“Yes, Durnik. I’m afraid we do.”
He sighed. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s go get it over with.”
They started forward, riding at a slow walk to avoid alerting the fanatics ahead.
The Karands were sitting around a large, hollowed-out section of log, pounding on it with clubs in rhythmic unison. It gave forth a dull booming sound. They were dressed in roughly tanned fur vests and cross-tied leggings of dirty sackcloth. They were raggedly bearded, and their hair was matted and greasy. Their faces were hideously painted, but their eyes seemed glazed and their expressions slack-lipped.
“I’ll go first,” Garion muttered to the others.
“Shouting a challenge, I suppose,” Silk whispered.
“I’m not an assassin, Silk,” Garion replied quietly. “One or two of them might be rational enough to run, and that means a few less we’ll have to kill.”
“Suit yourself, but expecting rationality from Karands is irrational all by itself.”
Garion quickly surveyed the clearing. The wooden temple was constructed of half-rotten logs, sagging badly at one end and surmounted along its ridgepole by a line of mossy skulls staring out vacantly. The ground before the building was hard-packed dirt, and there was a smoky firepit not far from the drummers.
“Try not to get into that smoke,” Silk cautioned in a whisper. “You might start to see all sorts of peculiar things if you inhale too much of it.”
Garion nodded and looked around. “Are we all ready?” he asked in a low voice.
They nodded.
“All right then.” He spurred Chretienne into the clearing. “Throw down your weapons!” he shouted at the startled Karands.
Instead of obeying, they dropped their clubs and seized up a variety of axes, spears, and swords, shrieking their defiance.
“You see?” Silk said.
Garion clenched his teeth and charged, brandishing his sword. Even as he thundered toward the fur-clad men, he saw four others come bursting out of the temple. Even with these reinforcements, however, the men on foot were no match for Garion and his mounted companions. Two of the howling Karands fell beneath Iron-grip’s sword on Garion’s first charge, and the one who tried to thrust at his back with a broad-bladed spear fell in a heap as Durnik brained him with his axe. Sadi caught a sword thrust with a flick of his cloak and then, with an almost delicate motion, dipped his poisoned dagger into the swordsman’s throat. Using his heavy staff like a club, Toth battered two men to the ground, the sound of his blows punctuated by the snapping of bones. Their howls of frenzy turned to groans of pain as they fell. Silk launched himself from his saddle, rolled with the skill of an acrobat, and neatly ripped open one fanatic with one of his daggers while simultaneously plunging the other into the chest of a fat man who was clumsily trying to wield an axe. Chretienne whirled so quickly that Garion was almost thrown from his saddle as the big stallion trampled a Karand into the earth with his steel-shod hooves.
The lone remaining fanatic stood in the doorway of the crude temple. He was much older than his companions, and his face had been tattooed into a grotesque mask. His only weapon was a skull-surmounted staff, and he was brandishing it at them even as he shrieked an incantation. His words broke off suddenly, however, as Velvet hurled one of her knives at him with a smooth underhand cast. The wizard gaped down in amazement at the hilt of her knife protruding from his chest. Then he slowly toppled over backward.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the groans of the two men Toth had crippled. And then a harsh scream came from the temple—a woman’s scream.
Garion jumped from his saddle, stepped over the body in the doorway, and looked into the large, smoky room.
A half-naked woman lay on the crude altar against the far wall. She had been bound to it in a spread-eagle position and she was partially covered by a filthy blanket. Her features were distorted, and her belly grossly, impossibly distended. She screamed again and then spoke in gasps.
“Nahaz! Magrash Klat Grichak ! Nahaz!”
“I’ll deal with this, Garion,” Polgara said firmly from behind him. “Wait outside with the others.”
“Were there any others in there?” Silk asked him as he came out.
“Just the woman. Aunt Pol’s with her.” Garion suddenly realized that he was shaking violently.
“What was that language she was speaking?” Sadi asked, carefully cleaning his poisoned dagger.
“The language of the demons,” Belgarath replied."She was calling out to the father of her baby.”
“Nahaz?” Garion asked, his voice startled.
“She thinks it was Nahaz,” the old man said. “She could be wrong—or maybe not.”
From inside the temple the woman screamed again.
“Is anybody hurt?” Durnik asked.
“They are,” Silk replied, pointing at the fallen Karands. Then he squatted and repeatedly plunged his daggers into the dirt to cleanse the blood off them.
“Kheldar,” Velvet said in a strangely weak voice,” would you get my knife for me?”
Garion looked at her and saw that her face was pale and that her hands were trembling slightly. He realized then that this self-possessed young woman was perhaps not quite so ruthless as he had thought.
“Of course, Liselle,” Silk replied in a neutral tone. The little man quite obviously also understood the cause of her distress. He rose, went to the doorway, and pulled the knife out of the wizard’s chest. He wiped it carefully and returned it to her. “Why don’t you go back and stay with Ce’Nedra?” he suggested. “We can clean up here.”
“Thank you, Kheldar,” she said, turned her horse, and rode out of the clearing.
“She’s only a girl,” Silk said to Garion in a defensive tone. “She is good, though,” he added with a certain pride.
“Yes,” Garion agreed. “Very good.” He looked around at the twisted shapes lying in heaps in the clearing."Why don’t we drag all these bodies over behind the temple?” he suggested. “This place is bad enough without all of this.”
There was another scream from the temple.
Noon came and went unnoticed as Garion and the others endured the cries of the laboring woman. By midafternoon, the screams had grown much weaker, and as the sun was just going down, there came one dreadful last shriek that seemed to dwindle off into silence. No other sound came from inside, and after several minutes, Polgara came out. Her face was pale, and her hands and clothing were drenched with blood.
“Well, Pol?” Belgarath asked her.
“She died.”
“And the demon?”
“Stillborn. Neither one of them survived the birth.” She looked down at her clothing. “Durnik, please bring me a blanket and water to wash in.”
“Of course, Pol.” With her husband shielding her by holding up the blanket, Polgara deliberately removed all of her clothing, throwing each article through the temple doorway. Then she drew the blanket about her. “Now burn it,” she said to them. “Burn it to the ground.”
21
They crossed the border into Jenno about noon the following day, still following the trail of Zandramas.
The experiences of the previous afternoon and evening had left them all subdued, and they rode on in silence.
A league or so past the rather indeterminate border, they pulled off to the side of the road to eat. The spring sunlight was very bright and the day pleasantly warm. Garion walked a little ways away from the others and reflectively watched a cloud of yellow-striped bees industriously working at a patch of wild flowers.
“Garion,” Ce’Nedra said in a small voice, coming up behind him.
“Yes, Ce’Nedra?” He put his arm around her.
“What really happened back there?”
“You saw about as much of it as I did.”
“That’s not what I mean. What happened inside the temple? Did that poor woman and her baby really just die—or did Polgara kill them?”