Senji slid down from the table and limped over to an overflowing bookcase. He rummaged around for a moment and finally selected a book that looked much the worse for wear. “Sorry about the shape it’s in,” he apologized. “It’s been blown up a few times.” He limped back to the table and opened the book. “I wrote this during the twenty-third century,” he said. “I noticed that I was starting to get a little absentminded, so I wanted to get it all down while it was still fresh in my memory.”
“Makes sense,” Beldin said. “My grim-faced friend over there has been suffering from some shocking lapses of memory lately—of course, that’s to be expected from somebody who’s nineteen thousand years old.”
“Do you mind?” Belgarath said acidly.
“You mean it’s been longer?”
“Shut up, Beldin.”
“Here we are,” Senji said. Then he began to read aloud. “ ‘For the next fourteen hundred years the Melcene Empire prospered, far removed from the theological and political squabbles of the western part of the continent. Melcene culture was secular, civilized, and highly educated. Slavery was unknown, and trade with the Angaraks and their subject peoples in Karanda and Dalasia was extremely profitable. The old imperial capital at Melcena became a major center of learning.’ “
“Excuse me,” Belgarath said, “but isn’t that taken directly from Emperors of Melcena and Mallorea?”
“Naturally,” Senji replied without any embarrassment. “Plagiarism is the first rule of scholarship. Please don’t interrupt.”
“Sorry,” Belgarath said.
“ ‘Unfortunately,’ “ Senji read on, “ ‘some of the thrust of Melcene scholarship turned toward the arcane. Their major field of concentration lay in the field of alchemy.’ “ He looked at Belgarath. “This is where it gets original,” he said. He cleared his throat. “ ‘It was a Melcene alchemist, Senji the clubfooted, who inadvertently utilized sorcery during the course of one of his experiments.’ “
“You speak of yourself in the third person?” Beldin asked.
“It was a twenty-third-century affectation,” Senji replied. “Autobiography was considered to be in terribly bad taste—immodest, don’t you know. It was a very boring century. I yawned all the way through it.” He went back to reading. “ ‘Senji, a fifteenth-century practitioner of alchemy at the university in the imperial city, was notorious for his ineptitude.’ “ He paused. “I might want to edit that part just a bit,” he noted critically. He glanced at the next one. “And this just won’t do at all,” he added. “ ‘To be quite frank about it,’ “ he read with distaste, “ ‘Senji’s experiments more often turned gold into lead than the reverse. In a fit of colossal frustration at the failure of his most recent experiment, Senji accidentally converted a half ton of brass plumbing into solid gold. An immediate debate arose, involving the Bureau of Currency, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Sanitation, the faculty of the College of Applied Alchemy and the faculty of the College of Comparative Theology about which organization should have control of Senji’s discovery. After about three hundred years of argumentation, it suddenly occurred to the disputants that Senji was not merely talented, but also appeared to be immortal. In the name of scientific experimentation, the varying bureaus, departments, and faculties agreed that an effort should be made to have him assassinated to verify that fact.’ “
“They didn’t!” Beldin said.
“Oh, yes,” Senji replied with a grim smugness. “Melcenes are inquisitive to the point of idiocy. They’ll go to any lengths to prove a theory.”
“What did you do?”
Senji smirked so hard that his long nose and pointed chin almost touched. “ ‘A well-known defenestrator was retained to throw the irascible old alchemist from a high window in one of the towers of the university administration building,’ “ he read.
“The experiment had a threefold purpose. What the curious bureaus wished to find out was: (A) if Senji was in fact unkillable, (B) what means he would take to save his life while plummeting toward the paved courtyard, and (C) if it might be possible to discover the secret of flight by giving him no other alternative.’ “ The clubfooted alchemist tapped the back of his hand against the text. “I’ve always been a little proud of that sentence,” he said. “It’s so beautifully balanced.”
“It’s a masterpiece,” Beldin approved, slapping the little man on the shoulder so hard that it nearly knocked him off the table. “Here,” he said, taking Senji’s cup, “let me refill that for you.” His brow creased, there was a surge, and the cup was full again. Senji took a sip and fell to gasping.
“It’s a drink that a Nadrak woman of my acquaintance brews,” Beldin told him. “Robust, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Senji agreed in a hoarse voice.
“Go on with your story, my friend.”
Senji cleared his throat—several times—and went on. “ ‘What the officials and learned men actually found out as a result of their experiment was that it is extremely dangerous to threaten the life of a sorcerer—even one as inept as Senji. The defenestrator found himself suddenly translocated to a position some fifteen hundred meters above the harbor, five miles distant. At one instant he had been wrestling Senji toward the window; at the next, he found himself standing on insubstantial air high above a fishing fleet. His demise occasioned no particular sorrow—except among the fishermen, whose nets were badly damaged by his rapid descent.’ “
“That was a masterful passage,” Beldin chortled, “but where did you discover the meaning of the word ‘translocation’?”
“I was reading an old text on the exploits of Belgarath the Sorcerer, and I—” Senji stopped, going very pale, turned, and gaped at Garion’s grandfather.
“It’s a terrible letdown, isn’t it?” Beldin said. “We always told him he ought to try to look more impressive.”
“You’re in no position to talk,” the old man said.
“You’re the one with the earthshaking reputation.” Beldin shrugged. “I’m just a flunky. I’m along for comic relief.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, Beldin?”
“I haven’t had so much fun in years. Wait until I tell Pol.”
“You keep your mouth shut, you hear me?”
“Yes, O mighty Belgarath,” Beldin said mockingly.
Belgarath turned to Garion. “Now you understand why Silk irritates me so much,” he said.
“Yes, Grandfather, I think I do.”
Senji was still a little wild-eyed.
“Take another drink, Senji,” Beldin advised. “It’s not nearly so hard to accept when your wits are half-fuddled.”
Senji began to tremble. Then he drained his cup in one gulp without so much as a cough.
“Now there’s a brave lad,” Beldin congratulated him. “Please read on. Your story is fascinating.”
Falteringly, the little alchemist continued. “ ‘In an out-burst of righteous indignation, Senji then proceeded to chastise the department heads who had consorted to do violence to his person. It was finally only a personal appeal from the emperor himself that persuaded the old man to desist from some fairly exotic punishments. After that, the department heads were more than happy to allow Senji to go his own way unmolested.
“On his own, Senji established a private academy and advertised for students. While his pupils never became sorcerers of the magnitude of Belgarath, Polgara, Ctuchik, or some of them were, nonetheless, able to perform rudimentary applications of the principle their master inadvertently discovered. This immediately elevated them far above the magicians and witches practicing their art forms within the confines of the university.’ “ Senji looked up. “There’s more,” he said, “but most of it deals with my experiments in the field of alchemy.”
“I think that’s the crucial part,” Belgarath said. “Let’s go back a bit. What were you feeling at the exact moment that you changed all that brass into gold?”
“Irritation,” Senji shrugged, closing his book. “Or maybe more than that. I’d worked out my calculations so very carefully, but the bar of lead I was working on just lay there not doing anything. I was infuriated. Then I just sort of pulled everything around me inside, and I could feel an enormous power building up. I shouted ‘Change!’—mostly at the lead bar, but there were some pipes running through the room as well, and my concentration was a little diffused.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t change the walls, too,” Beldin told him. “Were you ever able to do it again?”
Senji shook his head. “I tried, but I never seemed to be able to put together that kind of anger again.”
“Are you always angry when you do this sort of thing?” the hunchback asked.
“Almost always,” Senji admitted. “If I’m not angry, I can’t be certain of the results. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“That seems to be the key to it, Belgarath,” Beldin said. “Rage is the common element in every case we’ve come across.”
“As I remember, I was irritated the first time I did it as well,” Belgarath conceded.
“So was I,” Beldin said. “With you, I think.”