Pawn of Prophecy

stopping.
    Part of his mind seemed half asleep, but that secret, inner part was wide awake. The dry voice observed that something significant had just happened. The powerful compulsion not to speak about Asharak was obviously gone. Aunt Pol had somehow pulled it out of his mind entirely. His feeling about that was oddly ambiguous. That strange relationship between himself and dark-robed, silent Asharak had always been intensely private, and now it was gone. He felt vaguely empty and somehow violated. He sighed and went up the broad stairway toward his room.
    There were a half dozen warriors in the hallway outside his room, probably part of Barak's search for the man in the green cloak. Garion stopped. Something was wrong, and he shook off his half daze. This pan of the palace was much too populated to make it very likely that the spy would be hiding here. His heart began racing, and step by step he began to back away toward the top of the stairs he had just climbed. The warriors looked like any other Chereks in the palace-bearded, dressed in helmets, mail shirts, and furs, but something didn't seem exactly right.
    A bulky man in a dark, hooded cloak stepped through the doorway of Garion's room into the corridor. It was Asharak. The Murgo was about to say something, but then his eyes fell on Garion. "Ah," he said softly. His dark eyes gleamed in his scarred face. "I've been looking for you, Garion," he said in that same soft voice. "Come here, boy."
    Garion felt a tentative tug at his mind that seemed to slip away as if it somehow could not get a sure grip. He shook his head mutely and continued to back away.
    "Come along now," Asharak said. "We've known each other far too long for this. Do as I say. You know that you must."
    The tug became a powerful grasp that again slipped away. "Come here, Garion!" Asharak commanded harshly. Garion kept backing away, step by step.
    "No," he said. Asharak's eyes blazed, and he drew himself up angrily.
    This time it was not a tug or a grasp, but a blow. Garion could feel the force of it even as it seemed somehow to miss or be deflected. Asharak's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. "Who did this?" he demanded. "Polgara? Belgarath? It won't do any good, Garion. I had you once, and I can take you again any time I want to. You're not strong enough to refuse me."
    Garion looked at his enemy and answered out of some need for defiance. "Maybe I'm not," he said, "but I think you'll have to catch me first."
    Asharak turned quickly to his warriors. "That's the boy I want," he barked sharply. "Take him!"
    Smoothly, almost as if it were done without thought, one of the warriors raised his bow and leveled an arrow directly at Garion. Asharak swung his arm quickly and knocked the bow aside just as the steelpointed shaft was loosed. The arrow sang in the air and clattered against the stones of the wall a few feet to Garion's left.
    "Alive, idiot," Asharak snarled and struck the bowman a crushing blow to the side of the head. The bowman fell twitching to the stone floor.
    Garion spun, dashed back to the stairs and plunged down three steps at a time. He didn't bother to look back. The sound of heavy feet told him that Asharak and his men were after him. At the bottom of the stairs, he turned sharply to the left and fled down a long, dark passageway that led back into the maze of Anheg's palace.

Chapter Eighteen
    THERE WERE WARRIORS everywhere, and the sounds of fighting. In the first instant of his flight, Garion's plan had been simple. All he had to do was to find some of Barak's warriors, and he would be safe. But there were other warriors in the palace as well. The Earl of Jarvik had led a small army into the palace by way of the ruined wings to the south, and fighting raged in the corridors.
    Garion quickly realized that there was no way he could distinguish friend from enemy. To him, one Cherek warrior looked the same as another. Unless he could find Barak or someone else he recognized, he did not dare reveal himself to any of them. The frustrating knowledge that he was running from friends as well as enemies added to his fright. It was altogether possible - even quite likely - that he would run from Barak's men directly into the arms of Jarvik's.
    The most logical thing to do would be to go directly back to the council hall, but in his haste to escape from Asharak, he had run down so many dim passageways and turned so many corners that he had no idea where he was or how to get back to the