"Down here," Silk said finally, stopping with his head cocked to one side in front of an opening.
The singing stopped abruptly. "No closer," the unseen woman warned sharply. "I have a knife."
"We're friends," Durnik called to her.
She laughed bitterly at that. "I have no friends. You're not going to take me back. My knife is long enough to reach my heart."
"She thinks we're Murgos," Silk whispered.
Belgarath raised his voice, speaking in a language Garion had never heard before. After a moment, the woman answered haltingly, as if trying to remember words she had not spoken for years.
"She thinks it's a trick," the old man told them quietly. "She says she's got a knife right against her heart, so we're going to have to be careful." He spoke again into the dark passageway, and the woman answered him. The language they were speaking was liquid, musical.
"She says she'll let one of us go to her," Belgarath said finally. "She still doesn't trust us."
"I'll go," Aunt Pol told him.
"Be careful, Pol. She might decide at the last minute to use her knife on you instead of herself."
"I can handle it, father." Aunt Pol took the light from Barak and moved slowly on down the passageway, speaking calmly as she went. The rest of them stood in the darkness, listening intently to the murmur of voices coming from the passageway, as Aunt Pol talked quietly to the Marag woman. "You can come now," she called to them finally, and they went down the passageway toward her voice.
The woman was lying beside a small pool of water. She was dressed only in scanty rags, and she was very dirty. Her hair was a lustrous black, but badly tangled, and her face had a resigned, hopeless look on it. She had wide cheekbones, full lips, and huge, violet eyes framed with sooty black lashes. The few pitiful rags she wore exposed a great deal of her pale skin. Relg drew in a sharp breath and immediately turned his back.
"Her name is Taiba," Aunt Pol told them quietly. "She escaped from the slave pens under Rak Cthol several days ago."
Belgarath knelt beside the exhausted woman. "You're a Marag, aren't you?" he asked her intently.
"My mother told me I was," she confirmed. "She's the one who taught me the old language." Her dark hair fell across one of her pale cheeks in a shadowy tangle.
"Are there any other Marags in the slave pens?"
"A few, I think. It's hard to tell. Most of the other slaves have had their tongues cut out."
"She needs food," Aunt Pol said. "Did anyone think to bring anything?"
Durnik untied a pouch from his belt and handed it to her. "Some cheese," he said, "and a bit of dried meat."
Aunt Pol opened the pouch.
"Have you any idea how your people came to be here?" Belgarath asked the slave woman. "Think. It could be very important."
Taiba shrugged. "We've always been here." She took the food Aunt Pol offered her and began to eat ravenously.
"Not too fast," Aunt Pol warned.
"Have you ever heard anything about how Marags wound up in the slave pens of the Murgos?" Belgarath pressed.
"My mother told me once that thousands of years ago we lived in a country under the open sky and that we weren't slaves then," Taiba replied. "I didn't believe her, though. It's the sort of story you tell children."
"There are some old stories about the Tolnedran campaign in Maragor, Belgarath," Silk remarked. "Rumors have been floating around for years that some of the legion commanders sold their prisoners to the Nyissan slavers instead of killing them. It's the sort of thing a Tolnedran would do."
"It's a possibility, I suppose," Belgarath replied, frowning.
"Do we have to stay here?" Relg demanded harshly. His back was still turned, and there was a rigidity to it that spoke his outrage loudly.
"Why is he angry with me?" Taiba asked, her voice dropping wearily from her lips in scarcely more than a whisper.
"Cover your nakedness, woman," Relg told her. "You're an affront to decent eyes."
"Is that all?" She laughed, a rich, throaty sound. "These are all the clothes I have." She looked down at her lush figure. "Besides, there's nothing wrong with my body. It's not deformed or ugly. Why should I hide it?"
"Lewd woman!" Relg accused her.
"If it bothers you so much, don't look," she suggested.
"Relg has a certain religious problem," Silk told her dryly.
"Don't mention religion," she said with a shudder.
"You see," Relg snorted. "She's completely depraved."
"Not exactly," Belgarath told him. "In Rak Cthol the word religion means the altar and the knife."
"Garion," Aunt Pol said, "give me your cloak."
He unfastened his heavy wool cloak and handed it to her. She started to cover the exhausted slave woman with it, but stopped suddenly and looked closely at her. "Where are your children?" she asked.
"The Murgos took them," Taiba replied in a dead voice. "They were two baby girls - very beautiful - but they're gone now."
"We'll get them back for you," Garion promised impulsively.
She gave a bitter little laugh. "I don't think so. The Murgos gave them to the Grolims, and the Grolims sacrificed them on the altar of Torak. Ctuchik himself held the knife."
Garion felt his blood run cold.
"This cloak is warm," Taiba said gratefully, her hands smoothing the rough cloth. "I've been cold for such a long time." She sighed with a sort of weary contentment.
Belgarath and Aunt Pol were looking at each other across Taiba's body. "I must be doing something right," the old man remarked cryptically after a moment. "To stumble across her like this after all these years of searching!"
"Are you sure she's the right one, father?"
"She almost has to be. Everything fits together too well - right down to the last detail." He drew in a deep breath and then let it out explosively. "That's been worrying me for a thousand years." He suddenly looked enormously pleased with himself. "How did you escape from the slave pens, Taiba?" he asked gently.
"One of the Murgos forgot to lock a door," she replied, her voice drowsy. "After I slipped out, I found this knife. I was going to try to find Ctuchik and kill him with it, but I got lost. There are so many caves down here - so many. I wish I could kill him before I die, but I don't suppose there's much hope for that now." She sighed regretfully. "I think I'd like to sleep now. I'm so very tired."