Belgarath the Sorcerer

by David Eddings

  ‘That’s a little imprecise, Cerran,’ Ran Borune objected.

  ‘It’s a lot more specific than anything we’ve been able to come up with so far, your Majesty,’ Cerran replied. ‘King Cho-Ram assures us that his Stronghold’s impregnable, so Kal Torak’s going to get more and more frustrated as the time for him to be in Arendia approaches. Eventually he’ll be forced to break off his siege and march west. Angaraks take their religious obligations very seriously.’ Cerran rose from his chair and went to the large map hanging on the wall of the war-room. ‘An army the size of Kal Torak’s won’t move very fast,’ he noted, ‘particularly not once it gets up into the mountains of Ulgoland. It’s a hundred and fifty leagues from the Stronghold to Central Arendia. At ten miles a day, it’ll take him forty-five days. Give him another fifteen days to regroup, and we’re talking about two months. Our first signal will come when Urvon marches. The second will be Kal Torak’s abandonment of the siege of the Stronghold. That’s all we really need, isn’t it? The Murgos may or may not try to stop Urvon’s Malloreans, but we definitely will. I rather think that General Urvon’s going to be late getting to Arendia. Kal Torak’s a foreigner, so he doesn’t know all that much about the legions. I fully intend to educate him. I’ll stop Urvon dead in his tracks at Tolnedra’s southern border.’

  Now you see why Pol and I insisted that we coordinate our planning with the Tolnedran generals.

  Once we knew that we’d have plenty of warning, we turned our attention to the campaign in Arendia. General Cerran’s staff had carefully prepared plans for the defense of just about every location in the country. I’d spoken privately with Brand about that. Very few battles have ever been won from defensive positions. The methodical Tolnedrans, however, had compared Torak’s numbers with ours and concluded that our taking the offensive without the legions to help us was absolutely out of the question, and the legions were going to be busy somewhere else.

  The Tolnedran generals didn’t know why the Alorn kings all deferred to Brand, but they weren’t stupid. They recognized respect when they saw it, and after about six months of those ongoing strategy-sessions, they also recognized Brand’s tactical genius. Tolnedrans don’t normally have much use for Alorns, but in Brand they could see an altogether different sort of man. His genius lay in his ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the various elements that were to be a part of the army that was going to face Kal Torak when the final battle took place.

  Our decision not to tell the Tolnedran generals that we were basing a number of our decisions on the ravings of a madman was probably sound. The least hint of mysticism in an associate makes a Tolnedran very nervous. There were times when we had to talk very fast, of course. We knew that certain things were going to happen, but we couldn’t tell the Tolnedrans how we knew. Rhodar took care of most of that for us. The skills of the Drasnian intelligence service were already legendary, and after a couple of years, the generals had come to believe that there were Drasnian agents hidden in just about every element of the Angarak armies. Every time the inevitable ‘How do you know that?’ came up, Rhodar would look sly, take out a piece of paper, and lay it on the table with an insufferably smug expression. The implications were obvious.

  Even Rhodar’s cunning was strained to the limit when, after the siege of the Stronghold had plodded on for an interminable six years, the twins finally isolated the passage in the Mrin that told us where the battle was going to take place. The reference was obscure, but that’s normal for the Mrin. All it really said was, ‘The Child of Light and the Child of Dark shall meet before the walls of the golden city.’ The key word in that passage is ‘golden.’ Those of you who’ve seen Vo Mimbre’s yellow walls know where it comes from.

  Anyway, we had to lead General Cerran and his colleagues rather gently until Cerran himself finally made the right decision. Rhodar, pretending to have received the information from his spies, laid out Torak’s probable invasion route, and the rest of us found all sorts of things wrong with the other potential battle-sites. Finally Cerran stabbed the map with one blunt finger. ‘There,’ he said. ‘You should prepare your forces to meet Kal Torak at Vo Mimbre.’

  ‘The ground around there looks to be all right, I guess,’ King Eldrig said, trying to sound a little dubious.

  I stepped in at that point. ‘Isn’t it awfully flat?’ I objected. ‘Don’t we want the advantage of high ground?’

  ‘We don’t really need it, old one,’ Cho-Ram told me. ‘The city itself is high enough to slow Kal Torak’s army down. They’ll come down the valley of the River Arend and take up positions around Vo Mimbre in preparation for another siege. Then we’ll hit them from all sides and grind them up against the walls. General Cerran’s right. It’s the perfect place for the kind of battle we want.’

  Eldrig and I raised a few more feeble objections, and then Brand and Rhodar sided with Cho-Ram, and that settled the matter. It was a cumbersome way to do business, but we really didn’t have much choice.

  Polgara came to my room in the Cherek embassy a few nights after we’d decided where we were going to meet Kal Torak, and she found me muttering swear-words at my copy of the Mrin Codex. ‘What is the matter with you, father?’ she asked me. ‘You’ve been as cross as a bear with a sore paw for the past week.’

  I slammed my fist down on the Mrin. ‘This is what’s the matter!’ I yelled at her. ‘It doesn’t make any sense!’

  ‘It’s not supposed to. Wasn’t that the whole idea? It’s supposed to sound like gibberish. Why don’t you tell me about your problem, father? Maybe I can help.’

  I drew in a deep breath. ‘All right. Brand’s the Child of Light, isn’t he - at least in this particular EVENT? If I’m reading this right he’ll have to be in several places at the same time.’

  ‘Read it to me, father,’ she said patiently. ‘You don’t make all that much sense when you start to splutter.’

  ‘All right, let’s see what you make of it.’ I unrolled the scroll, found the index-mark, and read that cursed passage to her. ‘“And the Child of Light shall take the jewel from its accustomed place and shall cause it to be delivered up to the Child of Light before the gates of the golden city.” That clearly implies a paradox, doesn’t it? And paradoxes just don’t happen.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way, father. How long does one of these EVENTS last?’

  ‘As long as it takes, I suppose.’

  ‘Centuries, maybe? Years? Days? Or could it be just a few minutes, or perhaps even a single instant? How long did it take you to put Zedar to sleep in Morindland? That was one of these EVENTS, wasn’t it? How long did it really take you, father?’

  ‘Not too long, I guess. What are you driving at, Pol?’

  ‘I get a strong feeling that the EVENTS are instantaneous. The Necessities are just too powerful for these confrontations to last for more than a few seconds at the very most. Any longer might rip the universe to pieces. The prophecies tell us what we have to do to get ready, and that can take eons, but the actual EVENT is something as simple as a decision - or even a single word. “Yes”, maybe, or “No”. The Mrin says that the final confrontation’s going to be settled one way or the other by a choice, and choosing only takes an instant. I think that the last EVENT’s not the only one that’s going to involve choice. I think they all are. When you met Zedar in Morindland, you chose not to kill him. I think that was the EVENT. Everything else was just preparation.’

  Now do you see what I mean about the subtlety of Polgara’s mind? It might be pushing things a bit, but I chose to believe her explanation, and that turns that little conversation into an EVENT, doesn’t it? It also implies that the EVENTS don’t always involve face-to-face confrontations between the agents of the two Necessities. Now there’s a concept almost guaranteed to give you a perpetual headache.

  ‘I’m going to have to go to Riva,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘I have to pick up Iron-grip’s sword. Brand’s going to need it when
the time comes. The Mrin says that the Orb’s going to be the deciding factor, and that means the sword.’

  ‘Then you think the passage you read to me means that you’re going to be the Child of Light who’s supposed to take the Orb to Brand?’

  ‘It won’t be the first time I’ve been saddled with it.’ I shrugged. ‘If it turns out that I’m wrong, I won’t even be able to get the sword off that wall. That’s the nice thing about dealing with the Orb. It won’t let you do something you’re not supposed to do.’

  I decided not to make an issue of my little errand. No, it wasn’t one of those choices Pol had been talking about. It was based entirely on a desire not to embarrass myself. If it turned out that I couldn’t get the sword off the wall, I’d wind up looking a bit foolish if I’d been pompously announcing my intentions. Vanity’s ridiculous, but we all fall prey to it from time to time.

  I spoke with the Cherek ambassador and arranged to sail on the next courier ship to Riva. I suppose I could have gone there on my own, but if all went well, I’d be bringing something heavy with me when I came back.

  It wasn’t a pleasant voyage. I don’t like Cherek war-boats to begin with, and the foul weather that had plagued us for all those years didn’t make things any better.

  We tied up to the wharf at Riva, and I climbed up those steep, dripping stairs to the Citadel.

  Brand’s eldest son Rennig was in charge during his father’s absence. The position of the Rivan Warder was not, strictly speaking, hereditary, but I was fairly certain that this time it would be passed on to Rennig. He was as solid and dependable as his father.

  He was a bit wild-eyed when I was admitted into Brand’s study, though. ‘Thank the Gods!’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘You got my message!’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘You mean you didn’t? Why did you come, then?’

  ‘I’ve got something to attend to. What’s happened, Rennig? I haven’t seen you this excited since you were a little boy.’

  ‘You’d better come and see for yourself, Ancient One. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you. I’ll send for the guards who saw it happen. I’m sure you’ll want to talk with them.’ He led me out into the corridor, and we went to the Hall of the Rivan King. That hall, the throne room, hadn’t been used much during the centuries since Gorek’s assassination, and it was damp and musty and not very well-lighted. Rennig took a torch from one of the rings set in the wall just outside the door, and we went inside, marching down past the fire-pits to the throne. As we drew nearer, I could see Iron-grip’s sword hanging point down on the wall, but I could also see that there was something terribly wrong with it.

  My Master’s Orb was not on the pommel.

  ‘What’s going on here, Rennig?’ I demanded. ‘Where’s the Orb?’

  ‘It’s over here, Ancient One,’ he told me. He pointed at a large round shield leaning against the wall about ten feet off to the right of the throne. It was a fairly standard Alorn shield, big, round, and heavy, with those thick steel straps Alorns always rivet to their shields. What was definitely not standard was the fact that my Master’s Orb was embedded in the exact center of it.

  ‘Who did this?’ My voice was shaking.

  ‘We don’t know. The guards who were here that night had never seen her before.’

  ‘Her? A woman did this?’

  He nodded. ‘I’d have had some doubts about it myself, Belgarath, but I’ve known both of those men since childhood. They’re honest men, and they’d never lie about something like this.’

  ‘No one can touch the Orb except -’ I broke off as that passage in the Mrin started echoing in my head. ‘And the Child of Light shall take the jewel from its accustomed place -’ I’d thought that it meant that this interim Child would take down the Sword and deliver it to Brand. I’d even believed that the passage was a set of instructions to me - that I was the one who was supposed to take it down off the wall and carry it back to Tol Honeth. But the passage wasn’t talking about the sword. This woman, whoever she was, had removed it and set in the center of the shield instead. Pol had been right. Since no one could touch the Orb except the Child of Light, that particular position was being passed around - but a woman?

  Then the two off-duty guardsmen came into the hall and walked rather hesitantly toward us. I suppose that someday I’m going to have to do something about my reputation for being bad-tempered. ‘Oh, come here,’ I told them shortly. ‘I’m not going to bite you. You couldn’t have done anything to stop her. When did this happen?’

  ‘About a week ago, Ancient One,’ the taller of the two replied.

  How convenient - and how predictable. The incident had occurred at almost exactly the same time as when I’d decided to come to Riva.

  ‘It was sorcery, Holy One,’ the other guard asserted. ‘We were standing guard outside the door late at night, and a woman came down the corridor.’

  ‘We knew that something very strange was happening - particularly since she was on fire.’

  ‘On fire?’

  ‘Well, glowing, actually. There was bright blue light coming from her. We sort of backed away from her.’

  ‘She was a pretty woman,’ the other guard put in. ‘At least she would have been if she hadn’t been all blue. She opened the door to the Hall and went inside. We followed her down to the throne. When she got there, she raised her hand and said, “Come to me”. It was almost as if she was calling a pet dog.’

  ‘This was all pretty strange,’ the other man said, ‘but we’ve talked it over, and we both saw what happened next. The pommel-stone on that big sword just came loose and floated down to her hand - and it was glowing, too. Then she walked over to that shield - and I’ve never seen that shield in here before - and she set the stone against the middle of it, and it sort of melted its way right into the steel.’

  ‘Did she leave then?’ I asked them.

  ‘She said something first.’

  ‘Oh? Did she say who she was?’

  ‘She only said, “One will come, and he will know what to do”. Then she sort of smiled and went back to the door. We followed her, but when we got out into the corridor, she was gone. That’s all we saw, Ancient One. There wasn’t a thing we could do to stop her.’

  ‘You’ve got that part right,’ I told him. ‘Nobody could have stopped whoever she was.’ I picked up the heavy shield with both hands. ‘This “ghost”, or whatever, was right about one thing. I do know what to do with this.’

  ‘That’s the Orb, Holy Belgarath,’ Rennig objected. ‘It’s supposed to stay here on the Isle.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I replied, ‘right up until the time we need it, and unless my calculations are off, your father’s going to need it fairly soon.’

  I brooded about the fact that the Orb was now part of a shield rather than a sword on my trip back to Tol Honeth. That obviously meant that Brand wasn’t going to kill Torak. A shield by its very nature is defensive, and that began to change my thinking about the strategy the Tolnedran generals had put together for the battle that was going to be fought at Vo Mimbre. Maybe we could win from a defensive position.

  Just about the only really significant thing I did during the return voyage was to notify the twins about the alteration in the Orb’s location. I was definitely going to need some instruction here.

  The Angarak siege of the Algarian Stronghold dragged on for another year, then in the late spring of 4874, Beldin came back from southern Cthol Murgos to advise us that Urvon had assembled his army on the plains of Hagga and begun his march to the west. If General Cerran’s calculations were correct, we had about one more year before the final battle. We’d know for certain when Torak broke off his siege of the Stronghold and also started west.

  I spent much of the following summer scurrying around to make certain that everything was in place. Inevitably, hostilities periodically broke out between the warring factions in Arendia, and Polgara and I had to rush north from Tol Honeth to quiet things down ag
ain.

  Although the twins labored mightily, we weren’t able to get very many clues from the Mrin. That concerned me a great deal until I finally realized that the whole business of the fight between Brand and Torak was completely out of my hands. That particular revelation came to me in the early autumn when we all saw a marked change in Brand’s behavior. ‘A word with you, Belgarath?’ he said to me one rainy afternoon as our meeting with the Tolnedran generals was breaking up.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ he suggested. ‘I think this needs to be sort of private, and I’d rather not have some Tolnedran spy carrying word of what we say to Ran Borune. He’s a good man, I suppose, but he gets nervous when things he doesn’t understand start cropping up.’

  I smiled faintly. ‘Nervous’ was a gross understatement. Brand and I went out of the army headquarters building and strolled across the sodden lawns of the imperial compound. ‘You’ve been the instrument of Necessity in the past, haven’t you?’ he asked me once we were certain that no one was near us.

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, my friend,’ I replied. ‘I’ve spent my whole life running errands for it.’

  ‘I’m talking about something a little more specific. As I understand it, you and the Necessity were fairly close when you and Bear-shoulders and the others went to Cthol Mishrak.’

  ‘Yes. So what?’

  ‘Did it talk to you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that it did.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. I thought that my reason might be slipping. It has a peculiar way of talking, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It’s got a warped sense of humor. What’s it been saying?’

  ‘Nothing all that specific. I’ve been a little edgy about what I’m supposed to do when we all get together at Vo Mimbre, and it’s been telling me not to worry so much.’ He stopped and looked directly at me. ‘Did you know what you were going to do before you did it? I mean, when something came up, did the knowledge of how to respond just pop into your head?’