Belgarath the Sorcerer (26 page)

‘Oh, not that long,' I disagreed. Then, just to show him who was in charge, I looked at a nearby stack, concentrated, and said, ‘Hot.'

The stack started to smoke immediately. Riva had irritated me, and I'd gone a bit too far. I reduced the heat, and the smoke was replaced by steam as the green boards began to sweat out their moisture.

‘They're warping,' he pointed out triumphantly.

‘Of course they are,' I replied calmly. ‘I want them to warp.'

‘Warped lumber's no good.'

‘It depends on what you want to build with it,' I disagreed. ‘We want ships, and ships have curved sides. Something with flat sides is called a barge, and it doesn't sail very well.'

‘You've got an answer for everything, haven't you Belgarath? Even for your mistakes.'

‘Why are you being so cross with me, Riva?'

‘Because you've torn my life apart. You've separated me from my family, and you're taking me to the most wretched place on earth to spend the rest of my life. Stay away from me, Belgarath. I don't like you very much right now.' And he stalked off up the beach.

I started after him.

-
Leave him alone, Belgarath
. - It was my friend again.

-
If I'm going to have his cooperation, I'm going to have to make peace with him
. -

-
He's a little upset right now. He'll settle down. Don't weaken your position by going to him. Make him come to you
. -

-
What if he doesn't?
-

-
He has to. You're the only one who can tell him what to do, and he knows it. He's got an enormous sense of responsibility. That's why I chose him. Dras is bigger, and Algar's smarter, but Riva sticks to something once he starts it. Go back to baking boards. It'll keep your mind off your troubles
. -

Somehow he always knew what the most insulting thing he could say would be.
Baking boards!
I still get hot around the ears when I remember
that
particular expression.

Two days later, Riva came to me apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, Belgarath,' he said contritely.

‘What for? You didn't say anything that wasn't true. I
have
torn your life apart, I
have
separated you from your family, and I
am
going to take you to the Isle of the Winds to spend the rest of your life. The only thing you left out was the fact that none of it's been my idea. You're the
Keeper of the Orb now, and somebody has to tell you what to do. I'm your teacher. Neither one of us asked for the jobs, but we got them anyway. We might as well make the best of it. Now come over here, and I'll show you the plans I've drawn up for your boats.'

‘Ships,' he corrected absently.

‘Any way you want it, Orb-keeper.'

The Alorns began drifting in the next afternoon. Alorns don't march. They don't even stay together when they're traveling, and their direction is pretty indeterminate, since small groups of them periodically break off to go exploring.

Riva put them to work building ships immediately, and that lonely beach turned into an impromptu shipyard. There were a number of arguments about my design for those ships, and some of the objections raised by various Alorns were even valid. Most of them were silly, however. Alorns love to argue, probably because arguments in their culture are usually preludes to fights.

I drifted up and down the beach, cheating wherever it was necessary, and we finished about ten of those ships in just under six weeks. Then Riva left his cousin Anrak in charge, and we took an advance party out into the Sea of the Winds toward the Isle.

If you've never seen the Isle of the Winds, you might think that the descriptions of it you've heard are exaggerations. Believe me, they aren't. In the first place, the island has only one beach, a narrow strip of gravel about a mile long at the head of a deeply indented bay on the east side of the isle. The rest of the shoreline is comprised of cliffs. There are woods inland, dark evergreen forests such as you'll find in any northern region, and some fairly extensive meadows in the mountain valleys to the north. It probably wouldn't be so bad, except that the wind blows all the time, and it can - and frequently does - rain for six straight months without letup. Then, when it gets tired of raining, it snows.

We rowed around the Isle twice, but we didn't find any
other beaches, so we rowed up that bay I mentioned and came ashore on the island's only beach.

‘Where am I supposed to build this fort?' Riva asked me when the two of us finally got our feet on solid ground again.

‘That's up to you,' I replied. ‘What's the most logical place to build it?'

‘Right here, I suppose, since this is the only place where anybody can come ashore. If I've got my fort here, I'll be able to see them coming, at least.'

‘Sound thinking.' I looked at him rather closely. That boyish quality was starting to fade. The responsibility he'd so lightly accepted back in Cthol Mishrak was starting to sit heavily on him.

He looked at the steep valley running down out of the mountains to the head of the bay. ‘The fort's going to have to be a little bigger than I'd thought,' he mused. ‘I'll need to block that whole valley with it. I guess I'll have to build a city here.'

‘You might as well. There won't be much to do on this island except make babies, so your population's going to expand. You'll need lots of houses.'

He suddenly blushed.

‘You
do
know what's involved in that, don't you? Making babies, I mean?'

‘Of course I do.'

‘I just wanted to be sure that you weren't going to be out turning over cabbage leaves or trying to chase down storks looking for them.'

‘Don't be insulting.' He looked up the valley again. ‘There are enough trees to build a city, I guess.'

‘No,' I told him flatly. ‘Don't build a wooden city. The Tolnedrans tried that at Tol Honeth, and they no sooner got it finished than it burned to the ground. Use rock.'

‘That'll take a long time, Belgarath,' he objected.

‘Have you got anything better to do? Set up a temporary camp here on the beach and put signal fires on those head
lands at the mouth of the bay to guide the rest of your people here. Then you and I are going to spend some time designing a city. I don't want this place just growing here like a weed. Its purpose is to protect the Orb, and I want to be certain that there aren't any holes in the defenses.'

Over the next several weeks the rest of Riva's ships rowed in, six or eight at a time, and by then Iron-grip and I had completed the layout of the city.

‘What do you think I ought to call it - the city I mean?' he asked me when we were finished.

‘What difference does it make?'

‘A city ought to have a name, Belgarath.'

‘Call it anything you like. Name it after yourself, if you want.'

‘Val Riva?'

‘Isn't that a little ostentatious? Just call it Riva and let it go at that.'

‘That doesn't really sound like a city, Belgarath.'

‘It will, once people get used to it.'

Finally Anrak arrived. ‘That's the last of us, Riva,' he bellowed as he waded ashore. ‘We're all here now. Have you got anything to drink?'

The party there on the beach got rowdy that night, and after I'd had a few tankards, the noise began to make my head hurt, so I climbed up the steep valley to get away from the carousing and to think a bit. I still had a number of things to do before I could go home, and I considered various ways to get them all taken care of in a hurry. I
really
wanted to get back to the Vale and to Poledra. I was undoubtedly a father by now, and I sort of wanted to have a look at my offspring.

It was probably a couple of hours past midnight when I glanced down toward the beach. I jumped to my feet swearing. All the ships were on fire!

I ran back down the valley to the beach and found Riva and his cousin standing at the water's edge singing an
Alorn drinking song. They were bleary-eyed and swaying back and forth, as drunk as lords.

‘
What are you doing
?' I screamed at them.

‘Oh, there you are Belgarath,' Riva said, blinking owlishly at me. ‘We looked all over for you.' He gestured out at the burning ships. ‘Nice fire, isn't it?'

‘It's a splendid fire. Why did you set it?'

‘That lumber you made for us is nice and dry, so it burns very well.'

‘Riva, why are you burning the ships?'

He looked at his cousin. ‘Why
are
we burning the ships, Anrak? I forget.'

‘It's to keep people from getting bored and running off,' Anrak replied.

‘Oh, yes. Now I remember. Isn't that a good idea, Belgarath?'

‘
It's a rotten idea
!'

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘How am
I
supposed to get home now?'

‘Oh,' he said. ‘I hadn't thought of that, I guess.' His eyes brightened. ‘Would you like something to drink?' he asked me.

‘Belgarath?' Riva said to me one morning a few days later when we were standing at the upper end of the narrow valley stretching up from the beach watching his Alorns clearing stair-stepped terraces across the steep valley floor.

‘Yes, Riva?'

‘Am I supposed to have a sword?'

‘You've already got one.'

‘No, I mean a special sword.'

‘Yes,' I replied. Where had he found out about
that?

‘Where is it then?'

‘It doesn't exist yet. You're supposed to make it.'

‘I can do that, I guess. What am I supposed to make it from?'

‘Stars, as I understand it.'

‘How am I going to get my hands on any stars?'

‘They'll fall out of the sky.'

‘I guess it
was
Belar who talked to me last night, then.'

‘I don't follow you.'

‘I had a dream - at least I thought it was a dream. I seemed to hear Belar's voice. I recognized it because I used to watch him play dice with Dras. He used to swear a lot while he was playing, because Dras always won. Isn't that odd? You'd think a God could make the dice come up any way he wanted them to, but Belar doesn't even
think
about cheating. Dras does, though. Dras could roll a ten with only one die.'

I tried to stay calm. ‘Riva, you're straying. You started to tell me about your dream. If Belar spoke to you, it might be sort of important.'

‘He used a lot of “thee's” and “thou's”.'

‘The Gods do that. What did he say?'

‘I'm not sure if I got the first part of it right. I was dreaming about something else, and I didn't want to be interrupted.'

‘Oh? What were you dreaming about?'

He actually blushed. ‘It's not really important,' he said evasively.

‘You never know about dreams. What was it about?'

He blushed even redder. ‘Well - there was a girl involved in it. That wouldn't be too significant, would it?'

‘Ah - no, I suppose not. Did Belar finally manage to get your attention?'

‘He had to talk to me pretty loudly. I was
really
interested in that girl.'

‘I'm sure you were.'

‘She had the blondest hair I've ever seen, and would you believe that she didn't have any clothes on?'

‘
Riva
! Forget about the girl! What did Belar say?'

‘You don't have to get excited, Belgarath,' he said in a slightly injured tone. I'm getting to it.' He frowned. ‘Let me see now. It seems to me that he said something like, “Behold, Guardian of the Orb, I will cause two stars to fall from the sky, and I will show thee where they lie, and thou shalt take up the two stars and shall place them in a great fire and forge them. And the one star shall be a blade, and the other a hilt, and it shall be a sword that shall guard the Orb of my brother, Aldur”. Or something like that.'

‘We'll have to put out watchmen at night, then.'

‘Oh? What for?'

‘To keep an eye on the sky, of course. We have to know where the stars come down.'

‘Oh, I already know where they came down, Belgarath. Belar took me to the front of my tent and pointed at the sky. The two stars came down side by side, and I saw them hit the ground. Then Belar went away, and I went back to bed to see if I could find that girl again.'

‘
Will
you forget about that girl?'

‘No, I don't think I ever will. She was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.'

‘Do you happen to remember where the stars came down?'

‘Up there.' He gestured vaguely at the snow-covered mountain peak rearing up at the head of the valley.

‘Let's go get them.'

‘Shouldn't I stay here? I'm sort of in charge, I guess. Doesn't that mean that I'm supposed to supervise the work?'

‘Is your cousin sober?'

‘Anrak? Probably - more or less, anyway.'

‘Why don't you call him and let him take over here? We'd better go find those stars before it snows again and buries them.'

‘Oh, we'd still be able to find them. A little snow wouldn't hide them.'

I gave him a puzzled look.

‘They're
stars
, Belgarath, and stars shine. We'll be able to see the light even if they're completely covered.'

You see what I mean about Riva's innocence? He was far from being simple-minded, but he just couldn't bring himself to believe that anything could go wrong. He bellowed down the hill to his cousin, and then the two of us started up that narrow valley. There had evidently been a stream or river running down along the bottom of it at some time in the past, because there were rounded boulders at the bottom, but the stream was gone now. It had probably changed course when Torak rearranged the world.

Riva entertained me while we climbed by describing the girl he'd dreamed about. For some reason, he couldn't seem to think about anything else.

The fallen stars weren't really all that hard to find, of course. They'd been white-hot when they hit the mountain, and they'd melted huge craters in the snow.

‘Those aren't stars, Belgarath,' Riva objected when I
picked them up triumphantly. ‘They're nothing but a couple of lumps of iron.'

‘The snow put out their light,' I told him. It wasn't entirely true, but it was easier than trying to explain.

‘You can't put out the light of a star,' he scoffed.

‘These are special stars, Riva.' I was digging myself in deeper, but I didn't feel like arguing with him.

‘Oh. I hadn't thought of that, I guess. What do we do now?'

‘We follow Belar's instructions. Let's build a fire.'

‘Up here? In the snow?'

‘There's something else you have to do up here. You've still got the Orb with you, haven't you?'

‘Of course. I've always got it.' He patted the lump under his tunic. ‘What are we going to use for a hammer? And an anvil?'

‘I'll take care of it. I don't think ordinary tools would work. These stars seem to be a little harder than ordinary iron.'

We went into a nearby grove of trees, and I built a fire. I cheated quite a bit with that fire. You won't get the kind of heat we were going to need out of green wood. ‘Throw them in the fire, Riva,' I instructed him.

‘Anything you say,' he agreed, tossing the two lumps of celestial iron into the flames.

Then I focused my Will and constructed the hammer and anvil and tongs. I suspect that if you went to that mountain behind the Hall of the Rivan King, you'd find that they're still there. They're so dense that they probably haven't rusted down yet.

Riva hefted the hammer. ‘It's heavier than it looks,' he noted.

‘That's because it's a magic hammer.' It was easier than getting into the business of comparative density.

‘I thought it might be,' he said quite calmly.

We sat on a log by that roaring fire waiting for the lumps of iron to heat up. When they were finally white hot, Riva
raked them out of the coals and got down to work. Somewhere along the way, he'd picked up any number of skills. He wasn't as good a smith as Durnik is, but he was competent.

After about ten minutes, he stopped hammering and looked rather closely at the glowing lump he'd been beating on.

‘What's wrong?' I asked him.

‘These stars must be magic, too - just like the hammer. If they were just ordinary iron, they'd have cooled by now.'

 

No, Durnik, I didn't cheat. I think Belar did, though.

 

There are a number of versions of the BOOK OF ALORN that rather blandly state that I assumed the shape of a fox to advise Riva while he was forging the sword. That's sheer nonsense, of course. I've never taken the form of a fox in my entire life. What
is
it about priests that drives them to embellish a good story with improbable details? If they're
that
hungry for magic, why don't they just spend a little time and pick up the skills for themselves? Then they'll be able to play with magic to their hearts' content.

Riva continued to hammer on those two glowing lumps of iron until he'd roughed out the shape of the blade and the hilt. Then I made a file for him, and he started to smooth them out. He suddenly stopped and started to swear.

‘What's the matter?' I asked him.

‘I've made a mistake,' he said sourly.

‘I don't see anything wrong.'

‘I've got two pieces, Belgarath. How am I going to put them together?'

‘We'll get to that. Keep polishing.'

After he'd dressed off the blade, he set it aside and started on the massive, two-handed hilt. ‘Does it need a pommel?' he asked me.

‘We'll get to that, too.'

He kept working. His face was streaming sweat from the
heat of the iron, and he finally threw down the file and laid the hilt on the anvil with the tongs. ‘That's probably as good as I can get it,' he said. ‘I'm not a gold-smith. Now what?'

I willed a barrel of water into existence. ‘Quench them,' I told him.

He picked up that huge blade with his tongs and plunged it into the water. The cloud of steam was really quite spectacular. Then he dropped the hilt in. ‘I still don't think we'll be able to put them together.'

‘Trust me.'

It took quite some time for the submerged pieces of iron to stop glowing. I had to refill the barrel twice before they started to turn black.

Riva tentatively stuck his hand into the water and touched the blade. ‘I think they're cool enough now.'

‘Take out the Orb,' I told him.

He looked around quickly. ‘I don't see any Angaraks,' he said.

‘No. This is something else.'

He reached inside his tunic and took out the glowing Orb. It looked very small in that massive hand of his.

‘Now fish out the hilt,' I instructed.

He plunged his arm into the barrel and brought out that huge hilt.

‘Put the Orb where the pommel ought to be.'

‘Why?'

‘Just do it. You'll see.'

He held up the hilt in one hand and put the Orb against the bottom of the handle. The click that came when they adhered together was clearly audible. Riva gasped.

‘It's all right,' I told him. ‘That was supposed to happen. Now pick up the blade and put the bottom of it against the top of the hilt.'

He did that. ‘Now what?'

‘Push.'

‘Push? What do you mean, push?'

‘You know what the word means. Push the blade into the hilt.'

‘That's ridiculous, Belgarath. They're both solid steel.'

I sighed. ‘Just try it, Riva. Don't stand around arguing with me. This is magic, and I'm the expert. Don't push too hard, or you'll shove the blade all the way through.'

‘Have you been drinking?'

‘Do it, Riva!'

The blade made a strange singing sound as it slowly slid into the hilt, and the sound shuddered all the snow off nearby trees. When it was fully inserted, Riva tentatively wiggled the two pieces. Then he wrenched at them. ‘What an amazing thing!' he said. ‘It's all one piece now!'

‘Naturally. Grab the hilt and hold your sword up.'
This
was the real test.

He took hold of the two-handed hilt and lifted that huge sword a foot or so. ‘It hardly weighs anything!' he exclaimed.

‘The Orb's carrying the weight,' I explained. ‘Remember that when you have to take the Orb off. If you're holding the sword in one hand when you do that, the weight of it'll probably break your wrist. Raise the sword, Iron-grip.'

He lifted it easily over his head, and, as I'd hoped, it burst joyously into blue flame, shearing off the rough edges and polishing the sword to mirror brightness. ‘Nice job,' I complimented him. Then I howled with delight and danced a little jig of pure joy.

Riva was gaping at his flaming sword. ‘What happened?' he asked.

‘You did it right, boy!' I exulted.

‘You mean this was
supposed
to happen?'

‘Every time, Riva! Every time! The sword's part of the Orb now. That's why it's on fire. Every time you raise it up like that, it'll take fire, and if I understand it right, it'll do the same thing when your son picks it up - and his son - and
his
son as well.'

‘I don't have a son.'

‘Wait a while, he'll be along. Bring your sword. We're supposed to go up to the summit now.'

He spent a fair amount of time swishing that sword through the air as we climbed the rest of the way to the top. I'll admit that it was impressive, but the screeching whistle it made as it carved chunks off the air began to get on my nerves after a while. He was having fun, though, so I didn't say anything to him about it.

There was a boulder at the top of the peak that was about the size of a large house. I looked at it when we got there, and I began to have some doubts about what we were supposed to do. It was an awfully big rock.

‘All right,' Riva said, ‘now what?'

‘Get a firm grip on your sword and split that rock.'

‘That'll shatter the blade, Belgarath.'

It's not supposed to.'

‘Why am I supposed to split rocks with my sword? Wouldn't a sledge-hammer work better?'

‘You could pound on that boulder with a hammer for a year and not even dent it.'

‘More magic?'

‘Sort of. There used to be a river running down the valley. It got dammed up when Torak cracked the world. It's still there, though - under that boulder. Your family's going to repair the world, and this is where you're going to start. Break the rock, Riva. Free the river. You're going to need fresh water in your city anyway.'

He shrugged. ‘If you say so, Belgarath.'