Belgarath the Sorcerer

by David Eddings

  There were still eight or ten of the 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.

  There was another shimmering in the air, much too close to me for my comfort - and this particular shimmering glowed a sooty red. Then it congealed and became solid. I’d decided not to try to be exotic. Most Morind magicians get very creative when they devise the shape into which they plan to imprison their demon. I didn’t bother with tentacles or scales or any of that nonsense. I chose to use a human shape, and about all I did to modify the thing was to add horns. I really concentrated on those horns, since my very life hung on them.

  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.

  ‘Nicely done,’ I complimented the Demon Lord. ‘You can go home now. Sleep warm.’ As I’ve tried so many times to explain to Garion, these things have to be done with a certain style. I learned that from Belmakor.

  Cherek and his sons had been standing some distance away, and after I’d dismissed the Demon Lord, they began to increase that distance. ‘Oh, stop that!’ I snapped at them. ‘Come back here.’

  They seemed very reluctant, and a great deal of white was showing in their eyes, but they apprehensively approached me. ‘I’ve got something to attend to,’ I told them. ‘Keep going east. I’ll catch up with you.’

  ‘Ah - what have you got in mind?’ Cherek asked in an awed sort of voice.

  ‘Riva had it right,’ I explained. ‘This little gathering was totally out of character for the Morindim. Somebody’s out there playing games. I’m going to go find out who he is and tell him to stop. East is that way.’ I pointed toward the newly risen moon.

  ‘How long do you think it’s going to take?’ Riva asked me.

  ‘I have no idea. Just keep going.’ Then I changed back into my wolf-shape and loped off toward the south. I’d been getting, well, a pricking sensation for several days, and it seemed to come from that general direction.

  Once I got out of the range of the thoughts of my Alorns and the confused babble of the still-convulsing Morind magicians, I stopped and very carefully pushed out a searching thought.

  The sense that came back to me was very familiar. It should have been: it was Belzedar.

  I immediately pulled my thought back in. What was he doing? Evidently, he’d been following us, but why? Was he coming along to lend a hand? If that was what he had in mind, why didn’t he just catch up and join us? Why all this sneaking through the snow?

  I hadn’t really understood Belzedar since the day Torak stole the Orb. He’d grown more and more distant and increasingly secretive. I could have simply sent my voice to him and invited him to join us, but for some reason I didn’t. I wanted to see what he was doing first. I’m not normally a suspicious man, but Belzedar had been acting strangely for about two thousand years, and I decided that I’d better find out why before I let him know that I was aware of his presence.

  I had his general direction pinpointed, and as I loped higher up into the mountains of the north range, I periodically sent my thought out in short, searching little spurts.

  Try to remember that. When you go looking for somebody with your mind, and you stay in contact with him for too long, he’ll know you’re there. The trick is just to brush him. Don’t give him time to realize that somebody’s looking for him. It takes a lot of practice, but if you work on it, you’ll get it down pat.

  I was narrowing it down when I saw the fire. Of all the idiotic things! Here he was, trying to sneak along behind me and he goes and lights a beacon! My tongue lolled out. I couldn’t help laughing. I stopped running and slowed to a crawl, inching through the snow on my belly toward that fire.

  Then I saw him standing by that ridiculous fire of his, and he wasn’t alone. There was a Morind with him. The Morind was a stringy old man dressed in furs, and the skull-surmounted staff he held proclaimed him to be a magician.

  I crept closer, inch by inch. Sneaking up on somebody in the snow isn’t as easy as it sounds. The snow muffles any noise you might make, but if it’s cold enough, your whole body steams. Fortunately, I’d cooled off a bit, so my fur kept the heat of my body from reaching the outside air. Belly down, I lay under a snow-clogged bush and listened.

  ‘He made the sun come up!’ The magician was telling my brother in a shrill voice. ‘Then he raised a Demon Lord! My clan will have no further part in this!’

  ‘They must!’ Belzedar urged. ‘Belgarath must not be permitted to reach Mallorea! We must stop him!’

  What was this? I crept a few inches closer.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ the magician said adamantly. ‘My clan is scattered to the winds. I could not gather them together again even if I wanted to. Belgarath is too powerful. I will not face him again.’

  ‘Think of what you’re giving up, Etchquaw,’ Belzedar pleaded. ‘Will you be the slave of the King of Hell for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Morindland is cold and dark, Zedar,’ the magician replied. ‘I do not fear the flames of Hell.’

  ‘But you could have a God! My Master will accept you if you will do only this one small thing for him!’ Belzedar’s voice was desperate.

  The skinny Morind straightened, his expression resolute. ‘You have my final word, Zedar. I will have nothing more to do with this Belgarath. Tell your Master what I have said. Tell Torak to find someone else to contest with your brother Belgarath.’

  Chapter 13

  In retrospect, it was probably for the best that I was a wolf when I made that discovery. The personality of the wolf had become
so interwoven with my own during the past month that my reactions were not entirely my own. A wolf is incapable of hatred - rage, yes; hatred, no. Had I been in my own form, I probably would have done something precipitous.

  As it was, I simply lay there in the snow with my ears pricked forward, listening as Zedar pleaded with the Morind magician. That gave me enough time to pull my wits together. How could I have been so blind? Zedar had given himself away hundreds of times since Torak had cracked the world, but I’d been too inattentive to notice. I’d have more than likely wasted a great deal of time berating myself, but once again the wolf that enclosed me shrugged that useless activity aside. But now that I knew the truth about my sometime brother, what was I going to do about it?

  The simplest thing, of course, would be to lie in wait until the Morind left and then dash into the clearing and rip Zedar’s throat out with my teeth. I was tempted; the Gods know that I was tempted. There was a certain wolfish practicality about that notion. It was quick; it was easy; and it would remove a clear and present danger once and for all.

  Unfortunately, it would also leave a thousand questions unanswered, and curiosity is a trait common to both men and wolves. I knew what Zedar had done. Now I wanted to know why. I did know one thing, though. I’d just lost another brother. I didn’t even think of him as ‘Belzedar’ any more.

  There was a more practical reason for my restraint, however. The gathering of the Morindim had obviously been at Zedar’s instigation. He’d overcome their reluctance to join together by offering them a God. To my way of thinking, there wasn’t really all that much difference between Torak and the King of Hell, but the Morindim obviously saw it otherwise. Zedar had planted that particular trap in my path. How many others were out there besides? That’s what I really needed to know. A trap, once set, can lie there waiting long after the man who set it is dead. The situation seemed to call for subterfuge, and I’ve always been fairly good at that.

  ‘You’re just wasting your breath, Zedar,’ the Morind was saying. ‘I’m not going to confront a magician as powerful as your brother. If you want to fight him, do it yourself. I’m sure your Master will help you.’

  ‘He can’t, Etchquaw. It is forbidden. I must be the instrument of Necessity during this particular EVENT.’

  What was this?

  ‘If you are Necessity’s tool, why did you come to us?’ It’s easy to dismiss the Morindim. You don’t normally expect anything remotely resembling intelligence from demon-worshipers, but this Etchquaw fellow was surprisingly perceptive. ‘I think you are afraid of this Belgarath,’ he went on, ‘and I think you are afraid of his Necessity. Well, I won’t stick my head into the fire for you, Zedar. I’ve learned to live with demons. I don’t really need a God - particularly not a God as powerless as Torak. My demon can do anything I tell him to do. Your Torak seems to be quite limited.’

  ‘Limited?’ Zedar objected. ‘He cracked the world, you idiot!’

  ‘And what did it get him?’ The Morind’s tone was scornful. ‘It got him fire, Zedar. That’s what it got him. If all I want is fire, I can wait until I get to Hell.’

  Zedar’s eyes narrowed. ‘You won’t have to wait that long, Etchquaw,’ he said firmly.

  I suppose I could have stopped him. I could feel his Will building, but to be honest with you, I didn’t really believe he’d do it.

  But he did. I was fairly close, so the sound when he spoke the Word that released his Will was thunderous.

  Etchquaw quite suddenly caught on fire.

  I’m sorry to open old wounds, Garion, but you weren’t the first to do it. There was a difference, though. You had plenty of reason for what you did in the Wood of the Dryads. Zedar, however, set fire to the Morind out of pure viciousness. There’s also the fact that you felt guilty, but I’m sure that Zedar didn’t.

  This was all coming at me a little too fast, so I inched my way back out from under that snowy bush and left Zedar to his entertainments.

  The one thing that kept flashing in my mind was Zedar’s use of the word ‘EVENT.’ This was one of those incidents that our Master had warned us about. I’d been fairly sure that something important was going to happen, but I’d thought that it was going to happen at Cthol Mishrak. Evidently I’d been wrong. There might be another EVENT later, but we had to get by this one first. I decided that it was time for another consultation.

  - Can we talk? - I asked the presence inside my head.

  - Was there something? -

  I think that’s the thing that irritated me the most about my uninvited guest - he thought he was funny. I didn’t bother to make an issue of it. Considering his location, he probably already knew how I felt. - This is one of those little confrontations that keep happening, isn’t it? -

  - Obviously. -

  - An important one? -

  - They’re all important, Belgarath. -

  - Zedar said that he’s the instrument of the other Necessity this time. I thought it was Torak. -

  - It was. It changes from time to time, though. -

  - Then Zedar was telling the truth. -

  - If you choose to believe him, yes. -

  ‘Will you stop doing that?’ I said it aloud. Fortunately, it came out in wolfish, so I don’t think anyone could hear it.

  - You’re in a testy humor today. -

  - Never mind that. If Zedar’s the instrument of the other one, who’s yours? -

  There was a long silence, and I could feel the amusement dripping from it.

  - You’re not serious! -

  - I have every confidence in you. -

  - What am I supposed to do? -

  - I’m sure it’ll come to you. -

  - Aren’t you going to tell me? -

  - Of course not. We have to play by the rules. -

  - I need some directions here. If I make it up as I go along, I’m bound to make mistakes. -

  - We sort of take those into account. You’ll do just fine. -

  - I’m going to kill Zedar. - It was an empty threat, of course. Once I’d gotten past my initial rage, my homicidal instincts had cooled. Zedar had been my brother for over three thousand years, so I wasn’t going to kill him. I might set his beard on fire or tie his entrails into a very complicated knot, but I wouldn’t kill him. In spite of everything, I still loved him too much for that.

  There’s that word again. It always keeps cropping up, for some reason.

  - Try to be serious, Belgarath, - the voice in my head told me. - You’re incapable of killing your brother. All you have to do is neutralize him. Don’t get carried away. We’re going to need him again on down the line. -

  - You’re not going to tell me what to do, are you? -

  - It isn’t permitted this time. You and Zedar are going to have to work out the details for yourselves. -

  And then the silly thing was gone.

  I spent several minutes swearing. Then I loped back to where Zedar had been warming himself by the cheerily burning Morind. As I ran along, I began to formulate a plan. I could confront Zedar right now and get it over with, but there were a lot of holes in that idea. Now that I knew how things stood, there was no way he could take me by surprise, and without the element of surprise, he was no match for me. I could take him with one hand, but that would still leave the question of traps hanging up in the air. I reasoned that my best course would be to follow him for a few days to see if he were in contact with others - Morindim or anybody else. I knew Zedar well enough to know that he’d much prefer to let others do his dirty work for him.

  Then I stopped and dropped to my haunches. Zedar was fully aware of the fact that my favorite alternative form was that of a wolf. If he saw a wolf - or even wolf-tracks in the snow - he’d immediately know that I was around. I was going to have to come up with something else.

  Given the rules of this particular encounter, I think I can take credit for the idea that came to me. My visitor had told me that he wasn’t permitted to make suggestions, so I was entirely on my own
.

  I ran back over the last couple thousand years in my mind. Zedar had spent almost the entire time in Mallorea, so there were a lot of things that had happened in the Vale that he didn’t know about. He knew that the she-wolf had stayed with me in my tower, but he didn’t know about her abilities. If a wolf started following him, he might get suspicious, but an owl? I didn’t think so - at least he wouldn’t unless I let him see how inept I was at flying.

  I remembered the owl very well, of course, so it wasn’t too hard to form the image in my mind. It was only after I’d merged myself into the image that I realized my mistake. The image was female!

  It didn’t really make any difference, of course, but it definitely confused me right at first. How’s it possible for women to keep their heads on straight with all those additional internal organs - and all those exotic substances floating around in their blood?

  I don’t think it’d be a good idea for me to pursue this line of thought any further.

  Considering my irrational nervousness about flying too high, it’s fortunate that owls have no real reason to go very far up in the air. An owl’s interested in what’s on the ground, not what’s up among the stars. I ghosted low over the snow-covered earth back toward where I’d left Zedar.

  Have you any idea of how well an owl can see in the dark? I was absolutely amazed by how good my eyes were. My feathers, of course, were very soft, and I found that I could fly in absolute silence. I concentrated on that, and would you believe that my flying improved? I smoothed out my frantic flapping and actually managed to achieve a certain grace.

  Etchquaw had burned down to a heap of charred, smoking rubble by now, and Zedar was gone. His tracks, however, weren’t. They angled back up the hillside toward the edge of the stunted evergreens at the tree-line, and then they turned east. That made things even easier for me. It’s a little hard to follow someone inconspicuously when you’re flying out in the open. As an owl though, I was able to drift silently from tree to tree until I caught up with him. He seemed to be heading due east, parallel to the course I’d set for Cherek and his sons, and I began to entertain myself by zig-zagging back and forth across his path, now ahead of him, now off to one side, and now behind. He wasn’t really hard to follow, since he’d conjured up a dim, greenish light to see by - and to hold off the boogie-men. Did I ever tell you that Zedar’s afraid of the dark? That adds another dimension to his present situation, doesn’t it?