Magician's Gambit

through a broad, arched gate into the deserted city of Prolgu with snow swirling about them and the wind shrieking insanely in their ears.
    There were columns lining the empty streets, tall, thick columns reaching up into the dancing snow. The buildings, all unroofed by time and the endless progression of the seasons, had a strange, alien quality about them. Accustomed to the rigid rectangularity of the structures in the other cities he had seen, Garion was unprepared for the sloped corners of Ulgo architecture. Nothing seemed exactly square. The complexity of the angles teased at his mind, suggesting a subtle sophistication that somehow just eluded him. There was a massiveness about the construction that seemed to defy time, and the weathered stones sat solidly, one atop the other, precisely as they had been placed thousands of years before.
    Durnik seemed also to have noticed the peculiar nature of the structures, and his expression was one of disapproval. As they all moved behind a building to get out of the wind and to rest for a moment from the exertions of the climb, he ran his hand up one of the slanted corners. "Hadn't they ever heard of a plumb line?" he muttered critically.
    "Where do we go to find the Ulgos?" Barak asked, pulling his bearskin cloak even tighter about him.
    "It isn't far," Belgarath answered.
    They led their horses back out into the blizzard-swept streets, past the strange, pyramidal buildings.
    "An eerie place," Mandorallen said, looking around him. "How long hath it been abandoned thus?"
    "Since Torak cracked the world," Belgarath replied. "About five thousand years."
    They trudged across a broad street through the deepening snow to a building somewhat larger than the ones about it and passed inside through a wide doorway surmounted by a huge stone lintel. Inside, the air hung still and calm. A few flakes of snow drifted down through the silent air, sifting through the narrow opening at the top where the roof had been and lightly dusting the stone floor.
    Belgarath moved purposefully to a large black stone in the precise center of the floor. The stone was cut in such a way as to duplicate the truncated pyramidal shape of the buildings in the city, angling up to a flat surface about four feet above the floor. "Don't touch it," he warned them, carefully stepping around the stone.
    "Is it dangerous?" Barak asked.
    "No," Belgarath said. "It's holy. The Ulgos don't want it profaned. They believe that UL himself placed it here." He studied the floor intently, scraping away the thin dusting of snow with his foot in several places. "Let's see." He frowned slightly. Then he uncovered a single flagstone that seemed a slightly different color from those surrounding it. "Here we are," he grunted. "I always have to look for it. Give me your sword, Barak."
    Wordlessly the big man drew his sword and handed it to the old sorcerer.
    Belgarath knelt beside the flagstone he'd uncovered and rapped sharply on it three times with the pommel of Barak's heavy sword. The sound seemed to echo hollowly from underneath.
    The old man waited for a moment, then repeated his signal. Nothing happened.
    A third time Belgarath hammered his three measured strokes on the echoing flagstone. A slow grinding sound started in one corner of the large chamber.
    "What's that?" Silk demanded nervously.
    "The Ulgos," Belgarath replied, rising to his feet and dusting off his knees. "They're opening the portal to the caves."
    The grinding continued and a line of faint light appeared suddenly about twenty feet out from the east wall of the chamber. The line became a crack and then slowly yawned wider as a huge stone in the floor tilted up, rising with a ponderous slowness. The light from below seemed very dim.
    "Belgarath," a deep voice echoed from beneath the slowly tilting stone, "Yad ho, groja UL. "
    "Yad ho, groja UL. dad mar ishum, " Belgarath responded formally. "Peed mo, Belgarath. Mar ishum Ulgo, " the unseen speaker said.
    "What was that?" Garion asked in perplexity.
    "He invited us into the caves," the old man said. "Shall we go down now?"

Chapter Sixteen
    IT TOOK ALL Of Hettar's force of persuasion to start the horses moving down the steeply inclined passageway that led into the dimness of the caves of Ulgo. Their eyes rolled nervously as they took step after braced step down the slanting corridor, and they all flinched noticeably as the grinding stone boomed shut behind them. The colt walked so close to Garion that they