They gathered not far from the driftwood-littered beach. The fog had slipped imperceptibly from white to gray as evening settled slowly over this misty coast.
“That’s it, then,” Beldin said after Belgarath had told them what lay ahead. “If the Chandim and the Hounds are out there trying to sniff out Zandramas’ trail the same as we are, we’re bound to run into them sooner or later.”
“We’ve dealt with them before,” Silk objected.
“I’ll grant that,” Beldin replied, “but why risk that sort of thing if we don’t have to? The trail of Zandramas isn’t really important to us now. What we really need to do at this point is to get to Kell.”
Belgarath was pacing up and down. “Beldin’s right,” he said. “There’s no point in taking risks over something that doesn’t really matter any more.”
“But we’re so close,” Ce’Nedra protested.
“If we start running into Chandim—and Hounds—we won’t stay very close,” Beldin told her.
Sadi had put on a western-style traveler’s cloak and had turned the hood up to ward off the dampness of the fog. The covering of his shaved scalp peculiarly altered his appearance. “What’s Zandramas likely to do when she finds out that the Chandim are trailing her?” he asked.
“She’ll put every Grolim and every soldier she can lay her hands on in their path,” Polgara replied.
“And they’ll just bring in more force to counter that, won’t they?”
“That’s the logical assumption,” Durnik agreed.
“That sort of means that things are going to come to a head here fairly soon, wouldn’t you say—even if neither side would particularly have chosen this place for a major confrontation?”
“What are you getting at, Sadi?” Silk asked him.
“If Urvon and Zandramas are concentrating on each other, they won’t really pay that much attention to us, will they? About all we have to do is get out of this general vicinity, and then we should be able to make straight for Kell without much in the way of interference.”
“What lies to the south of us?” Beldin asked Silk.
“Nothing major.” Silk shrugged. “At least not until you get to Gandahar.”
Beldin nodded. “But we’ve got a city just to the north of here, don’t we?”
“Selda,” Silk supplied.
“Urvon’s probably there already, but if we go south, we should be able to avoid him—and Zandramas as well. Sadi’s right. They’ll be so busy with each other they won’t have time to look for us.”
“Anybody want to add anything?” Belgarath asked them.
“A fire maybe?” Durnik said.
“I don’t quite follow you.”
“We’ve got all this fog,” Durnik explained, “and night’s coming on. The Chandim are out there ahead of us, and we need something to distract their attention while we slip around them. There’s all that driftwood along the upper edge of the beach. A bonfire on a foggy night lights up the whole sky. You can see it for miles. If we build a few fires, the Chandim are going to think that something serious is going on behind them and they’ll all rush back to investigate. That ought to clear the way for us.”
Beldin grinned and clapped a gnarled hand on the smith’s shoulder. “You made a good choice, Pol,” he chortled. “This is a rare fellow here.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I saw that almost immediately.”
They rode back along the beach to the abandoned fishing village. “Do you want me to do it, Grandfather?” Garion coffered. “Set fire to the driftwood, I mean?”
“No,” the old man replied, “I’ll take care of it. You and Pol take the others on down along the shoreline. I’ll catch up in a bit.”
“Do you want these?” Durnik asked, offering the old man his flint and steel.
Belgarath shook his head. “I’ll do it the other way,” he said. “I want to give the Chandim some noise to listen to, as well as the fire to watch. That should get their undivided attention.” He strode off into the fog, heading back up the beach.
“Come along, Garion,” Polgara said, pushing back the (hood of her cloak. “We’ll scout ahead again. I think we’ll want to move fairly fast.”
The two of them walked a short distance down the beach and made the change once more. “Keep your mind awake as well as your ears and nose,” Polgara’s voice silently instructed. “With this fog, the Chandim will probably be Watching with their thoughts rather than their eyes.”
“Yes, Aunt Pol,” he replied, loping toward the upper end of the beach. Sand was different underfoot than grass or turf. It gave slightly under his paws and it slowed him a bit. He decided that he did not really like running in sand. He ran along for a couple of miles without any encounters, then he heard and felt a shockingly loud surge coming from somewhere behind him. He flinched and glanced back over shoulder. The fog was illuminated by a sooty orange. There was another surge that sounded almost like a detonation, then another, and another.
“Tacky, father,” he heard Polgara say disapprovingly. “Why are you being so ostentatious?”
“I just wanted to be sure they heard me, is all,” the old man replied.
“They probably heard you in Mal Zeth. Are you coming back now?”
“Let me start a few more fires first. The Chandim have a limited attention span. Besides, the smoke should confuse the Hounds’ sense of smell.”
There were several more detonations.
“That should do it.” Belgarath’s thought had a note of self-satisfaction in it.
About twenty minutes later, the great silver wolf came out of the fog like a ghost. “Oh, there you are,” Belgarath said to Garion in the way of wolves. “Let’s spread out a bit and move right along. Durnik and the others are right behind us.”
“Did the Chandim go back to the beach to see what was happening?”
“Oh, yes.” Belgarath’s tongue lolled out in the wolf’s version of a grin. “They were definitely curious. There were quite a few of them. Shall we go?”
They ran along for about another hour before Garion’s nostrils caught the scent of a horse and rider coming from somewhere ahead. He loped on through the fog, ranging back and forth until he pinpointed the man’s location. Then he ran forward.
It was a solitary Temple Guardsman who was galloping northward toward the towering fires Belgarath had ignited. Garion rushed him, snarling terribly. The Guardsman’s horse squealed in panic, rearing up onto his hind legs and dumping his startled rider into a bleached pile of driftwood. The horse fled, and the Guardsman groaned as he lay tangled up in the white logs and branches half-buried in the sand.
“Trouble?” Belgarath’s thought came out of the fog.
“A Guardsman,” Garion replied. “He fell off his horse. I think he may have broken some things.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes, Grandfather. Where are you?”
“Just a ways ahead of you. There are some woods up here. This looks like as good a place as any to turn west. I don’t think we need to go all the way down to Gandahar.”
“I’ll tell Aunt Pol to pass the word to Durnik.”
The woods were quite extensive, and there was very little undergrowth. At one point, Garion passed the embers of a campfire still glowing in the foggy dark. The campsite, however, was deserted, and there were signs that whoever had been there had departed in some haste. The track of churned loam on the forest floor indicated that the people had galloped off toward the fires on the beach.
Garion ran on.
Near the edge of the woods, a faint breeze carried a sharp canine reek. Garion stopped. “Grandfather,” he sent his thought out urgently, “I smell a dog up ahead.”
“Only one?”
“I think so.” He crept forward, his ears and nose alert. “I can only smell one,” he reported.
“Stay put. I’ll be right there.”
Garion dropped to his haunches and waited. A few moments later, the silver wolf joined him.
“Is he moving around at all?” Belgarath asked.
“No, Grandfather. He seems to be just sitting in one place. Do you think we can slip around him?”
“You and I could, but I don’t think that Durnik and the others would be able to. The Hounds can hear and smell almost as well as wolves can.”
“Can we frighten him off?”
“I doubt it. He’s bigger than we are. Even if we did, he’d just go for help—and we definitely don’t want a pack of the Hounds on our trail. We’re going to have to kill him.”
“Grandfather!” Garion gasped. For some reason, the thought of deliberately killing another canine profoundly shocked him.
“I know,” Belgarath agreed. “The notion’s repugnant, but we don’t have any choice. He’s blocking our way out of this area, and we have to be clear of here by daylight. Now listen carefully. The Hounds are big, but they’re not very agile. They particularly aren’t very good at turning around in a hurry. I’ll confront him head-on. You run in behind him and hamstring him. You know how to do that?”
That knowledge was instinctive in wolves, and Garion found, almost with surprise, that he knew precisely what to do. “Yes,” he replied. The speech of wolves is limited in its emotional range, so he could not indicate how uncomfortable this impending encounter made him.
“All right,” Belgarath continued, “once you cut his hamstrings, get back out of the range of his teeth. He’ll try to turn on you. That’s instinctive, so he won’t be able to stop himself. That’s when I’ll take his throat.”
Garion shuddered at the deliberateness of the plan. Belgarath was proposing not a fight, but a cold-blooded killing. “Let’s get it over with, Grandfather,” he said unhappily.
“Don’t whine, Garion,” Belgarath’s thought came to him. “He’ll hear you.”
“I don’t like this,” Garion thought back.
“Neither do I, but it’s the only thing we can do. Let’s go.” They crept among the fog-dimmed tree trunks with the smell of the Hound growing stronger in their nostrils. It was not a pleasant smell, since dogs will eat carrion, while wolves will not. Then Garion saw the Hound outlined black against the fog beyond the edge of the trees. Belgarath paused, indicating that he also saw their intended victim. Then the two wolves separated and moved in the slow, deliberate pace of the hunt, setting each paw carefully and noiselessly down on the damp forest loam.
It was over in a shockingly short time. The Hound screamed once when Garion’s fangs ripped the tendons of his hind legs, but the scream died into a hideous rattling gurgle as Belgarath’s jaws closed on his throat. The huge black body twitched a few times with its front paws scratching convulsively at the dirt. Then it shuddered and went limp. The dead Hound blurred peculiarly, and then there was a Grolim lying on the ground before them with his throat torn out.
“I didn’t know they did that,” Garion said, fighting down a surge of revulsion.
“Sometimes they do.” Then Belgarath sent out his thought. “It’s clear now, Pol. Tell Durnik to bring them on through.”
As dawn turned the fog opalescent, they took shelter in a ruined village. There had been a wall around it, and part of it was still standing. The houses had been made of stone. Some were still more or less intact—except for the roofs. Others had been tumbled into the narrow streets. In places, smoke still rose from the shattered debris.
“I think we can risk a fire,” Durnik suggested, looking at the smoke.
Polgara looked around. “A hot breakfast wouldn’t hurt,” she agreed. “It might be some time before we get another chance for one. Over there, I think,” she added, “in what’s left of that house.”
“In just a moment, Durnik,” Belgarath said. “I’ll need you to translate for me.” He looked at Toth. “I assume you know how to get to Kell from here?” he asked the huge mute.
Toth shifted the unbleached wool blanket he wore draped over one shoulder and nodded.
“In Melcena, we heard that Kell has been sealed off,” the old man continued. “Will they let us through?”
Toth made a series of those obscure gestures.
“He says that there won’t be any problem—as long as Cyradis is still at Kell,” Durnik translated. “She’ll instruct the other seers to let us through.”
“She’s there, then?” Belgarath asked.
The gestures came more rapidly.
“I didn’t quite follow that,” Durnik told his friend.
Toth gestured again, slower this time.
Durnik frowned. “This is a little complicated, Belgarath,” he said. “As closely as I can make out what he says, she’s there and yet not there at the same time—sort of the way she was when we saw Zandramas that time. But she’s also there and not there in several other places as well—and in several different times.”
“That’s a neat trick,” Beldin said. “Did he tell you where these other places and times are?”
“No. I think he’d rather not.”
“We can respect that,” Belgarath said.
“It doesn’t diminish the curiosity, though,” Beldin said. He brushed a few twigs out of his beard, then pointed at the sky. “I’m going up there,” he added. “I think we ought to know how far this fog extends and what we’re likely to run into once we get past it.” He stopped, spread his arms, shimmered, and swooped away.
Durnik led the way into the ruined house and built a small fire in the fireplace while Silk and Sadi prowled through the shattered village. After a short while they returned with a very thin Melcene in the brown robe of a bureaucrat. “He was hiding in a cellar,” Silk reported.
The bureaucrat was trembling visibly, and his eyes were wild.
“What’s your name?” Belgarath asked him.
The Melcene stared at the old man as if he didn’t understand.
“I think he’s had a bad time lately,” Silk said. “We weren’t able to get a word out of him.”
“Can you give him something to calm his nerves?” Belgarath asked Sadi.
“I was just about to suggest that myself, Ancient One.” Sadi went to his red leather case and took out a small glass vial filled with amber liquid. He took a tin cup from the table and poured some water into it. Then he carefully measured a few drops of the amber liquid into the water and swirled it around. “Why don’t you drink this?” he said, handing the trembling Melcene the cup.
The fellow seized the cup gratefully and drained it in several noisy gulps.
“Give it a few moments to take effect,” Sadi said quietly to Belgarath.
They watched the terrified man until his trembling subsided. “Are you feeling any better now, friend?” Sadi asked him.
“Y-yes,” the thin fellow replied. He drew in a long shuddering breath. “Thank you,” he said. “Have you any food? I’m very hungry.”
Polgara gave him some bread and cheese. “This should tide you over until breakfast,” she said.
“Thank you, Lady.” He hungrily took the food and began to wolf it down.
“You look as if you’ve been through quite a lot lately,” Silk said.
“And none of it pleasant,” the bureaucrat told him.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Nabros. I’m with the Bureau of Roads.”
“How long have you been in Peldane?”
“It seems like forever, but I suppose it’s only been twenty years or so.”
“What’s going on here?” The rat-faced man gestured around at the shattered houses.
“Absolute chaos,” Nabros replied. “Things have been in an upheaval for several years now, but last month Zandramas annexed Peldane.”
“How did she do that? I’d heard that she was somewhere in the western part of the continent.”
“So had I. Maybe she just got word back to her generals. Nobody’s seen her for several years now.”
“You seem to be fairly well informed, Nabros,” Silk suggested.
Nabros shrugged. “It goes with being a member of the bureaucracy.” He smiled a bit wanly. “Sometimes I think we spend more time gossiping than we do working.”
“What have you heard about Zandramas lately?” Belgarath asked.
“Well,” the fellow replied, rubbing at his unshaven cheek, “just before I fled the bureau offices in Selda, a friend of mine from the Bureau of Commerce came by. He said that there’s supposed to be a coronation of some kind in Hemil—that’s the capital of Darshiva, you know. My friend told me that they’re going to crown some archduke from Melcena as Emperor of Mallorea.”
“Mallorea’s already got an emperor,” Velvet objected.
“I think that may be part of the idea. My friend from Commerce is a fairly shrewd fellow, and he was speculating a bit after he told me what they were planning. Kal Zakath’s been in Cthol Murgos for years now, but he recently returned to Mal Zeth. Most of his army is still in the west, however, so he can’t put great masses of troops in the field. My friends seemed to think that Zandramas ordered this coronation in order to infuriate the Emperor to the point that he’ll do something rash. It’s my guess that she hopes to lure him out of Mal Zeth so her forces can fall on him. If she succeeds in killing him, this archduke from Melcena will actually be the emperor.”
“What’s the point of that?” Silk asked him.
“You’ve heard of Urvon, haven’t you?”
“The Disciple?”
“That’s the one. He’s been sitting for centuries in Mal Yaska, but what’s been going on in this part of the world has finally lured him out. It’s because of Zandramas, you see. She’s a direct challenge to him. Anyway, he marched across Karanda gathering up an enormous army. The Karands even believe he has demons aiding him. That’s nonsense, of course, but Karands will believe anything. That’s why Zandramas—or her people—have to get control of the imperial throne. She needs to bring the Mallorean army back from Cthol Murgos to match Urvon’s forces. Otherwise, he’ll destroy everything she’s worked for.” The suddenly talkative bureaucrat sighed deeply, and his head began to nod.
“I think he’ll sleep now,” Sadi murmured to Belgarath.
“That’s all right,” the old man replied. “I’ve got what I need.”
“Not quite yet,” Polgara said crisply from her cook-fire. “There are some things that I need as well.” She carefully stepped across the littered floor of the half-ruined house and lightly touched one hand to the dozing bureaucrat’s face. His eyes opened, and he looked at her a bit blankly. “How much do you know about Zandramas?” she asked him. “I think I’d like to hear the full story—if you know it. How did she gain so much power?”
“That’s a long story, Lady.”
“We have time.”
The thin Melcene rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn. “Let me see,” he said, half to himself, “where did it all start?” He sighed. “I came here to Peldane about twenty years ago. I was young and very enthusiastic. It was my first post, and I wanted very much to make good. Peldane’s not such a bad place, really. We had Grolims here, naturally, but they were a long way from Urvon and Mal Yaska, and they didn’t take their religion very seriously. Torak had been dormant for five hundred years, and Urvon wasn’t interested in what was going on out here in the hinterlands.
“Over in Darshiva, though, things were different. There had been some kind of a schism in the Temple in Hemil, the capital, and it ended up in a bloodbath.” He smiled faintly. “One of the few times Grolims have ever put their knives to good use, I suppose. The upshot of the affair was that a new archpriest gained control of the Temple—a man named Naradas.”
“Yes,” Polgara said. “We’ve heard of him.”
“I’ve never actually seen him, but I’m told he has very strange eyes. Anyway, among his followers there was a young Grolim priestess named Zandramas. She must have been about sixteen then, and very beautiful, I’ve heard. Naradas reintroduced the old forms of worship, and the altar in the Temple at Hemil ran with blood.” He shuddered. “It seems that the young priestess was the most enthusiastic participant in the Grolim rite of sacrifice—either out of an excess of fanaticism, or innate cruelty, or because she knew that this was the best way to attract the eye of the new archpriest. There are rumors that she attracted his eye in other ways as well. She’d unearthed a very obscure passage in the Book of Torak that seemed to say that the rite of sacrifice should be performed unclad. They say that Zandramas has a striking figure, and I guess the combination of blood and her nakedness completely inflamed Naradas. I’ve heard that things used to happen in the sanctum of the Temple during the rite that cannot be described in the presence of ladies.”
“I think we can skip over that part, Nabros,” Polgara told him primly, glancing at Eriond.
“Anyhow,” Nabros continued, “all Grolims claim to be sorcerers, but from what I gather, the ones in Darshiva weren’t very skilled. Naradas could manage a few things, but most of his followers resorted to charlatanism—sleight of hand and other forms of trickery, you understand.
“At any rate, not long after Naradas had consolidated his position, word reached us here that Torak had been killed. Naradas and his underlings went into absolute despair, but something rather profound seems to have happened to Zandramas. She walked out of the Temple at Hemil in a kind of a daze. My friend from the Bureau of Commerce was there at the time and he saw her. He said that her eyes were and that she had an expression of inhuman ecstasy her face. When she reached the edge of the city, she took off her clothes and ran naked into the forest. We all assumed that she’d gone completely mad and that we’d seen the last of her.
“Once in a while, though, travelers would report having seen her in that wilderness near the border of Likandia. Sometimes, she’d run away from them, and other times, she’d stop them and speak to them in a language no one could understand. They listened, though—perhaps because she still hadn’t managed to find any clothes.
“Then one day after a few years, she showed up at the gates of Hemil. She was wearing a black Grolim robe made of satin, and she seemed to be totally in control of herself. She went to the Temple and sought out Naradas. The arch-priest had given himself wholly over to the grossest kind of debauchery in his despair, but after he and Zandramas spoke together privately, he seems to have had a reconversion of some kind. Since that time, he’s been the follower. He’ll do anything Zandramas tells him to do.
“Zandramas spent a short time in the Temple, then she began to move about in Darshiva. At first she spoke only with Grolims, but in time she went out and talked with ordinary people as well. She always told them the same thing—that a new God of Angarak was coming. After a time, word of what she was doing got back to Mal Yaska, and Urvon sent some very powerful Grolims to Darshiva to stop her. I’m not sure what happened to her out there in that wilderness, but whatever it was seems to have filled her with enormous power. When Urvon’s Grolims tried to stop her from preaching, she simply obliterated them.”
“Obliterated?” Belgarath exclaimed in astonishment.
“That’s about the only word I can use. Some of them she consumed with fire. Others were blasted to bits by bolts of lightning that shot down out of a cloudless sky. Once, she opened the earth, dropped five of them into a pit, and then closed the earth on them again. Urvon began to take her very seriously at that point, I guess. He sent more and more Grolims to Darshiva, but she destroyed them all. The Darshivan Grolims who chose to follow her were given real powers, so they didn’t have to resort to trickery any more.”
“And the ones who didn’t?” Polgara asked.
“None of them survived. I understand that a few of them tried deception—pretending to accept her message—but I guess she could see right through them and took appropriate steps. It probably wasn’t really necessary, though. She spoke as if inspired, and no one could resist her message. Before long, all of Darshiva—Grolims and secular people alike-groveled at her feet.
“She moved north from Darshiva into Rengel and Voresebo, preaching as she went and converting whole multitudes. The archpriest Naradas followed her blindly and he was also enormously eloquent and appears to have only slightly less power than she does. For some reason, she never came across the River Magan into Peldane—until recently.”
“All right,” Polgara said, “she converted Rengel and Voresebo. Then what?”
“I really can’t say.” Nabros shrugged. “About three years ago, both she and Naradas disappeared. I think they went off to the west someplace, but I don’t know for sure. About the last thing she told the crowds before she left was that she was going to be the bride of this new God she’s been talking about. Then, a month ago, her forces came across the Magan and invaded Peldane. That’s about all I know, really.”
Polgara stepped back. “Thank you, Nabros,” she said gently. “Why don’t you see if you can get some sleep now? I’ll save some breakfast for you.”
He sighed, and his eyelids began to droop. “Thank you, Lady,” he said drowsily, and a moment later he was fast asleep. Polgara gently covered him with a blanket.
Belgarath motioned to them, and they all went back over to the fire again. “It’s all beginning to fit together now, isn’t it?” he said. “When Torak died, the Dark Spirit took over Zandramas and made her the Child of Dark. That’s what that business in the wilderness was all about.”
Ce’Nedra had been muttering to herself under her breath. Her eyes were dangerous and her face angry. “You’d better do something about this, old man,” she said threateningly to Belgarath.
“About what?” He looked a little baffled.
“You heard what that man said. He told us that Zandra plans to be the bride of this new God.”
“Yes,” he said mildly, “I heard him.”
“You’re not going to let something like that happen, are you?”
“I hadn’t planned to, no. What’s got you so upset, Ce’Nedra?”
Her eyes flashed. “I will not have Zandramas for a daughter-in-law,” she declared hotly, “no matter what happens.”
He stared at her for a moment, then he began to laugh.