Belgarath raised his voice, speaking in a language Garion had never heard before. After a moment, the woman answered haltingly, as if trying to remember words she had not spoken for years.
"She thinks it"s a trick," the old man told them quietly. "She says she"s got a knife right against her heart, so we"re going to have to be careful." He spoke again into the dark pa.s.sageway, and the woman answered him. The language they were speaking was liquid, musical.
"She says she"ll let one of us go to her," Belgarath said finally. "She still doesn"t trust us."
"I"ll go," Aunt Pol told him.
"Be careful, Pol. She might decide at the last minute to use her knife on you instead of herself."
"I can handle it, father." Aunt Pol took the light from Barak and moved slowly on down the pa.s.sageway, speaking calmly as she went. The rest of them stood in the darkness, listening intently to the murmur of voices coming from the pa.s.sageway, as Aunt Pol talked quietly to the Marag woman. "You can come now," she called to them finally, and they went down the pa.s.sageway toward her voice.
The woman was lying beside a small pool of water. She was dressed only in scanty rags, and she was very dirty. Her hair was a l.u.s.trous black, but badly tangled, and her face had a resigned, hopeless look on it. She had wide cheekbones, full lips, and huge, violet eyes framed with sooty black lashes. The few pitiful rags she wore exposed a great deal of her pale skin. Relg drew in a sharp breath and immediately turned his back.
"Her name is Taiba," Aunt Pol told them quietly. "She escaped from the slave pens under Rak Cthol several days ago."
Belgarath knelt beside the exhausted woman. "You"re a Marag, aren"t you?" he asked her intently.
"My mother told me I was," she confirmed. "She"s the one who taught me the old language." Her dark hair fell across one of her pale cheeks in a shadowy tangle.
"Are there any other Marags in the slave pens?"
"A few, I think. It"s hard to tell. Most of the other slaves have had their tongues cut out."
"She needs food," Aunt Pol said. "Did anyone think to bring anything?"
Durnik untied a pouch from his belt and handed it to her. "Some cheese," he said, "and a bit of dried meat."
Aunt Pol opened the pouch.
"Have you any idea how your people came to be here?" Belgarath asked the slave woman. "Think. It could be very important."
Taiba shrugged. "We"ve always been here." She took the food Aunt Pol offered her and began to eat ravenously.
"Not too fast," Aunt Pol warned.
"Have you ever heard anything about how Marags wound up in the slave pens of the Murgos?" Belgarath pressed.
"My mother told me once that thousands of years ago we lived in a country under the open sky and that we weren"t slaves then," Taiba replied. "I didn"t believe her, though. It"s the sort of story you tell children."
"There are some old stories about the Tolnedran campaign in Maragor, Belgarath," Silk remarked. "Rumors have been floating around for years that some of the legion commanders sold their prisoners to the Nyissan slavers instead of killing them. It"s the sort of thing a Tolnedran would do."
"It"s a possibility, I suppose," Belgarath replied, frowning.
"Do we have to stay here?" Relg demanded harshly. His back was still turned, and there was a rigidity to it that spoke his outrage loudly.
"Why is he angry with me?" Taiba asked, her voice dropping wearily from her lips in scarcely more than a whisper.
"Cover your nakedness, woman," Relg told her. "You"re an affront to decent eyes."
"Is that all?" She laughed, a rich, throaty sound. "These are all the clothes I have." She looked down at her lush figure. "Besides, there"s nothing wrong with my body. It"s not deformed or ugly. Why should I hide it?"
"Lewd woman!" Relg accused her.
"If it bothers you so much, don"t look," she suggested.
"Relg has a certain religious problem," Silk told her dryly.
"Don"t mention religion," she said with a shudder.
"You see," Relg snorted. "She"s completely depraved."
"Not exactly," Belgarath told him. "In Rak Cthol the word religion means the altar and the knife."
"Garion," Aunt Pol said, "give me your cloak."
He unfastened his heavy wool cloak and handed it to her. She started to cover the exhausted slave woman with it, but stopped suddenly and looked closely at her. "Where are your children?" she asked.
"The Murgos took them," Taiba replied in a dead voice. "They were two baby girls - very beautiful - but they"re gone now."
"We"ll get them back for you," Garion promised impulsively.
She gave a bitter little laugh. "I don"t think so. The Murgos gave them to the Grolims, and the Grolims sacrificed them on the altar of Torak. Ctuchik himself held the knife."
Garion felt his blood run cold.
"This cloak is warm," Taiba said gratefully, her hands smoothing the rough cloth. "I"ve been cold for such a long time." She sighed with a sort of weary contentment.
Belgarath and Aunt Pol were looking at each other across Taiba"s body. "I must be doing something right," the old man remarked cryptically after a moment. "To stumble across her like this after all these years of searching!"
"Are you sure she"s the right one, father?"
"She almost has to be. Everything fits together too well - right down to the last detail." He drew in a deep breath and then let it out explosively. "That"s been worrying me for a thousand years." He suddenly looked enormously pleased with himself. "How did you escape from the slave pens, Taiba?" he asked gently.
"One of the Murgos forgot to lock a door," she replied, her voice drowsy. "After I slipped out, I found this knife. I was going to try to find Ctuchik and kill him with it, but I got lost. There are so many caves down here - so many. I wish I could kill him before I die, but I don"t suppose there"s much hope for that now." She sighed regretfully. "I think I"d like to sleep now. I"m so very tired."
"Will you be all right here?" Aunt Pol asked her. "We have to leave, but we"ll be back. Do you need anything?"
"A little light, maybe." Taiba sighed. "I"ve lived in the dark all my life. I think I"d like it to be light when I die."
"Relg," Aunt Polt said, "make her some light."
"We might need it ourselves." His voice was still stiffly offended.
"She needs it more."
"Do it, Relg," Belgarath told the zealot in a firm voice.
Relg"s face hardened, but he mixed some of the contents of his two pouches together on a flat stone and dribbled a bit of water on the mixture. The pasty substance began to glow.
"Thank you," Taiba said simply.
Relg refused to answer or even to look at her.
They went back up the pa.s.sageway, leaving her beside the small pool with her dim little light. She began to sing again, quite softly this time and in a voice near the edge of sleep.
Relg led them through the dark galleries, twisting and changing course frequently, always climbing. Hours dragged by, though time had little meaning in the perpetual darkness. They climbed more of the sheer faces and followed pa.s.sageways that wound higher and higher up into the vast rock pillar. Garion lost track of direction as they climbed, and found himself wondering if even Relg knew which way he was going. As they rounded another corner in another gallery, a faint breeze seemed to touch their faces. The breeze carried a dreadful odor with it.
"What"s that stink?" Silk asked, wrinkling his sharp nose.
"The slave pens, most likely," Belgarath replied. "Murgos are lax about sanitation."
"The pens are under Rak Cthol, aren"t they?" Barak asked. Belgarath nodded.
"And they open up into the city itself?"
"As I remember it, they do."
"You"ve done it, Relg," Barak said, clapping the Ulgo on the shoulder.
"Don"t touch me," Reig told him.
"Sorry, Relg."
"The slave pens are going to be guarded," Belgarath told them. "We"ll want to be very quiet now."
They crept on up the pa.s.sageway, being careful where they put their feet. Garion was not certain at what point the gallery began to show evidence of human construction. Finally they pa.s.sed a partially open iron door. "Is there anybody in there?" he whispered to Silk.
The little man sidled up to the opening, his dagger held low and ready. He glanced in, his head making a quick, darting movement. "Just some bones," he reported somberly.
Belgarath signalled for a halt. "These lower galleries have probably been abandoned," he told them in a very quiet voice. "After the causeway was finished, the Murgos didn"t need all those thousands of slaves. We"ll go on up, but be quiet and keep your eyes open."
They padded silently up the gradual incline of the gallery, pa.s.sing more of the rusting iron doors, all standing partially ajar. At the top of the slope, the gallery turned back sharply on itself, still angling upward. Some words were crudely lettered on the wall in a script Garion could not recognize. "Grandfather," he whispered, pointing at the words.
Belgarath glanced at the lettering and grunted. "Ninth level," he muttered. "We"re still some distance below the city."
"How far do we go before we start running into Murgos?" Barak rumbled, looking around with his hand on his sword hilt.
Belgarath shrugged slightly. "It"s hard to say. I"d guess that only the top two or three levels are occupied."
They followed the gallery upward until it turned sharply, and once again there were words written on the wall in the alien script. "Eighth level," Belgarath translated. "Keep going."
The smell of the slave pens grew stronger as they progressed upward through the succeeding levels.
"Light ahead," Durnik warned sharply, just before they turned the corner to enter the fourth level.
"Wait here," Silk breathed and melted around the corner, his dagger held close against his leg.
The light was dim and seemed to be bobbing slightly, growing gradually brighter as the moments dragged by. "Someone with a torch," Barak muttered.
The torchlight suddenly flickered, throwing gyrating shadows. Then it grew steady, no longer bobbing. After a few moments, Silk came back, carefully wiping his dagger. "A Murgo," he told them. "I think he was looking for something. The cells up there are still empty."
"What did you do with him?" Barak asked.
"I dragged him into one of the cells. They won"t stumble over him unless they"re looking for him."
Relg was carefully veiling his eyes.
"Even that little bit of light?" Durnik asked him.
"It"s the color of it," Relg explained.
They rounded the corner into the fourth level and started up again. A hundred yards up the gallery a torch was stuck into a crack in the wall, burning steadily. As they approached it, they could see a long smear of fresh blood on the uneven, littered floor.
Belgarath stopped outside the cell door, scratching at his beard. "What was he wearing?" he asked Silk.
"One of those hooded robes," Silk replied. "Why?"
"Go get it."
Silk looked at him briefly, then nodded. He went back into the cell and came out a moment later carrying a black Murgo robe. He handed it to the old man.
Belgarath held up the robe, looking critically at the long cut running up the back. "Try not to put such big holes in the rest of them," he told the little man.
Silk grinned at him. "Sorry. I guess I got a bit overenthusiastic. I"ll be more careful from now on." He glanced at Barak. "Care to join me?" he invited.
"Naturally. Coming, Mandorallen?"
The knight nodded gravely, loosening his sword in its sheath. "We"ll wait here, then," Belgarath told them. "Be careful, but don"t take any longer than you have to."
The three men moved stealthily on up the gallery toward the third level.
"Can you guess at the time, father?" Aunt Pol asked quietly after they had disappeared.
"Several hours after midnight."
"Will we have enough time left before dawn?"
"If we hurry."
"Maybe we should wait out the day here and go up when it gets dark again."
He frowned. "I don"t think so, Pol. Ctuchik"s up to something. He knows I"m coming - I"ve felt that for the last week - but he hasn"t made a move of his own yet. Let"s not give him any more time than we have to.
"He"s going to fight you, father."
"It"s long overdue anyway," he replied. "Ctuchik and I have been stepping around each other for thousands of years because the time was never just exactly right. Now it"s finally come down to this." He looked off into the darkness, his face bleak. "When it starts, I want you to stay out of it, Pol."
She looked at the grim-faced old man for a long moment, then nodded. "Whatever you say, father," she said.