"I'll tell you quite honestly, Ambar, it's as much as a man's life is worth to go to Rak Goska just now. A good merchant I know was actually accused of violating the women's quarters in a Murgo household."

"Well, I suppose that happens sometimes. Murgo women are reputed to be very handsome."

"Ambar," Kalvor said with a pained expression, "the man was seventy-three years old."

"His sons can be proud of his vitality then." Silk laughed. "What happened to him?"

"He was condemned and impaled," Kalvor said with a shudder. "The soldiers rounded us all up and made us watch. It was ghastly."

Silk frowned. "There's no chance that the charges were true?"

"Seventy-three years old, Ambar," Kalvor repeated. "The charges were obviously false. If I didn't know better, I'd guess that Taur Urgas is trying to drive all western merchants out of Cthol Murgos. Rak Goska simply isn't safe for us any more."

Silk grimaced. "Who can ever say what Taur Urgas is thinking?"

"He profits from every transaction in Rak Goska. He'd have to be insane to drive us out deliberately."

"I've met Taur Urgas," Silk said grimly. "Sanity's not one of his major failings." He looked around with a kind of desperation on his face. "Kalvor, I've invested everything I own and everything I can borrow in this venture. If I turn back now, I'll be ruined."

"You could turn north after you get through the mountains," Kalvor suggested. "Cross the river into Mishrak ac Thull and go to Thull Mardu."

Silk made a face. "I hate dealing with Thulls."

"There's another possibility," the Tolnedran said. "You know where the halfway point between Tol Honeth and Rak Goska is?"

Silk nodded.

"There's always been a Murgo resupply station there - food, spare horses, other necessities. Anyway, since the troubles in Rak Goska, a few enterprising Murgos have come out there and are buying whole caravan loads - horses and all. Their prices aren't as attractive as the prices in Rak Goska, but it's a chance for some profit, and you don't have to put yourself in danger to make it."

"But that way you have no goods for the return journey," Silk objected. "Half the profit's lost if you come back with nothing to sell in Tol Honeth."

"You'd have your life, Ambar," Kalvor said pointedly. He looked around again nervously, as if expecting to be arrested. "I'm not coming back to Cthol Murgos," he declared in a firm voice. "I'm as willing as any man to take risks for a good profit, but all the gold in the world isn't worth another trip to Rak Goska."

"How far is it to the halfway point?" Silk asked, seemingly troubled.

"I've ridden for three days since I left there," Kalvor replied. "Good luck, Ambar - whatever you decide." He gathered up his reins. "I want to put a few more leagues behind me before I stop for the night. There may be snow in the Tolnedran mountains, but at least I'll be out of Cthol Murgos and out from under the fist of Taur Urgas." He nodded briefly and moved off to the west at a fast trot, with his guards and his packtrain following after him.

Chapter Twenty-one.

THE SOUTH CARAVAN ROUTE wound through a series of high, arid valleys that ran in a generally east-west direction. The surrounding peaks were high - higher probably than the mountains to the west, but their upper slopes were only faintly touched with snow. The clouds overhead turned the sky a dirty slate-gray, but what moisture they held did not fall on this desiccated wilderness of sand, rock, and scrubby thorn. Though it did not snow, it was nonetheless bitterly cold. The wind blew continually, and its edge was like a knife.

They rode east, making good time.

"Belgarath," Barak said back over his shoulder, "there's a Murgo on that ridgeline ahead just to the south of the track."

"I see him."

"What's he doing?"

"Watching us. He won't do anything as long as we stay on the caravan route."

"They always watch like that," Silk stated. "The Murgos like to keep a close watch on everybody in their kingdom."

"That Tolnedran-Kalvor," Barak said. "Do you think he was exaggerating?"

"No," Belgarath replied. "I'd guess that Taur Urgas is looking for an excuse to close the caravan route and expel all the westerners from Cthol Murgos."

"Why?" Durnik asked.

Belgarath shrugged. "The war is coming. Taur Urgas knows that a good number of the merchants who take this route to Rak Goska are spies. He'll be bringing armies up from the south soon, and he'd like to keep their numbers and movements a secret."

"What manner of army could be gathered from so bleak and uninhabited a realm?" Mandorallen asked.

Belgarath looked around at the high, bleak desert. "This is only the little piece of Cthol Murgos we're permitted to see. It stretches a thousand leagues or more to the south, and there are cities down there that no westerner has ever seen - we don't even know their names. Here in north, the Murgos play a very elaborate game to conceal the real Cthol Murgos."

"Is it thy thought then that the war will come soon?"

"Next summer perhaps," Belgarath replied. "Possibly the summer following."

"Are we going to be ready?" Barak asked.

"We're going to try to be."

Aunt Pol made a brief sound of disgust.

"What's wrong?" Garion asked her quickly.

"Vultures," she said. "Filthy brutes."

A dozen heavy-bodied birds were flapping and squawking over something on the ground to one side of the caravan track.

"What are they feeding on?" Durnik asked. "I haven't seen any animals of any kind since we left the top of the escarpment."

"A horse, probably - or a man," Silk said. "There's nothing else up here."

"Would a man be left unburied?" the smith asked.

"Only partially," Silk told him. "Sometimes certain brigands decide that the pickings along the caravan route might be easy. The Murgos give them plenty of time to realize how wrong they were."

Durnik looked at him questioningly.

"The Murgos catch them," Silk explained, "and then they bury them up to the neck and leave them. The vultures have learned that a man in that situation is helpless. Often they get impatient and don't bother to wait for the man to finish dying before they start to eat."

"That's one way to deal with bandits," Barak said, almost approvingly. "Even a Murgo can have a good idea once in a while."

"Unfortunately, Murgos automatically a.s.sume that anybody who isn't on the track itself is a bandit."

The vultures brazenly continued to feed, refusing to leave their dreadful feast as the party pa.s.sed no more than twenty yards from their flapping congregation. Their wings and bodies concealed whatever it was they were feeding on, a fact for which Garion was profoundly grateful. Whatever it was, however, was not very large.

"We should stay quite close to the track when we stop for the night, then," Durnik said, averting his eyes with a shudder.

"That's a very good idea, Durnik," Silk agreed.

The information the Tolnedran merchant had given them about the makeshift fair at the halfway point proved to be accurate. On the afternoon of the third day, they came over a rise and saw a cl.u.s.ter of tents surrounding a solid stone building set to one side of the caravan track. The tents looked small in the distance and they billowed and flapped in the endless wind that swept down the valley.

"What do you think?" Silk asked Belgarath.

"It's late," the old man replied. "We're going to have to stop for the night soon anyway, and it would look peculiar if we didn't stop."

Silk nodded.

"We're going to have to try to keep Relg out of sight, though," Belgarath continued. "n.o.body's going to believe we're ordinary merchants if they see an Ulgo with us."

Silk thought a moment. "We'll wrap him in a blanket," he suggested, "and tell anybody who asks that he's sick. People stay away from sick men."

Belgarath nodded. "Can you act sick?" he asked Relg.

"I am sick," the Ulgo said without any attempt at humor. "Is it always this cold up here?" He sneezed.

Aunt Pol pulled her horse over beside his and reached out to put her hand on his forehead.

"Don't touch me." Relg cringed away from her hand.

"Stop that," she told him. She briefly touched his face and looked at him closely. "He's coming down with a cold, father," she announced. "As soon as we get settled, I'll give him something for it. Why didn't you tell me?" she asked the fanatic.

"I will endure what UL chooses to send me," Relg declared. "It's his punishment for my sins."

"No," she told him flatly. "It has nothing to do with sin or punishment. It's a cold - nothing more."

"Am I going to die?" Relg asked calmly.

"Of course not. Haven't you ever had a cold before?"

"No. I've never been sick in my life."

"You won't be able to say that again," Silk said lightly, pulling a blanket out of one of the packs and handing it to him. "Wrap this around your shoulders and pull it up over your head. Try to look like you're suffering."

"I am," Relg said, starting to cough.

"But you have to look like it," Silk told him. "Think about sin - that ought to make you look miserable."

"I think about sin all the time," Relg replied, still coughing.

"I know," Silk said, "but try to think about it a little harder."

They rode down the hill toward the collection of tents with the dry, icy wind whipping at them as they rode. Very few of the a.s.sembled merchants were outside their tents, and those who were moved quickly about their tasks in the biting chill.

"We should stop by the resupply station first, I suppose," Silk suggested, gesturing toward the square stone building squatting among the tents. "That would look more natural. Let me handle things."

"Silk, you mangy Drasnian thief!" a coa.r.s.e voice roared from a nearby tent.

Silk's eyes widened slightly, and then he grinned. "I seem to recognize the squeals of a certain Nadrak hog," he said, loud enough to be heard by the man in the tent.

A rangy Nadrak in a belted, ankle-length, black felt overcoat and a snug-fitting fur cap strode out of the tent. He had coa.r.s.e, black hair and a thin, scraggly beard. His eyes had the peculiar angularity to them that was a characteristic of all Angaraks; but unlike the dead eyes of the Murgos, this Nadrak's eyes were alive with a kind of wary friendship. "Haven't they caught you yet, Silk?" he demanded raucously. "I was sure that by now someone would have peeled off your hide."

"Drunk as usual, I see." Silk grinned viciously. "How many days has it been this time, Yarblek?"

"Who counts?" The Nadrak laughed, swaying slightly on his feet. "What are you doing in Cthol Murgos, Silk? I thought your fat king needed you in Gar og Nadrak."

"I was getting to be a little too well-known on the streets of Yar Nadrak," Silk replied. "It was getting to the point that people were avoiding me."

"Now I wonder just why that could be," Yarblek retorted with heavy sarcasm. "You cheat at trade, you switch dice, you make free with other men's wives, and you're a spy. That shouldn't be any reason for men not to admire your good points - whatever they are."

"Your sense of humor's as overpowering as ever, Yarblek."

"It's my only failing," the slightly tipsy Nadrak admitted. "Get down off that horse, Silk. Come inside my tent and we'll get drunk together. Bring your friends." He lurched back inside the tent.

"An old acquaintance," Silk explained quickly, sliding out of his saddle.

"Can he be trusted?" Barak asked suspiciously.

"Not entirely, but he's all right. He's not a bad fellow, really - for a Nadrak. He'll know everything that's going on, and if he's drunk enough, we might be able to get some useful information out of him."

"Get in here, Silk," Yarblek roared from inside his gray felt tent.

"Let's see what he has to say," Belgarath said.

They all dismounted, tied their horses to a picket line at the side of the Nadrak's tent, and trooped inside. The tent was large, and the floor and walls were covered with thick crimson carpets. An oil lamp hung from the ridgepole, and an iron brazier shimmered out waves of heat.

Yarblek was sitting cross-legged on the carpeting at the back of the tent, with a large black keg conveniently beside him. "Come in. Come in," he said brusquely. "Close the flap. You're letting out all the heat."

"This is Yarblek," Silk said by way of introduction, "an adequate merchant and a notorious drunkard. We've known each other for a long time now."

"My tent is yours." Yarblek hiccuped indifferently. "It's not much of a tent, but it's yours anyway. There are cups over there in that pile of things by my saddle - some of them are even clean. Let's all have a drink."

"This is Mistress Pol, Yarblek," Silk introduced her.

"Good-looking woman," Yarblek observed, looking at her boldly. "Forgive me for not getting up, Mistress, but I feel a bit giddy at the moment - probably something I ate."

"Of course," she agreed with a dry little smile. "A man should always be careful about what he puts in his stomach."

"I've made that exact point myself a thousand times." He squinted at her as she pulled back her hood and unfastened her cape. "That's a remarkably handsome woman, Silk," he declared. "I don't suppose you'd care to sell her."