Magician's Gambit Part 20

"He invited us into the caves," the old man said. "Shall we go down now?"

Chapter Sixteen.

IT TOOK ALL Of Hettar's force of persuasion to start the horses moving down the steeply inclined pa.s.sageway that led into the dimness of the caves of Ulgo. Their eyes rolled nervously as they took step after braced step down the slanting corridor, and they all flinched noticeably as the grinding stone boomed shut behind them. The colt walked so close to Garion that they frequently b.u.mped against each other, and Garion could feel the little animal's trembling with every step.

At the end of the corridor two figures stood, each with his face veiled in a kind of filmy cloth. They were short men, shorter even than Silk, but their shoulders seemed bulky beneath their dark robes. Just beyond them an irregularly shaped chamber opened out, faintly lighted by a dim, reddish glow.

Belgarath moved toward the two, and they bowed respectfully to him as he approached. He spoke with them briefly, and they bowed again, pointing toward another corridor opening on the far side of the chamber. Garion nervously looked around for the source of the faint red light, but it seemed lost in the strange, pointed rocks hanging from the ceiling.

"We go this way," Belgarath quietly told them, crossing the chamber toward the corridor the two veiled men had indicated to him.

"Why are their faces covered?" Durnik whispered.

"To protect their eyes from the light when they opened the portal."

"But it was almost dark inside that building up there," Durnik objected.

"Not to an Ulgo," the old man replied.

"Don't any of them speak our language?"

"A few-not very many. They don't have much contact with outsiders. We'd better hurry. The Gorim is waiting for us."

The corridor they entered ran for a short distance and then opened abruptly into a cavern so vast that Garion could not even see the other side of it in the faint light that seemed to pervade the caves.

"How extensive are these caverns, Belgarath?" Mandorallen asked, somewhat awed by the immensity of the place.

"No one knows for sure. The Ulgos have been exploring the caves since they came down here, and they're still finding new ones."

The pa.s.sageway they had followed from the portal chamber had emerged high up in the wall of the cavern near the vaulted roof, and a broad ledge sloped downward from the opening, running along the sheer wall. Garion glanced once over the edge. The cavern floor was lost in the gloom far below. He shuddered and stayed close to the wall after that.

As they descended, they found that the huge cavern was not silent. From what seemed infinitely far away there was the cadenced sound of chanting by a chorus of deep male voices, the words blurred and confused by the echoes reverberating from the stone walls and seeming to die off, endlessly repeated. Then, as the last echoes of the chant faded, the chorus began to sing, their song strangely disharmonic and in a mournful, minor key. In a peculiar fas.h.i.+on, the disharmony of the first phrases echoing back joined the succeeding phrases and merged with them, moving inexorably toward a final harmonic resolution so profound that Garion felt his entire being moved by it. The echoes merged as the chorus ended its song, and the caves of Ulgo sang on alone, repeating that final chord over and over.

"I've never heard anything like that," Ce'Nedra whispered softly to Aunt Pol.

"Few people have," Polgara replied, "though the sound lingers in some of these galleries for days."

"What were they singing?"

"A hymn to UL. It's repeated every hour, and the echoes keep it alive. These caves have been singing that same hymn for five thousand years now."

There were other sounds as well, the sc.r.a.pe of metal against metal, s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation in the guttural language of the Ulgos, and an endless chipping sound, coming, it seemed, from a dozen places.

"There must be a lot of them down there," Barak observed, peering over the edge.

"Not necessarily," Belgarath told him. "Sound lingers in these caves, and the echoes keep coming back over and over again."

"Where does the light come from?" Durnik asked, looking puzzled. "I don't see any torches."

"The Ulgos grind two different kinds of rock to powder," Belgarath replied. "When you mix them, they give off a glow."

"It's pretty dim light," Durnik observed, looking down toward the floor of the cavern.

"Ulgos don't need all that much light."

It took them almost half an hour to reach the cavern floor. The walls around the bottom were pierced at regular intervals with the openings of corridors and galleries radiating out into the solid rock of the mountain. As they pa.s.sed, Garion glanced down one of the galleries. It was very long and dimly lighted with openings along its walls and a few Ulgos moving from place to place far down toward the other end.

In the center of the cavern lay a large, silent lake, and they skirted the edge of it as Belgarath moved confidently, seeming to know precisely where he was going. Somewhere from far out on the dim lake, Garion heard a faint splash, a fish perhaps or the sound of a dislodged pebble from far above falling into the water. The echo of the singing they had heard when they entered the cavern still lingered, curiously loud in some places and very faint in others.

Two Ulgos waited for them near the entrance to one of the galleries. They bowed and spoke briefly to Belgarath. Like the men who had met them in the portal chamber, both were short and heavy-shouldered. Their hair was very pale and their eyes large and almost black.

"We'll leave the horses here," Belgarath said. "We have to go down some stairs. These men will care for them."

The colt, still trembling, had to be told several times to stay with his mother, but he finally seemed to understand. Then Garion hurried to catch up to the others, who had already entered the mouth of one of the galleries.

There were doors in the walls of the gallery they followed, doors opening into small cubicles, some of them obviously workshops of one kind or another and others just as obviously arranged for domestic use. The Ulgos inside the cubicles continued at their tasks, paying no attention to the party pa.s.sing in the gallery. Some of the pale-haired people were working with metal, some with stone, a few with wood or cloth. An Ulgo woman was nursing a small baby.

Behind them in the cavern they had first entered, the sound of the chanting began again. They pa.s.sed a cubicle where seven Ulgos, seated in a circle, were reciting something in unison.

"They spend a great deal of time in religious observances," Belgarath remarked as they pa.s.sed the cubicle. "Religion's the central fact of Ulgo life."

"Sounds dull," Barak grunted.

At the end of the gallery a flight of steep, worn stairs descended sharply, and they went down, their hands on the wall to steady themselves.

"It would be easy to get turned around down here," Silk observed. "I've lost track of which direction we're going."

"Down," Hettar told him.

"Thanks," Silk replied dryly.

At the bottom of the stairs they entered another cavern, once again high up in the wall, but this time the cavern was spanned by a slender bridge, arching across to the other side. "We cross that," Belgarath told them and led them out onto the bridge that arched through the half light to the other side.

Garion glanced down once and saw a myriad of gleaming openings dotting the cavern walls far below. The openings did not appear to have any systematic arrangement, but rather seemed scattered randomly. "There must be a lot of people living here," he said to his grandfather.

The old man nodded. "It's the home cave of one of the major Ulgo tribes," he replied.

The first disharmonic phrases of the ancient hymn to UL drifted up to them as they neared the other end of the bridge. "I wish they'd find another tune," Barak muttered sourly. "That one's starting to get on my nerves."

"I'll mention that to the first Ulgo I meet," Silk told him lightly. "I'm sure they'll be only too glad to change songs for you."

"Very funny," Barak said.

"It probably hasn't occurred to them that their song isn't universally admired."

"Do you mind?" Barak asked acidly.

"They've only been singing it for five thousand years now."

"That'll do, Silk," Aunt Pol told the little man.

"Anything you say, great lady," Silk answered mockingly.

They entered another gallery on the far side of the cavern and followed it until it branched. Belgarath firmly led them to the left.

"Are you sure?" Silk asked. "I could be wrong, but it seems like we're going in a circle."

"We are."

"I don't suppose you'd care to explain that."

"There's a cavern we wanted to avoid, so we had to go around it."

"Why did we have to avoid it?"

"It's unstable. The slightest sound there might bring the roof down."

"Oh."

"That's one of the dangers down here."

"You don't really need to go into detail, old friend," Silk said, looking nervously at the roof above. The little man seemed to be talking more than usual, and Garion's own sense of oppression at the thought of all the rock surrounding him gave him a quick insight into Silk's mind. The sense of being closed in was unbearable to some men, and Silk, it appeared, was one of them. Garion glanced up also, and seemed to feel the weight of the mountain above pressing down firmly on him. Silk, he decided, might not be the only one disturbed by the thought of all that dreadful ma.s.s above them.

The gallery they followed opened out into a small cavern with a gla.s.sclear lake in its center. The lake was very shallow and it had a white gravel bottom. An island rose from the center of the lake, and on the island stood a building constructed in the same curiously pyramidal shape as the buildings in the ruined city of Prolgu far above. The building was surrounded by a ring of columns, and here and there benches were carved from white stone. Glowing crystal globes were suspended on long chains from the ceiling of the cavern about thirty feet overhead, and their light, while still faint, was noticeably brighter than that in the galleries through which they had pa.s.sed. A white marble causeway crossed to the island, and a very old man stood at its end, peering across the still water toward them as they entered the cavern.

"Yad ho, Belgarath," the old man called. "Groja UL. "

"Gorim," Belgarath replied with a formal bow. "Yad ho, groja UL. " He led them across the marble causeway to the island in the center of the lake and warmly clasped the old man's hand, speaking to him in the guttural Ulgo language.

The Gorim of Ulgo appeared to be very old. He had long, silvery hair and beard, and his robe was snowy white. There was a kind of saintly serenity about him that Garion felt immediately, and the boy knew, without knowing how he knew, that he was approaching a holy man - perhaps the holiest on earth.

The Gorim extended his arms fondly to Aunt Pol, and she embraced him affectionately as they exchanged the ritual greeting, "Yad ho, groja UL."

"Our companions don't speak your language, old friend," Belgarath said to the Gorim. "Would it offend you if we conversed in the language of the outside?"

"Not at all, Belgarath," the Gorim replied. "UL tells us that it's important for men to understand one another. Come inside, all of you. I've had food and drink prepared for you." As the old man looked at each of them, Garion noticed that his eyes, unlike those of the other Ulgos he had seen, were a deep, almost violet blue. Then the Gorim turned and led them along a path to the doorway of the pyramid-shaped building.

"Has the child come yet?" Belgarath asked the Gorim as they pa.s.sed through the ma.s.sive stone doorway.

The Gorim sighed. "No, Belgarath, not yet, and I am very weary. There's hope at each birth. But after a few days, the eyes of the child darken. It appears that UL is not finished with me yet."

"Don't give up hope, Gorim," Belgarath told his friend. "The child will come-in UL's own time."

"So we are told." The Gorim sighed again. "The tribes are growing restless, though, and there's bickering-and worse - in some of the farther galleries. The zealots grow bolder in their denunciations, and strange aberrations and cults have begun to appear. Ulgo needs a new Gorim. I've outlived my time by three hundred years."

"UL still has work for you," Belgarath replied. "His ways are not ours, Gorim, and he sees time in a different way."

The room they entered was square but had, nonetheless, the slightly sloping walls characteristic of Ulgo architecture. A stone table with low benches on either side sat in the center of the room, and there were a number of bowls containing fruit sitting upon it. Among the bowls sat several tall flasks and round crystal cups. "I'm told that winter has come early to our mountains," the Gorim said to them. "The drink should help to warm you."

"It's chilly outside," Belgarath admitted.

They sat down on the benches and began to eat. The fruit was tangy and wild-tasting, and the clear liquid in the flasks was fiery and brought an immediate warm glow that radiated out from the stomach.

"Forgive us our customs, which may seem strange to you," the Gorim said, noting that Barak and Hettar in particular approached the meal of fruit with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. "We are a people much tied to ceremony. We begin our meals with fruit in remembrance of the years we spent wandering in search of UL. The meat will come in due time."

"Where do you obtain such food in these caves, Holy One?" Silk asked politely.

"Our gatherers go out of the caves at night," the Gorim replied. "They tell us that the fruits and grains they bring back with them grow wild in the mountains, but I suspect that they have long since taken up the cultivation of certain fertile valleys. They also maintain that the meat they carry down to us is the flesh of wild cattle, taken in the hunt, but I have my doubts about that as well." He smiled gently. "I permit them their little deceptions."

Perhaps emboldened by the Gorim's geniality, Durnik raised a question that had obviously been bothering him since he had entered the city on the mountaintop above. "Forgive me, your Honor," he began, "but why do your builders make everything crooked? What I mean is, nothing seems to be square. It all leans over."

"It has to do with weight and support; I understand," the Gorim replied. "Each wall is actually falling down; but since they're all falling against each other, none of them can move so much as a finger's width - and, of course, their shape reminds us of the tents we lived in during our wanderings."

Durnik frowned thoughtfully, struggling with the alien idea.

"And have you as yet recovered Aldur's...o...b.. Belgarath?" the Gorim inquired then, his face growing serious.

"Not yet," Belgarath replied. "We chased Zedar as far as Nyissa, but when he crossed over into Cthol Murgos, Ctuchik was waiting and took the Orb away from him. Ctuchik has it now - at Rak Cthol."

"And Zedar?"

"He escaped Ctuchik's ambush and carried Torak off to Cthol Mishrak in Mallorea to keep Ctuchik from raising him with the Orb."

"Then you'll have to go to Rak Cthol."

Belgarath nodded as an Ulgo servingman brought in a huge, steaming roast, set it on the table, and left with a respectful bow.

"Has anyone found out how Zedar was able to take the Orb without being struck down?" the Gorim asked.

"He used a child," Aunt Pol told him. "An innocent."

"Ah." The Gorim stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Doesn't the prophecy say, 'And the child shall deliver up the birthright unto the Chosen One'?"

"Yes," Belgarath replied.

"Where's the child now?"

"So far as we know, Ctuchik has him at Rak Cthol."

"Will you a.s.sault Rak Cthol, then?"

"I'd need an army, and it could take years to reduce that fortress. There's another way, I think. A certain pa.s.sage in the Darine Codex speaks of caves under Rak Cthol."