The sword of the Rivan King slid smoothly into the dragon’s heart, like a stick into water.
The awful bellowing from both the dragon and the Demon Lord broke off suddenly in a kind of gurgling sigh.
Grimly, Garion wrenched his sword free and stepped clear of the convulsing beast. Then, like a burning house collapsing in on itself, the dragon crumpled to the ground, twitched a few times, and was still.
Garion wearily turned.
Toth’s face was calm, but blind Cyradis knelt on one side of his body and Durnik on the other. They were both weeping openly.
High overhead, the albatross cried out once, a cry of pain and loss.
Cyradis was weeping, her blindfold wet with her tears.
The smoky-looking orange sky roiled and tumbled overhead, and inky black patches lay in the folds of the clouds, shifting, coiling, and undulating as the clouds, still stained on their undersides by the new-risen sun, writhed in the sky above and flinched and shuddered as they begot drunken-appearing lightning that staggered down through the murky air to strike savagely at the altar of the One-eyed God on the pinnacle above.
Cyradis was weeping.
The sharply regular stones that floored the amphitheater were still darkly wet from the clinging fog that had enveloped the reef before dawn and the downpour of yesterday. The white speckles in that iron-hard stone glittered like stars under their sheen of moisture.
Cyradis was weeping.
Garion drew in a deep breath and looked around the amphitheater. It was not as large perhaps as he had first imagined – certainly not large enough to contain what had happened here – but then, all the world would probably not have been large enough to contain that. The faces of his companions, bathed in the fiery light from the sky and periodically glowing dead white in the intense flashes of the stuttering lightning, seemed awed by the enormity of what had just happened. The amphitheater was littered with dead Grolims, shrunken black patches lying on the stones or sprawled in boneless-looking clumps on the stairs. Garion heard a peculiar, voiceless rumble that died off into something almost like a sigh. He looked incuriously at the dragon. Its tongue protruded from its gaping mouth, and its reptilian eye stared blankly at him. The sound he had heard had come from that vast carcass. The beast’s entrails, still unaware that they, like the rest of the dragon were dead, continued their methodical work of digestion. Zandramas stood frozen in shock. The beast she had raised and the demon she had sent to possess it were both dead, and her desperate effort to evade the necessity of standing powerless and defenseless in the place of the Choice had crumbled and fallen as a child’s castle of sand crumbles before the encroaching waves. Garion’s son looked upon his father with unquestioning trust and pride, and Garion took a certain comfort in that clear-eyed gaze.
Cyradis was weeping. All else in Garion’s mind was drawn from reflection and random impressions. The one incontrovertable fact, however, was that the Seeress of Kell was crushed by her grief. At this particular time she was the most important person in the universe, and perhaps it had always been so. It might very well be, Garion thought, that the world had been created for the one express purpose of bringing this frail girl to this place at this time to make this single Choice. But could she do that now? Might it not be that the death of her guide and protector – the one person in all the world she had truly loved – had rendered her incapable of making the Choice?
Cyradis was weeping, and so long as she wept, the minutes ticked by. Garion saw now as clearly as if he were reading in that book of the heavens which guided the seers that the time of the meeting and of the Choice was not only this particular day, but would come in a specific instant of this day, and if Cyradis, bowed down by her unbearable grief, were unable to choose in that instant, all that had been all that was, and all that was yet to be would shimmer and vanish like an ephemeral dream. Her weeping must cease, or all would be forever lost.
It began with a clear-toned single voice, a voice that rose and rose in elegiac sadness that contained within it the sum of human woe. Then other voices emerging singly or in trios or in octets to join that aching song. The chorus of the group mind of the seers plumbed the depths of the grief of the Seeress of Kell and then sank in an unbearable diminuendo of blackest despair and faded off into a silence more profound than the silence of the grave.
Cyradis was weeping, but she did not weep alone. Her entire race wept with her.
That lone voice began again, and the melody was similar to the one which had just died away. To Garion’s untrained ear, it seemed almost the same, but a subtle chord-change had somehow taken place, and as the other voices joined in, more chords insinuated themselves into the song, and the grief and unutterable despair were questioned in the final notes.
Yet once again the song began, not this time with a single voice but with a mighty chord that seemed to shake the very roots of heaven with its triumphant affirmation. The melody remained basically the same, but what had begun as a dirge was now an exultation.
Cyradis gently laid Toth’s hand on his motionless chest, smoothed his hair, and groped across his body to touch Durnik’s tear-wet face consolingly.
She rose, no longer weeping, and Garion’s fears dissolved and faded as the morning fog which had obscured the reef had faded beneath the onslaught of the sun. ‘Go,’ she said in a resolute voice, pointing at the now-unguarded portal. ‘The time approaches. Go thou, Child of Light, and thou, Child of Dark, even into the grot, for we have choices to make which, once made, may never be unmade. Come ye with me, therefore, into the Place Which Is No More, there to decide the fate of all men.’ And with firm and unfaltering step, the Seeress of Kell led the way toward that portal surmounted by the stony image of the face of Torak.
Garion found himself powerless in the grip of that clear voice and he fell in beside satin-robed Zandramas to follow the slender Seeress. He felt a faint brush against his armored right shoulder as he and the Child of Dark entered the portal. It was almost with a wry amusement that he realized that the forces controlling this meeting were not so entirely sure of themselves. They had placed a barrier between him and the Sorceress of Darshiva. Zandramas’ unprotected throat lay quite easily within the reach of his vengeful hands, but the barrier made her as unassailable as if she had been on the far side of the moon. Faintly, he was aware that the others were coming up behind, his friends following him, and Geran and the violently trembling Otrath trailing after Zandramas.
‘This need not be so, Belgarion of Riva,’ Zandramas whispered urgently. ‘Will we, the two most powerful ones in all the universe, submit to the haphazard choice of this brain-sickly girl? Let us bestow our choices upon ourselves. Thus will we both become Gods. Easily will we be able to set aside UL and the others and rule all creation jointly.’ The swirling lights beneath the skin of her face spun faster now, and her eyes glowed red. ‘Once we have achieved divinity, thou canst put aside thine earthly wife, who is not, after all, human, and thou and I could mate. Thou couldst father a race of Gods upon me, Belgarion, and we could sate each other with unearthly delights. Thou wilt find me fair, King of Riva, as all men have, and I will consume thy days with the passion of Gods, and we will share in the meeting of Light and Dark.’
Garion was startled, even a little awed by the single-mindedness of the Spirit of the Child of Dark. The thing was as implacable and as unchangeable as adamantine rock. He perceived that it did not change because it could not. He began to grope his way toward something which seemed significant. Light could change. Every day was testimony to that. Dark could not. Then it was at last that he understood the true meaning of the eternal division which had rent the universe apart. The Dark sought immobile stasis; the Light sought progression. The Dark crouched in a perceived perfection; the Light, however, moved on, informed by the concept of perfectability. When Garion spoke, it was not in reply to the blatant inducements of Zandramas, but rather to the Spirit of Dark itself. ‘It will change, you know,’ he said. ‘Nothing you can
do will stop me from believing that. Torak offered to be my father, and now Zandramas offers to be my wife. I rejected Torak, and I reject Zandramas. You cannot lock me into immobility. If I change only one little thing, you’ve lost. Go stop the tide if you can, and leave me alone to do my work.’
The gasp which 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 featherlike 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 which came from her lips was dry, unemotional. ‘You’ll have to make your choice eventually, you know,’ it said.
The voice which 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 endlessly 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 which had killed him.
Just over his shoulder, Garion heard a sudden animal-like 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. ‘All 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, Garion. My opposite has agreed that we should leave the matter in 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 will 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 Zandamas’ 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 require that you acknowledge it.’
‘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 Kell.
‘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 I will see.’
It was the strange detached calm which came over him that alerted Garion to the fact that the ultimate Event was about to take place. It was the same calm which 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, s
till 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 which 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 Torak’s towering pride. It had only been later, after the pride had reasserted itself, that Torak had mutilated the pages of his prophecy. In that one bleak moment of sanity, the maimed God had spoken truly for perhaps the one time in his life. Garion could only imagine the agony of self-abasement that single moment of truth had cost Torak. In the silence of his mind Garion pledged his fidelity to the task his most ancient foe had lain upon him. ‘I will do all that is in my power to keep this abomination from coming to pass, my brother,’ he threw out his thought to the spirit of Torak. ‘Return to thy rest, for here I take up the burden.’
The dusky red glow of the Sardion had muted the swirling lights in the flesh of Zandramas, and Garion could now see her features quite clearly. Her expression was troubled. She had quite obviously been unprepared for the sudden acquiescence of the spirit which dominated her. Her drive to win at any cost had been frustrated by the withdrawal of the support of that spirit. Her own mind – or what was left of it – still strove to evade facing the Choice. The two prophecies had agreed at the beginning of time to place the entire matter in the hands of the Seeress of Kell. The evasions, the trickery and the multitudinous atrocities that had marked the passage of the Child of Dark through the world had all come from the twisted Grolim perceptions of the Sorceress of Darshiva herself. At this moment, Zandramas was more dangerous that she had ever been.