King of The Murgos

human skull.
    "One of the slaves Sadi mentioned last night?" Silk suggested.
    Polgara shook her head. "A part of the arrangement between Sariss and Naradas involved several men to escort Zandramas to the Murgo border," she reminded him. "When she got this far, she didn't need them any more."
    Silk's face grew grim. "That seems to be in character. Every time she finishes with somebody, she kills him."
    "She didn't just kill them," Polgara said with a look of revulsion. "She broke their legs and left them for the lions. They waited all day for nightfall, and then the lions came."
    Ce'Nedra's face blanched. "How horrible!"
    "Are you sure, Pol?" Durnik asked, his face slightly sick.
    "Some things are so dreadful that they leave their traces in the very rocks."
    Belgarath had been staring bleakly at the gnawed bones. "This isn't the first time she's done this. She's not satisfied with just killing people to cover her tracks. She has to commit atrocities."
    "She's a monster," Ce'Nedra declared. "She feeds on horror."
    "It's a bit more than that," Belgarath replied. "I think she's trying to leave messages for us." He jerked his head toward the scattered bones. "That wasn't really necessary. I think she's trying to scare us off."
    "It won't work," Garion said very quietly. "All she's doing is adding to the final reckoning. When the time finally comes for her to pay it, I think she's going to find that all of this is more than she can afford."
    At the top of the ridge, the ancient road they had been following ended abruptly, sharply marking the invisible line where Nyissa ended and Cthol Murgos began. From the ridge top they looked out over an endless, unbroken expanse of shattered black rock and miles-wide beds of dark brown gravel, shimmering under a broiling sun.
    "Which way did Zandramas go from here?" Durnik asked Garion.
    "She turned south," Garion replied, feeling the Orb pulling in a new direction.
    "We could gain time if we cut straight across that out there, couldn't we?"
    "Absolutely out of the question, Goodman Durnik," Sadi declared. "That's the Great Desert of Araga. It's as big as Algaria. The only water there is in the wells of the Dagashi, and you wouldn't want to get caught dipping into a Dagashi well."
    "The Dagashi live out there?" Durnik asked, shading his eyes with one hand to look out at the fiery wasteland.
    "They're the only ones who can," Sadi replied. "Perhaps that explains why they're so fearsome. We're going to have to follow this ridge line south for a hundred leagues or so to get around that waste. Then we'll strike out due southeast across Morcth and on down into the Great Southern Forest in Gorut."
    Belgarath nodded. "Let's get started then."
    They rode south, skirting the western edge of the Desert of Araga and staying well up in the hills, which sloped steeply down to the desert floor. As they rode, Garion noticed that the trees on this side of the ridge were stunted and sparsely distributed. There was no grass growing in the rock-strewn ground, and the heather had given way to scrubby thorn bushes. The sharp ridge line appeared to be an abrupt demarcation between two entirely different climates. What had been only pleasantly warm on the west side became oppressively hot here on the east. There were almost no streams, and the few springs they found were tiny and seeped their water grudgingly into tepid little puddles hidden among the rust-colored boulders.
    On the morning of the third day after they had entered Cthol Murgos, Toth belted his blanket across one shoulder, took up his staff, and walked down to the mouth of the ravine where they had spent the night, to look out over the rocky desert lying below. The sun had not yet risen, and the light from the dawn sky was steely and shadowless, etching each rock and crag of the sun-blasted wasteland in sharp detail. After a moment, the giant returned and touched Durnik's shoulder.
    "What is it, Toth?" the smith asked.
    The mute pointed to the mouth of the ravine.
    "All right," Durnik said, rising from the spot where he had been kindling their morning fire. The two of them went on down the ravine in the pale light and stood looking out. After a few moments, Durnik called back over his shoulder. "Belgarath, I think you'd better come here and look at this."
    The old sorcerer finished pulling on his scuffed and mismatched boots and went down to join them, with his green silk robe flapping about his ankles. He stared out for a while, then muttered a