Sorceress of Darshiva

with my sword, so I thought this might work just as well—particularly since Belgarath wanted to keep down the fatalities."
    "Did we kill anybody?" Durnik asked.
    "Two," Sadi admitted. He held up his small dagger. "It's a little hard to unpoison a knife."
    "And one other," Silk told the smith. "He was running up behind you with a spear, so I threw a knife at him."
    "It couldn't be helped," Belgarath said. "Now let's get out of here."
    They continued at a gallop for several miles, then slowed back to a canter again. They took shelter mat night in a sizable stand of dead trees. Durnik and Toth dug a shallow pit and built a small fire in it. After the tents were pitched, Garion and Zakath walked to the edge of the trees to keep watch on the road.
    "Is it always like this?" Zakath asked quietly.
    "Like what?"
    "All this sneaking and hiding?"
    "Usually. Belgarath tries to avoid trouble whenever he can. He doesn't like to risk people in random skirmishes. Most of the time we're able to avoid the kind of thing that happened this morning. Silk—and Sadi, too, for that matter—have lied us out of some very tight spots." He smiled faintly. "Up in Voresebo, Silk bribed our way past a group of soldiers with a pouchful of brass Mallorean halfpennies."
    "But they're virtually worthless."
    "That's what Silk said, but we were quite a ways past the soldiers before they opened the pouch."
    Then they heard a chilling howl.
    "A wolf?" Zakath asked. "Belgarath again?"
    "No. That wasn't a wolf. Let's go back. I think Urvon's managed to outflank General Atesca."
    "What makes you think so?"
    "That was a Hound."

CHAPTER TWENTY
    They walked carefully through the forest of dead snags, avoiding as best they could the litter of fallen limbs and twigs on the ground. The faint glow from Duraik's sunken fire guided them, and Garion knew it would serve as a dim beacon for the Hounds as well. Zakath's euphoria seemed to have evaporated. His expression now was wary, and he walked with his hand on his sword hilt.
    They entered the small clearing where the others were seated around the fire pit. "There's a Hound out there," Garion said quietly. "It howled once."
    "Could you make out what it was saying?" Belgarath asked, his voice tense.
    "I don't speak its language, Grandfather. It seemed to be some kind of a call, though."
    "Probably to the rest of the pack," the old man grunted. " The Hounds don't hunt alone very often."
    "The glow from our fire is fairly visible," Garion pointed out.
    "I'll take care of that right away," Durnik said, starting to shovel dirt into the fire pit.
    "Could you pinpoint the Hound's location at all?" Belgarath asked.
    "It was some distance away," Garion replied. "I think it's out there on the road."
    "Following our trail?" Silk asked.
    "It's following something. I could pick up that much."
    "If the Hound is following us, I can divert it with some of that powder I used back at Ashaba," Sadi suggested.
    "What do you think?" Belgarath asked Beldin. The dwarf squatted on the ground, absently scratching an obscure diagram in the dirt with a broken stick. "It wouldn't work," he said finally. "The Hounds aren't entirely dogs, so they're not going to just blindly follow the one in the lead. Once they pinpoint our location, they'll spread out and come at us from all sides. We're going to have to come up with something else."
    "Fairly soon, I'd think," Silk added, looking around nervously.
    Polgara removed her blue cloak and handed it to Durnik. "I'll deal with it," she said calmly.
    "What have you got in mind, Pol?" Belgarath asked suspiciously.
    "I haven't decided yet, Old Wolf. Maybe I'll just make it up as I go along—the way you do sometimes." She drew herself up, and the air around her shimmered with an odd luminescence. She was winging her way off among the dead white trees even before the light had faded.
    "I hate it when she does that," Belgarath muttered.
    "You do it all the time," Beldin said.
    "That's different."
    Zakath was staring at the ghostly shape of the disappearing white owl. "That's uncanny," he shuddered. Then he looked at Garion. "I can't say that I understand all this concern," he confessed. "You people—at least some of you—are sorcerers. Can't you just . . . ?" He left it hanging.
    "No," Garion shook his head.
    "Why not?"
    "It makes too much noise. Not the sort of noise ordinary people can hear—but we can hear it, and so can the Grolims. If we tried to do it that way, we'd have every Grolim in this