‘We’ve heard some rumors that the streams in Maragor are absolutely awash with gold,’ Riva added. At least Riva had a little good sense. Poledra knew enough about Alorns to know that the word ‘gold’ set their hearts on fire.
‘I’ll try to mediate for you, Bear-shoulders,’ I said, pulling a long face, ‘but I don’t think you’ll have very much luck with the Marags. They aren’t interested enough in the gold even to bend over to pick it up, and I don’t think you could offer them anything that’d make them willing to take the trouble.’
‘I think your trip will take longer than a week,’ Poledra told me. ‘Be sure to take warm clothing.’
‘Of course,’ I assured her.
‘Perhaps I should go with you.’
‘Absolutely not – not when you’re this close.’
‘You worry too much about that.’
‘No. You stay here. I’ve sent for Beldin. He’s coming back to stay with you.’
‘Not unless he bathes first, he won’t.’
‘I’ll remind him.’
‘When will you be leaving?’
I cast a spuriously inquiring look at Cherek. ‘Tomorrow morning?’ I asked him.
He shrugged, overdoing it a bit. ‘Might as well,’ he agreed. ‘The weather in those mountains isn’t going to get any better. If we’re going to have to wade through snow, we’d better get to wading.’
‘Stay under the trees,’ Poledra advised. ‘The snow isn’t as deep in thick woods.’ If she did know, she was taking it very calmly.
‘We’d better get some sleep,’ I said, standing up abruptly. I didn’t need any more lies to try to talk my way around.
Poledra was very quiet in our bed that night. She clung to me fiercely, however, and along toward morning she said, ‘Be very careful. The young and I will be waiting when you come back.’ Then she said something she rarely ever said, probably because she felt it was unnecessary to say it. ‘I love you,’ she told me. Then she kissed me, rolled over, and immediately went to sleep.
The Alorns and I left early the next morning, ostentatiously going off toward the south and Maragor. When we were about five miles south of my tower, however, we circled back, staying well out of sight, and proceeded on toward the northeast.
Chapter 12
This all happened about three thousand years ago; long before the Algars and the Melcenes had begun their breeding experiments with domestic animals, so what passed for horses in those days were hardly more than ponies – which wouldn’t have worked out very well for a group of seven-foot-tall Alorns. So we walked. That’s to say they walked; I ran. After trying to keep up with them for a couple of days, I called a halt. ‘This isn’t working,’ I told them. ‘I’m going to do something, and I don’t want you getting excited about it.’
‘What have you got in mind, Belgarath?’ Dras rumbled at me a little nervously. I had quite a reputation in Aloria back then, and the Alorns had exaggerated notions about the kinds of things I could do.
‘If I’m going to have to run just to keep up, I’m going to run on all four feet.’
‘You don’t have four feet,’ he objected.
‘I’m going to fix that right now. After I do, I won’t be able to talk to you – at least not in a language you’ll understand – so if you’ve got any questions, ask them now.’
‘Our friend here is the most powerful sorcerer in the world,’ Cherek Bear-shoulders told his sons sententiously. ‘There’s absolutely nothing he can’t do.’ I think he really believed that.
‘No questions?’ I asked, looking around at them. ‘All right then,’ I said, ‘now it’s your turn to try to keep up.’ I formed the image in my mind and slipped myself into the familiar form of the wolf. I’d done it often enough before that it was almost automatic by now.
‘Belar!’ Dras swore, jumping back from me.
Then I ran off a hundred yards toward the northeast, stopped, turned, and sat down on my haunches to wait for them. Even Alorns could understand the meaning of that.
The priest of Belar who wrote the early sections of the BOOK OF ALORN was quite obviously playing fast and loose with the truth when he described our journey. He was either drunk when he wrote it, or he didn’t have the facts straight. Then again, he may have thought that what really happened was too prosaic for a writer of his vast talent. He declares that Dras, Algar, and Riva were waiting for us a thousand leagues to the north, which simply wasn’t true. He then announces that my hair and beard were turned white by the frost of that bitter winter, which was also a lie. My hair and beard had turned white long before that – largely because of my association with the children of the Bear-God.
I was still not 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’d 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 cudgeled 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 c
ould 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.
Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress Page 19