I still wasn't too happy about this trip, and I placed the blame for it squarely on the shoulders of my traveling companions. I ran those four to the verge of exhaustion day after day. I'd resume my own form every evening, and I usually had enough time to get a fire going and supper started before they came wheezing and staggering into camp.
"We're in a hurry," I'd remind them somewhat maliciously.
"We've got a long way to go to reach this bridge of yours, and we want to get there before the ice starts to break up, don't we?"
We continued in a northeasterly direction across the snow-covered plains of what's now Algaria until we hit the eastern escarpment. I had no intention of climbing that mile-high cliff, so I turned slightly and led my puffing companions due north onto the moors of present-day eastern Drasnia. Then we cut across the mountains to that vast emptiness where the Morindim live.
My spiteful efforts to run Cherek and his sons into the ground every day accomplished two things. We reached Morindland in less than a month, and my Alorn friends were in peak condition when we got there. You try running as fast as you can all day every day for a month and see what it does to you. Assuming that you don't collapse and die in the first day or so, you'll be in very good shape before the month is out. If there was any fat left on my friends by the time we'd reached Morindland, it was under their fingernails. As it turned out, that was very useful.
When we came down out of the north range of mountains that marks the southern boundaries of Morindland, I resumed my own form and called a halt. It was the dead of winter, and the vast arctic plain where the Morindim lived was covered with snow and darkness. The long northern night had set in, although as luck had it, we had reached Morindland early enough in the lunar month that a half-moon hung low over the southern horizon, providing sufficient light to make travel possible-unpleasant, but possible.
"I don't know that we need to go out there," I told my fur-clad friends, gesturing at the frozen plain.
"There's not much point in holding extended conversations with every band of Morindim we come across, is there?"
"Not really," Cherek agreed, making a face.
"I don't care that much for the Morindim. They spend weeks talking about their dreams, and we don't really have time for that."
"When Algar and I were coming back from the land bridge, we stuck to these foothills," Riva told us.
"The Morindim don't like hills, so we didn't see very many of them."
"That's probably the best way to do it," I agreed.
"I could deal with an occasional band of them if I had to, but it'd just be a waste of time. Do you know how to make curse-markers? And dream-markers?"
Iron-grip nodded gravely.
"A combination of those two would sort of make them keep their distance, wouldn't it?"
"I don't understand," Dras rumbled with a puzzled look.
"You would if you'd come out of the taverns in Val Alorn once in a while," Algar suggested to him.
"I'm the eldest," Bull-neck replied a bit defensively.
"I have responsibilities."
"Of course you do," Riva said sardonically.
"Let's see if I can explain it. The Morindim live in a different kind of world--and I'm not just talking about all this snow. Dreams are more important to them than the real world, and curses are very significant. Belgarath just suggested that we carry a dream-marker to let the Morindim know that we're obeying a command that came to us in a dream. We'll also carry a curse-marker that'll tell them that anybody who interferes with us will have to deal with our demon."
"There's no such thing as a demon," Dras scoffed.
"Don't get your mind set in stone on that, Dras," I warned him.
"Have you ever seen one?"
"I've raised them, Dras. Aldur sent me up here to learn what I could about these people. I apprenticed myself to one of their magicians and learned all the tricks. Riva's got it fairly close. If we carry dream-markers and curse-markers, the Morindim will avoid us."
"Pestilence-markers?" Algar suggested. Algar never used more words than he absolutely had to. I've never fully understood what he was saving them for.
I considered it.
"No," I decided.
"Sometimes the Morindim feel that the best way to deal with pestilence is to stand off and shoot the infected people full of arrows."
"Inconvenient," Algar murmured.
"We won't encounter very many Morindim this far south anyway," I told them, "and the markers should make them keep their distance."
As it turned out, I was wrong on that score. Riva and I fashioned the markers, and we set out toward the east, staying well up in the foothills.
We hadn't traveled for more than two days--nights, actually, since that was when the moon was out--when suddenly there were Morindim all around us. The markers kept them away, but it was only a matter of time until some magician would come along to take up the challenge. I didn't sleep very much during the course of our journey along those foothills. The north range is riddled with caves, and I'd hide the Alorns in one of them and then go out to scout around. I very nearly froze my paws off. Lord, it was cold up there!
It wasn't too long until I started coming across counter-markers. For every curse, there's a counter-curse, and the presence of those counter-markers told me louder than words that magicians were starting to converge on us. This was puzzling, because Morind magicians are all insanely jealous of each other and they almost never cooperate. Since the magicians control all aspects of the lives of their assorted clans, a gathering such as we were seeing was a virtual impossibility.
The moon, of course, ignored us and continued her inevitable course, waxing fuller and fuller every night until she reached that monthly fulfillment of hers. Cherek and his sons couldn't understand why the moon kept coming up even though the sun didn't. I tried to explain it to them, but when I got to the part about the real orbit of the moon and the apparent orbit of the sun, I lost them. Finally I just told them,
"They follow different paths," and let it go at that. All they really had to know was that the moon would be in the arctic sky for about two weeks out of every month during the winter. Anything more would have just confused them. To be honest about it, I'd have been just as happy if the sun's baby sister had dropped below the horizon before her pregnancy started to show. Once she became full, it was as bright as day up there. A full moon over a snow-covered landscape really puts out a lot of light, and that was terribly inconvenient. I suppose that was what the Morindim had been waiting for.
I'd hidden Cherek and the boys in a cave just before moon-set, as usual, and then I went out to scout around. No more than a mile to the east of the cave, I saw Morindim--thousands of them.
I dropped to my haunches and started to swear--no mean trick for a wolf. The unnatural gathering of what appeared to be every clan in Morindland had completely blocked us off. We were in deep trouble.
When I finished swearing, I turned, loped back to the cave where the Alorns were sleeping, and resumed my own form.
"You'd better wake up," I told them.
"What's the matter?" Cherek asked, throwing off his fur robe.
"All of Morindim is stretched across our path no more than a mile from here."
"They don't do that," Riva protested.
"The clans never gather together in the same place."
"Evidently the rules have changed."
"What are we going to do?" Dras demanded.
"Could we slip around them?" Cherek asked.
"Not hardly," I told him.
"They're stretched out for miles."
"What are we going to do?" Dras said again. Dras tended to repeat himself when he got excited.
"I'm working on it." I started thinking very fast. One thing was certain.
Somebody was tampering with the Morindim. Riva was right; the clans never cooperated with each other. Someone had found a way to change that, and I didn't think it was a Morind who'd done it. I cudge
led my brain, but I couldn't come up with any way to get out of this. Each of the clans had a magician, and each magician had a pet demon. When the moon rose again, I was very likely to be up to my ears in creatures who normally lived in Hell. I was definitely going to need some help.
I have no idea of where the notion came from-Let me correct that. Now that I think about it, I do know where it came from.
"Are you in there?" I asked silently.
"Of course."
"I've got a problem here."
"Yes, probably so."
"What do I do?"
"I'm not permitted to tell you."
"That didn't seem to bother you back in the Vale."
"That was different. Think, Belgarath. You know the Morindim, and you know how hard it is to control one of their demons. The magician has to concentrate very hard to keep his demon from turning on him. What does that suggest to you?"
"I do something to break their concentration?"
"Is that a question? If it is, I'm not allowed to answer."
"All right, it's not a question. What do you think of the idea--just speculatively? Do your rules allow you to tell me if an idea is a bad one?"
"Just speculatively? I think that's allowed."
"It'll make things a little awkward, but I think we can work around it."
I suggested any number of possible solutions, and that silent voice inside my head rejected them one after another. I started to grow more and more exotic at that point. To my horror, that bodiless voice seemed to think that my most outrageous and dangerous notion had some possibilities.
You should always try to curb your creativity in situations like that.
"Are you mad?" Riva exclaimed when I told the Alorns what I had in mind.
"Let's all hope not," I told him.
"There isn't any other way out, I'm afraid. I'm going to have to do it this way--unless we want to turn around and go home, and I don't think that's permitted."
"When are you going to do this?" Cherek asked me.
"Just as soon as the moon comes up again. I want to pick the time, I don't want some tattooed magician out there picking it for me."
"Why wait?" Dras demanded.
"Why not do it now?"
"Because I'll need light to draw the symbols in the snow. I definitely don't want to leave anything out. Try to get some sleep. It might be quite a while before we get the chance again." Then I went back outside to keep watch.
It was a nervous night--day, actually, since your days and nights get turned around during the arctic winter. When I'd suggested the plan to that voice of Necessity that seemed to have taken up residence inside my head for a time, I'd been grasping at straws, since I wasn't really sure I could pull it off. Worrying isn't a good way to spend any extended period of time.
When I judged that the moon was about ready to come up, I went back into the cave and woke up my friends.
"I don't want you standing too close to me," I advised them.
"There's no point in all of us getting killed."
"I thought you knew what you were doing!" Dras objected. Dras was an excitable sort of fellow despite his size, and his normally deep voice sounded a little squeaky.
"In theory, yes," I told him, "but I've never tried it before, so things could go wrong. I'll have to wait until the magicians raise their demons before I do anything, so it might be sort of touch-and-go for a while. Just be ready to run. Let's go."
We came out of the cave, and I looked off toward the east. The pale glow along the horizon told me that it was very close to moon-rise, so we struck off in that direction, moving steadily toward the waiting Morindim.
We topped a rise just as they were waking up. It's an eerie thing to watch Morindim getting up in the winter. It resembles nothing quite so much as a suddenly animated graveyard, since they customarily bury themselves in snow before they go to sleep. The snow's cold, of course, but the outside air is much colder. It's a chilling thing to see them rising up out of the snow like men climbing up out of their graves.
The magicians probably hadn't gotten any more sleep than I had.
They had their own preparations to make. Each of them had stamped out the symbols in the snow and taken up positions inside those protective designs. They were already muttering the incantations when we came over the hill. And let me tell you, those Morind magicians are very careful not to speak too clearly when summoning demons. Those incantations are what you might call trade secrets, and the magicians guard them very jealously.
I decided that the hilltop was probably as good a place as any to make my stand, so I trampled my own design into the snow and stepped inside.
It was about then that several of the tribesmen in the valley below saw us, and there was a lot of pointing and shouting. Then the magicians began hurling challenges at me. That's a customary thing among primitive people. They spend more time boasting and threatening each other than they do actually fighting. I didn't waste my breath shouting back.
Then the demons started to appear. They were of varying sizes, depending on the skills of the magicians who summoned them. Some were no bigger than imps, and some were as big as houses. They were all hideous, of course, but that was to be expected. The one thing they all had in common was the fact that they steamed in the cold. They come from a much hotter climate, you realize.
I waited. Then, when I judged that all but a few of the demons were present, I began to gather in my Will. It was surprisingly easy, since I was bent on creating an illusion rather than actually doing anything in a physical sense. I didn't speak the Word yet, though. I didn't want to spring my surprise on them until the last possible moment.
You have no idea of how hard it is to keep your Will buttoned in like that. I could feel my hair rising as if it wanted to stand on end, and I felt as if I were about to explode.
Then somewhere in that mob below us somebody blew a horn. I gather that was supposed to be a signal of some kind. All the magicians began barking commands, and the howling demons started toward us, the imps skittering across the snow and the big ones lumbering up the hill like burning garbage scows, melting down the snowdrifts as they came.
"Behold!" I thundered--augmenting my voice, I'll admit--and I pointed dramatically toward the south. I didn't want the moon or the northern lights lessening the impact of what I was going to do.
Then, posing like a charlatan in a country fair, I spoke the words that released my Will in a voice they probably heard in Kell.
"Rise up!" I roared--and the sun came up.
Oh, come now. You know better than that. Nobody can order the sun around. Don't be so gullible.
It looked like the sun, though. It was a very good illusion, even if I do say so myself.
The Morindim were thunderstruck, to say the very least. My clever fakery quite literally bowled them over. Would you believe that a sizable number of them actually fainted?
The demons faltered, and most of them sort of shimmered like heat waves rising off hot rocks as they resumed their real forms. The shimmering ones turned around and went back to eat the magicians who'd enslaved them. That created a sort of generalized panic down in the valley. I expect that some of those Morindim were still running a year later.
There were still eight or ten magicians who'd kept their grip on their slaves though, and those fiery demons kept plowing up through the snow toward me. I'll admit that I'd desperately hoped that the panic my imitation sun would cause would be universal. I didn't want to have to take the next step.
"I hope you're right about this," I muttered to the uninvited guest inside my skull.
"Trust me."
I hate it when people say that to me.
I didn't bother to mutter. Nobody in his right mind would attempt to duplicate what I was about to do. I spoke the incantation quite precisely.
This wasn't a good time for blunders. I was concentrating very hard, and my illusion flickered and went out, leaving me with nothing but the moon to work with.
It was shaky there for a while. I hadn't realized how big the thing was going to be. It was a Demon Lord, though, and size is evidently an indication of rank in the hierarchy of Hell.
It struggled against me, naturally, and icicles began to form up in my beard as the sweat rolling down my face froze in the bitter cold.
"Stop it!"
I commanded the thing irritably.
"Just do what I tell you to do, and then I'll let you go back to where it's warm."
I can't believe I said that!
Oddly, it might have saved my life, though. The Demon Lord was steaming in the cold. You try jumping out of Hell into the middle of an arctic winter and see how you like it. My Demon Lord was rapidly turning blue, and his fangs were chattering.
"Go down there and run off those other demons coming up the hill,"
I commanded.
"You are Belgarath, aren't you?" It was the most awful voice I've ever heard. I was a bit surprised to discover that my reputation extended even into Hell. That sort of thing could go to a man's head.
"Yes," I admitted modestly.
"Tell your Master that my Master is not pleased with what you are doing."
"I'll pass that along. Now get cracking before your horns freeze off."
I can't be entirely sure what it was that turned the trick. It might have been the cold, or it might have been that the King of Hell had ordered the Demon Lord to go along with me so that I could carry his message back to Aldur. Maybe the presence of the Necessity intimidated the thing. Or perhaps I was strong enough to control that huge beast--though that seems unlikely. For whatever reason, however, the Demon Lord drew himself up to his full height--which was really high--and bellowed something absolutely incomprehensible. The other demons vanished immediately, and the magicians who had raised them all collapsed, convulsing in the snow in the throes of assorted seizures.
Rivan Codex Series Page 19