Castle of Wizardry

Even as they turned, a new and dreadful creaking roar surrounded them. Screeching in protest, the rock ripped apart with a long, hideous tearing. A sudden flood of light filled the gallery along which they fled as a great crack opened in the side of the basalt peak, widening ponderously as a vast chunk of the mountainside toppled slowly outward to fall to the floor of the wasteland thousands of feet below. The red glow of the new-risen sun was blinding as the dark world of the caves was violently opened, and the great wound in the side of the peak revealed a dozen or more dark openings both above and beneath, where caves suddenly ran out into nothingness.
    "There!" a shout came from overhead. Garion jerked his head around. Perhaps fifty feet above and out along the sharp angle of the face, a half dozen black-robed Murgos, swords drawn, stood in a cave mouth with the dust billowing about them. One was pointing excitedly at the fleeing fugitives. And then the peak heaved again, and another great slab of rock sheared away, carrying the shrieking Murgos into the abyss beneath.
    "Run!" Relg shouted again, and they all pounded along at his heels, back into the darkness of the shuddering passageway.
    "Stop a minute," Barak gasped, plowing to a sudden halt after they had retreated several hundred yards. "Let me get my breath." He lowered Belgarath to the floor, his huge chest heaving.
    "Can I help thee, my Lord?" Mandorallen offered quickly.
    "No," Barak panted. "I can manage all right, I'm just a little winded." The big man peered around. "What happened back there? What set all this off?"
    "Belgarath and Ctuchik had a bit of a disagreement," Silk told him with sardonic understatement. "It got a little out of hand toward the end."
    "What happened to Ctuchik?" Barak asked, still gasping for breath. "I didn't see anybody else when Mandorallen and I broke into that room."
    "He destroyed himself," Polgara replied, kneeling to examine Belgarath's face.
    "We saw no body, my Lady," Mandorallen noted, peering into the darkness with his great broadsword in his hand.
    "There wasn't that much left of him," Silk said.
    "Are we safe here?" Polgara asked Relg.
    The Ulgo set the side of his head against the wall of the passageway, listening intently. Then he nodded. "For the moment," he replied. "Let's stop here for a while then. I want to have a look at my father. Make me some light."
    Relg fumbled in the pouches at his belt and mixed the two substances that gave off that faint Ulgo light.
    Silk looked curiously at Polgara. "What really happened?" he asked her. "Did Belgarath do that to Ctuchik?"
    She shook her head, her hands lightly touching her father's chest. "Ctuchik tried to unmake the Orb for some reason," she said. "Something happened to frighten him so much that he forgot the first rule."
    A momentary flicker of memory came to Garion as he set the little boy down on his feet - that brief glimpse of Ctuchik's mind just before the Grolim had spoken the fatal "Be Not" that had exploded him into nothingness. Once again he caught that single image that had risen in the High Priest's mind - the image of himself holding the Orb in his hand - and he felt the blind, unreasoning panic the image had caused Ctuchik. Why? Why would that have frightened the Grolim into that deadly mistake?
    "What happened to him, Aunt Pol?" he asked. For some reason he had to know.
    "He no longer exists," she replied. "Even the substance that formed him is gone."
    "That's not what I meant," Garion started to object, but Barak was already speaking.
    "Did he destroy the Orb?" the big man asked with a kind of weak sickness in his voice.
    "Nothing can destroy the Orb," she told him calmly.
    "Where is it then?"
    The little boy pulled his hand free from Garion's and went confidently to the big Cherek. "Errand?" he asked, holding out the round, gray stone in his hand.
    Barak recoiled from the offered stone. "Belay!" he swore, quickly putting his hands behind his back. "Make him stop waving it around like that, Polgara. Doesn't he know how dangerous it is?"
    "I doubt it."
    "How's Belgarath?" Silk asked.
    "His heart's still strong," Polgara replied. "He's exhausted, though. The fight nearly killed him."
    With a long, echoing shudder the quaking subsided, and the silence seemed very loud.
    "Is it over?" Durnik asked, looking around nervously.
    "Probably not," Relg replied, his voice hushed in the sudden quiet. "An earthquake usually goes on for quite some time."
    Barak