The Belgariad 5: Enchanter's End Game (40 page)

"There's not much you can do. Just don't get into the habit of obeying his orders, that's all. "

They camped that evening as they usually did in a well-sheltered hollow between two hills and, as usual, they built no fire to give away their location.

"I'm getting a bit tired of cold suppers," Silk complained, biting down hard on a piece of dried meat. "This beef's like a strip of old leather."

"The exercise is good for your jaws," Belgarath told him.

"You can be a very unpleasant old man when you set your mind to it, do you know that?"

"The nights are getting longer, aren't they?" Garion said to head off any further wrangling.

"The summer's winding down," Belgarath told him. "It will be autumn up here in another few weeks, and winter will be right on its heels."

"I wonder where we'll be when winter comes," Garion said rather plaintively.

"I wouldn't do that," Silk advised. "Thinking about it isn't going to help, and it's only going to make you nervous."

"Nervouser," Garion corrected. "I'm already nervous."

"Is there such a word as 'nervouser?' " Silk asked Belgarath curiously.

"There is now," Belgarath replied. "Garion just invented it."

"I wish I could invent a word," Silk said admiringly to Garion, his ferretlike little eyes gleaming mischievously.

"Please don't poke fun at me, Silk. I'm having enough trouble as it is."

"Let's get some sleep," Belgarath suggested. "This conversation isn't going anywhere, and we've got a long way to ride tomorrow."

That night the whispering invaded Garion's sleep, and it seemed to convey its meaning in images rather than words. There was an offer of friendship - of a hand outstretched in love. The loneliness that had haunted his boyhood from the moment he had discovered that he was an orphan seemed to fade, to pass somehow behind him with that offer, and he found himself rather desperately wanting to run toward that hand reaching toward him.

Then, very clearly, he saw two figures standing side by side. The figure of the man was very tall and very powerful, and the figure of the woman was so familiar that the very sight of her caught at Garion's heart. The tall, powerful man seemed to be a stranger, and yet was not. His face went far beyond mere human handsomeness. It was quite the most beautiful face Garion had ever seen. The woman, of course, was not a stranger. The white lock at the brow and the glorious eyes were the most familiar things in Garion's life. Side by side, the beautiful stranger and Aunt Pol reached out their arms to him.

"You will be our son," the whispering voice told him. "Our beloved son. I will be your father, and Polgara your mother. This will be no imaginary thing, Child of Light, for I can make all things happen. Polgara will really be your mother, and all of her love will be yours alone; and I, your father, will love and cherish you both. Will you turn away from us and face again the bitter loneliness of the orphan child? Does that chill emptiness compare with the warmth of loving parents? Come to us, Belgarion, and accept our love."

Garion jerked himself out of sleep, sitting bolt upright, trembling and sweating.

"I need help, " he cried out silently, reaching into the vaults of his mind to find that other, nameless presence.

"What's your problem now?" the dry voice asked him.

"He's cheating, " Garion declared, outraged.

"Cheating? Did somebody come along and make up a set of rules while I wasn't watching?"

"You know what I mean. He's offering to make Aunt Pol my mother if I'll do what he says. "

"He's lying. He can't alter the past. Ignore him."

"How can I? He keeps reaching into my mind and putting his hand on the most sensitive spots "

"Think about Ce'Nedra. That'll confuse him. "

"Ce'Nedra?"

"Every time he tries to tempt you with Polgara, think about your flighty little princess. Remember exactly how she looked when you peeked at her while she was bathing that time back in the Wood of the Dryads."

"I did not peekl"

"Really? How is it that you remember every single detail so vividly, then?"

Garion blushed. He had forgotten that his daydreams were not entirely private.

"Just concentrate on Ce'Nedra. It will probably irritate Torak almost as much as it does me. " The voice paused. "Is that all you can really think about?" it asked then.

Garion did not try to answer that.

They pushed on southward under the dirty overcast and two days later they reached the first trees, scattered sparsely at the edge of the grassland where great herds of antlered creatures grazed as placidly and unafraid as cattle. As the three of them rode south, the scattered clumps of trees became thicker, and soon spread into a forest of dark-boughed evergreens.

The whispering blandishments of Torak continued, but Garion countered them with thoughts of his red-haired little princess. He could sense the irritation of his enemy each time he intruded these daydreams upon the carefully orchestrated images Torak kept trying to instill in his imagination. Torak wanted him to think of his loneliness and fear and of the possibility of becoming a part of a loving family, but the intrusion of Ce'Nedra into the picture confused and baffled the God. Garion soon perceived that Torak's understanding of men was severely limited. Concerned more with elementals, with those towering compulsions and ambitions which had inflamed him for the endless eons, Torak could not cope with the scattered complexities and conflicting desires that motivated most men. Garion seized on his advantage to thwart the insidious and compelling whispers with which Torak tried to lure him from his purpose.

The whole business was somehow peculiarly familiar. This had happened before - not perhaps in exactly the same way, but very similarly. He sorted through his memories, trying to pin down this strange sense of repetition. It was the sight of a twisted tree stump, lightning-blasted and charred, that suddenly brought it all flooding back in on him. The stump, when seen from a certain angle, bore a vague resemblance to a man on horseback, a dark rider who seemed to watch them as they rode by. Because the sky was overcast, the stump cast no shadow, and the image clicked into place. Throughout his childhood, hovering always on the edge of his vision, Garion had seen the strange, menacing shape of a dark-cloaked rider on a black horse, shadowless even in the brightest sunlight. That had been Asharak the Murgo, of course, the Grolim whom Garion had destroyed in his first open act as a sorcerer. But had it? There had existed between Garion and that dark figure which had so haunted his childhood a strange bond. They had been enemies; Garion had always known that; but in their enmity there had always been a curious closeness, something that seemed to pull them together. Garion quite deliberately began to examine a startling possibility. Suppose that the dark rider had not in fact been Asharak - or if it had been, suppose that Asharak had somehow been suffused by another, more powerful awareness.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced Garion became that he had stumbled inadvertently across the truth of the matter. Torak had demonstrated that, even though his body slept, his awareness could still move about the world, twisting events to his own purposes. Asharak had been involved, certainly, but the dominating force had always been the consciousness of Torak. The Dark God had stood watch over him since infancy. The fear he had sensed in that dark shape that had hovered always on the edge of his boyhood had not been Asharak's fear, but Torak's. Torak had known who he was from the beginning, had known that one day Garion would take up the sword of the Rivan King and come to the meeting that had been ordained since before the world was made.

Acting upon a sudden impulse, Garion put his left hand inside his tunic and took hold of his amulet. Twisting slightly, he reached up and laid the marked palm of his right hand on the Orb, which stood on the pommel of the great sword strapped across his back.

"I know you now, " he declared silently, hurling the thought at the murky sky. "You might as well give up trying to win me over to your side, because I'm not going to change my mind. Aunt Pol is not your wife, and I'm not your son. You'd better stop trying to play games with my thoughts and get ready, because I in coming to kill you. "

The Orb beneath his hand flared with a sudden exultation as Garion threw his challenge into the Dark God's teeth, and the sword at Garion's back suddenly burst into a blue flame that flickered through the sheath enclosing it.

There was a moment of deadly silence, and then what had been a whisper suddenly became a vast roar.

"Come, then, Belgarion, Child of Light, " Torak hurled back the challenge. "I await thee in the City of Night. Bring all thy will and all thy courage with thee, for I am ready for our meeting."

"What in the name of the seven Gods do you think you're doing?" Belgarath almost screamed at Garion, his face mottled with angry astonishment.

"Torak's been whispering at me for almost a week now," Garion explained calmly, taking his hand from the Orb. "He's been offering me all kinds of things if I'd give up this whole idea. I got tired of it, so I told him to stop."

Belgarath spluttered indignantly, waving his hands at Garion.

"He knows I'm coming, Grandfather," Garion said, trying to placate the infuriated old man. "He's known who I was since the day I was born. He's been watching me all this time. We're not going to be able to take him by surprise, so why try? I wanted to let him know that I was on to him. Maybe it's time for him to start worrying and being afraid just a little bit, too."

Silk was staring at Garion. "He's an Alorn, all right," he observed finally.

"He's an idiot!" Belgarath snapped angrily. He turned back to Garion. "Did it ever occur to you that there might be something out here to worry about besides Torak?" he demanded.

Garion blinked.

"Cthol Mishrak is not unguarded, you young blockhead. You've just succeeded in announcing our presence to every Grolim within a hundred leagues."

"I didn't think of that," Garion mumbled.

"I didn't think you'd thought. Sometimes I don't think you know how to think."

Silk looked around apprehensively. "Now what do we do?" he asked.

"We'd better get out of here - as fast as our horses can carry us," Belgarath said. He glared at Garion. "Are you sure you don't have a trumpet somewhere under your clothes?" he asked with heavy sarcasm. "Maybe you'd like to blow a few fanfares as we go along." He shook his head in disgust and then gathered up his reins. "Let's ride," he said.

THE ASPENS WERE stark white and motionless under the dead sky, and they rose, straight and slender, like the bars of an interminable cage. Belgarath led them at a walk, carefully weaving his way through the endless stretches of this vast, silent forest.

"How much farther?" Silk asked the old man tensely.

"Not much more than a day, now," Belgarath replied. "The clouds ahead are getting thicker."

"You say the cloudbank never moves?"

"Never. It's been stationary since Torak put it there."

"What if a wind came along? Wouldn't that move it?"

Belgarath shook his head. "The normal rules have been suspended in that region. For all I know, the cloud might not actually be cloud. It might be something else."

"Like what?"

"An illusion of some kind, perhaps. The Gods are very good at illusions."

"Are they looking for us? The Grolims, I mean."

Belgarath nodded.

"Are you taking steps to keep them from finding us?"

"Naturally." The old man looked at him. "Why this sudden urge for conversation? You've been talking steadily for the last hour."

"I'm a little edgy," Silk admitted. "This is unfamiliar territory, and that always makes me nervous. I'm much more comfortable when I've got my escape routes worked out in advance."

"Are you always ready to run?"

"In my profession you have to be. What was that?"

Garion heard it too. Faintly, somewhere far off behind them, there was a deep-toned baying - one animal at first, but soon joined by several others. "Wolves?" he suggested.

Belgarath's face had grown bleak. "No," he replied, "not wolves." He shook his reins, and his nervous horse began to trot, the sound of its hoofs muffled by the rotting loam lying thick beneath the aspens.

"What is it then, Grandfather?" Garion asked, also pushing his horse into a trot.

"Torak's Hounds," Belgarath replied tersely.

"Dogs?"

"Not really. They're Grolims - rather specialized ones. When the Angaraks built the city, Torak decided that he needed something to guard the surrounding countryside. Certain Grolims volunteered to take on nonhuman shapes. The change was permanent."

"I've dealt with watchdogs before," Silk said confidently.

"Not like these. Let's see if we can outrun them." Belgarath didn't sound very hopeful.

They pushed their horses into a gallop, weaving in and out among the tree trunks. The limbs slapped against their faces as they rode, and Garion raised his arm to ward them off as the three of them plunged on.