Magician's Gambit

only thing that kept Garion from giving in to unreasoning panic.
    At one point the zealot stopped.
    "What's wrong?" Silk asked sharply, his voice carrying that same faint edge of panic that Garion felt gnawing at his own awareness.
    "I have to cover my eyes here," Relg replied. He was wearing a peculiarly fashioned shirt of leaf mail, a strange garment formed of overlapping metal scales, belted at the waist and with a snug-fitting hood that left only his face exposed. From his belt hung a heavy, hookppointed knife, a weapon that made Garion cold just to look at it. He drew a piece of cloth out from under his mail shirt and carefully tied it over his face.
    "Why are you doing that?" Durnik asked him.
    "There's a vein of quartz in the cavern just ahead," Relg told him. "It reflects sunlight down from the outside. The light is very bright."
    "How can you tell which way to go if you're blindfolded?" Silk protested.
    "The cloth isn't that thick. I can see through it well enough. Let's go.
    They rounded a corner in the gallery they were following, and Garion saw light ahead. He resisted an impulse to run toward it. They moved on, the hooves of the horses Hettar was leading clattering on the stone floor. The lighted cavern was huge, and it was filled with a glittering crystal light. A gleaming band of quartz angled across the ceiling, illuminating the cavern with a blazing radiance. Great points of stone hung like icicles from the ceiling, and other points rose from the floor to meet them. In the center of the cavern another underground lake stretched, its surface rippled by a tiny waterfall trickling down into its upper end with an endless tinkling sound that echoed in the cave like a little silver bell and joined harmoniously with the faint, remembered sigh of the singing of the Ulgos miles behind. Garion's eyes were dazzled by color that seemed to be everywhere. The prisms in the crystalline quartz twisted the light, breaking it into colored fragments and filling the cave with the multihued light of the rainbow. Garion found himself quite suddenly wishing that he could show the dazzling cave to Ce'Nedra, and the thought puzzled him.
    "Hurry," Relg urged them, holding one hand across his brow as if to further shade his already veiled eyes.
    "Why not stop here?" Barak suggested. "We need some rest, and this looks like a good place."
    "It's the worst place in all the caves," Relg told him. "Hurry."
    "Maybe you like the dark," Barak said, "but the rest of us aren't that fond of it." He looked around at the cave.
    "Protect your eyes, you fool," Relg snapped.
    "I don't care for your tone, friend."
    "You'll be blind once we get past this place if you don't. It's taken your eyes two days to get used to the dark. You'll lose all of that if you stay here too long."
    Barak stared hard at the Ulgo for a moment. Then he grunted and nodded shortly. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't understand." He reached out to put his hand on Relg's shoulder in apology.
    "Don't touch me!" Relg cried, shrinking away from the big hand.
    "What's the matter?"
    "Just don't touch me - not ever." Relg hurried on ahead.
    "What's the matter with him?" Barak demanded.
    "He doesn't want you to defile him," Belgarath explained.
    "Defile him? Defile him?"
    "He's very concerned about his personal purity. The way he sees it, any kind of touch can soil him."
    "Soil? He's as dirty as a pig in a wallow."
    "It's a different kind of dirt. Let's move on."
    Barak strode along behind the rest of them, grumbling and sputtering in outrage. They moved into another dark passageway, and Garion looked longingly back over his shoulder at the fading light from the glowing cavern behind. Then they rounded a corner and the light was gone.
    There was no way to keep track of time in the murmuring darkness. They stumbled on, pausing now and then to eat or to rest, though Garion's sleep was filled with nightmares about mountains crushing in on him. He had almost given up all hope of ever seeing the sky again when the first faint cobweb touch of moving air brushed his cheek. It had been, as closely as he could judge, five days since they had left the last dimly lighted gallery of the Ulgos behind and plunged into this eternal night. At first he thought the faint hint of warmer air might only be his imagination, but then he caught the scent of trees and grass in the musty air of the cave, and he knew that somewhere ahead there lay an opening - a way out.
    The touch of warmer outside air grew