King of The Murgos

when the time comes.—
    Belgarath stopped again and stood tugging at one earlobe, looking dubiously down a dark passageway and then down another which branched off to the left.
    "You're lost again, aren't you?" Silk accused him. The rat-faced little Drasnian had put aside his pearl-gray doublet and his jewels and gold chains and now wore an old brown tunic, shiny with age, a moth-eaten fur cloak and a shapeless, battered hat, once again submerging himself in one of his innumerable disguises.
    "Of course I'm not lost," Belgarath retorted. "I just haven't pinpointed exactly where we are at the moment."
    "Belgarath, that's what the word lost means."
    "Nonsense. I think we go this way." He pointed down the left-hand passageway.
    "You think?'
    "Uh—Silk," Durnik the smith cautioned quietly, "you really ought to keep your voice down. That ceiling up there doesn't look all that stable to me, and sometimes a loud noise is all it takes to bring one of them down."
    Silk froze, his eyes rolling apprehensively upward and sweat visibly standing out on his forehead. "Polgara," he whispered in a strangled tone, "make him stop that."
    "Leave him alone, Durnik," she said calmly. "You know how he feels about caves."
    "I just thought he ought to know, Pol," the smith explained. "Things do happen in caves."
    "Polgara!" Silk's voice was agonized. "Please!"
    "I'll go back and see how Errand and Toth are doing with the horses," Durnik said. He looked at the sweating little Drasnian. "Just try not to shout," he advised.
    As they rounded a corner in the twisting gallery, the passageway opened out into a large cavern with a broad vein of quartz running across its ceiling. At some point, perhaps even miles away, the vein reached the surface, and refracted sunlight, shattered into its component elements by the facets of the quartz, spilled down into the cavern in dancing rainbows that flared and faded as they shifted across the sparkling surface of the small, shallow lake in the center of the cave. At the far end of the lake, a tiny waterfall tinkled endlessly from rock to rock to fill the cavern with its music.
    "Ce'Nedra, look!" Garion urged.
    "What?" She raised her head. "Oh, yes," she said indifferently, "very pretty." And she went back to her abstracted silence.
    Garion gave Aunt Pol a helpless look.
    "Father," Polgara said then, "I think it's just about lunch time. This seems like a good place to rest a bit and have a bite to eat."
    "Pol, we're never going to get there if we stop every mile or two."
    "Why do you always argue with me, father? Is it out of some obscure principle?"
    He glowered at her for a moment, then turned away, muttering to himself.
    Errand and Toth led the horses down to the shore of the crystal lake to water them. They were a strangely mismatched pair. Errand was a slight young man with blond, curly hair and he wore a simple brown peasant smock. Toth towered above him like a giant tree looming over a sapling. Although winter was coming on in the Kingdoms of the West, the huge mute still wore only sandals, a short kirtle belted at the waist, and an unbleached wool blanket drawn over one shoulder. His bare arms and legs were like tree trunks, and his muscles knotted and rippled whenever he moved. His nondescript brown hair was drawn straight back and tied at the nape of his neck with a short length of leather thong. Blind Cyradis had told them that this silent giant was to aid them in the search for Zandramas and Garion's stolen son, but so far Toth seemed content merely to follow them impassively, giving no hint that he even cared where they were going.
    "Would you like to help me, Ce'Nedra?" Polgara asked pleasantly, unbuckling the straps on one of the packs.
    Ce'Nedra, numb-faced and inattentive, walked slowly across the smooth stone floor of the cavern to stand mutely beside the pack horse.
    "We'll need bread," Polgara said, rummaging through the pack as if unaware of the young woman's obvious abstraction. She took out several long, dark brown loaves of peasant bread and piled them like sticks of firewood in the little queen's arms. "And cheese, of course," she added, lifting out a wax-covered ball of Sendarian cheddar. She pursed her lips. "And perhaps a bit of the ham as well, wouldn't you say?"
    "I suppose so," Ce'Nedra replied in an expressionless tone.
    "Garion," Polgara went on, "would you lay this cloth on that flat rock over there?" She looked back at Ce'Nedra. "1 hate to eat off an uncovered table, don't