“Let’s go!” Garion shouted to his friends, and they galloped once again through the center of the Darshivans and on down the road to rejoin Polgara, Ce’Nedra, Velvet, and
Eriond. Belgarath loped after them, then changed into his own form and walked back to his horse.
“It seems to have worked more or less the way we’d planned,” Zakath noted. He was panting, and his forehead was dewed with sweat. “I seem to be a bit out of condition, though,” he added.
“Too much sitting down,” Silk said. “What’s that thing you’ve got on your hand?”
“It’s called a cestus,” the Mallorean replied, pulling it off. “I’m a little rusty with my sword, so I thought this might work just as well—particularly since Belgarath wanted to keep down the fatalities.”
“Did we kill anybody?” Durnik asked.
“Two,” Sadi admitted. He held up his small dagger. “It’s a little hard to unpoison a knife.”
“And one other,” Silk told the smith. “He was running up behind you with a spear, so I threw a knife at him.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” Belgarath said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
They continued at a gallop for several miles, then slowed back to a canter again.
They took shelter that night in a sizable stand of dead trees. Durnik and Toth dug a shallow pit and built a small fire in it. After the tents were pitched, Garion and Zakath walked to the edge of the trees to keep watch on the road.
“Is it always like this?” Zakath asked quietly.
“Like what?”
“All this sneaking and hiding?”
“Usually. Belgarath tries to avoid trouble whenever he can. He doesn’t like to risk people in random skirmishes. Most of the time we’re able to avoid the kind of thing that happened this morning. Silk—and Sadi, too, for that matter—have lied us out of some very tight spots.” He smiled faintly. “Up in Voresebo, Silk bribed our way past a group of soldiers with a pouchful of brass Mallorean halfpennies.”
“But they’re virtually worthless.”
“That’s what Silk said, but we were quite a ways past the soldiers before they opened the pouch.”
Then they heard a chilling howl.
“A wolf?” Zakath asked. “Belgarath again?”
“No. That wasn’t a wolf. Let’s go back. I think Urvon’s managed to outflank General Atesca.”
“What makes you think so?”
“That was a Hound.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
They walked carefully through the forest of dead snags, avoiding as best they could the litter of fallen limbs and twigs on the ground. The faint glow from Durnik’s sunken fire guided them, and Garion knew it would serve as a dim beacon for the Hounds as well. Zakath’s euphoria seemed to have evaporated. His expression now was wary, and he walked with his hand on his sword hilt.
They entered the small clearing where the others were seated around the fire pit. “There’s a Hound out there,” Garion said quietly. “It howled once.”
“Could you make out what it was saying?” Belgarath asked, his voice tense.
“I don’t speak its language, Grandfather. It seemed to be some kind of a call, though.”
“Probably to the rest of the pack,” the old man grunted. *4The Hounds don’t hunt alone very often.”
“The glow from our fire is fairly visible,” Garion pointed out.
“I’ll take care of that right away,” Durnik said, starting to shovel dirt into the fire pit.
“Could you pinpoint the Hound’s location at all?” Belgarath asked.
“It was some distance away,” Garion replied. “I think it’s out there on the road.” / “Following our trail?” Silk asked.
“It’s following something. I could pick up that much.”
“If the Hound is following us, I can divert it with some of that powder I used back at Ashaba,” Sadi suggested. “What do you think?” Belgarath asked Beldin. The dwarf squatted on the ground, absently scratching an Obscure diagram in the dirt with a broken stick. “It wouldn’t k work,” he said finally. “The Hounds aren’t entirely dogs, f .so they’re not going to just blindly follow the one in the 3; lead. Once they pinpoint our location, they’ll spread out and !;come at us from all sides. We’re going to have to come up with something else.”
“Fairly soon, I’d think,” Silk added, looking around nervously.
Polgara removed her blue cloak and handed it to Durnik.“I’ll deal with it,” she said calmly.
“What have you got in mind, Pol?” Belgarath asked suspiciously.
“I haven’t decided yet, Old Wolf. Maybe I’ll just make it up as I go along—the way you do sometimes.” She drew herself up, and the air around her shimmered with an odd luminescence. She was winging her way off among the dead white trees even before the light had faded.
“I hate it when she does that,” Belgarath muttered.
“You do it all the time,” Beldin said.
“That’s different.”
Zakath was staring at the ghostly shape of the disappearing white owl. “That’s uncanny,” he shuddered. Then he looked at Garion. “I can’t say that I understand all this concern,” he confessed. “You people—at least some of you—are sorcerers. Can’t you just . . . ?” He left it hanging.
“No,” Garion shook his head.
“Why not?”
“It makes too much noise. Not the sort of noise ordinary people can hear—but we can hear it, and so can the Grolims. If we tried to do it that way, we’d have every Grolim in this part of Darshiva down our necks. Sorcery’s an overrated thing, Zakath. I’ll grant you we can do things that other people can’t, but there are so many restrictions on us that sometimes it’s not worth the trouble—unless you’re in a hurry.”
“I didn’t know that,” Zakath admitted. “Are the Hounds as big as they say they are?”
“Probably even bigger,” Silk replied. “They’re about the size of small horses.”
“You’re a droll fellow, Kheldar,” Zakath said, “so I think I’d have to see that to believe it.”
“You’d better hope that you don’t get that close.”
Belgarath looked narrowly at the Mallorean. “You don’t believe in very much, do you?” he asked.
“What I can see.” Zakath shrugged. “I’ve had most of the belief washed out of me over the years.”
“That could prove to be a problem,” the old man said, scratching at his cheek. “A time might come when we’ll have to do something in a hurry and we won’t have time for explanations—and you won’t have time to stand around gaping in astonishment. I think this might be a good time to fill you in on a few things.”
“I’ll listen to you,” Zakath said. “I don’t promise to believe everything you say, though. Go ahead.”
“I’ll let Garion do it. I want to keep in touch with Pol. Why don’t you two go back to the edge of the woods and keep watch? Garion can fill you in there. Try not to be skeptical just on principle.”
“We’ll see,” Zakath replied.
During the next hour, as Garion and Zakath crouched behind a fallen tree at the edge of the woods, the Emperor of Mallorea had his credulity stretched to the limits. Garion spoke in a half whisper even as he kept his eyes and ears alert. He began by briefly sketching in the Book of Alorn, went on to a few salient points from the Mrin Codex. Then, so far as he knew it, he described the early life of Belgarath the sorcerer. And then he got down to business. He explained the possibilities and the limitations of the Will and the Word, covering such matters as projections, translocation, shape-change, and so on. He covered the mysterious sound that accompanies the use of what common people call sorcery, the exhaustion that comes over a sorcerer after its use, and the single absolute prohibition— that of unmaking.
“That’s what happened to Ctuchik,” he concluded. “He was so afraid of what would happen if I got my hands on the Orb that he forgot he was stepping over the line when he tried to destroy it.”
Out in the darkness, the Hound howled again, and there was an answering howl from a different direction. “They’re getting closer,” Garion whispered. “I hope Aunt Pol hurries.”
Zakath, however, was still mulling over the things Garion had told him. “Are you trying to tell me that it was the Orb that killed Ctuchik and not Belgarath?” he whispered.
“No. It wasn’t the Orb. It was the universe. Do you really want to get into theology?”
“I’m even more skeptical in that direction.”
“That’s the one thing you can’t afford, Zakath,” Garion seriously. “You have to believe. Otherwise, we’ll fail. If we fail, the world fails— forever. “
The Hound howled again, even closer this time.
“Keep your voice down,” Garion warned in a tense whisper. “The Hounds have very sharp ears.”
“I’m not afraid of a dog, Garion, no matter how big it is.”
“That could be a mistake. Being afraid is one of the things that keeps us alive. All right. As closely as I understand it, this is the way it went. UL created the universe.”