Magician's Gambit

by David Eddings

  "Just do it, Silk," Wolf told him firmly. "I can't watch over you every minute." He slipped his fingers up under the dirty and rather ragged bandage on his arm, scratching irritably. "That's enough of that," he declared. "Garion, take this thing off me." He held out his arm.

  Garion backed away. "Not me," he refused. "Do you know what Aunt Pol would say to me if I did that without her permission?"

  "Don't be silly. Silk, you do it."

  "First you say to stay out of trouble, and then you tell me to cross Polgara? You're inconsistent, Belgarath."

  "Oh, here," Ce'Nedra said. She took hold of the old man's arm and began picking at the knotted bandage with her tiny fingers. "Just remember that this was your idea. Garion, give me your knife."

  Somewhat reluctantly, Garion handed over his dagger. The princess sawed through the bandage and began to unwrap it. The splints fell clattering to the stone floor.

  "What a dear child you are." Mister Wolf beamed at her and began to scratch at his arm with obvious relief.

  "Just remember that you owe me a favor," she told him.

  "She's a Tolnedran, all right," Silk observed.

  It was about an hour later when Aunt Pol came around the table to them, her eyes somber.

  "How's the mare?" Ce'Nedra asked quickly.

  "Very weak, but I think she'll be all right."

  "What about the baby horse?"

  Aunt Pol sighed. "We were too late. We tried everything, but we just couldn't get him to start breathing."

  Ce'Nedra gasped, her little face suddenly a deathly white. "You're not going to just give up, are you?" She said it almost accusingly.

  "There's nothing more we can do, dear," Aunt Pol told her sadly. "It took too long. He just didn't have enough strength left."

  Ce'Nedra stared at her, unbelieving. "Do something!" she demanded. "You're a sorceress. Do something!"

  "I'm sorry, Ce'Nedra, that's beyond our power. We can't reach beyond that barrier."

  The little princess wailed then and began to cry bitterly. Aunt Pol put her arms comfortingly about her and held her as she sobbed.

  But Garion was already moving. With absolute clarity he now knew what it was that the cave expected of him, and he responded without thinking, not running or even hurrying. He walked quietly around the stone table toward the fire.

  Hettar sat cross-legged on the floor with the unmoving colt in his lap, his head bowed with sorrow and his manelike scalp lock falling across the spindle-shanked little animal's silent face.

  "Give him to me, Hettar," Garion said.

  "Garion! No!" Aunt Pol's voice, coming from behind him, was alarmed.

  Hettar looked up, his hawk face filled with deep sadness.

  "Let me have him, Hettar," Garion repeated very quietly. Wordlessly Hettar raised the limp little body, still wet and glistening in the firelight, and handed it to Garion. Garion knelt and laid the foal on the floor in front of the shimmering fire. He put his hands on the tiny ribcage and pushed gently. "Breathe," he almost whispered.

  "We tried that, Garion," Hettar told him sadly. "We tried everything."

  Garion began to gather his will.

  "Don't do that, Garion," Aunt Pol told him firmly. "It isn't possible, and you'll hurt yourself if you try."

  Garion was not listening to her. The cave itself was speaking to him too loudly for him to hear anything else. He focused his every thought on the wet, lifeless body of the foal. Then he stretched out his right hand and laid his palm on the unblemished, walnut-colored shoulder of the dead animal. Before him there seemed to be a blank wall - black and higher than anything else in the world, impenetrable and silent beyond his comprehension. Tentatively he pushed at it, but it would not move. He drew in a deep breath and hurled himself entirely into the struggle. "Live," he said.

  "Garion, stop."

  "Live," he said again, throwing himself deeper into his effort against that blackness.

  "It's too late now, Pol," he heard Mister Wolf say from somewhere. "He's already committed himself."

  "Live," Garion repeated, and the surge he felt welling up out of him was so vast that it drained him utterly. The glowing walls flickered and then suddenly rang as if a bell had been struck somewhere deep inside the mountain. The sound shimmered, filling the air inside the domed chamber with a vibrant ringing. The light in the walls suddenly flared with a searing brightness, and the chamber was as bright as noon.

  The little body under Garion's hand quivered, and the colt drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Garion heard the others gasp as the sticklike little legs began to twitch. The colt inhaled again, and his eyes opened.

  "A miracle," Mandorallen said in a choked voice.

  "Perhaps even more than that," Mister Wolf replied, his eyes searching Garion's face.

  The colt struggled, his head wobbling weakly on his neck. He pulled his legs under him and began to struggle to his feet. Instinctively, he turned to his mother and tottered toward her to nurse. His coat, which had been a deep, solid brown before Garion had touched him, was now marked on the shoulder with a single incandescently white patch exactly the size of the mark on Garion's palm.

  Garion lurched to his feet and stumbled away, pushing past the others. He staggered to the icy spring bubbling in the opening in the wall and splashed water over his head and neck. He knelt before the spring, shaking and breathing hard for a very long time. Then he felt a tentative, almost shy touch on his elbow. When he wearily raised his head, he saw the now steadier colt standing at his side and gazing at him with adoration in its liquid eyes.

  Chapter Nine

  THE STORM BLEW itself out the next morning, but they stayed in the cave for another day after the wind had died down to allow the mare to recover and the newborn colt to gain a bit more strength. Garion found the attention of the little animal disturbing. It seemed that no matter where he went in the cave, those soft eyes followed him, and the colt was continually nuzzling at him. The other horses also watched him with a kind of mute respect. All in all it was a bit embarrassing.

  On the morning of their departure, they carefully removed all traces of their stay from the cave. The cleaning was spontaneous, neither the result of some suggestion or of any discussion, but rather was something in which they all joined without comment.

  "The fire's still burning," Durnik fretted, looking back into the glowing dome from the doorway as they prepared to leave.

  "It will go out by itself after we leave," Wolf told him. "I don't think you could put it out anyway - no matter how hard you tried."

  Durnik nodded soberly. "You're probably right," he agreed.

  "Close the door, Garion," Aunt Pol said after they had led their horses out onto the ledge outside the cave.

  Somewhat self consciously, Garion took hold of the edge of the huge iron door and pulled it. Although Barak with all his great strength had tried without success to budge the door, it moved easily as soon as Garion's hand touched it. A single tug was enough to set it swinging gently closed. The two solid edges came together with a great, hollow boom, leaving only a thin, nearly invisible line where they met.

  Mister Wolf put his hand lightly on the pitted iron, his eyes far away. Then he sighed once, turned, and led them back along the ledge the way they had come two days before.

  Once they had rounded the shoulder of the mountain, they remounted and rode on down through the tumbled boulders and patches of rotten ice to the first low bushes and stunted trees a few miles below the pass. Although the wind was still brisk, the sky overhead was blue, and only a few fleecy clouds raced by, appearing strangely close.

  Garion rode up to Mister Wolf and fell in beside him. His mind was filled with confusion by what had happened in the cave, and he desperately needed to get things straightened out. "Grandfather," he said.

  "Yes, Garion?" the old man answered, rousing himself from his half doze.

  "Why did Aunt Pol try to stop me? With the colt, I mean?"

  "Because it was dangerous," the
old man replied. "Very dangerous."

  "Why dangerous?"

  "When you try to do something that's impossible, you can pour too much energy into it; and if you keep trying, it can be fatal."

  "Fatal?"

  Wolf nodded. "You drain yourself out completely, and you don't have enough strength left to keep your own heart beating."

  "I didn't know that." Garion was shocked.

  Wolf ducked as he rode under a low branch. "Obviously."

  "Don't you keep saying that nothing is impossible?"

  "Within reason, Garion. Within reason."

  They rode on quietly for a few minutes, the sound of their horses' hooves muffled by the thick moss covering the ground under the trees. "Maybe I'd better find out more about all this," Garion said finally.

  "That's not a bad idea. What was it you wanted to know?"

  "Everything, I guess."

  Mister Wolf laughed. "That would take a very long time, I'm afraid."

  Garion's heart sank. "Is it that complicated?"

  "No. Actually it's very simple, but simple things are always the hardest to explain."

  "That doesn't make any sense," Garion retorted, a bit irritably.

  "Oh?" Wolf looked at him with amusement. "Let me ask you a simple question, then. What's two and two?"

  "Four," Garion replied promptly.

  "Why?"

  Garion floundered for a moment. "It just is," he answered lamely.

  "But why?"

  "There isn't any why to it. It just is."

  "There's a why to everything, Garion."

  "All right, why is two and two four then?"

  "I don't know," Wolf admitted. "I thought maybe you might." They passed a dead snag standing twisted and starkly white against the deep blue sky.

  "Are we getting anywhere?" Garion asked, even more confused now.

  "Actually, I think we've come a very long way," Wolf replied. "Precisely what was it you wanted to know?"

  Garion put it as directly as he knew how. "What is sorcery?"

  "I told you that once already. The Will and the Word."

  "That doesn't really mean anything, you know."

  "All right, try it this way. Sorcery is doing things with your mind instead of your hands. Most people don't use it because at first it's much easier to do things the other way."

  Garion frowned. "It doesn't seem hard."

  "That's because the things you've been doing have come out of impulse. You've never sat down and thought your way through something - you just do it."

  "Isn't it easier that way? What I mean is, why not just do it and not think about it?"

  "Because spontaneous sorcery is just third-rate magic - completely uncontrolled. Anything can happen if you simply turn the power of your mind loose. It has no morality of its own. The good or the bad of it comes out of you, not out of the sorcery."

  "You mean that when I burned Asharak, it was me and not the sorcery?" Garion asked, feeling a bit sick at the thought.

  Mister Wolf nodded gravely. "It might help if you remember that you were also the one who gave life to the colt. The two things sort of balance out."

  Garion glanced back over his shoulder at the colt, who was frisking along behind him like a puppy. "What you're saying is that it can be either good or bad."

  "No," Wolf corrected. "By itself it has nothing to do with good or bad. And it won't help you in any way to make up your mind how to use it. You can do anything you want to with it - almost anything, that is. You can bite the tops off all the mountains or stick the trees in the ground upside down or turn all the clouds green, if you feel like it. What you have to decide is whether you should do something, not whether you can do it."

  "You said almost anything," Garion noted quickly.

  "I'm getting to that," Wolf said. He looked thoughtfully at a low-flying cloud - an ordinary-looking old man in a rusty tunic and gray hood looking at the sky. "There's one thing that's absolutely forbidden. You can never destroy anything - not ever."

  Garion was baffled by that. "I destroyed Asharak, didn't I?"

  "No. You killed him. There's a difference. You set fire to him, and he burned to death. To destroy something is to try to uncreate it. That's what's forbidden."

  "What would happen if I did try?"

  "Your power would turn inward on you, and you'd be obliterated in an instant."

  Garion blinked and then suddenly went cold at the thought of how close he had come to crossing that forbidden line in his encounter with Asharak. "How do I tell the difference?" he asked in a hushed voice. "I mean, how do I go about explaining that I only meant to kill somebody and not destroy him?"

  "It's not a good area for experimentation," Wolf told him. "If you really want to kill somebody, stick your sword in him. Hopefully you won't have occasion to do that sort of thing too often."

  They stopped at a small brook trickling out of some mossy stones to allow their horses to drink.

  "You see, Garion," Wolf explained, "the ultimate purpose of the universe is to create things. It will not permit you to come along behind it uncreating all the things it went to so much trouble to create in the first place. When you kill somebody, all you've really done is alter him a bit. You've changed him from being alive to being dead. He's still there. To uncreate him, you have to will him out of existence entirely. When you feel yourself on the verge of telling something to 'vanish' or 'go away' or 'be not,' you're getting very close to the point of self destruction. That's the main reason we have to keep our emotions under control all the time."

  "I didn't know that," Garion admitted.

  "You do now. Don't even try to unmake a single pebble."

  "A pebble?"

  "The universe doesn't make any distinction between a pebble and a man." The old man looked at him somewhat sternly. "Your Aunt's been trying to explain the necessity for keeping yourself under control for several months now, and you've been fighting her every step of the way."

  Garion hung his head. "I didn't know what she was getting at," he apologized.

  "That's because you weren't listening. That's a great failing of yours, Garion."

  Garion flushed. "What happened the first time you found out you could - well - do things?" he asked quickly, wanting to change the subject.

  "It was something silly," Wolf replied. "It usually is, the first time."

  "What was it?"

  Wolf shrugged. "I wanted to move a big rock. My arms and back weren't strong enough, but my mind was. After that I didn't have any choice but to learn to live with it because, once you unlock it, it's unlocked forever. That's the point where your life changes and you have to start learning to control yourself."

  "It always gets back to that, doesn't it?"

  "Always," Wolf said. "It's not as difficult as it sounds, really. Look at Mandorallen." He pointed at the knight, who was riding with Durnik. The two of them were in a deep discussion. "Now, Mandorallen's a nice enough fellow - honest, sincere, toweringly noble - but let's be honest. His mind has never been violated by an original thought - until now. He's learning to control fear, and learning to control it is forcing him to think - probably for the first time in his whole life. It's painful for him, but he's doing it. If Mandorallen can learn to control fear with that limited brain of his, surely you can learn the same kind of control over the other emotions. After all, you're quite a bit brighter than he is."

  Silk, who had been scouting ahead, came riding back to join them. "Belgarath," he said, "there's something about a mile in front of us that I think you'd better take a look at."

  "All right," Wolf replied. "Think about what I've been saying, Garion. We'll talk more about it later." Then he and Silk moved off through the trees at a gallop.

  Garion pondered what the old man had told him. The one thing that bothered him the most was the crushing responsibility his unwanted talent placed upon him.

  The colt frisked along beside him, galloping off into the trees from time to time and then rushing
back, his little hooves pattering on the damp ground. Frequently he would stop and stare at Garion, his eyes full of love and trust.

  "Oh, stop that," Garion told him.

  The colt scampered away again.

  Princess Ce'Nedra moved her horse up until she was beside Garion. "What were you and Belgarath talking about?" she asked.

  Garion shrugged. "A lot of things."

  There was immediately a hard little tightening around her eyes. In the months that they had known each other, Garion had learned to catch those minute danger signals. Something warned him that the princess was spoiling for an argument, and with an insight that surprised him he reasoned out the source of her unspoken belligerence. What had happened in the cave had shaken her badly, and Ce'Nedra did not like to be shaken. To make matters even worse, the princess had made a few coaxing overtures to the colt, obviously wanting to turn the little animal into her personal pet. The colt, however, ignored her completely, fixing all his attention on Garion, even to the point of ignoring his own mother unless he was hungry. Ce'Nedra disliked being ignored even more than she disliked being shaken. Glumly, Garion realized how small were his chances of avoiding a squabble with her.

  "I certainly wouldn't want to pry into a private conversation," she said tartly.

  "It wasn't private. We were talking about sorcery and how to keep accidents from happening. I don't want to make any more mistakes."

  She turned that over in her mind, looking for something offensive in it. His mild answer seemed to irritate her all the more. "I don't believe in sorcery," she said flatly. In the light of all that had recently happened, her declaration was patently absurd, and she seemed to realize that as soon as she said it. Her eyes hardened even more.

  Garion sighed. "All right," he said with resignation, "was there anything in particular you wanted to fight about, or did you just want to start yowling and sort of make it up as we go along?"

  "Yowling?" Her voice went up several octaves. "Yowling?"

  "Screeching, maybe," he suggested as insultingly as possible. As long as the fight was inevitable anyway, he determined to get in a few digs at her before her voice rose to the point where she could no longer hear him.