King of The Murgos

closely."
    "It was built before the Murgos came to this part of the world," Eriond said.
    "By the slave race?" Urgit asked incredulously. "All they know how to make are mud huts."
    "That's what they wanted you to think. They were building towers—and cities—when Murgos were still living in goatskin tents."
    "Could somebody please make a fire?" Ce'Nedra asked through chattering teeth. "I'm freezing." Garion looked at her closely and saw that her lips had a bluish tinge to them. "The firewood's over here," Eriond said. He went behind one of the buttresses and emerged with an armload of white-bleached sticks. "Zedar and I used to carry driftwood up from the beach. There's still quite a bit left." He went to the fireplace in the back wall, dropped the wood, and bent over to peer up the chimney. "It seems to be clear," he said. Durnik went to work immediately with his flint, steel, and tinder. In a few moments, a small curl of orange flame was licking up through the little peaked roof of splinters he had built on the bed of ash in the fireplace. They all crowded around that tiny flame, thrusting twigs and sticks at it in their eagerness to force it to grow more quickly.
    "That won't do," Durnik said with uncharacteristic sternness. "You'll only knock it apart and put it out." They reluctantly backed away from the fireplace. Durnik carefully laid twigs and splinters on the growing flame, then small sticks, and finally larger ones. The flames grew higher and began to spread quickly through the bone-dry wood. The light from the fireplace began to fill the musty cellar, and Garion could feel a faint warmth on his face.
    "All right, then," Polgara said in a crisp, businesslike way, "what are we going to do about food?"
    "The sailors have left the wreck," Garion said, "and the tide's gone out enough so that all but the very aft end of the ship is out of the water. I'll take some packhorses and go back down there to see what I can find."
    Durnik's fire had begun to crackle. He stood up and looked at Eriond. "Can you manage here?" he asked.
    Eriond nodded and went behind the buttress for more wood.
    The smith bent and picked up his cloak. "Toth and I can go with you, Garion," he said, "just in case those sailors decide to come back. But we're going to have to hurry. It's going to start getting dark before too long."
    The gale still howled across the weather-rounded top of the headland, driving rain and sleet before it. Garion and his two friends picked their way carefully down the slope again toward the forlorn-looking ship, lying twisted and broken-backed on the boulder that had claimed her life.
    "How long do you think this storm is going to last?" Garion shouted to Durnik.
    "It's hard to say," Durnik shouted back. "It could blow over tonight or it could keep it up for several days."
    "I was afraid you might say that."
    They reached the wreck, dismounted, and entered the hold through the opening they had previously made in the bow. "I don't think we'll find too much down here," Durnik said. "Our own food is all spoiled, and I don't think the sailors stored anything perishable in the hold."
    Garion nodded. "Can we get Aunt Pol's cooking things?" he asked. "She'll want those, I think."
    Durnik peered aft at the bilge-soaked bags and bales lying in a tumbled heap in the shattered stern, with surf sloshing over them through the holes rent in the hull in that end of the ship. "I think so," he said. "I'll take a look."
    "As long as we're here, we might as well pick up the rest of the things we had in those aft cabins," Garion said. "I'll go gather them up while you and Toth see what the sailors left behind in the galley." He climbed carefully over the splintered timbers at the point where the keel had broken and went up a ladder to the hatch above. Then he slipped and slid down the deck to the aft companion way.
    It took him perhaps a quarter of an hour to gather up the belongings they had left behind when they had fled the wreck. He wrapped them all in a sheet of sailcloth and went back up on deck. He carried his bundle forward and dropped it over the side onto the wet sand of the beach.
    Durnik poked his head out of the forward companionway.
    "There isn't much, Garion," he said. "The sailors picked it over pretty thoroughly."
    "We'll have to make do with whatever we can find, I guess." Garion squinted up through the rain. The sky was growing noticeably darker. "We'd better hurry," he added. They reached the top of the headland