"What's he listening for?" Barak asked Polgara.
"The geysers make a certain noise just before they erupt," she answered.
"I didn't hear anything."
"You don't know what to listen for."
Behind them the mud geyser spouted again.
"Garion!" Aunt Pol snapped as he turned to look back at the mud plume rising from the pool. "Watch where you're going!"
He jerked his eyes back. The ground ahead of him looked quite ordinary.
"Back up," she told him. "Durnik, get the reins of Relg's horse."
Durnik took the reins, and Garion began to turn his mount.
"I said to back up," she repeated.
Garion's horse put one front hoof on the seemingly solid ground, and the hoof sank out of sight. The horse scrambled back and stood trembling as Garion held him in tightly. Then, carefully, step by step, Garion backed to the solid rock of the path they followed.
"Quicksand," Silk said with a sharp intake of his breath.
"It's all around us," Aunt Pol agreed. "Don't wander off the path - any of you."
Silk stared with revulsion at the hoofprint of Garion's horse, disappearing on the surface of the quicksand. "How deep is it?"
"Deep enough," Aunt Pol replied.
They moved on, carefully picking their way through the quagmires and quicksand, stopping often as more geysers - some of mud, some of frothy, boiling water - shot high into the air. By late afternoon, when they reached a low ridge of hard, solid rock beyond the steaming bog, they were all exhausted from the effort of the concentration it had taken to pass through the hideous region.
"Do we have to go through any more like that?" Garion asked.
"No," Belgarath replied. "It's just around the southern edges of the Tarn."
"Can one not go around it, then?" Mandorallen inquired.
"It's much longer if you do, and the bog helps to discourage pursuit."
"What's that?" Relg cried suddenly.
"What's what?" Barak asked him.
"I heard something just ahead - a kind of click, like two pebbles knocking together."
Garion felt a quick kind of wave against his face, almost like an unseen ripple in the air, and he knew that Aunt Pol was searching ahead of them with her mind.
"Murgos!" she said.
"How many?" Belgarath asked her.
"Six and a Grolim. They're waiting for us just behind the ridge."
"Only six?" Mandorallen said, sounding a little disappointed.
Barak grinned tightly. "Light entertainment."
"You're getting to be as bad as he is," Silk told the big Cherek.
"Thinkest thou that we might need some plan, my Lord?" Mandorallen asked Barak.
"Not really," Barak replied. "Not for just six. Let's go spring their trap."
The two warriors moved into the lead, unobtrusively loosening their swords in their scabbards.
"Has the sun gone down yet?" Relg asked Garion.
"It's just setting."
Relg pulled the binding from around his eyes and tugged down the dark veil. He winced and squinted his large eyes almost shut.
"You're going to hurt them," Garion told him. "You ought to leave them covered until it gets dark."
"I might need them," Relg said as they rode up the ridge toward the waiting Murgo ambush.
The Murgos gave no warning. They rode out from behind a large pile of black rock and galloped directly at Mandorallen and Barak, their swords swinging. The two warriors, however, were waiting for them and reacted without that instant of frozen surprise which might have made the attack successful. Mandorallen swept his sword from its sheath even as he drove his warhorse directly into the mount of one of the charging Murgos. He rose in his stirrups and swung a mighty blow downward, splitting the Murgo's head with his heavy blade. The horse, knocked off his feet by the impact, fell heavily backward on top of his dying rider. Barak, also charging at the attackers, chopped another Murgo out of the saddle with three massive blows, spattering bright red blood on the sand and rock around them.
A third Murgo sidestepped Mandorallen's charge and struck at the knight's back, but his blade clanged harmlessly off the steel armor. The Murgo desperately raised his sword to strike again, but stiffened and slid from his saddle as Silk's skilfully thrown dagger sank into his neck, just below the ear.
A dark-robed Grolim in his polished steel mask had stepped out from behind the rocks. Garion could quite clearly feel the priest's exultation turning to dismay as Barak and Mandorallen systematically chopped his warriors to pieces. The Grolim drew himself up, and Garion sensed that he was gathering his will to strike. But it was too late. Relg had already closed on him. The zealot's heavy shoulders surged as he grasped the front of the Grolim's robe with his knotted hands. Without apparent effort he lifted and pushed the man back against the flattened face of a house-sized boulder.
At first it appeared that Relg only intended to hold the Grolim pinned against the rock until the others could assist him with the struggling captive, but there was a subtle difference. The set of his shoulders indicated that he had not finished the action he had begun with lifting the man from his feet. The Grolim hammered at Relg's head and shoulders with his fists, but Relg pushed at him inexorably. The rock against which the Grolim was pinned seemed to shimmer slightly around him.
"Relg - no!" Silk's cry was strangled.
The dark-robed Grolim began to sink into the stone face, his arms flailing wildly as Relg pushed him in with a dreadful slowness. As he went deeper into the rock, the surface closed smoothly over him. Relg continued to push, his arms sliding into the stone as he sank the Grolim deeper and deeper. The priest's two protruding hands continued to twitch and writhe, even after the rest of his body had been totally submerged. Then Relg drew his arms out of the stone, leaving the Grolim behind. The two hands sticking out of the rock opened once in mute supplication, then stiffened into dead claws.
Behind him, Garion could hear the muffled sound of Silk's retching. Barak and Mandorallen had by now engaged two of the remaining Murgos, and the sound of clashing sword blades rang in the chill air. The last Murgo, his eyes wide with fright, wheeled his horse and bolted. Without a word, Durnik jerked his axe free of his saddle and galloped after him. Instead of striking the man down, however, Durnik cut across in front of his opponent's horse, turning him, driving him back. The panic-stricken Murgo flailed at his horse's flanks with the flat of his sword, turning away from the grim-faced smith, and plunged at a dead run back up over the ridge with Durnik close behind him.