‘We do sort of plan to leave, don’t we, Belgarath?’
‘Oh. I guess I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’
He was polite enough not to make an issue of that. ‘I’ll come last,’ he told me. ‘I know how to close up the entrance so that nobody’ll see it.’
Despite my sense of urgency, I knew that we still had at least fifteen hours until the sun would briefly peek over the southern horizon again. We burrowed like moles for a couple of hours, and then I bumped into Riva’s feet. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why are we stopping?’
‘Father’s reached the wall,’ he replied. ‘You see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
‘Where did you fellows come up with this?’
‘We do it sometimes when we’re hunting, and it’s a very good way to sneak up on enemies.’
‘How are we going to get over the wall?’
‘I’ll stand on Dras’ shoulders, and Algar’ll stand on father’s. We’ll hoist ourselves up on top of the wall and then pull the rest of you up. It probably wouldn’t work if we were shorter. We came up with the idea during the last clan war.’ He peered on ahead. ‘We can move on now. Father’s out of the tunnel.’
We inched our way forward, and we were soon standing beside the wall. Cherek and Dras braced their hands against the stones, and Algar and Riva clambered up their backs, reached up, grabbed the top of the wall, and pulled themselves up.
‘Belgarath first,’ Riva whispered down. ‘Hold him up so I can reach his hand.’
Dras took me by the waist and lifted me up in the air. That’s how I found out how strong Riva’s hands were. I half-way expected to see blood come spurting out of the ends of my fingers when he seized my outstretched hand.
And then we were inside the city. Beldin had described Cthol Mishrak as a suburb of Hell, and I saw no reason to dispute that description. The buildings were all jammed together, and the narrow, twisting alleyways were covered over by the jutting second stories which butted tightly together overhead. The idea made some sense in a city so far north, I’ll grant you. At least the streets weren’t buried in snow, but the total lack of any windows in the buildings made the streets resemble hallways in some dungeon. They were poorly lighted by widely spaced torches that guttered and gave off clouds of pitchy smoke. It was depressing, but my friends and I didn’t really want brightly lighted boulevards. We were sneaking, and that’s an activity best performed in the dark.
I’m not certain if those narrow, smoky corridors were unpopulated by the arrangement between my friend in the attic and his opposite, or if it was a custom here in the City of Endless Night – which stands to reason, since the Hounds were out – but we didn’t encounter a soul as we worked our way deeper and deeper into the very heart of Angarak.
We finally emerged in the unlovely square in the middle of the city and looked through the perpetually murky air at the iron tower Beldin had described. It was naturally, when you take Torak’s personality into account, even higher than Aldur’s tower. It was absolutely huge and monumentally ugly. Iron doesn’t make for very pretty buildings. It was black, of course, and even from a distance it looked pitted. It had been there for almost two thousand years, after all. The Alorns and I weren’t really looking at that monument to Torak’s ego, however. We were looking at the pair of huge Hounds guarding the rivet-studded door.
‘Now what?’ Algar whispered.
‘Nothing simpler,’ Dras said confidently. ‘I’ll just walk across the square and bash out their brains with my axe.’
I had to head that off immediately. The other Alorns might very well see nothing at all wrong with his absurd plan. ‘It won’t work,’ I said quickly. ‘They’ll start baying as soon as they see you, and that’ll rouse the whole city.’
‘Well, how are we going to get past them then?’ he demanded truculently.
‘I’m working on it.’ I thought very fast, and it suddenly came to me. I knew it’d work, because it already had once. ‘Let’s pull back into this alley,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going to change again.’
‘You’re not as big as they are when you’re a wolf, Belgarath,’ Cherek pointed out.
‘I’m not going to change myself into a wolf,’ I assured him. ‘You’d better all step back a ways. I might be a little dangerous until I get it under control.’
They backed nervously away from me.
I didn’t turn myself into a wolf, or an owl, or an eagle, or even a dragon.
I became a civet-cat.
The Alorns backed away even farther.
The idea probably wouldn’t have worked if Torak’s Hounds had been real dogs. Even the stupidest dog knows enough to avoid a civet-cat or a skunk. The Chandim weren’t really dogs, though. They were Grolims, and they looked on the wild creatures around them with contempt. I flared out my spotted tail and, chittering warningly, I started across the snow-covered plaza toward them. When I got close enough for them to see me, one of them growled at me. ‘Go away,’ he said in a hideous voice. He actually seemed to chew on the words.
I kept moving toward them. Then, when I judged that they were in range, I turned around and pointed the dangerous end of my assumed form at them.
I don’t think I need to go into the details. The procedure’s a little disgusting, and I wouldn’t want to offend any ladies who might read this.
When a real dog has a brush with a skunk or a civet-cat, he does a lot of yelping and howling to let the world know how sorry he feels for himself, but the pair at the door weren’t real dogs. They did a lot of whining though, and they rolled around, digging their noses into the snow and pawing at their eyes.
I watched them clinically over my shoulder, and then I gave them another dose, just for good measure.
The last I saw of them, they were blundering blindly across that open square, stopping every few yards to roll in the snow again. They didn’t bark or howl, but they did whimper a lot.
I resumed my own form, waved Cherek and the boys in, and then set my fingertips to that pitted iron door. I could sense the lock, but it wasn’t a very good one, so I clicked it open with a single thought and began to inch the door open very slowly. It still made noise. It sounded very loud in that silent square, but I don’t imagine that the sound really carried all that far.
When Cherek and his sons got to within a few yards of me, they stopped. ‘Well, come on,’ I whispered to them.
‘Ah – that’s all right, Belgarath,’ Cherek whispered back. ‘Why don’t you go on ahead? We’ll follow you.’ He seemed to be trying to hold his breath.
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I snapped at him. ‘The smell’s out here where the Hounds were. None of it splashed on me – not in this form anyway.’
They still seemed very reluctant to come any closer.
I muttered a few choice oaths and slipped sideways through the doorway into the absolute darkness beyond it. I fumbled briefly in the pouch at my waist, brought out a stub of a candle, and touched fire to it with my thumb.
Yes, it was a little risky, but I’d been told that Torak wouldn’t be able to interfere. I wanted to make sure of that before we went any farther.
The Alorns edged through the minimally open doorway and looked around the chamber at the bottom of the tower nervously. ‘Which way?’ Cherek whispered.
‘Up those stairs, I’d imagine,’ I replied, pointing at the iron stairway spiraling up into the darkness. ‘There’s not much point to building a tower if you don’t plan to live at the top of it. Let me check around down here first, though.’