Aldur's face was kindly and enormously wise. His long hair and beard were white - from conscious choice, Garion felt, rather than from any result of age. The face was very familiar to him somehow. It bore a startling resemblance to Belgarath's, but Garion perceived immediately, with a sudden curious inversion of his original notion, that it was Belgarath who resembled Aldur - as if their centuries of association had stamped Aldur's features upon the face of the old man. There were differences, of course. That certain mischievous roguishness was not present on the calm face of Aldur. That quality was Belgarath's own, the last remnant, perhaps, of the face of the thieving boy Aldur had taken into his tower on a snowy day some seven thousand years ago.
"Master," Belgarath said, bowing respectfully as Aldur approached.
"Belgarath," the God acknowledged. His voice was very quiet. "I have not seen thee in some time. The years have not been unkind to thee."
Belgarath shrugged wryly. "Some days I feel them more than others, Master. I carry a great number of years with me."
Aldur smiled and turned to Aunt Pol. "My beloved daughter," he said fondly, reaching out to touch the white lock at her brow. "Thou art as lovely as ever."
"And thou as kind, Master," she replied, smiling and inclining her head.
There passed among the three of them a kind of intensely personal linkage, a joining of minds that marked their reunion. Garion could feel the edges of it with his own mind, and he was somewhat wistful at being excluded - though he realized at once that there was no intent to exclude him. They were merely reestablishing an eons-old companionship - shared experiences that stretched back into antiquity.
Aldur then turned to look at the others. "And so you have come together at last, as it hath been foretold from the beginning of days you should. You are the instruments of destiny, and my blessing goes with each as you move toward that awful day when the universe will become one again."
The faces of Garion's companions were awed and puzzled by Aldur's enigmatic blessing. Each, however, bowed with profound respect and humility.
And then Ce'Nedra emerged from the tent she shared with Aunt Pol. The tiny girl stretched luxuriantly and ran her fingers through the tumbled mass of her flaming hair. She was dressed in a Dryad tunic and sandals.
"Ce'Nedra," Aunt Pol called her, "come here."
"Yes, Lady Polgara," the little princess replied obediently. She crossed to the fire, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground. Then she saw Aldur standing with the others and stopped, her eyes wide.
"This is our Master, Ce'Nedra," Aunt Pol told her. "He wanted to meet you."
The princess stared at the glowing presence in confusion. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a meeting. She lowered her eyelashes and then looked up shyly, her tiny face artfully and automatically assuming its most appealing expression.
Aldur smiled gently. "She's like a flower that charms without knowing it." His eyes looked deeply into those of the princess. "There is steel in this one, however. She is fit for her task. My blessings upon thee, my child."
Ce'Nedra responded with an instinctively graceful curtsey. It was the first time Garion had ever seen her bow to anyone.
Aldur turned then to look full at Garion. A brief, unspoken acknowledgment passed between the God and the consciousness that shared Garion's thoughts. There was in that momentary meeting a sense of mutual respect and of shared responsibility. And then Garion felt the massive touch of Aldur's mind upon his own and knew that the God had instantly seen and understood his every thought and feeling.
"Hail, Belgarion," Aldur said gravely.
"Master," Garion replied. He dropped to one knee, not really knowing why.
"We have awaited thy coming since time's beginning. Thou art the vessel of all our hopes." Aldur raised his hand. "My blessing, Belgarion. I am well pleased with thee."
Garion's entire being was suffused with love and gratitude as the warmth of Aldur's benediction filled him.
"Dear Polgara," Aldur said to Aunt Pol, "thy gift to us is beyond value. Belgarion has come at last, and the world trembles at his coming."
Aunt Pol bowed again.
"Let us now go apart," Aldur said to Belgarath and Aunt Pol. "Your task is well begun, and I must now provide you with that instruction I promised when first I set your steps upon this path. That which was once clouded becomes clearer, and we now can see what lies before us. Let us look toward that day we have all awaited and make our preparations."
The three of them moved away from the fire, and it seemed to Garion that, as they went, the glowing nimbus which had surrounded Aldur now enclosed Aunt Pol and his grandfather as well. Some movement or sound distracted his eye for a moment, and when he looked back, the three had vanished.
Barak let out his breath explosively. "Belar! That was something to seel"
"We have been favored, I think, beyond all men," Mandorallen said. They all stood staring at each other, caught up in the wonder of what they had just witnessed.
Ce'Nedra, however, broke the mood. "All right," she ordered peremptorily, "don't just stand there gaping. Move away from the fire."
"What are you going to do?" Garion asked her.
"The Lady Polgara's going to be busy," the little girl said loftily, "so I'm going to make breakfast." She moved toward the fire with a businesslike bustling.
The bacon was not too badly burned, but Ce'Nedra's attempt to toast slices of bread before the open fire turned out disastrously, and her porridge had lumps in it as solid as clods in a sun-baked field. Garion and the others, however, ate what she offered without comment, prudently avoiding the direct gaze she leveled at them, as if daring them to speak so much as one word of criticism.
"I wonder how long they're going to be," Silk said after breakfast. "Gods, I think, have little notion of time," Barak replied sagely, stroking at his beard. "I don't expect them back until sometime this afternoon at the earliest."
"It is a good time to check over the horses," Hettar decided. "Some of them have picked up a few burrs along the way, and I'd like to have a look at their hooves - just to be on the safe side."
"I'll help you," Durnik offered, getting up.
Hettar nodded, and the two went off to the place where the horses were picketed.
"And I've got a nick or two in my sword edge," Barak remembered, fishing a piece of polishing stone out of his belt and laying his heavy blade across his lap.
Mandorallen went to his tent and brought out his armor. He laid it out on the ground and began a minute inspection for dents and spots of rust.
Silk rattled a pair of dice hopefully in one hand, looking inquiringly at Barak.
"If it's all the same to you, I think I'd like to enjoy the company of my money for a while longer," the big man told him.
"This whole place absolutely reeks of domesticity," Silk complained. Then he sighed, put away his dice, and went to fetch a needle and thread and a tunic he'd torn on a bush up in the mountains.
Ce'Nedra had returned to her communion with the vast tree and was scampering among the branches, taking what Garion felt to be inordinate risks as she jumped from limb to limb with a catlike unconcern. After watching her for a few moments, he fell into a kind of reverie, thinking back to the awesome meeting that morning. He had met the Gods Issa and Mara already, but there was something special about Aldur. The affinity Belgarath and Aunt Pol showed so obviously for this God who had always remained aloof from men spoke loudly to Garion. The devotional activities of Sendaria, where he had been raised, were inclusive rather than exclusive. A good Sendar prayed impartially, and honored all the Gods - even Torak. Garion now, however, felt a special closeness and reverence for Aldur, and the adjustment in his theological thinking required a certain amount of thought.
A twig dropped out of the tree onto his head, and he glanced up with annoyance.
Ce'Nedra, grinning impishly, was directly over his head. "Boy," she said in her most superior and insulting tone, "the breakfast dishes are
getting cold. The grease is going to be difficult to wash off if you let it harden."
"I'm not your scullion," he told her.
"Wash the dishes, Garion," she ordered him, nibbling at the tip of a lock of hair.
"Wash them yourself."
She glared down at him, biting rather savagely at the unoffending lock.
"Why do you keep chewing on your hair like that?" he asked irritably.
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, removing the lock from between her teeth.
"Every time I look at you, you've got your hair stuck in your mouth."
"I do not, " she retorted indignantly.
"Are you going to wash the dishes?"
"No."
He squinted up at her. The short Dryad tunic she was wearing seemed to expose an unseemly amount of leg. "Why don't you go put on some clothes?" he suggested. "Some of us don't appreciate the way you run around half naked all the time."
The fight got under way almost immediately after that.
Finally Garion gave up his efforts to get in the last word and stamped away in disgust.
"Garion!" she screamed after him. "Don't you dare go off and leave me with all these dirty dishes!"
He ignored her and kept walking.
After a short distance, he felt a familiar nuzzling at his elbow and he rather absently scratched the colt's ears. The small animal quivered with delight and rubbed against him affectionately. Then, unable to restrain himself any more, the colt galloped off into the meadow to pester a family of docilely feeding rabbits. Garion found himself smiling. The morning was just too beautiful to allow the squabble with the princess to spoil it.
There was, it seemed, something rather special about the Vale. The world around grew cold with the approach of winter and was buffeted by storms and dangers, but here it seemed as if the hand of Aldur stretched protectively above them, filling this special place with warmth and peace and a kind of eternal and magical serenity. Garion, at this trying point in his life, needed all the warmth and peace he could get. There were things that had to be worked out, and he needed a time, however brief, without storms and dangers to deal with them.
He was halfway to Belgarath's tower before he realized that it had been there that he had been going all along. The tall grass was wet with dew, and his boots were soon soaked, but even that did not spoil the day.
He walked around the tower several times, gazing up at it. Although he found the stone that marked the door quite easily, he decided not to open it. It would not be proper to go uninvited into the old man's tower; and beyond that, he was not entirely certain that the door would respond to any voice but Belgarath's.
He stopped quite suddenly at that last thought and started searching back, trying to find the exact instant when he had ceased to think of his grandfather as Mister Wolf and had finally accepted the fact that he was Belgarath. The changeover seemed significant - a kind of turning point.
Still lost in thought, he turned then and walked across the meadow toward the large, white rock the old man had pointed out to him from the tower window. Absently he put one hand on it and pushed. The rock didn't budge.
Garion set both hands on it and pushed again, but the rock remained motionless. He stepped back and considered it. It wasn't really a vast boulder. It was rounded and white and not quite as high as his waist heavy, certainly, but it should not be so inflexibly solid. He bent over to look at the bottom, and then he understood. The underside of the rock was flat. It would never roll. The only way to move it would be to lift one side and tip it over. He walked around the rock, looking at it from every angle. He judged that it was marginally movable. If he exerted every ounce of his strength, he might be able to lift it. He sat down and looked at it, thinking hard. As he sometimes did, he talked to himself, trying to lay out the problem.
"The first thing to do is to try to move it," he concluded. "It doesn't really look totally impossible. Then, if that doesn't work, we'll try it the other way."
He stood up, stepped purposefully to the rock, wormed his fingers under the edge of it and heaved. Nothing happened.
"Have to try a little harder," he told himself. He spread his feet and set himself. He began to lift again, straining, the cords standing out in his neck. For the space of about ten heartbeats he tried as hard as he could to lift the stubborn rock - not to roll it over; he'd given that up after the first instant - but simply to make it budge, to acknowledge his existence. Though the ground was not particularly soft there, his feet actually sank a fraction of an inch or so as he strained against the rock's weight.
His head was swimming, and little dots seemed to swirl in front of his eyes as he released the rock and collapsed, gasping, against it. He lay against the cold, gritty surface for several minutes, recovering.
"All right," he said finally, "now we know that that won't work." He stepped back and sat down.
Each time he'd done something with his mind before, it had been on impulse, a response to some crisis. He had never sat down and deliberately worked himself up to it. He discovered almost at once that the entire set of circumstances was completely different. The whole world seemed suddenly filled with distractions. Birds sang. A breeze brushed his face. An ant crawled across his hand. Each time he began to bring his will to bear, something pulled his attention away.
There was a certain feeling to it, he knew that, a tightness in the back of his head and a sort of pushing out with his forehead. He closed his eyes, and that seemed to help. It was coming. It was slow, but he felt the will begin to build in him. Remembering something, he reached inside his tunic and put the mark on his palm against the amulet. The force within him, amplified by that touch, built to a great roaring crescendo. He kept his eyes closed and stood up. Then he opened his eyes and looked hard at the stubborn white rock. "You will move," he muttered. He kept his right hand on the amulet and held out his left hand, palm up.
"Now!" he said sharply and slowly began to raise his left hand in a lifting motion. The force within him surged, and the roaring sound inside his head became deafening.
Slowly the edge of the rock came up out of the grass. Worms and burrowing grubs who had lived out their lives in the safe, comfortable darkness under the rock flinched as the morning sunlight hit them. Ponderously, the rock raised, obeying Garion's inexorably lifting hand. It teetered for a second on its edge, then toppled slowly over.
The exhaustion he had felt after trying to lift the rock with his back was nothing compared to the bone-deep weariness that swept over him after he let the clenching of his will relax. He folded his arms on the grass and let his head sink down on them.
After a moment or two, that peculiar fact began to dawn on him. He was still standing, but his arms were folded comfortably in front of him on the grass. He jerked his head up and looked around in confusion. He had moved the rock, certainly. That much was obvious, since the rock now lay on its rounded top with its damp underside turned up. Something else had also happened, however. Though he had not touched the rock, its weight had nonetheless been upon him as he had lifted it, and the force he had directed at it had not all gone at the rock.
With dismay, Garion realized that he had sunk up to his armpits in the firm soil of the meadow.
"Now what do I do?" he asked himself helplessly. He shuddered away from the idea of once again mustering his will to pull himself out of the ground. He was too exhausted even to consider it. He tried to wriggle, thinking that he might be able to loosen the earth around him and work his way up an inch at a time, but he could not so much as budge.
"Look what you've done," he accused the rock. The rock ignored him.
A thought occurred to him. "Are you in there?" he asked that awareness that seemed always to have been with him.
The silence in his mind was profound. "Help!" he shouted.
A bird, attracted by the exposed worms and bugs that had been under the rock, cocked one eye at him and then went back to its breakfast. Garion heard a light step be
hind him and craned around, trying to see. The colt was staring at him in amazement. Hesitantly, the small horse thrust out his nose and nuzzled Garion's face.
"Good horse," Garion said, relieved not to be alone, at least. An idea came to him. "You're going to have to go get Hettar," he told the colt. The colt pranced about and nuzzled his face again.
"Stop that," Garion commanded. "This is serious." Cautiously, he tried to push his mind into the colt's thoughts. He tried a dozen different ways until he finally struck the right combination by sheer accident. The colt's mind flitted from here to there without purpose or pattern. It was a baby's mind, vacant of thought, receiving only sense impressions. Garion caught flickering images of green grass and running and clouds in the sky and warm milk. He also felt the sense of wonder in the little mind, and the abiding love the colt had for him.
Slowly, painfully, Garion began constructing a picture of Hettar in the colt's wandering thoughts. It seemed to take forever.
"Hettar," Garion said over and over. "Go get Hettar. Tell him that I'm in trouble."
The colt scampered around and came back to stick his soft nose in Garion's ear.
"Please pay attention," Garion cried. "Please!"
Finally, after what seemed hours, the colt seemed to understand. He went several paces away, then came back to nuzzle Garion again. "Go-get-Hettar," Garion ordered, stressing each word.
The colt pawed at the ground, then turned and galloped away - going in the wrong direction. Garion started to swear. For almost a year now he had been exposed to some of the more colorful parts of Barak's vocabulary. After he had repeated all the phrases he remembered six or eight times, he began to extemporize.
A flickering thought came back to him from the now-vanished colt. The little beast was chasing butterflies. Garion pounded the ground with his fists, wanting to howl with frustration.
The sun rose higher, and it started to get hot.
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