"This is poor shelter, Belgarath," Barak roared, his beard whipping about his shoulders. "How long is this likely to last?"
"A day - two days - sometimes as long as a week."
Durnik had bent to pick up a piece of broken scab-rock. He looked at it carefully, turning it over in his hands. "It's fractured into square pieces," he said, holding it up. "It will stack well. We can build a wall to shelter us."
"That will take quite a while," Barak objected.
"Did you have something else to do?"
By evening they had the wall up to shoulder height, and by anchoring the tents to the top of it and higher up on the side of the rock-pile, they were able to get in out of the worst of the wind. It was crowded, since they had to shelter the horses as well, but at least it was out of the storm.
They huddled in their cramped shelter for two days with the wind shrieking insanely around them and the taut tent canvas drumming overhead. Then, when the wind finally blew itself out and the black sand began to settle slowly, the silence seemed almost oppressive.
As they emerged, Relg glanced up once, then covered his face and sank to his knees, praying desperately. The clearing sky overhead was a bright, chilly blue. Garion moved over to stand beside the praying fanatic. "It will be all right, Relg," he told him. He reached out his hand without thinking.
"Don't touch me," Relg said and continued to pray.
Silk stood, beating the dust and sand out of his clothing. "Do these storms come up often?" he asked.
"It's the season for them," Belgarath replied.
"Delightful," Silk said sourly.
Then a deep rumbling sound seemed to come from deep in the earth beneath them, and the ground heaved. "Earthquake!" Belgarath warned sharply. "Get the horses out of there!"
Durnik and Barak dashed back inside the shelter and led the horses out from behind the trembling wall and onto the salt flat.
After several moments the heaving subsided.
"Is Ctuchik doing that?" Silk demanded. "Is he going to fight us with earthquakes and sandstorms?"
Belgarath shook his head. "No. Nobody's strong enough to do that. That's what's causing it." He pointed to the south. Far across the wasteland they could make out a line of dark peaks. A thick plume was rising from one of them, towering into the air, boiling up in great black billows as it rose. "Volcano," the old man said. "Probably the same one that erupted last summer and dropped all the ash on Sthiss Tor."
"A fire-mountain?" Barak rumbled, staring at the great cloud that was growing up out of the mountaintop. "I've never seen one before."
"That's fifty leagues away, Belgarath," Silk stated. "Would it make the earth shake even here?"
The old man nodded. "The earth's all one piece, Silk. The force that's causing that eruption is enormous. It's bound to cause a few ripples. I think we'd better get moving. Taur Urgas' patrols will be out looking for us again, now that the sandstorm's blown over."
"Which way do we go?" Durnik asked, looking around, trying to get his bearings.
"That way." Belgarath pointed toward the smoking mountain.
"I was afraid you were going to say that," Barak grumbled.
They rode at a gallop for the rest of the day, pausing only to rest the horses. The dreary wasteland seemed to go on forever. The black sand had shifted and piled into new dunes during the sandstorm, and the thick-crusted salt flats had been scoured by the wind until they were nearly white. They passed a number of the huge, bleached skeletons of the sea monsters which had once inhabited this inland ocean. The bony shapes appeared almost to be swimming up out of the black sand, and the cold, empty eye sockets seemed somehow hungry as they galloped past.
They stopped for the night beside another shattered outcropping of scab-rock. Although the wind had died, it was still bitterly cold, and firewood was scanty.
The next morning as they set out again, Garion began to smell a strange, foul odor. "What's that stink?" he asked.
"The Tarn of Cthok," Belgarath replied. "It's all that's left of the sea that used to be here. It would have dried out centuries ago, but it's fed by underground springs."
"It smells like rotten eggs," Barak said.
"There's quite a bit of sulfur in the ground water around here. I wouldn't drink from the lake."
"I wasn't planning to." Barak wrinkled his nose.
The Tarn of Cthok was a vast, shallow pond filled with oily-looking water that reeked like all the dead fish in the world. Its surface steamed in the icy air, and the wisps of steam gagged them with the dreadful stink. When they reached the southern tip of the lake, Belgarath signalled for a halt. "This next stretch is dangerous," he told them soberly. "Don't let your horses wander. Be sure you stay on solid rock. Ground that looks firm quite often won't be, and there are some other things we'll need to watch out for. Keep your eyes on me and do what I do.
When I stop, you stop. When I run, you run." He looked thoughtfully at Relg. The Ulgo had bound another cloth across his eyes, partially to keep out the light and partially to hide the expanse of the sky above him.
"I'll lead his horse, Grandfather," Garion offered.
Belgarath nodded. "It's the only way, I suppose."
"He's going to have to get over that eventually," Barak said.
"Maybe, but this isn't the time or place for it. Let's go." The old man moved forward at a careful walk.
The region ahead of them steamed and smoked as they approached it. They passed a large pool of gray mud that bubbled and fumed, and beyond it a sparkling spring of clear water, boiling merrily and cascading a scalding brook down into the mud. "At least it's warmer," Silk observed.
Mandorallen's face was streaming perspiration beneath his heavy helmet. "Much warmer," he agreed.
Belgarath had been riding slowly, his head turned slightly as he listened intently.
"Stop!" he said sharply.
They all reined in.
Just ahead of them another pool suddenly erupted as a dirty gray geyser of liquid mud spurted thirty feet into the air. It continued to spout for several minutes, then gradually subsided.
"Now!" Belgarath barked. "Run!" He kicked his horse's flanks, and they galloped past the still-heaving surface of the pool, the hooves of their horses splashing in the hot mud that had splattered across their path. When they had passed, the old man slowed again and once more rode with his ear cocked toward the ground.