They moved on down together, taking turns on the rocks the Murgos were rolling down the ravine. Garion discovered that it grew easier each time he did it, but Belgarath was drenched with sweat by the time they neared the bottom. Garion considered trying once again to slip his grandfather a bit of assistance, but the old sorcerer glared at him so fiercely as he started to gather in his will that he quickly abandoned the idea.

"I wondered where you'd gone," Aunt Pol said to Garion as the two clambered out over the rocks at the mouth of the ravine to rejoin the rest of the party. She looked closely at Belgarath. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm just fine," he snapped. "I had all this assistance - unsolicited, of course." He glared at Garion again.

"When we get a bit of time, we're going to have to give him some lessons in controlling the noise," she observed. "He sounds like a thunderclap."

"That's not all he has to learn to control." For some reason the old man was behaving as if he'd just been dreadfully insulted.

"What now?" Barak asked. "Do you want to light signal fires and wait here for Hettar and Cho-Hag?"

"This isn't a good place, Barak," Silk pointed out. "Half of Murgodom's going to come pouring down that ravine very shortly."

"The passage is not wide, Prince Kheldar," Mandorallen observed.

"My Lord Barak and I can hold it for a week or more if need be."

"You're backsliding again, Mandorallen," Barak told him.

"Besides, they'd just roll rocks down on you," Silk said. "And they're going to be dropping boulders off the edge up there before long. We're probably going to have to get out on the plain a ways to avoid that sort of thing."

Durnik was staring thoughtfully at the mouth of the ravine. "We need to send something up there to slow them down, though," he mused. "I don't think we want them right behind us."

"It's a little hard to make rocks roll uphill," Barak said.

"I wasn't thinking of rocks," Durnik replied. "We'll need something much lighter."

"Like what?" Silk asked the smith.

"Smoke would be good," Durnik answered. "The ravine should draw just like a chimney. If we build a fire and fill the whole thing with smoke, nobody's going to come down until the fire goes out."

Silk grinned broadly. "Durnik," he said, "you're a treasure."

Chapter Five

THERE WERE BUSHES, scrub and bramble for the most part, growing here and there along the base of the cliff, and they quickly fanned out with their swords to gather enough to build a large, smoky fire. "You'd better hurry," Belgarath called to them as they worked. "There are a dozen Murgos or more already halfway down the ravine."