When they reached the upper edge of the forest, Garion stared up at the steep, rock-strewn meadow rising above the timberline. "Is there a pass of any kind through these mountains?" he asked.

"Off to the left of that big peak," Brin replied, pointing. "I use it when I go out to hunt wild stags, and the shepherds take their flocks through it to the pastures in the interior valleys."

"Also the shepherdesses," Verdan added drily. "Sometimes the game my brother chases doesn't have horns."

Brin threw a quick, nervous glance at Polgara, and a slow blush mounted his cheeks.

"I've always been rather fond of shepherdesses," Belgarath noted blandly. "For the most part, they're gentle, understanding girls -and frequently lonely, aren't they, Brin?"

"That will do, father," Aunt Pol said primly.

It took the better part of the day to go over the pass and through the green meadows lying in the hidden valleys among the mountains beyond. The sun hovered just above the gleaming, almost molten-looking sea on the western side of the Isle when they crested a boulder-covered ridge and started down the long, rocky slope toward the cliffs and the frothy surf pounding endlessly against the western coast.

"Could a ship have landed on this side?" Garion asked Kail as they went downhill.

Kail was puffing noticeably from the strenuous trek across the island and he mopped his streaming face with his sleeve.

"There are a few places where it's possible, Belgarion -if you know what you're doing. It's difficult and dangerous, but it is possible."

Garion's heart sank. "Then he could very well have gotten away," he said.

"I had ships out there, Belgarion," Kail said to him, pointing at the sea. "I sent them out as soon as we found out that the prince had been taken. About the only way someone could have gotten all the way across the island to this side in time to sail away before those ships got around here would be if he could fly."

"We've got him, then," the irrepressible Brin exclaimed, loosening his sword in its scabbard and searching the boulder-strewn slope and the brink of the cliffs with a hunter's trained eye.

"Hold it a second," Durnik said sharply. He lifted his head and sniffed at the onshore breeze. "There's somebody up ahead."

"What?" Garion said, a sudden excitement building up in him.

"I just caught a distinct whiff of somebody who doesn't bathe regularly."

Belgarath's face took on an intense expression. "Pol," he said, "why don't you take a quick look down there?"

She nodded tersely, and her forehead furrowed with concentration. Garion felt and heard the whispered surge as she probed the empty-looking terrain ahead. "Chereks," she said after a moment. "About a dozen of them. They're hiding behind those boulders at the edge of the cliffs. They're watching us and planning an ambush."

"Chereks?" Brin exclaimed. "Why would Chereks want to attack us?"

"They're Bear-cultists," she told him, "and nobody knows why those madmen do anything."

"What do we do?" Brin asked in a half whisper.

"An ambusher always has the advantage," Verdan replied, "unless the person about to be ambushed knows that he's there. Then it's the other way around." He looked down the slope grimly, his big hand on his sword hilt.

"Then we just go down there and spring their trap?" Brin asked eagerly.

Kail looked at Belgarath. "What do you think, Ancient One? We have the advantage now. They're going to expect us to be startled when they jump out at us, but we'll be ready for them. We could have half of them down before they realize their mistake."

Belgarath squinted at the setting sun. "Normally, I'd say no," he said. "These little incidental fights aren't usually very productive, but we're losing the light." He turned to Aunt Pol. "Is Geran anywhere in the vicinity?"

"No," she replied. "There's no sign of him."

Belgarath scratched at his beard. "If we leave the Chereks there, they're going to follow us, and I don't think I want them creeping along behind -particularly once it gets dark." His lined old face tightened into a wolfish grin. "All right, let's indulge ourselves."

"Save a few of them, though, father," Polgara said. "I have some questions I'd like answered. And try not to get yourselves hurt, gentlemen. I'm a little tired for surgery today."

"No surgery today, Lady Polgara," Brin promised blithely. "A few funerals, perhaps, but no surgery."

She raised her eyes toward the sky. " Alorns," she sighed.

The ambush did not turn out at all as the hidden Bear-cultists had anticipated. The fur-clad Cherek who leaped at Garion was met in midair by the flaming sword of the Rivan King and was sheared nearly in two at the waist by the great blade. He fell to the suddenly blood-drenched grass, writhing and squealing. Kail coolly split a charging cultist's head while his brothers fell on the startled attackers and savagely but methodically began to hack them to pieces.

One cultist leaped atop a large rock, drawing a bow with his arrow pointed directly at Garion, but Belgarath made a short gesture with his left hand, and the bowman was suddenly hurled backward in a long, graceful arc that carried him out over the edge of the nearby cliff. His arrow went harmlessly into the air as he fell shrieking toward the foamy breakers five hundred feet below.

"Remember, I need a few of them alive!" Polgara sharply reminded them, as the carnage threatened to get completely out of hand.

Kail grunted, then neatly parried the thrust of a desperate Cherek. His big left fist swung in a broad arc and smashed solidly into the side of the Cherek's head, sending him spinning to the turf.

Durnik was using his favorite weapon, a stout cudgel perhaps three feet long. Expertly, he slapped a cultist's sword out of his hand and cracked him sharply alongside the head. The man's eyes glazed, and he tumbled limply to the ground.

Belgarath surveyed the fight, selected a likely candidate and then levitated him about fifty feet into the air. The suspended man was at first apparently unaware of his new location and kept slashing ineffectually at the surrounding emptiness.

The fight was soon over. The last crimson rays of the setting sun mingled with the scarlet blood staining the grass near the edge of the cliff, and the ground was littered with broken swords and scraps of bloody bearskin.

"For some reason, that makes me feel better," Garion declared, wiping his sword on the fallen body of one of the cultists. The Orb, he noted, was also blazing with a kind of fiery satisfaction.