some magician would come along to take up the challenge. I didn’t
sleep very much during the course of our journey along those foothills.
The north range is riddled with caves, and I’d hide the Alorns in one
of them and then go out to scout around. I very nearly froze my paws
off. Lord, it was cold up there!
It wasn’t too long until I started coming across counter-markers. For
every curse, there’s a counter-curse, and the presence of those
counter-markers told me louder than words that magicians were starting
to converge on us. This was puzzling, because Morind magicians are all
insanely jealous of each other and they almost never cooperate. Since
the magicians control all aspects of the lives of their assorted clans,
a gathering such as we were seeing was a virtual impossibility.
The moon, of course, ignored us and continued her inevitable course,
waxing fuller and fuller every night until she reached that monthly
fulfillment of hers. Cherek and his sons couldn’t understand why the
moon kept coming up even though the sun didn’t. I tried to explain it
to them, but when I got to the part about the real orbit of the moon
and the apparent orbit of the sun, I lost them. Finally I just told
them,
“They follow different paths,” and let it go at that. All they really
had to know was that the moon would be in the arctic sky for about two
weeks out of every month during the winter. Anything more would have
just confused them. To be honest about it, I’d have been just as happy
if the sun’s baby sister had dropped below the horizon before her
pregnancy started to show. Once she became full, it was as bright as
day up there. A full moon over a snow-covered landscape really puts
out a lot of light, and that was terribly inconvenient. I suppose that
was what the Morindim had been waiting for.
I’d hidden Cherek and the boys in a cave just before moon-set, as
usual, and then I went out to scout around. No more than a mile to the
east of the cave, I saw Morindim–thousands of them.
I dropped to my haunches and started to swear–no mean trick for a
wolf. The unnatural gathering of what appeared to be every clan in
Morindland had completely blocked us off. We were in deep trouble.
When I finished swearing, I turned, loped back to the cave where the
Alorns were sleeping, and resumed my own form.
“You’d better wake up,” I told them.
“What’s the matter?” Cherek asked, throwing off his fur robe.
“All of Morindim is stretched across our path no more than a mile from
here.”
“They don’t do that,” Riva protested.
“The clans never gather together in the same place.”
“Evidently the rules have changed.”
“What are we going to do?” Dras demanded.
“Could we slip around them?” Cherek asked.
“Not hardly,” I told him.
“They’re stretched out for miles.”
“What are we going to do?” Dras said again. Dras tended to repeat
himself when he got excited.
“I’m working on it.” I started thinking very fast. One thing was
certain.
Somebody was tampering with the Morindim. Riva was right; the clans
never cooperated with each other. Someone had found a way to change
that, and I didn’t think it was a Morind who’d done it. I cudgeled my
brain, but I couldn’t come up with any way to get out of this. Each of
the clans had a magician, and each magician had a pet demon. When the
moon rose again, I was very likely to be up to my ears in creatures who
normally lived in Hell. I was definitely going to need some help.
I have no idea of where the notion came from-Let me correct that. Now
that I think about it, I do know where it came from.
“Are you in there?” I asked silently.
“Of course.”
“I’ve got a problem here.”
“Yes, probably so.”
“What do I do?”
“I’m not permitted to tell you.”
“That didn’t seem to bother you back in the Vale.”
“That was different. Think, Belgarath. You know the Morindim, and you
know how hard it is to control one of their demons. The magician has
to concentrate very hard to keep his demon from turning on him. What
does that suggest to you?”
“I do something to break their concentration?”
“Is that a question? If it is, I’m not allowed to answer.”
“All right, it’s not a question. What do you think of the idea–just
speculatively? Do your rules allow you to tell me if an idea is a bad
one?”
“Just speculatively? I think that’s allowed.”
“It’ll make things a little awkward, but I think we can work around
it.”
I suggested any number of possible solutions, and that silent voice
inside my head rejected them one after another. I started to grow more
and more exotic at that point. To my horror, that bodiless voice
seemed to think that my most outrageous and dangerous notion had some
possibilities.
You should always try to curb your creativity in situations like
that.
“Are you mad?” Riva exclaimed when I told the Alorns what I had in
mind.
“Let’s all hope not,” I told him.
“There isn’t any other way out, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to do it
this way–unless we want to turn around and go home, and I don’t think
that’s permitted.”
“When are you going to do this?” Cherek asked me.
“Just as soon as the moon comes up again. I want to pick the time, I
don’t want some tattooed magician out there picking it for me.”
“Why wait?” Dras demanded.
“Why not do it now?”
“Because I’ll need light to draw the symbols in the snow. I definitely
don’t want to leave anything out. Try to get some sleep. It might be
quite a while before we get the chance again.” Then I went back
outside to keep watch.
It was a nervous night–day, actually, since your days and nights get
turned around during the arctic winter. When I’d suggested the plan to
that voice of Necessity that seemed to have taken up residence inside
my head for a time, I’d been grasping at straws, since I wasn’t really
sure I could pull it off. Worrying isn’t a good way to spend any
extended period of time.
When I judged that the moon was about ready to come up, I went back
into the cave and woke up my friends.
“I don’t want you standing too close to me,” I advised them.
“There’s no point in all of us getting killed.”
“I thought you knew what you were doing!” Dras objected. Dras was an
excitable sort of fellow despite his size, and his normally deep voice
sounded a little squeaky.
“In theory, yes,” I told him, “but I’ve never tried it before, so
things could go wrong. I’ll have to wait until the magicians raise
their demons before I do anything, so it might be sort of touch-and-go
for a while. Just be ready to run. Let’s go.”
We came out of the cave, and I looked off toward the east. The pale
glow along the horizon told me that it was very close to moon-rise, so
we struck off in that direction, moving steadily toward the waiting
Morindim.
We topped a rise just as they were waking up. It’s an eerie thing to
watch Morindim getting up in the winter. It resembles nothing quite so
much as a suddenly animated graveyard, since they customarily bury
themselves in snow before they go to sleep. The snow’s cold, of
course, but the outside air is much colder. It’s a chilling thing to
see them rising up out of the snow like men climbing up out of their
graves.
The magicians probably hadn’t gotten any more sleep than I had.
They had their own preparations to make. Each of them had stamped out
the symbols in the snow and taken up positions inside those protective
designs. They were already muttering the incantations when we came
over the hill. And let me tell you, those Morind magicians are very
careful not to speak too clearly when summoning demons. Those
incantations are what you might call trade secrets, and the magicians
guard them very jealously.
I decided that the hilltop was probably as good a place as any to make
my stand, so I trampled my own design into the snow and stepped
inside.
It was about then that several of the tribesmen in the valley below saw
us, and there was a lot of pointing and shouting. Then the magicians
began hurling challenges at me. That’s a customary thing among
primitive people. They spend more time boasting and threatening each
other than they do actually fighting. I didn’t waste my breath
shouting back.
Then the demons started to appear. They were of varying sizes,
depending on the skills of the magicians who summoned them. Some were