"I don't really know. He seems quite sure he can do it, though."
"If it doesn't work, Taur Urgas is going to have Silk roasting over a slow fire first thing tomorrow morning. You know that, don't you?"
Belgarath nodded somberly.
Barak shook his head. "It's unnatural," he grumbled.
"Don't let it upset you so much," Belgarath advised.
The light began to fade, and Relg continued to pray, his voice rising and falling in formal cadences. When it was fully dark, he came back to where the others waited. "I'm ready," he said quietly. "We can leave now."
"We'll circle to the west," Belgarath told them. "We'll lead the horses and stay under cover as much as we can."
"It will take us a couple hours," Durnik said.
"That's all right. It will give the soldiers time to settle down. Pol, see what the Grolims Garion saw are up to."
She nodded, and Garion felt the gentle push of her probing mind. "It's all right, father," she stated after a few moments. "They're preoccupied. Taur Urgas has them conducting services for him."
"Let's go, then," the old man said.
They moved carefully down the gully, leading the horses. The night was murky, and the wind bit at them as they came out from between the protecting gravel banks. The plain to the east of the fair was dotted with a hundred fires whipping in the wind and marking the vast encampment of the army of Taur Urgas.
Relg grunted and covered his eyes with his hands.
"What's wrong?" Garion asked him.
"Their fires," Relg said. "They stab at my eyes."
"Try not to look at them."
"My God has laid a hard burden on me, Belgarion." Relg sniffed and wiped at his nose with his sleeve. "I'm not meant to be out in the open like this."
"You'd better have Aunt Pol give you something for that cold. It will taste awful, but you'll feel better after you drink it."
"Perhaps," Relg said, still shielding his eyes from the dim flicker of the Murgo watch fires.
The hill on the south side of the fair was a low outcropping of granite. Although eons of constant wind had covered it for the most part with a thick layer of blown sand and dirt, the rock itself lay solid beneath its covering mantle. They stopped behind it, and Relg began carefully to brush the dirt from a sloping granite face.
"Wouldn't it be closer if you started over there?" Barak asked quietly.
"Too much dirt," Relg replied.
"Dirt or rock - what's the difference?"
"A great difference. You wouldn't understand." He leaned forward and put his tongue to the granite face, seeming actually to taste the rock. "This is going to take a while," he said. He drew himself up, began to pray, and slowly pushed himself directly into the rock.
Barak shuddered and quickly averted his eyes.
"What ails thee, my Lord?" Mandorallen asked.
"It makes me cold all over just watching that," Barak replied.
"Our new friend is perhaps not the best of companions," Mandorallen said, "but if his gift succeeds in freeing Prince Kheldar, I will embrace him gladly and call him brother."
"If it takes him very long, we're going to be awfully close to this spot when morning comes and Taur Urgas finds out that Silk's gone," Barak mentioned.
"We'll just have to wait and see what happens," Belgarath told him. The night dragged by interminably. The wind moaned and whistled around the rocks on the flanks of the stony hill, and the sparse thornbushes rustled stiffly. They waited. A growing fear oppressed Garion as the hours passed. More and more, he became convinced that they had lost Relg as well as Silk. He felt that same sick emptiness he had felt when it had been necessary to leave the wounded Lelldorin behind back in Arendia. He realized, feeling a bit guilty about it, that he hadn't thought about Lelldorin in months. He began to wonder how well the young hothead had recovered from his wound - or even if he had recovered. His thoughts grew bleaker as the minutes crawled.
Then, with no warning - with not even a sound - Relg stepped out of the rock face he had entered hours before. Astride his broad back and clinging desperately to him was Silk. The rat-faced little man's eyes were wide with horror, and his hair seemed to be actually standing on end.
They all crowded around the two, trying to keep their jubilation quiet, conscious of the fact that they were virtually on top of an army of Murgos.
"I'm sorry it took so long," Relg said, jerking his shoulders uncomfortably until Silk finally slid off his back. "There's a different kind of rock in the middle of the hill. I had to make certain adjustments."
Silk stood, gasping and shuddering uncontrollably. Finally he turned on Relg. "Don't ever do that to me again," he blurted. "Not ever."
"What's the trouble?" Barak asked.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"I had feared we had lost thee, my friend," Mandorallen said, grasping Silk's hand.
"How did Brill catch you?" Barak asked.
"I was careless. I didn't expect him to be here. His men threw a net over me as I was galloping through a ravine. My horse fell and broke his neck."
"Hettar's not going to like that."
"I'll cut the price of the horse out of Brill's skin - someplace close to the bone, I think."
"Why does Taur Urgas hate you so much?" Barak asked curiously.
"I was in Rak Goska a few years ago. A Tolnedran agent made a few false charges against me - I never found out exactly why. Taur Urgas sent some soldiers out to arrest me. I didn't particularly feel like being arrested, so I argued with the soldiers a bit. Several of them died during the argument - those things happen once in a while. Unfortunately, one of the casualties was Taur Urgas' oldest son. The king of the Murgos took it personally. He's very narrow-minded sometimes."
Barak grinned. "He'll be terribly disappointed in the morning when he finds out that you've left."
"I know," Silk replied. "He'll probably take this part of Cthol Murgos apart stone by stone trying to find me."
"I think it's time we left," Belgarath agreed.
"I thought you'd never get around to that," Silk said.
Chapter Twenty-three
THEY RODE HARD through the rest of the night and for most of the following day. By evening their horses were stumbling with exhaustion, and Garion was as numb with weariness as with the biting cold."We'll have to find shelter of some kind," Durnik said as they reined in to look for a place to spend the night. They had moved up out of the series of connecting valleys through which the South Caravan Route wound and had entered the ragged, barren wilderness of the mountains of central Cthol Murgos. It had grown steadily colder as they had climbed into that vast jumble of rock and sand, and the endless wind moaned among the treeless crags. Durnik's face was creased with fatigue, and the gritty dust that drove before the wind had settled into the creases, etching them deeper. "We can't spend the night in the open," he declared. "Not with this wind."