‘You have a plan?’ Riva asked me.
‘I’m working on it,’ I replied shortly. Actually, I didn’t have a plan. I hadn’t really thought we’d live long enough to get this far. I decided that it might be a good time to have a chat with my friend in the attic.
– Are you still there? – I asked tentatively.
– No, I’m off somewhere chasing moonbeams. Where else would I be, Belgarath? –
– Silly question, I guess. Are you permitted to give me a description of the city? –
– No, but you’ve already got one. Beldin told you everything you need to know. You know that Torak’s in the iron tower and that the Orb’s there with him. –
– Should I get ready for anything? I mean, is there going to be another one of those meetings here in Cthol Mishrak? The notion of getting into a wrestling match with Torak doesn’t appeal to me very much. –
– No. That was all settled when you met Zedar. –
– We actually won one? –
– We win about half of them. Don’t get overconfident, though. Pure chance could trip you up. You know what to do when you get there, don’t you? –
And suddenly I did know. Don’t ask me how, I just did. – Maybe I’d better scout on ahead, – I suggested.
– Absolutely not. Don’t give yourself away by wandering around aimlessly. Take the Alorns, do what you came to do, and get out. –
– Are we on schedule? –
– Yes – if you get it done tonight. After tonight, you’re in trouble. Don’t try to talk to me again – not until you’re clear of the city. I won’t be permitted to answer you. Good luck. – Then he was gone again.
The light lasted for about three hours – which only seemed like about three years to me. When the lingering twilight finally faded, I was very jumpy. ‘Let’s go,’ I told the Alorns. ‘If we come across any Angaraks, put them down quickly, and don’t make any more noise than you absolutely have to.’
‘What’s the plan?’ Cherek asked me.
‘I’m going to make it up as we go along,’ I replied. Why should I be the only one with bad nerves?
He swallowed hard. ‘Lead the way,’ he told me. Say what you like about Alorns – and I usually do – but no one can fault their bravery.
We crept out of the thicket and waded through the snow until we reached the edge of the swamp. I wasn’t particularly worried about tracks, since the Grolims had been patrolling this part of the swamp regularly, and their tracks were everywhere, mingled with the occasional tracks of one of the Hounds. A few more wouldn’t mean anything.
Our luck was holding. A blizzard had come in out of the west, and the screaming wind had scoured all the snow off the hillsides facing the swamp. It was no more than an hour until we reached the top of the hill we were climbing, and then we got our first look at the City of Endless Night.
I could see Torak’s iron tower, of course, but that wasn’t what concerned me. The light wasn’t good, naturally, but it was good enough to reveal the fact that Cthol Mishrak had a wall around it. I swore.
‘What’s wrong?’ Dras asked me.
‘You see that wall?’
‘Yes.’
‘That means we’ll have to go through a gate, and you don’t look all that much like a Grolim.’
He shrugged. ‘You worry too much, Belgarath,’ he rumbled. ‘We’ll just kill the gate-guards and then walk in like we own the place.’
‘I think we might be able to come up with something a little better than that,’ Algar said quietly. ‘Let’s see how high the wall is.’
As I think I mentioned, the wind of that blizzard had swept the west side of the hills bare of snow – and drifted it all on the east side. We stared at those six-foot drifts. This wasn’t going at all well.
‘There’s no help for it, Belgarath,’ Cherek told me gravely. ‘We’re going to have to follow that road.’ He pointed at a narrow track that wound up the hill from the gate of the city.
‘Cherek,’ I replied in a pained tone, ‘that path’s as crooked as a broken-backed snake, and the snow’s piled up so high on both sides that we won’t be able to see anybody coming toward us. We’ll be right on top of him before we even know he’s there.’
He shrugged. ‘But we’ll be expecting him,’ he said. ‘He won’t be expecting us. That’s all the advantage we really need, isn’t it?’
It was sheer idiocy, of course, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything better – short of wading through the drifts, and we didn’t have time for that. We had an appointment in Cthol Mishrak, and I didn’t want to be late. ‘We’ll try it,’ I gave in.
We did encounter one Grolim on our way down to the city, but Algar and Riva jumped him before he could even cry out, and they made quick work of him with their daggers. Then they picked him up, swung him a few times, and threw him up over the top of the snowbank to the left while Dras kicked snow over the pool of blood in the middle of the trail.
‘My sons work well together, don’t they?’ Cherek noted with fatherly pride.
‘Very well,’ I agreed. ‘Now, how are we going to get off this trail before we reach the gate?’
‘We’ll get a little closer, and then we’ll burrow through the snow off to one side. The last one through can kick the roof of our tunnel down. Nobody’ll ever know we’ve been here.’
‘Clever. Why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Probably because you’re not used to living in snow-country. When I was about fifteen, there was a married woman in Val Alorn that sort of took my eye. Her husband was old, but very jealous. I had a snow-tunnel burrowed all the way around his house before the winter was over.’
‘What an absolutely fascinating sidelight on your boyhood. How old was she?’
‘Oh, about thirty-five or so. She taught me all sorts of things.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I could tell you about them, if you’d like.’
‘Some other time, maybe. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.’
I’ll wager you never read about that conversation in the BOOK OF ALORN.
Algar moved on slightly ahead of us, carefully peeking around each bend in that winding path. Finally he came back. ‘This is far enough,’ he said shortly. ‘The gate’s just around the next turn.’
‘How high’s the wall?’ his father asked.
‘Not bad,’ Algar replied, ‘only about twelve feet.’
‘Good,’ Cherek said. ‘I’ll lead out. You boys know what to do when you come along behind.’
They all nodded, taking no offense at being called ‘boys.’ Cherek lived to be over ninety, and he still called them ‘boys.’
Tunneling through snow isn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds, if you’ve got some help. Cherek clawed his way through, angling slightly upward as he swam through toward a point some fifty feet or so to the left of the gate. Dras followed behind him, raising up every few inches to compress