Belgarath shook his head. "It's not a storm," he replied. "It's ashfall. That volcano out there is erupting again, and the wind's blowing the ash this way."

Barak made a face, then shrugged. "At least we won't have to worry about being seen, once it starts," he said.

"The Grolims won't be looking for us with their eyes, Barak," Aunt Pol reminded him.

Belgarath scratched at his beard. "We'll have to take steps to deal with that, I suppose."

"This is a large group to shield, father," Aunt Pol pointed out, "and that's not even counting the horses."

"I think you can manage it, Pol. You were always very good at it."

"I can hold up my side as long as you can hold up yours, Old Wolf."

"I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to help you, Pol. Ctuchik himself is looking for us. I've felt him several times already, and I'm going to have to concentrate on him. If he decides to strike at us, he'll come very fast. I'll have to be ready for him, and I can't do that if I'm all tangled up in a shield."

"I can't do it alone, father," she protested. "n.o.body can enclose this many men and horses without help."

"Garion can help you."

"Me?" Garion jerked his eyes off the looming cloud to stare at his grandfather.

"He's never done it before, father," Aunt Pol pointed out.

"He's going to have to learn sometime."

"This is hardly the time or place for experimentation."

"He'll do just fine. Walk him through it a time or two until he gets the hang of it."

"Exactly what is it I'm supposed to do?" Garion asked apprehensively.

Aunt Pol gave Belgarath a hard look and then turned to Garion. "I'll show you dear," she said. "The first thing you have to do is stay calm. It really isn't all that difficult."

"But you just said-"

"Never mind what I said, dear. Just pay attention."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked doubtfully.

"The first thing is to relax," she replied, "and think about sand and rock."

"That's all?"

"Just do that first. Concentrate."

He thought about sand and rock.

"No, Garion, not white sand. Black sand - like the sand all around us."

"You didn't say that."

"I didn't think I had to."

Belgarath started to laugh.

"Do you want to do this, father?" she demanded crossly. Then she turned back to Garion. "Do it again, dear. Try to get it right this time."

He fixed it in his mind.

"That's better," she told him. "Now, as soon as you get sand and rock firmly in your mind, I want you to sort of push the idea out in a half circle so that it covers your entire right side. I'll take care of the left."

He strained with it. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. "Don't push quite so hard, Garion. You're wrinkling it, and it's very hard for me to make the seams match when you do that. Just keep it steady and smooth."

"I'm sorry." He smoothed it out.

"How does it look, father?" she asked the old man.

Garion felt a tentative push against the idea he was holding.

"Not bad, Pol," Belgarath replied. "Not bad at all. The boy's got talent."

"Just exactly what are we doing?" Garion asked. In spite of the chill, he felt sweat standing out on his forehead.

"You're making a shield," Belgarath told him. "You enclose yourself in the idea of sand and rock, and it merges with the real sand and rock all around us. When Grolims go looking for things with their minds, they're looking for men and horses. They'll sweep right past us, because all they'll see here is more sand and more rock."

"That's all there is to it?" Garion was quite pleased with how simple it was.

"There's a bit more, dear," Aunt Pol said. "We're going to extend it now so that it covers all of us. Go out slowly, a few feet at a time."

That was much less simple. He tore the fabric of the idea several times before he got it pushed out as far as Aunt Pol wanted it. He felt a strange merging of his mind with hers along the center of the idea where the two sides joined.

"I think we've got it now, father," Aunt Pol said.

"I told you he could do it, Pol."

The purple-black cloud was rolling ominously up the sky toward them, and faint rumbles of thunder growled along its leading edge.

"If that ash is anything like what it was in Nyissa, we're going to be wandering blind out here, Belgarath," Barak said.

"Don't worry about it," the sorcerer replied. "I've got a lock on Rak Cthol. The Grolims aren't the only ones who can locate things that way. Let's move out."

They started along the ridge again as the cloud blotted out the sky overhead. The thunder shocks were a continuous rumble, and lightning seethed in the boiling cloud. The lightning had an arid, crackling quality about it as the billions of tiny particles seethed and churned, building enormous static discharges. Then the first specks of drifting ash began to settle down through the icy air, as Belgarath led them down off the ridge and out onto the sand flats.

By the end of the first hour, Garion found that holding the image in his mind had grown easier. It was no longer necessary to concentrate all his attention on it as it had been at first. By the end of the second hour, it had become no more than tedious. To relieve the boredom of it as they rode through the thickening ashfall, he thought about one of the huge skeletons they had pa.s.sed when they had first entered the wasteland. Painstakingly he constructed one of them and placed it in the image he was holding. On the whole he thought it looked rather good, and it gave him something to do.

"Garion," Aunt Pol said crisply, "please don't try to be creative."

"What?"

"Just stick to sand. The skeleton's very nice, but it looks a bit peculiar with only one side."

"One side?"

"There wasn't a skeleton on my side of the image - just yours. Keep it simple, Garion. Don't embellish."

They rode on, their faces m.u.f.fled to keep the choking ash out of their mouths and noses. Garion felt a tentative push against the image he was holding. It seemed to flutter against his mind, feeling almost like the wriggling touch of the tadpoles he had once caught in the pond at Faldor's farm.

"Hold it steady, Garion," Aunt Pol warned. "That's a Grolim."

"Did he see us?"

"No. There - he's moving on now." And the fluttering touch was gone.

They spent the night in another of the piles of broken rock that dotted the wasteland. Durnik once again devised a kind of low, hollowed-out shelter of piled rock and anch.o.r.ed-down tent cloth. They took a cold supper of bread and dried meat and built no fire. Garion and Aunt Pol took turns holding the image of empty sand over them like an umbrella. He discovered that it was much easier when they weren't moving.

The ash was still falling the next morning, but the sky was no longer the inky black it had been the day before. "I think it's thinning out, Belgarath," Silk said as they saddled their horses. "If it blows over, we'll have to start dodging patrols again."

The old man nodded. "We'd better hurry," he agreed. "There's a place I know of where we can hide - about five miles north of the city. I'd like to get there before this ashfall subsides. You can see for ten leagues in any direction from the walls of Rak Cthol."

"Are the walls so high, then?" Mandorallen asked.

"Higher than you can imagine."

"Higher even than the walls of Vo Mimbre?"

"Ten times higher - fifty times higher. You'll have to see it to understand."

They rode hard that day. Garion and Aunt Pol held their shield of thought in place, but the searching touches of the Grolims came mare frequently now. Several times the push against Garion's mind was very strong and came without warning.

"They know what we're doing, father," Aunt Pol told the old man. "They're trying to penetrate the screen."

"Hold it firm," he replied. "You know what to do if one of them breaks through."

She nodded, her face grim.

"Warn the boy."

She nodded again, then turned to Garion. "Listen to me carefully, dear," she said gravely. "The Grolims are trying to take us by surprise. The best shield in the world can be penetrated if you hit it quickly enough and hard enough. If one of them does manage to break through, I'm going to tell you to stop. When I say stop, I want you to erase the image immediately and put your mind completely away from it."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to. Just do exactly as I say. If I tell you to stop, pull your thought out of contact with mine instantly. I'll be doing something that's very dangerous, and I don't want you getting hurt."

"Can't I help?"

"No, dear. Not this time."

They rode on. The ashfall grew even thinner, and the sky overhead turned a hazy, yellowish blue. The ball of the sun, pale and round like a full moon, appeared not far above the southwestern horizon.

"Garion, stop!"

What came was not a push but a sharp stab. Garion gasped and jerked his mind away, throwing the image of sand from him. Aunt Pol stiffened, and her eyes were blazing. Her hand flicked a short gesture, and she spoke a single world. The surge Garion felt as her will unleashed was overpowering. With a momentary dismay, he realized that his mind was still linked to hers. The merging that had held the image together was too strong, too complete to break. He felt himself drawn with her as their still joined minds lashed out like a whip. They flashed back along the faint trail of thought that had stabbed at the shield and they found its origin. They touched another mind, a mind filled with the exultation of discovery. Then, sure of her target now, Aunt Pol struck with the full force of her will. The mind they had touched flinched back, trying to break off the contact, but it was too late for that now. Garion could feel the other mind swelling, expanding unbearably. Then it suddenly burst, exploding into gibbering insanity, shattering as horror upon horror overwhelmed it. There was flight then, blind shrieking flight across dark stones of some kind, a flight with the single thought of a dreadful, final escape. The stones were gone, and there was a terrible sense of falling from some incalculable height. Garion wrenched his mind away from it.

"I told you to get clear," Aunt Pol snapped at him.

"I couldn't help it. I couldn't get loose."

"What happened?" Silk's face was startled.

"A Grolim broke through," she replied.

"Did he see us?"

"For a moment. It doesn't matter. He's dead now."

"You killed him? How?"

"He forgot to defend himself. I followed his thought back."

"He went crazy," Garion said in a choked voice, still filled with the horror of the encounter. "He jumped off something very high. He wanted to jump. It was the only way he could escape from what was happening to him." Garion felt sick.

"It was awfully noisy, Pol," Belgarath said with a pained expression.

"You haven't been that clumsy in years."

"I had this pa.s.senger." She gave Garion an icy look.

"It wasn't my fault," Garion protested. "You were holding on so tight I couldn't break loose. You had us all tied together."

"You do that sometimes, Pol," Belgarath told her. "The contact gets a little too personal, and you seem to want to take up permanent residence. It has to do with love, I imagine."

"Do you have any idea what they're talking about?" Barak asked Silk.

"I wouldn't even want to guess."

Aunt Pol was looking thoughtfully at Garion. "Perhaps it was my fault," she admitted finally.

"You're going to have to let go someday, Pol," Belgarath said gravely.

"Perhaps - but not just yet."

"You'd better put the screen back up," the old man suggested. "They know we're out here now, and there'll be others looking for us."

She nodded. "Think about sand again, Garion."

The ash continued to settle as they rode through the afternoon, obscuring less and less with each pa.s.sing mile. They were able to make out the shapes of the jumbled piles of rock around them and a few rounded spires of basalt thrusting up out of the sand. As they approached another of the low rock ridges that cut across the wasteland at regular intervals, Garion saw something dark and enormously high looming in the haze ahead.

"We can hide here until dark," Belgarath said, dismounting behind the ridge.