Free Castle of Wizardry by David Eddings Page A

fire, though," Aunt Pol told him. "We all need a hot meal."
    "I don't know if that's wise, Polgara," Belgarath objected.
    "We'll have a hard day tomorrow, father," she said firmly. "Durnik knows how to build a small fire and keep it hidden."
    "Have it your own way, Pol," the old man said in a resigned tone of voice.
    "Naturally, father."
    It was cold that night, and they kept their fire small and well sheltered. As the first light of dawn began to stain the cloudy sky to the east, they rose and prepared to descend the rocky cut toward the plain below.
    "I'll strike the tents," Durnik said.
    "Just knock them down," Belgarath told him. He turned and nudged one of the packs thoughtfully with his foot. "We'll take only what we absolutely have to have," he decided. "We're not going to have the time to waste on these."
    "You're not going to leave them?" Durnik sounded shocked.
    "They'll just be in the way, and the horses will be able to move faster without them."
    "But - all of our belongings!" Durnik protested.
    Silk also looked a bit chagrined. He quickly spread out a blanket and began rummaging through the packs, his quick hands bringing out innumerable small, valuable items and piling them in a heap on the blanket.
    "Where did you get all those?" Barak asked him.
    "Here and there," Silk replied evasively.
    "You stole them, didn't you?"
    "Some of them," Silk admitted. "We've been on the road for a long time, Barak."
    "Do you really plan to carry all of that down the ravine?" Barak asked, curiously eyeing Silk's treasures.
    Silk looked at the heap, mentally weighing it. Then he sighed with profound regret. "No," he said, "I guess not." He stood up and scattered the heap with his foot. "It's all very pretty though, isn't it? Now I guess I'll have to start all over again." He grinned then. "It's the stealing that's fun, anyway. Let's go down." And he started toward the top of the steeply descending streambed that angled sharply down toward the base of the escarpment.
    The unburdened horses were able to move much more rapidly, and they all passed quite easily over spots Garion remembered painfully from the upward climb weeks before. By noon they were more than halfway down.
    Then Polgara stopped and raised her face. "Father," she said calmly, "they've found the top of the ravine."
    "How many of them?"
    "It's an advance patrol - no more than twenty."
    Far above them they heard a sharp clash of rock against rock, and then, after a moment, another. "I was afraid of that," Belgarath said sourly.
    "What?" Garion asked.
    "They're rolling rocks down on us." The old man grimly hitched up his belt. "All right, the rest of you go on ahead. Get down as fast as you can.
    "Are you strong enough, father?" Aunt Pol asked, sounding concerned. "You still haven't really recovered, you know."
    "We're about to find out," the old man replied, his face set. "Move - all of you." He said it in a tone that cut off any possible argument. As they all began scrambling down over the steep rocks, Garion lagged farther and farther behind. Finally, as Durnik led the last packhorse over a jumble of broken stone and around a bend, Garion stopped entirely and stood listening. He could hear the clatter and slide of hooves on the rocks below and, from above, the clash and bounce of a large stone tumbling over the ravine, coming closer and closer. Then there was a familiar surge and roaring sound. A rock, somewhat larger than a man's head, went whistling over him, angling sharply up out of the cut to fall harmlessly far out on the tumbled debris at the floor of the escarpment. Carefully Garion began climbing back up the ravine, pausing often to listen.
    Belgarath was sweating as Garion came into sight around a bend in the ravine a goodly way above and ducked back out of the old man's sight. Another rock, somewhat larger than the first, came bounding and crashing down the narrow ravine, bouncing off the walls and leaping into the air each time it struck the rocky