"You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea." The rat-faced man was shivering uncontrollably.
They waited in the chill darkness for half an hour or more. Somewhere high above them there was a scream.
"What was that cry?" Mandorallen asked.
"The Grolims are busy," Belgarath answered grimly. "It's the season of the wounding - when the Orb burned Torak's hand and face. A large number of sacrifices are called for at this time of year - usually slaves. Torak doesn't seem to insist on Angarak blood. As long as it's human, it seems to satisfy him."
There was a faint sound of steps somewhere along the cliff, and a few moments later Relg rejoined them. "I found it," he told them. "The opening's about a half mile farther along. It's partially blocked."
"Does it go all the way up?" Belgarath demanded.
Relg shrugged. "It goes up. I can't say how far. The only way to find out for sure is to follow it. The whole series of caves is fairly extensive, though."
"Do we really have any choice, father?" Aunt Pol asked.
"No. I suppose not."
"I'll go get Durnik," Silk said. He turned and disappeared into the darkness.
The rest of them followed Relg until they reached a small hole in the rock face just above the tumbled scree. "We'll have to move some of this rubble if we're going to get your animals inside," he told them.
Barak bent and lifted a large stone block. He staggered under its weight and dropped it to one side with a clatter.
"Quietly!" Belgarath told him.
"Sorry," Barak mumbled.
For the most part, the stones were not large, but there were a great many of them. When Silk and Durnik joined them, they all fell to clearing the rubble out of the cave mouth. It took them nearly an hour to remove enough rock to make it possible for the horses to squeeze through.
"I wish Hettar was here," Barak grunted, putting his shoulder against the rump of a balky packhorse.
"Talk to him, Barak," Silk suggested.
"I am talking."
"Try it without all the curse words."
"There's going to be some climbing involved," Relg told them after they had pushed the last horse inside and stood in the total blackness of the cave. "As nearly as I can tell, the galleries run vertically, so we'll have to climb from level to level."
Mandorallen leaned against one of the walls, and his armor clinked. "That's not going to work," Belgarath told him. "You wouldn't be able to climb in armor anyway. Leave it here with the horses, Mandorallen."
The knight sighed and began removing his armor.
A faint glow appeared as Relg mixed powders in a wooden bowl from two leather pouches he carned inside his mail shirt.
"That's better," Barak approved, "but wouldn't a torch be brighter?"
"Much brighter," Relg agreed, "but then I wouldn't be able to see. This will give you enough light to see where you're going."
"Let's get started," Belgarath said.
Relg handed the glowing bowl to Barak and turned to lead them up a dark gallery.
After they had gone a few hundred yards, they came to a steep slope of rubble rising up into darkness. "I'll look," Relg said and scrambled up the slope out of sight. After a moment or so, they heard a peculiar popping sound, and tiny fragments of rock showered down onto the rubble from above. "Come up now," Relg's voice came to them.
Carefully they climbed the rubble until they reached a sheer wall. "To your right," Relg said, still above them. "You'll find some holes in the rock you can use to climb up."
They found the holes, quite round and about six inches deep. "How did you make these?" Durnik asked, examining one of the holes.
"It's a bit difficult to explain," Relg replied. "There's a ledge up here. It leads to another gallery."
One by one they climbed the rock face to join Relg on the ledge. As he had told them, the ledge led to a gallery that angled sharply upward.
They followed it toward the center of the peak, passing several passageways opening to the sides.
"Shouldn't we see where they go?" Barak asked after they had passed the third or fourth passageway.
"They don't go anyplace," Relg told him. "How can you be sure?"
"A gallery that goes someplace feels different. That one we just passed comes to a blank wall about a hundred feet in."
Barak grunted dubiously.
They came to another sheer face, and Relg stopped to peer up into the blackness.
"How high is it?" Durnik asked.
"Thirty feet or so. I'll make some holes so we can climb up." Relg knelt and slowly pushed one hand into the face of the rock. Then he tensed his shoulder and twisted his arm slightly. The rock popped with a sharp little detonation; when Relg pulled his hand out, a shower of fragments came with it. He brushed the rest of the debris out of the hole he had made, stood up and sank his other hand into the rock about two feet above the first hole.
"Clever," Silk admired.
"It's a very old trick," Relg told him.
They followed Relg up the face and squeezed through a narrow crack at the top. Barak muttered curses as he wriggled through, leaving a fair amount of skin behind.
"How far have we come?" Silk asked. His voice had a certain apprehension in it, and he looked about nervously at the rock which seemed to press in all around them.
"We're about eight hundred feet above the base of the pinnacle," Relg replied. "We go that way now." He pointed up another sloping passageway.
"Isn't that back in the direction we just came?" Durnik asked.
"The cave zigzags," Relg told him. "We have to keep following the galleries that lead upward."
"Do they go all the way to the top?"
"They open out somewhere. That's all I can tell for sure at this point."
"What's that?" Silk cried sharply.
From somewhere along one of the dark passageways, a voice floated out at them, singing. There seemed to be a deep sadness in the song, but the echoes made it impossible to pick out the words. About all they could be sure of was the fact that the singer was a woman.
After a moment, Belgarath gave a startled exclamation.
"What's wrong?" Aunt Pol asked him.
"Marag!" the old man said. "That's impossible."
"I know the song, Pol. It's a Marag funeral song. Whoever she is, she's very close to dying."
The echoes in the twisting passageways made it very difficult to pinpoint the singer's exact location; but as they moved, the sound seemed to be getting closer.