’s all get some sleep.’
Garion had the same dream again that night. He was not really sure that it was a dream, since dreaming usually involved sight as well as sound, but all there was to this one was that persistent, despairing wail and the sense of horror with which it filled him. He sat up on his bunk, trembling and sweat-covered. After a time, he drew his blanket about his shoulders, clasped his arms about his knees, and stared at the ruddy coals in the fireplace until he dozed off again.
It was still cloudy the following morning, and they rode cautiously back down the ravine to the rutted track leading up into the foothills of the mountains. Silk and Feldegast ranged out in front of them as scouts to give them warning should any dangers arise.
After they had ridden a league or so, the pair came back down the narrow road. Their faces were sober, and they motioned for silence.
‘There’s a group of Karands camped around the road up ahead,’ Silk reported in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper.
‘An ambush?’ Sadi asked him.
‘No,’ Feldegast replied in a low voice. ‘They’re asleep fer the most part. From the look of things, I’d say that they spent the night in some sort of religious observance, an’ so they’re probably exhausted—or still drunk.’
‘Can we get around them?’ Belgarath asked.
‘It shouldn’t be too much trouble,’ Silk replied. ‘We can just go off into the trees and circle around until we’re past the spot where they’re sleeping.’
The old man nodded. ‘Lead the way,’ he said.
They left the road and angled off into the timber, moving at a cautious walk.
‘What sort of ceremony were they holding?’ Durnik asked quietly.
Silk shrugged. ‘It looked pretty obscure,’ Silk told him. ‘They’ve got an altar set up with skulls on posts along the back of it. There seems to have been quite a bit of drinking going on—as well as some other things.’
‘What sort of things?’
Silk’s face grew slightly pained. ‘They have women with them,’ he answered disgustedly. ‘There’s some evidence that things got a bit indiscriminate.’
Durnik’s cheeks suddenly turned bright red.
‘Aren’t you exaggerating a bit, Kheldar?’ Velvet asked him.
‘No, not really. Some of them were still celebrating.’
‘A bit more important than quaint local religious customs, though,’ Feldegast added, still speaking quietly, ‘be the peculiar pets the Karands was keepin’.’
‘Pets?’ Belgarath asked.
‘Perhaps ‘tis not the right word, Ancient One, but sittin’ round the edges of the camp was a fair number of the Hounds—an’ they was makin’ no move t’ devour the celebrants.’
Belgarath looked at him sharply. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve seen enough of the Hounds of Torak t’ recognize ’em when I see ’em.’
‘So there is some kind of an alliance between Mengha and Urvon,’ the old man said.
‘Yer wisdom is altogether a marvel, old man. It must be a delight beyond human imagination t’ have the benefit of ten thousand years experience t’ guide ye in comin’ t’ such conclusions.’
‘Seven thousand,’ Belgarath corrected.
‘Seven—ten—what matter?’
‘Seven thousand,’ Belgarath repeated with a slightly offended expression.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They rode that afternoon into a dead wasteland, a region foul and reeking, where white snags poked the skeletonlike fingers of their limbs imploringly at a dark, roiling sky and where dank ponds of oily, stagnant water exuded the reek of decay. Clots of fungus lay in gross profusion about the trunks of long-dead trees and matted-down weeds struggled up through ashy soil toward a sunless sky.
‘It looks almost like Cthol Mishrak, doesn’t it?’ Silk asked, looking about distastefully.
‘We’re getting very close to Ashaba,’ Belgarath told him. ‘Something about Torak did this to the ground.’
‘Didn’t he know?’ Velvet said sadly.
‘Know what?’ Ce’Nedra asked her.
‘That his very presence befouled the earth?’
‘No,’ Ce’Nedra replied, ‘I don’t think he did. His mind was so twisted that he couldn’t even see it. The sun hid from him, and he saw that only as a mark of his power and not as a sign of its repugnance for him.’
It was a peculiarly astute observation, which to some degree surprised Garion. His wife oftentimes seemed to have a wide streak of giddiness in her nature which made it far too easy to think of her as a child, a misconception reinforced by her diminutive size. But he had frequently found it necessary to reassess this tiny, often willful little woman who shared his life. Ce’Nedra might sometimes behave foolishly, but she was never stupid. She looked out at the world with a clear, unwavering vision that saw much more than gowns and jewels and costly perfumes. Quite suddenly he was so proud of her that he thought his heart would burst.
‘How much farther is it to Ashaba?’ Sadi asked in a subdued tone. ‘I hate to admit it, but this particular swamp depresses me.’
‘You?’ Durnik said. ‘I thought you liked swamps.’
‘A swamp should be green and rich with life, Goodman,’ the eunuch replied. ‘There’s nothing here but death.’ He looked at Velvet. ‘Have you got Zith, Margravine?’ he asked rather plaintively. ‘I’m feeling a bit lonesome just now.’
‘She’s sleeping at the moment, Sadi,’ she told him, her hand going to the front of her bodice in an oddly protective fashion. ‘She’s safe and warm and very content. She’s even purring.’
‘Resting in her perfumed little bower.’ He sighed. ‘There are times when I envy her.’
‘Why, Sadi,’ she said, blushing slightly, lowering her
eyes, and then flashing her dimples at him.
‘Merely a clinical observation, my dear Liselle,’ he said to her rather sadly. ‘There are times when I wish it could be otherwise, but . . .’ He sighed again.
‘Do you really have to carry that snake there?’ Silk asked the blond girl.
‘Yes, Kheldar,’ she replied, ‘as a matter of fact, I do.’
‘You didn’t answer my question, Ancient One,’ Sadi said to Belgarath. ‘How much farther is it to Ashaba?’
‘It’s up there,’ the old sorcerer replied shortly, pointing toward a ravine angling sharply up from the reeking wasteland. ‘We should make it by dark.’
‘A particularly unpleasant time to visit a haunted house,’ Feldegast added.
As they started up the ravine, there came a sudden hideous growling from the dense undergrowth to one side of the weedy track, and a huge black Hound burst out of the bushes, its eyes aflame and with foam dripping from its cruel fangs. ‘Now you are mine!’ it snarled, its jaws biting off the words.
Ce’Nedra screamed, and Garion’s hand flashed back over his shoulder; but quick as he was, Sadi was even quicker. The eunuch spurred his terrified horse directly at the hulking dog. The beast rose, its jaws agape, but Sadi hurled a strangely colored powder of about the consistency of coarse flour directly into its face.
The Hound shook its head, still growling horribly. Then it suddenly screamed, a shockingly human sound. Its eyes grew wide in terror. Then it began desperately to snap at the empty air around it, whimpering and trying to cringe back. As suddenly as it had attacked, it turned and fled howling back into the undergrowth.
‘What did you do?’ Silk demanded.
A faint smile touched Sadi’s slender features. ‘When ancient Belgarath told me about Torak’s Hounds, I took certain precautions,’ he replied, his head slightly cocked as he listened to the terrified yelps of the huge dog receding off into the distance.
‘Poison?’
‘No. It’s really rather contemptible to poison a dog if you don’t have to. The Hound simply inhaled some of that powder I threw in its face. Then it began to see some very distracting things—very distracting.’ He smiled again. ‘Once I saw a cow accidentally sniff the flower that’s the main ingredient of the powder. The last time I saw her, she was trying to climb a tree.’ He looked over at Belgarath. ‘I hope you didn’t mind my taking action without consulting you, Ancient One, but as you’ve pointed out, your sorcery might alert others in the region, and I had to move quickly to deal with the situation before you felt compelled to unleash it anyway.’
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