The gasp that came from the mouth of Zandramas was more than human. Garion’s sudden understanding had actually stung the Dark, not merely its instrument. He felt a faint, almost feath-erlike probing, and made no effort to repel it.
Zandramas hissed, her eyes aflame with hate-filled frustration.
“Didn’t you find what you wanted?” Garion asked.
The voice that came from her lips was dry, unemotional. “You’ll have to make your choice eventually, you know,” it said.
The voice that came from Garion’s lips was not his own, and it was just as dry and clinical. “There’s plenty of time,” it replied. “My instrument will choose when it is needful.”
“A clever move, but it does not yet signify the end of the game.”
“Of course not. The last move lies in the hands of the Seeress of Kell.”
“So be it, then.”
They were walking down a long, musty-smelling corridor.
“I absolutely hate this,” Garion heard Silk murmur from behind him.
‘ ‘It’s going to be all right, Kheldar,” Velvet told the little man comfortingly. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Then the corridor opened out into a submerged grotto. The walls were rough, irregular, for this was not a construction but a natural cavern. Water oozed down a far wall to trickle end-
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lessly with silvery note into a dark pool. The grotto had a faintly reptilian smell overlaid by the odor of long-dead meat, and the floor was littered with gnawed white bones. By some ironic twist, the lair of the Dragon God had become the lair of the dragon herself. No better guard had been necessary to protect this place.
On the near wall stood a massive throne carved from a single rock, and before the throne there was one of the now all-too-familiar altars. Lying on the center of that altar was an- oblong stone somewhat larger than a man’s head. The stone glowed red, and its ugly light illuminated the grotto. Just to one side of the altar lay a human skeleton, its bony arm extended in a gesture of longing. Garion frowned. Some sacrifice to Torak, perhaps? Some victim of the dragon? Then he knew. It was the Melcene scholar who had stolen the Sardion from the university and fled with it to this place to die here in unthinking adoration of .the stone that had killed him.
Just over his shoulder, Garion heard a sudden animallike snarl coming from the Orb, and a similar sound came from the red stone, the Sardion, which lay on the altar. There was a confused babble of sound in a multitude of languages, some drawn, for all Garion knew, from the farthest reaches of the universe. Flickering streaks of blue shot up through the milky-red Sardion, and similarly, angry red bathed the Orb in undulant waves as all the conflicts of all the ages came together in this small, confined space.
“Control it, Garion!” Belgarath said sharply. “If you don’t they’ll destroy each other—and the universe, as well!”
Garion reached back over his shoulder and placed his marked palm over the Orb, speaking silently to the vengeful stone. ‘ ‘Not yet,” he said. “AH in good time.” He could not have explained why he had chosen those precise words. Grumbling almost like a petulant child, the Orb fell silent, and the Sardion also grudgingly broke off its snarl. The lights, however, continued to stain the surfaces of both stones.
‘ ‘You were quite good back there,” the voice in Garion’s mind congratulated him. ‘ ‘Our enemy is a bit off balance now. Don’t get overconfident, though. We ‘re at a slight disadvantage here because the Spirit of the Child of Dark is very strong in this grotto. ”
” Why didn ‘t you tell me that before ?”
” Would you have paid any attention ? Listen carefully, Gar-ion. My opposite has agreed that we should leave the matter in
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Cyradis’ hands. Zandramas, however, has made no such commitment. She’s very likely to make one last attempt. Put yourself between her and the Sardion. No matter what you have to do, don’t let her reach that stone. ”
‘ ‘All right,” Garion said bleakly. He reasoned that attempting to edge into position inch by inch would not deceive the Sorceress of Darshiva as to his intent. Instead, quite calmly and deliberately, he simply stepped in front of the altar, drew his sword, and set its point on the floor of the grotto in front of him with his crossed hands resting on the pommel.
“What art thou about?” Zandramas demanded in a harsh, suspicious tone of voice.
“You know exactly what I’m doing, Zandramas,” Garion replied. “The two spirits have agreed to let Cyradis decide between them. I haven’t heard you agree yet. Do you still think you can avoid the Choice?”
Her light-speckled face twisted with hatred. “Thou wilt pay for this, Belgarion,” she answered. “All that thou art and all that thou lovest will perish here.”
“That’s for Cyradis to decide, not you. In the meantime, nobody’s going to touch the Sardion until after Cyradis makes her choice.”
Zandramas ground her teeth in sudden, impotent fury.
And then Poledra came closer, her tawny hair stained by the light of the Sardion. “Very well done, young wolf,” she said to Garion.
“Thou no longer hast the power, Poledra.” The strangely abstracted words came from Zandramas’ unmoving mouth.
“Point.” The familiar dry voice spoke through Poledra’s lips.
“I perceive no point.”
“That’s because you’ve always discarded your instruments when you were finished with them. Poledra was the Child of Light at Vo Mimbre. She was even able to defeat Torak there— if only temporarily. Once that power is bestowed, it can never be wholly taken away. Did not her control over the Demon Lord prove that to you?”
Garion was almost staggered by that. Poledra? The Child of Light during that dreadful battle five hundred years ago?
The voice went on. “Do you acknowledge the point?” it asked its opposite.
“What difference can it make? The game will be played out soon.”
“I claim point. Our rules required that you acknowledge it.”
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“Very well. I acknowledge the point. You’ve really become quite childish about this, you know.”
“A rule is a rule, and the game isn’t finished yet.”
Garion went back to watching Zandramas very closely so that he might meet any sudden move she made toward the Sardion.
“When is the time, Cyradis?” Belgarath quietly asked the Seeress of Keli.
“Soon,” she replied. “Very soon.”
“We’re all here,” Silk said, nervously looking up-at the ceiling. “Why don’t we get on with it?”
‘ ‘This is the day, Kheldar,” she said,’ ‘but it is not the instant. In the instant of the Choice, a great light shall appear, a light which even /will see.”
It was the strange detached calm that came over him that alerted Garion to the fact that the ultimate Event was about to take place. It was the same calm that had enveloped him in the ruins of Cthol Mishrak when he had met Torak.
Then, as if the thought of his name had aroused, if only briefly, the spirit of the One-Eyed God from its eternal slumber, Garion seemed to hear Torak’s dreadful voice intoning that prophetic passage from the last page of the Ashabine Oracles:
“Know that we are brothers, Belgarion, though our hate for each other may one day sunder the heavens. We are brothers in that we share a dreadful task. That thou art reading my words means that thou hast been my destroyer. Thus must I charge thee with the task. What is foretold in these pages is an abomination. Do not let it come to pass. Destroy the world. Destroy the universe if need be, but do not permit this to come to pass. In thy hand is now the fate of all that was, all that is, and all that is yet to be. Hail, my hated brother, and farewell. We will meet—or have met—in the City of Endless Night, and there will our dispute be concluded. The task, however, still lieth before us in the Place Which Is No More. One of us must go there to face the ultimate horror. Should it be thou, fail us not. Failing all else, thou must reave the life from thine only son, even as thou hast reft mine from me.”
This time, however, the words of Torak did not fill Garion with weeping. They simply intensified his resolve as he finally began to understand. What Torak had seen in the vision that had come to him at Ashaba had been so terrifying that in the moment of his awakening from his prophetic dream the maimed God had felt impelled to lay the possibility of the dreadful task upon his most hated foe. That momentary horror had surpassed even