Castle of Wizardry (8 page)

He felt his immensity as he entered the room with the cracked wall where the nine black-robed old men sat, trying with the concerted power of their minds to kill Durnik. Their eyes were all focused on a huge ruby, nearly the size of a man's head, which lay flickering in the center of the table around which they sat. The slanting rays of the morning sun had distorted and enlarged Garion's shadow, and he filled one corner of the room, bending slightly so that he could fit under the ceiling. "Stop!" he roared at the evil old men.
"Leave Durnik alone!"

They flinched back from his sudden apparition, and he could feel the thought they were directing at Durnik through the stone on the table falter and begin to fall apart. He took a threatening step and saw them cringe away from him in the purple light that half clouded his vision.

Then one of the old men-very thin and with a long dirty beard and completely hairless scalp - seemed to recover from his momentary fright. "Stand firm!" he snapped at the others. "Keep the thought on the Sendar!"

"Leave him alone!" Garion shouted at them.

"Who says so?" the thin old man drawled insultingly.

"I do."

"And just who are you?"

"I am Belgarion. Leave my friends alone."

The old man laughed, and his laugh was as chilling as Ctuchik's had been. "Actually, you're only Belgarion's shadow," he corrected. "We know the trick of the shadow. You can talk and bluster and threaten, but that's all you can do. You're just a powerless shade, Belgarion."

"Leave us alone!"

"And what will you do if we don't?" The old man's face was filled with contemptuous amusement.

"Is he right?" Garion demanded of the voice within his mind.

"Perhaps perhaps not," the voice replied. "A few men have been able to go beyond the limitation. You won't know unless you try."

Despite his dreadful anger, Garion did not want to kill any of them. "Ice!" he said, focusing on the idea of cold and lashing out with his will. It felt odd - almost tenuous, as if it had no substance behind it, and the roaring was hollow and puny-sounding.

The bald old man sneered and waggled his beard insultingly. Garion ground his insubstantial teeth and drew himself in with dreadful concentration. "Burn!" he said then, driving his will. There was a flicker and then a sudden flash. The force of Garion's will burst forth, directed not at the bald man himself, but rather at his whiskers.

The Hierarch jumped up and stumbled back with a hoarse exclamation, trying desperately to beat the flames out of his beard.

The concerted thought of the Hierarchs shattered as the rest of them scrambled to their feet in terrified astonishment. Grimly, Garion gathered his swelling will and began to lay about him with his immensely long arms. He tumbled the Hierarchs across the rough stone floor and slammed them into walls. Squealing with fright, they scurried this way and that, trying to escape, but he methodically reached out and grasped them one by one to administer his chastisement. With a peculiar kind of detachment, he even stuffed one of them headfirst into the crack in the wall, pushing quite firmly until only
a pair of wriggling feet were
sticking out.

Then, when it was done, he turned back to the bald Hierarch, who had managed finally to beat the last of the fire out of his beard.

"It's impossible - impossible," the Hierarch protested, his face stunned.
"How did you do it?"

"I told you - I am Belgarion. I can do things you can't even imagine."

"The jewel," the voice told him. "They're using the jewel to focus their attacks. Destroy it."

"How?"

"It can only hold so much. Look."

Garion suddenly found that he could actually see into the interior of the still-flickering ruby on the table. He saw the minute stress lines within its crystalline structure, and then he understood. He turned his will on it and poured all his anger into it. The stone blazed with light and began to pulsate as the force within it swelled. Then, with a sharp detonation, the stone exploded into fragments.

"No!" the bald Hierarch wailed.
"You idiot!
That stone was irreplaceable."

"Listen to me, old man," Garion said in an awful voice, "you will leave us alone. You will not pursue us, or try to injure any of us any more." He reached out with his shadowy hand and slid it directly into the bald man's chest. He could feel the heart flutter like a terrified bird and the lungs falter as the Hierarch's breath stopped and he gaped with horror at the arm sticking out of his chest. Garion slowly opened his fingers very wide. "Do you understand me?" he demanded.

The Hierarch gurgled and tried to take hold of the arm, but his fingers found nothing to grasp.

"Do you understand me?" Garion repeated and suddenly clenched his fist.

The Hierarch screamed.

"Are you going to leave us alone?"

"Please, Belgarion! No more! I'm dying!"

"Are you going to leave us alone?" Garion demanded again.

"Yes, yes - anything, but please stop! I beg you! I'll do anything. Please!"

Garion unclenched his fist and drew his hand out of the Hierarch's heaving chest. He held it up, clawlike, directly in front of the old man's face. "Look at this and remember it," he said in a dreadfully quiet voice. "Next time I'll reach into your chest and pull your heart out."

The Hierarch shrank back, his eyes filled with horror as he stared at the awful hand. "I promise you," he stammered. "I promise."

"Your life depends on it," Garion told him, then turned and flashed back across the empty miles toward his friends. Quite suddenly he was standing at the mouth of the ravine staring down at his shadow slowly reforming on the ground before him. The purple haze was gone; strangely enough, he didn't even feel tired.

Durnik drew in a shuddering breath and struggled to rise.

Garion turned quickly and ran back to his friend. "Are you all right?" he asked, taking hold of the smith's arm.

"It was like a knife twisting inside me," Durnik replied in a shaking voice. "What was it?"

"The Grolim Hierarchs were trying to kill you," Garion told him. Durnik looked around, his eyes frightened.

"Don't worry, Durnik. They won't do it again."' Garion helped him to his feet and together they went back into the ravine.

Aunt Pol was looking directly at him as he approached her. Her eyes were penetrating. "You're growing up very fast," she said to him.

"I had to do something," he replied. "What happened to your shield?"

"It doesn't seem to be necessary any more."

"Not bad," Belgarath said. The old man was sitting up. He looked weak and drawn, but his eyes were alert. "Some of it was a bit exotic; but on the whole, it wasn't bad at all. The business with the hand was just a little overdone, though."

"I wanted to be sure he understood that I meant what I was saying." Garion felt a tremendous wave of relief at his grandfather's return to consciousness.

"I think you convinced him," Belgarath said dryly. "Is there anything to eat somewhere nearby?" he asked Aunt Pol.

"Are you all right now, Grandfather?" Garion asked him.

"Aside from being as weak as a fresh-hatched baby chick and as hungry as a she-wolf with nine puppies, I'm just fine," Belgarath replied. "I could really use something to eat, Polgara."

"I'll see what I can find, father," she told him, turning to the packs.

"I don't know that you need to bother cooking it," he added.

The little boy had been looking curiously at Garion, his wide, blue eyes serious and slightly puzzled. Quite suddenly he laughed; smiling, he looked into Garion's face. "Belgarion," he said.

"NO REGRETS?" Silk asked Garion that evening as they rode toward the sharply rising peaks outlined against the glittering stars ahead.

"Regrets about what?"

"Giving up command."
Silk had been watching him curiously ever since the setting sun had signalled the resumption of their journey.

"No," Garion replied, not quite sure what the little man meant. "Why should there be?"

"It's a very important thing for a man to learn about himself, Garion," Silk told him seriously. "Power can be very sweet for some men, and you never know how a man's going to handle it until you give him the chance to try."

"I don't know why you went to all the trouble. It's not too likely that I'm going to be put in charge of things very often."

"You never know, Garion. You never know."

They rode on across the barren black sands of the wasteland toward the mountains looming ahead. The quarter moon rose behind them, and its light was cold and white. Near the edge of the wasteland there were a few scrubby thornbushes huddling low to the sand and silvered with frost. It was an hour or so before midnight when they finally reached rocky ground, and the hooves of their horses clattered sharply as they climbed up out of the sandy waste. When they topped the first ridge, they stopped to look back. The dark expanse of the wasteland behind them was dotted with the watch fires of the Murgos, and far back along their trail they saw moving torches.

"I was starting to worry about that," Silk said to Belgarath, "but it looks as if they found our trail after all."

"Let's hope they don't lose it again," the old man replied.

"Not too likely, really.
I made it pretty obvious."

"Murgos can be a bit undependable sometimes."

Belgarath seemed to have recovered almost completely, but Garion noted a weary slump to his shoulders and was glad that they did not plan to ride all night.

The mountains into which they rode were as arid and rocky as the ones lying to the north had been. There were looming cliffs and patches of alkali on the ground and a bitingly cold wind that seemed to wail endlessly through the rocks and to tug at the coarse-woven Murgo robes that disguised them. They pushed on until they were well into the mountains; then, several hours before dawn, they stopped to rest and to wait for the sun to rise.

When the first faint light appeared on the eastern horizon, Silk rode out and located a rocky gap passing to the northwest between two ocherous cliff faces. As soon as he returned, they saddled their horses again and moved out at a trot.

"We can get rid of these now, I think," Belgarath said, pulling off his Murgo robe.

"I'll take them," Silk suggested as he reined in. "The gap's just ahead there." He pointed. "I'll catch up in a couple of hours."

"Where are you going?" Barak asked him.

"I'll leave a few miles more of false trail," Silk replied. "Then I'll double back and make sure that you haven't left any tracks. It won't take long."

"You want some company?" the big man offered.

Silk shook his head. "I can move faster alone."

"Be careful."

Silk grinned. "I'm always careful." He took the Murgo garments from them and rode off to the west.

The gap into which they rode appeared to be the bed of a stream that had dried up thousands of years before. The water had cut down through the rock, revealing layer upon layer of red, brown, and yellow stone lying in bands, one atop the other. The sound of their horses' hooves was very loud as they clattered along between the cliffs, and the wind whistled as it poured through the cut.

Taiba drew her horse in beside Garion's. She was shivering and she had the cloak he had given her pulled tightly ahout her shoulders. "Is it always this cold?" she asked, her large, violet eyes very wide.

"In the wintertime," he replied. "I imagine it's pretty hot here in the summer."

"The slave pens were always the same," she told him. "We never knew what season it was."

The twisting streambed made a sharp bend to the right, and they rode into the light of the newly risen sun. Taiba gasped.

"What's wrong?" Garion asked her quickly.

"The light," she cried, covering her face with her hands. "It's like fire in my eyes."

Relg, who rode directly in front of them, was also shielding his eyes. He looked back over his shoulder at the Marag woman. "Here," he said. He took one of the veils he usually bound across his eyes when they were in direct sunlight and handed it back to her. "Cover your face with this until we're back into the shadows again." His voice was peculiarly neutral.