“One of the others will do just as well,” Ctuchik asserted, his eyes blazing with fury.
“No,” Belgarath disagreed. “The others are all unassailable. Ce’Nedra’s the only vulnerable one, and she’s at Prolgu – under the protection of UL himself. You can attempt that if you’d like, but I wouldn’t really advise it.”
“Curse you, Belgarath!”
“Why don’t you just give me the Orb now, Ctuchik?” Belgarath suggested. “You know I can take it away from you if I have to.”
Ctuchik struggled to gain control of himself. “Let’s not be hasty, Belgarath,” he said after a moment. “What are we going to gain by destroying each other? We have Cthrag Yaska in our possession. We could divide the world between us.”
“I don’t want half the world, Ctuchik.”
“You want it all for yourself?” A brief, knowing smile crossed Ctuchik’s face. “So did I – at first – but I’ll settle for half.”
“Actually, I don’t want any of it.”
Ctuchik’s expression became a bit desperate. “What do you want, Belgarath?”
“The Orb,” Belgarath replied inexorably. “Give it to me, Ctuchik.”
“Why don’t we join forces and use the Orb to destroy Zedar?”
“Why?”
“You hate him as much as I do. He betrayed your Master. He stole Cthrag Yaska from you.”
“He betrayed himself, Ctuchik, and I think that haunts him sometimes. His plan to steal the Orb was clever, though.” Belgarath looked thoughtfully at the little boy standing in front of the table, his large eyes fixed on the iron cask. “I wonder where he found this child,” he mused. “Innocence and purity are not exactly the same thing, of course, but they’re very close. It must have cost Zedar a great deal of effort to raise a total innocent. Think of all the impulses he had to suppress.”
“That’s why I let him do it,” Ctuchik said.
The little blond boy, seeming to know that they were discussing him, looked at the two old men, his eyes filled with absolute trust.
“The whole point is that I still have Cthrag Yaska – the Orb,” Ctuchik said, leaning back in his chair and laying one hand on the cask. “If you try to take it, I’ll fight you. Neither of us knows for sure how that would turn out. Why take chances?”
“What good is it doing you? Even if it would submit to you, what then? Would you raise Torak and surrender it to him?”
“I might think about it. But Torak’s been asleep for five centuries now, and the world’s run fairly well without him. I don’t imagine there’s all that much point in disturbing him just yet.”
“Which would leave you in possession of the Orb.”
Ctuchik shrugged. “Someone has to have it. Why not me?”
He was still leaning back in his chair, seeming almost completely at ease. There was no warning movement or even a flicker of emotion across his face as he struck.
It came so quickly that it was not a surge but a blow, and the sound of it was not the now-familiar roaring in the mind but a thunderclap. Garion knew that, had it been directed at him, it would have destroyed him. But it was not directed at him. It lashed instead at Belgarath. For a dreadful instant Garion saw his grandfather engulfed in a shadow blacker than night itself. Then the shadow shattered like a goblet of delicate crystal, scattering shards of darkness as it blew apart. Now grim-faced, Belgarath still faced his ancient enemy.
“Is that the best you can do, Ctuchik?” he asked, even as his own will struck.
A searing blue light suddenly surrounded the Grolim, closing in upon him, seeming to crush him with its intensity. The stout chair upon which he sat burst into chunks and splinters, as if a sudden vast weight had settled down upon it. Ctuchik fell among the fragments of his chair and pushed back the blue incandescence with both hands. He lurched to his feet and answered with flames. For a dreadful instant Garion remembered Asharak, burning in the Wood of the Dryads, but Belgarath brushed the fire away and, despite his once-stated assertion that the Will and Word needed no gesture, he raised his hand and smashed at Ctuchik with lightning.
The sorcerer and the magician faced each other in the center of the room, surrounded by blazing lights and waves of flame and darkness. Garion’s mind grew numb under the repeated detonations of raw energy as the two struggled. He sensed that their battle was only partially visible and that blows were being struck which he could not see – could not even imagine. The air in the turret room seemed to crackle and hiss. Strange images appeared and vanished, flickering at the extreme limits of visibility – vast faces, enormous hands, and things Garion could not name. The turret itself trembled as the two dreadful old men ripped open the fabric of reality itself to grasp weapons of imagination or delusion.
Without even thinking, Garion began to gather his will, drawing his mind into focus. He had to stop it. The edges of the blows were smashing at him and at the others. Beyond thought now, Belgarath and Ctuchik, consumed with their hatred for each other, were unleashing forces that could kill them all.
“Garion! Stay out of it!” Aunt Pol told him in a voice so harsh that he could not believe it was hers. “They’re at the limit. If you throw anything else into it, you’ll destroy them both.” She gestured sharply to the others. “Get back – all of you. The air around them is alive.”
Fearfully, they all backed toward the rear wall of the turret room. The sorcerer and the magician stood no more than a few feet apart now, their eyes blazing and their power surging back and forth in waves. The air sizzled around them, and their robes smoked.
Then Garion’s eyes fell upon the little boy. He stood watching with calm, uncomprehending eyes. He neither started nor flinched at the dreadful sounds and sights that crashed around him. Garion tensed himself to dash forward and yank the child to safety, but at that moment the little boy turned toward the table. Quite calmly, he walked through a sudden wall of green flame that shot up in front of him. Either he did not see the fire, or he did not fear it. He reached the table, stood on his tiptoes and, raising the lid, he put his hand into the iron cask over which Ctuchik had been gloating. He lifted a round, polished, gray stone out of the cask. Garion instantly felt that strange tingling glow again, so strong now that it was almost overwhelming, and his ears filled with the haunting song.
He heard Aunt Pol gasp.
Holding the gray stone in both hands like a ball, the little boy turned and walked directly toward Garion, his eyes filled with trust and the expression on his small face confident. The polished stone reflected the flashing lights of the terrible conflict raging in the center of the room, but there was another light within it as well. Deep within it stood an intense azure glow – a light that neither flickered nor changed, a light that grew steadily stronger as the boy approached Garion. The child stopped and raised the stone in his hands, offering it to Garion. He smiled and spoke a single word, “Errand.”
An instant image filled Garion’s mind, an image of a dreadful fear. He knew that he was looking directly into the mind of Ctuchik. There was a picture in Ctuchik’s mind – a picture of Garion holding the glowing stone in his hand – and that picture terrified the Grolim. Garion felt waves of fear spilling out toward him. Deliberately and quite slowly he reached his right hand toward the stone the child was offering. The mark on his palm yearned toward the stone, and the chorus of song in his mind swelled to a mighty crescendo. Even as he stretched out his hand, he felt the sudden, unthinking, animal panic in Ctuchik.
The Grolim’s voice was a hoarse shriek. “Be not!” he cried out desperately, directing all his terrible power at the stone in the little boy’s hands.
For a shocking instant, a deadly silence filled the turret. Even Belgarath’s face, drawn by his terrible struggle, was shocked and unbelieving.
The blue glow within the heart of the stone seemed to contract. Then it flared again.
Ctuchik, his long hair and beard disheveled, stood gaping in wideeyed and openmouthed horror. “I didn’t mean it!” he howled. “I didn’t – I-”
But a new and even more stupendous force had already entered the round room. The force flashed no light, nor did it push against Garion’s mind. It seemed instead to pull out, drawing at him as it closed about the horrified Ctuchik.
The High Priest of the Grolims shrieked mindlessly. Then he seemed to expand, then contract, then expand again. Cracks appeared on his face as if he had suddenly solidified into stone and the stone was disintegrating under the awful force welling up within him. Within those hideous cracks Garion saw, not flesh and blood and bone, but blazing energy. Ctuchik began to glow, brighter and brighter. He raised his hands imploringly. “Help me!” he screamed. He shrieked out a long, despairing, “NO!” And then, with a shattering sound that was beyond noise, the Disciple of Torak exploded into nothingness.