"David Eddings - King of the" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

KING OF THE MURGOS

boots shuffling along the uneven floor. The rest of them waited with the darkness pressing in all around them.

"I hate this," Silk muttered, half to himself. "I absolutely hate it."

They waited.

The ruddy flicker of Belgarath's torch reappeared at the farend of the gallery. "Allright," hecalled. "It's this way."

Garion put his arm about Ce'Nedra's slender shoulders. A kind of deep silence had fallen over her during their ride south from Rheon as it had grown increasingly evident that their entire campaign against the Bear-cult in eastern Drasnia had done little more than give Zandramas a nearly insurmountable lead with the abducted Geran. The frustration that made Garion want to beat his fists against the rocks around him and howl in impotent fury had plunged Ce'Nedra into a profound depression instead, and now she stumbled through the dark caves of Ulgo, sunk in a kind of numb misery, neither knowing nor caring where the others led her. He turned his head to look back at Polgara, his face mirroring all his deep concern. The look she returned him was grave, but seemingly unperturbed. She parted the front of her blue cloak and moved her hands in the minute gestures of the Drasnian secret language. —Be sure she stays warm—she said. —She's very susceptible to chills just now,—

A half-dozen desperate questions sprang into Garion's mind; but with Ce'Nedra at his side with his arm about her shoulders, there was no way he could voice them.

—It's important for you to stay calm, Garion—Polgara's ringers told him. —Don't let her know how concerned you are. I'm watching her, and I'll know what to do when the time comes.—

Belgarath stopped again and stood tugging at one earlobe, looking dubiously down a dark passageway and then down another which branched off to the left.

"You're lost again, aren't you?" Silk accused him. The rat-faced little Drasnian had put aside his pearl-gray doublet and his jewels and gold chains and now wore an old brown tunic, shiny with age, a moth-eaten fur cloak and a shapeless, battered hat, once again submerging himself in one of his innumerable disguises.

"Of course I'm not lost," Belgarath retorted. "I just haven't pinpointed exactly where we are at the moment."

"Belgarath, that's what the word lost means."

DAVID EDDINGS

11

"Nonsense. I think we go this way." He pointed down the left-hand passageway.

"You thinkT'

"Uh—Silk," Durnik the smith cautioned quietly, "you really ought to keep your voice down. That ceiling up there doesn't look all that stable to me, and sometimes a loud noise is all it takes to bring one of them down."

Silk froze, his eyes rolling apprehensively upward and sweat visibly standing out on his forehead. "Polgara," he whispered in a strangled tone, "make him stop that."

"Leave him alone, Durnik," she said calmly. "You know how he feels about caves."

"I just thought he ought to know, Pol," the smith explained. "Things do happen in caves."

"Polgara!" Silk's voice was agonized. "Please.1"

"I'll go back and see how Errand and Toth are doing with the horses," Durnik said. He looked at the sweating little Drasnian. "Just try not to shout," he advised.

As they rounded a corner in the twisting gallery, the passageway opened out into a large cavern with a broad vein of quartz running across its ceiling. At some point, perhaps even miles away, the vein reached the surface, and refracted sunlight, shattered into its component elements by the facets of the quartz, spilled down into the cavern in dancing rainbows that flared and faded as they shifted across the sparkling surface of the small, shallow lake in the center of the cave. At the far end of the lake, a tiny waterfall tinkled endlessly from rock to rock to fill the cavern with its music.

"Ce'Nedra, look!" Garion urged.

"What?" She raised her head. "Oh, yes," she said indifferently, "very pretty." And she went back to her abstracted silence.