Magician's Gambit

big as buckets, seemed to stare balefully at them.
    "I don't think it has a name," Belgarath answered calmly. "They Iived in the sea before the water escaped. They've all been dead now for thousands of years."
    As they passed the dead sea monster, Garion could see that it was only a skeleton. Its ribs were as big as the rafters of a barn, and its vast, bleached skull larger than a horse. The vacant eye sockets watched them as they rode past.
    Mandorallen, dressed once again in full armor, stared at the skull. "A fearsome beast," he murmured.
    "Look at the size of the teeth," Barak said in an awed voice. "It could bite a man in two with one snap."
    "That happened a few times," Belgarath told him, "until people learned to avoid this place."
    They had moved only a few leagues out into the wasteland when the wind picked up, scouring along the black dunes under the slate-gray sky. The sand began to shift and move and then, as the wind grew even stronger, it began to whip off the tops of the dunes, stinging their faces.
    "We'd better take shelter," Belgarath shouted over the shrieking wind. "This sandstorm's going to get worse as we move out farther from the mountains."
    "Are there any caves around?" Durnik asked Relg.
    Relg shook his head. "None that we can use. They're all filled with sand."
    "Over there." Barak pointed at a pile of scab-rock rising from the edge of a salt flat. "If we go to the leeward side, it will keep the wind off us."
    "No," Belgarath shouted. "We have to stay to the windward. The sand will pile up at the back. We could be buried alive."
    They reached the rock pile and dismounted. The wind tore at their clothing, and the sand billowed across the wasteland like a vast, black cloud.
    "This is poor shelter, Belgarath," Barak roared, his beard whipping about his shoulders. "How long is this likely to last?"
    "A day - two days - sometimes as long as a week."
    Durnik had bent to pick up a piece of broken scab-rock. He looked at it carefully, turning it over in his hands. "It's fractured into square pieces," he said, holding it up. "It will stack well. We can build a wall to shelter us."
    "That will take quite a while," Barak objected.
    "Did you have something else to do?"
    By evening they had the wall up to shoulder height, and by anchoring the tents to the top of it and higher up on the side of the rock-pile, they were able to get in out of the worst of the wind. It was crowded, since they had to shelter the horses as well, but at least it was out of the storm.
    They huddled in their cramped shelter for two days with the wind shrieking insanely around them and the taut tent canvas drumming overhead. Then, when the wind finally blew itself out and the black sand began to settle slowly, the silence seemed almost oppressive.
    As they emerged, Relg glanced up once, then covered his face and sank to his knees, praying desperately. The clearing sky overhead was a bright, chilly blue. Garion moved over to stand beside the praying fanatic. "It will be all right, Relg," he told him. He reached out his hand without thinking.
    "Don't touch me," Relg said and continued to pray.
    Silk stood, beating the dust and sand out of his clothing. "Do these storms come up often?" he asked.
    "It's the season for them," Belgarath replied.
    "Delightful," Silk said sourly.
    Then a deep rumbling sound seemed to come from deep in the earth beneath them, and the ground heaved. "Earthquake!" Belgarath warned sharply. "Get the horses out of there!"
    Durnik and Barak dashed back inside the shelter and led the horses out from behind the trembling wall and onto the salt flat.
    After several moments the heaving subsided.
    "Is Ctuchik doing that?" Silk demanded. "Is he going to fight us with earthquakes and sandstorms?"
    Belgarath shook his head. "No. Nobody's strong enough to do that. That's what's causing it." He pointed to the south. Far across the wasteland they could make out a line of dark peaks. A thick plume was rising from one of them, towering into the air, boiling up in great black billows as it rose. "Volcano," the old man said. "Probably the same one that erupted last summer and dropped all the ash on Sthiss Tor."
    "A fire-mountain?" Barak rumbled, staring at the great cloud that was growing up out of the mountaintop. "I've never seen one before."
    "That's fifty leagues away, Belgarath," Silk stated. "Would it make the earth shake even here?"
    The old man nodded. "The earth's all one piece, Silk. The force that's causing that