Belgarath the Sorcerer (69 page)

That gave me an idea. ‘I think you've just solved a problem for me, Rhodar.'

‘Oh?'

‘I need to have a look around over there in Gar og Nadrak, and I'd like to be sort of inconspicuous. The Nadraks are probably used to seeing foreigners up in those mountains, so I think I'll get a pick and shovel and go looking for gold.'

‘That's very tedious work, Belgarath.'

‘Not the way I'm going to do it.'

‘I didn't quite follow that.'

‘I'm not really all that interested in gold. All I'm going to do is wander around asking questions. The tools will explain why I'm there.'

‘Have fun,' he said. ‘Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a city to build.'

I bought some tools and a pack mule and set out across the moors toward the Nadrak border. It was early summer
by now, and the usually dreary Drasnian moors were all abloom, so travel was actually pleasant.

The Angaraks had been so soundly defeated at Vo Mimbre that their societies had virtually disintegrated, so there weren't any guards at the border crossing. I was fairly sure that I was being watched, but my pack mule with all those tools on his back explained my presence, so the Nadraks let me pass without any interference.

I followed the North Caravan Route, and the first town I came to was Yar Gurak, which isn't really a town, but more in the nature of a mining camp. It squats on either side of a muddy creek, and most of the buildings are slap-dash affairs, half log and half canvas tenting. I've passed through it several times in the past five centuries, and it hasn't really changed very much. Silk goes there quite often, and he and Garion and I passed through on our way to Cthol Mishrak for Garion's meeting with Torak. Nobody really lives in Yar Gurak for any extended period of time, so they aren't civic-minded enough to bother with the building of more permanent structures. I set up my tent at the far end of a muddy street and without very much effort I blended into the population. The mining camps in the mountains of Gar og Nadrak are very cosmopolitan, and it's considered bad manners to ask personal questions.

There were certain frictions, of course. We
had
just come through a war, after all, but aside from a few tavern-brawls, things were relatively peaceful. The people living in Yar Gurak were looking for gold, not for fights. After I'd been there for a few days and my face had become fairly well-known, I began to frequent the large tavern which was the center of what passed for social life in Yar Gurak. I passed myself off as a Sendar, since Sendars are so racially mixed that my peculiar background and slightly alien features didn't attract much attention.

While there were a fair number of solitary gold-hunters operating out of Yar Gurak, it was far more common for the adventurers living there to set out for the mountains in
twos and threes. There weren't any laws in that part of the world, and it was safer to have friends around - just in case you happened to be lucky enough actually to find gold. There are always people around who feel that stealing is easier than digging.

I struck up an acquaintanceship with a bluff, good-natured Nadrak named Rablek. Rablek had returned to Yar Gurak for supplies, and he lingered a while for beer and companionship. He'd been in partnership with a Tolnedran the previous year, but he and his friend had strayed up into Morindland and a passing band of Morinds had rather casually removed his partner's head. After we'd gotten to know each other, he finally made the offer I'd been waiting for. We were sitting in the tavern drinking that rather fruity-tasting Nadrak beer, and he looked across the table at me. He was a rangy fellow with coarse black hair and a scruffy-looking beard. ‘You seem like a sensible sort of fellow, Garath,' he said. ‘What would you say to the notion that we team up and go out looking for gold together?'

Notice that I'd reverted to my original name. I've done that from time to time. Assumed names can be awkward, particularly if you forget which one you're using. I squinted at him. ‘Do you snore?' I asked him.

‘Can't say for sure. I'm usually asleep when that's supposed to happen. I've never had any complaints, though.'

‘We could give it a try, I suppose,' I said. ‘If it turns out that we can't get along, we can always break off the partnership and go our separate ways.'

‘Are you any good in a fight? I'm not trying to pry, understand, but sometimes we might need to defend whatever we find out there.'

‘I can usually handle my own end of a fight.'

‘That's good enough for me. Equal shares?'

‘Naturally.'

‘That's it, then. I'm willing to give it a try if you are. I'll come by your tent tomorrow morning, and we can get
out of this place. I've just about satisfied my hunger for civilization.'

I'd picked up a few hints about Rablek during the course of our conversations. He'd been pressed into military service during the recent war, and he'd been one of the few Nadraks to escape the carnage at Vo Mimbre. He had opinions, and he wasn't the sort to keep them to himself. After we'd been in the mountains for a few days, he started to open up, and I picked up a great deal of information about him - and about other Nadraks as well. He assured me that all Nadraks despised Murgos, for one thing, and that they felt much the same way about Malloreans. Rablek habitually spat every time he mentioned the name of Kal Torak. Though my partner didn't come right out and say it in so many words, I got the impression that he'd had some disagreements with Grolims in the past, and Rablek was quick with his knife when somebody irritated him. Ctuchik might have thoroughly cowed the Murgos and Thulls, but his Grolims had at best an only tenuous hold on the Nadraks. From what Rablek told me, I could see that it really wouldn't pay a Grolim to go anywhere in Gar og Nadrak by himself. Rablek suggested that all sorts of accidents had a way of happening to lone Grolims in the forests and mountains of that northernmost Angarak kingdom.

The more I talked with Rablek, the more I came to understand that curious passage in the Darine Codex. Angarak society was not nearly as monolithic as it appeared to be, and if anybody was going to break away, it was almost certain to be the Nadraks.

And then, if you can believe it, we found gold! We were up at the northern end of the mountains, not far from that indeterminate boundary of Morindland, and we were following a turbulent mountain stream that boiled and tumbled over large boulders and formed deep swirling pools of frothy green water. It was at that point that I discovered a hitherto unrealized aspect of what my
brothers and I routinely refer to as ‘talent.' I could
feel
the presence of gold!

I looked around. It was there; I knew it was there. ‘It looks to be coming on toward evening,' I said to my partner. ‘Why don't we set up camp here and rinse out a few shovelfuls of gravel before it gets dark?'

Rablek looked around. ‘It doesn't look all that promising to me,' he said.

‘We'll never know for sure until we try it.'

He shrugged. ‘Why not?'

I let
him
find the first few nuggets. I didn't want to give away
too
much, after all. What we'd found were some fairly extensive deposits of free gold the stream had carried down from farther up in the mountains and deposited in those pools of relatively calm water.

We made a fortune there. It's one of the few times in my life I've ever actually been rich. We settled in and built a crude shack, and we worked that merry little creek from one end to the other. Winter came, but we didn't move. We couldn't do much work during that season, but we weren't about to go off and leave our diggings. We got snowed in, naturally, and Rablek opened up more and more during those long months. I picked up a great deal of information from him during that winter, and the gold was in the nature of a bonus.

Then spring came, and with it came a band of marauding Morindim. We'd put out the usual pestilence markers and curse-markers as a precaution, but this particular band had a young apprentice magician with them, and he knew enough about his trade to neutralize our markers.

‘This isn't turning out very well, Garath,' Rablek said somberly, staring out through a crack in the wall of our cabin at the twenty or so fur-clad Morindim advancing on us. ‘We're going to have those savages inside here with us before long.'

We both had bows, of course, but a winter of hunting deer had severely depleted our supply of arrows.

I started to swear. ‘How broad-minded are you feeling, Rablek?' I asked.

‘Not so much so that I'm ready to welcome twenty Morind house-guests.'

‘I think I'd draw the line there myself. I'm going to do something a little out of the ordinary. Don't get excited.'

‘If you can come up with a way to run those animals off, I think I'll be able to control myself.'

I didn't have time to explain, and there was no way I could hide what I was doing from my partner. I carefully formed the image of a medium-sized demon in my mind and crammed myself into it.

Rablek jumped back, his eyes bulging.

‘Stay here!' I growled at him in that soul-chilling voice of the demon. ‘Don't come outside, and you'd better not watch. This is going to get worse.' Then I crashed out through our crude door to face the advancing Morindim.

As I think I've indicated, the Morind magician was an inexperienced and callow youth. He might have been able to raise an imp the size of a mouse, but anything beyond that was far beyond his capability. Just to add to his chagrin, I expanded the image in which I was encased until I had the appearance of a full-grown Demon-Lord.

The Morindim fled, screaming in terror. The magician, I noticed, led the flight. He was young, and he ran very fast.

Then I resumed my own form and returned to the shack.

‘Just who
are
you, Garath?' Rablek demanded in a trembling voice as I came through the splinters of our door.

‘I'm your partner, Rablek. That's all you really need to know, isn't it? You and I came up here to get rich. Why don't we get at that before we lose any more daylight?'

He started to shake violently. ‘Where's my mind been for all these months? I should have recognized the name. You're not just Garath. You're Belgarath, aren't you?'

‘It's no great thing, partner,' I tried to calm him. ‘It's only a name, after all, and I haven't done anything to harm
you
, have I?'

‘Well - not yet, I guess.' He didn't sound very convinced. ‘I've heard a lot of stories about you, though.'

‘I can imagine. Most of them are just Grolim propaganda, partner. I've had occasion to disrupt Grolim schemes now and then in the past, and they've had to invent some very wild stories to explain their failures.'

‘Are you really as old as they say you are?'

‘Probably older.'

‘What are you doing in Gar og Nadrak?'

I grinned at him. ‘Getting rich, I hope. Isn't that why we're both out here in this wilderness?'

‘You've got that part right.'

‘We're still partners then?'

‘I wouldn't have it any other way, Belgarath. Did you just conjure up all this gold we've been finding?'

‘No. It's a natural deposit of real gold, and it's just lying there waiting for us to pick it up.'

He grinned back at me. ‘Well, then, partner, why don't we get back to picking?'

‘Why don't we?' I agreed.

There's a kind of irresistible lure about gold - and I'm not just talking about the red-tinted gold of Angarak which the Grolims use to buy the souls of men like the Earl of Jarvik. By midsummer, Rablek and I had accumulated more gold than our horses could carry, but we still lingered beside that tumbling mountain stream ‘for just one more day.'

I finally managed to clamp a lid on my own hunger for more, but it took me another week to persuade my partner that it was time to leave. ‘Be reasonable, Rablek,' I told him. ‘You've already got more gold than you can possibly spend in a lifetime, and if you're really all
that
desperate, you know how to find this place again. You can come back and dig up more, if you really want to.'

‘I just hate to leave any behind,' he replied.

‘It's not going to go anyplace, Rablek. It'll be here forever, if you happen to need it.'

I know that it sounds unnatural, but I liked my Nadrak partner. He was a bit crude and rough-hewn, but I'm no angel myself, so we got along well together. He wasn't afraid of work, and when the sun went down and we'd laid aside our tools, he could talk for hours, and I didn't mind listening. He'd been a little wild-eyed and standoffish after our encounter with the Morindim, but he got over that, and the pair of us went back to just being a couple of fellows out to make our fortunes. We both forgot about the fact that we were supposed to be natural enemies and concentrated instead on getting rich.

Anyway, we tore down our shack, concealed the traces of our diggings as best we could, and started back to Yar Gurak. ‘What do you plan to do with all your money?' I
asked my partner on the night before we reached the shabby mining camp.

‘I think I'll go into the fur trade,' he replied. ‘There's a lot of money to be made there.'

‘You've already got a lot of money.'

‘Money doesn't mean very much unless you put it to work for you, Belgarath. I'm not the sort to just lay around getting fat, and I know some fur traders who double their money every year or two.'

‘If you've already got more than you can spend, why bother?'

‘It's the game, Belgarath,' he said with a shrug. ‘Money's just a way of keeping score. I'm going into the fur trade for the sake of the game, not for the money.'

That opened my eyes and gave me a profound insight into the Nadrak character. At last I understood why Nadraks dislike Murgos so much.

 

Never mind. It's much too complicated to explain.

 

Rablek and I parted company on the outskirts of Yar Gurak. I saw no real reason to go back into that ugly place. Moreover, I had a great deal of gold in my pack-saddle, and I didn't want any curious people rifling through it while I was asleep.

‘It was fun, wasn't it, Belgarath?' Rablek said just a bit wistfully as we were saddling our horses.

‘That it was, my friend.'

‘If you ever get bored, look me up. The mountains'll always be there, and I can be ready to go again any time you say the word.'

‘Be well, Rablek,' I said, clasping his hand warmly.

The Nadrak border was still unguarded, and I entered Drasnia with a certain sense of relief. I was a bit surprised to discover that my sudden riches had made me nervous and apprehensive. What a peculiar thing! When I was no more than a poor vagabond, I'd been willing to go any
where without a second thought. Now that I was rich, my whole attitude had changed.

I rode on down through Algaria at the tag end of the summer of the year 4881, and I reached the Vale just as autumn was turning all the leaves golden. The color suited my mood and reflected the cargo in my pack-saddle. Rablek and I had put the fruits of our labors into stout canvas bags, and I had forty of those bags. It took me hours to carry them all up into my tower.

The next day I built a makeshift kind of forge and cast my gold into bars. Forty bags of gold sounds like a lot, but gold's so heavy that the bars weren't really all that big, and when I'd stacked them all in one corner, the pile was disappointingly small. I sat looking at it, idly wondering if I could catch up with Rablek before he left Yar Gurak. There was still a lot of gold left in our creek up there near the border of Morindland, after all.

 

Well, of
course
I was greedy. I've told you about the kind of person I was before I entered my Master's service, and some things never change. I've thought about that a lot over the years. Every so often, I get a powerful urge to return to that nameless little stream. Then, however, usually in the cold grey light of morning, rationality rears its ugly head. What on earth does a man in my situation need with money? If I really want something, I can usually get it somehow, or I can magic it up, and in the long run, that'd be much easier than digging gold out of the ground. But gold's so pretty to look at, and so exciting when you find it.

Over the years, I've spent a few bars of my horde, but not very many. Most of it's still around here - someplace.

Excuse me a moment. I think I'll root around and see if I can find it.

 

About a year after I'd returned from Gar og Nadrak, Pol sent word to me that Gelane's wife, Enalla, had finally given
birth to a son. They'd been married for about twenty years at that point, and Gelane was approaching his fortieth birthday. Enalla's childlessness had caused all of us quite a bit of concern. In the light of the significance of that particular family, I'm sure you can see why. Considering the forces at work, we probably shouldn't have worried, but we did all the same. I journeyed on up to Cherek to have a look at my new grandson, and I found that he looked very much as his father had as a baby - another indication of those forces I just mentioned.

I'm sure you noticed that in my own mind I'd long since discarded all those tedious ‘great-great's. To me, that long string of sandy-haired little boys were simply grandsons. I loved them all in just about the same way.

Polgara, however, loved each of them a bit differently, some more, some less. For any number of reasons, she was particularly close to Gelane, and she was devastated when he was killed in an accident in the year 4902, exactly nine hundred years after the murder of King Gorek. The twins felt the date to be highly significant, and they tore the Mrin apart trying to find something hinting at what it meant. Garion's silent friend, however, had remained just that - silent.

I don't think any of us fully realized just how much Polgara had suffered during those seemingly endless centuries and losses. My primary concern had been with the line, not the individuals. My relationship with those heirs had been sketchy at best, and their passings hadn't really touched me all that much. I could be fairly philosophical about it. I'd grown used to the fact that people are born, they grow up, and then they die. Everybody loses a few family members if he lives long enough, but Pol's situation was unique. She'd been intimately involved with all those little boys, and she'd lost them by the score in the course of those nine centuries; grief's not something you're
ever
going to get used to.

I went back to Cherek after Gelane died and took a long,
hard look at his son. Then I sighed and went away. He wasn't the one we'd been waiting for.

The years continued their stately, ordered procession, and things were quiet in the west for a change. That disastrous defeat at Vo Mimbre had subdued the Angaraks, and they largely left us alone. Chamdar was still lurking around somewhere, but he wasn't making enough noise to attract my attention, and I was fairly certain that he wasn't going to appear in Cherek to give Polgara any problems. Chereks are, almost by definition, the most primitive, archetypal Alorns. Drasnians have established a somewhat wary relationship with the Nadraks, and Algars can tolerate the Thulls, but Chereks steadfastly maintain a stiff-necked racial prejudice against
all
Angaraks. I've occasionally tried to explain to any number of Chereks why prejudice isn't particularly commendable, but I don't believe I've ever gotten through to any of them, largely because I think that Belar got to them first. Don't get me wrong here, I
liked
Belar, but, ye Gods, he was stubborn! I sometimes think that the Cherek hatred of all Angaraks is divinely inspired. It suited our purposes during those years, however, since it most definitely kept Chamdar away from Polgara.

The Third Borune Dynasty went on and on; that, all by itself, strongly hinted that something important was in the wind. The Mrin was fairly specific about the fact that the Godslayer's wife was going to be a Borune princess.

Things had begun to deteriorate in Arendia. The peace we'd imposed on Asturia and Mimbre by marrying Mayaserana to Korodullin began to come apart at the seams, largely, I think, because the Mimbrates refused to recognize the titles of the Asturian nobility. That offended the hotheaded Asturians, and there were any number of ugly incidents during the fiftieth century.

Prosperity returned to Sendaria when the yearly Algar cattle-drives to Muros resumed. The limited trade on the Isle of the Winds was re-established, but foreign merchants were still not allowed inside the city of Riva. The Ulgos
didn't change at all, but Ulgos never do. The Tolnedran merchant princes in Tol Honeth had looked upon the Ulgo participation in the war against Kal Torak as a good sign, hoping that the Ulgos might loosen some of their restrictions on trade. The Ulgos, however, went back to Prolgu, descended into their caves, and slammed the door behind them.

The Nyissans grew increasingly sulky, since their economy was largely based on the slave trade, and when there are no battles, there aren't any new slaves. Nyissans
always
pout during an extended period of peace.

Korzeth had completed the reunification of Mallorea - sort of. He delivered a nominally unified empire to his son, but the actual business of welding Mallorea together was accomplished by the Melcene bureaucracy and its policy of including
all
the subject people in the government.

Kell, like Ulgoland, didn't change.

Since nothing was really going on, I had the chance to return to my studies, and I rediscovered something that's always aggravated me. It takes a considerable amount of time to reactivate your brain after you've been away from your studies for a while. Study is a very intensive activity, and if you lay it aside for a bit, you have to learn how all over again. I know that it's going to happen every time, and that's why I get irritable when something comes up that drags me away from what is, after all, my primary occupation. The long period of relative peace and tranquility gave me about three hundred and fifty years of uninterrupted study time, and I accomplished quite a bit.

 

Did you really want me to break off at this point to give you an extended lecture on number theory or the principles of literary criticism?

I didn't really think you would, so why don't we just lay those things aside and press on with this great work that we are in?

 

I think it was sometime in the middle of the fifty-third century - 5249 or 5250 - when I completed something I'd been working on for twenty years or so and decided that it might not be a bad idea for me to go out and have a look around. I slipped down into Cthol Murgos and looked in on Ctuchik.

That's all I did - just look. He appeared to be busy with his assorted amusements - some obscene, and some merely disgusting - so I didn't bother him.

Then I went on south from Rak Cthol to see if I could locate the cave where Zedar was keeping his comatose Master. I didn't have much trouble finding it, because Beldin was sitting on top of a ridge just across the rocky gorge from it. It didn't look as if he'd moved for several decades. ‘Did you kill Ctuchik yet?' he asked me after I'd shed my feathers.

‘Beldin,' I said in a pained tone of voice, ‘why is that always your first answer to any problem?'

‘I'm a simple man, Belgarath,' he replied, reaching out his gnarled hand with surprising swiftness, snatching up an unwary lizard, and eating it alive. ‘Killing things is always the simplest answer to problems.'

‘Just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's the best way,' I told him. ‘No, as a matter of fact, I didn't kill Ctuchik. The twins have been getting some hints out of the Mrin that we'll need him later, and I'm not going to do anything to get in the way of things that have to happen.' I looked across the gorge. ‘Is Zedar still in that cave with One-eye?'

‘No. He left a few years back.'

‘Why are you setting down roots here, then?'

‘Because it's altogether possible that Torak'll be the first to know when the Godslayer arrives. That might be all the warning we'll get when things start coming to a head. I'll let you know when the side of that mountain over there blows out.'

‘Have you any idea of where Zedar went?'

‘I can't do
everything
, Belgarath. I'll watch Torak; Zedar's
your
problem. What have you been up to lately?'

‘I proved that three and three make six,' I replied proudly.

‘
That
took you three centuries? I could have proved that with a handful of dried beans.'

‘But not mathematically, Beldin. Empirical evidence doesn't really prove anything, because the investigator might be crazy. Certainty exists only in pure mathematics.'

‘And if you accidentally turn your equation upside down, will that make all of us suddenly fly off the face of the earth?'

‘Probably not.'

‘Forgive me, brother, but I'd much rather trust empirical evidence. I might be a little crazy now and then, but I've
seen
some of the answers you come up with when you try to add up a column of figures.'

I shrugged. ‘Nobody's perfect.' I moved around to the upwind side of him. ‘How long's it been since you've had a bath?'