Now the war turned to Rheon. Belgarion found his troops badly outnumbered and an ambush awaiting his advance toward the city. He was facing defeat when Prince Kheldar arrived with a force of Nadrak mercenaries to turn the tide of battle. Reinforced by the Nadraks, the Rivans besieged the city of Rheon.
Belgarion and Durnik combined their wills to weaken the wails of the city until the siege engines of Baron Mandorallen could bring them down. The Rivans and Nadraks poured into the city, led by Belgarion. The battle inside was savage, but the cultists were driven back and most of them were slaughtered. Then Belgarion and Durnik captured the cult leader, Ulfgar.
Though Belgarion had already learned that his son was not within the city, he hoped that close questioning might drag the child’s whereabouts from Ulfgar. The cult leader stubbornly refused to answer; then, surprisingly, Errand drew the information directly from Ulfgar’s mind.
While it became clear that Ulfgar had been responsible for the attempt on Ce’Nedra’s life, he had played no part in the theft of the child. Indeed, his chief goal had been the death of Beigarion’s son, preferably before its birth. He obviously knew nothing of the abduction, which did not at all suit his purpose.
Then the sorcerer Beldin joined them. He quickly recognized Ulfgar as Harakan, an underling of Torak’s last living disciple Urvon. Harakan suddenly vanished, and Beldin sped in pursuit.
Messengers now arrived from Riva. Investigations following Beigarion’s departure had discovered a shepherd in the hills who had seen a figure carrying what might have been a baby embark upon a ship of Nyissan design and sail southward.
Then Cyradis, a Seeress of Kell, sent a projection of herself to tell them more. The child, she claimed, had been taken by Zandramas, who had spun such a web of deceit to throw the blame upon Harakan that even the cult members who had been left behind to be discovered had believed what Polgara had extracted from the captive on the cliff of the Isle of the Winds.
Clearly, she said, the Child of Dark had stolen the baby for a purpose. That purpose was connected with the Sardion. Now they must pursue Zandramas. Beyond that she would not speak, except to identify those who must go with Belgarion. Then, leaving her huge, mute guide Toth behind to accompany them, she vanished.
Belgarion’s heart sank within him as he realized that his son’s abductor was now months ahead and that the trail had grown extremely dim. But he grimly gathered his companions to pursue Zandramas, even to the edge of the world or beyond, if need be.
PART ONE
THE SERPENT QUEEN
CHAPTER ONE
Somewhere in the darkness, Garion could hear the crystalline tap of water dripping with a slow, monotonous regularity. The air around him was cool, smelling of rock and dampness overlaid with the musty odor of pallid white things that grow in the dark and flinch from the light. He found himself straining to catch all the myriad sounds that whispered through the dark caves of Ulgo—the moist trickle of water, the dusty slither of dislodged pebbles slowly running down a shallow incline, and the mournful sighing of air coming down from the surface through minute fissures in the rock.
Belgarath stopped and lifted the smoky torch that filled the passageway with flickering orange light and leaping shadows. “Wait here a moment,” he said, and then he moved off down the murky gallery with his scuffed, mismatched boots shuffling along the uneven floor. The rest of them waited with the darkness pressing in all around them.
“I hate this,” Silk muttered, half to himself. “I absolutely hate it.”
They waited.
The ruddy flicker of Belgarath’s torch reappeared at the far end of the gallery. “All right,” he called. “It’s this way.”
Garion put his arm about Ce’Nedra’s slender shoulders. A kind of deep silence had fallen over her during their ride south from Rheon as it had grown increasingly evident that their entire campaign against the Bear-cult in eastern Drasnia had done little more than give Zandramas a nearly insurmountable lead with the abducted Geran. The frustration that made Garion want to beat his fists against the rocks around him and howl in impotent fury had plunged Ce’Nedra into a profound depression instead, and now she stumbled through the dark caves of Ulgo, sunk in a kind of numb misery, neither knowing nor caring where the others led her. He turned his head to look back at Polgara, his face mirroring all his deep concern. The look she returned him was grave, but seemingly unperturbed. She parted the front of her blue cloak and moved her hands in the minute gestures of the Drasnian secret language. —Be sure she stays warm—she said. —She’s very susceptible to chills just now,—
A half-dozen desperate questions sprang into Garion’s mind; but with Ce’Nedra at his side with his arm about her shoulders, there was no way he could voice them.
It’s important for you to stay calm, Garion—Polgara’s ringers told him. —Don’t let her know how concerned you are. I’m watching her, and I’ll know what to do when the time comes.—
Belgarath stopped again and stood tugging at one earlobe, looking dubiously down a dark passageway and then down another which branched off to the left.
“You’re lost again, aren’t you?” Silk accused him. The rat-faced little Drasnian had put aside his pearl-gray doublet and his jewels and gold chains and now wore an old brown tunic, shiny with age, a moth-eaten fur cloak and a shapeless, battered hat, once again submerging himself in one of his innumerable disguises.
“Of course I’m not lost,” Belgarath retorted. “I just haven’t pinpointed exactly where we are at the moment.”
“Belgarath, that’s what the word lost means.”
“Nonsense. I think we go this way.” He pointed down the left-hand passageway.
“You think?”
“Uh—Silk,” Durnik the smith cautioned quietly, “you really ought to keep your voice down. That ceiling up there doesn’t look all that stable to me, and sometimes a loud noise is all it takes to bring one of them down.”
Silk froze, his eyes rolling apprehensively upward and sweat visibly standing out on his forehead. “Polgara,” he whispered in a strangled tone, “make him stop that.”
“Leave him alone, Durnik,” she said calmly. “You know how he feels about caves.”
“I just thought he ought to know, Pol,” the smith explained. “Things do happen in caves.”
“Polgara!” Silk’s voice was agonized. “Please!”
“I’ll go back and see how Errand and Toth are doing with the horses,” Durnik said. He looked at the sweating little Drasnian. “Just try not to shout,” he advised.
As they rounded a corner in the twisting gallery, the passageway opened out into a large cavern with a broad vein of quartz running across its ceiling. At some point, perhaps even miles away, the vein reached the surface, and refracted sunlight, shattered into its component elements by the facets of the quartz, spilled down into the cavern in dancing rainbows that flared and faded as they shifted across the sparkling surface of the small, shallow lake in the center of the cave. At the far end of the lake, a tiny waterfall tinkled endlessly from rock to rock to fill the cavern with its music.
“Ce’Nedra, look!” Garion urged.
“What?” She raised her head. “Oh, yes,” she said indifferently, “very pretty.” And she went back to her abstracted silence.
Garion gave Aunt Pol a helpless look.
“Father,” Polgara said then, “I think it’s just about lunch time. This seems like a good place to rest a bit and have a bite to eat.”
“Pol, we’re never going to get there if we stop every mile or two.”
“Why do you always argue with me, father? Is it out of some obscure principle?”
He glowered at her for a moment, then turned away, muttering to himself.
Errand and Toth led the horses down to the shore of the crystal lake to water them. They were a strangely mismatched pair. Errand was a slight young man with blond, curly hair and he wore a simple brown peasant smock. Toth towered above him like a giant tree looming over a sapling. Although winter was coming on in the Kingdoms of the West, the huge mute still wore only sandals, a short kirtle belted at the waist, and an unbleached wool blanket drawn over one shoulder. His bare arms and legs were like tree trunks, and his muscles knotted and rippled whenever he moved. His nondescript brown hair was drawn straight back and tied at the nape of his neck with a short length of leather thong. Blind Cyradis had told them that this silent giant was to aid them in the search for Zandramas and Garion’s stolen son, but so far Toth seemed content merely to follow them impassively, giving no hint that he even cared where they were going.
“Would you like to help me, Ce’Nedra?” Polgara asked pleasantly, unbuckling the straps on one of the packs.