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.”
“That’s quite all right, Sadi,” Belgarath replied. “I may have said it before, but you’re a very versatile fellow.”
“Merely a student of pharmacology, Belgarath. I’ve found that there are chemicals suitable for almost every situation.”
“Won’t the Hound report back to its pack that we’re here?” Durnik asked, looking around worriedly.
“Not for several days.” Sadi chuckled, brushing off his hands, holding them as far away from his face as possible.
They rode slowly up the weed‑grown track along the bottom of the ravine where mournful, blackened trees spread their branches, filling the deep cut with a pervading gloom. Off in the distance they could hear the baying of Torak’s Hounds as they coursed through the forest.
Above them, sooty ravens flapped from limb to limb, croaking hungrily.
“Disquieting sort of place,” Velvet murmured.
“And that adds the perfect touch,” Silk noted, pointing at a large vulture perched on the limb of a dead snag at the head of the ravine.
“Are we close enough to Ashaba yet for you to be able to tell if Zandramas is still there?” Garion asked Polgara.
“Possibly,” she replied. “But even that faint a sound could be heard.”
“We’re close enough now that we can wait,” Belgarath said. “I’ll tell you one thing, though,” he added. “If my great‑grandson is at Ashaba, I’ll take the place apart stone by stone until I find him and I don’t care how much noise it wakes.”
Impulsively, Ce’Nedra pulled her horse in beside his, leaned over, and locked her arms about his waist. “Oh, Belgarath,” she said, “I love you.” And she burrowed her face into his shoulder.
“What’s this?” His voice was slightly surprised.
She pulled back, her eyes misty. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, then gave him an arch look.
“You’re the dearest man in all the world,” she told him. “I might even consider throwing Garion over for you,” she added, “if it weren’t for the fact that you’re twelve thousand years old, that is.”
“Seven,” he corrected automatically.
She gave him a sadly whimsical smile, a melancholy sign of her final victory in an ongoing contest that no longer had any meaning for her. “Whatever,” she sighed.
And then in a peculiarly uncharacteristic gesture, he enfolded her in his arms and gently kissed her. “My dear child,” he said with brimming eyes. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Polgara. “How did we ever get along without her?” he asked.
Polgara’s eyes were a mystery. “I don’t know, father,” she replied. “I really don’t.”
At the head of the ravine, Sadi dismounted and dusted the leaves of a low bush growing in the middle of the track they were following with some more of his powder.
“Just to be on the safe side,” he explained, pulling himself back into his saddle.
The region they entered under a lowering sky was a wooded plateau, and they rode on along the scarcely visible track in a generally northerly direction with the rising wind whipping at their cloaks. The baying of Torak’s Hounds still sounded from some distance off, but seemed to be coming no closer.
As before, Silk and Feldegast raged out ahead, scouting for possible dangers. Garion again rode at the head of their column, his helmet in place and the butt of his lance riding in his stirrup. As he rounded a sharp bend in the track, he saw Silk and the juggler ahead. They had dismounted and were crouched behind some bushes. Silk turned quickly and motioned Garion back. Garion quickly passed on that signal and, step by step, backed his gray stallion around the bend again. He dismounted, leaned his lance against a tree, and took off his helmet.
“What is it?” Belgarath asked, also swinging down from his horse.
“I don’t know,” Garion replied, “Silk motioned us to stay out of sight.”
“Let’s go have a look,” the old man said.
“Right.”
The two of them crouched over and moved forward on feet to join the rat‑faced man and the juggler. Silk his finger to his lips as they approached. When Garion reached the brush, he carefully parted the leaves and looked out.
There was a road there, a road that intersected the track they had been following. Riding along that road were half‑a‑hundred men dressed mostly in furs, with rusty helmets on their heads and bent and dented swords in their hands. The men at the head of the column, however, wore mail coats. Their helmets were polished, and they carried lances and shields.
Tensely, without speaking, Garion and his friends watched the loosely organized mob ride past.
When the strangers were out of sight, Feldegast turned to Belgarath. “It sort of confirms yer suspicion, old friend,” he said.
“Who were they?” Garion asked in a low voice.
“The ones in fur be Karands,” Feldegast replied, “an’ the ones in steel be Temple Guardsmen. ‘Tis more evidence of an alliance between Urvon and Mengha, y’ see.”
“Can we be sure that the Karands were Mengha’s men?”
“He’s overcome Katakor altogether, an’ the only armed Karands in the area be his. Urvon an’ his Chandim control the Guardsmen ‑an’ the Hounds. When ye see Karands an’ Hounds together the way we did yesterday, it’s fair proof of an alliance, but when ye see Karandese fanatics escorted by armed Guardsmen, it doesn’t leave hardly any doubt at all.”
“What is that fool up to?” Belgarath muttered.
“Who?” Silk asked.
“Urvon. He’s done some fairly filthy things in his life, but he’s never consorted with demons before.”
“Perhaps ’twas because Torak had forbid it,” Feldegast suggested. “Now that Torak’s dead, though, maybe he’s throwin’ off all restraints. The demons would be a powerful factor if the final confrontation between the Church an’ the imperial throne that’s been brewin’ all these years should finally come.”
“Well,” Belgarath grunted, “we don’t have time to sort it out now. Let’s get the others and move on.”
They quickly crossed the road that the Karands and the Guardsmen had been following and continued along the narrow track. After a few more miles, they crested a low knoll that at some time in the past had been denuded by fire. At the far end of the plateau, just before a series of stark cliffs rose sharply up into the mountains, there stood a huge black building, rearing up almost like a mountain itself. It was surmounted by bleak towers and surrounded by a battlement‑topped wall, half‑smothered in vegetation.
“Ashaba,” Belgarath said shortly, his eyes flinty.
“I thought it was a ruin,” Silk said with some surprise.
“Parts of it are, I’ve been told,” the old man replied. “The upper floors aren’t habitable anymore, but the ground floor’s still more or less intact ‑at least it’s supposed to be. It takes a very long time for wind and weather to tear down a house that big.” The old man nudged his horse and led them down off the knoll and back into the wind‑tossed forest.
It was nearly dark by the time they reached the edge of the clearing surrounding the House of Torak. Garion noted that the vegetation half covering the walls of the black castle consisted of brambles and thick‑stemmed ivy.
The glazing in the windows had long since succumbed to wind and weather, and the vacant casements seemed to stare out at the clearing like the eye sockets of a dark skull.