Magician's Gambit

here. He seems to lack perspective." Silk turned back to Relg. "The core of the Angarak religion is a ritual most men find repugnant. Thulls devote their entire lives to avoiding it. That's the central reality of Thullish life."
    "An abominable people." Relg's denunciation was harsh.
    "No. Thulls are stupid - even brutish - but they're hardly abominable. You see, Relg, the ritual we're talking about involves human sacrifice."
    Relg pulled the veil from his eyes to stare incredulously at the ratfaced little man.
    "Each year two thousand Thulls are sacrificed to Torak," Silk went on, his eyes boring into Relg's stunned face. "The Grolims permit the substitution of slaves, so a Thull spends his whole life working in order to get enough money to buy a slave to take his place on the altar if he's unlucky enough to be chosen. But slaves die sometimes - or they escape. If a Thull without a slave is chosen, he usually tries to run. Then the Grolims chase him - they've had a lot of practice, so they're very good at it. I've never heard of a Thull actually getting away."
    "It's their duty to submit," Relg maintained stubbornly, though he seemed a bit less sure of himself.
    "How are they sacrificed?" Durnik asked in a subdued voice. The Thull's willingness to hurl himself off the escarpment had obviously shaken him.
    "It's a simple procedure," Silk replied, watching Relg closely. "Two Grolims bend the Thull backward over the altar, and a third cuts his heart out. Then they burn the heart in a little fire. Torak isn't interested in the whole Thull. He only wants the heart."
    Relg flinched at that.
    "They sacrifice women, too," Silk pressed. "But women have a simpler means of escape. The Grolims won't sacrifice a pregnant woman - it confuses their count - so Thulllish women try to stay pregnant constantly. That explains why there are so many Thulls and why Thullish women are notorious for their indiscriminate appetite."
    "Monstrous." Relg gasped. "Death would be better than such vile corruption."
    "Death lasts for a long time, Relg," Silk said with a cold little smile. "A little corruption can be forgotten rather quickly if you put your mind to it. That's particularly true if your life depends on it."
    Relg's face was troubled as he struggled with the blunt description of the horror of Thullish life. "You're a wicked man," he accused Silk, though his voice lacked conviction.
    "I know," Silk admitted.
    Relg appealed to Belgarath. "Is what he says true?"
    The sorcerer scratched thoughtfully at his beard. "He doesn't seem to have left out very much," he replied. "The word religion means different things to different people, Relg. It depends on the nature of one's God. You ought to try to get that sorted out in your mind. It might make some of the things you'll have to do a bit easier."
    "I think we've just about exhausted the possibilities of this conversation, father," Aunt Pol suggested, "and we have a long way to go."
    "Right," he agreed, getting to his feet.
    They rode down through the arid jumble of rock and scrubby bushes that spread across the western frontier of the land of the Thulls. The continual wind that swept up across the escarpment was bitterly cold, though there were only a few patches of thin snow lying beneath the somber gray sky.
    Relg's eyes adjusted to the subdued light, and the clouds appeared to quiet the panic the open sky had caused him. But this was obviously a difficult time for him. The world here above ground was alien, and everything he encountered seemed to shatter his preconceptions. It was also a time of personal religious turmoil, and the crisis goaded him into peculiar fluctuations of speech and action. At one moment he would sanctimoniously denounce the sinful wickedness of others, his face set in a stern expression of righteousness; and in the next, he would be writhing in an agony of self loathing, confessing his sin and guilt in an endless, repetitious litany to any who would listen. His pale face and huge, dark eyes, framed by the hood of his leaf mail shirt, contorted in the tumult of his emotions. Once again the others - even patient, good-hearted Durnik - drew away from him, leaving him entirely to Garion. Relg stopped often for prayers and obscure little rituals that always seemed to involve a great deal of groveling in the dirt.
    "It's going to take us all year to get to Rak Cthol at this rate," Barak rumbled sourly on one such occasion, glaring with open dislike at the ranting fanatic