‘I’d rather not have him start killing people until after he loses his baby teeth,’ Garion said firmly. ‘Is there anybody else there?’
‘Judging from his wife’s description, the Archduke Otrath is among the group. He’s wearing a cheap crown and sort of second-hand royal robes. There’s not too much in the way of intelligence in his eyes.’
‘That one is mine,’ Zakath grated. ‘I’ve never had the opportunity to deal with high treason on a personal level before.’
‘His wife will be eternally in your debt,’ Beldin grinned. ‘She might even decide to journey to Mal Zeth to offer her thanks – among other things – in person. She’s a lush wench, Zakath. I’d advise that you get plenty of rest.’
‘Methinks I care not for the turn this conversation hath taken,’ Cyradis said primly. ‘The day wears on. Let us proceed.’
‘Anythin’ yer heart desires, me little darlin’,’ Beldin grinned.
Cyradis smiled in spite of herself.
Again they all spoke with that jocular bravado. They were approaching what was probably the most important Event in all of time, and making light of it was a natural human response.
Silk led the way out of the niche, his soft boots making no sound on the wet stones under their feet. Garion and Zakath, however, had to move with some care to avoid clinking. The sharply mounting stone terraces were each uniformly about ten feet tall, but at regular intervals there were stairways leading from one terrace to the one above. Silk led them up about three levels and then began circling the truncated pyramid. When they reached the northeast corner, he paused. ‘We’d better be very quiet now,’ he whispered. ‘We’re only about a hundred yards from that amphitheater. We don’t want some sharp-eared Grolim to hear us.’
They crept around the corner and made their way carefully along the north face for several minutes. Then Silk stopped and leaned out over the edge to peer down into the fog. ‘This is it,’ he whispered. ‘The amphitheater’s a rectangular indentation in the side of the peak. It runs from the beach up to that portal or whatever you want to call it. If you look over the edge, you’ll see that the terraces below us break off back there a ways. The amphitheater is right below us. We’re within a hundred yards of Zandramas right now.’
Garion peered down into the fog, almost wishing that by a single act of will he could brush aside the obscuring mist so that he could look at the face of his enemy.
‘Steady,’ Beldin whispered to him. ‘It’s going to come soon enough. Let’s not spoil the surprise for her.’
Disjointed voices came up out of the fog – harsh, gutteral Grolim voices. The fog seemed to muffle them, so Garion could not pick out individual words, but he didn’t really have to.
They waited.
The sun by now had risen above the eastern horizon, and its pale disk was faintly visible through the fog and the roiling cloud that was the aftermath of the storm. The fog began to eddy and swirl. Gradually the mist overhead dissolved, and now Garion could see the sky. A thick blanket of dirty-looking scud lay over the reef but extended only a few leagues to the east. Thus it was that the sun, low on the eastern horizon, shone on the underside of the clouds and stained them an angry reddish orange with its light. It looked almost as if the sky had taken fire.
‘Colorful,’ Sadi murmured, nervously passing his poisoned dagger from one hand to the other. He set his red leather case down and opened it. Then he took up the earthenware bottle, worked the stopper out, and laid it on its side. ‘There should be mice on this reef,’ he said, ‘or the eggs of sea-birds. Zith and her babies will be all right.’ Then he straightened, carefully putting a small bag he had taken from the case in the pocket of his tunic. ‘A little precaution,’ he whispered by way of explanation.
The fog now lay beneath them like a pearly gray ocean in the shadow of the pyramid. Garion heard a strange, melancholy cry and raised his eyes. The albatross hovered on motionless wings above the fog. Garion peered intently down into the obscuring mist, almost absently working the leather sleeve off the hilt of his sword. The Orb was glowing faintly, and its color was not blue, but an angry red, almost the color of the burning sky.
‘That confirms it, Old Wolf,’ Poledra said to her husband. ‘The Sardion’s in that cave.’
Belgarath, his silvery hair and beard glowing red in the light reflected from the clouds overhead, grunted.
The fog below began to swirl, its surface looking almost like an angry sea. It thinned even more. Garion could now see shadowy forms beneath them, hazy, indistinct, and uniformly dark.
The fog was now no more that a faintly obscuring haze.
‘Holy sorceress!’ a Grolim voice exclaimed in alarm. ‘Look!’
A hooded figure in a shiny black satin robe spun about, and Garion looked full into the face of the Child of Dark. He had heard the lights beneath her skin described several times, but no description had prepared him for what he now saw. The lights in Zandramas’ face were not stationary, but swirled restlessly beneath her skin. In the shadow of the ancient pyramid, her features were dark, nearly invisible, but the swirling lights made it appear, in the cryptic words of the Ashabine Oracles, as if ‘all the starry universe’ were contained in her flesh.
Behind him he heard the sharp hiss of Ce’Nedra’s indrawn breath. He turned his head and saw his little queen, dagger in hand and eyes ablaze with hatred, starting toward the stairs leading down into the amphitheater. Polgara and Velvet, obviously aware of her desperate plan, quickly restrained and disarmed her.
Then Poledra stepped to the edge of the terrace. ‘And so it has come at last, Zandramas,’ she said in a clear voice.
‘I was but waiting for thee to join thy friends, Poledra,’ the sorceress replied in a taunting tone. ‘I was concerned for thee, fearing that thou hadst lost thy way. Now it is complete, and we may proceed in orderly fashion.’
‘Thy concern with order is somewhat belated, Zandramas,’ Poledra told her, ‘but no matter. We have all, as was foretold, arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time. Shall we put aside all this foolishness and go inside? The universe must be growing impatient with us.’
‘Not just yet, Poledra,’ Zandramas replied flatly.
‘How tiresome,’ Belgarath’s wife said wearily. ‘That’s a failing in thee, Zandramas. Even after something obviously isn’t working, thou must continue to try. Thou hast twisted and turned and tried to evade this meeting, but all in vain. And all of thine evasion hath only brought thee more quickly to this place. Thinkest thou not that it is time to forgo thine entertainments and to go along gracefully?’
‘I do not think so, Poledra.’
Poledra sighed. ‘All right, Zandramas,’ she said in a resigned tone, ‘as it pleaseth thee.’ She extended her arm, pointing at Garion. ‘Since thou art so bent on this, thus I summon the Godslayer.’
Slowly, deliberately, Garion reached back across his shoulder and wrapped his hand about the hilt of his sword. It made an angry hiss as it slid from its sheath and it was already flaming an incandescent blue as it emerged. Garion’s mind was icy calm now. All doubt and fear were gone, even as they had been at Cthol Mishrak, and the spirit of the Child of Light possessed him utterly. He took the sword hilt in both hands and slowly raised it until the flaming blade was pointed at the fiery clouds overhead. ‘This is thy fate, Zandramas!’ he roared in an awful voice, the archaic words coming unbidden to his lips.
‘That has yet to be determined, Belgarion.’ Zandramas’ tone was defiant, as might be expected, but there was something else behind it. ‘Fate is not always so easily read.’ She made an imperious gesture, and her Grolims formed up into a phalanx around her and began to intone a harsh chant in an ancient and hideous language.
‘Get back!’ Polgara warned sharply, and she, her parents, and Beldin stepped to the edge of the terrace.
Flickering faintly, an inky shadow began to appear at the very edge of Garion’s vision, and he began to feel an obscure sense of dread. ‘Watch yourse
lves,’ he quietly warned his friends. ‘I think she’s starting one of those illusions we were talking about last night.’ Then he felt a powerful surge and head a roar of sound. A wave of sheer darkness rolled out from the extended hands of the Grolims massed around Zandramas, but the wave shattered into black fragments that sizzled and skittered around the amphitheater like frightened mice as the four sorcerers blew it apart almost contemptuously with a single word spoken in unison. Several of the Grolims collapsed writhing to the stone floor, and most of the rest of them staggered back, their faces suddenly pasty white.
Beldin cackled evilly. ‘An’ would ye like t’ try it again, darlin’?’ he taunted Zandramas. ‘If that’s yer intent, ye should have brought more Grolims. Yer usin’ ‘em up at a fearful rate, don’t y’ know.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ Belgarath said to him.
‘So does she, I’ll wager. She takes herself very seriously, and a little ridicule always sets that sort off their pace.’
Without changing expression, Zandramas hurled a fireball at the dwarf, but he brushed it aside as if it were no more than an annoying insect.
Garion quite suddenly understood. The sudden sheet of darkness and the fireball were not intended seriously. They were no more than subterfuge, a way to distract attention from that shadow at the edge of vision.
The Sorceress of Darshiva smiled a chill little smile. ‘No matter,’ she shrugged. ‘I was only testing you, my droll little hunchback. Keep laughing, Beldin. I like to see people die happy.’
‘Truly,’ he agreed. ‘Smile a bit yerself, me darlin’, an’ have a bit of a look around. Y’ might say goodbye t’ the sun while yer at it, fer I don’t think ye’ll be seein’ it fer much longer.’
‘Are all these threats really necessary?’ Belgarath asked wearily.
‘It’s customary,’ Beldin told him. ‘Insults and boasting are a common prelude to more serious business; Besides, she started it.’ He looked down at Zandramas’ Grolims, who had started to move menacingly forward. ‘I guess it’s time, though. Shall we go downstairs then and prepare a big pot of Grolim stew? I like mine chopped rather fine.’ He extended his hand, snapped his fingers, and wrapped the hand around the hilt of a hook-pointed Ulgo knife.
With Garion in the lead, they walked purposefully to the head of the stairs and started down as the Grolims, with a variety of weapons in their hands, rushed to the bottom.
‘Get back!’ Silk snapped at Velvet, who had resolutely joined them with one of her daggers held professionally low.
‘Not a chance,’ she said crisply. ‘I’m protecting my investment.’
‘What investment?’
‘We can talk about it later. I’m busy right now.’
The Grolim leading the charge was a huge man, almost as big as Toth. He was swinging a massive axe, and his eyes were filled with madness. When he was perhaps five feet from Garion, Sadi stepped up to the Rivan King’s shoulder and hurled a fistfull of strangely colored powder full into the ascending Grolim’s face. The Grolim shook his head, pawing at his eyes. Then he sneezed. And then his eyes filled with horror, and he screamed. Howling in terror, he dropped his axe, spun, and bolted back down, shouldering his companions off the steps as he fled. When he reached the floor of the amphitheater, he did not stop, but ran toward the sea. He floundered out into waist-deep water and then stepped off the edge of an unseen terrace lurking beneath the surface. It did not appear that he knew how to swim.
‘I thought you were out of that powder,’ Silk said to Sadi even as he made a long, smooth, overhand cast with one of his daggers. A Grolim stumbled back, plucking at the dagger hilt protruding from his chest, missed his footing, and fell heavily backward down the stairway.
‘I always keep a bit for contingencies,’ Sadi replied, ducking under a sword swipe and deftly slicing a Grolim across the belly with his poisoned dagger. The Grolim stiffened, then slowly toppled out off the side of the staircase. A number of black-robed men, seeking to surprise them from the rear, were clambering up the rough sides of the stairway. Velvet knelt and cooly drove one of her daggers into the upturned face of a Grolim on the verge of reaching the top. With a hoarse cry he clutched at his face and fell backward, sweeping several of his companions off the wall as he plunged down.
Then the blond Drasnian girl darted to the other side of the stairs, shaking out her silken cord. She deftly looped it about the neck of a Grolim in the act of scrambling up onto the steps. She stepped under his flailing arms, turned until they were back to back, and leaned forward. The helpless Grolim’s feet came up off the step, and he clutched at the cord about his neck with both hands. His feet kicked futilely at the air for a few moments, his face turning black, and then he went limp. Velvet turned back, unlooped her cord, and cooly kicked the inert body off the edge.
Durnik and Toth had moved up to take positions beside Garion and Zakath, and the four of them moved implacably down the stairs, step by step, chopping and smashing at the black-robed figures rushing up to meet them. Durnik’s hammer seemed only slightly less dreadful than the sword of the Rivan King. The Grolims fell before them as they moved inexorably down the stairs. Toth was chopping methodically with Durnik’s axe, his face as expressionless as that of a man felling a tree. Zakath was a fencer, and he feinted and parried with his massive, though nearly weightless sword. His thrusts were quick and usually lethal. The steps below the dreadful quartet were soon littered with twisted bodies and were running with rivulets of blood.
‘Watch your footing,’ Durnik warned as he crushed another Grolim’s skull. ‘The steps are getting slippery.’
Garion swept off another Grolim head. It bounced like a child’s ball down the steps even as the body toppled off the side of the stairway. Garion risked a quick look back over his shoulder. Belgarath and Beldin had joined Velvet to help the girl repel the black-robed men scrambling up the sides of the steps. Beldin seemed to take vicious delight in driving his hook-pointed knife into Grolim eyes, then, with a sharp twist and a jerk he would pull out sizable gobs of brains. Belgarath, his thumbs tucked into his rope belt, waited calmly. When a Grolim’s head appeared above the edge of the stair, the old man would draw back his foot and kick the priest of Torak full in the face. Since it was a thirty-foot drop from the stairs to the stones of the amphitheater, few of the Grolims he kicked off the side of the stairs tried the climb a second time.
When they reached the foot of the stairs, scarcely any of Zandramas’ Grolims survived. With his usual prudence, Sadi darted around first one side of the stairway and then the other, cooly sinking his poisoned dagger into the bodies of those Grolims who had fallen to the amphitheater floor, the inert dead as well as the groaning injured.
Zandramas seemed somewhat taken aback by the sheer violence of her foes’ descent. She held her ground nonetheless, drawing herself up in scornful defiance. Standing behind her, his mouth agape with terror, stood a man in a cheap crown and somewhat shopworn regal robes. His features bore a faint resemblance to those of Zakath, so Garion assumed that he was the Archduke Otrath. And then at last, Garion beheld his own young son. He had avoided looking at the boy during the bloody descent, since he had been unsure of what his own reaction might have been at a time when his concentration was vital. As Beldin had said, Geran was no longer a baby. His blond curls gave his face a softness, but there was no softness in his eyes as he met his father’s gaze. Geran was quite obviously consumed with hatred for the woman who firmly held his arm in her grasp.
Gravely, Garion raised his sword to his visor in salute, and, just as gravely, Geran lifted his free hand in response.
Then the Rivan King began an implacable advance, pausing only long enough to kick an unattached Grolim head out of his way. The uncertainty he had felt back in Dal Perivor had vanished now. Zandramas stood no more than a few yards away, and the fact that she was a woman no longer mattered. He raised his flaming sword and continued his advance.
The flickering shadow along the periphery o
f his vision grew darker, and he hesitated as his sense of dread increased. Try though he might, he could not stifle it. He faltered.
The shadow, vague at first, began to coalesce into a hideous face that towered behind the black-robed sorceress. The eyes were soullessly blank, and the mouth gaped open in an expression of unspeakable loss as if the owner of the face had been plunged into a horror beyond imagining from a place of light and glory. That loss however, bespoke no compassion or gentleness, but rather expressed the implacable need of the hideous being to find others to share its misery.
‘Behold the King of Hell!’ Zandramas cried triumphantly. ‘Flee now and live a few moments longer ’ere he pulls you all down into eternal darkness, eternal flames, and eternal despair.’
Garion stopped. He could not advance on that ultimate horror.
And then a voice came to him out of his memories, and with the voice there came an image. He seemed to be standing in a damp clearing in a forest somewhere. A light, drizzling rain was falling from a heavy, nighttime sky, and the leaves underfoot were wet and soggy. Eriond, all unconcerned, was speaking to them. It had happened, Garion realized, just after their first encounter with Zandramas, who had assumed the shape of the dragon to attack them. ‘But the fire wasn’t real,’ the young man was explaining. ‘Didn’t you all know that?’ He looked slightly surprised at their failure to understand. ‘It was only an illusion. That’s all evil ever really is – an illusion. I’m sorry if any of you were worried, but I didn’t have time to explain.’
That was the key, Garion understood now. Hallucination was the product of derangement; illusion was not. He was not going mad. The face of the King of Hell was no more real than had been the illusion of Arell which Ce’Nedra had encountered in the forest below Kell. The only weapon the Child of Dark had to counter the Child of Light with was illusion, a subtle trickery directed at the mind. It was a powerful weapon, but very fragile. One ray of light could destroy it. He started forward again.
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