be able to control myself.”
I didn’t have time to explain, and there was no way I could hide what I
was doing from my partner. I carefully formed the image of a
medium-size demon in my mind and crammed myself into it.
Rablek jumped back, his eyes bulging.
“Stay here!” I growled at him in that soul-chilling voice of the
demon.
“Don’t come outside, and you’d better not watch. This is going to get
worse.” Then I crashed out through our crude door to face the
advancing Morindim.
As I think I’ve indicated, the Morind magician was an inexperienced and
callow youth. He might have been able to raise an imp the size of a
mouse, but anything beyond that was far beyond his capability. Just to
add to his chagrin, I expanded the image in which I was encased until I
had the appearance of a full-grown Demon-Lord.
The Morindim fled, screaming in terror. The magician, I noticed, led
the flight. He was young, and he ran very fast.
Then I resumed my own form and returned to the shack.
“Just who are you, Garath?” Rablek demanded in a trembling voice as I
came through the splinters of our door.
“I’m your partner, Rablek. That’s all you really need to know, isn’t
it?
You and I came up here to get rich. Why don’t we get at that before we
lose any more daylight?”
He started to shake violently.
“Where’s my mind been for all these months? I should have recognized
the name. You’re not just Garath.
You’re Brigarath, aren’t you?”
“It’s no great thing, partner.” I tried to calm him.
“It’s only a name, after all, and I haven’t done anything to harm you,
have I?”
“Well–not yet, I guess.” He didn’t sound very convinced.
“I’ve heard a lot of stories about you, though.”
“I can imagine. Most of them are just Grolim propaganda, partner.
I’ve had occasion to disrupt Grolim schemes now and then in the past,
and they’ve had to invent some very wild stories to explain their
failures.”
“Are you really as old as they say you are?”
“Probably older.”
“What are you doing in Gar og Nadrak?”
I grinned at him.
“Getting rich, I hope. Isn’t that why we’re both out here in this
wilderness?”
“You’ve got that part right.”
“We’re still partners then?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Belgarath. Did you just conjure up
all this gold we’ve been finding?”
“No. It’s a natural deposit of real gold, and it’s just laying there
waiting for us to pick it up.”
He grinned back at me.
“Well, then, partner, why don’t we get back to picking?”
“Why don’t we?” I agreed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
There’s a kind of irresistible lure about gold–and I’m not just
talking about the red-tinted gold of Angarak that the Grolims use to
buy the souls of men like the Earl of Jarvik. By midsummer, Rablek and
I had accumulated more gold than our horses could carry, but we still
lingered beside that tumbling mountain stream “for just one more
day.”
I finally managed to clamp a lid on my own hunger for more, but it took
me another week to persuade my partner that it was time to leave.
“Be reasonable, Rablek,” I told him.
“You’ve already got more gold than you can possibly spend in a
lifetime, and if you’re really all that desperate, you know how to find
this place again. You can come back and dig up more, if you really
want to.”
“I just hate to leave any behind,” he replied.
“It’s not going to go anyplace, Rablek. It’ll be here forever, if you
happen to need it.”
I know that it sounds unnatural, but I liked my Nadrak partner. He was
a bit crude and rough-hewn, but I’m no angel myself, so we got along
well together. He wasn’t afraid of work, and when the sun went down
and we’d laid aside our tools, he could talk for hours, and I didn’t
mind listening. He’d been a little wild-eyed and standoffish after our
encounter with the Morindim, but he got over that, and the pair of us
went back to just being a couple of fellows out to make our fortunes.
We both forgot about the fact that we were supposed to be natural
enemies and concentrated instead on getting rich.
Anyway, we tore down our shack, concealed the traces of our diggings as
best we could, and started back to Yar Gurak.
“What do you plan to do with all your money?” I asked my partner on
the night before we reached the shabby mining camp.
“I think I’ll go into the fur trade,” he replied.
“There’s a lot of money to be made there.”
“You’ve already got a lot of money.”
“Money doesn’t mean very much unless you put it to work for you,
Belgarath. I’m not the sort to just lie around getting fat, and I know
some fur traders who double their money every year or two.”
“If you’ve already got more than you can spend, why bother?”
“It’s the game, Belgarath,” he said with a shrug.
“Money’s just a way of keeping score. I’m going into the fur trade for
the sake of the game, not for the money.”
That opened my eyes and gave me a profound insight into the Nadrak
character. At last I understood why Nadraks dislike Murgos so much.
Never mind. It’s much too complicated to explain.
Rablek and I parted company on the outskirts of Yar Gurak. I saw no
real reason to go back into that ugly place. Moreover, I had a great
deal of gold in my pack-saddle, and I didn’t want any curious people
rifling through it while I was asleep.
“It was fun, wasn’t it, Belgarath?” Rablek said just a bit wistfully
as we were saddling our horses.
“That it was, my friend.”
“If you ever get bored, look me up. The mountains’ll always be there,
and I can be ready to go again any time you say the word.”
“Be well, Rablek,” I said, clasping his hand warmly.
The Nadrak border was still unguarded, and I entered Drasnia with a
certain sense of relief. I was a bit surprised to discover that my
sudden riches had made me nervous and apprehensive. What a peculiar
thing!
When I was no more than a poor vagabond, I’d been willing to go
anywhere without a second thought. Now that I was rich, my whole
attitude had changed.
I rode on down through Algaria at the tag end of the summer of the year
4881, and I reached the Vale just as autumn was turning all the leaves
golden. The color suited my mood and reflected the cargo in my
pack-saddle. Rablek and I had put the fruits of our labors into stout
can was bags, and I had forty of those bags. It took me hours to carry
them all up into my tower.
The next day I built a makeshift kind of forge and cast my gold into
bars. Forty bags of gold sounds like a lot, but gold’s so heavy that
the bars weren’t really all that big, and when I’d stacked them all in
one corner, the pile was disappointingly small. I sat looking at it,
idly wondering if I could catch up with Rablek before he left Yar
Gurak. There was still a lot of gold left in our creek up there near
the border of Morindland, after all.
Well, of course I was greedy. I’ve told you about the kind of person I
was before I entered my Master’s service, and some things never change.
I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. Every so often I get a
powerful urge to return to that nameless little stream. Then, however,
usually in the cold grey light of morning, rationality rears its ugly
head. What on earth does a man in my situation need with money? If I
really want something, I can usually get it somehow–or make it. In
the long run, that’d be much easier than digging gold out of the
ground. But gold’s so pretty to look at, and so exciting when you find
it.
Over the years, I’ve spent a few bars of my horde, but not very many.
Most of it’s still around here–someplace.
Excuse me a moment. I think I’ll root around and see if I can find
it.
About a year after I’d returned from Gar og Nadrak, Pol sent word to me
that Gelane’s wife, Enalla, had finally given birth to a son. They’d
been married for about twenty years at that point, and Gelane was
approaching his fortieth birthday. Enalla’s childlessness had caused
all of us quite a bit of concern. In the light of the significance of
that particular family, I’m sure you can see why. Considering the
forces at work, we probably shouldn’t have worried, but we did all the
same. I journeyed up to Cherek to have a look at my new grandson, and