David Eddings - Magician's Gambit

“I don’t like it, father,” she stated bluntly.

“I don’t care much for it myself,” he admitted, “but we’ve got to shake off all these Murgos or we’ll never make it to the Vale before winter sets in.”

Hettar rode back down the hill. “They’re coming,” he reported quietly. “And there’s another group of them circling in from the west to cut us off.”

Wolf drew in a deep breath. “I think that pretty well decides it, Pol,” he said. “Let’s go.”

As they passed into the belt of trees dotting the last low line of hills bordering the plain, Garion glanced back once. A half dozen dust clouds spotted the face of the miles-wide slope above them. Murgos were converging on them from all over the mountains.

They galloped on into the trees and thundered through a shallow draw. Barak, riding in the lead, suddenly held up his hand. “Men ahead of us,” he warned.

“Murgos?” Hettar asked, his hand going to his sabre.

“I don’t think so,” Barak replied. “The one I saw looked more like some of those we saw back at the settlement.”

Silk, his eyes very bright, pushed his way to the front. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let me talk to them.” He pushed his horse into a dead run, plunging directly into what seemed to be an ambush. “Comrades!” he shouted. “Get ready! They’re coming—and they’ve got the gold!”

Several shabby-looking men with rusty swords and axes rose from the bushes or stepped out from behind trees to surround the little man. Silk was talking very fast, gesticulating, waving his arms and pointing back toward the slope looming behind them.

“What’s he doing?” Barak asked.

“Something devious, I imagine,” Wolf replied.

The men surrounding Silk looked dubious at first, but their expressions gradually changed as he continued to talk excitedly. Finally he turned in his saddle to look back. He jerked his arm in a broad, overhead sweep. “Let’s go!” he shouted. “They’re with us!” He spun his horse to scramble up the graveled side of the gully.

“Don’t get separated,” Barak warned, shifting his shoulders under his mail shirt. “I’m not sure what he’s up to, but these schemes of his sometimes fall apart.”

They pounded down through the grim-looking brigands and up the side of the gully on Silk’s heels.

“What did you say to them?” Barak shouted as they rode.

“I told them that fifteen Murgos had made a dash into Maragor and come out with three heavy packs of gold.” The little man laughed. “Then I said that the men at the settlement had turned them back and that they were trying to double around this way with the gold. I told them that we’d cover this next gully if they’d cover that one back there.”

“Those scoundrels will swarm all over Brill and his Murgos when they try to come through,” Barak suggested.

“I know.” Silk laughed. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

They rode on at a gallop. After about a half mile, Mister Wolf raised his arm, and they all reined in. “This should be far enough,” he told them. “Now listen very carefully, all of you. These hills are alive with Murgos, so we’re going to have to go into Maragor.”

Princess Ce’Nedra gasped, and her face turned deathly pale.

“It will be all right, dear,” Aunt Pol soothed her.

Wolf’s face was grimly serious. “As soon as we ride out onto the plain, you’re going to start hearing certain things,” he continued. “Don’t pay any attention. Just keep riding. I’m going to be in the lead and I want you all to watch me very closely. As soon as I raise my hand, I want you to stop and get down off your horses immediately. Keep your eyes on the ground and don’t look up, no matter what you hear. There are things out there that you don’t want to see. Polgara and I are going to put you all into a kind of sleep. Don’t try to fight us. Just relax and do exactly what we tell you to do.”

“Sleep?” Mandorallen protested. “What if we are attacked? How may we defend ourselves if we are asleep?”

“There isn’t anything alive out there to attack you, Mandorallen,” Wolf told him. “And it isn’t your body that needs to be protected; it’s your mind.”

“What about the horses?” Hettar asked.

“The horses will be all right. They won’t even see the ghosts.”

“I can’t do it,” Ce’Nedra declared, her voice hovering on the edge of hysteria. “I can’t go into Maragor.”

“Yes, you can, dear,” Aunt Pol told her in that same calm, soothing voice. “Stay close to me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Garion felt a sudden profound sympathy for the frightened little girl, and he drew his horse over beside hers. “I’ll be here, too,” he told her. She looked at him gratefully, but her lower lip still trembled, and her face was very pale.

Mister Wolf took a deep breath and glanced once at the long slope behind them. The dust clouds raised by the converging Murgos were much closer now. “All right,” he said, “let’s go.” He turned his horse and began to ride at an easy trot down toward the mouth of the gully and the plain stretching out before them.

The sound at first seemed faint and very far away, almost like the murmur of wind among the branches of a forest or the soft babble of water over stones. Then, as they rode farther out onto the plain, it grew louder and more distinct. Garion glanced back once, almost longingly at the hills behind them. Then he pulled his horse close in beside Ce’Nedra’s and locked his eyes on Mister Wolf’s back, trying to close his ears.

The sound was now a chorus of moaning cries punctuated by occasional shrieks. Behind it all, and seeming to carry and sustain all the other sounds, was a dreadful wailing—a single voice surely, but so vast and all-encompassing that it seemed to reverberate inside Garion’s head, erasing all thought.

Mister Wolf suddenly raised his hand, and Garion slid out of his saddle, his eyes fixed almost desperately on the ground. Something flickered at the edge of his vision, but he refused to look.

Then Aunt Pol was speaking to them, her voice calm, reassuring. “I want you to form a circle,” she told them, “and take each others’ hands. Nothing will be able to enter the circle, so you’ll all be safe.”

Trembling in spite of himself, Garion stretched out his hands. Someone took his left, he didn’t know who; but he instantly knew that the tiny hand that clung so desperately to his right was Ce’Nedra’s.

Aunt Pol stood in the center of their circle, and Garion could feel the force of her presence there washing over all of them. Somewhere outside the circle, he could feel Wolf. The old man was doing something that swirled faint surges through Garion’s veins and set off staccato bursts of the familiar roaring sound.

The wailing of the dreadful, single voice grew louder, more intense, and Garion felt the first touches of panic. It was not going to work. They were all going to go mad.

“Hush, now,” Aunt Pol’s voice came to him, and he knew that she spoke inside his mind. His panic faded, and he felt a strange, peaceful lassitude. His eyes grew heavy, and the sound of the wailing grew fainter. Then, enfolded in a comforting warmth, he fell almost at once into a profound slumber.

Garion was not exactly sure when it was that his mind shook off Aunt Pol’s soft compulsion to sink deeper and deeper into protective unawareness. It could not have been long. Falteringly, like someone rising slowly from the depths, he swam back up out of sleep to find himself moving stiffly, even woodenly, toward the horses with the others. When he glanced at them, he saw their faces were blank, uncomprehending. He seemed to hear Aunt Pol’s whispered command to “sleep, sleep, sleep,” but it somehow lacked the power necessary to compel him to obey.