Ce’Nedra, numb-faced and inattentive, walked slowly across the smooth stone floor of the cavern to stand mutely beside the pack horse.
“We’ll need bread,” Polgara said, rummaging through the pack as if unaware of the young woman’s obvious abstraction. She took out several long, dark brown loaves of peasant bread and piled them like sticks of firewood in the little queen’s arms. “And cheese, of course,” she added, lifting out a wax-covered ball of Sendarian cheddar. She pursed her lips. “And perhaps a bit of the ham as well, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose so,” Ce’Nedra replied in an expressionless tone.
“Garion,” Polgara went on, “would you lay this cloth on that flat rock over there?” She looked back at Ce’Nedra. “I hate to eat off an uncovered table, don’t you?”
“Umm,” Ce’Nedra replied.
The two of them carried the loaves of bread, the wax-coated cheese, and the ham to the improvised table. Polgara snapped her fingers and shook her head. “I forgot the knife. Would you get it for me?”
Ce’Nedra nodded and started back toward the pack horse.
“What’s wrong with her, Aunt Pol?” Garion asked in a tense whisper.
“It’s a form of melancholia, dear.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“It is if it goes on for too long.”
“Can you do anything? I mean, could you give her some kind of medicine or something?”
“I’d rather not do that unless I have to, Garion. Sometimes the medicines just mask the symptoms, and other problems start to crop up. Most of the time, it’s best to let these things run their natural course.”
“Aunt Pol, I can’t stand to see her like this.”
“You’re going to have to endure it for a while, Garion. Just behave as if you weren’t aware of the way she’s acting. She’s not quite ready to come out of it yet.” She turned with a warm smile. “Ah, there it is,” she said, taking the knife from Ce’Nedra. “Thank you, dear.”
They all gathered around Polgara’s makeshift table for their simple lunch. As he ate, Durnik the smith gazed thoughtfully at the small crystal lake. “I wonder if there could be any fish in there,” he mused.
“No, dear,” Polgara said.
“It is possible, Pol. If the lake’s fed by streams from the surface, the fish could have been washed down here when they were minnows, and—”
“No, Durnik.”
He sighed.
After lunch, they re-entered the endless, twisting galleries, once again following Belgarath’s flickering torch. The hours limped by as they trudged mile after mile with the darkness pressing palpably in around them.
“How much farther do we have to go, Grandfather?” Gar-ion asked, falling in beside the old man.
“It’s hard to say exactly. Distances can be deceptive here in the caves.”
“Have you got any idea at all about why we had to come here? I mean, is there anything in the Mrin Codex—or maybe the Darine—that talks about something that’s supposed to happen here in Ulgo?”
“Not that I remember, no.”
“You don’t suppose we might have misunderstood, do you?”
“Our friend was pretty specific, Garion. He said that we have to stop at Prolgu on our way south, because something that has to happen is going to happen here.”
“Can’t it happen without us?” Garion demanded. “We’re just floundering around here in these caves, and all the while Zandramas is getting farther and farther ahead of us with my son.”
“What’s that?” Errand asked suddenly from somewhere behind them. “I thought I heard something.”
They stopped to listen. The guttering sound of Belgarath’s torch suddenly sounded very loud as Garion strained his ears, trying to reach out into the darkness to capture any wayward sound. The slow drip of water echoed its soft tapping from somewhere in the dark, and the faint sigh of air coming down through the cracks and crevices in the rock provided a mournful accompaniment. Then, very faintly, Garion heard the sound of singing, of choral voices raised in the peculiarly discordant but deeply reverent hymn to UL that had echoed and re-echoed through these dim caverns for over five millennia.
“Ah, the Ulgos,” Belgarath said with satisfaction. “We’re almost to Prolgu. Now maybe we’ll find out what it is that’s supposed to happen here.”
They went perhaps another mile along the passageway which rather suddenly became steeper, taking them deeper and deeper into the earth.
“Yakkf” a voice from somewhere ahead barked sharply. “Tacha velk? “•
“Belgarath, lyun hak,” the old sorcerer replied calmly in response to the challenge.
“Belgarath? “ The voice sounded startled. “Zajek kattig, Belgarath?”
“Marekeg Gorim, lyun zajek.”
“Veed mo. Mar ishum Ulgo.”
Belgarath extinguished his torch as the Ulgo sentry approached with a phosphorescently glowing wooden bowl held aloft.
“Yad ho, Belgarath. Groja UL.”
“Yad ho,” the old man answered the ritual greeting. “Groja UL.”
The short, broad-shouldered Ulgo bowed briefly, then turned and led them on down the gloomy passageway. The greenish, unwavering glow from the wooden bowl he carried spread its eerie light in the dim gallery, painting all their faces with a ghostly pallor. After another mile or so, the gallery opened out into one of those vast caverns where the pale glow of that strange, cold light the Ulgos contrived winked at them from a hundred openings high up in the stone wall. They carefully moved along a narrow ledge to the foot of a stone stairway that had been chipped from the rock wall of the cave. Their guide spoke briefly to Belgarath.
“We’ll have to leave the horses here,” the old man said.
“I can stay with them,” Durnik offered.
“No. The Ulgos will tend to them. Let’s go up.” And he started up the steep flight of stairs.
They climbed in silence, the sound of their footsteps echoing back hollowly from the far side of the cavern.
“Please don’t lean out over the edge like that, Errand,” Polgara said when they were about halfway up.
“I just wanted to see how far down it goes,” he replied. “Did you know that there’s water down there?”
“That’s one of the reasons I’d rather you stayed away from the edge.”
He flashed her a sudden smile and went on up.
At the top of the stairs, they skirted the edge of the dim subterranean abyss for several hundred yards, then entered one of the galleries where the Ulgos lived and worked in small cubicles carved from the rock. Beyond that gallery lay the Gorim’s half-lit cavern with its lake and its island and the peculiarly pyramid-shaped house surrounded by solemn white pillars. At the far end of the marble causeway which crossed the lake, the Gorim of Ulgo, dressed as always in his white robe, stood peering across the water. “Belgarath?” he called in a quavering voice, “is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Holy One,” the old man replied. “You might have guessed that I’d turn up again.”
“Welcome, old friend.”
Belgarath started toward the causeway, but Ce’Nedra darted past him with her coppery curls flying and ran toward the Gorim with her arms outstretched.
“Ce’Nedra?” he said, blinking as she threw her arms about his neck.
“Oh, Holy Gorim,” she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder, “someone’s taken my baby.”
“They’ve done what?” he exclaimed.
Garion had started almost involuntarily to cross the causeway to Ce’Nedra’s side, but Polgara put her hand on his arm to stop him. “Not just yet, dear,” she murmured.
“But—”
“This may be what she needs, Garion.”
“But, Aunt Pol, she’s crying.”
“Yes, dear. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. We have to let her grief run its course before she can begin to come out of it.”
The Gorim held the sobbing little queen in his arms, murmuring to her in a soft, comforting tone. After the first storm of her weeping had subsided, he raised his lined old face. “When did all this happen?” he asked.
“Late last summer,” Belgarath told him. “It’s a fairly involved story.”
“Come inside then, all of you,” the Gorim said. “My servants will prepare food and drink for you, and we can talk while you eat.”
They filed into the pyramid-shaped house standing on the Gorim’s island and entered the large central room with its stone benches and table, its glowing crystal lamps hanging on chains from the ceiling, and its peculiar, inward-sloping walls. The Gorim spoke briefly with one of his silent servants, then turned with his arm still about Ce’Nedra’s shoulders. “Sit, my friends,” he said to them.
As they sat at the stone table, one of the Gorim’s servants entered, carrying a tray of polished crystal goblets and a couple of flagons of the fiery Ulgo drink.
“Now,” the saintly old man said, “what has happened?”
Belgarath filled himself one of the goblets and then quickly sketched in the events of the past several months, telling the Gorim of the murder of Brand, of the attempt to sow dissention in the Alorn ranks and of the campaign against the cult stronghold at Jarviksholm.