The whispering blandishments of Torak continued, but Garion countered them with thoughts of his red-haired little princess. He could sense the irritation of his enemy each time he intruded these daydreams upon the carefully orchestrated images Torak kept trying to instill in his imagination. Torak wanted him to think of his loneliness and fear and of the possibility of becoming a part of a loving family, but the intrusion of Ce’Nedra into the picture confused and baffled the God. Garion soon perceived that Torak’s understanding of men was severely limited. Concerned more with elementals, with those towering compulsions and ambitions which had inflamed him for the endless eons, Torak could not cope with the scattered complexities and conflicting desires that motivated most men. Garion seized on his advantage to thwart the insidious and compelling whispers with which Torak tried to lure him from his purpose.
The whole business was somehow peculiarly familiar. This had happened before – not perhaps in exactly the same way, but very similarly. He sorted through his memories, trying to pin down this strange sense of repetition. It was the sight of a twisted tree stump, lightning-blasted and charred, that suddenly brought it all flooding back in on him. The stump, when seen from a certain angle, bore a vague resemblance to a man on horseback, a dark rider who seemed to watch them as they rode by. Because the sky was overcast, the stump cast no shadow, and the image clicked into place. Throughout his childhood, hovering always on the edge of his vision, Garion had seen the strange, menacing shape of a dark-cloaked rider on a black horse, shadowless even in the brightest sunlight. That had been Asharak the Murgo, of course, the Grolim whom Garion had destroyed in his first open act as a sorcerer. But had it? There had existed between Garion and that dark figure which had so haunted his childhood a strange bond. They had been enemies; Garion had always known that; but in their enmity there had always been a curious closeness, something that seemed to pull them together. Garion quite deliberately began to examine a startling possibility. Suppose that the dark rider had not in fact been Asharak – or if it had been, suppose that Asharak had somehow been suffused by another, more powerful awareness.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced Garion became that he had stumbled inadvertently across the truth of the matter. Torak had demonstrated that, even though his body slept, his awareness could still move about the world, twisting events to his own purposes. Asharak had been involved, certainly, but the dominating force had always been the consciousness of Torak. The Dark God had stood watch over him since infancy. The fear he had sensed in that dark shape that had hovered always on the edge of his boyhood had not been Asharak’s fear, but Torak’s. Torak had known who he was from the beginning, had known that one day Garion would take up the sword of the Rivan King and come to the meeting that had been ordained since before the world was made.
Acting upon a sudden impulse, Garion put his left hand inside his tunic and took hold of his amulet. Twisting slightly, he reached up and laid the marked palm of his right hand on the Orb, which stood on the pommel of the great sword strapped across his back.
“I know you now, ” he declared silently, hurling the thought at the murky sky. “You might as well give up trying to win me over to your side, because I’m not going to change my mind. Aunt Pol is not your wife, and I’m not your son. You’d better stop trying to play games with my thoughts and get ready, because I in coming to kill you. ”
The Orb beneath his hand flared with a sudden exultation as Garion threw his challenge into the Dark God’s teeth, and the sword at Garion’s back suddenly burst into a blue flame that flickered through the sheath enclosing it.
There was a moment of deadly silence, and then what had been a whisper suddenly became a vast roar.
“Come, then, Belgarion, Child of Light, ” Torak hurled back the challenge. “I await thee in the City of Night. Bring all thy will and all thy courage with thee, for I am ready for our meeting.”
“What in the name of the seven Gods do you think you’re doing?” Belgarath almost screamed at Garion, his face mottled with angry astonishment.
“Torak’s been whispering at me for almost a week now,” Garion explained calmly, taking his hand from the Orb. “He’s been offering me all kinds of things if I’d give up this whole idea. I got tired of it, so I told him to stop.”
Belgarath spluttered indignantly, waving his hands at Garion.
“He knows I’m coming, Grandfather,” Garion said, trying to placate the infuriated old man. “He’s known who I was since the day I was born. He’s been watching me all this time. We’re not going to be able to take him by surprise, so why try? I wanted to let him know that I was on to him. Maybe it’s time for him to start worrying and being afraid just a little bit, too.”
Silk was staring at Garion. “He’s an Alorn, all right,” he observed finally.
“He’s an idiot!” Belgarath snapped angrily. He turned back to Garion. “Did it ever occur to you that there might be something out here to worry about besides Torak?” he demanded.
Garion blinked.
“Cthol Mishrak is not unguarded, you young blockhead. You’ve just succeeded in announcing our presence to every Grolim within a hundred leagues.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Garion mumbled.
“I didn’t think you’d thought. Sometimes I don’t think you know how to think.”
Silk looked around apprehensively. “Now what do we do?” he asked.
“We’d better get out of here – as fast as our horses can carry us,” Belgarath said. He glared at Garion. “Are you sure you don’t have a trumpet somewhere under your clothes?” he asked with heavy sarcasm. “Maybe you’d like to blow a few fanfares as we go along.” He shook his head in disgust and then gathered up his reins. “Let’s ride,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE ASPENS WERE stark white and motionless under the dead sky, and they rose, straight and slender, like the bars of an interminable cage. Belgarath led them at a walk, carefully weaving his way through the endless stretches of this vast, silent forest.
“How much farther?” Silk asked the old man tensely.
“Not much more than a day, now,” Belgarath replied. “The clouds ahead are getting thicker.”
“You say the cloudbank never moves?”
“Never. It’s been stationary since Torak put it there.”
“What if a wind came along? Wouldn’t that move it?”
Belgarath shook his head. “The normal rules have been suspended in that region. For all I know, the cloud might not actually be cloud. It might be something else.”
“Like what?”
“An illusion of some kind, perhaps. The Gods are very good at illusions.”
“Are they looking for us? The Grolims, I mean.”
Belgarath nodded.
“Are you taking steps to keep them from finding us?”
“Naturally.” The old man looked at him. “Why this sudden urge for conversation? You’ve been talking steadily for the last hour.”
“I’m a little edgy,” Silk admitted. “This is unfamiliar territory, and that always makes me nervous. I’m much more comfortable when I’ve got my escape routes worked out in advance.”
“Are you always ready to run?”
“In my profession you have to be. What was that?”
Garion heard it too. Faintly, somewhere far off behind them, there was a deep-toned baying – one animal at first, but soon joined by several others. “Wolves?” he suggested.
Belgarath’s face had grown bleak. “No,” he replied, “not wolves.” He shook his reins, and his nervous horse began to trot, the sound of its hoofs muffled by the rotting loam lying thick beneath the aspens.
“What is it then, Grandfather?” Garion asked, also pushing his horse into a trot.
“Torak’s Hounds,” Belgarath replied tersely.
“Dogs?”
“Not really. They’re Grolims – rather specialized ones. When the Angaraks built the city, Torak decided that he needed something to guard the surrounding countryside. Certain Grolims volunteered to take on nonhuman shapes. The change was permanent.”
“I’ve dealt with watchdogs before,” Silk said confidently.
“Not like these. Let’s see if we can outrun them.” Belgarath didn’t sound very hopeful.
They pushed their horses into a gallop, weaving in and out among the tree trunks. The limbs slapped against their faces as they rode, and Garion raised his arm to ward them off as the three of them plunged on.
They crested a low ridge and galloped down the far side. The baying behind them seemed to be closer now.
Then Silk’s horse stumbled, and the little man was almost thrown from his saddle.
“T’his isn’t working, Belgarath,” he said as the old man and Garion reined in. “This ground’s too treacherous for us to keep this pace.”