Magician's Gambit

7

They were all standing in a circle with their hands joined when they awoke. Ce’Nedra was holding Garion’s left hand, and Durnik was on his right. Garion’s awareness came flooding back as sleep left him. The breeze was fresh and cool, and the morning sun was very bright. Yellow-brown foothills rose directly in front of them and the haunted plain of Maragor lay behind.

Silk looked around sharply as he awoke, his eyes wary. “Where are we?” he asked quickly.

“On the northern edge of Maragor,” Wolf told him, “about eighty leagues east of Tol Rane.”

“How long were we asleep?”

“A week or so.”

Silk kept looking around, adjusting his mind to the passage of time and distance. “I guess it was necessary,” he conceded finally.

Hettar went immediately to check the horses, and Barak began massaging the back of his neck with both hands. “I feel as if I’ve been sleeping on a pile of rocks,” he complained.

“Walk around a bit,” Aunt Pol advised. “That will work the stiffness out.”

Ce’Nedra had not removed her hand from Garion’s, and he wondered if he should mention it to her. Her hand felt very warm and small in his and, on the whole, it was not unpleasant. He decided not to say anything about it.

Hettar was frowning when he came back. “One of the pack mares is with foal, Belgarath,” he said.

“How long has she got to go?” Wolf asked, looking quickly at him.

“It’s hard to say for sure—no more than a month. It’s her first.”

“We can break down her pack and distribute the weight among the other horses,” Durnik suggested. “She’ll be all right if she doesn’t have to carry anything.”

“Maybe.” Hettar sounded dubious.

Mandorallen had been studying the yellowed foothills directly ahead. “We are being watched, Belgarath,” he said somberly, pointing at several wispy columns of smoke rising toward the blue morning sky.

Mister Wolf squinted at the smoke and made a sour face. “Goldhunters, probably. They hover around the borders of Maragor like vultures over a sick cow. Take a look, Pol.”

But Aunt Pol’s eyes already had that distant look in them as she scanned the foothills ahead. “Arends,” she said, “Sendars, Tolnedrans, a couple of Drasnians. They aren’t very bright.”

“Any Murgos?”

“No.”

“Common rabble then,” Mandorallen observed. “Such scavengers will not impede us significantly.”

“I’d like to avoid a fight if possible,” Wolf told him. “These incidental skirmishes are dangerous and don’t really accomplish anything.” He shook his head with disgust. “We’ll never be able to convince them that we’re not carrying gold out of Maragor, though, so I guess there’s no help for it.”

“If gold’s all they want, why don’t we just give them some?” Silk suggested.

“I didn’t bring all that much with me, Silk,” the old man replied.

“It doesn’t have to be real,” Silk said, his eyes bright. He went to one of the packhorses, came back with several large pieces of canvas, and quickly cut them into foot-wide squares. Then he took one of the squares and laid a double handful of gravel in its center. He pulled up the corners and wrapped a stout piece of cord around them, forming a heavy-looking pouch. He hefted it a few times. “Looks about like a sackful of gold, wouldn’t you say?”

“He’s going to do something clever again,” Barak said.

Silk smirked at him and quickly made up several more pouches. “I’ll take the lead,” he said, hanging the pouches on their saddles. “Just follow me and let me do the talking. How many of them are up there, Polgara?”

“About twenty,” she replied.

“That will work out just fine,” he stated confidently. “Shall we go?” They mounted their horses and started across the ground toward the broad mouth of a dry wash that opened out onto the plain. Silk rode at the front, his eyes everywhere. As they entered the mouth of the wash, Garion heard a shrill whistle and saw several furtive movements ahead of them. He was very conscious of the steep banks of the wash on either side of them.

“I’m going to need a bit of open ground to work with,” Silk told them. “There.” He pointed with his chin at a spot where the slope of the bank was a bit more gradual. When they reached the spot, he turned his horse sharply. “Now!” he barked. “Ride!”

They followed him, scrambling up the bank and kicking up a great deal of gravel; a thick cloud of choking yellow dust rose in the air as they clawed their way up out of the wash.

Shouts of dismay came from the scrubby thornbushes at the upper end of the wash, and a group of rough-looking men broke out into the open, running hard up through the knee-high brown grass to head them off. A black-bearded man, closer and more desperate than the rest, jumped out in front of them, brandishing a rust-pitted sword. Without hesitation, Mandorallen rode him down. The black-bearded man howled as he rolled and tumbled beneath the churning hooves of the huge warhorse.

When they reached the hilltop above the wash, they gathered in a tight group. “This will do,” Silk said, looking around at the rounded terrain. “All I need is for the mob to have enough room to think about casualties. I definitely want them to be thinking about casualties.”

An arrow buzzed toward them, and Mandorallen brushed it almost contemptuously out of the air with his shield.

“Stop!” one of the brigands shouted. He was a lean, pockmarked Sendar with a crude bandage wrapped around one leg, wearing a dirty green tunic.

“Who says so?” Silk yelled back insolently.

“I’m Kroldor,” the bandaged man announced importantly. “Kroldor the robber. You’ve probably heard of me.”

“Can’t say that I have,” Silk replied pleasantly.

“Leave your gold—and your women,” Kroldor ordered. “Maybe I’ll let you live.”

“If you get out of our way, maybe we’ll let you live.”

“I’ve got fifty men,” Kroldor threatened, “all desperate, like me.”

“You’ve got twenty,” Silk corrected. “Runaway serfs, cowardly peasants, and sneak thieves. My men are trained warriors. Not only that, we’re mounted, and you’re on foot.”

“Leave your gold,” the self proclaimed robber insisted.

“Why don’t you come and take it?”

“Let’s go!” Kroldor barked at his men. He lunged forward. A couple of his outlaws rather hesitantly followed him through the brown grass, but the rest hung back, eyeing Mandorallen, Barak, and Hettar apprehensively. After a few paces, Kroldor realized that his men were not with him. He stopped and spun around. “You cowards!” he raged. “If we don’t hurry, the others will get here. We won’t get any of the gold.”

“I’ll tell you what, Kroldor,” Silk said. “We’re in kind of a hurry, and we’ve got more gold than we can conveniently carry.” He unslung one of his bags of gravel from his saddle and shook it suggestively. “Here.” Negligently he tossed the bag into the grass off to one side. Then he took another bag and tossed it over beside the first. At his quick gesture the others all threw their bags on the growing heap. “There you are, Kroldor,” Silk continued. “Ten bags of good yellow gold that you can have without a fight. If you want more, you’ll have to bleed for it.”

The rough-looking men behind Kroldor looked at each other and began moving to either side, their eyes fixed greedily on the heap of bags lying in the tall grass.

“Your men are having thoughts about mortality, Kroldor,” Silk said dryly. “There’s enough gold there to make them all rich, and rich men don’t take unnecessary risks.”

Kroldor glared at him. “I won’t forget this,” he growled.

“I’m sure you won’t,” Silk replied. “We’re coming through now. I suggest that you get out of our way.”

Barak and Hettar moved up to flank Mandorallen, and the three of them started deliberately forward at a slow, menacing walk.

Kroldor the robber stood his ground until the last moment, then turned and scurried out of their path, spouting curses.

“Let’s go,” Silk snapped.

They thumped their heels to their horses’ flanks and charged through at a gallop. Behind them, the outlaws circled and then broke and ran toward the heap of canvas bags. Several ugly little fights broke out almost immediately, and three men were down before anyone thought to open one of the bags. The howls of rage could be heard quite clearly for some distance.

Barak was laughing when they finally reined in their horses after a couple of miles of hard riding. “Poor Kroldor.” He chortled. “You’re an evil man, Silk.”

“I’ve made a study of the baser side of man’s nature,” Silk replied innocently. “I can usually find a way to make it work for me.”

“Kroldor’s men are going to blame him for the way things turned out,” Hettar observed.

“I know. But then, that’s one of the hazards of leadership.”

“They might even kill him.”

“I certainly hope so. I’d be terribly disappointed in them if they didn’t.”

They pushed on through the yellow foothills for the rest of the day and camped that night in a well-concealed little canyon where the light from their fire would not betray their location to the brigands who infested the region. The next morning they started out early, and by noon they were in the mountains. They rode on up among the rocky crags, moving through a thick forest of dark green firs and spruces where the air was cool and spicy. Although it was still summer in the lowlands, the first signs of autumn had begun to appear at the higher elevations. The leaves on the underbrush had begun to turn, the air had a faint, smoky haze, and there was frost on the ground each morning when they awoke. The weather held fair, however, and they made good time.

Then, late one afternoon after they had been in the mountains for a week or more, a heavy bank of clouds moved in from the west, bringing with it a damp chill. Garion untied his cloak from the back of the saddle and pulled it around his shoulders as he rode, shivering as the afternoon grew colder.

Durnik lifted his face and sniffed at the air. “We’ll have snow before morning,” he predicted.

Garion could also smell the chill, dusty odor of snow in the air. He nodded glumly.

Mister Wolf grunted. “I knew this was too good to last.” Then he shrugged. “Oh, well,” he added, “we’ve all lived through winters before.”

When Garion poked his head out of the tent the next morning, an inch of snow lay on the ground beneath the dark firs. Soft flakes were drifting down, settling soundlessly and concealing everything more than a hundred yards away in a filmy haze. The air was cold and gray, and the horses, looking very dark under a dusting of snow, stamped their feet and flicked their ears at the fairy touch of the snowflakes settling on them. Their breath steamed in the damp cold.

Ce’Nedra emerged from the tent she shared with Aunt Pol with a squeal of delight. Snow, Garion realized, was probably a rarity in Tol Honeth, and the tiny girl romped through the soft drifting flakes with childish abandon. He smiled tolerantly until a well-aimed snowball caught him on the side of the head. Then he chased her, pelting her with snowballs, while she dodged in and out among the trees, laughing and squealing. When he finally caught her, he was determined to wash her face with snow, but she exuberantly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, her cold little nose rubbing against his cheek and her eyelashes thick with snowflakes. He didn’t realize the full extent of her deceitfulness until she had already poured a handful of snow down the back of his neck. Then she broke free and ran toward the tents, hooting with laughter, while he tried to shake the snow out of the back of his tunic before it all melted.

By midday, however, the snow on the ground had turned to slush, and the drifting flakes had become a steady, unpleasant drizzle. They rode up a narrow ravine under dripping firs while a torrentlike stream roared over boulders beside them.

Mister Wolf finally called a halt. “We’re getting close to the western border of Cthol Murgos,” he told them. “I think it’s time we started to take a few precautions.”

“I’ll ride out in front,” Hettar offered quickly.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Wolf replied. “You tend to get distracted when you see Murgos.”

“I’ll do it,” Silk said. He had pulled his hood up, but water still dripped from the end of his long, pointed nose. “I’ll stay about half a mile ahead and keep my eyes open.”

Wolf nodded. “Whistle if you see anything.”

“Right.” Silk started off up the ravine at a trot.

Late that afternoon, the rain began to freeze as it hit, coating the rocks and trees with gray ice. They rounded a large outcropping of rock and found Silk waiting for them. The stream had turned to a trickle, and the walls of the ravine had opened out onto the steep side of a mountain. “We’ve got about an hour of daylight left,” the little man said. “What do you think? Should we go on, or do you want to drop back down the ravine a bit and set up for the night?”

Mister Wolf squinted at the sky and then at the mountainside ahead. The steep slope was covered with stunted trees, and the timberline lay not far above them. “We have to go around this and then down the other side. It’s only a couple of miles. Let’s go ahead.”

Silk nodded and led out again.

They rounded the shoulder of the mountain and looked down into a deep gorge that separated them from the peak they had crossed two days before. The rain had slackened with the approach of evening, and Garion could see the other side of the gorge clearly. It was not more than half a mile away, and his eyes caught a movement near the rim. “What’s that?” He pointed.

Mister Wolf brushed the ice out of his beard. “I was afraid of that.”

“What?”

“It’s an Algroth.”

With a shudder of revulsion, Garion remembered the scaly, goatfaced apes that had attacked them in Arendia. “Hadn’t we better run?” he asked.

“It can’t get to us,” Wolf replied. “The gorge is at least a mile deep. The Grolims have turned their beasts loose, though. It’s something we’re going to have to watch out for.” He motioned for them to continue.

Faintly, distorted by the wind that blew perpetually down the yawning gorge, Garion could hear the barking yelps of the Algroth on the far side as it communicated with the rest of its pack. Soon a dozen of the loathsome creatures were scampering along the rocky rim of the gorge, barking to one another and keeping pace with the party as they rode around the steep mountain face toward a shallow draw on the far side. The draw led away from the gorge; after a mile, they stopped for the night in the shelter of a grove of scrubby spruces.

It was colder the next morning and still cloudy, but the rain had stopped. They rode on back down to the mouth of the draw and continued following the rim of the gorge. The face on the other side fell away in a sheer, dizzying drop for thousands of feet to the tiny-looking ribbon of the river at the bottom. The Algroths still kept pace with them, barking and yelping and looking across with a dreadful hunger. There were other things as well, dimly seen back among the trees on the other side. One of them, huge and shaggy, seemed even to have a human body, but its head was the head of a beast. A herd of swift-moving animals galloped along the fir rim, manes and tails tossing.

“Look,” Ce’Nedra exclaimed, pointing. “Wild horses.”

“They’re not horses,” Hettar said grimly.

“They look like horses.”

“They may look like it, but they aren’t.”

“Hrulgin,” Mister Wolf said shortly.

“What’s that?”

“A Hrulga is a four-legged animal—like a horse—but it has fangs instead of teeth, and clawed feet instead of hooves.”

“But that would mean—” The princess broke off, her eyes wide.

“Yes. They’re meat-eaters.”

She shuddered. “How dreadful.”

“That gorge is getting narrower, Belgarath,” Barak growled. “I’d rather not have any of those things on the same side with us.”

“We’ll be all right. As I remember, it narrows down to about a hundred yards and then widens out again. They won’t be able to get across.”

“I hope your memory hasn’t failed you.”

The sky above looked ragged, tattered by a gusty wind. Vultures soared and circled over the gorge, and ravens flapped from tree to tree, croaking and squawking to one another. Aunt Pol watched the birds with a look of stern disapproval, but said nothing.

They rode on. The gorge grew narrower, and soon they could see the brutish faces of the Algroths on the other side clearly. When the Hrulgin, manes tossing in the wind, opened their mouths to whinny to each other, their long, pointed teeth were plainly visible.

Then, at the narrowest point of the gorge, a party of mail-skirted Murgos rode out onto the opposite precipice. Their horses were lathered from hard riding, and the Murgos themselves were gaunt-faced and travel-stained. They stopped and waited until Garion and his friends were opposite them. At the very edge, staring first across the gorge and then down at the river far below, stood Brill.

“What kept you?” Silk called in a bantering tone that had a hard edge just below the surface. “We thought perhaps you’d gotten lost.”

“Not very likely, Kheldar,” Brill replied. “How did you get across to that side?”

“You go back that way about four days’ ride,” Silk shouted, pointing back the way they had come. “If you look very carefully, you’ll find the canyon that leads up here. It shouldn’t take you more than a day or two to find it.”

One of the Murgos pulled a short bow out from beneath his left leg and set an arrow to it. He pointed the arrow at Silk, drew back the string and released. Silk watched the arrow calmly as it fell down into the gorge, spinning in a long, slow-looking spiral. “Nice shot,” he called.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Brill snapped at the Murgo with the bow. He looked back at Silk. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, Kheldar,” he said.

“One has developed a certain reputation,” Silk replied modestly.

“One of these days I’ll have to find out if you’re as good as they say.”

“That particular curiosity could be the first symptom of a fatal disease.”

“For one of us, at least.”

“I look forward to our next meeting, then,” Silk told him. “I hope you’d excuse us, my dear fellow—pressing business, you know.”

“Keep an eye out behind you, Kheldar,” Brill threatened. “One day I’ll be there.”

“I always keep an eye out behind me, Kordoch,” Silk called back, “so don’t be too surprised if I’m waiting for you. It’s been wonderful chatting with you. We’ll have to do it again—soon.”

The Murgo with the bow shot another arrow. It followed his first into the gorge.

Silk laughed and led the party away from the brink of the precipice. “What a splendid fellow,” he said as they rode away. He looked up at the murky sky overhead. “And what an absolutely beautiful day.”

The clouds thickened and grew black as the day wore on. The wind picked up until it howled among the trees. Mister Wolf led them away from the gorge which separated them from Brill and his Murgos, moving steadily toward the northeast.

They set up for the night in a rock-strewn basin just below the timberline. Aunt Pol prepared a meal of thick stew; as soon as they had finished eating, they let the fire go out. “There’s no point in lighting beacons for them,” Wolf observed.

“They can’t get across the gorge, can they?” Durnik asked.

“It’s better not to take chances,” Wolf replied. He walked away from the last few embers of the dying fire and looked out into the darkness. On an impulse. Garion followed him.

“How much farther is it to the Vale, Grandfather?” he asked.

“About seventy leagues,” the old man told him.

“We can’t make very good time up here in the mountains.”

“The weather’s getting worse, too.”

“I noticed that.”

“What happens if we get a real snowstorm?”

“We take shelter until it blows over.”

“What if—”

“Garion, I know it’s only natural, but sometimes you sound a great deal like your Aunt. She’s been saying ‘what if’ to me since she was about seventeen. I’ve gotten terribly tired of it over the years.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it any more.”

Overhead in the pitch-blackness of the blustery sky, there was a sudden, ponderous flap as of enormous wings.

“What’s that?” Garion asked, startled.

“Be still!” Wolf stood with his face turned upward. There was another great flap. “Oh, that’s sad.”

“What?”

“I thought the poor old brute had been dead for centuries. Why don’t they leave her alone?”

“What is it?”

“It doesn’t have a name. It’s big and stupid and ugly. The Gods only made three of them, and the two males killed each other during the first mating season. She’s been alone for as long as I can remember.”

“It sounds huge,” Garion said, listening to the enormous wings beat overhead and peering up into the darkness. “What does it look like?”

“She’s as big as a house, and you really wouldn’t want to see her.”

“Is she dangerous?”

“Very dangerous, but she can’t see too well at night.” Wolf sighed. “The Grolims must have chased her out of her cave and put her to hunting for us. Sometimes they go too far.”

“Should we tell the others about her?”

“It would only worry them. Sometimes it’s better not to say anything.”

The great wings flapped again, and there was a long, despairing cry from the darkness, a cry filled with such aching loneliness that Garion felt a great surge of pity welling up in him.

Wolf sighed again. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “Let’s go back to the tents.”

8

The weather continued raw and unsettled as they rode for the next two days up the long, sloping rise toward the snow-covered summits of the mountains. The trees became sparser and more stunted as they climbed and finally disappeared entirely. The ridgeline flattened out against the side of one of the mountains, and they rode up onto a steep slope of tumbled rock and ice where the wind scoured continually.

Mister Wolf paused to get his bearings, looking around in the pale afternoon light. “That way,” he said finally, pointing. A saddleback stretched between two peaks, and the sky beyond roiled in the wind. They rode up the slope, their cloaks pulled tightly about them.

Hettar came forward with a worried frown on his hawk face. “That pregnant mare’s in trouble,” he told Wolf. “I think her time’s getting close.”

Without a word Aunt Pol dropped back to look at the mare, and her face was grave when she returned. “She’s no more than a few hours away, father,” she reported.

Wolf looked around. “There’s no shelter on this side.”

“Maybe there’ll be something on the other side of the pass,” Barak suggested, his beard whipping in the wind.

Wolf shook his head. “I think it’s the same as this side. We’re going to have to hurry. We don’t want to spend the night up here.”

As they rode higher, occasional spits of stinging sleet pelted them, and the wind gusted even stronger, howling among the rocks. As they crested the slope and started through the saddle, the full force of the gale struck them, driving a tattered sleet squall before it.

“It’s even worse on this side, Belgarath,” Barak shouted over the wind. “How far is it down to the trees?”

“Miles,” Wolf replied, trying to keep his flying cloak pulled around him.

“The mare will never make it,” Hettar said. “We’ve got to find shelter.”

“There isn’t any,” Wolf stated. “Not until we get to the trees. It’s all bare rock and ice up here.”

Without knowing why he said it—not even aware of it until he spoke—Garion made a shouted suggestion. “What about the cave?”

Mister Wolf turned and looked sharply at him. “What cave? Where?”

“The one in the side of the mountain. It isn’t far.” Garion knew the cave was there, but he did not know how he knew.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. It’s this way.” Garion turned his horse and rode up the slope of the saddle toward the vast, craggy peak on their left. The wind tore at them as they rode, and the driving sleet half blinded them. Garion moved confidently, however. For some reason every rock about them seemed absolutely familiar, though he could not have said why. He rode just fast enough to stay in front of the others. He knew they would ask questions, and he didn’t have any answers. They rounded a shoulder of the peak and rode out onto a broad rock ledge. The ledge curved along the mountainside, disappearing in the swirling sleet ahead.

“Where art thou taking us, lad?” Mandorallen shouted to him.

“It’s not much farther,” Garion yelled back over his shoulder.

The ledge narrowed as it curved around the looming granite face of the mountain. Where it bent around a jutting cornice, it was hardly more than a footpath. Garion dismounted and led his horse around the cornice. The wind blasted directly into his face as he stepped around the granite outcrop, and he had to put his hand in front of his face to keep the sleet from blinding him. Walking that way, he did not see the door until it was almost within reach of his hands.

The door in the face of the rock was made of iron, black and pitted with rust and age. It was broader than the gate at Faldor’s farm, and the upper edge of it was lost in the swirling sleet.

Barak, following close behind him, reached out and touched the iron door. Then he banged on it with his huge fist. The door echoed hollowly. “There is a cave,” he said back over his shoulder to the others. “I thought that the wind had blown out the boy’s senses.”

“How do we get inside?” Hettar shouted, the wind snatching away his words.

“The door’s as solid as the mountain itself,” Barak said, hammering with his fist again.

“We’ve got to get out of this wind,” Aunt Pol declared, one of her arms protectively about Ce’Nedra’s shoulders.

“Well, Garion?” Mister Wolf asked.

“It’s easy,” Garion replied. “I just have to find the right spot.” He ran his fingers over the icy iron, not knowing just what he was looking for. He found a spot that felt a little different. “Here it is.” He put his right hand on the spot and pushed lightly. With a vast, grating groan, the door began to move. A line that had not even been visible before suddenly appeared like a razor-cut down the precise center of the pitted iron surface, and flakes of rust showered from the crack, to be whipped away by the wind.

Garion felt a peculiar warmth in the silvery mark on the palm of his right hand where it touched the door. Curious, he stopped pushing, but the door continued to move, swinging open, it seemed, almost in response to the presence of the mark on his palm. It continued to move even after he was no longer touching it. He closed his hand, and the door stopped moving.

He opened his hand, and the door, grating against stone, swung open even wider.

“Don’t play with it, dear,” Aunt Pol told him. “Just open it.”

It was dark in the cave beyond the huge door, but it seemed not to have the musty smell it should have had. They entered cautiously, feeling at the floor carefully with their feet.

“Just a moment,” Durnik murmured in a strangely hushed voice. They heard him unbuckling one of his saddlebags and then heard the rasp of his flint against steel. There were a few sparks, then a faint glow as the smith blew on his tinder. The tinder flamed, and he set it to the torch he had pulled from his saddlebag. The torch sputtered briefly, then caught. Durnik raised it, and they all looked around at the cave.

It was immediately evident that the cave was not natural. The walls and floor were absolutely smooth, almost polished, and the light of Durnik’s torch reflected back from the gleaming surfaces. The chamber was perfectly round and about a hundred feet in diameter. The walls curved inward at they rose, and the ceiling high overhead seemed also to be round. In the precise center of the floor stood a round stone table, twenty feet across, with its top higher than Barak’s head. A stone bench encircled the table. In the wall directly opposite the door was a circular arch of a fireplace. The cave was cool, but it did not seem to have the bitter chill it should have had.

“Is it all right to bring in the horses?” Hettar asked quietly.

Mister Wolf nodded. His expression seemed bemused in the flickering torchlight, and his eyes were lost in thought.

The horses’ hooves clattered sharply on the smooth stone floor as they were led inside, and they looked around, their eyes wide and their ears twitching nervously.

“There’s a fire laid in here,” Durnik said from the arched fireplace. “Shall I light it?”

Wolf looked up. “What? Oh-yes. Go ahead.”

Durnik reached into the fireplace with his torch, and the wood caught immediately. The fire swelled up very quickly, and the flames seemed inordinately bright.

Ce’Nedra gasped. “The walls! Look at the walls!” The light from the fire was somehow being refracted through the crystalline structure of the rock itself, and the entire dome began to glow with a myriad of shifting colors, filling the chamber with a soft, multihued radiance.

Hettar had moved around the circle of the wall and was peering into another arched opening. “A spring,” he told them. “This is a good place to ride out a storm.”

Durnik put out his torch and pulled off his cloak. The chamber had become warm almost as soon as he had lighted the fire. He looked at Mister Wolf. “You know about this place, don’t you?” he asked.

“None of us has ever been able to find it before,” the old man replied, his eyes still thoughtful. “We weren’t even sure it still existed.”

“What is this strange cave, Belgarath?” Mandorallen asked.

Mister Wolf took a deep breath. “When the Gods were making the world, it was necessary for them to meet from time to time to discuss what each of them had done and was going to do so that everything would fit together and work in harmony—the mountains, the winds, the seasons and so on.” He looked around. “This is the place where they met.”

Silk, his nose twitching with curiosity, had climbed up onto the bench surrounding the huge table. “There are bowls up here,” he said. “Seven of them—and seven cups. There seems to be some kind of fruit in the bowls.” He began to reach out with one hand.

“Silk!” Mister Wolf told him sharply. “Don’t touch anything.” Silk’s hand froze, and he looked back over his shoulder at the old man, his face startled.

“You’d better come down from there,” Wolf said gravely.

“The door!” Ce’Nedra exclaimed.

They all turned in time to see the massive iron door gently swinging closed. With an oath, Barak leaped toward it, but he was too late. Booming hollowly, it clanged shut just before his hands reached it. The big man turned, his eyes filled with dismay.

“It’s all right, Barak,” Garion told him. “I can open it again.”

Wolf turned then and looked at Garion, his eyes questioning. “How did you know about the cave?” he asked.

Garion floundered helplessly. “I don’t know. I just did. I think I’ve known we were getting close to it for the last day or so.”

“Does it have anything to do with the voice that spoke to Mara?”

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem to be there just now, and my knowing about the cave seemed to be different somehow, I think it came from me, not him, but I’m not sure how. For some reason, it seems that I’ve always known this place was here—only I didn’t think about it until we started to get near it. It’s awfully hard to explain it exactly.”

Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf exchanged a long glance. Wolf looked as if he were about to ask another question, but just then there was a groan at the far end of the chamber.

“Somebody help me,” Hettar called urgently. One of the horses, her sides distended and her breath coming in short, heaving gasps, stood swaying as if her legs were about to give out from under her. Hettar stood at her side, trying to support her. “She’s about to foal,” he said.

They all turned then and went quickly to the laboring mare. Aunt Pol immediately took charge of the situation, giving orders crisply. They eased the mare to the floor, and Hettar and Durnik began to work with her, even as Aunt Pol filled a small pot with water and set it carefully in the fire. “I’ll need some room,” she told the rest of them pointedly as she opened the bag which contained her jars of herbs.

“Why don’t we all get out of your way?” Barak suggested, looking uneasily at the gasping horse.

“Splendid idea,” she agreed. “Ce’Nedra, you stay here. I’ll need your help.”

Garion, Barak, and Mandorallen moved a few yards away and sat down, leaning back against the glowing wall, while Silk and Mister Wolf went off to explore the rest of the chamber. As he watched Durnik and Hettar with the mare and Aunt Pol and Ce’Nedra by the fire, Garion felt strangely abstracted. The cave had drawn him, there was no question of that, and even now it was exerting some peculiar force on him. Though the situation with the mare was immediate, he seemed unable to focus on it. He had a strange certainty that finding the cave was only the first part of whatever it was that was happening, There was something else he had to do, and his abstraction was in some way a preparation for it.

“It is not an easy thing to confess,” Mandorallen was saying somberly.

Garion glanced at him, “In view of the desperate nature of our quest, however,” the knight continued, “I must openly acknowledge my great failing. It may come to pass that this flaw of mine shall in some hour of great peril cause me to turn and flee like the coward I am, leaving all your lives in mortal danger.”

“You’re making too much of it,” Barak told him.

“Nay, my Lord. I urge that you consider the matter closely to determine if I am fit to continue in our enterprise.” He started to creak to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Barak asked.

“I thought to go apart so that you may freely discuss this matter.”

“Oh, sit down, Mandorallen,” Barak said irritably. “I’m not going to say anything behind your back I wouldn’t say to your face.”

The mare, lying close to the fire with her head cradled in Hettar’s lap, groaned again. “Is that medicine almost ready, Polgara?” the Algar asked in a worried voice.

“Not quite,” she replied. She turned back to Ce’Nedra, who was carefully grinding up some dried leaves in a small cup with the back of a spoon. “Break them up a little finer, dear,” she instructed.

Durnik was standing astride the mare, his hands on her distended belly. “We may have to turn the foal,” he said gravely. “I think it’s trying to come the wrong way.”

“Don’t start on that until this has a chance to work,” Aunt Pol told him, slowly tapping a grayish powder from an earthen jar into her bubbling pot, She took the cup of leaves from Ce’Nedra and added that as well, stirring as she poured.

“I think, my Lord Barak,” Mandorallen urged, “that thou hast not fully considered the import of what I have told thee.”

“I heard you. You said you were afraid once. It’s nothing to worry about. It happens to everybody now and then.”

“I cannot live with it. I live in constant apprehension, never knowing when it will return to unman me.”

Durnik looked up from the mare. “You’re afraid of being afraid?” he asked in a puzzled voice.

“You cannot know what it was like, good friend,” Mandorallen replied.

“Your stomach tightened up,” Durnik told him. “Your mouth was dry, and your heart felt as if someone had his fist clamped around it?”

Mandorallen blinked.

“It’s happened to me so often that I know exactly how it feels.”

“Thou? Thou art among the bravest men I have ever known.”

Durnik smiled wryly. “I’m an ordinary man, Mandorallen,” he said. “Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn’t you know that? We’re afraid of the weather, we’re afraid of powerful men, we’re afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we’re afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we’re even afraid of living. Ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives.”

“How can you bear it?”

“Do we have any choice? Fear’s a part of life, Mandorallen, and it’s the only life we have. You’ll get used to it. After you’ve put it on every morning like an old tunic, you won’t even notice it any more. Sometimes laughing at it helps—a little.”

“Laughing?”

“It shows the fear that you know it’s there, but that you’re going to go ahead and do what you have to do anyway.” Durnik looked down at his hands, carefully kneading the mare’s belly. “Some men curse and swear and bluster,” he continued. “That does the same thing, I suppose. Every man has to come up with his own technique for dealing with it. Personally, I prefer laughing. It seems more appropriate somehow.”

Mandorallen’s face became gravely thoughtful as Durnik’s words slowly sank in. “I will consider this,” he said. “It may be, good friend, that I will owe thee more than my life for thy gentle instruction.”

Once more the mare groaned, a deep, tearing sound, and Durnik straightened and began rolling up his sleeves. “The foal’s going to have to be turned, Mistress Pol,” he said decisively. “And soon, or we’ll lose the foal and the mare both.”

“Let me get some of this into her first,” she replied, quenching her boiling pot with some cold water. “Hold her head,” she told Hettar. Hettar nodded and firmly wrapped his arms around the laboring mare’s head. “Garion,” Aunt Pol said, as she spooned the liquid between the mare’s teeth, “why don’t you and Ce’Nedra go over there where Silk and your grandfather are?”

“Have you ever turned a foal before, Durnik?” Hettar asked anxiously.

“Not a foal, but calves many times. A horse isn’t that much different from a cow, really.”

Barak stood up quickly. His face had a slight greenish cast to it. “I’ll go with Garion and the princess,” he rumbled. “I don’t imagine I’d be much help here.”

“And I will join thee,” Mandorallen declared. His face was also visibly pale. “It were best, I think, to leave our friends ample room for their midwifery.”

Aunt Pol looked at the two warriors with a slight smile on her face, but said nothing.

Garion and the others moved rather quickly away.

Silk and Mister Wolf were standing beyond the huge stone table, peering into another of the circular openings in the shimmering wall. “I’ve never seen fruits exactly like those,” the little man was saying.

“I’d be surprised if you had,” Wolf replied.

“They look as fresh as if they’d just been picked.” Silk’s hand moved almost involuntarily toward the tempting fruit.

“I wouldn’t,” Wolf warned.

“I wonder what they taste like.”

“Wondering won’t hurt you. Tasting might.”

“I hate an unsatisfied curiosity.”

“You’ll get over it.” Wolf turned to Garion and the others. “How’s the horse?”

“Durnik says he’s going to have to turn the foal,” Barak told him. “We thought it might be better if we all got out of the way.”

Wolf nodded. “Silk!” he admonished sharply, not turning around.

“Sorry.” Silk snatched his hand back.

“Why don’t you just get away from there? You’re only going to get yourself in trouble.”

Silk shrugged. “I do that all the time anyway.”

“Just do it, Silk,” Wolf told him firmly. “I can’t watch over you every minute.” He slipped his fingers up under the dirty and rather ragged bandage on his arm, scratching irritably. “That’s enough of that,” he declared. “Garion, take this thing off me.” He held out his arm.

Garion backed away. “Not me,” he refused. “Do you know what Aunt Pol would say to me if I did that without her permission?”

“Don’t be silly. Silk, you do it.”

“First you say to stay out of trouble, and then you tell me to cross Polgara? You’re inconsistent, Belgarath.”

“Oh, here,” Ce’Nedra said. She took hold of the old man’s arm and began picking at the knotted bandage with her tiny fingers. “Just remember that this was your idea. Garion, give me your knife.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Garion handed over his dagger. The princess sawed through the bandage and began to unwrap it. The splints fell clattering to the stone floor.

“What a dear child you are.” Mister Wolf beamed at her and began to scratch at his arm with obvious relief.

“Just remember that you owe me a favor,” she told him.

“She’s a Tolnedran, all right,” Silk observed.

It was about an hour later when Aunt Pol came around the table to them, her eyes somber.

“How’s the mare?” Ce’Nedra asked quickly.

“Very weak, but I think she’ll be all right.”

“What about the baby horse?”

Aunt Pol sighed. “We were too late. We tried everything, but we just couldn’t get him to start breathing.”

Ce’Nedra gasped, her little face suddenly a deathly white. “You’re not going to just give up, are you?” She said it almost accusingly.

“There’s nothing more we can do, dear,” Aunt Pol told her sadly. “It took too long. He just didn’t have enough strength left.”

Ce’Nedra stared at her, unbelieving. “Do something!” she demanded. “You’re a sorceress. Do something!”

“I’m sorry, Ce’Nedra, that’s beyond our power. We can’t reach beyond that barrier.”

The little princess wailed then and began to cry bitterly. Aunt Pol put her arms comfortingly about her and held her as she sobbed.

But Garion was already moving. With absolute clarity he now knew what it was that the cave expected of him, and he responded without thinking, not running or even hurrying. He walked quietly around the stone table toward the fire.

Hettar sat cross-legged on the floor with the unmoving colt in his lap, his head bowed with sorrow and his manelike scalp lock falling across the spindle-shanked little animal’s silent face.

“Give him to me, Hettar,” Garion said.

“Garion! No!” Aunt Pol’s voice, coming from behind him, was alarmed.

Hettar looked up, his hawk face filled with deep sadness.

“Let me have him, Hettar,” Garion repeated very quietly. Wordlessly Hettar raised the limp little body, still wet and glistening in the firelight, and handed it to Garion. Garion knelt and laid the foal on the floor in front of the shimmering fire. He put his hands on the tiny ribcage and pushed gently. “Breathe,” he almost whispered.

“We tried that, Garion,” Hettar told him sadly. “We tried everything.”

Garion began to gather his will.

“Don’t do that, Garion,” Aunt Pol told him firmly. “It isn’t possible, and you’ll hurt yourself if you try.”

Garion was not listening to her. The cave itself was speaking to him too loudly for him to hear anything else. He focused his every thought on the wet, lifeless body of the foal. Then he stretched out his right hand and laid his palm on the unblemished, walnut-colored shoulder of the dead animal. Before him there seemed to be a blank wall—black and higher than anything else in the world, impenetrable and silent beyond his comprehension. Tentatively he pushed at it, but it would not move. He drew in a deep breath and hurled himself entirely into the struggle. “Live,” he said.

“Garion, stop.”

“Live,” he said again, throwing himself deeper into his effort against that blackness.

“It’s too late now, Pol,” he heard Mister Wolf say from somewhere. “He’s already committed himself.”

“Live,” Garion repeated, and the surge he felt welling up out of him was so vast that it drained him utterly. The glowing walls flickered and then suddenly rang as if a bell had been struck somewhere deep inside the mountain. The sound shimmered, filling the air inside the domed chamber with a vibrant ringing. The light in the walls suddenly flared with a searing brightness, and the chamber was as bright as noon.

The little body under Garion’s hand quivered, and the colt drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Garion heard the others gasp as the sticklike little legs began to twitch. The colt inhaled again, and his eyes opened.

“A miracle,” Mandorallen said in a choked voice.

“Perhaps even more than that,” Mister Wolf replied, his eyes searching Garion’s face.

The colt struggled, his head wobbling weakly on his neck. He pulled his legs under him and began to struggle to his feet. Instinctively, he turned to his mother and tottered toward her to nurse. His coat, which had been a deep, solid brown before Garion had touched him, was now marked on the shoulder with a single incandescently white patch exactly the size of the mark on Garion’s palm.

Garion lurched to his feet and stumbled away, pushing past the others. He staggered to the icy spring bubbling in the opening in the wall and splashed water over his head and neck. He knelt before the spring, shaking and breathing hard for a very long time. Then he felt a tentative, almost shy touch on his elbow. When he wearily raised his head, he saw the now steadier colt standing at his side and gazing at him with adoration in its liquid eyes.

9

The storm blew itself out the next morning, but they stayed in the cave for another day after the wind had died down to allow the mare to recover and the newborn colt to gain a bit more strength. Garion found the attention of the little animal disturbing. It seemed that no matter where he went in the cave, those soft eyes followed him, and the colt was continually nuzzling at him. The other horses also watched him with a kind of mute respect. All in all it was a bit embarrassing.

On the morning of their departure, they carefully removed all traces of their stay from the cave. The cleaning was spontaneous, neither the result of some suggestion or of any discussion, but rather was something in which they all joined without comment.

“The fire’s still burning,” Durnik fretted, looking back into the glowing dome from the doorway as they prepared to leave.

“It will go out by itself after we leave,” Wolf told him. “I don’t think you could put it out anyway—no matter how hard you tried.”

Durnik nodded soberly. “You’re probably right,” he agreed.

“Close the door, Garion,” Aunt Pol said after they had led their horses out onto the ledge outside the cave.

Somewhat self consciously, Garion took hold of the edge of the huge iron door and pulled it. Although Barak with all his great strength had tried without success to budge the door, it moved easily as soon as Garion’s hand touched it. A single tug was enough to set it swinging gently closed. The two solid edges came together with a great, hollow boom, leaving only a thin, nearly invisible line where they met.

Mister Wolf put his hand lightly on the pitted iron, his eyes far away. Then he sighed once, turned, and led them back along the ledge the way they had come two days before.

Once they had rounded the shoulder of the mountain, they remounted and rode on down through the tumbled boulders and patches of rotten ice to the first low bushes and stunted trees a few miles below the pass. Although the wind was still brisk, the sky overhead was blue, and only a few fleecy clouds raced by, appearing strangely close.

Garion rode up to Mister Wolf and fell in beside him. His mind was filled with confusion by what had happened in the cave, and he desperately needed to get things straightened out. “Grandfather,” he said.

“Yes, Garion?” the old man answered, rousing himself from his half doze.

“Why did Aunt Pol try to stop me? With the colt, I mean?”

“Because it was dangerous,” the old man replied. “Very dangerous.”

“Why dangerous?”

“When you try to do something that’s impossible, you can pour too much energy into it; and if you keep trying, it can be fatal.”

“Fatal?”

Wolf nodded. “You drain yourself out completely, and you don’t have enough strength left to keep your own heart beating.”

“I didn’t know that.” Garion was shocked.

Wolf ducked as he rode under a low branch. “Obviously.”

“Don’t you keep saying that nothing is impossible?”

“Within reason, Garion. Within reason.”

They rode on quietly for a few minutes, the sound of their horses’ hooves muffled by the thick moss covering the ground under the trees. “Maybe I’d better find out more about all this,” Garion said finally.

“That’s not a bad idea. What was it you wanted to know?”

“Everything, I guess.”

Mister Wolf laughed. “That would take a very long time, I’m afraid.”

Garion’s heart sank. “Is it that complicated?”

“No. Actually it’s very simple, but simple things are always the hardest to explain.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Garion retorted, a bit irritably.

“Oh?” Wolf looked at him with amusement. “Let me ask you a simple question, then. What’s two and two?”

“Four,” Garion replied promptly.

“Why?”

Garion floundered for a moment. “It just is,” he answered lamely.

“But why?”

“There isn’t any why to it. It just is.”

“There’s a why to everything, Garion.”

“All right, why is two and two four then?”

“I don’t know,” Wolf admitted. “I thought maybe you might.” They passed a dead snag standing twisted and starkly white against the deep blue sky.

“Are we getting anywhere?” Garion asked, even more confused now.

“Actually, I think we’ve come a very long way,” Wolf replied. “Precisely what was it you wanted to know?”

Garion put it as directly as he knew how. “What is sorcery?”

“I told you that once already. The Will and the Word.”

“That doesn’t really mean anything, you know.”

“All right, try it this way. Sorcery is doing things with your mind instead of your hands. Most people don’t use it because at first it’s much easier to do things the other way.”

Garion frowned. “It doesn’t seem hard.”

“That’s because the things you’ve been doing have come out of impulse. You’ve never sat down and thought your way through something—you just do it.”

“Isn’t it easier that way? What I mean is, why not just do it and not think about it?”

“Because spontaneous sorcery is just third-rate magic—completely uncontrolled. Anything can happen if you simply turn the power of your mind loose. It has no morality of its own. The good or the bad of it comes out of you, not out of the sorcery.”

“You mean that when I burned Asharak, it was me and not the sorcery?” Garion asked, feeling a bit sick at the thought.

Mister Wolf nodded gravely. “It might help if you remember that you were also the one who gave life to the colt. The two things sort of balance out.”

Garion glanced back over his shoulder at the colt, who was frisking along behind him like a puppy. “What you’re saying is that it can be either good or bad.”

“No,” Wolf corrected. “By itself it has nothing to do with good or bad. And it won’t help you in any way to make up your mind how to use it. You can do anything you want to with it—almost anything, that is. You can bite the tops off all the mountains or stick the trees in the ground upside down or turn all the clouds green, if you feel like it. What you have to decide is whether you should do something, not whether you can do it.”

“You said almost anything,” Garion noted quickly.

“I’m getting to that,” Wolf said. He looked thoughtfully at a lowflying cloud—an ordinary-looking old man in a rusty tunic and gray hood looking at the sky. “There’s one thing that’s absolutely forbidden. You can never destroy anything—not ever.”

Garion was baffled by that. “I destroyed Asharak, didn’t I?”

“No. You killed him. There’s a difference. You set fire to him, and he burned to death. To destroy something is to try to uncreate it. That’s what’s forbidden.”

“What would happen if I did try?”

“Your power would turn inward on you, and you’d be obliterated in an instant.”

Garion blinked and then suddenly went cold at the thought of how close he had come to crossing that forbidden line in his encounter with Asharak. “How do I tell the difference?” he asked in a hushed voice. “I mean, how do I go about explaining that I only meant to kill somebody and not destroy him?”

“It’s not a good area for experimentation,” Wolf told him. “If you really want to kill somebody, stick your sword in him. Hopefully you won’t have occasion to do that sort of thing too often.”

They stopped at a small brook trickling out of some mossy stones to allow their horses to drink.

“You see, Garion,” Wolf explained, “the ultimate purpose of the universe is to create things. It will not permit you to come along behind it uncreating all the things it went to so much trouble to create in the first place. When you kill somebody, all you’ve really done is alter him a bit. You’ve changed him from being alive to being dead. He’s still there. To uncreate him, you have to will him out of existence entirely. When you feel yourself on the verge of telling something to ‘vanish’ or ‘go away’ or ‘be not,’ you’re getting very close to the point of self destruction. That’s the main reason we have to keep our emotions under control all the time.”

“I didn’t know that,” Garion admitted.

“You do now. Don’t even try to unmake a single pebble.”

“A pebble?”

“The universe doesn’t make any distinction between a pebble and a man.” The old man looked at him somewhat sternly. “Your Aunt’s been trying to explain the necessity for keeping yourself under control for several months now, and you’ve been fighting her every step of the way.”

Garion hung his head. “I didn’t know what she was getting at,” he apologized.

“That’s because you weren’t listening. That’s a great failing of yours, Garion.”

Garion flushed. “What happened the first time you found out you could—well—do things?” he asked quickly, wanting to change the subject.

“It was something silly,” Wolf replied. “It usually is, the first time.”

“What was it?”

Wolf shrugged. “I wanted to move a big rock. My arms and back weren’t strong enough, but my mind was. After that I didn’t have any choice but to learn to live with it because, once you unlock it, it’s unlocked forever. That’s the point where your life changes and you have to start learning to control yourself.”

“It always gets back to that, doesn’t it?”

“Always,” Wolf said. “It’s not as difficult as it sounds, really. Look at Mandorallen.” He pointed at the knight, who was riding with Durnik. The two of them were in a deep discussion. “Now, Mandorallen’s a nice enough fellow—honest, sincere, toweringly noble—but let’s be honest. His mind has never been violated by an original thought—until now. He’s learning to control fear, and learning to control it is forcing him to think—probably for the first time in his whole life. It’s painful for him, but he’s doing it. If Mandorallen can learn to control fear with that limited brain of his, surely you can learn the same kind of control over the other emotions. After all, you’re quite a bit brighter than he is.”

Silk, who had been scouting ahead, came riding back to join them. “Belgarath,” he said, “there’s something about a mile in front of us that I think you’d better take a look at.”

“All right,” Wolf replied. “Think about what I’ve been saying, Garion. We’ll talk more about it later.” Then he and Silk moved off through the trees at a gallop.

Garion pondered what the old man had told him. The one thing that bothered him the most was the crushing responsibility his unwanted talent placed upon him.

The colt frisked along beside him, galloping off into the trees from time to time and then rushing back, his little hooves pattering on the damp ground. Frequently he would stop and stare at Garion, his eyes full of love and trust.

“Oh, stop that,” Garion told him.

The colt scampered away again.

Princess Ce’Nedra moved her horse up until she was beside Garion. “What were you and Belgarath talking about?” she asked.

Garion shrugged. “A lot of things.”

There was immediately a hard little tightening around her eyes. In the months that they had known each other, Garion had learned to catch those minute danger signals. Something warned him that the princess was spoiling for an argument, and with an insight that surprised him he reasoned out the source of her unspoken belligerence. What had happened in the cave had shaken her badly, and Ce’Nedra did not like to be shaken. To make matters even worse, the princess had made a few coaxing overtures to the colt, obviously wanting to turn the little animal into her personal pet. The colt, however, ignored her completely, fixing all his attention on Garion, even to the point of ignoring his own mother unless he was hungry. Ce’Nedra disliked being ignored even more than she disliked being shaken. Glumly, Garion realized how small were his chances of avoiding a squabble with her.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to pry into a private conversation,” she said tartly.

“It wasn’t private. We were talking about sorcery and how to keep accidents from happening. I don’t want to make any more mistakes.”

She turned that over in her mind, looking for something offensive in it. His mild answer seemed to irritate her all the more. “I don’t believe in sorcery,” she said flatly. In the light of all that had recently happened, her declaration was patently absurd, and she seemed to realize that as soon as she said it. Her eyes hardened even more.

Garion sighed. “All right,” he said with resignation, “was there anything in particular you wanted to fight about, or did you just want to start yowling and sort of make it up as we go along?”

“Yowling?” Her voice went up several octaves. “Yowling?”

“Screeching, maybe,” he suggested as insultingly as possible. As long as the fight was inevitable anyway, he determined to get in a few digs at her before her voice rose to the point where she could no longer hear him.

“SCREECHING?” she screeched.

The fight lasted for about a quarter of an hour before Barak and Aunt Pol moved forward to separate them. On the whole, it was not very satisfactory. Garion was a bit too preoccupied to put his heart into the insults he flung at the tiny girl, and Ce’Nedra’s irritation robbed her retorts of their usual fine edge. Toward the end, the whole thing had degenerated into a tedious repetition of “spoiled brat” and “stupid peasant” echoing endlessly back from the surrounding mountains.

Mister Wolf and Silk rode back to join them. “What was all the yelling?” Wolf asked.

“The children were playing,” Aunt Pol replied with a withering look at Garion.

“Where’s Hettar?” Silk asked.

“Right behind us,” Barak said. He turned to look back toward the packhorses, but the tall Algar was nowhere to be seen. Barak frowned. “He was just there. Maybe he stopped for a moment to rest his horse or something.”

“Without saying anything?” Silk objected. “That’s not like him. And it’s not like him to leave the packhorses unattended.”

“He must have some good reason,” Durnik said.

“I’ll go back and look for him,” Barak offered.

“No,” Mister Wolf told him. “Wait a few minutes. Let’s not get scattered all over these mountains. If anybody goes back, we’ll all go back.”

They waited. The wind stirred the branches of the pines around them, making a mournful, sighing sound.

After several moments, Aunt Pol let out her breath almost explosively. “He’s coming.” There was a steely note in her voice. “He’s been entertaining himself.”

From far back up the trail, Hettar appeared in his black leather clothing, riding easily at a loping canter with his long scalp lock flowing in the wind. He was leading two saddled but riderless horses. As he drew nearer, they could hear him whistling rather tunelessly to himself.

“What have you been doing?” Barak demanded.

“There were a couple of Murgos following us,” Hettar replied as if that explained everything.

“You might have asked me to go along,” Barak said, sounding a little injured.

Hettar shrugged. “There were only two. They were riding Algar horses, so I took it rather personally.”

“It seems that you always find some reason to take it personally where Murgos are concerned,” Aunt Pol said crisply.

“It does seem to work out that way, doesn’t it?”

“Didn’t it occur to you to let us know you were going?” she asked.

“There were only two,” Hettar said again. “I didn’t expect to be gone for very long.”

She drew in a deep breath, her eyes flashing dangerously.

“Let it go, Pol,” Mister Wolf told her.

“But ”

“You’re not going to change him, so why excite yourself about it? Besides, it’s just as well to discourage pursuit.” The old man turned to Hettar, ignoring the dangerous look Aunt Pol leveled at him. “Were the Murgos some of those who were with Brill?” he asked.

Hettar shook his head. “No. Brill’s Murgos were from the south and they were riding Murgo horses. These two were northern Murgos.”

“Is there a visible difference?” Mandorallen asked curiously.

“The armor is slightly different, and the southerners have flatter faces and they’re not quite so tall.”

“Where did they get Algar horses?” Garion asked.

“They’re herd raiders,” Hettar answered bleakly. “Algar horses are valuable in Cthol Murgos, and certain Murgos make a practice of creeping down into Algaria on horse-stealing expeditions. We try to discourage that as much as possible.”

“These horses aren’t in very good shape,” Durnik observed, looking at the two weary-looking animals Hettar was leading. “They’ve been ridden hard, and there are whip cuts on them.”

Hettar nodded grimly. “That’s another reason to hate Murgos.”

“Did you bury them?” Barak asked.

“No. I left them where any other Murgos who might be following could find them. I thought it might help to educate any who come along later.”

“There are some signs that others have been through here, too,” Silk said. “I found the tracks of a dozen or so up ahead.”

“It was to be expected, I suppose,” Mister Wolf commented, scratching at his beard. “Ctuchik’s got his Grolims out in force, and Taur Urgas is probably having the region patrolled. I’m sure they’d like to stop us if they could. I think we should move on down into the Vale as fast as possible. Once we’re there, we won’t be bothered any more.”

“Won’t they follow us into the Vale?” Durnik asked, looking around nervously.

“No. Murgos won’t go into the Vale—not for any reason. Aldur’s Spirit is there, and the Murgos are desperately afraid of him.”

“How many days to the Vale?” Silk asked.

“Four or five, if we ride hard,” Wolf replied.

“We’d better get started then.”

10

The weather, which had seemed on the brink of winter in the higher mountains, softened back into autumn as they rode down from the peaks and ridges. The forests in the hills above Maragor had been thick with fir and spruce and heavy undergrowth. On this side, however, the dominant tree was the pine, and the undergrowth was sparse. The air seemed drier, and the hillsides were covered with high, yellow grass.

They passed through an area where the leaves on the scattered bushes were bright red; then, as they moved lower, the foliage turned first yellow, then green again. Garion found this reversal of the seasons strange. It seemed to violate all his perceptions of the natural order of things. By the time they reached the foothills above the Vale of Aldur, it was late summer again, golden and slightly dusty. Although they frequently saw evidences of the Murgo patrols which were crisscrossing the region, they had no further encounters. After they crossed a certain undefined line, there were no more tracks of Murgo horses.

They rode down beside a turbulent stream which plunged over smooth, round rocks, frothing and roaring. The stream was one of several forming the headwaters of the Aldur River, a broad flow running through the vast Algarian plain to empty into the Gulf of Cherek, eight hundred leagues to the northwest.

The Vale of Aldur was a valley lying in the embrace of the two mountain ranges which formed the central spine of the continent. It was lush and green, covered with high grass and dotted here and there with huge, solitary trees. Deer and wild horses grazed there, as tame as cattle. Skylarks wheeled and dove, filling the air with their song. As the party rode out into the valley, Garion noticed that the birds seemed to gather wherever Aunt Pol moved, and many of the braver ones even settled on her shoulders, warbling and trilling to her in welcome and adoration.

“I’d forgotten about that,” Mister Wolf said to Garion. “It’s going to be difficult to get her attention for the next few days.”

“Why?”

“Every bird in the Vale is going to stop by to visit her. It happens every time we come here. The birds go wild at the sight of her.”

Out of the welter of confused bird sound it seemed to Garion that faintly, almost like a murmuring whisper, he could hear a chorus of chirping voices repeating, “Polgara. Polgara. Polgara.”

“Is it my imagination, or are they actually talking?” he asked.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard them before,” Wolf replied. “Every bird we’ve passed for the last ten leagues has been babbling her name.”

“Look at me, Polgara, look at me,” a swallow seemed to say, hurling himself into a wild series of swooping dives around her head. She smiled gently at him, and he redoubled his efforts.

“I’ve never heard them talk before,” Garion marveled.

“They talk to her all the time,” Wolf said. “Sometimes they go on for hours. That’s why she seems a little abstracted sometimes. She’s listening to the birds. Your Aunt moves through a world filled with conversation.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Not many people do.”

The colt, who had been trotting rather sedately along behind Garion as they had come down out of the foothills, went wild with delight when he reached the lush grass of the Vale. With an amazing burst of speed, he ran out over the meadows. He rolled in the grass, his thin legs flailing. He galloped in long, curving sweeps over the low, rolling hilts. He deliberately ran at herds of grazing deer, startling them into flight and then plunging along after them. “Come back here!” Garion shouted at him.

“He won’t hear you,” Hettar said, smiling at the little horse’s antics. “At least, he’ll pretend that he doesn’t. He’s having too much fun.”

“Get back here right now!” Garion projected the thought a bit more firmly than he’d intended. The colt’s forelegs stiffened, and he slid to a stop. Then he turned and trotted obediently back to Garion, his eyes apologetic. “Bad horse!” Garion chided.

The colt hung his head.

“Don’t scold him,” Wolf said. “You were very young once yourself.”

Garion immediately regretted what he had said and reached down to pat the little animal’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he apologized. The colt looked at him gratefully and began to frisk through the grass again, although staying close.

Princess Ce’Nedra had been watching him. She always seemed to be watching him for some reason. She would look at him, her eyes speculative and a tendril of her coppery hair coiled about one finger and raised absently to her teeth. It seemed to Garion that every time he turned around she was watching and nibbling. For some reason he could not quite put his finger on, it made him very nervous. “If he were mine, I wouldn’t be so cruel to him,” she accused, taking the tip of the curl from between her teeth.

Garion chose not to answer that.

As they rode down the valley, they passed three ruined towers, standing some distance apart and all showing signs of great antiquity. Each of them appeared to have originally been about sixty feet high, though weather and the passage of years had eroded them down considerably. The last of the three looked as if it had been blackened by some intensely hot fire.

“Was there some kind of war here, Grandfather?” Garion asked.

“No,” Wolf replied rather sadly. “The towers belonged to my brothers. That one over there was Belsambar’s, and the one near it was Belmakor’s. They died a long time ago.”

“I didn’t think sorcerers ever died.”

“They grew tired—or maybe they lost hope. They caused themselves no longer to exist.”

“They killed themselves?”

“In a manner of speaking. It was a little more complete than that, though.”

Garion didn’t press it, since the old man appeared to prefer not to go into details. “What about the other one—the one that’s been burned? Whose tower was that?”

“Belzedar’s.”

“Did you and the other sorcerers burn it after he went over to Torak?”

“No. He burned it himself. I suppose he thought that was a way to show us that he was no longer a member of our’ brotherhood. Belzedar always liked dramatic gestures.”

“Where’s your tower?”

“Farther on down the Vale.”

“Will you show it to me?”

“If you like.”

“Does Aunt Pol have her own tower?”

“No. She stayed with me while she was growing up, and then we went out into the world. We never got around to building her one of her own.”

They rode until late afternoon and stopped for the day beneath an enormous tree which stood alone in the center of a broad meadow. The tree quite literally shaded whole acres. Ce’Nedra sprang out of her saddle and ran toward the tree, her deep red hair flying behind her. “He’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, placing her hands with reverent affection on the rough bark.

Mister Wolf shook his head. “Dryads. They grow giddy at the sight of trees.”

“I don’t recognize it,” Durnik said with a slight frown. “It’s not an oak.”

“Maybe it’s some southern species,” Barak suggested. “I’ve never seen one exactly like it myself.”

“He’s very old,” Ce’Nedra said, putting her cheek fondly against the tree trunk, “and he speaks strangely—but he likes me.”

“What kind of tree is it?” Durnik asked. He was still frowning, his need to classify and categorize frustrated by the huge tree.

“It’s the only one of its kind in the world,” Mister Wolf told him. “I don’t think we ever named it. It was always just the tree. We used to meet here sometimes.”

“It doesn’t seem to drop any berries or fruit or seeds of any kind,” Durnik observed, examining the ground beneath the spreading branches.

“It doesn’t need them,” Wolf replied. “As I told you, it’s the only one of its kind. It’s always been here—and always will be. It feels no urge to propagate itself.”

Durnik seemed worried about it. “I’ve never heard of a tree with no seeds.”

“It’s a rather special tree, Durnik,” Aunt Pol said. “It sprouted on the day the world was made, and it will probably stand here for as long as the world exists. It has a purpose other than reproducing itself.”

“What purpose is that?”

“We don’t know,” Wolf answered. “We only know that it’s the oldest living thing in the world. Maybe that’s its purpose. Maybe it’s here to demonstrate the continuity of life.”

Ce’Nedra had removed her shoes and was climbing up into the thick branches, making little sounds of affection and delight.

“Is there by any chance a tradition linking Dryads with squirrels?” Silk asked.

Mister Wolf smiled. “If the rest of you can manage without us, Garion and I have something to attend to.”

Aunt Pol looked questioningly at him.

“It’s time for a little instruction, Pol,” he explained.

“We can manage, father,” she said. “Will you be back in time for supper?”

“Keep it warm for us. Coming, Garion?”

The two of them rode in silence through the green meadows with the golden afternoon sunlight making the entire Vale warm and lovely. Garion was baffled by Mister Wolf’s curious change of mood. Always before, there had been a sort of impromptu quality about the old man. He seemed frequently to be making up his life as he went along, relying on chance, his wits, and his power, when necessary, to see him through. Here in the Vale, he seemed serene, undisturbed by the chaotic events taking place in the world outside.

About two miles from the tree stood another tower. It was rather squat and round and was built of rough stone. Arched windows near the top faced out in the directions of the four winds, but there seemed to be no door.

“You said you’d like to visit my tower,” Wolf said, dismounting. “This is it.”

“It isn’t ruined like the others.”

“I take care of it from time to time. Shall we go up?”

Garion slid down from his horse. “Where’s the door?” he asked.

“Right there.” Wolf pointed at a large stone in the rounded wall. Garion looked skeptical.

Mister Wolf stepped in front of the stone. “It’s me,” he said. “Open.”

The surge Garion felt at the old man’s word seemed commonplace—ordinary—a household kind of surge that spoke of something that had been done so often that it was no longer a wonder. The rock turned obediently, revealing a sort of narrow, irregular doorway. Motioning for Garion to follow, Wolf squeezed through into the dim chamber beyond the door.

The tower, Garion saw, was not a hollow shell as he had expected, but rather was a solid pedestal, pierced only by a stairway winding upward.

“Come along,” Wolf told him, starting up the worn stone steps. “Watch that one,” he said about halfway up, pointing at one of the steps. “The stone is loose.”

“Why don’t you fix it?” Garion asked, stepping up over the loose stone.

“I’ve been meaning to, but I just haven’t gotten around to it. It’s been that way for a long time. I’m so used to it now that I never seem to think of fixing it when I’m here.”

The chamber at the top of the tower was round and very cluttered. A thick coat of dust lay over everything. There were several tables in various parts of the room, covered with rolls and scraps of parchment, strange-looking implements and models, bits and pieces of rock and glass, and a couple of birds’ nests; on one, a curious stick was so wound and twisted and coiled that Garion’s eye could not exactly follow its convolutions. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, trying to trace it out. “What’s this, Grandfather?” he asked.

“One of Polgara’s toys,” the old man said absently, staring around at the dusty chamber.

“What’s it supposed to do?”

“It kept her quiet when she was a baby. It’s only got one end. She spent five years trying to figure it out.”

Garion pulled his eyes off the fascinatingly compelling piece of wood. “That’s a cruel sort of thing to do to a child.”

“I had to do something,” Wolf answered. “She had a penetrating voice as a child. Beldaran was a quiet, happy little girl, but your Aunt never seemed satisfied.”

“Beldaran?”

“Your Aunt’s twin sister.” The old man’s voice trailed off, and he looked sadly out of one of the windows for a few moments. Finally he sighed and turned back to the round room. “I suppose I ought to clean this up a bit,” he said, looking around at the dust and litter.

“Let me help,” Garion offered.

“Just be careful not to break anything,” the old man warned. “Some of those things took me centuries to make.” He began moving around the chamber, picking things up and setting them down again, blowing now and then on them to clear away a bit of the dust. His efforts didn’t really seem to be getting anywhere.

Finally he stopped, staring at a low, rough-looking chair with the rail along its back, scarred and gashed as if it had been continually grasped by strong claws. He sighed again.

“What’s wrong?” Garion asked.

“Poledra’s chair,” Wolf said. “—My wife. She used to perch there and watch me—sometimes for years on end.”

“Perch?”

“She was fond of the shape of the owl.”

“Oh.” Garion had somehow never thought of the old man as ever having been married, although he obviously had to have been at some time, since Aunt Pol and her twin sister were his daughters. The shadowy wife’s affinity for owls, however, explained Aunt Pol’s own preference for that shape. The two women, Poledra and Beldaran, were involved rather intimately in his own background, he realized, but quite irrationally he resented them. They had shared a part of the lives of his Aunt and his grandfather that he would never—could never know.

The old man moved a parchment and picked up a peculiar-looking device with a sighting glass in one end of it. “I thought I’d lost you,” he told the device, touching it with a familiar fondness. “You’ve been under that parchment all this time.”

“What is it?” Garion asked him.

“A thing I made when I was trying to discover the reason for mountains.”

“The reason?”

“Everything has a reason.” Wolf raised the instrument. “You see, what you do is—” He broke off and laid the device back on the table. “It’s much too complicated to explain. I’m not even sure if I remember exactly how to use it myself. I haven’t touched it since before Belzedar came to the Vale. When he arrived, I had to lay my studies aside to train him.” He looked around at the dust and clutter. “This is useless,” he said. “The dust will just come back anyway.”

“Were you alone here before Belzedar came?”

“My Master was here. That’s his tower over there.” Wolf pointed through the north window at a tall, slender stone structure about a mile away.

“Was he really here?” Garion asked. “I mean, not just his spirit?”

“No. He was really here. That was before the Gods departed.”

“Did you live here always?”

“No. I came like a thief, looking for something to steal—well, that’s not actually true, I suppose. I was about your age when I came here, and I was dying at the time.”

“Dying?” Garion was startled.

“Freezing to death. I’d left the village I was born in the year before after my mother died—and spent my first winter in the camp of the Godless Ones. They were very old by then.”

“Godless Ones?”

“Ulgos—or rather the ones who decided not to follow Gorim to Prolgu. They stopped having children after that, so they were happy to take me in. I couldn’t understand their language at the time, and all their pampering got on my nerves, so I ran away in the spring. I was on my way back the next fall, but I got caught in an early snowstorm not far from here. I lay down against the side of my Master’s tower to die—I didn’t know it was a tower at first. With all the snow swirling around, it just looked like a pile of rock. As I recall, I was feeling rather sorry for myself at the time.”

“I can imagine.” Garion shivered at the thought of being alone and dying.

“I was sniveling a bit, and the sound disturbed my Master. He let me in—probably more to quiet me than for any other reason. As soon as I got inside, I started looking for things to steal.”

“But he made you a sorcerer instead.”

“No. He made me a servant—a slave. I worked for him for five years before I even found out who he was. Sometimes I think I hated him, but I had to do what he told me to—I didn’t really know why. The last straw came when he told me to move a big rock out of his way. I tried with all my strength, but I couldn’t budge it. Finally I got angry enough to move it with my mind instead of my back. That’s what he’d been waiting for, of course. After that we got along better. He changed my name from Garath to Belgarath, and he made me his pupil.”

“And his disciple?”

“That took a little longer. I had a lot to learn. I was examining the reason that certain stars fell at the time he first called me his disciple and he was working on a round, gray stone he’d picked up by the riverbank.”

“Did you ever discover the reason—that stars fall, I mean?”

“Yes. It’s not all that complicated. It has to do with balance. The world needs a certain weight to keep it turning. When it starts to slow down, a few nearby stars fall. Their weight makes up the difference.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Neither did I—not for quite some time.”

“The stone you mentioned. Was it—”

“The Orb,” Wolf confirmed. “Just an ordinary rock until my Master touched it. Anyway, I learned the secret of the Will and the Word which isn’t really that much of a secret, after all. It’s there in all of us or did I say that before?”

“I think so.”

“Probably so. I tend to repeat myself.” The old man picked up a roll of parchment and glanced at it, then laid it aside again. “So much that I started and haven’t finished.” He sighed.

“Grandfather?”

“Yes, Garion?”

“This—thing of ours—how much can you actually do with it?”

“That depends on your mind, Garion. The complexity of it lies in the complexity of the mind that puts it to use. Quite obviously, it can’t do something that can’t be imagined by the mind that focuses it. That was the purpose of our studies—to expand our minds so that we could use the power more fully.”

“Everybody’s mind is different, though.” Garion was struggling toward an idea.

” Yes.”

“Wouldn’t that mean that—this thing—” He shied away from the word “power.”

“What I mean is, is it different? Sometimes you do things, and other times you have Aunt Pol do them.”

Wolf nodded. “It’s different in each one of us. There are certain things we can all do. We can all move things, for example.”

“Aunt Pol called it trans—” Garion hesitated, not remembering the word.

“Translocation,” Wolf supplied. “Moving something from one place to another. It’s the simplest thing you can do—usually the thing you do first—and it makes the most noise.”

“That’s what she told me.” Garion remembered the slave he had jerked from the river at Sthiss Tor—the slave who had died.

“Polgara can do things that I can’t,” Wolf continued. “Not because she’s any stronger than I am, but because she thinks differently than I do. We’re not sure how much you can do yet, because we don’t know exactly how your mind works. You seem to be able to do certain things quite easily that I wouldn’t even attempt. Maybe it’s because you don’t realize how difficult they are.”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

The old man looked at him. “Perhaps you don’t, at that. Remember the crazy monk who tried to attack you in that village in northern Tolnedra just after we left Arendia?”

Garion nodded.

“You cured his madness. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize that in the instant you cured him, you had to understand fully the nature of his insanity. That’s an extremely difficult thing, and you did it without even thinking about it. And then, of course, there was the colt.”

Garion glanced down through the window at the little horse friskily running through the field surrounding the tower.

“The colt was dead, but you made him start to breathe. In order for you to do that, you had to be able to understand death.”

“It was just a wall,” Garion explained. “All I did was reach through it.”

“There’s more to it than that, I think. What you seem to be able to do is to visualize extremely difficult ideas in very simple terms. That’s a rare gift, but there are some dangers involved in it that you should be aware of.”

“Dangers? Such as what?”

“Don’t oversimplify. If a man’s dead, for example, he’s usually dead for a very good reason—like a sword through the heart. If you bring him back, he’ll only die immediately again anyway. As I said before, just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. ”

Garion sighed. “I’m afraid this is going to take a very long time, Grandfather,” he said. “I have to learn how to keep myself under control; I have to learn what I can’t do, so I don’t kill myself trying to do something impossible; I have to learn what I can do and what I should do. I wish this had never happened to me.”

“We all do sometimes,” the old man told him. “The decision wasn’t ours to make, though. I haven’t always liked some of the things I’ve had to do, and neither has your Aunt; but what we’re doing is more important than we are, so we do what’s expected of us—like it or not.”

“What if I just said, ‘No. I won’t do it’?”

“You could do that, I suppose, but you won’t, will you?”

Garion sighed again. “No,” he said, “I guess not.”

The old sorcerer put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “I thought you might see things that way, Belgarion. You’re bound to this the same way we all are.”

The strange thrill he always felt at the sound of his other, secret name ran through Garion. “Why do you all insist on calling me that?” he asked.

“Belgarion?” Wolf said mildly. “Think, boy. Think what it means. I haven’t been talking to you and telling you stories all these years just because I like the sound of my own voice.”

Garion turned it over carefully in his mind. “You were Garath,” he mused thoughtfully, “but the God Aldur changed your name to Belgarath. Zedar was Zedar first and then Belzedar—and then he went back to being Zedar again.”

“And in my old tribe, Polgara would have just been Gara. Pol is like Bel. The only difference is that she’s a woman. Her name comes from mine—because she’s my daughter. Your name comes from mine, too.”

“Garion—Garath,” the boy said. “Belgarath—Belgarion. It all fits together, doesn’t it?”

“Naturally,” the old man replied. “I’m glad you noticed it.”

Garion grinned at him. Then a thought occurred. “But I’m not really Belgarion yet, am I?”

“Not entirely. You still have a way to go.”

“I suppose I’d better get started then.” Garion said it with a certain ruefulness. “Since I don’t really have any choice.”

“Somehow I knew that eventually you’d come around,” Mister Wolf said.

“Don’t you sometimes wish that I was just Garion again, and you were the old storyteller coming to visit Faldor’s farm—with Aunt Pol making supper in the kitchen as she did in the old days—and we were hiding under a haystack with a bottle I’d stolen for you?” Garion felt the homesickness welling up in him.

“Sometimes, Garion, sometimes,” Wolf admitted, his eyes far away.

“We won’t ever be able to go back there again, will we?”

“Not the same way, no.”

“I’ll be Belgarion, and you’ll be Belgarath. We won’t even be the same people any more.”

“Everything changes, Garion,” Belgarath told him.

“Show me the rock,” Garion said suddenly.

“Which rock?”

“The one Aldur made you move—the day you first discovered the power.”

“Oh,” Belgarath said, “that rock. It’s right over there—the white one. The one the colt’s sharpening his hooves on.”

“It’s a very big rock.”

“I’m glad you appreciate that,” Belgarath replied modestly. “I thought so myself.”

“Do you suppose I could move it?”

“You never know until you try, Garion,” Belgarath told him.

11

The next morning when Garion awoke, he knew immediately that he was not alone.

“Where have you been?” he asked silently.

“I’ve been watching,” the other consciousness in his mind said. “I see that you’ve finally come around. ”

“What choice did I have?”

“None. You’d better get up. Aldur’s coming. ”

Garion quickly rolled out of his blankets. “Here? Are you sure?” The voice in his mind didn’t answer.

Garion put on a clean tunic and hose and wiped off his half boots with a certain amount of care. Then he went out of the tent he shared with Silk and Durnik.

The sun was just coming up over the high mountains to the east, and the line between sunlight and shadow moved with a stately ponderousness across the dewy grass of the Vale. Aunt Pol and Belgarath stood near the small fire where a pot was just beginning to bubble. They were talking quietly, and Garion joined them.

“You’re up early,” Aunt Pol said. She reached out and smoothed his hair.

“I was awake,” he replied. He looked around, wondering from which direction Aldur would come.

“Your grandfather tells me that the two of you had a long talk yesterday.”

Garion nodded. “I understand a few things a little better now. I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult.”

She drew him to her and put her arms around him. “It’s all right, dear. You had some hard decisions to make.”

“You’re not angry with me, then?”

“Of course not, dear.”

The others had begun to get up, coming out of their tents, yawning and stretching and rumpled-looking.

“What do we do today?” Silk asked, coming to the fire and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“We wait,” Belgarath told him. “My Master said he’d meet us here.”

“I’m curious to see him. I’ve never met a God before.”

“Thy curiosity, me thinks, will soon be satisfied, Prince Kheldar,” Mandorallen said. “Look there.”

Coming across the meadow not far from the great tree beneath which they had pitched their tents, a figure in a blue robe was approaching. A soft nimbus of blue light surrounded the figure, and the immediate sense of presence made it instantly clear that what approached was not a man. Garion was not prepared for the impact of that presence. His meeting with the Spirit of Issa in Queen Salmissra’s throne room had been clouded by the narcotic effects of the things the Serpent Queen had forced him to drink. Similarly, half his mind had slept during the confrontation with Mara in the ruins of Mar Amon. But now, fully awake in the first light of morning, he found himself in the presence of a God.

Aldur’s face was kindly and enormously wise. His long hair and beard were white—from conscious choice, Garion felt, rather than from any result of age. The face was very familiar to him somehow. It bore a startling resemblance to Belgarath’s, but Garion perceived immediately, with a sudden curious inversion of his original notion, that it was Belgarath who resembled Aldur—as if their centuries of association had stamped Aldur’s features upon the face of the old man. There were differences, of course. That certain mischievous roguishness was not present on the calm face of Aldur. That quality was Belgarath’s own, the last remnant, perhaps, of the face of the thieving boy Aldur had taken into his tower on a snowy day some seven thousand years ago.

“Master,” Belgarath said, bowing respectfully as Aldur approached.

“Belgarath,” the God acknowledged. His voice was very quiet. “I have not seen thee in some time. The years have not been unkind to thee.”

Belgarath shrugged wryly. “Some days I feel them more than others, Master. I carry a great number of years with me.”

Aldur smiled and turned to Aunt Pol. “My beloved daughter,” he said fondly, reaching out to touch the white lock at her brow. “Thou art as lovely as ever.”

“And thou as kind, Master,” she replied, smiling and inclining her head.

There passed among the three of them a kind of intensely personal linkage, a joining of minds that marked their reunion. Garion could feel the edges of it with his own mind, and he was somewhat wistful at being excluded—though he realized at once that there was no intent to exclude him. They were merely reestablishing an eons-old companionship—shared experiences that stretched back into antiquity.

Aldur then turned to look at the others. “And so you have come together at last, as it hath been foretold from the beginning of days you should. You are the instruments of destiny, and my blessing goes with each as you move toward that awful day when the universe will become one again.”

The faces of Garion’s companions were awed and puzzled by Aldur’s enigmatic blessing. Each, however, bowed with profound respect and humility.

And then Ce’Nedra emerged from the tent she shared with Aunt Pol. The tiny girl stretched luxuriantly and ran her fingers through the tumbled mass of her flaming hair. She was dressed in a Dryad tunic and sandals.

“Ce’Nedra,” Aunt Pol called her, “come here.”

“Yes, Lady Polgara,” the little princess replied obediently. She crossed to the fire, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground. Then she saw Aldur standing with the others and stopped, her eyes wide.

“This is our Master, Ce’Nedra,” Aunt Pol told her. “He wanted to meet you.”

The princess stared at the glowing presence in confusion. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a meeting. She lowered her eyelashes and then looked up shyly, her tiny face artfully and automatically assuming its most appealing expression.

Aldur smiled gently. “She’s like a flower that charms without knowing it.” His eyes looked deeply into those of the princess. “There is steel in this one, however. She is fit for her task. My blessings upon thee, my child.”

Ce’Nedra responded with an instinctively graceful curtsey. It was the first time Garion had ever seen her bow to anyone.

Aldur turned then to look full at Garion. A brief, unspoken acknowledgment passed between the God and the consciousness that shared Garion’s thoughts. There was in that momentary meeting a sense of mutual respect and of shared responsibility. And then Garion felt the massive touch of Aldur’s mind upon his own and knew that the God had instantly seen and understood his every thought and feeling.

“Hail, Belgarion,” Aldur said gravely.

“Master,” Garion replied. He dropped to one knee, not really knowing why.

“We have awaited thy coming since time’s beginning. Thou art the vessel of all our hopes.” Aldur raised his hand. “My blessing, Belgarion. I am well pleased with thee.”

Garion’s entire being was suffused with love and gratitude as the warmth of Aldur’s benediction filled him.

“Dear Polgara,” Aldur said to Aunt Pol, “thy gift to us is beyond value. Belgarion has come at last, and the world trembles at his coming.”

Aunt Pol bowed again.

“Let us now go apart,” Aldur said to Belgarath and Aunt Pol. “Your task is well begun, and I must now provide you with that instruction I promised when first I set your steps upon this path. That which was once clouded becomes clearer, and we now can see what lies before us. Let us look toward that day we have all awaited and make our preparations.”

The three of them moved away from the fire, and it seemed to Garion that, as they went, the glowing nimbus which had surrounded Aldur now enclosed Aunt Pol and his grandfather as well. Some movement or sound distracted his eye for a moment, and when he looked back, the three had vanished.

Barak let out his breath explosively. “Belar! That was something to seel”

“We have been favored, I think, beyond all men,” Mandorallen said. They all stood staring at each other, caught up in the wonder of what they had just witnessed.

Ce’Nedra, however, broke the mood. “All right,” she ordered peremptorily, “don’t just stand there gaping. Move away from the fire.”

“What are you going to do?” Garion asked her.

“The Lady Polgara’s going to be busy,” the little girl said loftily, “so I’m going to make breakfast.” She moved toward the fire with a businesslike bustling.

The bacon was not too badly burned, but Ce’Nedra’s attempt to toast slices of bread before the open fire turned out disastrously, and her porridge had lumps in it as solid as clods in a sun-baked field. Garion and the others, however, ate what she offered without comment, prudently avoiding the direct gaze she leveled at them, as if daring them to speak so much as one word of criticism.

“I wonder how long they’re going to be,” Silk said after breakfast. “Gods, I think, have little notion of time,” Barak replied sagely, stroking at his beard. “I don’t expect them back until sometime this afternoon at the earliest.”

“It is a good time to check over the horses,” Hettar decided. “Some of them have picked up a few burrs along the way, and I’d like to have a look at their hooves—just to be on the safe side.”

“I’ll help you,” Durnik offered, getting up.

Hettar nodded, and the two went off to the place where the horses were picketed.

“And I’ve got a nick or two in my sword edge,” Barak remembered, fishing a piece of polishing stone out of his belt and laying his heavy blade across his lap.

Mandorallen went to his tent and brought out his armor. He laid it out on the ground and began a minute inspection for dents and spots of rust.

Silk rattled a pair of dice hopefully in one hand, looking inquiringly at Barak.

“If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to enjoy the company of my money for a while longer,” the big man told him.

“This whole place absolutely reeks of domesticity,” Silk complained. Then he sighed, put away his dice, and went to fetch a needle and thread and a tunic he’d torn on a bush up in the mountains.

Ce’Nedra had returned to her communion with the vast tree and was scampering among the branches, taking what Garion felt to be inordinate risks as she jumped from limb to limb with a catlike unconcern. After watching her for a few moments, he fell into a kind of reverie, thinking back to the awesome meeting that morning. He had met the Gods Issa and Mara already, but there was something special about Aldur. The affinity Belgarath and Aunt Pol showed so obviously for this God who had always remained aloof from men spoke loudly to Garion. The devotional activities of Sendaria, where he had been raised, were inclusive rather than exclusive. A good Sendar prayed impartially, and honored all the Gods—even Torak. Garion now, however, felt a special closeness and reverence for Aldur, and the adjustment in his theological thinking required a certain amount of thought.

A twig dropped out of the tree onto his head, and he glanced up with annoyance.

Ce’Nedra, grinning impishly, was directly over his head. “Boy,” she said in her most superior and insulting tone, “the breakfast dishes are getting cold. The grease is going to be difficult to wash off if you let it harden.”

“I’m not your scullion,” he told her.

“Wash the dishes, Garion,” she ordered him, nibbling at the tip of a lock of hair.

“Wash them yourself.”

She glared down at him, biting rather savagely at the unoffending lock.

“Why do you keep chewing on your hair like that?” he asked irritably.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded, removing the lock from between her teeth.

“Every time I look at you, you’ve got your hair stuck in your mouth.”

“I do not,” she retorted indignantly.

“Are you going to wash the dishes?”

“No.”

He squinted up at her. The short Dryad tunic she was wearing seemed to expose an unseemly amount of leg. “Why don’t you go put on some clothes?” he suggested. “Some of us don’t appreciate the way you run around half naked all the time.”

The fight got under way almost immediately after that.

Finally Garion gave up his efforts to get in the last word and stamped away in disgust.

“Garion!” she screamed after him. “Don’t you dare go off and leave me with all these dirty dishes!”

He ignored her and kept walking.

After a short distance, he felt a familiar nuzzling at his elbow and he rather absently scratched the colt’s ears. The small animal quivered with delight and rubbed against him affectionately. Then, unable to restrain himself any more, the colt galloped off into the meadow to pester a family of docilely feeding rabbits. Garion found himself smiling. The morning was just too beautiful to allow the squabble with the princess to spoil it.

There was, it seemed, something rather special about the Vale. The world around grew cold with the approach of winter and was buffeted by storms and dangers, but here it seemed as if the hand of Aldur stretched protectively above them, filling this special place with warmth and peace and a kind of eternal and magical serenity. Garion, at this trying point in his life, needed all the warmth and peace he could get. There were things that had to be worked out, and he needed a time, however brief, without storms and dangers to deal with them.

He was halfway to Belgarath’s tower before he realized that it had been there that he had been going all along. The tall grass was wet with dew, and his boots were soon soaked, but even that did not spoil the day.

He walked around the tower several times, gazing up at it. Although he found the stone that marked the door quite easily, he decided not to open it. It would not be proper to go uninvited into the old man’s tower; and beyond that, he was not entirely certain that the door would respond to any voice but Belgarath’s.

He stopped quite suddenly at that last thought and started searching back, trying to find the exact instant when he had ceased to think of his grandfather as Mister Wolf and had finally accepted the fact that he was Belgarath. The changeover seemed significant—a kind of turning point.

Still lost in thought, he turned then and walked across the meadow toward the large, white rock the old man had pointed out to him from the tower window. Absently he put one hand on it and pushed. The rock didn’t budge.

Garion set both hands on it and pushed again, but the rock remained motionless. He stepped back and considered it. It wasn’t really a vast boulder. It was rounded and white and not quite as high as his waist heavy, certainly, but it should not be so inflexibly solid. He bent over to look at the bottom, and then he understood. The underside of the rock was flat. It would never roll. The only way to move it would be to lift one side and tip it over. He walked around the rock, looking at it from every angle. He judged that it was marginally movable. If he exerted every ounce of his strength, he might be able to lift it. He sat down and looked at it, thinking hard. As he sometimes did, he talked to himself, trying to lay out the problem.

“The first thing to do is to try to move it,” he concluded. “It doesn’t really look totally impossible. Then, if that doesn’t work, we’ll try it the other way.”

He stood up, stepped purposefully to the rock, wormed his fingers under the edge of it and heaved. Nothing happened.

“Have to try a little harder,” he told himself. He spread his feet and set himself. He began to lift again, straining, the cords standing out in his neck. For the space of about ten heartbeats he tried as hard as he could to lift the stubborn rock—not to roll it over; he’d given that up after the first instant—but simply to make it budge, to acknowledge his existence. Though the ground was not particularly soft there, his feet actually sank a fraction of an inch or so as he strained against the rock’s weight.

His head was swimming, and little dots seemed to swirl in front of his eyes as he released the rock and collapsed, gasping, against it. He lay against the cold, gritty surface for several minutes, recovering.

“All right,” he said finally, “now we know that that won’t work.” He stepped back and sat down.

Each time he’d done something with his mind before, it had been on impulse, a response to some crisis. He had never sat down and deliberately worked himself up to it. He discovered almost at once that the entire set of circumstances was completely different. The whole world seemed suddenly filled with distractions. Birds sang. A breeze brushed his face. An ant crawled across his hand. Each time he began to bring his will to bear, something pulled his attention away.

There was a certain feeling to it, he knew that, a tightness in the back of his head and a sort of pushing out with his forehead. He closed his eyes, and that seemed to help. It was coming. It was slow, but he felt the will begin to build in him. Remembering something, he reached inside his tunic and put the mark on his palm against the amulet. The force within him, amplified by that touch, built to a great roaring crescendo. He kept his eyes closed and stood up. Then he opened his eyes and looked hard at the stubborn white rock. “You will move,” he muttered. He kept his right hand on the amulet and held out his left hand, palm up.

“Now!” he said sharply and slowly began to raise his left hand in a lifting motion. The force within him surged, and the roaring sound inside his head became deafening.

Slowly the edge of the rock came up out of the grass. Worms and burrowing grubs who had lived out their lives in the safe, comfortable darkness under the rock flinched as the morning sunlight hit them. Ponderously, the rock raised, obeying Garion’s inexorably lifting hand. It teetered for a second on its edge, then toppled slowly over.

The exhaustion he had felt after trying to lift the rock with his back was nothing compared to the bone-deep weariness that swept over him after he let the clenching of his will relax. He folded his arms on the grass and let his head sink down on them.

After a moment or two, that peculiar fact began to dawn on him. He was still standing, but his arms were folded comfortably in front of him on the grass. He jerked his head up and looked around in confusion. He had moved the rock, certainly. That much was obvious, since the rock now lay on its rounded top with its damp underside turned up. Something else had also happened, however. Though he had not touched the rock, its weight had nonetheless been upon him as he had lifted it, and the force he had directed at it had not all gone at the rock.

With dismay, Garion realized that he had sunk up to his armpits in the firm soil of the meadow.

“Now what do I do?” he asked himself helplessly. He shuddered away from the idea of once again mustering his will to pull himself out of the ground. He was too exhausted even to consider it. He tried to wriggle, thinking that he might be able to loosen the earth around him and work his way up an inch at a time, but he could not so much as budge.

“Look what you’ve done,” he accused the rock. The rock ignored him.

A thought occurred to him. “Are you in there?” he asked that awareness that seemed always to have been with him.

The silence in his mind was profound. “Help!” he shouted.

A bird, attracted by the exposed worms and bugs that had been under the rock, cocked one eye at him and then went back to its breakfast. Garion heard a light step behind him and craned around, trying to see. The colt was staring at him in amazement. Hesitantly, the small horse thrust out his nose and nuzzled Garion’s face.

“Good horse,” Garion said, relieved not to be alone, at least. An idea came to him. “You’re going to have to go get Hettar,” he told the colt. The colt pranced about and nuzzled his face again.

“Stop that,” Garion commanded. “This is serious.” Cautiously, he tried to push his mind into the colt’s thoughts. He tried a dozen different ways until he finally struck the right combination by sheer accident. The colt’s mind flitted from here to there without purpose or pattern. It was a baby’s mind, vacant of thought, receiving only sense impressions. Garion caught flickering images of green grass and running and clouds in the sky and warm milk. He also felt the sense of wonder in the little mind, and the abiding love the colt had for him.

Slowly, painfully, Garion began constructing a picture of Hettar in the colt’s wandering thoughts. It seemed to take forever.

“Hettar,” Garion said over and over. “Go get Hettar. Tell him that I’m in trouble.”

The colt scampered around and came back to stick his soft nose in Garion’s ear.

“Please pay attention,” Garion cried. “Please!”

Finally, after what seemed hours, the colt seemed to understand. He went several paces away, then came back to nuzzle Garion again. “Go—get—Hettar,” Garion ordered, stressing each word.

The colt pawed at the ground, then turned and galloped away—going in the wrong direction. Garion started to swear. For almost a year now he had been exposed to some of the more colorful parts of Barak’s vocabulary. After he had repeated all the phrases he remembered six or eight times, he began to extemporize.

A flickering thought came back to him from the now-vanished colt. The little beast was chasing butterflies. Garion pounded the ground with his fists, wanting to howl with frustration.

The sun rose higher, and it started to get hot.

It was early afternoon when Hettar and Silk, following the prancing little colt, found him.

“How in the world did you manage to do that?” Silk asked curiously.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Garion muttered, somewhere between relief and total embarrassment.

“He probably can do many things that we can’t,” Hettar observed, climbing down from his horse and untying Durnik’s shovel from his saddle. “The thing I can’t understand, though, is why he’d want to do it.

“I’m positive he had a good reason for it,” Silk assured him. “Do you think we should ask him?”

“It’s probably very complicated,” Silk replied. “I’m sure simple men like you and me wouldn’t be able to understand it.”

“Do you suppose he’s finished with whatever it is he’s doing?”

“We could ask him, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t want to disturb him,” Hettar said. “It could be very important.”

“It almost has to be,” Silk agreed.

“Will you please get me out of here?” Garion begged.

“Are you sure you’re finished?” Silk asked politely. “We can wait if you’re not done yet.”

“Please,” Garion asked, almost in tears.

12

“Why did you try to lift it?” Belgarath asked Garion the next morning after he and Aunt Pol had returned and Silk and Hettar had solemnly informed them of the predicament in which they had found the young man the afternoon before.

“It seemed like the best way to tip it over,” Garion answered. “You know, kind of get hold of it from underneath and then roll it—sort of.”

“Why didn’t you just push against it—close to the top? It would have rolled over if you’d done it that way.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“Don’t you realize that soft earth won’t accept that kind of pressure?” Aunt Pol asked.

“I do now,” Garion replied. “But wouldn’t pushing on it have just moved me backward?”

“You have to brace yourself,” Belgarath explained. “That’s part of the whole trick. As much of your will goes to holding yourself immobile as it does to pushing against the object you’re trying to move. Otherwise all you do is just shove yourself away.”

“I didn’t know that,” Garion admitted. “It’s the first time I’ve ever tried to do anything unless it was an emergency . . . Will you stop that?” he demanded crossly of Ce’Nedra, who had collapsed into gales of laughter as soon as Silk had finished telling them about Garion’s blunder.

She laughed even harder.

“I think you’re going to have to explain a few things to him, father,” Aunt Pol said. “He doesn’t seem to have even the most rudimentary idea about the way forces react against each other.” She looked at Garion critically. “It’s lucky you didn’t decide to throw it,” she told him. “You might have flung yourself halfway back to Maragor.”

“I really don’t think it’s all that funny,” Garion told his friends, who were all grinning openly at him. “This isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.” He realized that he had just made a fool of himself and he was not sure if he were more embarrassed or hurt by their amusement.

“Come with me, boy,” Belgarath said firmly. “It looks as if we’re going to have to start at the very beginning.”

“It’s not my fault I didn’t know,” Garion protested. “You should have told me.”

“I didn’t know you were planning to start experimenting so soon,” the old man replied. “Most of us have sense enough to wait for guidance before we start rearranging local geography.”

“Well, at least I did manage to move it,” Garion said defensively as he followed the old man across the meadow toward the tower.

“Splendid. Did you put it back the way you found it?”

“Why? What difference does it make?”

“We don’t move things here in the Vale. Everything that’s here is here for a reason, and they’re all supposed to be exactly where they are.”

“I didn’t know,” Garion apologized.

“You do now. Let’s go put it back where it belongs.” They trudged along in silence.

“Grandfather?” Garion said finally.

“Yes?”

“When I moved the rock, it seemed that I was getting the strength to do it from all around me. It seemed just to flow in from everyplace. Does that mean anything?”

“That’s the way it works,” Belgarath explained. “When we do something, we take the power to do it from our surroundings. When you burned Chamdar, for example, you drew the heat from all around you—from the air, from the ground, and from everyone who was in the area. You drew a little heat from everything to build the fire. When you tipped the rock over, you took the force to do it from everything nearby.”

“I thought it all came from inside.”

“Only when you create things,” the old man replied. “That force has to come from within us. For anything else, we borrow. We gather up a little power from here and there and put it all together and then turn it loose all at one spot. Nobody’s big enough to carry around the kind of force it would take to do even the simplest sort of thing.”

“Then that’s what happens when somebody tries to unmake something,” Garion said intuitively. “He pulls in all the force, but then he can’t let it go, and it just—” He spread his hands and jerked them suddenly apart.

Belgarath looked narrowly at him. “You’ve got a strange sort of mind, boy. You understand the difficult things quite easily, but you can’t seem to get hold of the simple ones. There’s the rock.” He shook his head. “That will never do. Put it back where it belongs, and try not to make so much noise this time. That racket you raised yesterday echoed all over the Vale.”

“What do I do?” Garion asked.

“Gather in the force,” Belgarath told him. “Take it from everything around.”

Garion tried that.

“Not from me!” the old man exclaimed sharply.

Garion excluded his grandfather from his field of reaching out and pulling in. After a moment or two, he felt as if he were tingling all over and that his hair was standing on end. “Now what?” he asked, clenching his teeth to hold it in.

“Push out behind you and push at the rock at the same time.”

“What do I push at behind me?”

“Everything—and at the rock as well. It has to be simultaneous.”

“Won’t I get—sort of squeezed in between?”

“Tense yourself up.”

“We’d better hurry, Grandfather,” Garion said. “I feel like I’m going to fly apart.”

“Hold it in. Now put your will on the rock, and say the word.” Garion put his hands out in front of him and straightened his arms. “Push,” he commanded. He felt the surge and the roaring.

With a resounding thud, the rock teetered and then rolled back smoothly to where it had been the morning before. Garion suddenly felt bruised all over, and he sank to his knees in exhaustion.

“Push?” Belgarath said incredulously.

“You said to say push.”

“I said to push. I didn’t say to say push.”

“It went over. What difference does it make what word I used?”

“It’s a question of style,” the old man said with a pained look. “Push sounds so—so babyish.”

Weakly, Garion began to laugh.

“After all, Garion, we do have a certain dignity to maintain,” the old man said loftily. “If we go around saying ‘push’ or ‘flop’ or things like that, no one’s ever going to take us seriously.”

Garion wanted to stop laughing, but he simply couldn’t. Belgarath stalked away indignantly, muttering to himself.

When they returned to the others, they found that the tents had been struck and the packhorses loaded.

“There’s no point in staying here,” Aunt Pol told them, “and the others are waiting for us. Did you manage to make him understand anything, father?”

Belgarath grunted, his face set in an expression of profound disapproval.

“Things didn’t go well, I take it.”

“I’ll explain later,” he said shortly.

During Garion’s absence, Ce’Nedra, with much coaxing and a lapful of apples from their stores, had seduced the little colt into a kind of ecstatic subservience. He followed her about shamelessly, and the rather distant look he gave Garion showed not the slightest trace of guilt.

“You’re going to make him sick,” Garion accused her.

“Apples are good for horses,” she replied airily.

“Tell her, Hettar,” Garion said.

“They won’t hurt him,” the hook-nosed man answered. “It’s a customary way to gain the trust of a young horse.”

Garion tried to think of another suitable objection, but without success. For some reason the sight of the little animal nuzzling at Ce’Nedra offended him, though he couldn’t exactly put his finger on why.

“Who are these others, Belgarath?” Silk asked as they rode. “The ones Polgara mentioned.”

“My brothers,” the old sorcerer replied. “Our Master’s advised them that we’re coming.”

“I’ve heard stories about the Brotherhood of Sorcerers all my life. Are they as remarkable as everyone says?”

“I think you’re in for a bit of a disappointment,” Aunt Pol told him rather primly. “For the most part, sorcerers tend to be crotchety old men with a wide assortment of bad habits. I grew up amongst them, so I know them all rather well.” She turned her face to the thrush perched on her shoulder, singing adoringly. “Yes,” she said to the bird, “I know.”

Garion pulled closer to his Aunt and began to listen very hard to the birdsong. At first it was merely noise—pretty, but without sense. Then, gradually, he began to pick up scraps of meaning—a bit here, a bit there. The bird was singing of nests and small, speckled eggs and sunrises and the overwhelming joy of flying. Then, as if his ears had suddenly opened, Garion began to understand. Larks sang of flying and singing. Sparrows chirped of hidden little pockets of seeds. A hawk, soaring overhead, screamed its lonely song of riding the wind alone and the fierce joy of the kill. Garion was awed as the air around him suddenly came alive with words.

Aunt Pol looked at him gravely. “It’s a beginning,” she said without bothering to explain.

Garion was so caught up in the world that had just opened to him that he did not see the two silvery-haired men at first. They stood together beneath a tall tree, waiting as the party rode nearer. They wore identical blue robes, and their white hair was quite long, though they were clean-shaven. When Garion looked at them for the first time, he thought for a moment that his eyes were playing tricks. The two were so absolutely identical that it was impossible to tell them apart.

“Belgarath, our brother,” one of them said, “it’s been such—”

“—a terribly long time,” the other finished.

“Beltira,” Belgarath said. “Belkira.” He dismounted and embraced the twins.

“Dearest little Polgara,” one of them said then. “The Vale has been—” the other started.

“—empty without you,” the second completed. He turned to his brother. “That was very poetic,” he said admiringly.

“Thank you,” the first replied modestly.

“These are my brothers, Beltira and Belkira,” Belgarath informed the members of the party who had begun to dismount. “Don’t bother to try to keep them separate. Nobody can tell them apart anyway.”

“We can,” the two said in unison.

“I’m not even sure of that,” Belgarath responded with a gentle smile. “Your minds are so close together that your thoughts start with one and finish with the other.”

“You always complicate it so much, father,” Aunt Pol said. “This is Beltira.” She kissed one of the sweet-faced old men. “And this is Belkira.” She kissed the other. “I’ve been able to tell them apart since I was a child.”

“Polgara knows—”

“—all our secrets.” The twins smiled. “And who are—”

“—your companions?”

“I think you’ll recognize them,” Belgarath answered. “Mandorallen, Baron of Vo Mandor.”

“The Knight Protector,” the twins said in unison, bowing.

“Prince Kheldar of Drasnia.”

“The Guide,” they said.

“Barak, Earl of Trellheim.”

“The Dreadful Bear.” They looked at the big Cherek apprehensively. Barak’s face darkened, but he said nothing.

“Hettar, son of Cho-Hag of Algaria.”

“The Horse Lord.”

“And Durnik of Sendaria.”

“The One with Two Lives,” they murmured with profound respect. Durnik looked baffled at that.

“Ce’Nedra, Imperial Princess of Tolnedra.”

“The Queen of the World,” they replied with another deep bow. Ce’Nedra laughed nervously.

“And this—”

“—can only be Belgarion,” they said, their faces alive with joy, “the Chosen One.” The twins reached out in unison and laid their right hands on Garion’s head. Their voices sounded within his mind. “Hail, Belgarion, Overlord and Champion, hope of the world.”

Garion was too surprised at this strange benediction to do more than awkwardly nod his head.

“If this gets any more cloying, I think I’ll vomit,” a new voice, harsh and rasping, announced. The speaker, who had just stepped out from behind the tree, was a squat, misshapen old man, dirty and profoundly ugly. His legs were bowed and gnarled like oak trunks. His shoulders were huge, and his hands dangled below his knees. There was a large hump in the middle of his back, and his face was twisted into a grotesque caricature of a human countenance. His straggly, iron-gray hair and beard were matted, and twigs and bits of leaves were caught in the tangles. His hideous face wore an expression of perpetual contempt and anger.

“Beldin,” Belgarath said mildly, “we weren’t sure you would come.”

“I shouldn’t have, you bungler,” the ugly man snapped. “You’ve made a mess of things as usual, Belgarath.” He turned to the twins. “Get me something to eat,” he told them peremptorily.

“Yes, Beldin,” they said quickly and started away.

“And don’t be all day,” he shouted after them.

“You seem to be in a good humor today, Beldin,” Belgarath said with no trace of sarcasm. “What’s made you so cheerful?”

The ugly dwarf scowled at him, then laughed, a short, barking sound. “I saw Belzedar. He looked like an unmade bed. Something had gone terribly wrong for him, and I enjoy that sort of thing.”

“Dear Uncle Beldin,” Aunt Pol said fondly, putting her arms around the filthy little man. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Don’t try to charm me, Polgara,” he told her, though his eyes seemed to soften slightly. “This is as much your fault as it is your father’s. I thought you were going to keep an eye on him. How did Belzedar get his hands on our Master’s Orb?”

“We think he used a child,” Belgarath answered seriously. “The Orb won’t strike an innocent.”

The dwarf snorted. “There’s no such thing as an innocent. All men are born corrupt.” He turned his eyes back to Aunt Pol and looked appraisingly at her. “You’re getting fat,” he said bluntly. “Your hips are as wide as an ox cart.”

Durnik immediately clenched his fists and went for the hideous little man.

The dwarf laughed, and one of his big hands caught the front of the smith’s tunic. Without any seeming effort, he lifted the surprised Durnik and threw him several yards away. “You can start your second life right now if you want,” he growled threateningly.

“Let me handle this, Durnik,” Aunt Pol told the smith. “Beldin,” she said coolly, “how long has it been since you’ve had a bath?”

The dwarf shrugged. “It rained on me a couple months ago.”

“Not hard enough, though. You smell like an uncleaned pigsty.”

Beldin grinned at her. “That’s my girl.” He chortled. “I was afraid the years had taken off your edge.”

The two of them then began to trade the most hair-raising insults Garion had ever heard in his life. Graphic, ugly words passed back and forth between them, almost sizzling in the air. Barak’s eyes widened in astonishment, and Mandorallen’s face blanched often. Ce’Nedra, her face flaming, bolted out of earshot.

The worse the insults, however, the more the hideous Beldin smiled. Finally Aunt Pol delivered an epithet so vile that Garion actually cringed, and the ugly little man collapsed on the ground, roaring with laughter and hammering at the dirt with his great fists. “By the Gods, I’ve missed you, Pol!” he gasped. “Come here and give us a kiss.”

She smiled, kissing his dirty face affectionately. “Mangy dog.”

“Big cow.” He grinned, catching her in a crushing embrace.

“I’ll need my ribs more or less in one piece, uncle,” she told him.

“I haven’t cracked any of your ribs in years, my girl.”

“I’d like to keep it that way.”

The twins hurried across to the dwarf Beldin, carrying a large plate of steaming stew and a huge tankard. The ugly man looked curiously at the plate, then casually dumped the stew on the ground and tossed the plate away. “Doesn’t smell too bad.” He squatted and began to stuff the food into his mouth with both hands, pausing only now and then to spit out some of the larger pebbles that clung to the chunks of meat. When he had finished, he swilled down the contents of the tankard, belched thunderously, and sat back, scratching at his matted hair with gravy-smeared fingers. “Let’s get down to business,” he said.

“Where have you been?” Belgarath asked him.

“Central Cthol Murgos. I’ve been sitting on a hilltop since the Battle of Vo Mimbre, watching the cave where Belzedar took Torak.”

“Five hundred years?” Silk gasped.

Beldin shrugged. “More or less,” he replied indifferently. “Somebody had to keep an eye on Burnt-Face, and I wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t be interrupted.”

“You said you saw Belzedar,” Aunt Pol said.

“About a month ago. He came to the cave as if he had a demon on his tail and pulled Torak out. Then he changed himself into a vulture and flew off with the body.”

“That must have been right after Ctuchik caught him at the Nyissan border and took the Orb away from him,” Belgarath mused.

“I wouldn’t know about that. That was part of your responsibility, not mine. All I was supposed to do was keep watch over Torak. Did any of the ashes fall on you?”

“Which ashes?” one of the twins asked.

“When Belzedar took Torak out of the cave, the mountain exploded—blew its guts out. I imagine it had something to do with the force surrounding One-Eye’s body. It was still blowing when I left.”

“We wondered what had caused the eruption,” Aunt Pol commented. “It put ash down an inch deep all over Nyissa.”

“Good. Too bad it wasn’t deeper.”

“Did you see any signs—”

“—of Torak stirring?” the twins asked.

“Can’t you two ever talk straight?” Beldin demanded.

“We’re sorry—”

“—it’s our nature.”

The ugly little man shook his head with disgust. “Never mind. No. Torak didn’t move once in the whole five hundred years. There was mold on him when Belzedar dragged him out of the cave.”

“Did you follow Belzedar?” Belgarath asked.

“Naturally.”

“Where did he take Torak?”

“Now where do you think, idiot? To the ruins of Cthol Mishrak in Mallorea, of course. There are only a few places on earth that will bear Torak’s weight, and that’s one of them. Belzedar will have to keep Ctuchik and the Orb away from Torak, and that’s the only place he could go. The Mallorean Grolims refuse to accept Ctuchik’s authority, so Belzedar will be safe there. It will cost him a great deal to pay for their aid, but they’ll keep Ctuchik out of Mallorea—unless he raises an army of Murgos and invades.”

“That’s something we could hope for,” Barak said.

“You’re supposed to be a bear, not a donkey,” Beldin told him. “Don’t base your hopes on the impossible. Neither Ctuchik nor Belzedar would start that sort of war at this particular time—not with Belgarion here stalking through the world like an earthquake.” He scowled at Aunt Pol. “Can’t you teach him to be a little quieter? Or are your wits getting as flabby as your behind?”

“Be civil, uncle,” she replied. “The boy’s just coming into his strength. We were all a bit clumsy at first.”

“He doesn’t have time to be a baby, Pol. The stars are dropping into southern Cthol Murgos like poisoned roaches, and dead Grolims are moaning in their tombs from Rak Cthol to Rak Hagga. The time’s on us, and he has to be ready.”

“He’ll be ready, uncle.”

“Maybe,” the filthy man said sourly.

“Are you going back to Cthol Mishrak?” Belgarath asked.

“No. Our Master told me to stay here. The twins and I have work to do and we don’t have much time.”

“He spoke to—”

“—us, too.”

“Stop that!” Beldin snapped. He turned back to Belgarath. “Are you going to Rak Cthol now?”

“Not yet. We’ve got to go to Prolgu first. I have to talk to the Gorim, and we’ve got to pick up another member of the party.”

“I noticed that your group wasn’t complete yet. What about the last one?”

Belgarath spread his hands. “That’s the one that worries me. I haven’t been able to find any trace of her—and I’ve been looking for three thousand years.”

“You spent too much time looking in alehouses.”

“I noticed the same thing, uncle,” Aunt Pol said with a sweet little smile.

“Where do we go after Prolgu?” Barak asked.

“I think that then we’ll go to Rak Cthol,” Belgarath replied rather grimly. “We’ve got to get the Orb back from Ctuchik, and I’ve been meaning to have a rather pointed discussion with the magician of the Murgos for a long, long time, now.”