Belgarath frowned. “Are you absolutely sure?” he asked the giant.
Toth nodded.
“Have you been through these woods before?”
Again the mute nodded, then firmly pointed once more in the same direction.
“And if we go that way, we’re going to come out on the south coast in the vicinity of the Isle of Verkat?”
Toth nodded again and went back to tending the fire.
“Cyradis said that he was coming along to aid us in the search, Grandfather,” Garion reminded him.
“All right. Since he knows the way, we’ll let him lead us through this forest. I’m tired of guessing.”
They had gone perhaps two leagues that cloudy morning, with Toth confidently leading them along a scarcely perceptible track, when Polgara quite suddenly reined in her horse with a warning cry. “Look out!”
An arrow sizzled through the foggy air directly at Toth, but the huge man swept it aside with his staff. Then a gang of rough-looking men, some Murgos and some of indeterminate race, came rushing out of the woods, brandishing a variety of weapons.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Silk rolled out of his saddle, his hands diving under his slaver’s robe for his daggers. As the bawling ruffians charged forward, he leaped to meet them, his heavy daggers extended in front of him like a pair of spears.
Even as Garion jumped to the ground, he saw Toth already advancing, his huge staff whirling as he bore down on the attackers, and Durnik, holding his axe in both hands, circling to the other side.
Garion swept Iron-grip’s sword from its scabbard and ran forward, swinging the flaming blade in great arcs. One of the ruffians launched himself into the air, twisting as he did so in a clumsy imitation of a maneuver Garion had seen Silk perform so many times in the past. This time, however, the technique failed. Instead of driving his heels into Garion’s face or chest, the agile fellow encountered the point of the burning sword, and his momentum quite smoothly skewered him on the blade.
Silk ripped open an attacker with one of his daggers, spun, and drove his other knife directly into the forehead of another.
Toth and Durnik, moving in from opposite sides, drove several of the assailants into a tight knot, and methodically began to brain them one after another as they struggled to disentangle themselves from each other.
“Garion!” Ce’Nedra cried, and he whirled to see a burly, unshaven man pull the struggling little queen from her saddle with one hand, even as he raised the knife he held in the other. Then he dropped the knife, and both his hands flew up to grasp the slim, silken cord that had suddenly been looped about his neck from the rear. Calmly, the golden-haired Velvet, her knee pushed firmly against the wildly threshing man’s back, pulled her cord tighter and tighter. Ce’Nedra watched in horror as her would-be killer was efficiently strangled before her eyes.
Garion grimly turned and began to chop his way through the now-disconcerted attackers. The air around him was suddenly filled with shrieks, groans, and chunks of clothing and flesh. The ragged-looking men he faced flinched back as his huge sword laid a broad windrow of quivering dead in his wake. Then they broke and ran.
“Cowards!” a black-robed man screamed after the fleeing villains. He held a bow in his hand and he raised it, pointing his arrow directly at Garion. Then he suddenly doubled over sharply, driving his arrow into the ground before him as one of Silk’s daggers flickered end over end to sink solidly into his stomach.
“Is anybody hurt?” Garion demanded, spinning around quickly, his dripping sword still in his hand.
“They are.” Silk laughed gaily, looking around with some satisfaction at the carnage in the forest clearing.
“Please stop!” Ce’Nedra cried to Velvet in an anguished voice.
“What?” the blond girl asked absently, still leaning back against the silken cord drawn tightly about the neck of the now-limp man she had just strangled. “Oh, I’m sorry, Ce’Nedra,” she apologized. “My attention wandered a bit, I guess.” She released the cord, and the black-faced dead man toppled to the ground at her feet.
“Nice job,” Silk congratulated her.
“Fairly routine.” She shrugged, carefully coiling up her garrote.
“You seem to be taking it quite calmly.”
“There’s no particular reason to get excited, Kheldar. It’s part of what we were trained to do, after all.”
He looked as if he were about to reply, but her matter-of-fact tone obviously baffled him.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Stop that!” Durnik said in disgust to Sadi, who was moving about the clearing casually sticking his small, poisoned dagger into each of the bodies littering the ground.
“Just making sure, Goodman,” Sadi replied coolly. “It’s not prudent to leave an enemy behind you who might be feigning death.” He moved over to the black-robed man whom Silk had felled. “What’s this?” he said with some surprise. “This one’s still alive.” He reached down to push the dying man’s hood aside to look at his face, then pulled back his hand with a sharp intake of his breath. “You’d better have a look at this one, Belgarath,” he said.
Belgarath crossed the clearing to the eunuch’s side.
“Doesn’t that purple lining on the inside of his hood mean that he’s a Grolim?” Sadi asked.
Belgarath nodded bleakly. He bent and lightly touched the hilt of Silk’s dagger that still protruded from the robed man’s stomach. “He doesn’t have much time left,” he said. “Can you get him conscious enough to answer a few questions?”
“I can try,” Sadi told him. He went to his horse and took a vial of yellow liquid from his red case. “Could you get me a cup of water, Goodman?” he asked Durnik.
The smith’s face was disapproving, but he fetched a tin cup from one of the packs and filled it from one of their water bags.
Sadi carefully measured a few drops of the yellow liquid into the cup, then swirled it around a few times. He knelt beside the dying man and almost tenderly lifted his head. “Here,” he said gently, “drink this. It might make you feel better.” He supported the Grolim’s head on his arm and held the cup to his lips. Weakly, the stricken man drank, then lay back. After a moment, a serene smile came to his ashen face.
“There, isn’t that better?”
“Much better,” the dying man croaked.
“That was quite a skirmish, wasn’t it?”
“We thought to surprise you,” the Grolim admitted, “but we were the ones who got the surprise.”
“Your Master—what was his name again? I’m terrible at names.”
“Morgat,” the Grolim supplied with a bemused look on his face, “Hierarch of Rak Cthan.”
“Oh, yes, now I remember. Anyway, Morgat should have given you more men to help you.”
“I hired the men myself—at Rak Cthaka. They told me that they were professionals, but—” He began to cough weakly.
“Don’t tire yourself,” Sadi said. He paused. “What’s Morgat’s interest in us?” he asked.
“He’s acting on the instructions of Agachak,” the Grolim replied, his voice little more than a whisper. “Agachak is not one to take chances, and some very serious accusations were made back at Rak Urga, I understand. Agachak has ordered that every Grolim priest of the purple seek you out.”
Sadi sighed. “It’s more or less what I’d expected,” he said mournfully. “People always seem to distrust me. Tell me, how did you ever manage to find us?”
“It was Cthrag Yaska,” the Grolim replied, his breathing growing even more labored. “Its accursed song rings across Cthol Murgos like a beacon, drawing every Grolim of the purple directly to you.” The dying man drew in a deep breath, and his unfocused eyes suddenly became alert. “What was in that cup?” he demanded sharply. He pushed Sadi’s arm away and tried to rise to a sitting position. A great gush of blood spurted from his mouth, and his eyes went blank. He shuddered once with a long, gurgling groan. Then he fell limply back.
“Dead,” Sadi noted clinically. “That’s the problem with oret. It’s a little hard on the heart, and this fellow wasn’t in very good shape to begin with. I’m sorry, Belgarath, but it was the best I could do.”
“It was enough, Sadi,” the old man replied bleakly. “Come with me, Garion,” he said. “Let’s go someplace quiet. You and I are going to have to have a long talk with the Orb.”
“Do you suppose that you could hold off on that, Belgarath?” Sadi asked, looking around nervously. “I think we want to get as far away from here as we can—almost immediately.”
“I hardly expect those fellows to come back, Sadi,” Silk drawled.
“That’s not what concerns me, Kheldar. It’s not prudent to remain in the vicinity of so many dead bodies in this forest, and we’ve lingered much too long already.”