“Garion!” Aunt Pol’s voice came sharply to him in the near dark through which they ran. “Watch where you’re going!” And he struggled to pull his mind back from its wandering even as he stumbled over a pile of broken rock where a large stretch of ceiling had fallen to the floor.
The terrified wails of the imprisoned slaves locked in clammy cells rose all around them now, joining in a weird counterharmony with the rumble and boom of earthquake. Other sounds came from the darkness as well-confused shouts in harshly accented Murgo voices, the lurching stagger of running feet, the clanging of an unlatched iron cell door swinging wildly as the huge rock pinnacle swayed and shuddered and heaved in the surging roll. Dust billowed through the dark caves, a thick, choking rock dust that stung their eyes and made them all cough almost continually as they clambered over the broken rubble.
Garion carefully lifted the trusting little boy over the pile of shattered rock, and the child looked into his face, calm and smiling despite the chaos of noise and stink all around them in the oppressive dimness. He started to set the child down again, but changed his mind. It would be easier and safer to carry the boy. He turned to go on along the passageway, but he recoiled sharply as his foot came down on something soft. He peered at the floor, then felt his stomach suddenly heave with revulsion as he saw that he had stepped on a lifeless human hand protruding from the rockfall.
They ran on through the heaving darkness with the black Murgo robes which had disguised them flapping around their legs and the dust still thick in the air about them.
“Stop!” Relg, the Ulgo zealot, raised his hand and stood with his head cocked to one side, listening intently.
“Not here!” Barak told him, still lumbering forward with the dazed Belgarath in his arms. “Move, Relg!”
“Be still!” Relg ordered. “I’m trying to listen.” Then he shook his head. “Go back!” he barked, turning quickly and pushing at them. “Run!”
“There are Murgos back there!” Barak objected.
“Run!” Relg repeated. “The side of the mountain’s breaking away!” Even as they turned, a new and dreadful creaking roar surrounded them. Screeching in protest, the rock ripped apart with a long, hideous tearing. A sudden flood of light filled the gallery along which they fled as a great crack opened in the side of the basalt peak, widening ponderously as a vast chunk of the mountainside toppled slowly outward to fall to the floor of the wasteland thousands of feet below. The red glow of the new-risen sun was blinding as the dark world of the caves was violently opened, and the great wound in the side of the peak revealed a dozen or more dark openings both above and beneath, where caves suddenly ran out into nothingness.
“There!” a shout came from overhead. Garion jerked his head around. Perhaps fifty feet above and out along the sharp angle of the face, a half dozen black-robed Murgos, swords drawn, stood in a cave mouth with the dust billowing about them. One was pointing excitedly at the fleeing fugitives. And then the peak heaved again, and another great slab of rock sheared away, carrying the shrieking Murgos into the abyss beneath.
“Run!” Relg shouted again, and they all pounded along at his heels, back into the darkness of the shuddering passageway.
“Stop a minute,” Barak gasped, plowing to a sudden halt after they had retreated several hundred yards. “Let me get my breath.” He lowered Belgarath to the floor, his huge chest heaving.
“Can I help thee, my Lord?” Mandorallen offered quickly.
“No,” Barak panted. “I can manage all right, I’m just a little winded.” The big man peered around. “What happened back there? What set all this off?”
“Belgarath and Ctuchik had a bit of a disagreement,” Silk told him with sardonic understatement. “It got a little out of hand toward the end.”
“What happened to Ctuchik?” Barak asked, still gasping for breath. “I didn’t see anybody else when Mandorallen and I broke into that room.”
“He destroyed himself,” Polgara replied, kneeling to examine Belgarath’s face.
“We saw no body, my Lady,” Mandorallen noted, peering into the darkness with his great broadsword in his hand.
“There wasn’t that much left of him,” Silk said.
“Are we safe here?” Polgara asked Relg.
The Ulgo set the side of his head against the wall of the passageway, listening intently. Then he nodded. “For the moment,” he replied. “Let’s stop here for a while then. I want to have a look at my father. Make me some light.”
Relg fumbled in the pouches at his belt and mixed the two substances that gave off that faint Ulgo light.
Silk looked curiously at Polgara. “What really happened?” he asked her. “Did Belgarath do that to Ctuchik?”
She shook her head, her hands lightly touching her father’s chest. “Ctuchik tried to unmake the Orb for some reason,” she said. “Something happened to frighten him so much that he forgot the first rule.”
A momentary flicker of memory came to Garion as he set the little boy down on his feet – that brief glimpse of Ctuchik’s mind just before the Grolim had spoken the fatal “Be Not” that had exploded him into nothingness. Once again he caught that single image that had risen in the High Priest’s mind – the image of himself holding the Orb in his hand – and he felt the blind, unreasoning panic the image had caused Ctuchik. Why? Why would that have frightened the Grolim into that deadly mistake?
“What happened to him, Aunt Pol?” he asked. For some reason he had to know.
“He no longer exists,” she replied. “Even the substance that formed him is gone.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Garion started to object, but Barak was already speaking.
“Did he destroy the Orb?” the big man asked with a kind of weak sickness in his voice.
“Nothing can destroy the Orb,” she told him calmly.
“Where is it then?”
The little boy pulled his hand free from Garion’s and went confidently to the big Cherek. “Errand?” he asked, holding out the round, gray stone in his hand.
Barak recoiled from the offered stone. “Belay!” he swore, quickly putting his hands behind his back. “Make him stop waving it around like that, Polgara. Doesn’t he know how dangerous it is?”
“I doubt it.”
“How’s Belgarath?” Silk asked.
“His heart’s still strong,” Polgara replied. “He’s exhausted, though. The fight nearly killed him.”
With a long, echoing shudder the quaking subsided, and the silence seemed very loud.
“Is it over?” Durnik asked, looking around nervously.
“Probably not,” Relg replied, his voice hushed in the sudden quiet. “An earthquake usually goes on for quite some time.”
Barak was peering curiously at the little boy. “Where did he come from?” he asked, his rumbling voice also subdued.
“He was in the turret with Ctuchik,” Polgara told him. “He’s the child Zedar raised to steal the Orb.”
“He doesn’t look all that much like a thief.”
“He isn’t precisely.” She looked gravely at the blond-headed waif. “Somebody’s going to have to keep an eye on him,” she observed. “There’s something very peculiar about him. After we get down, I’ll look into it, but I’ve got too much on my mind for that at the moment.”
“Could it be the Orb?” Silk asked curiously. “I’ve heard that it has strange effects on people.”
“Perhaps that’s it.” But she didn’t sound very convinced. “Keep him with you, Garion, and don’t let him lose the Orb.”
“Why me?” He said it without thinking. She gave him a level gaze.
“All right, Aunt Pol.” He knew there was no point in arguing with her.
“What was that?” Barak asked, holding up his hand for silence. Somewhere off in the darkness there was the murmur of voices – harsh, guttural voices.
“Murgos!” Silk whispered sharply, his hand going to his dagger.
“How many?” Barak asked Aunt Pol.
“Five,” she replied. “No-six. One’s lagging behind.”
“Are any of them Grolims?”
She shook her head.
“Let’s go, Mandorallen,” the big Cherek muttered, grimly drawing his sword.
The knight nodded, shifting his own broadsword in his hands. “Wait here,” Barak whispered to the rest of them. “We shouldn’t be long.” And then he and Mandorallen moved off into the darkness, their black Murgo robes blending into the shadows.
The others waited, their ears straining to catch any sound. Once again that strange song began to intrude itself upon Garion’s awareness, and once again his thoughts scattered before its compulsion. Somewhere a long, hissing slither of dislodged pebbles rattled down a slope, and that sound raised a confused welter of memory in him. He seemed to hear the ring of Durnik’s hammer on the anvil at Faldor’s farm, and then the plodding step of the horses and the creak of the wagons in which they had carried turnips to Darine back when this had all begun. As clearly as if he were there, he heard again the squealing rush of the boar he had killed in the snowy woods outside Val Alorn, and then the aching song of the Arendish serfboy’s flute that had soared to the sky from the stump-dotted field where Asharak the Murgo had watched with hate and fear on his scarred face.