‘Be reasonable, dear.’
‘I don’t want to be reasonable. I want to kill Zandramas.’
‘I’m not going to let you put yourself in that kind of danger. We have much more important things to do tomorrow.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just—’
‘Just what?’
She turned back and put her arms around his neck. ‘Never mind, Garion,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to sleep now.’ She nestled down against him, and after a few moments her regular breathing told him that she had drifted off.
‘You should have given her the knife,’ the voice in his mind told him. ‘Silk could have stolen it back from her sometime tomorrow.’
‘But—’
‘We’ve got something else to talk about, Garion. Have you been thinking about your successor?’
‘Well – sort of It doesn’t really fit any of them, you know.’
‘Have you given serious consideration to each of them?’
‘I suppose I have, but I haven’t been able to make any decisions yet.’
‘You’re not supposed to make your choice yet. All you had to do was think about each one of them and get them all firmly fixed in your mind.’
‘When do I make the choice then?’
‘At the last possible moment, Garion. Zandramas might be able to hear your thoughts, but she can’t hear what you haven’t decided yet.’
‘What if I make a mistake?’
‘I really don’t think you can, Garion. I really don’t.’
Garion’s sleep was troubled that night. His dreams seemed chaotic, disconnected, and he woke often only to sink back into restless doze. There was at first a kind of distorted recapitulation of the strange dreams which had so disturbed him that night long ago on the Isle of the Winds just before his life had been unalterably changed. The question, ‘are you ready?’ seemed to echo again and again in the vaults of his mind. Again, he faced Rundorig with Aunt Pol’s matter-of-fact instruction to kill his boyhood friend roaring in his mind. And then the boar he had encountered in the snowy wood outside Val Alorn was there, pawing at the snow, its eyes aglow with rage and hate. ‘Are you ready?’ Barak asked him before releasing the beast. Then he stood on the colorless plain surrounded by the pieces of the incomprehensible game trying to decide which piece to move while the voice in his mind urged him to hurry.
The dream subtly changed and took on a different tone. Our dreams, no matter how bizarre, have a familiarity to them, since they are formed and shaped by our own minds. Now it seemed as if Garion’s dreams were being formed by a different and unfriendly awareness almost in the same way that Torak had intruded Himself in dreams and in thoughts before the meeting at Cthol Mishrak.
Again he faced Asharak the Murgo in the loamy Wood of the Dryads, and once again he unleashed his will with that single, open-handed slap and the fatal word, ‘burn!’ This was a familiar nightmare. It had haunted Garion’s sleep for years. He saw Asharak’s cheek begin to seethe and smoke. He heard the Grolim shriek and saw him clutch at his burning face. He heard the dreadful plea, ‘Master, have mercy!’ He spurned that plea and intensified the flame, but this time the act was not overlaid with the sense of self-loathing which had always accompanied the dream, but a kind of cruel exultation, a hideous joy as he watched his enemy writhe and burn before him. Deep within him something cried out, trying to repudiate that unholy joy.
And then he was at Cthol Mishrak, and his flaming sword slid again and again into the body of the One-Eyed God. Torak’s despairing ‘Mother!’ did not this time fill him with pity but with a towering satisfaction. He felt himself laughing, and the savage, unpitying laughter erased his humanity.
Soundlessly shrieking in horror, Garion recoiled, not so much from the awful images of those whom he had destroyed, but more from his own enjoyment of their despairing agony.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THEY WERE A somber group when they gathered in the main cabin before daybreak the following morning. With a sudden, even surprising, insight, Garion was very certain that the nightmares had not been his alone. Insight and intuitive perception were not normal for Garion. His sensible Sendarian background rejected such things as questionable, even in some peculiar way immoral. ‘Did you do that?’ he asked the voice.
‘No. Rather surprisingly, you came up with it all on your own. You seem to be making some progress – slowly, of course, but progress all the same.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Silk looked particularly shaken as he entered the cabin. The little man’s eyes were haunted, and his hands were shaking. He slumped onto a bench and buried his face in his hands. ‘Have you got any of that ale left?’ he asked Beldin in a hoarse voice.
‘A little quivery this morning, Kheldar?’ the dwarf asked him.
‘No,’ Garion said. ‘That’s not what’s bothering him. He had some bad dreams last night.’
Silk raised his face sharply. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.
‘I had some myself. I got to relive what I did to Asharak the Murgo, and I killed Torak again – several times. It didn’t get any better as we went along.’
‘I was trapped in a cave,’ Silk said with a shudder. ‘There wasn’t any light, but I could feel the walls closing in on me. I think the next time I see Relg, I’m going to hit him in the mouth – gently, of course. Relg’s sort of a friend.’
‘I’m glad I wasn’t the only one,’ Sadi said. The eunuch had placed a bowl of milk on the table, and Zith and her babies were gathered around it, lapping and purring. Garion was a bit surprised to note that no one really paid any attention to Zith and her brood any more. People, it seemed, could get used to almost anything. Sadi rubbed his long-fingered hand over his shaved scalp. ‘It seemed to me that I was adrift in the streets of Sthiss Tor, and I was trying to survive by begging. It was ghastly.’
‘I saw Zandramas sacrificing my baby,’ Ce’Nedra said in a stricken voice. ‘There was crying and so much blood – so very much blood.’
‘Peculiar,’ Zakath said. ‘I was presiding over a trial. I had to condemn a number of people. There was one of them I cared a great deal about, but I was forced to condemn her anyway.’
‘I had one, too,’ Velvet admitted.
‘I rather expect we all did,’ Garion told them. ‘The same thing happened to me on the way to Cthol Mishrak. Torak kept intruding in my dreams.’ He looked at Cyradis. ‘Does the Child of Dark always fall back on this?’ he asked her. ‘We’ve found that events keep repeating themselves when we’re leading up to one of these meetings. Is this one of those events that keeps happening over and over again?’
‘Thou art very perceptive, Belgarion of Riva,’ the Seeress told him. ‘In all the uncounted eons since these meetings began, thou art the first Child of either Light or Dark to have realized that the sequence must be endlessly repeated until the division hath ended.’
‘I not sure I can take much credit for it, Cyradis,’ he admitted. ‘As I understand it, the meetings are getting closer and closer together. I’m probably the first in history to have been the Child of Light – or Dark – during two meetings, and even then it took me a while to realize that it was happening. The nightmares are part of that pattern then?’
‘Thy guess is shrewd, Belgarion,’ she smiled gently. ‘Unfortunately, it is not correct. It seemeth me a shame to waste such a clever perception, though.’
‘Are you trying to be funny, Holy Seeress?’
‘Would I do that, noble Belgarion?’ she said, perfectly imitating Silk’s inflection.
‘You could spank her,’ Beldin suggested.
‘With that human mountain standing guard over her?’ Garion said, grinning at Toth. His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not permitted to help us with this, are you Cyradis?’ he asked her.
She sighed and shook her head.
‘That’s all right, Holy Seeress,’ he said. ‘I think we can come up with a workable answer t
o the question by ourselves.’ He looked at Belgarath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Torak tried to frighten me with nightmares, and now it looks as if Zandramas is trying to do the same thing, except that this time, she’s doing it to all of us. If it’s not one of those usual repetitions, what is it?’
‘That boy’s beginning to develop a rather keen analytical mind, Belgarath,’ Beldin said.
‘Naturally,’ the old man said modestly.
‘Don’t wrench your shoulder out of its socket trying to pat yourself on the back,’ Beldin said sourly. He rose to his feet and started pacing up and down, his forehead creased in thought. ‘Now then,’ he began, ‘first; this isn’t just one of the tedious repetitions that have been dogging us since the beginning, right?’
‘Right,’ Belgarath agreed.
‘Second; it happened in about the same way last time.’ He looked at Garion. ‘Right?’ he asked.
‘Right,’ Garion said.
‘That’s only two times. Twice can be a coincidence, but let’s assume that it’s not. We know that the Child of Light always has companions, but that the Child of Dark is always solitary.’
‘So Cyradis tells us,’ Belgarath agreed.
‘She doesn’t have any reason to lie to us. All right, if the Child of Light has companions but the Child of Dark is alone, wouldn’t that put the Dark at a serious disadvantage?’
‘You’d think so.’
‘But the two have always been so evenly matched that not even the Gods can predict the outcome. The Child of Dark is using something to offset the apparant advantage of our side. I think these nightmares might be part of it.’
Silk rose and came over to Garion. ‘Discussions like this make my head ache,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going up on deck for a while.’ He left the cabin, and for no apparent reason the gangly young wolf followed him.
‘I don’t really think a few nightmares would make that much difference, Beldin,’ Belgarath disagreed.
‘But what if the nightmares are only a part of it, Old Wolf?’ Poledra asked him. ‘You and Pol were both at Vo Mimbre, and that was one of these meetings, too. You two have been companions of the Child of Light twice already. What happened at Vo Mimbre?’
‘We did have nightmares,’ Belgarath conceded to Beldin.
‘Anything else?’ the dwarf asked intently.
‘We saw things that weren’t there, but that could have come from all the Grolims in the vicinity.’
‘And?’
‘Everybody went sort of crazy. It was all we could do to keep Brand from trying to attack Torak with his teeth, and at Cthol Mishrak I entombed Belzedar in solid rock, and then Pol wanted to dig him up so that she could drink his blood.’
‘Father! I did not!’ she objected.
‘Oh, really? You were very angry that day, Pol.’
‘It fits the same pattern, Old Wolf,’ Poledra said somberly. ‘Our side fights with normal weapons. Garion’s sword might be a little abnormal, but it’s still just a sword.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d been at Cthol Mishrak,’ her husband told her.
‘I was there, Belgarath,’ she replied.
‘You were?’
‘Of course. I was hiding in the ruins watching. Anyway, the Child of Dark doesn’t attack the body; it attacks the mind. That’s how it manages to keep everything so perfectly balanced.’
‘Nightmares, hallucinations, and ultimately madness,’ Polgara mused. ‘That’s a formidable array of things to throw against us. It might even have worked – if Zandramas hadn’t been so clumsy.’
‘I don’t quite follow that, Pol,’ Durnik said.
‘She blundered,’ Polgara shrugged. ‘If only one person has a nightmare, he’ll probably try to shrug it off and he certainly won’t mention it on the morning of the meeting. Zandramas sent nightmares to all of us, though. This conversation probably wouldn’t have taken place if she hadn’t.’
‘It’s nice to know that she can stumble, too,’ Belgarath said. ‘All right then, we know that she’s been tampering with us. The best way to defeat that tactic is to put those nightmares out of our minds.’
‘And to be particularly wary if we start seeing things that shouldn’t be there,’ Polgara added.
Silk and the wolf came back down the stairs to the cabin. ‘We’ve got absolutely beautiful weather this morning,’ he reported happily, bending slightly to scratch the pup’s ears.
‘Wonderful,’ Sadi murmured drily. Sadi was carefully annointing his small dagger with a fresh coating of poison. He was wearing a stout leather jerkin and leather boots that reached to mid thigh. Back in Sthiss Tor, Sadi had appeared, despite his slender frame, to be soft, even in some peculiar way, flabby. Now, however, he looked lean and tough. A year or more without drugs and with an enforced regimen of hard exercise had changed him a great deal.
‘It’s perfect,’ Silk told him. ‘We have fog this morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘a nice, wet gray fog almost thick enough to walk on. That fog would be a burglar’s delight.’
‘Trust Silk to think of that.’ Durnik smiled. The smith wore his usual clothing, but he had given Toth his axe, while he himself carried the dreadful sledge with which he had driven off the demon Nahaz.
‘The prophecies are leading us around by the noses again,’ Beldin said irritably, ‘but at least it appears that we made the right decision last night. A good thick fog makes sneaking almost inevitable.’ Beldin looked the same as always, tattered, dirty, and very ugly.
‘Maybe they’re just trying to help,’ Velvet suggested. Velvet had shocked them all when she had entered the cabin a half-hour earlier. She wore tight-fitting leather clothing not unlike that normally worn by the Nadrak dancer, Vella. It was a peculiarly masculine garb and bleakly businesslike. ‘They’ve done a great deal to assist Zandramas. Maybe it’s our turn to get a little help.’
‘Is she right?’ Garion asked the awareness that shared his mind. ‘Are you and your opposite helping us for a change?’
‘Don’t be silly, Garion. Nobody’s been helping anybody. That’s forbidden at this particular stage of the game.’
‘Where did the fog come from then?’
‘Where does fog usually come from?’
‘How would I know?’
‘I didn’t think so. Ask Beldin. He can probably tell you. The fog out there is perfectly natural.’
‘Liselle,’ Garion said, ‘I just checked with my friend. The fog isn’t the result of any playing around. It’s a natural result of the storm.’
‘How disappointing,’ she said.
Ce’Nedra had risen that morning fully intent on wearing a Dryad tunic. Garion had adamantly rejected that idea, however. She wore instead a simple gray wool dress with no petticoats to hinger her movements. She was quite obviously stripped down for action. Garion was fairly certain that she had at least one knife concealed somewhere in her clothing. ‘Why don’t we get started?’ she demanded.
‘Because it’s still dark, dear,’ Polgara explained patiently. `‘We have to wait for at least a little bit of light.’ Polgara and her mother wore almost identical plain dresses, Polgara’s gray, and Poledra’s brown.
‘Garion,’ Poledra said then, ‘why don’t you step down to the galley and tell them that we’ll have breakfast now? We should all eat something, since I doubt that we’ll have time or maybe even the need for lunch.’ Poledra sat at Belgarath’s side, and the two of them were almost unconsciously holding hands. Garion was a bit offended at her suggestion. He was a king, after all, not an errand boy. Then he realized just how silly that particular thought was. He started to rise.
‘I’ll go, Garion,’ Eriond said. It was almost as if the blond young man had seen into his friend’s thoughts. Eriond wore the same simple brown peasant clothes he always wore, and he had nothing even resembling a weapon.
As the young man went out through the cabin door, Garion had an odd thought. Why was he paying so much attention to the appearance of each of his
companions? He had seen them all before, and for the most part, he had seen the clothing they wore this morning so many times that the garments should not even have registered on his mind. Then with dreadful certainty, he knew. One of them was going to die today, and he was fixing them all in his mind so that he could remember for the rest of his life the one who was to make that sacrifice. He looked at Zakath. His Mallorean friend had shaved off his short beard. His slightly olive skin was no longer pale, but tanned and healthy-looking save for the slighter pitch on his chin and jaw. He wore simple clothing much like Garion’s own, since as soon as they reached the reef, the two of them would be putting on their armor.
Toth, his face impassive, was dressed as always – a loin-cloth, sandals, and that unbleached wool blanket slung across one shoulder. He did not, however, have his heavy staff. Instead, Durnik’s axe lay in his lap.
The Seeress of Kell was unchanged. Her hooded white robe gleamed, and her blindfold, unwrinkled and unchanged, smoothly covered her eyes. Idly, Garion wondered if she removed the cloth when she slept. A chilling thought came to him then. What if the one they would lose today was going to be Cyradis? She had sacrificed everything for her task. Surely the two prophecies could not be so cruel as to require one last, supreme sacrifice from this slender girl.
Belgarath, of course, was unchanged and unchangeable. He still wore the mismatched boots, patched hose, and rust-colored tunic he had worn when he had appeared at Faldor’s farm as Mister Wolf the storyteller. The one difference about the old man was the fact that he did not hold a tankard in his free hand. At supper the previous evening, he had almost absently drawn himself one that brimmed with foaming ale. Poledra, just as absently, had firmly removed it from his hand and had emptied it out a port-hole. Garion strongly suspected that Belgarath’s drinking days had come rather abruptly to an end. He decided that it might be refreshing to have a long conversation with his Grandfather when the old man was completely sober.
They ate their breakfast with hardly any conversation, since there was nothing more to say. Ce’Nedra dutifully fed the puppy, then looked rather sadly at Garion. ‘Take care of him, please,’ she said.