"I thought you might have."
Some leagues farther on, the road they were following reentered the forest, and they rode along through a cool, damp shade beneath towering evergreens.
Then, from somewhere ahead they heard a hollow, booming sound.
"I think we might want to go rather carefully until we're past that." Silk said quietly.
"What is that sound?" Sadi asked.
"Drums. There's a temple ahead."
"Out here in the forest?" The eunuch sounded surprised. "I thought that the Grolims were largely confined to the cities."
"This isn't a Grolim Temple, Sadi. It was nothing to do with the worship of Torak. As a matter of fact, the Grolims used to burn these places whenever they came across them. They were a part of the old religion of the area."
"Demon worship, you mean?"
Silk nodded. "Most of them have been long abandoned, but every so often you come across one that's still in use. The drums are a fair indication that the one just ahead is still open for business."
"Will we be able to go around them?" Durnik asked.
"It shouldn't be much trouble," the little man replied. "The Karands burn a certain fungus in their ceremonial fires. The fumes have a peculiar effect on one's senses."
"Oh?" Sadi said with a certain interest.
"Never mind," Belgarath told him. "That red case of yours has quite enough in it already."
"Just scientific curiosity, Belgarath."
"Of course. "
"What are they worshipping?" Velvet asked. "I thought that the demons had all left Karanda."
Silk was frowning. "The beat isn't right," he said.
"Have you suddenly become a music critic, Kheldar?" she asked him.
He shook his head. "I've come across these places before, and the drumming's usually pretty frenzied when they're holding their rites. That beat up ahead is too measured, It's almost as if they're waiting for something."
Sadi shrugged. "Let them wait," he said. "It's no concern of ours, is it?"
"We don't know that for sure, Sadi," Polgara told him. She looked at Belgarath. "Wait here, father," she suggested. "I'll go on ahead and take a look."
"It's too dangerous, Pol," Durnik objected.
She smiled. "They won't even pay any attention to me, Durnik." She dismounted and walked a short way up the path. Then, momentarily, she was surrounded with a kind of glowing nimbus, a hazy patch of light that had not been there before. When the light cleared, a great snowy owl hovered among the trees and then ghosted away on soft, silent wings.
"For some reason that always makes my blood run cold," Sadi murmured.
They waited while the measured drumming continued.
Garion dismounted and checked his cinch strap. Then he walked about a bit, stretching his legs.
It was perhaps ten minutes later when Polgara returned, drifting on white wings under the low‑hanging branches. When she resumed her normal shape, her face was pale and her eyes were filled with loathing. "Hideous! " she said. "Hideous!"
"What is it, Pol?" Durnik's voice was concerned.
"There's a woman in labor in that temple."
"I don't know that a temple is the right sort of place for that, but if she needed shelter‑" The smith shrugged.
"The temple was chosen quite deliberately," she replied. "The infant that's about to be born isn't human."
"But‑"
"It's a demon." Ce'Nedra gasped.
Polgara looked at Belgarath. "We have to intervene, father," she told him. "This must be stopped."
"How can it be stopped?" Velvet asked in perplexity. "I mean, if the woman's already in labor . . ." She spread her hands.
"We may have to kill her," Polgara said bleakly. "Even that may not prevent this monstrous birth. We may have to deliver the demon child and then smother it."
"No!" Ce'Nedra cried. "It's just a baby! You can't kill it"
"It's not that kind of baby, Ce'Nedra. It's half human and half demon. It's a creature of this world and a spawn of the other. If it's allowed to live, it won't be possible to banish it. It will be a perpetual horror."
"Garion!" Ce'Nedra cried. "You can't let her."
"Polgara's right, Ce'Nedra," Belgarath told her. "The creature can't be allowed to live."
"How many Karands are gathered up there?" Silk asked.
"There are a half dozen outside the temple," Polgara replied. "There may be more inside."
"However many they are, we're going to have to dispose of them," he said. "They're waiting for the birth of what they believe is a God, and they'll defend the newborn demon to the death."
"All right, then," Garion said bleakly', "let's go oblige them."
"You're not condoning this?" Ce'Nedra exclaimed.
"I don't like it," he admitted, "but I don't see that we've got much choice." He looked at Polgara. "There's absolutely no way it could be sent back to the place where demons originate?" he asked her.
"None whatsoever," she said flatly. "This world will be it's home. It wasn't summoned and it has no master.
Within two years, it will be a horror such as this world has never seen. It must be destroyed."
"Can you do it, Pol?" Belgarath asked her.
"I don't have any choice, father," she replied. "I have to do it."
"All right, then," the old man said to the rest of them.
"We have to get Pol inside that temple ‑and that means dealing with the Karands."
Silk reached inside his boot and pulled out his dagger. "I should have sharpened this," he muttered, looking ruefully at his jagged blade.
"Would you like to borrow one of mine?" Velvet asked him.
"No, that's all right, Liselle," he replied. "I've got a couple of spares." He returned the knife to his boot and drew another from its place of concealment at the small of his back and yet a third from its sheath down the back of his neck.
Durnik lifted his axe from its loop at the back of his saddle. His face was unhappy. "Do we really have to do this, Pol?" he asked.
"Yes, Durnik. I'm afraid we do."
He sighed. "All right, then," he said. "Let's go get it over with."
They started forward, riding at a slow walk to avoid alerting the fanatics ahead.
The Karands were sitting around a large, hollowed‑out section of log, pounding on it with clubs in rhythmic unison. It gave forth a dull booming sound. They were dressed in roughly tanned fur vests and cross‑tied leggings of dirty sackcloth. They were raggedly bearded, and their hair was matted and greasy. Their faces were hideously painted, but their eyes seemed glazed and their expressions slack‑lipped.
"I'll go first," Garion muttered to the others.
"Shouting a challenge, I suppose," Silk whispered.
"I'm not an assassin, Silk," Garion replied quietly. "One or two of them might be rational enough to run, and that means a few less we'll have to kill."
"Suit yourself, but expecting rationality from Karands is irrational all by itself."
Garion quickly surveyed the clearing. The wooden temple was constructed of half‑rotten logs, sagging badly at one end and surmounted along its ridgepole by a line of mossy skulls staring out vacantly. The ground before the building was hard‑packed dirt, and there was a smoky firepit not far from the drummers.
"Try not to get into that smoke," Silk cautioned in a whisper. "You might start to see all sorts of peculiar things if you inhale too much of it."
Garion nodded and looked around. "Are we all ready?" he asked in a low voice.
They nodded.
"All right then." He spurred Chretienne into the clearing. "Throw down your weapons!" he shouted at the startled Karands.
Instead of obeying, they dropped their clubs and seized up a variety of axes, spears, and swords, shrieking their defiance.
"You see?" Silk said.
Garion clenched his teeth and charged, brandishing his sword. Even as he thundered toward the fur‑clad men, he saw four others come bursting ou
t of the temple. Even with these reinforcements, however, the men on foot were no match for Garion and his mounted companions. Two of the howling Karands fell beneath Iron‑grip's sword on Garion's first charge, and the one who tried to thrust at his back with a broad‑bladed spear fell in a heap as Durnik brained him with his axe. Sadi caught a sword thrust with a flick of his cloak and then, with an almost delicate motion, dipped his poisoned dagger into the swordsman's throat. Using his heavy staff like a club, Toth battered two men to the ground, the sound of his blows punctuated by the snapping of bones. Their howls of frenzy turned to groans of pain as they fell. Silk launched himself from his saddle, rolled with the skill of an acrobat, and neatly ripped open one fanatic with one of his daggers while simultaneously plunging the other into the chest of a fat man who was clumsily trying to wield an axe. Chretienne whirled so quickly that Garion was almost thrown from his saddle as the big stallion trampled a Karand into the earth with his steel‑shod hooves.
The lone remaining fanatic stood in the doorway of the crude temple. He was much older than his companions, and his face had been tattooed into a grotesque mask. His only weapon was a skull‑surmounted staff, and he was brandishing it at them even as he shrieked an incantation. His words broke off suddenly, however, as Velvet hurled one of her knives at him with a smooth underhand cast. The wizard gaped down in amazement at the hilt of her knife protruding from his chest. Then he slowly toppled over backward.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the groans of the two men Toth had crippled. And then a harsh scream came from the temple ‑a woman's scream.
Garion jumped from his saddle, stepped over the body in the doorway, and looked into the large, smoky room.
A half‑naked woman lay on the crude altar against the far wall. She had been bound to it in a spread‑eagle position and she was partially covered by a filthy blanket. Her features were distorted, and her belly grossly, impossibly distended. She screamed again and then spoke in gasps.
"Nahaz! Magrash Klat Grichak! Nahaz!"
"I'll deal with this, Garion," Polgara said firmly from behind him. "Wait outside with the others."
"Were there any others in there?" Silk asked him as he came out.
"Just the woman. Aunt Pol's with her." Garion suddenly realized that he was shaking violently.
"What was that language she was speaking?" Sadi asked, carefully cleaning his poisoned dagger.
"The language of the demons," Belgarath replied. "She was calling out to the father of her baby."
"Nahaz?" Garion asked, his voice startled.
"She thinks it was Nahaz," the old man said. "She could be wrong ‑or maybe not."
From inside the temple the woman screamed again.
"Is anybody hurt?" Durnik asked.
"They are," Silk replied, pointing at the fallen Karands. Then he squatted and repeatedly plunged his daggers into the dirt to cleanse the blood off them.
"Kheldar," Velvet said in a strangely weak voice," would you get my knife for me?"
Garion looked at her and saw that her face was pale and that her hands were trembling slightly. He realized then that this self-possessed young woman was perhaps not quite so ruthless as he had thought.
"Of course, Liselle," Silk replied in a neutral tone. The little man quite obviously also understood the cause of her distress. He rose, went to the doorway, and pulled the knife out of the wizard's chest. He wiped it carefully and returned it to her. "Why don't you go back and stay with Ce'Nedra?" he suggested. "We can clean up here."
"Thank you, Kheldar," she said, turned her horse, and rode out of the clearing.
"She's only a girl," Silk said to Garion in a defensive tone. "She is good, though," he added with a certain pride.
"Yes," Garion agreed. "Very good." He looked around at the twisted shapes lying in heaps in the clearing. "Why don't we drag all these bodies over behind the temple?" he suggested. "This place is bad enough without all of this."
There was another scream from the temple.
Noon came and went unnoticed as Garion and the others endured the cries of the laboring woman. By midafternoon, the screams had grown much weaker, and as the sun was just going down, there came one dreadful last shriek that seemed to dwindle off into silence. No other sound came from inside, and after several minutes, Polgara came out. Her face was pale, and her hands and clothing were drenched with blood.
"Well, Pol?" Belgarath asked her.
"She died."
"And the demon?"
"Stillborn. Neither one of them survived the birth." She looked down at her clothing. "Durnik, please bring me a blanket and water to wash in."
"Of course, Pol." With her husband shielding her by holding up the blanket, Polgara deliberately removed all of her clothing, throwing each article through the temple doorway. Then she drew the blanket about her. "Now burn it," she said to them. "Burn it to the ground."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They crossed the border into Jenno about noon the following day, still following the trail of Zandramas.
The experiences of the previous afternoon and evening had left them all subdued, and they rode on in silence.
A league or so past the rather indeterminate border, they pulled off to the side of the road to eat. The spring sunlight was very bright and the day pleasantly warm. Garion walked a little ways away from the others and reflectively watched a cloud of yellow‑striped bees industriously working at a patch of wild flowers.
"Garion," Ce'Nedra said in a small voice, coming up behind him.
"Yes, Ce'Nedra?" He put his arm around her.
"What really happened back there?"
"You saw about as much of it as I did."
"That's not what I mean. What happened inside the temple? Did that poor woman and her baby really just die -or did Polgara kill them?"
"Ce'Nedra!"
"I have to know, Garion. She was so grim about it before she went inside that place. She was going to kill the baby. Then she came out and told us that the mother and baby had both died in the birth. Wasn't that very convenient?"
He drew in a deep breath. "Ce'Nedra, think back. You've known Aunt Pol for a long time now. Has she ever told you a lie ‑ever?"
"Well ‑sometimes she hasn't told me the whole truth. She's told me part of it and kept the rest a secret."
"That's not the same as lying, Ce'Nedra, and you know it."
"Well‑"
"You're angry because she said we might have to kill that thing."
"Baby," she corrected firmly.
He took her by the shoulders and looked directly into her face. "No, Ce'Nedra. It was a thing ‑half human, half demon, and all monster."
"But it was so little ‑so helpless."
"How do you know that?"
"All babies are little when they're born."
"I don't think that one was. I saw the woman for just a minute before Aunt Pol told me to leave the temple. Do you remember how big you were just before Geran was born? Well, that woman's stomach was at least five times as big as yours was ‑and she wasn't a great deal taller than you are."
"You aren't serious!"
"Oh, yes, I am. There was no way that the demon could have been born without killing its mother. For all I know, it might just simply have clawed its way out."
"It's own mother?" she gasped.
"Did you think it would love its mother? Demons don't know how to love, Ce'Nedra. That's why they're demons. Fortunately the demon died. It's too bad that the woman had to die, too, but it was much too late to do anything for her by the time we got there."
"You're a cold, hard person, Garion."
"Oh, Ce'Nedra, you know better than that. What happened back there was unpleasant, certainly, but none of us had any choice but to do exactly what we did."
She turned her back on him and started to stalk away.
"Ce'Nedra," he said, hurrying to catch her.
"What?" She tried to free her arm from his grasp.
"We
didn't have any choice," he repeated. "Would you want Geran to grow up in a world filled with demons?"
She stared at him. "No," she firmly admitted. "It's just that . . ." She left it hanging.
"I know," He put his arms about her.
"Oh, Garion." She suddenly clung to him, and everything was all right again.
After they had eaten, they rode on through the forest, passing occasional villages huddled deep among the trees. The villages were rude, most of them consisting of a dozen or so rough log houses and surrounded by crude log palisades. There were usually a rather surprising number of hogs rooting among the stumps that surrounded each village.
"There don't seem to be very many dogs," Durnik observed.
These people prefer pigs as house pets," Silk told him. "As a race, Karands have a strong affinity for dirt, and pigs satisfy certain deep inner needs among them."
"Do you know something, Silk," the smith said then.
"You'd be a much more pleasant companion if you didn't try to turn everything into a joke."
"It's a failing I have. I've looked at the world for quite a few years now and I've found that if I don't laugh, I'll probably end up crying."
"You're really serious, aren't you?"
"Would I do that to an old friend?"
About midafternoon, the road they were following curved slightly, and they soon reached the edge of the forest and a fork in the rutted track.
"All right. Which way?" Belgarath asked.
Garion lifted his sword from the pommel of his saddle and swept it slowly back and forth until he felt the familiar tug. "The right fork," he replied.
"I'm so glad you said that," Silk told him. "The left fork leads to Calida, I'd expect that news of Harakan's death has reached there by now. Even without the demons, a town full of hysterics doesn't strike me as a very nice place to visit. The followers of Lord Mengha might be just a bit upset when they hear that he's gone off and left them."
"Where does the right fork go?" Belgarath asked him.
"Down to the lake," Silk replied, "Lake Karanda, It's the biggest lake in the world. When you stand on the shore, it's like looking at an ocean."
Garion frowned. "Grandfather," he said, starting to worry, "Do you think that Zandramas knows that the Orb can follow her?"
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