“Not yet,” the voice told me.
“It isn’t time yet.”
“When then?”
“Just a few more minutes, and you might want to reconsider your plan. I
think it might have some holes in it.”
After a moment’s thought, I realized that the voice was right. Falling
on top of Zedar wasn’t a very good idea. I’d have just as much chance
of knocking myself senseless as I would him. Besides, I wanted to talk
with him a little first.
The sense of Torak’s somewhat nebulous presence was gone now.
The maimed God in Cthol Mishrak was busy consulting with that other
awareness. Zedar started down the hill through the evergreens, angling
back to pick up the trail.
I flew on and landed in the snow several hundred yards in front of him.
Then I changed back into my own form and waited, leaning rather
casually against a tree.
I could see that greenish light of his bobbing through the trees as he
came toward me, and I took advantage of the time to put a lid on my
towering anger. It’s not a good idea to let your emotions run away
with you when you’re involved in a confrontation.
Then he came out of the trees on the other side of the clearing where
I’d stationed myself.
“What kept you?” I asked him in a calm, run-of-the-mill tone of
voice.
“Belgarath!” he gasped.
“You must be half asleep, Belzedar. Couldn’t you feel my presence? I
wasn’t trying to hide it.”
“Thank the Gods you’re here,” he said with feigned enthusiasm. He was
quick on his feet; I’ll give him that.
“Weren’t you listening? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”
“I’ve been running as a wolf. That might have dulled my perceptions.
What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been trying to catch up with you. You and the Alorns are running
into an unnecessary danger.”
“Oh?”
“There’s no need for you to go to Mallorea. I’ve already retrieved the
Orb. This absurd quest of yours is just a waste of time.”
“What an amazing thing. Let’s see it.”
“Ah–I didn’t think it was safe to bring it up here with me. I wasn’t
positive I could catch up with you, and I didn’t want to take it back
to Mallorea, so I put it in a safe place.”
“Good idea. How did you manage to get it away from Torak?” As long as
he was being so creative, I thought I’d give him a chance to expand on
his wild story.
“I’ve been at this for two thousand years, Belgarath. I’ve been
work-tag on Urvon all this time. He’s still a Grolim, but he’s afraid
of the power of our Master’s jewel. He distracted Torak, and I was
able to slip into that iron tower at Cthol Mishrak and steal the
Orb.”
“Where did Torak keep it?” That particular bit of information might be
very useful later on.
“It was in a room adjoining the one where he spends all his time. He
didn’t want that iron box in the same room with him. The temptation to
open it might have been too great for him.”
“Well,” I said blandly,
“I guess that takes care of all of that, then. I’m glad you came along
when you did, brother. I wasn’t really too eager to go to Mallorea.
I’ll go fetch Cherek and his sons while you go pick up the Orb. Then
we can all go back to the Vale.” I waited for a little bit to give him
a moment to exult over his success in deceiving me.
“Isn’t that sort of what you’d expect from a drunken lecher with scant
morality and little seriousness?” I added, throwing his own words back
in his teeth. Then I sighed with genuine regret.
“Why, Belzedar?” I asked him.
“Why have you betrayed our Master?”
His head came up sharply, and his look was stricken.
“You ought to pay more attention, old boy,” I told him.
“I’ve been almost on top of you for the past ten hours. Did you really
think it was necessary to set fire to Etchquaw?” I’ll admit that I was
goading him. He was still my brother, and I didn’t want to be the one
to strike the first blow. I bored in inexorably.
“You’re Torak’s third disciple, aren’t you, Zedar? You’ve gone over to
the other side. You’ve sold your soul to that one-eyed monster in
Cthol Mishrak. What did he offer you, Zedar? What is there in this
whole world that was worth what you’ve done?”
He actually broke down at that point.
“I had no choice, Belgarath,”
he sobbed.
“I thought that I could deceive Torak–that I could pretend to accept
him and serve him–but he put his hand on my soul and tore it out of
me. His touch, Belgarath! Dear God, his touch!”
I braced myself. I knew what was coming. Zedar always overreacted.
It was his one great weakness.
He started by throwing fire into my face. Between one spurious sob and
the next, his arm whipped back and then flashed forward with a great
blob of incandescent flame nestled in his palm.
I brushed it aside with a negligent gesture.
“Not good enough, brother,” I told him. Then I knocked him
cart-wheeling through the snow with my fist. It was tactically sound.
He’d have felt my Will building anyway, and I got an enormous
satisfaction out of punching him in the mouth.
He came up spitting blood and teeth and trying to gather his wits. I
didn’t give him time for that, however. He spent the next several
minutes dancing in the snow, dodging the lightning bolts I threw at
him. I still didn’t want to kill him, so I gave him an instant of
warning before I turned each bolt loose. It did keep him off balance,
though, and the sizzling noise when the bolts hit the snow really
distracted him.
Then he enveloped himself in a cloud of absolute darkness, trying to
hide. I dissolved his cloud and kept shooting lightning at him. He
really didn’t like that. Zedar’s afraid of a lot of things, and
lightning’s one of them. My thunderclaps and the sizzle and steam
definitely upset him.
He tried more fire, but I smothered each of his flames before he even
got it well started. I suppose I might have toyed with him longer, but
by now he fully understood that I had the upper hand. There was no
real point in grinding his face in that any more, so I jumped on him
and quite literally beat him into the ground with my bare hands. I
could have done it any number of other ways, I guess, but his betrayal
seemed to call for a purely physical chastisement. I hammered on him
with my fists for a while, and right at first he gave as good as he
got. We banged on each other for several minutes, but I was enjoying
it far more than he was. I had a great deal of pent-up anger, and
hitting him felt very, very good.
I finally gave him a good solid punch on the side of his head, and his
eyes glazed over, and he slumped senseless into the snow.
“That’ll teach you,” I muttered to him, rising and standing over his
unconscious body. It was a silly thing to say, but I had to say
something.
I had a little problem, though. What was I going to do with him now?
I wasn’t going to kill him, and the blow I’d given him wouldn’t keep
him unconscious for very long. I was certain that the rules of this
encounter prohibited the voice inside my head from making any
suggestions, so I was on my own.
I considered the inert form at my feet. In his present condition,
Zedar posed no threat to anyone. All I really had to do was keep him
in that condition. I took him by the shoulders and dragged him back in
among the trees. Then I piled branches over him. In spite of
everything, I didn’t want him to freeze to death or get smothered by a
sudden snow squall. Then I reached my hand in under the branches,
found his face, and gathered my Will.
“This all must have been exhausting for you, Zedar,” I told him.
“Why don’t you see if you can catch up on your sleep?”
Then I released my Will. I smiled and stood up. I’d gauged it rather
carefully. Zedar would sleep for at least six months, and that would
keep him out of my hair while the Alorns and I went to Cthol Mishrak to
finish what we’d set out to do.
I felt quite pleased with myself as I resumed the form of the wolf.
Then I went looking for Cherek and his boys.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Evidently the word of my Demon Lord had gotten around, because we
didn’t encounter any more of the Morindim as we crossed the southern