Demon Lord of Karanda

pick up?"
    "He's got a point, Belgarath," Silk agreed seriously, "I don't like riding into a situation blind."
    Belgarath considered it. "All right," he said to the juggler, "but be careful -and stay out of the alehouses."
    Feldegast sighed. "There be no such havens in Mal Yaska, Belgarath. The Grolims there be fearful strict in their disapproval of simple pleasures." He shook the reins of his mule and rode on across the plain toward the black walls of Urvon's capital.
    "Isn't he contradicting himself?" Sadi asked. "First he says it's too dangerous to go into the city and then he rides on in anyway."
    "He knows what he's doing," Belgarath said. "He's in no danger."
    "We might as well have some lunch while we're waiting, father," Polgara suggested.
    He nodded, and they rode some distance into an open field and dismounted.
    Garion laid aside his lance, pulled his helmet from his sweaty head, and stood looking across the intervening open space at the center of Church power in Mallorea.
    The city was large, certainly, though not nearly so large as Mal Zeth. The walls were high and thick, surmounted by heavy battlements, and the towers rising inside were square and blocky. There was a kind of unrelieved ugliness about it, and it seemed to exude a brooding menace as if the eons of cruelty and blood lust had sunk into its very stones. From somewhere near the center of the city, the telltale black column of smoke rose into the air, and faintly, echoing across the plain with its huddled encampments of tightened refugees, he thought he could hear the sullen iron clang of the gong coming from the Temple of Torak. Finally, he sighed and turned his head away.
    "It will not last forever," Eriond, who had come up beside him, said firmly. "We're almost to the end of it now. All the altars will be torn down, and the Grolims will put their knives away to rust."
    "Are you sure, Eriond?"
    "Yes, Belgarion. I'm very sure."
    They ate a cold lunch, and, not long after, Feldegast returned, his face somber. " 'Tis perhaps a bit more serious than we had expected, Ancient One," he reported, swinging down from his mule. "The Chandim be in total control of the city, an' the Temple Guardsmen be takin' their orders directly from them. The Grolims who hold t' the old ways have all gone into hidin ', but packs of Torak's Hounds be sniffin' out the places where they've hidden an' they be tearin' 'em t' pieces wherever they find 'em."
    "I find it very hard to sympathize with Grolims," Sadi murmured.
    "I kin bear their discomfort meself ," Feldegast agreed, "but 'tis rumored about the marketplace that the Chandim an' their dogs an' their Guardsmen also be movin' about across the border in Katakor."
    "In spite of the Karands and Mengha's demons?" Silk asked with some surprise.
    "Now that's somethin' I could not get the straight of," the juggler replied. "No one could tell me why or how, but the Chandim an' the Guardsmen seem not t' be concerned about Mengha nor his army nor his demons."
    "That begins to smell of some kind of accommodation," Silk said.
    "There were hints of that previously," Feldegast reminded him.
    "An alliance?" Belgarath frowned.
    " 'Tis hard t' say fer sure, Ancient One, but Urvon be a schemer, an' he's always had this dispute with the imperial throne at Mal Zeth. If he's managed t' put Mengha in his pocket, Kal Zakath had better look t' his defenses"
    "Is Urvon in the city?" Belgarath asked.
    "No. No one knows where he's gone fer sure, but he's not in his palace there."
    "That's very strange," Belgarath said.
    "Indeed," the juggler replied, "but whatever he's doin' or plannin' t' do, I think we'd better be walkin' softly once we cross the border into Katakor. When ye add the Hounds an' the Temple Guardsmen t' the demons an' Karands already there, 'tis goin' t' be fearful perilous t' approach the House of Torak at Ashaba."
    "That's a chance we'll have to take," the old man said grimly. "We're going to Ashaba, and if anything -Hound, human, or demon- gets in our way, we'll just have to deal with it as it comes."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    The sky continued to lower as they rode past the brooding city of the Grolim Church under the suspicious gaze of the armored Guardsmen at the gate and the hooded Grolims on the walls.
    "Is it likely that they'll follow us?" Durnik asked.
    "It's not very probable, Goodman," Sadi replied. "Look around you. There are thousands encamped here, and I doubt that either Guardsmen or Grolims would take the trouble to