Sorceress of Darshiva

careful."
    "All right," she replied. There was another soft wing beat in the fog. Again there was that interminable wait.
    Then her voice came back quite clearly. "You're right, farther," she said. "They're Chandim."
    A muttered oath came out of the stillness. "Urvon," Belgarath's voice said.
    "And probably Nahaz as well," Polgara added.
    "This complicates things," the old man said. "Let's go back and talk with the others. We might have to make the decision sooner than Beldin thought."

CHAPTER TEN
    They gathered not far from the driftwood-littered beach. The fog had slipped imperceptibly from white to gray as evening settled slowly over this misty coast.
    "That's it, then," Beldin said after Belgarath had told mem what lay ahead. "If the Chandim and the Hounds are out there trying to sniff out Zandramas' trail the same as we are, we're bound to run into them sooner or later."
    "We've dealt with them before," Silk objected.
    "I'll grant that," Beldin replied, "but why risk that sort of thing if we don't have to? The trail of Zandramas isn't really important to us now. What we really need to do at this point is to get to Kell."
    Belgarath was pacing up and down. "Beldin's right," he said. "There's no point in taking risks over something that doesn't really matter any more."
    "But we're so close," Ce'Nedra protested.
    "If we start running into Chandim—and Hounds—we won't stay very close," Beldin told her.
    Sadi had put on a western-style traveler's cloak and had turned the hood up to ward off the dampness of the fog. The covering of his shaved scalp peculiarly altered his appearance. "What's Zandramas likely to do when she finds out that the Chandim are trailing her?" he asked.
    "She'll put every Grolim and every soldier she can lay her hands on in their path," Polgara replied.
    "And they'll just bring in more force to counter that, won't they?"
    "That's the logical assumption," Durnik agreed.
    "That sort of means that things are going to come to a head here fairly soon, wouldn't you say—even if neither side would particularly have chosen this place for a major confrontation?"
    "What are you getting at, Sadi?" Silk asked him.
    "If Urvon and Zandramas are concentrating on each other, they won't really pay that much attention to us, will they? About all we have to do is get out of this general vicinity, and then we should be able to make straight for Kell without much in the way of interference."
    "What lies to the south of us?" Beldin asked Silk.
    "Nothing major." Silk shrugged. "At least not until you get to Gandahar."
    Beldin nodded. "But we've got a city just to the north of here, don't we?"
    "Selda," Silk supplied.
    "Urvon's probably there already, but if we go south, we should be able to avoid him—and Zandramas as well. Sadi's right. They'll be so busy with each other they won't have time to look for us."
    "Anybody want to add anything?" Belgarath asked them.
    "A fire maybe?" Durnik said.
    "I don't quite follow you."
    "We’ve got all this fog," Durnik explained, "and night's coming on. The Chandim are out there ahead of us, and we need something to distract their attention while we slip around them. There's all that driftwood along the upper edge of the beach. A bonfire on a foggy night lights up the whole sky. You can see it for miles. If we build a few fires, the Chandim are going to think that something serious is going on behind them and they'll all rush back to investigate. That ought to clear the way for us."
    Beldin grinned and clapped a gnarled hand on the smith's shoulder. "You made a good choice, Pol," he chortled. "This is a rare fellow here."
    "Yes," she murmured. "I saw that almost immediately."
    They rode back along the beach to the abandoned fishing village. "Do you want me to do it, Grandfather?" Garion coffered. "Set fire to the driftwood, I mean?"
    "No," the old man replied, "I'll take care of it. You and Pol take the others on down along the shoreline. I'll catch up in a bit."
    "Do you want these?" Durnik asked, offering the old man his flint and steel.
    Belgarath shook his head. "I'll do it the other way," he f'said. "I want to give the Chandim some noise to listen to, as well as the fire to watch. That should get their undivided attention." He strode off into the fog, heading back up the beach.
    "Come along, Garion," Polgara said, pushing back the hood of her cloak. "We'll scout ahead again. I think we'll want to move fairly fast."
    The two of them walked a short distance down the