Belgarath the Sorcerer (15 page)

‘Something foolish,' Beldin replied sourly. ‘Belzedar's not always the most rational of men, and he's been absolutely obsessed with the Master's Orb since he first laid eyes on it. Sometimes you'd almost think it was something of his own that Torak stole.'

‘You've noticed that too, I see,' Belmakor said with a faint smile.

‘
Noticed
it? How could anyone
miss
it? What were
you
doing in Mallorea?'

‘I wanted to see what had happened to my people, actually.'

‘Well? What did?'

‘Torak didn't do them any favors when he cracked the world.'

‘I don't think he was trying to. What happened?'

‘I can't be entirely positive. Melcena was an island kingdom off the east coast, and when Torak started rearranging the world's geography, he managed to sink about half of those islands. That inconvenienced my people just a bit. Now they're all jammed together in what little space they've got left. They appointed a committee to look into it.'

‘They did
what
?'

‘That's the first thing a Melcene thinks of when a crisis of any kind crops up, old boy. It gives us a sense of accomplishment - and we can always blame the committee if things don't work out.'

‘That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.'

‘Of course it is. We Melcenes are a ridiculous people. It's part of our charm.'

‘What did the committee come up with?' I asked him.

‘They studied the problem from all angles - for about ten years, actually - and then they filed their report to the government.'

‘And what were their findings?' I asked.

‘The report was five hundred pages long, Belgarath. It'd take me all night to repeat it.'

‘Boil it down.'

‘Well, the gist of it was that the Melcene empire needed more land.'

‘It took them ten years to come up with
that
?' Beldin demanded incredulously.

‘Melcenes are
very
thorough, old boy. They went on to suggest expansion to the mainland.'

‘Isn't it already occupied?' I asked him.

‘Well, yes, but all of the people along the east coast are of Dallish extraction anyway - until you get farther north into the lands of the Karands - so there's a certain kinship. The emperor sent emissaries to our cousins in Rengel and Celanta to explore possible solutions to our predicament.'

‘When did the war start?' Beldin asked bluntly.

‘Oh, there wasn't any war, old boy. We Melcenes are far too civilized for that. The emperor's emissaries simply pointed out to the petty kinglets the advantages of becoming a part of the Melcene empire - and the
disadvantages
of refusing.'

‘Threats, you mean?' Beldin suggested.

‘I wouldn't actually call them threats, dear boy. The emis
saries were very polite, of course, but they
did
manage to convey the notion that the emperor would be
terribly
disappointed if he didn't get what he wanted. The little kings got the point almost immediately. Anyway, after the Melcenes established footholds in Rengel and Celanta, they annexed Darshiva and Peldane. Gandahar's giving them some trouble, though. The people in the jungles of Gandahar have domesticated the elephant, and elephant cavalry's a little difficult to cope with. I'm sure they'll work things out, though.'

‘Do you think they'll expand into the lands of the Dals?' I asked him.

Belmakor shook his head. ‘That wouldn't be a good idea at all, Belgarath.'

‘Why? I've never heard that the Dals are a particularly warlike people.'

‘They aren't, but no one in his right mind crosses the Dals. They're scholars of the arcane, and they've discovered all sorts of things that could make life unpleasant for anybody who blundered into their territory. Have you ever heard of Urvon?'

‘He's one of Torak's disciples, isn't he?'

‘Yes. He more or less controls the Grolims at Mal Yaska, and Ctuchik runs things in Cthol Mishrak. Anyway, a few years ago Urvon wanted a survey of the native people of Mallorea, so he sent his Grolims out to have a look. The ones he sent to Kell didn't come back. They're still wandering around in the shadow of that huge mountain down there - blind and crazy. Of course, you can't always tell if a Grolim's crazy; they aren't too rational to begin with.'

Beldin barked that ugly laugh of his. ‘You can say that again, brother.'

‘What
are
the Dals at Kell up to?' I asked curiously.

‘All sorts of things - wizardry, necromancy, divining, astrology.'

‘Don't tell me that they're still into
that
tired old nonsense.'

‘I'm not entirely positive that it
is
nonsense, old boy. Astrology's the province of the Seers, and they're more or less at the top of the social structure at Kell. Kell's been there forever, and it doesn't really have what you could call a government. They all just do what the Seers tell them to do.'

‘Have you ever met one of these Seers?' Beldin asked.

‘One - a young woman with a bandage over her eyes.'

‘How could she read the stars if she's blind?'

‘I didn't say that she was blind, old boy. Evidently she only takes the bandage off when she wants to read the Book of the Heavens. She was a strange girl, but the Dals all listened to her - not that what she said made much sense to me.'

‘That's usually the case with people who pretend to be able to see the future,' Beldin noted. ‘Talking in riddles is a very good way to keep from being exposed as a fraud.'

‘I don't think they're frauds, Beldin,' Belmakor disagreed. ‘The Dals tell me that no Seer has ever been wrong about what's going to happen. The Seers think in terms of Ages. The Second Age began when Torak broke the world apart.'

‘It
was
a sort of memorable event,' I said. ‘The Alorns started
their
calendar that day. I think we're currently in the year one hundred and thirty-eight-or so.'

‘Foolishness!' Beldin snorted.

‘It gives them something to think about beside picking fights with their neighbors.'

The she-wolf came loping across the meadow. ‘One wonders when you are coming home,' she said to me pointedly.

‘She's almost as bad as a wife, isn't she?' Beldin observed.

She bared her fangs at him. I could never really be sure just how much she understood of what we were saying.

‘Are you going back to Mallorea?' I asked Belmakor.

‘I don't think so, old boy. I think I'll look in on the Marags instead. I rather like the Marags.'

‘Well,
I am
going back to Mallorea,' Beldin said. ‘I still want to find out who Torak's third disciple is, and I'd like to keep an eye on Belzedar - if I can keep up with him. Every time I turn around, he's given me the slip.' He looked at me. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Right now I'm going home - before my friend here sinks her fangs into my leg and drags me there.'

‘I meant it more generally, Belgarath.'

‘I'm not entirely sure. I think I'll stay around here for a while - until the Master thinks of something else for me to do.'

‘Well,' the wolf said to me, ‘are you coming home or not?'

‘Yes, dear,' I sighed, rolling my eyes upward.

It was lonely in the Vale after Belsambar left us. Beldin and Belzedar were off in Mallorea, and Belmakor was down in Maragor, entertaining Marag women, I'm sure. That left only the twins and me to stay with our Master. There was a sort of unspoken agreement among us that the twins would always stay close to Aldur. That particular custom had started right after Torak stole our Master's Orb.
I
moved around quite a bit during the next several centuries, however. There were still marriages to arrange - and an occasional murder.

 

Does that shock you? It shouldn't. I've never made any pretense at being a saint, and there
were
people out there in the world who were inconvenient. I didn't tell the Master what I was doing - but he didn't ask, either. I'm not going to waste my time - or yours - coming up with lame excuses. I was driven by Necessity, so I did what was necessary.

 

The years rolled on. I would have passed my three thousandth birthday without even noticing it if my companion hadn't brought it to my attention. For some reason she always remembered my birthday, and that was very odd. Wolves watch the seasons, not the years, but she never
once forgot that day that no longer had any real meaning for me.

I stumbled rather bleary-eyed from my bed that morning. The twins and I had been celebrating something or other the night before. She sat watching me with that silly tongue of hers lolling out. Being laughed at is not a good way to start out the day. ‘You smell bad,' she noted.

‘Please don't,' I said. ‘I'm not feeling well this morning.'

‘Remarkable. You felt very well last night.'

‘That was then. This is now.'

‘One is curious to know why you do this to yourself. You know that you will be unwell in the morning.'

‘It is a custom.' I'd found over the years that shrugging things off as ‘a custom' was the best approach with her.

‘Oh. I see. Well, if it is a custom, I suppose it is all right. You are older today, you know.'

‘I feel much,
much
older today.'

‘You were whelped on this day a long time ago.'

‘Is it my birthday again? Already? Where
does
the time go?'

‘Behind us - or in front. It depends on which way you are looking.' Can you believe the complexity of that thought coming from a wolf?

‘You have been with me for quite some time now.'

‘What is time to a wolf? One day is much like another, is it not?'

‘As I recall it, we first met on the grasslands to the north before the world was broken.'

‘It was about then, yes.'

I made a few quick mental calculations. ‘A thousand or so of my birthdays have passed since then.'

‘So?'

‘Do wolves normally live so long?'

‘You are a wolf - sometimes - and
you
have lived this long.'

‘That is different. You are a very unusual wolf.'

‘Thank you. One had thought that you might not have noticed that.'

‘This is really amazing. I cannot believe that a wolf could live so long.'

‘Wolves live as long as they choose to live,' she sniffed. ‘One would be more content with you if you would do something about your smell,' she added.

 

You see, Polgara, you weren't the first to make that observation.

 

It was several years later when I had occasion to change my form for some reason which I've long since forgotten. I can't even remember what form I took, but I do remember that it was early summer, and the sun was streaming golden through the open window of my tower, bathing all the clutter of half-forgotten experiments and the heaps of books and scrolls piled against the walls in the pellucid light of that particular season. I'd thought that the wolf was asleep when I did it, but I probably should have known better. Nothing I did ever slipped past her.

She sat up with those golden eyes of hers glowing in the sunlight. ‘So
that
is how you do it,' she said to me. ‘What a simple thing.'

And she promptly turned herself into a snowy white owl.

I knew little peace after that. I never knew when I turned around what might be staring at me - wolf or owl, bear or butterfly. She seemed to take great delight in startling me, but as time wore on more and more she appeared to me in the shape of an owl.

‘What is this thing about owls?' I growled one day.

‘I like owls,' she explained as if it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘During my first winter, when I was a young and foolish thing, I was chasing a rabbit, floundering around in the snow like a puppy, and a great white owl swooped down and snatched my rabbit almost out of my jaws. She carried it to a nearby tree and ate it, dropping the scraps to me. I thought at the time that it would be a fine thing to be an owl.'

‘Foolishness,' I snorted.

‘Perhaps,' she replied blandly, preening her tail feathers, ‘but it amuses me. It may be that one day a different shape will amuse me even more.'

 

Those of you who know my daughter will see how she came by her affinity for that particular shape. Neither Polgara nor my wife will tell me how they communicated with each other during those terrible years when I thought I'd lost Poledra forever, but they obviously did, and Poledra's fondness for owls quite obviously rubbed off. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

 

Things went along quietly in the Vale for the next several centuries. We'd set most of the things in motion that needed
to be ready for us later, and now we were just marking time.

As I'd been almost sure that it would, Tol Nedrane had burned to the ground, and my badgering of that patriarch of the Honethite family finally paid off. One of his descendants, a minor public official at the time, had that affinity for masonry I'd so carefully bred into his family, and after he'd surveyed the ashes of the city, he persuaded the other city fathers that stone doesn't burn quite as fast as logs and thatch. It's heavier than wood, though, so before they could start erecting stone buildings, they had to fill in the marshy places on the island in the Nedrane. Over the shrill objections of the ferrymen, they built a couple of bridges, one to the south bank of the Nedrane and the other to the north one.

After they'd filled the swamps with rubble, they got down to business. To be quite honest about it,
we
didn't care if the citizens of Tol Honeth lived in stone houses or in paper shacks. It was the work gangs that were important. They provided the basis for the legions, and we were going to need those legions later. Building stone is too heavy for one man to carry - unless he has the sort of advantages my brothers and I have. The standard work gang of ten men ultimately became the elemental squad. When they had to move larger stones, they'd combine into ten gangs of ten - the typical company. And when they had to install those huge foundation-blocks, they'd gather up a hundred gangs of ten - a legion, obviously. They had to learn how to cooperate with each other to get the job done, and they learned to take orders from their overseers. I'm sure you get the picture. My Honethite became the general foreman of the whole operation. I'm still sort of proud of him - even though he was a Honeth.

Tolnedra at that time was not nearly as civilized as it is now - if you can call Ce'Nedra civilized. There are always people in any society who'd rather take what they want from others than work for it, and Tolnedra was no
exception. There were bands of marauding brigands out in the countryside, and when one of those bands attempted to cross the south bridge in order to loot Tol Nedrane, my stone-mason ordered his work gangs to drop their tools and take up their weapons. The rest, as they say, is history. My protégé immediately realized what he'd created, and the dream of empire was born.

After the Honethite stone-mason had extended his control of the surrounding countryside for about twenty leagues in all directions, he changed the name of his native city to Tol Honeth and dubbed himself ‘Ran Honeth I, Emperor of all Tolnedra' - a slightly grandiose title for a man whose ‘empire' was only about four hundred square leagues, I'll grant you, but it was a start. I felt rather smug about the way it all turned out.

I didn't have time to sit around congratulating myself, though, because it was about then that the Arendish civil wars broke out. I'd invested a lot of effort in Arendia, and I didn't want those families I'd founded getting wiped out in the course of the festivities. The three major cities in Arendia, Vo Mimbre, Vo Wacune, and Vo Astur, had been established fairly early on, and each city, along with its surrounding territory, was ruled by a duke. I'm not certain that the idea of a single king would have occurred to the Arends if the example of the First Honethite Dynasty hadn't existed to the south. It wasn't until much later, however, that the Duke of Vo Astur formalized the internal conflict by proclaiming himself King of Arendia.

The informal civil war was trouble enough, though. I'd established families in each of the three duchies, and my major concern at the time was keeping them from encountering each other on the battlefield. If Mandorallen's ancestor had killed Lelldorin's, for example, I'd never have been able to make peace between the two of them.

To add to the confusion in Arendia, herds of Hrulgin and packs of Algroths periodically made forays into eastern Arendia to look for something - somebody - to eat. The
Ulgos were down in the caves, so the favorite food of those monsters was in short supply in their home range.

I saw this at first hand once when I was supposedly guiding the Baron of Vo Mandor, Mandorallen's ancestor, toward a battlefield. I didn't want him to reach that field, so I was taking him the long way around. We were near the Ulgo frontier, when the Algroths attacked.

Mandorin, the baron, was a Mimbrate to the core, and he and his vassals were totally encased in armor, which protected them from the venomous claws of the Algroths.

Mandorin shouted the alarm to his vassals, clapped down his visor, set his lance, and charged.

Some traits breed very true.

Algroths' courage is a reflection of the pack, not the individual, so when Mandorin and his cohorts began killing Algroths, the courage of the pack diminished. Finally, they ran back into the forest.

Mandorin was grinning broadly when he raised his visor. ‘A frolicsome encounter, Ancient Belgarath,' he said gaily. ‘Their lack of spirit, however, hath deprived us of much entertainment.'

Arends!

‘You'd better pass along word of this incident, Mandorin,' I told him. ‘Let everybody in Arendia know that the monsters of Ulgoland are coming down into this forest.'

‘I shall advise all of Mimbre,' he promised. ‘The safety of the Wacites and Asturians doth not concern me.'

‘They're your countrymen, Mandorin. That in itself should oblige you to warn them.'

‘They are mine enemies,' he said stubbornly.

‘They're still human. Decency alone should spur you to warn them, and you
are
a decent man.'

That
got his attention. His face was troubled for a moment or so, but he finally came around. ‘It shall be as you say, Ancient One,' he promised. ‘It shall not truly be necessary, however.'

‘Oh?'

‘Once we have concluded our business with the Asturians, I shall myself, with some few companions, mount an expedition into the mountains of Ulgo. Methinks it will be no great chore to exterminate these troublesome creatures.'

Mandorallen himself would not have said it any differently.

It was about fifteen hundred years after the cracking of the world when Beldin came back from Mallorea to fill us in on Torak and his Angaraks. Belmakor left his entertainments in Maragor to join us, but there was still no sign of Belzedar.

We gathered in the Master's tower and took our usual chairs. The fact that Belzedar's chair was empty bothered us all, I think.

‘It was absolute chaos in Mallorea for a while,' Beldin reported. ‘The Grolims from Mal Yaska were selecting their sacrificial victims almost exclusively from the officer corps of the army, and the Generals were arresting and executing every Grolim they could lay their hands on, charging them with all sorts of specious crimes. Finally Torak got wind of it, and he put a stop to it.'

‘Pity,' Belmakor murmured. ‘What did he do?'

‘He summoned the military high command and the Grolim hierarchy to Cthol Mishrak and delivered an ultimatum. He told them that if they didn't stop their secret little war, they could all just jolly well pick up and move to Cthol Mishrak where he could keep an eye on them. That got their immediate attention. They could live in at least semi-autonomy in Mal Zeth and Mal Yaska, and the climate in those two cities isn't all that bad. Cthol Mishrak's like a suburb of Hell. It's on the southern edge of an arctic swamp, and it's so far north that the days are only about two hours long in the winter time - if you can call what comes after dawn up there “day”. Torak's put a perpetual cloud-bank over the place, so it never really gets light. “Cthol Mishrak” means “the City of Endless Night”, and that comes fairly close to describing it. The sun never
touches the ground, so the only thing that grows around there is fungus.'

Beltira shuddered. ‘Why would he do that?' he asked, his expression baffled.

Beldin shrugged. ‘Who knows why Torak does anything? He's crazy. Maybe he's trying to hide his face. I think that what finally brought the generals and the Grolims to heel, though, was the fact that the disciple Ctuchik runs things in Cthol Mishrak. I've met Urvon, and he can chill the blood of a snake just by looking at it. Ctuchik's reputed to be even worse.'

‘Have you found out who the third disciple is yet?' I asked.

Beldin shook his head. ‘Nobody's willing to talk about him. I get the impression that he's not an Angarak.'

‘That is very unlike my brother,' Aldur mused. ‘Torak doth hold the other races of man in the profoundest of contempt.'

‘I could be wrong, Master,' Beldin admitted, ‘but the Angaraks themselves seem to believe that he's not one of them. Anyway, the threat of being required to return to Cthol Mishrak brought out the peaceful side of Urvon's nature, and Urvon rules in Mal Yaska. He started making peace overtures to the generals almost immediately.'

‘Does Urvon really have that much autonomy?' Belkira asked.

‘Up to a point, yes. Torak concentrates on the Orb and leaves the administrative details to his disciples. Ctuchik's absolute master in Cthol Mishrak, and Urvon sits on a throne in Mal Yaska. He adores being adored. The only other power center in Angarak Mallorea is Mal Zeth. Logic suggests that Torak's third disciple is there - probably working behind the scenes. Anyway, once Urvon and the generals declared peace on each other, Torak told them to behave themselves and sent them home. They hammered out the details later. The Grolims have absolute sway in Mal Yaska, and the generals in Mal Zeth. All the other
towns and districts are ruled jointly. Neither side likes it very much, but they don't have much choice.'

‘Is that the way things stand right now?' Belkira asked.

‘It's moved on a bit from there. Once the generals got the Grolims out of their hair, they were free to turn their attention to the Karands.'

‘Ugly brutes,' Belmakor observed. ‘The first time I saw one, I couldn't believe he was human.'

‘They've been sort of humanized now,' Beldin told him. ‘The Angaraks started having trouble with the Karands almost as soon as they came up out of the Dalasian Mountains. The Karands have a sort of loose confederation of seven kingdoms in the northeast quadrant of the continent. Torak's new ocean did some radical things to the climate up there. They'd been in the middle of an ice age in Karanda - lots of snow, glaciers, and all that, but all the steam that came boiling out of the crack in the world melted it off almost overnight. There used to be a little stream called the Magan that meandered down out of the Karandese Mountains in a generally southeasterly direction until it emptied out into the ocean down in Gandahar. When the glaciers melted all at once, it stopped being so gentle. It gouged a huge trench three quarters of the way across the continent. That sent the Karands off in search of high ground. Unfortunately, the high ground they located just happened to be in lands claimed by the Angaraks.'

‘I wouldn't call it all that unfortunate,' Belmakor said. ‘If the Angaraks are busy with the Karands, they won't come pestering us.'

‘The unfortunate part came later,' Beldin told him. ‘As long as the generals were squabbling with the Grolims, they didn't have time to deal with the Karands. Once Torak settled
that
particular problem, the generals moved their army up to the borders of the Karandese Kingdom of Pallia, and then they invaded. The Karands were no match for them, and they crushed Pallia in about a month. The Grolims started sharpening their gutting knives, but the gen
erals wanted to leave Pallia intact - paying tribute, of course. They suggested that the Karands in Pallia be converted to the worship of Torak. That made the Grolims crazy. The notion of Angarak superiority may have originated with Torak, but the Grolims picked it up and ran with it. So far as
they
were concerned, the other races of mankind were good only as slaves or sacrifices. Anyway, to keep it short, Torak thought it over and eventually sided with the military. Their solution gives him more worshipers, for one thing, and it'll give him a much bigger army just in case Belar ever finds a way to lead his Alorns onto the Mallorean continent. Alorns seem to make Torak nervous, for some reason.'

‘You know,' Belmakor said, ‘they have the same effect on me. Maybe it has something to do with their tendency to go berserk at the slightest provocation.'

‘Torak took the whole idea one step further,' Beldin went on. ‘He wasn't satisfied with just Pallia. He ordered the Grolims to go out and convert
all
of Karanda. “I will have them all”, he told the Grolims. “Any man who liveth in all of boundless Mallorea shall bow down to me, and if any of ye shirk in this stern responsibility, ye shall feel my displeasure most keenly”. That got the Grolims' attention, and they went out to convert the heathens.'