Belgarath the Sorcerer (4 page)

‘Tell it to open.'

‘What?'

‘Speak unto the stone,' the voice said patiently, ignoring the fact that I was congealing in the gale. ‘Command it to open.'

‘Command? Me?'

‘Thou art a man. It is but a rock.'

‘What do I say?'

‘Tell it to open.'

‘I think this is silly, but I'll try it.' I faced the rock. ‘Open,' I commanded half-heartedly.

‘Surely thou canst do better than that.'

‘Open!' I thundered.

And the rock slid aside.

‘Come in, boy,' the voice said. ‘Stand not in the weather like some befuddled calf. It is quite cold.' Had he only just now noticed that?

I went inside what appeared to be some kind of vestibule with nothing in it but a stone staircase winding upward. Oddly, it wasn't dark, though I couldn't see exactly where the light came from.

‘Close the door, boy.'

‘How?'

‘How didst thou open it?'

I turned to face that gaping opening, and, quite proud of myself, I commanded, ‘Close!' And, at the sound of my voice, the rock slid shut with a grinding sound that chilled my blood even more than the fierce storm outside. I was trapped! My momentary panic passed as I suddenly realized that I was dry for the first time in days. There wasn't even a puddle around my feet! Something strange was going on here.

‘Come up, boy,' the voice commanded.

What choice did I have? I mounted the stone steps worn with countless centuries of footfalls and spiraled my way up and up, only a little bit afraid. The tower was very high, and the climbing took me a long time.

At the top was a chamber filled with wonders. I looked at things such as I'd never seen before. I was still young and not, at the time, above thoughts of theft. Larceny seethed in my grubby little soul. I'm sure that Polgara will find that particular admission entertaining.

Near a fire - which burned, I observed, without fuel of any kind - sat a man, who seemed most incredibly ancient, but somehow familiar, though I couldn't seem to place him. His beard was long and full and as white as the snow which had so nearly killed me - but his eyes were eternally young. I think it might have been the eyes that seemed so familiar
to me. ‘Well, boy,' he said, ‘hast thou decided not to die?'

‘Not if it isn't necessary,' I said bravely, still cataloguing the wonders of the chamber.

‘Dost thou require anything?' he asked. ‘I am unfamiliar with thy kind.'

‘A little food, perhaps,' I replied. ‘I haven't eaten in two days. And a warm place to sleep, if you wouldn't mind.' I thought it might not be a bad idea to stay on the good side of this strange old man, so I hurried on. ‘I won't be much trouble, Master, and I can make myself useful in payment.' It was an artful little speech. I'd learned during my months with the Tolnedrans how to make myself agreeable to people in a position to do me favors.

‘Master?' he said, and laughed, a sound so cheerful that it made me almost want to dance. Where
had
I heard that laugh before? ‘I am not thy Master, boy,' he said. Then he laughed again, and my heart sang with the splendor of his mirth. ‘Let us see to this thing of food. What dost thou require?'

‘A little bread perhaps - not too stale, if it's all right.'

‘Bread? Only bread? Surely, boy, thy stomach is fit for more than bread. If thou wouldst make thyself useful - as thou hast promised - we must nourish thee properly. Consider, boy. Think of all the things thou hast eaten in thy life. What in all the world would most surely satisfy this vast hunger of thine?'

I couldn't even say it. Before my eyes swam the visions of smoking roasts, of fat geese swimming in their own gravy, of heaps of fresh-baked bread and rich, golden butter, of pastries in thick cream, of cheese, and dark brown ale, of fruits and nuts and salt to savor it all. The vision was so real that it even seemed that I could smell it.

And he who sat by the glowing fire that burned, it seemed, air alone, laughed again, and again my heart sang. ‘Turn, boy,' he said, ‘and eat thy fill.'

And I turned, and there on a table, which I had not even seen before, lay everything I had imagined. No wonder I
could smell it! A hungry boy doesn't ask where the food comes from - he eats. And so I ate. I ate until my stomach groaned. And through the sound of my eating I could hear the laughter of the aged one beside his fire, and my heart leapt within me at each strangely familiar chuckle.

And when I'd finished and sat drowsing over my plate, he spoke again. ‘Wilt thou sleep now, boy?'

‘A corner, Master,' I said. ‘A little out-of-the-way place by the fire, if it isn't too much trouble.'

He pointed. ‘Sleep there, boy,' he said, and all at once I saw a bed which I had no more seen than I had the table - a great bed with huge pillows and comforters of softest down. And I smiled my thanks and crept into the bed, and, because I was young and very tired, I fell asleep almost at once without even stopping to think about how very strange all of this had been.

But in my sleep I knew that he who had brought me in out of the storm and fed me and cared for me was watching through the long, snowy night, and I slept even more securely in the comforting warmth of his care.

And that began my servitude. At first the tasks my Master set me to were simple ones - ‘sweep the floor,' ‘fetch some firewood,' ‘wash the windows' - that sort of thing. I suppose I should have been suspicious about many of them. I could have sworn that there hadn't been a speck of dust anywhere when I first mounted to his tower room, and, as I think I mentioned earlier, the fire burning in his fireplace didn't seem to need fuel. It was almost as if he were somehow
making
work for me to do.

He was a good master, though. For one thing, he didn't command in the way I'd heard the Tolnedrans command their servants, but rather made suggestions. ‘Thinkest thou not that the floor hath become dirty again, boy?' Or, ‘Might it not be prudent to lay in some store of firewood?' My chores were in no way beyond my strength or abilities, and the weather outside was sufficiently unpleasant to persuade me that what little was expected of me was a small price to pay in exchange for food and shelter. I
did
resolve, however, that when spring came and he began to look farther afield for things for me to do, I might want to reconsider our arrangement. There isn't really very much to do when winter keeps one housebound, but warmer weather brings with it the opportunity for heavier and more tedious tasks. If things turned
too
unpleasant, I could always pick up and leave.

There was something peculiar about that notion, though. The compulsion which had come over me at Gara seemed gone now. I don't know that I really thought about it in any specific way. I just seemed to notice that it was gone and shrugged it off. Maybe I just thought I'd outgrown it.
It seems to me that I shrugged off a great deal that first winter.

I paid very little attention, for example, to the fact that my Master seemed to have no visible means of support. He didn't keep cattle or sheep or even chickens, and there were no sheds or outbuildings in the vicinity of his tower. I couldn't even find his storeroom. I knew there had to be one
somewhere
, because the meals he prepared were always on the table when I grew hungry. Oddly, the fact that I never once saw him cooking didn't seem particularly strange to me. Not even the fact that I never once saw him
eat
anything seemed strange. It was almost as if my natural curiosity - and believe me, I can be
very
curious - had been somehow put to sleep.

I had absolutely no idea of what he did during that long winter. It seemed to me that he spent a great deal of time just looking at a plain round rock. He didn't speak very often, but I talked enough for both of us. I've always been fond of the sound of my own voice - or had you noticed that?

My continual chatter must have driven him to distraction, because one evening he rather pointedly asked me why I didn't go read something.

I knew about reading, of course. Nobody in Gara had known how, but I'd seen Tolnedrans doing it - or pretending to. It seemed a little silly to me at the time. Why take the trouble to write a letter to somebody who lives two houses over? If it's important, just step over and tell him about it. ‘I don't know how to read, Master,' I confessed.

He actually seemed startled by that. ‘Is this truly the case, boy?' he asked me. ‘I had thought that the skill was instinctive amongst thy kind.'

I
wished
that he'd quit talking about ‘my kind' as if I were a member of some obscure species of rodent or insect.

‘Fetch down that book, boy,' he instructed, pointing at a high shelf.

I looked up in some amazement. There seemed to be several dozen bound volumes on that shelf. I'd cleaned and dusted and polished the room from floor to ceiling a dozen times or more, and I'd have taken an oath that the shelf hadn't been there the last time I looked. I covered my confusion by asking, ‘Which one, Master?' Notice that I'd even begun to pick up some semblance of good manners?

‘Whichever one falls most easily to hand,' he replied indifferently.

I selected a book at random and took it to him.

‘Seat thyself, boy,' he told me. ‘I shall give thee instruction.'

I knew nothing whatsoever about reading, so it didn't seem particularly odd to me that under his gentle tutelage I was a competent reader within the space of an hour. Either I was an extremely gifted student - which seems highly unlikely - or he was the greatest teacher who ever lived.

From that hour on I became a voracious reader. I devoured his bookshelf from one end to another. Then, somewhat regretfully, I went back to the first book again, only to discover that I'd never seen it before. I read and read and read, and every page was new to me. I read my way through that bookshelf a dozen times over, and it was always fresh and new. That reading opened the world of the mind to me, and I found it much to my liking.

My new-found obsession gave my Master some peace, at least, and he seemed to look approvingly at me as I sat late into those long, snowy, winter nights reading texts in languages I could not have spoken, but which I nonetheless clearly understood when they seemed to leap out at me from off the page. I also noticed - dimly, for, as I think I've already mentioned, my curiosity seemed somehow to have been blunted - that when I was reading, my Master tended to have no chores for me, at least not at first. The conflict between reading and chores came later. And so we passed the winter in that world of the mind, and with few exceptions, I've probably never been so happy.

I'm sure it was the books that kept me there the following spring and summer. As I'd suspected they might, the onset of warm days and nights stirred my Master's creativity. He found all manner of things for me to do outside - mostly unpleasant and involving a great deal of effort and sweat. I do
not
enjoy cutting down trees, for example - particularly not with an axe. I broke that axe-handle eight times that summer - quite deliberately, I'll admit - and it miraculously healed itself overnight. I
hated
that cursed, indestructible axe!

But strangely enough, it wasn't the sweating and grunting I resented, but the time I wasted whacking at unyielding trees which I could more profitably have spent trying to read my way through that inexhaustible bookshelf. Every page opened new wonders for me, and I groaned audibly each time my Master suggested that it was time for me and my axe to go out and entertain each other again.

And, almost before I had turned around twice, winter came again. I had better luck with my broom than I had with my axe. After all, you can only pile so much dust in a corner before you start becoming obvious about it, and my Master was never obvious. I continued to read my way again and again along the bookshelf and was probably made better by it, although my Master, guided by some obscure, sadistic instinct, always seemed to know exactly when an interruption would be most unwelcome. He inevitably selected that precise moment to suggest sweeping or washing dishes or fetching firewood.

Sometimes he would stop what he was doing to watch my labors, a bemused expression on his face. Then he would sigh and return to the things he did which I did not understand.

The seasons turned, marching in their stately, ordered progression as I labored with my books and with the endless and increasingly difficult tasks my Master set me. I grew bad-tempered and sullen, but never once did I even think about running away.

Then, perhaps three - or more likely it was five - years after I had come to the tower to begin my servitude, I was struggling one early winter day to move a large rock which my Master had stepped around since my first summer with him, but which he now found inconvenient for some reason. The rock, as I say, was quite large, and it was white, and it was very, very heavy. It would not move, though I heaved and pushed and strained until I thought my limbs would crack. Finally, in a fury, I concentrated my strength and all my will upon the boulder and grunted one single word. ‘Move!' I said.

And it moved! Not grudgingly with its huge inert weight sullenly resisting my strength, but quite easily, as if the touch of one finger would be sufficient to send it bounding across the vale.

‘Well, boy,' my Master said, startling me by his nearness, ‘I had wondered how long it might be ere this day arrived.'

‘Master,' I said, very confused, ‘what happened? How did the great rock move so easily?'

‘It moved at thy command, boy. Thou art a man, and it is only a rock.' Where had I heard
that
before?

‘May other things be done so, Master?' I asked, thinking of all the hours I'd wasted on meaningless tasks.

‘
All
things may be done so, boy. Put but thy Will to that which thou wouldst accomplish and speak the Word. It shall come to pass even as thou wouldst have it. Much have I marveled, boy, at thine insistence upon doing all things with thy back instead of thy will. I had begun to fear for thee, thinking that perhaps thou wert defective.'

Suddenly, all the things I had ignored or shrugged off or been too incurious even to worry about fell into place. My Master had indeed been creating things for me to do, hoping that I would eventually learn this secret. I walked over to the rock and laid my hands on it again. ‘Move,' I commanded, bringing my Will to bear on it, and the rock moved as easily as before.

‘Does it make thee more comfortable touching the rock
when thou wouldst move it, boy?' my Master asked, a note of curiosity in his voice.

The question stunned me. I hadn't even considered
that
possibility. I looked at the rock. ‘Move,' I said tentatively.

‘Thou must command, boy, not entreat.'

‘Move!' I roared, and the rock heaved and rolled off with nothing but my Will and the Word to make it do so.

‘Much better, boy. Perhaps there is hope for thee yet.'

Then I remembered something. Notice how quickly I pick up on these things? I'd been moving the rock which formed the door to the tower with only my voice for some five years now. ‘You knew all along that I could do this, didn't you, Master? There isn't really all that much difference between this rock and the one that closes the tower door, is there?'

He smiled gently. ‘Most perceptive, boy,' he complimented me. I was getting a little tired of that ‘boy.'

‘Why didn't you just tell me?' I asked accusingly.

‘I had need to know if thou wouldst discover it for thyself, boy.'

‘And all these chores and tasks you've put me through for all these years were nothing more than an excuse to force me to discover it, weren't they?'

‘Of course,' he replied in an off-hand sort of way. ‘What is thy name, boy?'

‘Garath,' I told him, and suddenly realized that he'd never asked me before.

‘An unseemly name, boy. Far too abrupt and commonplace for one of thy talent. I shall call thee Belgarath.'

‘As it please thee, Master.' I'd never ‘thee'd' or ‘thou'd' him before, and I held my breath for fear that he might be displeased, but he showed no sign that he had noticed. Then, made bold by my success, I went further. ‘And how may I call
thee
, Master?' I asked.

‘I am called Aldur,' he replied, smiling.

I'd heard the name before, of course, so I immediately fell on my face before him.

‘Art thou ill, Belgarath?'

‘Oh, great and most powerful God,' I said, trembling, ‘forgive mine ignorance. I should have known thee at once.'

‘Don't do that!' he said irritably. ‘I require no obeisance. I am not my brother, Torak. Rise to thy feet, Belgarath. Stand up, boy. Thine action is unseemly.'

I scrambled up fearfully and clenched myself for the sudden shock of lightning. Gods, as all men knew, could destroy at their whim those who displeased them. That was a quaint notion of the time. I've met a few Gods since then, and I know better now. In many respects, they're even more circumscribed than we are.

‘And what dost thou propose to do with thy life now, Belgarath?' he asked. That was my Master for you. He always asked questions that stretched out endlessly before me.

‘I would stay and serve thee, Master,' I said, as humbly as I could.

‘I require no service,' he said. ‘These past few years have been for
thy
benefit. In truth, Belgarath, what canst
thou
do for
me
?'

That
was a deflating sort of thing to say - true, probably, but deflating all the same. ‘May I not stay and worship thee, Master?' I pleaded. At that time I'd never met a God before, so I was uncertain about the proprieties. All I knew was that I would die if he sent me away.

He shrugged. You can cut a man's heart out with a shrug, did you know that? ‘I do not require thy worship either, Belgarath,' he said indifferently.

‘May I not stay, Master?' I pleaded with actual tears standing in my eyes. He was breaking my heart! - quite deliberately, of course. ‘I would be thy disciple and learn from thee.'

‘The desire to learn does thee credit,' he said, ‘but it will not be easy, Belgarath.'

‘I am quick to learn, Master,' I boasted, glossing over the fact that it had taken me five years to learn his first lesson.
‘I shall make thee proud of me.' I actually meant that.

And then he laughed, and my heart soared, even as it had when that old vagabond in the rickety cart had laughed. I had a few suspicions at that point. ‘Very well, then, Belgarath,' he relented. ‘I shall accept thee as my pupil.'

‘And thy disciple also, Master?'

‘That we will see in the fullness of time, Belgarath.'

And then, because I was still very young and much impressed with my recent accomplishment, I turned to a winter-dried bush and spoke to it fervently. ‘Bloom,' I said, and the bush quite suddenly produced a single flower. It wasn't much of a flower, I'll admit, but it was the best that I could do at the time. I was still fairly new at this. I plucked it and offered it to him. ‘For thee, Master,' I said, ‘because I love thee.' I don't believe I'd ever used the word ‘love' before, and it's become the center of my whole life. Isn't it odd how we make these simple little discoveries?