I flew up to the northern edge of the battlefield, settled to earth, and resumed my own form. That noticeably startled a platoon of Sendars. I didn't have time to explain it to them, though, and some very wild stories have been circulating in Sendaria for the last five hundred years as a result.
It took me a little while to find Brand, and Polgara had already joined him by the time I reached them.
"You know what you're supposed to do?" I asked the Rivan Warder.
"Yes," he replied.
"And do you know when to do it?"
"I will when the time comes." The calm, almost indifferent attitude of the Child of Light--whoever he is--has always sort of unnerved me. I guess it's understandable, since he's totally under the control of the Necessity, but it seems sort of unnatural to me. Garion's told me that he felt much the same way on that dreadful night in Cthol Mishrak when he and Torak finally met. As I remember it, though, I didn't feel that way when Zedar and I had our little get-together up in Morindland. Of course, I had a certain amount of personal animosity toward Zedar at the time, and that might have had something to do with it.
Then there was a slight change in Brand's expression. His calm indifference faded, and it was replaced by a look of almost inhuman resolution.
He straightened, and when he spoke, his voice didn't even sound like his own, and the language that came out of his mouth was certainly not in the Rivan idiom.
"In the name of Belar I defy thee, Torak, maimed and accursed," he said. His voice didn't sound all that loud to me, but I was told later that it was clearly audible inside the walls of Vo Mimbre.
"In the name of Aldur, also," he went on,
"I cast my despite into thy teeth. Let the bloodshed be abated, and I will meet thee--man against God--and I shall prevail against thee. Before thee I cast my gage. Take it up or stand exposed as craven before men and Gods!"
Now that got Torak's immediate attention. He'd armed himself before he had emerged from that silly iron castle, and he was wearing that same archaic armor he'd worn during the War of the Gods. His huge shield was strapped to his maimed left arm, his high-plumed and visored helmet covered the polished mask that hid his ruined face, and he had that black sword he called Cthrek Goru clenched in his right fist. Brand's insulting challenge enraged him, and he shattered a dozen or so large boulders with the sword before he got control of himself. The Angaraks in his immediate vicinity pulled back several hundred yards, and Zedar bolted like a rabbit.
"Who among mortal kind is so foolish as to thus defy the King of the World?" Torak roared.
"Who among ye would contend with a God?"
You have to admire the cunning of the Necessity that spoke through Brand's lips. Torak had been very reluctant to meet Brand in single combat, but his rage overcame his better judgment. Torak, always the sublime egomaniac, absolutely had to respond to those insults.
"I am Brand, Warder of Riva," the Child of Light replied, "and I defy thee, foul and misshapen Godling, and all thy putrid host. Bring forth thy might. Take up my gage or slink away and come no more against the Kingdoms of the West."
That was really pushing things. Torak was still a God, and prohibition or no prohibition, that particular speech might very well have pushed him over the edge. I had a momentary vision of a repetition of the cracking of the world at that point. He didn't do it again, however, but he did bash a few more boulders with his sword.
"Behold!" he roared in a voice that probably broke windows in Tol Honeth
"I am Torak, King of Kings and Lord of Lords! I fear no man of mortal kind nor the dim shades of long-forgotten Gods! I will come forth and destroy this loud-voiced Rivan fool, and mine enemies shall fall away before my wrath, and Cthrag Yaska shall be mine again and the world, also!"
In spite of everything that had warned him against it, he had accepted Brand's challenge.
The exchange between the two of them had caused a vast silence to fall over the battlefield. Many soldiers, both mine and Zedar's, seemed paralyzed by the sheer sound of those two thundering voices. The fighting stopped, and the only sounds were the groans of the wounded and the dying. The challenge and its acceptance laid the full burden of the Battle of Vo Mimbre on Brand's shoulders--and on Torak's.
Torak strode north, and his Malloreans melted out of his path as he came. Brand, equally implacable, marched south to meet him. I went wolf, and I trotted along at his side. There was also a snowy owl drifting above him.
Brand was a big man with heavy shoulders and powerful arms. In many ways he closely resembled Dras Bull-neck, though he wasn't quite as tall. His shield was strapped to his left arm, and he'd taken some pains to rivet a grey Rivan cloak to the face of it to conceal my Master's Orb.
The sword he was carrying wasn't quite as large as Iron-grip's sword, but it was large enough that I wouldn't have wanted to swing it.
Torak was wearing that antique black armor, and he was brandishing Cthrek Goru as he came. The agreement between the Necessities kept him from swelling into immensity as he did at Cthol Mishrak when he met Garion, but he was every bit as big as Brand. So far as I could tell, the two of them were evenly matched. Since neither of them had any particular advantage--either in size or weaponry--this promised to be a very interesting duel.
They advanced on each other until they were about twenty yards apart, and then they both stopped, evidently acting on instructions. Brand spoke once more at that point.
"I am Brand, Warder of Riva," he introduced himself in a civil tone of voice.
"I am he who will contend with thee, Torak. Beware of me, for the spirits of Belar and Aldur are with me.
I alone stand between thee and the Orb for which thou hast brought war into the West."
Torak didn't answer him, but spoke to me instead.
"Begone, Belgarath,"
he told me.
"Flee if thou wouldst save thy life. It occurs that I may soon have the leisure to give thee that instruction I so long ago promised thee, and I doubt that even thou wouldst survive my instruction."
I've never been sure why he bothered with that. He should have known what my answer would be. I bared my teeth and snarled at him.
Then he spoke to the owl hovering in the air over Brand's head.
"Abjure thy father, Polgara, and come with me," he said in an oddly wheedling tone of voice.
"I will wed thee," he continued, "and make thee Queen of all the world, and thy might and thy power shall be second only to mine."
That marriage proposal has given Polgara nightmares for five centuries now. It also seriously confused the Grolims; they've stepped rather carefully around Pol ever since. They did not want to offend the chosen bride of Torak. I suspect that he'd gotten the idea from the Ashabine Oracles, and it was probably that same passage that had given Zedar the idea for his cruel deception of Illessa.
The scream of an owl is usually just a scream, but Pol managed to fill the one she threw into Torak's teeth with all sorts of defiance and scorn to let him know just what she thought of his proposal of marriage.
"Prepare then to perish all," Torak roared at us, rushing forward with his black sword upraised.
That made me a little nervous. I'd just seen him shatter a number of large boulders with that sword.
Brand didn't even change his expression when he raised the shield to ward off that massive blow.
If you've ever seen a fight between a couple of men armed with broadswords and shields, you know how badly the shields get dented and gashed. Brand's shield, however, showed no visible effects as Cthrek Goru bounced harmlessly off its face. Torak's huge blow didn't even cut through the grey cloth that covered the shield. My Master's Orb was clearly taking steps.
Torak's shield, however, didn't seem to be quite so impervious, because Brand's return blow sliced deep into its rim.
Torak struck again, and his second blow had no more effect than the first.
Then it was Brand's turn, and his stroke left a deep dent in the face o
f Torak's shield.
That went on for quite a while. They banged at each other with those huge broadswords, raising a dreadful amount of noise and spraying sparks in all directions every time their sword-edges met. They reeled back and forth, struggling to keep their balance on the uneven ground.
Brand still seemed to be in the grip of that unnatural calmness, but Torak grew increasingly enraged. He bellowed at the grave-faced Rivan facing him, and his sword-strokes came faster and faster. Despite the huge weight of Cthrek Goru, Torak was swinging it almost as rapidly as an Algar horseman might swing a saber. The sheer fury of his attack was driving Brand backward.
Then, with a stroke that changed direction in mid-swing, Torak gashed open Brand's left shoulder.
"Well, finally!" that familiar voice said.
"I thought they were going to be at it all day. Go ahead and give the signal, Belgarath. Let's finish this right now."
I did it without even thinking. I didn't have to think. The instructions had been floating around in my head for almost three thousand years. I dropped to my haunches, lifted my muzzle, and howled. And, at exactly the same instant, the white owl screamed a piercingly shrill scream.
Brand jumped back and scraped the edge of his sword down over the face of his shield, ripping off the grey cloth that had covered it.
Kal Torak flinched back violently as my Master's Orb blazed forth its baleful blue fire. The smoldering fire that always glowed behind the left eye-slit of his steel mask suddenly blazed forth like a small sun.
He screamed, and Cthrek Goru fell out of his violently trembling hand. He shook away his shield and tried to clutch at his face. His right hand covered his right eye, but he had no left hand to cover the other.
Then Brand struck the final blow of their duel, and it was not an overhand stroke. It was a thrust. He seized his sword hilt in both hands and lunged forward, and his thrust wasn't aimed at Torak's chest or throat or belly.
It was aimed directly at Torak's burning left eye.
Brand's sword made a terrible sound as it slid through the visor of Torak's helmet and an even worse sound as it crunched through that flaming eye and on into the brain of the maimed God of Angarak.
Torak screamed again, and it was not so much a scream of pain as it was one of unutterable loss. He clutched at the blade protruding from his eye and jerked it away. Then he threw away his helmet and clawed away that steel mask.
It was the first time I'd seen his face since the day when he had cracked the world. The right side was still unmarred and beautiful.
The left side was hideous. The revenge of my Master's Orb had been too horrible to imagine. There were still inflamed scars, of course, but there were parts of Torak's face where the flesh had been burned away and bone showed through.
His left eye no longer flamed. It wept blood instead.
Most of the epic of Davoul the Lame is very badly written, but its climax isn't too bad, so I'll quote it here.
. . . and raised he up and pushed his arms even into the sky and cried out again. And cried he out one last time as he beheld the jewel which he had named Cthrag Yaska and which had caused him to be smitten again, and then, as a tree hewn away at the ground, the Dark God fell, and the earth resounded with his fall.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
And that's what really happened at Vo Mimbre. Whole libraries have been written about the battle, but with only a few exceptions--mostly written by Alorn scholars--those lurid accounts miss the truly significant events that led up to the duel between Brand and Torak. Everything we did was designed to force Torak to accept Brand's challenge. Once we put him in a situation where he didn't have any choice, the outcome was inevitable.
The fall of their God totally demoralized the Angaraks; and the Ulgo s and various others had killed their kings and generals, so there wasn't anybody around to give them orders. Angaraks don't function well independently. Someone very wise once said,
"It's all very well to put the government in the hands of the perfect man, but what do you do when the perfect man gets a bellyache?" That's the major argument against any kind of absolutism.
The Malloreans, of course, were doomed. They were surrounded by people who had every reason to hate them, and forgiveness and mercy weren't very evident as the armies of the West fell on the luckless invaders like the wrath of a whole pantheon of Gods.
The Murgos on the left flank really didn't see any reason to rush to the aid of their Mallorean cousins. Murgos don't like Malloreans in the first place, so there weren't any strong ties between the two races--not without Torak ramming brotherhood down their throats. There weren't really any orders given. The Murgos simply turned, fled south to the banks of the River Arend on the east side of the city, and tried to swim across. The current was very swift there, and the river was deep. A few Murgos made it across, but not very many.
The Thulls had already bolted to the river just to the west of Vo Mimbre. Thulls aren't bright, but they're strong, and they weren't weighted down with mail shirts the way the Murgos were, so a surprising number of them made it across to the Tolnedran side. The Nadraks tried to follow them, but Nadraks don't swim very well, so probably no more of them reached safety than did Murgos.
The slaughter continued until dark, and then the Alorns lit torches and kept on killing Malloreans.
Finally General Cerran came to Brand.
"Isn't that enough?" he demanded in a sick voice.
"No," Brand replied firmly, adjusting the sling cradling his bandaged left arm.
"They came here to butcher us. I'm going to make sure they don't do it again. No seed nor root is going to escape this cleansing."
"That's barbaric, Brand!"
"So was what happened to Drasnia."
And after midnight when the torches had burned down, Brasa's Ulgo s went around and killed all the wounded. I didn't care for that kind of savagery any more than Cerran did, but I kept my nose out of it. Brand was in charge now, and I still had things for him to do. Those things were very important, and he might start getting stubborn and uncooperative if I started giving him orders he didn't like.
The dawn the following morning was bleary with smoke, and the only Angaraks left on the field were the dead ones. Malloreans, Murgos, Nadraks, Thulls, and black-robed Grolims lay scattered or piled in heaps on that blood-soaked field. Brand's cleansing was complete.
The Rivan Warder had slept for an hour or two at the end of that awful night, but he came out of his tent when the sun rose to join my brothers, my daughter, and me.
"Where is he?" he demanded.
"Where's who?" Beldin said shortly.
"Torak. I want to have a look at the King of the World."
"You can look for him if you want to," Beldin told him, "but you're not going to find him. Zedar spirited him off during the night."
"What?"
"Didn't you tell him?" Beldin asked me.
"He didn't need to know about it," I replied.
"If he had known, he'd probably have tried to stop it."
"He couldn't have, you dunce--any more than you or I could have."
"Does somebody want to explain this?" Brand's voice had a testy edge to it.
"It was part of the agreement between the Necessities," I told him.
"Those agreements get very complicated sometimes, and they appear to involve a lot of horse-trading. After they'd agreed that you'd win if the duel took place on the third day, our Necessity was forced to agree that you wouldn't be permitted to keep Torak's body. This wasn't the last EVENT, you know. We haven't seen the last of Torak."
"But he's dead!"
"No, Brand," Polgara told him, "actually, he's not. You didn't really think that sword of yours could kill him, did you? There's only one sword in the world that can do that, and it's still hanging on the wall behind the throne of the Rivan King. That was another part of the agreement, and it's why the Orb was set in your shield instead of left where it was. You aren't the one who's supposed to use that
sword."
"Hang it all, Polgara," he burst out.
"Nobody survives a sword thrust through the head!"
"Torak can--and has. Your thrust rendered him comatose, but the time's going to come when he'll wake up again."
"When?"
"When the Rivan king returns. He's the one who's supposed to take down that sword. When he does, Torak'll wake up, and there'll be another
EVENT."
"Will that be the last one?"
"Probably, but we're not entirely sure," Beltira replied.
"There are several things in the Mrin that don't seem to match up."
"Is Gelane going to be able to handle it?" Brand asked Pol.
"He doesn't seem all that muscular to me, and Torak's a very serious opponent."
"I didn't say it was going to be Gelane, Brand," she corrected him.
"It probably won't be, if I'm reading the signs correctly. It might be his son--or somebody twenty generations out in the future."
Brand's shoulders slumped, and he winced and put his hand on his wounded arm.
"Then all of this has been for nothing," he sighed.
"I'd hardly call it nothing, Brand," I disagreed.
"Torak was coming after the Orb, and he didn't get it. That counts for something, doesn't it?"
"I suppose," he conceded glumly. Then he looked out over the corpse-littered battlefield.
"We'd better get rid of all these dead Angaraks," he said.
"It's summer, and there'll be pestilence if we just leave them lying there to rot."
"Are you going to bury them?" Beltira asked him.
"No, I think we'll burn them instead. I wouldn't be very popular if I took everybody's sword away from him and handed him a shovel."
"Where are you going to get that much wood?" Beldin asked.
"There's a sizable forest on the northern edge of this plain," Brand replied with a shrug.
"As long as it's so close, we might as well use it."
And that's what happened to those woods. We had a lot of dead Angaraks on our hands, so we needed some very large bonfires.
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