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directly into what seemed to be an ambush. "Comrades!" he shouted. "Get ready!
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They're coming - and they've got the gold!"
Several shabby-looking men with rusty swords and axes rose from the bushes or
stepped out from behind trees to surround the little man. Silk was talking very
fast, gesticulating, waving his arms and pointing back toward the slope looming
behind them.
"What's he doing?" Barak asked.
"Something devious, I imagine," Wolf replied.
The men surrounding Silk looked dubious at first, but their expressions
gradually changed as he continued to talk excitedly. Finally he turned in his
saddle to look back. He jerked his arm in a broad, overhead sweep. "Let's go!"
he shouted. "They're with us!" He spun his horse to scramble up the graveled
side of the gully.
"Don't get separated," Barak warned, shifting his shoulders under his mail
shirt. "I'm not sure what he's up to, but these schemes of his sometimes fall
apart."
They pounded down through the grim-looking brigands and up the side of the gully
on Silk's heels.
"What did you say to them?" Barak shouted as they rode.
"I told them that fifteen Murgos had made a dash into Maragor and come out with
three heavy packs of gold." The little man laughed. "Then I said that the men at
the settlement had turned them back and that they were trying to double around
this way with the gold. I told them that we'd cover this next gully if they'd
cover that one back there."
"Those scoundrels will swarm all over Brill and his Murgos when they try to come
through," Barak suggested.
"I know." Silk laughed. "Terrible, isn't it?"
They rode on at a gallop. After about a half mile, Mister Wolf raised his arm,
and they all reined in. "This should be far enough," he told them. "Now listen
very carefully, all of you. These hills are alive with Murgos, so we're going to
have to go into Maragor."
Princess Ce'Nedra gasped, and her face turned deathly pale.
"It will be all right, dear," Aunt Pol soothed her.
Wolf's face was grimly serious. "As soon as we ride out onto the plain, you're
going to start hearing certain things," he continued. "Don't pay any attention.
Just keep riding. I'm going to be in the lead and I want you all to watch me
very closely. As soon as I raise my hand, I want you to stop and get down off
your horses immediately. Keep your eyes on the ground and don't look up, no
matter what you hear. There are things out there that you don't want to see.
Polgara and I are going to put you all into a kind of sleep. Don't try to fight
us. Just relax and do exactly what we tell you to do."
"Sleep?" Mandorallen protested. "What if we are attacked? How may we defend
ourselves if we are asleep?"
"There isn't anything alive out there to attack you, Mandorallen," Wolf told
him. "And it isn't your body that needs to be protected; it's your mind."
"What about the horses?" Hettar asked.
"The horses will be all right. They won't even see the ghosts."
"I can't do it," Ce'Nedra declared, her voice hovering on the edge of hysteria.
"I can't go into Maragor."
"Yes, you can, dear," Aunt Pol told her in that same calm, soothing voice. "Stay
close to me. I won't let anything happen to you."
Garion felt a sudden profound sympathy for the frightened little girl, and he
drew his horse over beside hers. "I'll be here, too," he told her. She looked at
him gratefully, but her lower lip still trembled, and her face was very pale.
Mister Wolf took a deep breath and glanced once at the long slope behind them.
The dust clouds raised by the converging Murgos were much closer now. "All
right," he said, "let's go." He turned his horse and began to ride at an easy
trot down toward the mouth of the gully and the plain stretching out before
them.
The sound at first seemed faint and very far away, almost like the murmur of
wind among the branches of a forest or the soft babble of water over stones.
Then, as they rode farther out onto the plain, it grew louder and more distinct.
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Garion glanced back once, almost longingly at the hills behind them. Then he
pulled his horse close in beside Ce'Nedra's and locked his eyes on Mister Wolf's
back, trying to close his ears.
The sound was now a chorus of moaning cries punctuated by occasional shrieks.
Behind it all, and seeming to carry and sustain all the other sounds, was a
dreadful wailing - a single voice surely, but so vast and all-encompassing that
it seemed to reverberate inside Garion's head, erasing all thought.
Mister Wolf suddenly raised his hand, and Garion slid out of his saddle, his
eyes fixed almost desperately on the ground. Something flickered at the edge of
his vision, but he refused to look.
Then Aunt Pol was speaking to them, her voice calm, reassuring. "I want you to
form a circle," she told them, "and take each others' hands. Nothing will be
able to enter the circle, so you'll all be safe."
Trembling in spite of himself, Garion stretched out his hands. Someone took his
left, he didn't know who; but he instantly knew that the tiny hand that clung so
desperately to his right was Ce'Nedra's.
Aunt Pol stood in the center of their circle, and Garion could feel the force of
her presence there washing over all of them. Somewhere outside the circle, he
could feel Wolf. The old man was doing something that swirled faint surges
through Garion's veins and set off staccato bursts of the familiar roaring
sound.
The wailing of the dreadful, single voice grew louder, more intense, and Garion
felt the first touches of panic. It was not going to work. They were all going
to go mad.
"Hush, now," Aunt Pol's voice came to him, and he knew that she spoke inside his
mind. His panic faded, and he felt a strange, peaceful lassitude. His eyes grew
heavy, and the sound of the wailing grew fainter. Then, enfolded in a comforting
warmth, he fell almost at once into a profound slumber.
Chapter Five
GARION WAS NOT exactly sure when it was that his mind shook off Aunt Pol's soft
compulsion to sink deeper and deeper into protective unawareness. It could not
have been long. Falteringly, like someone rising slowly from the depths, he swam
back up out of sleep to find himself moving stiffly, even woodenly, toward the
horses with the others. When he glanced at them, he saw their faces were blank,
uncomprehending. He seemed to hear Aunt Pol's whispered command to "sleep,
sleep, sleep," but it somehow lacked the power necessary to compel him to obey.
There was to his consciousness, however, a subtle difference. Although his mind
was awake, his emotions seemed not to be. He found himself looking at things
with a calm, lucid detachment, uncluttered by those feelings which so often
churned his thoughts into turmoil. He knew that in all probability he should
tell Aunt Pol that he was not asleep, but for some obscure reason he chose not
to. Patiently, he began to sort through the notions and ideas surrounding that
decision, trying to isolate the single thought which he knew must lie behind the
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