Chapter Twenty-One
THE SOUTH CARAVAN ROUTE wound through a series of high, arid valleys that ran in a generally east-west direction. The surrounding peaks were high - higher probably than the mountains to the west, but their upper slopes were only faintly touched with snow. The clouds overhead turned the sky a dirty slate-gray, but what moisture they held did not fall on this desiccated wilderness of sand, rock, and scrubby thorn. Though it did not snow, it was nonetheless bitterly cold. The wind blew continually, and its edge was like a knife.
They rode east, making good time.
"Belgarath," Barak said back over his shoulder, "there's a Murgo on that ridgeline ahead just to the south of the track."
"I see him."
"What's he doing?"
"Watching us. He won't do anything as long as we stay on the caravan route."
"They always watch like that," Silk stated. "The Murgos like to keep a close watch on everybody in their kingdom."
"That Tolnedran-Kalvor," Barak said. "Do you think he was exaggerating?"
"No," Belgarath replied. "I'd guess that Taur Urgas is looking for an excuse to close the caravan route and expel all the westerners from Cthol Murgos."
"Why?" Durnik asked.
Belgarath shrugged. "The war is coming. Taur Urgas knows that a good number of the merchants who take this route to Rak Goska are spies. He'll be bringing armies up from the south soon, and he'd like to keep their numbers and movements a secret."
"What manner of army could be gathered from so bleak and uninhabited a realm?" Mandorallen asked.
Belgarath looked around at the high, bleak desert. "This is only the little piece of Cthol Murgos we're permitted to see. It stretches a thousand leagues or more to the south, and there are cities down there that no westerner has ever seen - we don't even know their names. Here in north, the Murgos play a very elaborate game to conceal the real Cthol Murgos."
"Is it thy thought then that the war will come soon?"
"Next summer perhaps," Belgarath replied. "Possibly the summer following."
"Are we going to be ready?" Barak asked.
"We're going to try to be."
Aunt Pol made a brief sound of disgust.
"What's wrong?" Garion asked her quickly.
"Vultures," she said. "Filthy brutes."
A dozen heavy-bodied birds were flapping and squawking over something on the ground to one side of the caravan track.
"What are they feeding on?" Durnik asked. "I haven't seen any animals of any kind since we left the top of the escarpment."
"A horse, probably - or a man," Silk said. "There's nothing else up here."
"Would a man be left unburied?" the smith asked.
"Only partially," Silk told him. "Sometimes certain brigands decide that the pickings along the caravan route might be easy. The Murgos give them plenty of time to realize how wrong they were."
Durnik looked at him questioningly.
"The Murgos catch them," Silk explained, "and then they bury them up to the neck and leave them. The vultures have learned that a man in that situation is helpless. Often they get impatient and don't bother to wait for the man to finish dying before they start to eat."
"That's one way to deal with bandits," Barak said, almost approvingly. "Even a Murgo can have a good idea once in a while."
"Unfortunately, Murgos automatically assume that anybody who isn't on the track itself is a bandit."
The vultures brazenly continued to feed, refusing to leave their dreadful feast as the party passed no more than twenty yards from their flapping congregation. Their wings and bodies concealed whatever it was they were feeding on, a fact for which Garion was profoundly grateful. Whatever it was, however, was not very large.
"We should stay quite close to the track when we stop for the night, then," Durnik said, averting his eyes with a shudder.
"That's a very good idea, Durnik," Silk agreed.
The information the Tolnedran merchant had given them about the makeshift fair at the halfway point proved to be accurate. On the afternoon of the third day, they came over a rise and saw a cluster of tents surrounding a solid stone building set to one side of the caravan track. The tents looked small in the distance and they billowed and flapped in the endless wind that swept down the valley.
"What do you think?" Silk asked Belgarath.
"It's late," the old man replied. "We're going to have to stop for the night soon anyway, and it would look peculiar if we didn't stop."
Silk nodded.
"We're going to have to try to keep Relg out of sight, though," Belgarath continued. "Nobody's going to believe we're ordinary merchants if they see an Ulgo with us."
Silk thought a moment. "We'll wrap him in a blanket," he suggested, "and tell anybody who asks that he's sick. People stay away from sick men."
Belgarath nodded. "Can you act sick?" he asked Relg.
"I am sick," the Ulgo said without any attempt at humor. "Is it always this cold up here?" He sneezed.