“Why did you take it out on that tree, then?”
“At the last second I remembered that our Master was fond of you, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by obliterating you.”
“That probably saved your life. If you’d said ‘be not,’ you wouldn’t be here now.”
Beldin scratched at his stomach. “That might explain why we find so few cases of spontaneous sorcery,” he mused. “When somebody’s enraged at something, his first impulse is usually to destroy it. This might have happened many, many times, but the spontaneous sorcerers probably annihilated themselves in the moment of discovery.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised that you’ve hit it,” Belgarath agreed.
Senji had gone pale again. “I think there’s something I need to know here,” he said.
“It’s the first rule,” Garion told him. “The universe won’t let us unmake things. If we try, all the force turns inward, and we’re the ones who vanish.” With a shudder he remembered the obliteration of Ctuchik. He looked at Beldin. “Did I get that right?” he asked.
“Fairly close. The explanation is a little more complex, but you described the process pretty accurately.”
“Did that by any chance happen to any of your students?” Belgarath asked Senji.
The alchemist frowned. “It might have,” he admitted. “Quite a few of them disappeared. I thought they’d just gone off someplace, but maybe not.”
“Are you taking any more students these days?”
Senji shook his head. “I don’t have the patience for it any more. Only about one in ten could even grasp the concept, and the rest stood around whining and sniveling and blaming me for not explaining it any better. I went back to alchemy. I almost never use sorcery any more.”
“We were told that you can actually do it,” Garion said. “Turn brass or lead into gold, I mean.”
“Oh, yes,” Senji replied in an offhand way. “It’s really fairly easy, but the process is more expensive than the gold is worth. That’s what I’m trying to do now—simplify the process and substitute less expensive chemicals. I can’t get anyone to fund my experiments, though.”
Garion felt a sudden throbbing against his hip. Puzzled, he looked down at the pouch in which he was carrying the Orb. There was a sound in his ears, an angry sort of buzz that was unlike the shimmering sound the Orb usually made.
“What’s that peculiar sound?” Senji asked.
Garion untied the pouch from his belt and opened it. The Orb was glowing an angry red.
“Zandramas?” Belgarath asked intently.
Garion shook his head. “No, Grandfather. I don’t think so.”
“Does it want to take you someplace?”
“It’s pulling.”
“Let’s see where it wants to go.” Garion held the Orb out in his right hand and it drew him steadily toward the door. They went out into the corridor with Senji limping along behind them, his face afire with curiosity. The Orb led them down the stairs and out the front door of the building.
“It seems to want to go toward that building over there,” Garion said, pointing toward a soaring tower of pure white marble.
“The College of Comparative Theology,” Senji sniffed. “They’re a sorry group of scholars with an inflated notion of their contribution to the sum of human knowledge.”
“Follow it, Garion,” Belgarath instructed. They crossed the lawn. Startled scholars scattered before them like frightened birds after one look at Belgarath’s face.
They entered the ground floor of the tower. A thin man in ecclesiastical robes sat at a high desk just inside the door. “You’re not members of this college,” he said in an outraged voice. “You can’t come in here.”
Without even slowing his pace, Belgarath translocated the officious doorman some distance out onto the lawn, desk and all.
“It does have its uses, doesn’t it?” Senji conceded. “Maybe I should give it a little more study. Alchemy’s beginning to bore me.”
“What’s behind this door?” Garion asked, pointing.
“That’s their museum.” Senji shrugged. “It’s a hodgepodge of old idols, religious artifacts, and that sort of thing.”
Garion tried the handle. “It’s locked.”
Beldin leaned back and kicked the door open, splintering the wood around the lock.
“Why did you do that?” Belgarath asked him.
“Why not?” Beldin shrugged. “I’m not going to waste the effort of pulling in my will for an ordinary door.”
“You’re getting lazy.”
“I’ll put it back together, and you can open it.”
“Never mind.”
They went into the dusty, cluttered room. There were rows of glass display cases in the center, and the walls were lined with grotesque statues. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and dust lay everywhere.
“They don’t come in here very often,” Senji noted. “They’d rather cook up addlepated theories than look at the real effects of human religious impulses.”
“This way,” Garion said as the Orb continued to pull steadily at his hand. He noticed that the stone was glowing redder and redder, and it was getting uncomfortably warm.
Then it stopped before a glass case where a rotting cushion lay behind the dusty panes. Aside from the cushion, the case was empty. The Orb was actually hot now, and its ruddy glow filled the entire room.
“What was in this case?” Belgarath demanded.
Senji leaned forward to read the inscription on the corroded brass plate attached to the case. “Oh,” he said, “now I remember. This is the case where they used to keep Cthrag Sardius—before it was stolen.’
Suddenly, without any warning, the Orb seemed to jump in Garion’s hand, and the glass case standing empty before them exploded into a thousand fragments.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How long was it here?” Belgarath asked the shaken Senji, who was gaping in awe first at the still sullenly glowing Orb in Garion’s hand, then at the shattered remains of the case.
“Senji,” Belgarath said sharply, “pay attention.”
“Is that what I think it is?” the alchemist asked, pointing at the Orb with a trembling hand.
“Cthrag Yaska,” Beldin told him. “If you’re going to play this game, you may as well learn what’s involved. Now answer my brother’s question.”
Senji floundered. “I’m not—” he began. “I’ve always been just an alchemist. I’m not interested in—”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Belgarath cut him off. “Like it or not, you’re a member of a very select group. Stop thinking about gold and other nonsense, and start paying attention to what’s important.”
Senji swallowed hard. “It was always just a kind of game,” he quavered. “Nobody ever took me seriously.”
“We do,” Garion told him, holding out the Orb to the now-cringing little man. “Do you have any idea of the kind of power you’ve stumbled over?” He was suddenly enormously angry. “Would you like to have me blow down this tower—or sink the Melcene Islands back into the sea—just to show you how serious we are?” “You’re Belgarion, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The Godslayer?”
“Some people call me that.”
“Oh, my God,” Senji whimpered.
“We’re wasting time,” Belgarath said flatly. “Start talking. I want to know just where Cthrag Sardius came from, how long it was here, and where it went from here.”
“It’s a long story,” Senji said.
“Abbreviate it,” Beldin told him, kicking aside the glass shards on the floor. “We’re a little pressed for time right now.”
“How long was the Sardion here?” Belgarath asked.
“Eons,” Senji replied.
“Where did it come from?”
“Zamad,” the alchemist responded. “The people up there are Karands, but they’re a little timid about demons. I think a few of their magicians were eaten alive. Anyway—so the legends say—at about the time of the cracking of the world some five thousand years or so ago . . .”he faltered again, staring at the two dreadful old men facing him.
“It was noisy,” Beldin supplied distastefully. “A lot of steam and earthquakes. Torak was always ostentatious— some kind of character defect, I think.”
“Oh, my God,” Senji said again.
“Don’t keep saying that,” Belgarath told him in a disgusted tone. “You don’t even know who your God is.”
“But you will, Senji,” Garion said in a voice that was his own, “and once you have met Him, you will follow all the days of your life.” Belgarath looked at Garion with one raised eyebrow.
Garion spread his hands helplessly. “Get on with this, Belgarath,” the voice said through Garion’s lips. “Time isn’t waiting for you, you know.”
Belgarath turned back to Senji. “All right,” he said. “The Sardion came to Zamad. How?”
“It’s said to have fallen out of the sky.”
“They always do,” Beldin said. “Someday I’d like to see something rise up out of the earth—just for the sake of variety. “
“You get bored too easily, my brother,” Belgarath told him.
“I didn’t see you sitting over Burnt-face’s tomb for five hundred years, my brother,” Beldin retorted.
“I don’t think I can stand this,” Senji said, burying his face in his trembling hands.
“It gets easier as you go along,” Garion said in a comforting tone. “We’re not really here to make your life unpleasant. All we need is a little information and then we’ll go away. If you think about it in the right way, you might even be able to make yourself believe that this is all a dream.”