Magician's Gambit

by David Eddings

  Relg grunted and covered his eyes with his hands.

  "What's wrong?" Garion asked him.

  "Their fires," Relg said. "They stab at my eyes."

  "Try not to look at them."

  "My God has laid a hard burden on me, Belgarion." Relg sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. "I'm not meant to be out in the open like this."

  "You'd better have Aunt Pol give you something for that cold. It will taste awful, but you'll feel better after you drink it."

  "Perhaps," Relg said, still shielding his eyes from the dim flicker of the Murgo watch fires.

  The hill on the south side of the fair was a low outcropping of granite. Although eons of constant wind had covered it for the most part with a thick layer of blown sand and dirt, the rock itself lay solid beneath its covering mantle. They stopped behind it, and Relg began carefully to brush the dirt from a sloping granite face.

  "Wouldn't it be closer if you started over there?" Barak asked quietly.

  "Too much dirt," Relg replied.

  "Dirt or rock - what's the difference?"

  "A great difference. You wouldn't understand." He leaned forward and put his tongue to the granite face, seeming actually to taste the rock. "This is going to take a while," he said. He drew himself up, began to pray, and slowly pushed himself directly into the rock.

  Barak shuddered and quickly averted his eyes.

  "What ails thee, my Lord?" Mandorallen asked.

  "It makes me cold all over just watching that," Barak replied.

  "Our new friend is perhaps not the best of companions," Mandorallen said, "but if his gift succeeds in freeing Prince Kheldar, I will embrace him gladly and call him brother."

  "If it takes him very long, we're going to be awfully close to this spot when morning comes and Taur Urgas finds out that Silk's gone," Barak mentioned.

  "We'll just have to wait and see what happens," Belgarath told him. The night dragged by interminably. The wind moaned and whistled around the rocks on the flanks of the stony hill, and the sparse thornbushes rustled stiffly. They waited. A growing fear oppressed Garion as the hours passed. More and more, he became convinced that they had lost Relg as well as Silk. He felt that same sick emptiness he had felt when it had been necessary to leave the wounded Lelldorin behind back in Arendia. He realized, feeling a bit guilty about it, that he hadn't thought about Lelldorin in months. He began to wonder how well the young hothead had recovered from his wound - or even if he had recovered. His thoughts grew bleaker as the minutes crawled.

  Then, with no warning - with not even a sound - Relg stepped out of the rock face he had entered hours before. Astride his broad back and clinging desperately to him was Silk. The rat-faced little man's eyes were wide with horror, and his hair seemed to be actually standing on end.

  They all crowded around the two, trying to keep their jubilation quiet, conscious of the fact that they were virtually on top of an army of Murgos.

  "I'm sorry it took so long," Relg said, jerking his shoulders uncomfortably until Silk finally slid off his back. "There's a different kind of rock in the middle of the hill. I had to make certain adjustments."

  Silk stood, gasping and shuddering uncontrollably. Finally he turned on Relg. "Don't ever do that to me again," he blurted. "Not ever."

  "What's the trouble?" Barak asked.

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "I had feared we had lost thee, my friend," Mandorallen said, grasping Silk's hand.

  "How did Brill catch you?" Barak asked.

  "I was careless. I didn't expect him to be here. His men threw a net over me as I was galloping through a ravine. My horse fell and broke his neck."

  "Hettar's not going to like that."

  "I'll cut the price of the horse out of Brill's skin - someplace close to the bone, I think."

  "Why does Taur Urgas hate you so much?" Barak asked curiously.

  "I was in Rak Goska a few years ago. A Tolnedran agent made a few false charges against me - I never found out exactly why. Taur Urgas sent some soldiers out to arrest me. I didn't particularly feel like being arrested, so I argued with the soldiers a bit. Several of them died during the argument - those things happen once in a while. Unfortunately, one of the casualties was Taur Urgas' oldest son. The king of the Murgos took it personally. He's very narrow-minded sometimes."

  Barak grinned. "He'll be terribly disappointed in the morning when he finds out that you've left."

  "I know," Silk replied. "He'll probably take this part of Cthol Murgos apart stone by stone trying to find me."

  "I think it's time we left," Belgarath agreed.

  "I thought you'd never get around to that," Silk said.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THEY RODE HARD through the rest of the night and for most of the following day. By evening their horses were stumbling with exhaustion, and Garion was as numb with weariness as with the biting cold.

  "We'll have to find shelter of some kind," Durnik said as they reined in to look for a place to spend the night. They had moved up out of the series of connecting valleys through which the South Caravan Route wound and had entered the ragged, barren wilderness of the mountains of central Cthol Murgos. It had grown steadily colder as they had climbed into that vast jumble of rock and sand, and the endless wind moaned among the treeless crags. Durnik's face was creased with fatigue, and the gritty dust that drove before the wind had settled into the creases, etching them deeper. "We can't spend the night in the open," he declared. "Not with this wind."

  "Go that way," Relg said, pointing toward a rockfall on the steep slope they were climbing. His eyes were squinted almost shut, though the sky was still overcast and the fading daylight was pale. "There's shelter there - a cave."

  They had all begun to look at Relg in a somewhat different light since his rescue of Silk. His demonstration that he could, when necessary, take decisive action made him seem less an encumbrance and more like a companion. Belgarath had finally convinced him that he could pray on horseback just as well as he could on his knees, and his frequent devotions no longer interrupted their journey. His praying thus had become less an inconvenience and more a personal idiosyncrasy - somewhat like Mandorallen's archaic speech or Silk's sardonic witticisms.

  "You're sure there's a cave?" Barak asked him.

  Relg nodded. "I can feel it."

  They turned and rode toward the rockfall. As they drew closer, Relg's eagerness became more obvious. He pushed his horse into the lead and nudged the tired beast into a trot, then a canter. At the edge of the rockslide, he swung down from his horse, stepped behind a large boulder, and disappeared.

  "It looks as if he knew what he was talking about," Durnik observed. "I'll be glad to get out of this wind."

  The opening to the cave was narrow, and it took some pushing and dragging to persuade the horses to squeeze through; but once they were inside, the cave widened out into a large, low-ceilinged chamber.

  Durnik looked around with approval. "Good place." He unfastened his axe from the back of his saddle. "We'll need firewood."

  "I'll help you," Garion said.

  "I'll go, too," Silk offered quickly. The little man was looking around at the stone walls and ceiling nervously, and he seemed obviously relieved as soon as the three of them were back outside.

  "What's wrong?" Durnik asked him.

  "After last night, closed-in places make me a little edgy," Silk replied.

  "What was it like?" Garion asked him curiously. "Going through stone, I mean?"

  Silk shuddered. "It was hideous. We actually seeped into the rock. I could feel it sliding through me."

  "It got you out, though," Durnik reminded him.

  "I think I'd almost rather have stayed," Silk shuddered again. "Do we have to talk about it?"

  Firewood was difficult to find on that barren mountainside and even more difficult to cut. The tough, springy thornbushes resisted the blows of Durnik's axe tenaciously. After an hour, as darkness began to close in o
n them, they had gathered only three very scanty armloads.

  "Did you see anybody?" Barak asked as they reentered the cave.

  "No," Silk replied.

  "Taur Urgas is probably looking for you."

  "I'm sure of it." Silk looked around. "Where's Relg?"

  "He went back into the cave to rest his eyes," Belgarath told him. "He found water - ice actually. We'll have to thaw it before we can water the horses."

  Durnik's fire was tiny, and he fed it with twigs and small bits of wood, trying to conserve their meager fuel supply. It proved to be an uncomfortable night.

  In the morning Aunt Pol looked critically at Relg. "You don't seem to be coughing any more," she told him. "How do you feel?"

  "I'm fine," he replied, being careful not to look directly at her. The fact that she was a woman seemed to make him terribly uncomfortable, and he tried to avoid her as much as possible.

  "What happened to that cold you had?"

  "I don't think it could go through the rock. It was gone when I brought him out of the hillside last night."

  She looked at him gravely. "I'd never thought of that," she mused. "No one's ever been able to cure a cold before."

  "A cold isn't really that serious a thing, Polgara," Silk told her with a pained look. "I'll guarantee you that sliding through rock is never going to be a popular cure."

  It took them four days to cross the mountains to reach the vast basin Belgarath referred to as the Wasteland of Murgos and another half day to make their way down the steep basalt face to the black sand of the floor.

  "What hath caused this huge depression?" Mandorallen asked, looking around at the barren expanse of scab-rock, black sand and dirty gray salt flats.

  "There was an inland sea here once," Belgarath replied. "When Torak cracked the world, the upheaval broke away the eastern edge and all the water drained out."

  "That must have been something to see," Barak said.

  "We had other things on our minds just then."

  "What's that?" Garion asked in alarm, pointing at something sticking out of the sand just ahead of them. The thing had a huge head with a long, sharp-toothed snout. Its eye sockets, as big as buckets, seemed to stare balefully at them.

  "I don't think it has a name," Belgarath answered calmly. "They Iived in the sea before the water escaped. They've all been dead now for thousands of years."

  As they passed the dead sea monster, Garion could see that it was only a skeleton. Its ribs were as big as the rafters of a barn, and its vast, bleached skull larger than a horse. The vacant eye sockets watched them as they rode past.

  Mandorallen, dressed once again in full armor, stared at the skull. "A fearsome beast," he murmured.

  "Look at the size of the teeth," Barak said in an awed voice. "It could bite a man in two with one snap."

  "That happened a few times," Belgarath told him, "until people learned to avoid this place."

  They had moved only a few leagues out into the wasteland when the wind picked up, scouring along the black dunes under the slate-gray sky. The sand began to shift and move and then, as the wind grew even stronger, it began to whip off the tops of the dunes, stinging their faces.

  "We'd better take shelter," Belgarath shouted over the shrieking wind. "This sandstorm's going to get worse as we move out farther from the mountains."

  "Are there any caves around?" Durnik asked Relg.

  Relg shook his head. "None that we can use. They're all filled with sand."

  "Over there." Barak pointed at a pile of scab-rock rising from the edge of a salt flat. "If we go to the leeward side, it will keep the wind off us."

  "No," Belgarath shouted. "We have to stay to the windward. The sand will pile up at the back. We could be buried alive."

  They reached the rock pile and dismounted. The wind tore at their clothing, and the sand billowed across the wasteland like a vast, black cloud.

  "This is poor shelter, Belgarath," Barak roared, his beard whipping about his shoulders. "How long is this likely to last?"

  "A day - two days - sometimes as long as a week."

  Durnik had bent to pick up a piece of broken scab-rock. He looked at it carefully, turning it over in his hands. "It's fractured into square pieces," he said, holding it up. "It will stack well. We can build a wall to shelter us."

  "That will take quite a while," Barak objected.

  "Did you have something else to do?"

  By evening they had the wall up to shoulder height, and by anchoring the tents to the top of it and higher up on the side of the rock-pile, they were able to get in out of the worst of the wind. It was crowded, since they had to shelter the horses as well, but at least it was out of the storm.

  They huddled in their cramped shelter for two days with the wind shrieking insanely around them and the taut tent canvas drumming overhead. Then, when the wind finally blew itself out and the black sand began to settle slowly, the silence seemed almost oppressive.

  As they emerged, Relg glanced up once, then covered his face and sank to his knees, praying desperately. The clearing sky overhead was a bright, chilly blue. Garion moved over to stand beside the praying fanatic. "It will be all right, Relg," he told him. He reached out his hand without thinking.

  "Don't touch me," Relg said and continued to pray.

  Silk stood, beating the dust and sand out of his clothing. "Do these storms come up often?" he asked.

  "It's the season for them," Belgarath replied.

  "Delightful," Silk said sourly.

  Then a deep rumbling sound seemed to come from deep in the earth beneath them, and the ground heaved. "Earthquake!" Belgarath warned sharply. "Get the horses out of there!"

  Durnik and Barak dashed back inside the shelter and led the horses out from behind the trembling wall and onto the salt flat.

  After several moments the heaving subsided.

  "Is Ctuchik doing that?" Silk demanded. "Is he going to fight us with earthquakes and sandstorms?"

  Belgarath shook his head. "No. Nobody's strong enough to do that. That's what's causing it." He pointed to the south. Far across the wasteland they could make out a line of dark peaks. A thick plume was rising from one of them, towering into the air, boiling up in great black billows as it rose. "Volcano," the old man said. "Probably the same one that erupted last summer and dropped all the ash on Sthiss Tor."

  "A fire-mountain?" Barak rumbled, staring at the great cloud that was growing up out of the mountaintop. "I've never seen one before."

  "That's fifty leagues away, Belgarath," Silk stated. "Would it make the earth shake even here?"

  The old man nodded. "The earth's all one piece, Silk. The force that's causing that eruption is enormous. It's bound to cause a few ripples. I think we'd better get moving. Taur Urgas' patrols will be out looking for us again, now that the sandstorm's blown over."

  "Which way do we go?" Durnik asked, looking around, trying to get his bearings.

  "That way." Belgarath pointed toward the smoking mountain.

  "I was afraid you were going to say that," Barak grumbled.

  They rode at a gallop for the rest of the day, pausing only to rest the horses. The dreary wasteland seemed to go on forever. The black sand had shifted and piled into new dunes during the sandstorm, and the thick-crusted salt flats had been scoured by the wind until they were nearly white. They passed a number of the huge, bleached skeletons of the sea monsters which had once inhabited this inland ocean. The bony shapes appeared almost to be swimming up out of the black sand, and the cold, empty eye sockets seemed somehow hungry as they galloped past.

  They stopped for the night beside another shattered outcropping of scab-rock. Although the wind had died, it was still bitterly cold, and firewood was scanty.

  The next morning as they set out again, Garion began to smell a strange, foul odor. "What's that stink?" he asked.

  "The Tarn of Cthok," Belgarath replied. "It's all that's left of the sea that used to be here. It would have dried out centuries ago
, but it's fed by underground springs."

  "It smells like rotten eggs," Barak said.

  "There's quite a bit of sulfur in the ground water around here. I wouldn't drink from the lake."

  "I wasn't planning to." Barak wrinkled his nose.

  The Tarn of Cthok was a vast, shallow pond filled with oily-looking water that reeked like all the dead fish in the world. Its surface steamed in the icy air, and the wisps of steam gagged them with the dreadful stink. When they reached the southern tip of the lake, Belgarath signalled for a halt. "This next stretch is dangerous," he told them soberly. "Don't let your horses wander. Be sure you stay on solid rock. Ground that looks firm quite often won't be, and there are some other things we'll need to watch out for. Keep your eyes on me and do what I do.

  When I stop, you stop. When I run, you run." He looked thoughtfully at Relg. The Ulgo had bound another cloth across his eyes, partially to keep out the light and partially to hide the expanse of the sky above him.

  "I'll lead his horse, Grandfather," Garion offered.

  Belgarath nodded. "It's the only way, I suppose."

  "He's going to have to get over that eventually," Barak said.

  "Maybe, but this isn't the time or place for it. Let's go." The old man moved forward at a careful walk.

  The region ahead of them steamed and smoked as they approached it. They passed a large pool of gray mud that bubbled and fumed, and beyond it a sparkling spring of clear water, boiling merrily and cascading a scalding brook down into the mud. "At least it's warmer," Silk observed.

  Mandorallen's face was streaming perspiration beneath his heavy helmet. "Much warmer," he agreed.

  Belgarath had been riding slowly, his head turned slightly as he listened intently.

  "Stop!" he said sharply.

  They all reined in.

  Just ahead of them another pool suddenly erupted as a dirty gray geyser of liquid mud spurted thirty feet into the air. It continued to spout for several minutes, then gradually subsided.

  "Now!" Belgarath barked. "Run!" He kicked his horse's flanks, and they galloped past the still-heaving surface of the pool, the hooves of their horses splashing in the hot mud that had splattered across their path. When they had passed, the old man slowed again and once more rode with his ear cocked toward the ground.