Then there was golden light ahead. The mouth of the passageway was a jagged, irregular opening with a stiff tangle of limbs sharply outlined in front of it. With a sudden clatter of little hooves, the colt, ignoring Hettar’s sharp command, bolted for the opening and plunged out into the light.
Belgarath scratched at his whiskers, squinting after the little animal. “Maybe you’d better take him and his mother with you when we separate,” he said to Hettar. “He seems to have a little trouble taking things seriously, and Cthol Murgos is a very serious place.”
Hettar nodded gravely.
“I can’t,” Relg blurted suddenly, turning his back to the light and pressing himself against the rock wall of the passageway. “I can’t do it.”
“Of course you can,” Aunt Pol said comfortingly to him. “We’ll go out slowly so you can get used to it a little at a time.”
“Don’t touch me,” Relg replied almost absently.
“That’s going to get very tiresome,” Barak growled.
Garion and the rest of them pushed ahead eagerly, their hunger for light pulling at them. They shoved their way roughly through the tangle of bushes at the mouth of the cave and, blinking and shading their eyes, they emerged into the sunlight. The light at first stabbed Garion’s eyes painfully; but after a few moments, he found that he could see again. The partially concealed entrance to the caves was near the midpoint of a rocky hillside. Behind them, the snow-covered mountains of Ulgo glittered in the morning sun, outlined against the deep blue sky, and a vast plain spread before them like a sea. The tall grass was golden with autumn, and the morning breeze touched it into long, undulating waves. The plain reached to the horizon, and Garion felt as if he had just awakened from a nightmare.
Just inside the mouth of the cave behind them, Relg knelt with his back to the light, praying and beating at his shoulders and chest with his fists.
“Now what’s he doing?” Barak demanded.
“It’s a kind of purification ritual,” Belgarath explained. “He’s trying to purge himself of all unholiness and draw the essence of the caves into his soul. He thinks it may help to sustain him while he’s outside.”
“How longs he going to be at it?”
“About an hour, I’d imagine. It’s a fairly complicated ritual.”
Relg stopped praying long enough to bind a second veil across his face on top of the first one.
“If he wraps any more cloth around his head, he’s likely to smother,” Silk observed.
“I’d better get started,” Hettar said, tightening the straps on his saddle. “Is there anything else you wanted me to tell Cho-Hag?”
“Tell him to pass the word along to the others about what’s happened so far,” Belgarath answered. “Things are getting to the point where I’d like everybody to be more or less alert.”
Hettar nodded.
“Do you know where you are?” Barak asked him.
“Of course.” The tall man looked out at the seemingly featureless plain before him.
“It’s probably going to take us at least a month to get to Rak Cthol and back,” Belgarath advised. “If we get a chance, we’ll light signal fires on top of the eastern escarpment before we start down. Tell Cho-Hag how important it is for him to be waiting for us. We don’t want Murgos blundering into Algaria. I’m not ready for a war just yet.”
“We’ll be there,” Hettar replied, swinging up into his saddle. “Be careful in Cthol Murgos.” He turned his horse and started down the hill toward the plain with the mare and the colt tagging along behind him. The colt stopped once to look back at Garion, gave a forlorn little whinny, then turned to follow his mother.
Barak shook his head sombrely. “I’m going to miss Hettar,” he rumbled.
“Cthol Murgos wouldn’t be a good place for Hettar,” Silk pointed out. “We’d have to put a leash on him.”
“I know that.” Barak sighed. “But I’ll miss him all the same.”
“Which direction do we take?” Mandorallen asked, squinting out at the grassland.
Belgarath pointed to the southeast. “That way. We’ll cross the upper end of the Vale to the escarpment and then go through the southern tip of Mishrak ac Thull. The Thulls don’t put out patrols as regularly as the Murgos do.”
“Thulls don’t do much of anything unless they have to,” Silk noted. “They’re too preoccupied with trying to avoid Grolims.”
“When do we start?” Durnik asked.
“As soon as Relg finishes his prayers,” Belgarath replied.
“We’ll have time for breakfast then,” Barak said dryly.
They rode all that day across the flat grassland of southern Algaria beneath the deep blue autumn sky. Relg, wearing an old hooded tunic of Durnik’s over his mail shirt, rode badly, with his legs sticking out stifliy. He seemed to be concentrating more on keeping his face down than on watching where he was going.
Barak watched sourly, with disapproval written plainly on his face. “I’m not trying to tell you your business, Belgarath,” he said after several hours, “but that one’s going to be trouble before we’re finished with this.”
“The light hurts his eyes, Barak,” Aunt Pol told the big man, “and he’s not used to riding. Don’t be so quick to criticize.”
Barak clamped his mouth shut, his expression still disparaging.
“At least we’ll be able to count on his staying sober,” Aunt Pol observed primly. “Which is more than I can say about some members of this little group.”
Barak coughed uncomfortably.
They set up for the night on the treeless bank of a meandering stream. Once the sun had gone down, Relg seemed less apprehensive, though he made an obvious point of not looking directly at the driftwood fire. Then he looked up and saw the first stars in the evening sky. He gaped up at them in horror, his unveiled face breaking out in a glistening sweat. He covered his head with his arms and collapsed face down on the earth with a strangled cry.
“Relg!” Garion exclaimed, jumping to the stricken man’s side and putting his hands on him without thinking.
“Don’t touch me,” Relg gasped automatically.
“Don’t be stupid. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“The sky,” Relg croaked in despair. “The sky! It terrifies me!”
“The sky?” Garion was baffled. “What’s wrong with the sky?” He looked up at the familiar stars.
“There’s no end to it,” Relg groaned. “It goes up forever.”
Quite suddenly Garion understood. In the caves he had been afraid unreasoningly afraid – because he had been closed in. Out here under the open sky, Relg suffered from the same kind of blind terror. Garion realized with a kind of shock that quite probably Relg had never been outside the caves of Ulgo in his entire life. “It’s all right,” he assured him comfortingly. “The sky can’t hurt you. It’s just up there. Don’t pay any attention to it.”
“I can’t bear it.”
“Don’t look at it.”
“I still know it’s there – all that emptiness.”
Garion looked helplessly at Aunt Pol. She made a quick gesture that told him to keep talking. “It’s not empty,” he floundered. “It’s full of things – all kinds of things – clouds, birds, sunlight, stars-”
“What?” Relg lifted his face up out of his hands. “What are those?”
“Clouds? Everyone knows what-” Garion stopped. Obviously Relg did not know what clouds were. He’d never seen a cloud in his life. Garion tried to rearrange his thoughts to take that into account. It was not going to be easy to explain. He took in a deep breath. “All right. Let’s start with clouds, then.”
It took a long time, and Garion was not really sure that Relg understood or if he was simply clinging to the words to avoid thinking about the sky. After clouds, birds were a bit easier, although feathers were very hard to explain.
“UL spoke to you,” Relg interrupted Garion’s description of wings. “He called you Belgarion. Is that your name?”
“Well-” Garion replied uncomfortably. “Not really. Actually my name is Garion, but I think the other name is supposed to be mine too sometime later, I believe – when I’m older.”
“UL knows all things,” Relg declared. “If he called you Belgarion, that’s your true name. I will call you Belgarion.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t.”
“My God rebuked me,” Relg groaned, his voice sunk into a kind of sick self loathing. “I have failed him.”
Garion couldn’t quite follow that. Somehow, even in the midst of his panic, Relg had been suffering the horrors of a theological crisis. He sat on the ground with his face turned away from the fire and his shoulders slumped in an attitude of absolute despair.
“I’m unworthy,” he said, his voice on the verge of a sob. “When UL spoke in the silence of my heart, I felt that I had been exalted above all other men, but now I am lower than dirt.”