The dragon bellowed in pain, and flames burst from her gaping mouth. Overriding what little control Mordja exerted upon her, she wheeled clumsily to respond to Silk's attack. The little thief, however, skipped nimbly out of her way even as the others dashed in to attack her flanks. Durnik rhythmically hammered on one exposed flank while Torn chopped no less rhythmically at the other.
A desperate plan came unbidden to Garion as he saw that the dragon had turned almost completely around to meet Silk's attack. "Work on her tail!" he shouted to Zakath. He backed off a few paces to give himself running room, then lumbered forward, his movements made awkward by his armor. He leaped over the slashing tail and ran up the dragon's back.
"Garion!" he heard Ce'Nedra scream in horror. He ignored her frightened cry and continued to scramble up the scaly back until he was finally able to plant his feet on the dragon's shoulders between the batlike wings. The dragon, he knew, would not fear or even feel the strokes of his burning sword. Mordja, however, would. He raised Iron-grip's sword and struck a two-handed blow at the base of the scaly neck. The dragon, weaving her fearsome head and breathing fire and smoke as she sought out those who were attacking her, paid no heed. Mordja, however, screamed in agony as the power of the Orb seared him. That was their advantage. Left to herself, the dragon was incapable of meeting their many-pronged attack. It was the added intelligence of the Demon Lord that made her so dangerous in this situation, but Garion had seen evidence in the past that the Orb could inflict intolerable agony upon a demon. In that respect, it had even more power than did a God. Demons fled from the presence of the Gods, but they could not flee from the chastisement of Aldur's Orb. "Hotter!" he commanded the stone as he raised his blade again. He struck and struck and Struck again. The great blade no longer bounced off the dragon's scales but seared its way through them to bite into the dragon's Besh. The half-indistinct image of Mordja, encased in the dragon, shrieked as the sword cut into his neck even as it slashed at that of the dragon. Almost in mid-stroke, Garion reversed his sword and, grasping the crosspiece of the hilt, drove it down into the dragon's back between the vast shoulders.
Mordja screamed.
Garion wrenched the sword back and forth, tearing the wound even wider.
Even the dragon felt that. She screamed, Garion raised his sword again, and once again sank it into die bleeding wound, deeper this time.
The dragon and Mordja screamed in unison.
Ludicrously, Garion remembered a time in his bygone youth when he had watched old Cralto digging holes for fence posts. He consciously imitated the old farm worker's rhythmic motion, raising his reversed sword high overhead as Cralto had his shovel, and driving the blade down into the dragon's flesh. With each driving blow the wound grew deeper, and blood gushed and spurted from the quivering flesh. He momentarily saw the white of bone and altered his point of aim. Not even Iron-grip's sword could shear through that tree-trunksized backbone.
His friends had momentarily fallen back, astonished at the Rivan King's insane-appearing audacity. Then they saw that the dragon's almost serpentlike head was raised high in the air as she tried desperately to writhe her neck around to bite at the tormenter digging a huge hole between her shoulder blades. They rushed back into tine attack, hacking and stabbing at the softer scales covering the dragon's throat, belly, and flanks. Darting in and out quickly to avoid being trampled by the huge beast, Silk, Velvet, and Sadi attacked the unprotected underside of the distracted dragon. Durnik was steadily pounding on the dragon's side, methodically breaking ribs one by one as Toth chopped at the other side. Belgarath and Poledra, once again as wolves, were gnawing on die writhing tail.
Then Garion saw what he had been searching for—the hawserlike tendon leading down into one of the dragon's huge wings. "Hotter!" he shouted again at the Orb.
The sword flared anew, and this time Garion did not strike. Instead he set the edge of his weapon against the tendon and began to saw back and forth wkh it, burning through the tough ligament rather than chopping. The tendon, finally severed, snapped, its cut ends slithering snakelike back into the bleeding flesh.
The bellow of pain that emerged from that flame-filled mouth was shattering. The dragon lurched, then fell, thrashing its huge limbs in terrible agony.
Garion was thrown clear when the dragon fell. Desperately he rolled, trying to get away from those flailing claws. Then Zakath was there, yanking him to his feet. "You're insane, Gar-ion!" he shouted in a shrill voice. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Garion said in a tight voice. "Let's finish it."
Toth, however, was already there. In the very shadow of the dragon's huge head he stood, his feet planted wide apart, chopping at the base of the dragon's throat. Great gushes of blood spurted from severed arteries as the huge mute, his heavy shoulders surging, sought to find and cut the barrellike windpipe. Despite the concerted efforts of Garion and his friends, there had been little more than pain before. Toth's singleminded attack, however, threatened the dragon's very life. Were he to succeed in severing or even broaching the thick gristle of that windpipe, the dragon would die, choking for lack of breath or drowning in her own blood. She clawed her way back onto her forelegs and reared high over the huge mute.
"Toth!" Durnik shouted. "Get out of there! She's going to strike!"
But it was not the fanged tnouth that struck. Dimly, within the bleeding body of the dragon, Garion saw the indistinct shape of Mordja desperately raise Cthrek Goru, the sword of shadows. Then the Demon Lord thrust out with the sword. The blade, as if insubstantial, emerged from the dragon's chest and, as smoothly, plunged into Toth to emerge from his back. The mute stiffened, then slid limply off the sword, unable even in death to cry out.
"No!" Durnik roared in a voice filled with indescribable loss.
Garion's mind went absolutely cold. "Keep her teeth off me," he told Zakath in a flat, unemotional tone. Then he dashed forward, reversing his sword once again in preparation for a thrust such as he had never delivered before. He aimed that thrust not at the wound Toth had opened but at the dragon's broad chest instead.
Cthrek Goru flickered out to ward him off, but Garion parried that desperate defensive stroke, then set his shoulder against the massive crosspiece of his sword's hilt. He fixed the now-shrinking demon with a look of pure hatred and then he drove his sword into the dragon's chest with all his strength, and the great surge as the Orb unleashed its power almost staggered him.
The sword of the Rivan King slid smoothly into the dragon's heart, like a stick into water.
The awful bellowing from both the dragon and the Demon Lord broke off suddenly in a kind of gurgling sigh.
Grimly, Garion wrenched his sword free and stepped clear of the convulsing beast. Then, like a burning house collapsing in on itself, the dragon crumpled to the ground, twitched a few times, and was still.
Garion wearily turned.
Toth's face was calm, but blind Cyradis knelt on one side of his body and Duraik on the other. They were both weeping openly.
High overhead, the albatross cried out once, a cry of pain and loss.
Cyradis was weeping, her blindfold wet with her tears.
The smoky-looking orange sky roiled and tumbled overhead, and inky black patches lay in the folds of the clouds,'shifting, coiling, and undulating as the clouds, still stained on their undersides by the new-risen sun, writhed in the sky above and flinched and shuddered as they begot drunken-appearing lightning that staggered down through the murky air to strike savagely at the altar of the One-Eyed God on the pinnacle above.
Cyradis was weeping.
The sharply regular stones that floored the amphitheater were still darkly wet from the clinging fog that had enveloped the reef before dawn and the downpour of yesterday. The white speckles in that iron-hard stone glittered like stars under their sheen of moisture.
Cyradis was weeping.
Garion drew in a deep breath and looked around the amphitheater. It was not as large perhaps as he had fir
st imagined— certainly not large enough to contain what had happened here—but then, all the world would probably not have been large enough to contain that. The faces of his companions, bathed in the fiery light from the sky and periodically glowing dead white in the intense flashes of the stuttering lightning, seemed awed by the enormity of what had just happened. The amphitheater was littered with dead Grolims, shrunken black patches lying on the stones or sprawled in boneless-looking clumps on the stairs. Garion heard a peculiar, voiceless rumble that died off into something almost like a sigh. He looked incuriously at the dragon. Its tongue protruded from its gaping mouth, and its reptilian eyes stared blankly at Him. The sound he had heard had come from that vast carcass. The beast's entrails, still unaware that they, like the rest of the dragon, were dead, continued their methodical work of digestion. Zandramas stood frozen in shock. The beast she had raised and the demon she had sent to possess it were both dead, and her desperate effort to evade the necessity of standing powerless and defenseless in the place of the Choice had crumbled and fallen as a child's castle of sand crumbles before the encroaching waves. Garion's son looked upon his father with unquestioning trust and pride, and Garion took a certain comfort in that clear-eyed gaze.
Cyradis was weeping. All else in Garion's mind was drawn from reflection and random impressions. The one incontrovertible fact, however, was that the was crushed by her grief. At this particular time she was the most important person in the universe, and perhaps it had always been so. It might very well be, Garion thought, that the world had been created for the one express purpose of bringing this frail girl to this place at this time to make this single Choice. But could she do that now? Might it not be that the death of her guide and protector—the one person in all the world she had truly loved— had rendered her incapable of making the Choice?
Cyradis was weeping, and so long as she wept, the minutes ticked by. Garion saw now as clearly as if he were reading in that book of the heavens which guided the seers that the time of the meeting and of the Choice was not only this particular day, but would come in a specific instant of this day, and if Cyradis, bowed down by her unbearable grief, were unable to choose in that instant, all mat had been, all that was, and all that was yet to be would shimmer and vanish like an ephemeral dream. Her weeping must cease, or all would be forever lost.
It began with a clear-toned single voice, a voice that rose and rose in elegaic sadness that contained within it the sum of human woe. Then other voices emerged singly or in trios or hi octets to join that aching song. The chorus of the group mind of the seers plumbed the depths of the grief of the and then sank in an unbearable diminuendo of blackest despair and faded off into a silence more profound than the silence of the grave.
Cyradis was weeping, but she did not weep alone. Her entire race wept with her.
That lone voice began again, and the melody was similar to the one that had just died away. To Garion's untrained ear, it seemed almost the same, but a subtle chord change had somehow taken place, and as the other voices joined in, more chords insinuated themselves into the song, and the grief and unutterable despair were questioned in the final notes.
Yet once again the song began, not this time with a single voice but with a mighty chord that seemed to shake the very roots of heaven with its triumphant affirmation. The melody remained basically the same, but what had begun as a dirge was now an exultation.
Cyradis gently laid Toth's hand on his motionless chest, smoothed his hair, and groped across his body to touch Durnik's tear-wet face consolingly.
She rose, no longer weeping, and Garion's fears dissolved and faded as the morning fog that had obscured the reef had faded beneath the onslaught of the sun. "Go," she said in a resolute voice, pointing at the now-unguarded portal. "The time approaches. Go thou, Child of Light, and thou, Child of Dark, even into the grot, for we have choices to make which; once made, may never be unmade. Come ye with me, therefore, into the Place Which Is No More, there to decide the fate of all men." And with firm and unfaltering step, the led the way toward that portal surmounted by the stony image of the face of Torak.
Garion found himself powerless in the grip of that clear voice and he fell in beside satin-robed Zandramas to follow the slender Seeress. He felt a faint brush against his armored right shoulder as he and the Child of Dark entered the portal. It was almost with a wry amusement that he realized that the forces controlling this meeting were not so entirely sure of themselves. They had placed a barrier between him and the Sorceress of Darshiva. Zandramas' unprotected throat lay quite easily within the reach of his vengeful hands, but the barrier made her as unassailable as if she had been on the far side of the moon. Faintly, he was aware that the others were coming up behind, his friends following him, and Geran and the violently trembling Otrath trailing after Zandramas.
"This need not be so, Belgarion of Riva," Zandramas whispered urgently. "Will we, the two most powerful ones in all the universe, submit to the haphazard choice of this brain-sickly girl? Let us bestow our choices upon ourselves. Thus will we both become Gods. Easily will we be able to set aside UL and the others and rule all creation jointly." The swirling lights beneath the skin of her face spun faster now, and her eyes glowed red.”Once we have achieved divinity, thou canst put aside thine earthly wife, who is not, after all, human, and thou and I could mate. Thou couldst father a race of Gods upon me, Belgarion, and we could sate each other with unearthly delights, Thou wilt find me fair, King of Riva, as all men have, and I will consume thy days with the passion of Gods, and we will share in the meeting of Light and iDark."
Garion was startled, even a little awed by the single-mindedness of the Spirit of the Child of Dark. The thing was as implacable and as unchangeable as adamantine rock. He perceived that it did not change because it could not. He began to grope his way toward something that seemed significant. Light could change. Every day was testimony to that. Dark could not. Then it was at last that he understood the true meaning of the eternal division which had rent the universe apart. The Dark sought immobile stasis; the Light sought progression. The Dark crouched in a perceived perfection; the Light, however, moved on, informed by the concept of perfectability. When Garion spoke, it was not in reply to the blatant inducements of Zandramas, but rather to the Spirit of Dark itself. "It will change, you know," he said. "Nothing you can do will stop me from believing that. Torak offered to be my father, and now Zandramas offers to be my wife. I rejected Ibrak, and I reject Zandramas. You cannot lock me into immobility. If I change only one little thing, you've lost. Go stop the tide if you can, and leave me alone to do my work."
The gasp that came from the mouth of Zandramas was more than human. Garion's sudden understanding had actually stung the Dark, not merely its instrument. He felt a faint, almost feath-erlike probing, and made no effort to repel it.
Zandramas hissed, her eyes aflame with hate-filled frustration.
"Didn't you find what you wanted?" Garion asked.
The voice that came from her lips was dry, unemotional. "You'll have to make your choice eventually, you know," it said.
The voice that came from Garion's lips was not his own, and it was just as dry and clinical. "There's plenty of time," it replied. "My instrument will choose when it is needful."
"A clever move, but it does not yet signify the end of the game."
"Of course not. The last move lies in the hands of the ."
"So be it, then."
They were walking down a long, musty-smelling corridor.
"I absolutely hate this," Garion heard Silk murmur from behind him.
“It's going to be all right, Kheldar,” Velvet told the little man comfortingly. "I won't let anything happen to you."
Then the corridor opened out into a submerged grotto. The walls were rough, irregular, for this was not a construction but a natural cavern. Water oozed down a far wall to trickle endlessly with silvery note into a dark pool. The grotto had a faintly reptilian smell overlaid by the odor of lon
g-dead meat, and the floor was littered with gnawed white bones. By some ironic twist, the lair of the Dragon God had become the lair of the dragon herself. No better guard had been necessary to protect this place.
On the near wall stood a massive throne carved from a single rock, and before the throne there was one of the now all-too-familiar altars. Lying on the center of that altar was an- oblong stone somewhat larger than a man's head. The stone glowed red, and its ugly light illuminated the grotto. Just to one side of the altar lay a human skeleton, its bony arm extended in a gesture of longing. Garion frowned. Some sacrifice to Torak, perhaps? Some victim of the dragon? Then he knew. It was the Melcene scholar who had stolen the Sardion from the university and fled with it to this place to die here in unthinking adoration of .the stone that had killed him.
Just over his shoulder, Garion heard a sudden animallike snarl coming from the Orb, and a similar sound came from the red stone, the Sardion, which lay on the altar. There was a confused babble of sound in a multitude of languages, some drawn, for all Garion knew, from the farthest reaches of the universe. Flickering streaks of blue shot up through the milky-red Sardion, and similarly, angry red bathed the Orb in undulant waves as all the conflicts of all the ages came together in this small, confined space.
"Control it, Garion!" Belgarath said sharply. "If you don't they'll destroy each other—and the universe, as well!"
Garion reached back over his shoulder and placed his marked palm over the Orb, speaking silently to the vengeful stone. “Not yet," he said. "All in good time." He could not have explained why he had chosen those precise words. Grumbling almost like a petulant child, the Orb fell silent, and the Sardion also grudgingly broke off its snarl. The lights, however, continued to stain the surfaces of both stones.
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