Belgarath the Sorcerer (21 page)

It took me a moment to realize what I'd just heard. The other Necessity - the opposite of the one that had taken up residence in my head - was
not
in direct communication with Zedar! Torak stood between them! He was too jealous to permit
anyone
to have access to that spirit - or whatever you want to call it. There was my edge! I had them! I'd be told if I made a mistake. Zedar wouldn't. I suddenly wanted to flap my wings and crow like a rooster.

I listened very carefully while Zedar described my confrontation with the Morindim and their demons. He exaggerated a bit. Zedar's language was always a bit excessive, but he had a very good reason for it this time. His continued good health depended on his persuading Torak that I was well-nigh invincible.

There was a long silence after Zedar had finished his extravagant description of my Demon Lord.

-
I will consider this and consult with the Necessity
. - Torak said finally. -
Dog the steps of thy brother whilst I devise some new means to delay him. We need not destroy him. The TIME of the EVENT is as important as the EVENT itself
. -

The implications there were clear. There
weren't
any other traps out there. They'd hung everything on the Morindim. I felt like grinning, but that's a little hard to do with a hooked beak. There was no need now to wait any longer. I knew what I had to know. I decided to put Zedar out of
action right here and now. I could fly over the top of him, change back to my own form, and fall on him like a collapsing roof.

-
Not yet
- the voice told me. -
It isn't time yet
. -

-
When then?
-

-
Just a few more minutes, and you might want to reconsider your plan. I think it might have some holes in it
. -

After a moment's thought, I realized that the voice was right. Falling on top of Zedar wasn't a very good idea. I'd have just as much chance of knocking myself senseless as I would him. Besides, I wanted to talk with him a little first.

The sense of Torak's somewhat nebulous presence was gone now. The maimed God in Cthol Mishrak was busy consulting with that other awareness. Zedar started down the hill through the evergreens, angling back to pick up our trail.

I flew over him and landed in the snow several hundred yards in front of him. Then I changed back into my own form and waited for him, leaning rather casually against a tree.

I could see that greenish light of his bobbing through the trees as he came toward me, and I took advantage of the time to put a lid on my towering anger. It's not a good idea to let your emotions run away with you when you're involved in a confrontation.

Then he came out of the trees on the other side of the clearing where I'd stationed myself.

‘What kept you?' I asked him in a calm, run-of-the mill tone of voice.

‘Belgarath!' he gasped.

‘You must be half-asleep, Belzedar. Couldn't you
feel
my presence? I wasn't trying to hide it.'

‘Thank the Gods you're here,' he said with feigned enthusiasm. He was quick on his feet; I'll give him that. ‘Weren't you listening? I've been trying to get in touch with you?'

‘I've been running as a wolf. That might have dulled my perceptions. What are you doing here?'

‘I've been trying to catch up with you. You and the Alorns are running into an unnecessary danger.'

‘Oh?'

‘There's no need for you to go to Mallorea. I've already retrieved the Orb. This absurd quest of yours is just a waste of time.'

‘What an amazing thing. Let's see it.'

‘Ah - I didn't think it was safe to bring it up here with me. I wasn't positive I could catch up with you, and I didn't want to take it back to Mallorea, so I put it in a safe place.'

‘Good idea. How did you manage to get it away from Torak?' As long as he was being so creative, I thought I'd give him a chance to expand on his wild story.

‘I've been at this for two thousand years, Belgarath. I've been working on Urvon all this time. He's still a Grolim, but he's afraid of the power of our Master's jewel. He distracted Torak, and I was able to slip into that iron tower at Cthol Mishrak and steal the Orb.'

‘Where did Torak keep it?' That particular bit of information might be very useful later on.

‘It was in a room adjoining the one where he spends all his time. He didn't want that iron box in the same room with him. The temptation to open it might have been too great for him.'

‘Well,' I said blandly, ‘I guess that takes care of all of that, then. I'm glad you came along when you did, brother. I wasn't really too eager to go to Mallorea. I'll go fetch Cherek and his sons while you go pick up the Orb. Then we can all go back to the Vale.' I waited for a little bit to give him a moment to exult over his success in deceiving me. ‘Isn't that sort of what you'd expect from a drunken lecher with scant morality and little seriousness?' I added, throwing his own words back in his teeth. Then I sighed with genuine regret. ‘Why, Belzedar?' I asked him. ‘Why have you betrayed our Master?'

His head came up sharply, and his look was stricken.

‘You ought to pay more attention, old boy,' I told him. ‘I've been almost on top of you for die past ten hours. Did you really think it was necessary to set fire to Etchquaw?' I'll admit that I was goading him. He was still my brother, and I didn't want to be the one to strike the first blow. I bored in inexorably. ‘You're Torak's third disciple, aren't you, Zedar? You've gone over to the other side. You've sold your soul to that one-eyed monster in Cthol Mishrak. What did he offer you, Zedar? What is there in this whole world that was worth what you've done?'

He actually broke down at that point. ‘I had no choice, Belgarath,' he sobbed. ‘I'd thought that I could deceive Torak - that I could pretend to accept him and serve him - but he put his hand on my soul and tore it out of me. His touch, Belgarath! Dear God, his touch!'

I braced myself. I knew what was coming. Zedar always overacted. It was his one great weakness.

He started by throwing fire into my face. Between one spurious sob and the next, his arm whipped back and then flashed forward with a great blob of incandescent flame nestled in his palm.

I brushed it aside with a negligent gesture. ‘Not good enough, brother,' I told him. Then I knocked him cart-wheeling through the snow with my fist. It was tactically sound. He'd have felt my Will building anyway, and I got an enormous satisfaction out of punching him in the mouth.

He came up spitting blood and teeth, and trying to gather his wits. I didn't give him time for that, however. He spent the next several minutes dancing in the snow, dodging the lightning bolts I threw at him. I still didn't want to kill him, so I gave him an instant of warning before I turned each bolt loose. It
did
keep him off-balance, though, and the sizzling noise when the bolts hit the snow
really
distracted him.

Then he enveloped himself in a cloud of absolute darkness, trying to hide. I dissolved his cloud and kept shooting
lightning at him. He
really
didn't like that. Zedar's afraid of a lot of things, and lightning's one of them. My thunderclaps and the sizzle and steam
definitely
upset him.

He tried more fire, but I smothered each of his flames before he even got it well-started. I suppose I might have toyed with him longer, but by now he fully understood that I had the upper hand. There was no real point in grinding his face in that any more, so I jumped on him and quite literally beat him into the ground with my bare hands. I could have done it any number of other ways, I guess, but his betrayal seemed to call for a purely physical chastisement. I hammered on him with my fists for a while, and right at first he gave as good as he got. We banged on each other for several minutes, but I was enjoying it far more than he was. I had a great deal of pent-up anger, and hitting him felt very, very good.

I finally gave him a good solid punch on the side of his head, and his eyes glazed over, and he slumped senseless into the snow.

‘That'll teach you,' I muttered to him, rising and standing over his unconscious body. It was a silly thing to say, but I had to say
something
.

I had a little problem, though. What was I going to do with him
now?
I wasn't going to kill him, and the blow I had given him wouldn't keep him unconscious for very long. I was certain that the rules of this encounter prohibited the voice inside my head from making any suggestions, so I was on my own.

I considered the inert form at my feet. In his present condition, Zedar posed no threat to anyone. All I really had to do was
keep
him in that condition. I took him by the shoulders and dragged him back in among the trees. Then I piled branches over him. In spite of everything, I didn't want him to freeze to death or get smothered by a sudden snow-squall. Then I reached my hand in under the branches, found his face, and gathered my Will. ‘This all must have been exhausting for you, Zedar,' I told him.
‘Why don't you see if you can catch up on your sleep?'

Then I released my Will. I smiled and stood up. I'd gauged it rather carefully. Zedar would sleep for at least six months, and that would keep him out of my hair while the Alorns and I went to Cthol Mishrak to finish what we'd set out to do.

I felt quite pleased with myself as I resumed the form of the wolf.

Then I went looking for Bear-shoulders and his boys.

Evidently the word of my Demon Lord had gotten around, because we didn't encounter any more of the Morindim as we crossed the southern edge of their range. The moon had gone off to the south, but the northern lights illuminated the sky well enough, and we made good time. We soon reached the shore of Torak's Sea.

Fortunately the beach was littered with huge piles of driftwood. Otherwise, I don't think we'd have been able to tell where the land stopped and the sea began. The ground along that beach was nearly as flat as the frozen sea, and both were covered with knee-deep snow.

‘We go north along the beach from here,' Riva told us. ‘After a while it swings east. The bridge is off in that direction.'

‘Let's stay clear of your bridge,' I told him.

‘What?'

‘Torak knows we're coming, and by now he knows that Zedar wasn't able to stop us. He might have a few surprises waiting for us if we follow that string of islands. Let's cross the ice instead.'

‘There aren't any landmarks out there, Belgarath,' he objected, ‘and we can't even take our bearings on the sun. We'll get lost.'

‘No we won't, Riva. I've got a very good sense of direction.'

‘Even in the dark?'

‘Yes.' I looked around, squinting into the bitterly cold wind sweeping down out of the northwest. ‘Let's get behind that pile of driftwood,' I told them. ‘We'll build a
fire, have a hot meal, and get some sleep. The next several days aren't going to be very pleasant.'

Crossing open ice in the dead of winter is one of the more uncomfortable experiences you'll ever have, I expect. Once you get out a ways from shore, the wind has total access to you, and the arctic wind blows continually. Of course, it sweeps the ice clear of snow, so at least you don't have to wade through snowdrifts. There are enough other problems to make up for the absence of drifts, though. When people talk about crossing ice, they're usually talking about a frozen lake, which is normally as flat as a table-top. Sea-ice isn't like that because of the tides. The continual rising and falling of the water during the autumn and early winter keeps breaking up the ice before it gets duck enough to become stable, and that creates ridges and deep cracks that make crossing a stretch of sea-ice almost as difficult as crossing a range of mountains. I didn't enjoy it very much.

The sun had long since abandoned the north, and the moon had wandered away, so I can't really give you any idea of how long it took us to make it across - probably not as long as it seemed, since I reverted to the form of the wolf and I could keep going for a long time without slowing down. Moreover, my malicious running of the Alorns had conditioned them to the point that they could almost keep up with me.

Anyway, we finally reached the coast of Mallorea - just in time as it turned out, because a three-day blizzard came up almost as soon as we hit the beach. We took shelter under a mountainous pile of driftwood to wait out the storm. Dras turned out to be very useful at that point. He took his battle-axe to that jumble of logs and limbs and hollowed us out a very comfortable den near the center of the pile. We built a fire and gradually thawed out.

During one of his visits to the Vale, Beldin had sketched me out a rough map of Mallorea, and I spent a great deal of time hunched over that map while the blizzard was busy drifting about eight feet of snow over our shelter. ‘How far
is your bridge up the coast from where we crossed?' I asked Riva when the wind began to subside.

‘Oh, I don't know. Fifty leagues or so, I guess.'

‘You're a lot of help, Riva,' I told him sourly. I stared at the map again. Beldin hadn't known about the bridge, of course, so he hadn't drawn it in, and he also hadn't included a scale, so all I could do was guess. ‘As closely as I can make it out, we're approximately due west of Cthol Mishrak,' I told my friends.

‘Approximately?' Bear-shoulders asked.

‘This map isn't all that good. It gives me a general idea of where the city is, but that's about all. When the wind dies down a bit more, we'll scout around. Cthol Mishrak's on a river, and there's a swamp north of that river. If we find a swamp inland, we'll know that we're fairly close.'

‘And if we don't?'

‘Then we'll have to go looking for it - or the river.'

Cherek squinted at my map. ‘We could be north of the swamp, Belgarath,' he objected. ‘- or south of the river, for that matter. We could end up wandering around up here until summer time.'

‘Have you got anything better to do?'

‘Well, no, but-'

‘Let's not start worrying until we find out what's lying inland. Your auguries say this is your lucky year, so maybe we've come ashore in the right place.'

‘But you don't believe in auguries.'

‘No, but you do. Maybe that's all it takes. If you
think
you're lucky, you probably are.'

‘I suppose I didn't think of that,' he said, his face suddenly brightening. You can convince an Alorn of almost anything if you talk fast enough.

We rolled up in our furs and slept at that point. There really wasn't anything else to do, unless we wanted to sit around and watch Dras play with his dice. Drasnians love to gamble, but I got much more entertainment from dreaming about my wife.

I can't be sure how long I slept, but some time later, Riva shook me awake. ‘I think you'd better reset that sense of direction of yours, Belgarath,' he said accusingly.

‘What's the matter?'

‘I just went outside to see if the wind had died. The sun's coming up.'

I sat up quickly. ‘Good,' I said. ‘Go wake up your father and brothers,' I told him. ‘We've got a little light for a while. Let's take advantage of it to have a look inland. Tell them not to bother breaking down our camp. We'll go take a look and then come back. I want it to be dark again before we start out.'

There were rounded mounds backing the beach where we'd sat out the storm, and once we got to them, Dras negligently hit the snow-covered side of one of them with his axe. ‘Sand,' he reported. That sounded promising.

We topped the dunes and gazed out over a scrubby forest that looked almost like a jungle dotted here and there with broad clearings.

‘What do you think?' Cherek asked me. ‘It
looks
sort of boggy. It's frozen, of course, and knee-deep in snow, but those clearings would be open water in the summer if it
is
that swamp.'

‘Let's go look,' I said, squinting nervously at the fading ‘dawn' along the southern horizon. ‘We'd better hurry if we want to reach it before it gets dark again.'

We trotted down the back-side of the dune and out among the gnarled, stunted trees. When we got to one of those clearings, I kicked the snow out of the way and had a look. ‘Ice,' I said with a certain satisfaction. ‘Chop a hole in it, Dras. I need to have a look at the water.'

‘You're dulling the edge of my axe, Belgarath,' he complained.

‘You can sharpen it again. Start chopping.'

He muttered a few choice oaths, bunched those enormous shoulders, and began to chop ice.

‘Harder, Dras,' I urged him. ‘I want to get down to water before the light goes.'

He began to chop harder and faster, sending splinters and chunks of ice in all directions. After several minutes, water began to seep up from the bottom of the hole.

I suppressed an urge to dance with glee. The water was brown. ‘That's enough,' I told the huge man. I knelt, scooped up a handful of water and tasted it. ‘Brackish,' I announced. ‘It's swamp-water, all right. It looks as if your auguries were right, Cherek. This
is
your lucky year. Let's go back to the beach and have some breakfast.'

Algar fell in beside me as we started back. ‘I'd say it's
your
lucky year too, Belgarath,' he murmured quietly. ‘Father would have been a little grumpy if we'd missed that swamp.'

‘I can't possibly lose, Algar,' I replied gaily. ‘When we get back to the beach, I'll borrow your brother's dice and roll the main all day long.'

‘I don't play dice. What are you talking about?'

‘It's a game called hazard,' I explained. ‘You're supposed to call a number before your first roll. If it comes up, you win. That number's called “the main”.'

‘And if it doesn't come up, you lose?'

‘It's a little more complicated than that. Have Dras show you.'

‘I've got better things to do with my money, Belgarath, and I've heard stories about my brother's dice.'

‘You don't think he'd cheat you, do you? You
are
his brother.'

‘If there was money involved, Dras would cheat our own mother.'

You see what I mean about Drasnians?

We returned to our den, and Riva cooked an extensive breakfast. Cooking is a chore that nobody really likes - except for my daughter, of course - so it usually fell to the youngest. Oddly, Riva wasn't a bad cook.

 

You didn't know that, did you, Pol?

 

‘Will you recognize this place when you see it?' Dras rumbled around a mouthful of bacon.

‘It shouldn't be too hard,' I replied blandly, ‘since it's the only city north of the river.'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘I didn't know that.'

‘It'll sort of stand out,' I continued. ‘It's got a perpetual cloud-bank over it.'

He frowned. ‘What causes that?'

‘Torak, from what Beldin says.'

‘Why would he do that?'

I shrugged. ‘Maybe he hates the sun.' I didn't want to get
too
exotic in my explanation.
Little
things confused Dras. A big one might have unraveled his whole brain.

 

I apologize to the entire Drasnian nation for that last remark. Dras was brave and strong and absolutely loyal, but sometimes he was just a little slow of thought. His descendants have
more
than overcome that. If anyone doesn't believe that, I invite him to try having business dealings with Prince Kheldar.

 

‘All right then,' I told them after we'd eaten, ‘Torak's mind is very rigid. Once he gets hold of an idea, he won't let go of it. He almost certainly knows about that bridge - particularly since the Karands use it to go over to trade with the Morindim, and the Karands are Torak-worshipers now. They probably only use the bridge in the summer when there isn't any ice, though. I don't think Torak would even take the ice into account.'

‘Where are we going with this?' Cherek asked.

‘I'm sure Torak's expecting us,
but
he's expecting us to come at him from the north - from the direction of the bridge. If he's put people out there to stop us, that's where they'll be.'

Riva laughed delightedly. ‘But we won't be coming from
the north, will we? We'll be coming from the west instead.'

‘Good point,' Algar murmured with an absolutely straight face. He concealed it very well, but Algar was much brighter than his brothers - or his father, for that matter. Maybe that's why he didn't waste his breath trying to talk to them.

‘I can do certain things to keep the Angaraks facing north,' I continued. ‘Now that the blizzard's blown off, I'll decorate the snowbanks up there near your bridge with footprints and perfume the bushes with our scent. That should throw the Chandim off.'

‘Chandim?' Dras gave me that blank stare.

‘The Hounds of Torak. They'll be trying to sniff us out. I'll give them enough clues to make them do their sniffing up north of here. If we're half-way careful, we should be able to reach Cthol Mishrak without being noticed.'

‘You knew this all along, didn't you, Belgarath?' Riva said. ‘
That's
why you made us cross the ice where we did instead of going up to the bridge.'

I shrugged. ‘Naturally,' I replied modestly. It was a barefaced lie, of course. I'd only just put it all together myself. But a reputation for infallible cleverness doesn't hurt when you're dealing with Alorns. The time might come very soon when I'd be making decisions based on hunches, and I wouldn't have time for arguments.

It was dark again by the time we crawled out of our den and struck out across the snowy dunes toward the frozen bog to the east. We soon discovered that not
all
of the Chandim had gone north to lie in wait for us. We came across tracks as large as horses' hooves in the fresh snow from time to time, and we could hear them baying off in the swamp now and again.

I'll make a confession here. Despite my strong reservations about it, for once I
did
tamper with the weather - just a bit. I created a small portable fog-bank for us to hide in and a very docile little snow-cloud that followed us like a puppy, happily burying our tracks in new snow. It doesn't
really take much to make a cloud happy. I kept both the fog and the cloud tightly controlled, though, so their effects didn't alter any major weather patterns. Between the two of them, they kept the Chandim from finding us with their eyes, and the new-fallen snow muffled the sound of our passage. Then I summoned a cooperative family of civet-cats to trail along behind us. Civet-cats are nice little creatures related to skunks, except that they have spots instead of stripes. Their means of dealing with creatures unlucky enough to offend them are the same, though - as one of Torak's Hounds discovered when he got too close. I don't imagine he was very popular in his pack for the next several weeks.

We crept unobserved through that frozen swamp for several days, hiding in thickets during the brief daylight hours and traveling during the long arctic nights.

Then one morning our fog-bank turned opalescent. I let it dissipate so that we could take a look, but it really wasn't necessary. I knew what was lighting up the fog. The sun had finally cleared the horizon. Winter was wearing on, and it was time for us to hurry. As the fog thinned, we saw that we were nearing the eastern edge of the swamp. A low range of hills rose a few miles ahead, and just beyond those hills was an inky black cloud-bank. ‘That's it,' I told Cherek and his boys, speaking very quietly.