lights a beacon!
My tongue lolled out. I couldn’t help laughing. I stopped running and
slowed to a crawl, inching through the snow on my belly toward that
fire.
Then I saw him standing by that ridiculous fire of his, and he wasn’t
alone. There was a Morind with him. The Morind was a stringy old man
dressed in furs, and the skull-surmounted staff he held proclaimed him
to be a magician.
I crept closer, inch by inch. Sneaking up on somebody in the snow
isn’t as easy as it sounds. The snow muffles any noise you might make,
but if it’s cold enough, your whole body steams. Fortunately, I’d
cooled off a bit, so my fur kept the heat of my body from reaching the
outside air.
Belly down, I lay under a snow-clogged bush and listened.
“He made the sun come up!” The magician was telling my brother in a
shrill voice.
“Then he raised a Demon Lord! My clan will have no further part in
this!”
“They must!” Belzedar urged.
“Belgarath must not be permitted to reach Mallorea! We must stop
him!”
What was this? I crept a few inches closer.
“There’s nothing I can do,” the magician said adamantly.
“My clan is scattered to the winds. I could not gather them together
again even if I wanted to. Belgarath is too powerful. I will not face
him again.”
“Think of what you’re giving up, Etchquaw,” Belzedar pleaded.
“Will you be the slave of the king of Hell for the rest of your
life?”
“Morindland is cold and dark, Zedar,” the magician replied.
“I do not fear the flames of Hell.”
“But you could have a God! My Master will accept you if you will do
only this one small thing for him!” Belzedar’s voice was desperate.
The skinny Morind straightened, his expression resolute.
“You have my final word, Zedar. I will have nothing more to do with
this Belgarath.
Tell your Master what I have said. Tell Torak to find someone else to
contest with your brother Belgarath.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
In retrospect, it was probably for the best that I was a wolf when I
made that discovery. The personality of the wolf had become so
interwoven with my own during the past month that my reactions were not
entirely my own. A wolf is incapable of hatred–rage, yes; hatred, no.
Had I been in my own form, I probably would have done something
precipitous.
As it was, I simply lay there in the snow with my ears pricked forward,
listening as Zedar pleaded with the Morind magician. That gave me
enough time to pull my wits together. How could I have been so
blind?
Zedar had given himself away hundreds of times since Torak had cracked
the world, but I’d been too inattentive to notice … I’d have more
than likely wasted a great deal of time berating myself, but once again
the wolf that enclosed me shrugged that useless activity aside. But
now that I knew the truth about my sometime brother, what was I going
to do about it?
The simplest thing, of course, would be to lay in wait until the Morind
left and then dash into the clearing and rip Zedar’s throat out with my
teeth. I was tempted; the Gods know that I was tempted. There was a
certain wolfish practicality about that notion. It was quick; it was
easy; and it would remove a clear and present danger once and for
all.
Unfortunately, it would also leave a thousand questions unanswered, and
curiosity is a trait common to both men and wolves. I knew what Zedar
had done. Now I wanted to know why. I did know one thing, though. I
had just lost another brother. I didn’t even think of him as
“Belzedar” any more.
There was a more practical reason for my restraint, however. The
gathering of the Morindim had obviously been at Zedar’s instigation.
He’d overcome their reluctance to join together by offering them a
God.
To my way of thinking, there wasn’t really all that much difference
between Torak and the king of Hell, but the Morindim obviously saw it
otherwise. Zedar had planted that particular trap in my path. How
many others were out there besides? That’s what I really needed to
know. A trap, once set, can lay there waiting long after the man who
set it is dead.
The situation seemed to call for subterfuge, and I’ve always been
fairly good at that.
“You’re just wasting your breath, Zedar,” the Morind was saying.
“I’m not going to confront a magician as powerful as your brother. If
you want to fight him, do it yourself. I’m sure your Master will help
you.”
“He can’t, Etchquaw. It is forbidden. I must be the instrument of
Necessity during this particular EVENT.”
What was this?
“If you are Necessity’s tool, why did you come to us?” It’s easy to
dismiss the Morindim. You don’t normally expect anything remotely
resembling intelligence from demon-worshipers, but this Etchquaw fellow
was surprisingly perceptive.
“I think you are afraid of this Belgarath,” he went on, “and I think
you are afraid of his Necessity. Well, I won’t stick my head into the
fire for you, Zedar. I’ve learned to live with demons. I don’t really
need a God–particularly not a God as powerless as Torak.
My demon can do anything I tell him to do. Your Torak seems to be
quite limited.”
“Limited?” Zedar objected.
“He cracked the world, you idiot!”
“And what did it get him?” The Morind’s tone was scornful.
“It got him fire, Zedar. That’s what it got him. If all I want is
fire, I can wait until I get to Hell.”
Zedar’s eyes narrowed.
“You won’t have to wait that long, Etchquaw,” he said firmly.
I suppose I could have stopped him. I could feel his Will building,
but to be honest with you, I didn’t really believe he’d do it.
But he did. I was fairly close, so the sound when he spoke the Word
that released his Will was thunderous.
Etchquaw quite suddenly caught on fire.
I’m sorry to open old wounds, Garion, but you weren’t the first to do
it.
There was a difference, though. You had plenty of reason for what you
did in the Wood of the Dryads. Zedar, however, set fire to the Morind
out of pure viciousness. There’s also the fact that you felt guilty,
but I’m sure that Zedar didn’t.
This was all coming at me a little too fast, so I inched my way back
out from under that snowy bush and left Zedar to his entertainments.
The one thing that kept flashing in my mind was Zedar’s use of the
word
“EVENT.” This was one of those incidents that our Master had warned us
about. I’d been fairly sure that something important was going to
happen, but I’d thought that it was going to happen at Cthol Mishrak.
Evidently I’d been wrong. There might be another EVENT later, but we
had to get by this one first. I decided that it was time for another
consultation.
“Can we talk?” I asked the presence inside my head.
“Was there something?”
I think that’s the thing that irritated me the most about my uninvited
guest–he thought he was funny. I didn’t bother to make an issue of
it.
Considering his location, he probably already knew how I felt.
“This is one of those little confrontations that keep happening, isn’t
it?”
“Obviously.”
“An important one?”
“They’re all important, Belgarath.”
“Zedar said that he’s the instrument of the other Necessity this time.
I thought it was Torak.”
“It was. It changes from time to time, though.”
“Then Zedar was telling the truth.”
“If you choose to believe him, yes.”
“Will you stop doing that?” I said it aloud. Fortunately, it came out
in wolfish, so I don’t think anyone could hear it.
“You’re in a testy humor today.”
“Never mind that. If Zedar’s the instrument of the other one, who’s
yours?”
There was a long silence, and I could feel the amusement dripping from
it.
“You’re not serious!”
“I have every confidence in you.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“I’m sure it’ll come to you.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Of course not. We have to play by the rules.”
“I need some directions here. If I make it up as I go along, I’m bound
to make mistakes.”
“We sort of take those into account. You’ll do just fine.”
“I’m going to kill Zedar.” It was an empty threat, of course. Once I
had gotten past my initial rage, my homicidal instincts had cooled.
Zedar had been my brother for over three thousand years, so I wasn’t
going to kill him. I might set his beard on fire or tie his entrails
into a very complicated knot, but I wouldn’t kill him. In spite of
everything, I still loved him too much for that.
There’s that word again. It always keeps cropping up, for some