Magician's Gambit

  "How longs he going to be at it?"

  "About an hour, I'd imagine. It's a fairly complicated ritual."

  Relg stopped praying long enough to bind a second veil across his face on top of the first one.

  "If he wraps any more cloth around his head, he's likely to smother," Silk observed.

  "I'd better get started," Hettar said, tightening the straps on his saddle. "Is there anything else you wanted me to tell Cho-Hag?"

  "Tell him to pass the word along to the others about what's happened so far," Belgarath answered. "Things are getting to the point where I'd like everybody to be more or less alert."

  Hettar nodded.

  "Do you know where you are?" Barak asked him.

  "Of course." The tall man looked out at the seemingly featureless plain before him.

  "It's probably going to take us at least a month to get to Rak Cthol and back," Belgarath advised. "If we get a chance, we'll light signal fires on top of the eastern escarpment before we start down. Tell Cho-Hag how important it is for him to be waiting for us. We don't want Murgos blundering into Algaria. I'm not ready for a war just yet."

  "We'll be there," Hettar replied, swinging up into his saddle. "Be careful in Cthol Murgos." He turned his horse and started down the hill toward the plain with the mare and the colt tagging along behind him. The colt stopped once to look back at Garion, gave a forlorn little whinny, then turned to follow his mother.

  Barak shook his head sombrely. "I'm going to miss Hettar," he rumbled.

  "Cthol Murgos wouldn't be a good place for Hettar," Silk pointed out. "We'd have to put a leash on him."

  "I know that." Barak sighed. "But I'll miss him all the same."

  "Which direction do we take?" Mandorallen asked, squinting out at the grassland.

  Belgarath pointed to the southeast. "That way. We'll cross the upper end of the Vale to the escarpment and then go through the southern tip of Mishrak ac Thull. The Thulls don't put out patrols as regularly as the Murgos do."

  "Thulls don't do much of anything unless they have to," Silk noted. "They're too preoccupied with trying to avoid Grolims."

  "When do we start?" Durnik asked.

  "As soon as Relg finishes his prayers," Belgarath replied.

  "We'll have time for breakfast then," Barak said dryly.

  They rode all that day across the flat grassland of southern Algaria beneath the deep blue autumn sky. Relg, wearing an old hooded tunic of Durnik's over his mail shirt, rode badly, with his legs sticking out stifliy. He seemed to be concentrating more on keeping his face down than on watching where he was going.

  Barak watched sourly, with disapproval written plainly on his face. "I'm not trying to tell you your business, Belgarath," he said after several hours, "but that one's going to be trouble before we're finished with this."

  "The light hurts his eyes, Barak," Aunt Pol told the big man, "and he's not used to riding. Don't be so quick to criticize."

  Barak clamped his mouth shut, his expression still disparaging.

  "At least we'll be able to count on his staying sober," Aunt Pol observed primly. "Which is more than I can say about some members of this little group."

  Barak coughed uncomfortably.

  They set up for the night on the treeless bank of a meandering stream. Once the sun had gone down, Relg seemed less apprehensive, though he made an obvious point of not looking directly at the driftwood fire. Then he looked up and saw the first stars in the evening sky. He gaped up at them in horror, his unveiled face breaking out in a glistening sweat. He covered his head with his arms and collapsed face down on the earth with a strangled cry.

  "Relg!" Garion exclaimed, jumping to the stricken man's side and putting his hands on him without thinking.

  "Don't touch me," Relg gasped automatically.

  "Don't be stupid. What's wrong? Are you sick?"

  "The sky," Relg croaked in despair. "The sky! It terrifies me!"

  "The sky?" Garion was baffled. "What's wrong with the sky?" He looked up at the familiar stars.

  "There's no end to it," Relg groaned. "It goes up forever."

  Quite suddenly Garion understood. In the caves he had been afraid unreasoningly afraid - because he had been closed in. Out here under the open sky, Relg suffered from the same kind of blind terror. Garion realized with a kind of shock that quite probably Relg had never been outside the caves of Ulgo in his entire life. "It's all right," he assured him comfortingly. "The sky can't hurt you. It's just up there. Don't pay any attention to it."

  "I can't bear it."

  "Don't look at it."

  "I still know it's there - all that emptiness."

  Garion looked helplessly at Aunt Pol. She made a quick gesture that told him to keep talking. "It's not empty," he floundered. "It's full of things - all kinds of things - clouds, birds, sunlight, stars-"

  "What?" Relg lifted his face up out of his hands. "What are those?"

  "Clouds? Everyone knows what-" Garion stopped. Obviously Relg did not know what clouds were. He'd never seen a cloud in his life. Garion tried to rearrange his thoughts to take that into account. It was not going to be easy to explain. He took in a deep breath. "All right. Let's start with clouds, then."

  It took a long time, and Garion was not really sure that Relg understood or if he was simply clinging to the words to avoid thinking about the sky. After clouds, birds were a bit easier, although feathers were very hard to explain.

  "UL spoke to you," Relg interrupted Garion's description of wings. "He called you Belgarion. Is that your name?"

  "Well-" Garion replied uncomfortably. "Not really. Actually my name is Garion, but I think the other name is supposed to be mine too sometime later, I believe - when I'm older."

  "UL knows all things," Relg declared. "If he called you Belgarion, that's your true name. I will call you Belgarion."

  "I really wish you wouldn't."

  "My God rebuked me," Relg groaned, his voice sunk into a kind of sick self loathing. "I have failed him."

  Garion couldn't quite follow that. Somehow, even in the midst of his panic, Relg had been suffering the horrors of a theological crisis. He sat on the ground with his face turned away from the fire and his shoulders slumped in an attitude of absolute despair.

  "I'm unworthy," he said, his voice on the verge of a sob. "When UL spoke in the silence of my heart, I felt that I had been exalted above all other men, but now I am lower than dirt."

  In his anguish he began to beat the sides of his head with his fists.

  "Stop that!" Garion said sharply. "You'll hurt yourself. What's this all about?"

  "UL told me that I was to reveal the child to Ulgo. I took his words to mean that I had found special grace in his eyes."

  "What child are we talking about?"

  "The child. The new Gorim. It's UL's way to guide and protect his people. When an old Gorim's work is done, UL places a special mark upon the eyes of the child who is to succeed him. When UL told me that I had been chosen to bring the child to Ulgo, I revealed his words to others, and, they revered me and asked me to speak to them in the words of UL. I saw sin and corruption all around me and I denounced it, and the people listened to me - but the words were mine, not UL's. In my pride, I presumed to speak for UL. I ignored my own sins to accuse the sins of others." Relg's voice was harsh with fanatic self accusation. "I am filth," he declared, "an abomination. UL should have raised his hand against me and destroyed me."

  "That's forbidden," Garion told him without thinking.

  "Who has the power to forbid anything to UL?"

  "I don't know. All I know is that unmaking is forbidden - even to the Gods. It's the very first thing we learn."

  Relg looked up sharply, and Garion knew instantly that he had made a dreadful mistake. "You know the secrets of the Gods?" the fanatic demanded incredulously.

  "The fact that they're Gods doesn't have anything to do with it," Garion replied. "The rule applies to everybody."

  Relg's eyes burned w
ith a sudden hope. He drew himself up onto his knees and bowed forward until his face was in the dirt. "Forgive me my sin," he intoned.

  "What?"

  "I have exalted myself when I was unworthy."

  "You made a mistake - that's all. Just don't do it anymore. Please get up, Relg."

  "I'm wicked and impure."

  "You?"

  "I've had impure thoughts about women."

  Garion flushed with embarrassment. "We all have those kinds of thoughts once in a while," he said with a nervous cough.

  "My thoughts are wicked - wicked," Relg groaned with guilt. "I burn with them."

  "I'm sure that UL understands. Please get up, Relg. You don't have to do this."

  "I have prayed with my mouth when my mind and heart were not in my prayers."

  "Relg-"

  "I have sought out hidden caves for the joy of finding them rather than to consecrate them to UL. I have this defiled the gift given me by my God."

  "Please, Relg-"

  Relg began to beat his head on the ground. "Once I found a cave where the echoes of UL's voice lingered. I did not reveal it to others, but kept the sound of UL's voice for myself."

  Garion began to become alarmed. The fanatic Relg was working himself into a frenzy.

  "Punish me, Belgarion," Relg pleaded. "Lay a hard penance on me for my iniquity."

  Garion's mind was very clear as he answered. He knew exactly what he had to say. "I can't do that, Relg," he said gravely. "I can't punish you - any more than I can forgive you. If you've done things you shouldn't have, that's between you and UL. If you think you need to be punished, you'll have to do it yourself. I can't. I won't."

  Relg lifted his stricken face out of the dirt and stared at Garion. Then with a strangled cry he lurched to his feet and fled wailing into the darkness.

  "Garion!" Aunt Pol's voice rang with that familiar note.

  "I didn't do anything," he protested almost automatically.

  "What did you say to him?" Belgarath demanded.

  "He said that he'd committed all kinds of sins," Garion explained. "He wanted me to punish him and forgive him."

  "So?"

  "I couldn't do that, Grandfather."

  "What's so hard about it?"

  Garion stared at him.

  "All you had to do was lie to him a little. Is that so difficult?"

  "Lie? About something like that?" Garion was horrified at the thought.

  "I need him, Garion, and he can't function if he's incapacitated by some kind of religious hysteria. Use your head, boy."

  "I can't do it, Grandfather," Garion repeated stubbornly. "It's too important to him for me to cheat him about it."

  "You'd better go find him, father," Aunt Pol said.

  Belgarath scowled at Garion. "You and I aren't finished with this yet, boy," he said, pointing an angry finger. Then, muttering irritably to himself, he went in search of Relg.

  With a cold certainty Garion suddenly knew that the journey to Cthol Murgos was going to be very long and uncomfortable.

  Chapter Twenty

  THOUGH SUMMER THAT year had lingered in the lowlands and on the plains of Algaria, autumn was brief. The blizzards and squalls they had encountered in the mountains above Maragor and again among the peaks of Ulgo had hinted that winter would be early and severe, and there was already a chill to the nights as they rode day after day across the open grassland toward the eastern escarpment.

  Belgarath had recovered from his momentary fit of anger over Garion's failure to deal with Relg's attack of guilt, but then, with inescapable logic, he had placed an enormous burden squarely on Garion's shoulders. "For some reason he trusts you," the old man observed, "so I'm going to leave him entirely in your hands. I don't care what you have to do, but keep him from flying apart again."

  At first, Relg refused to respond to Garion's efforts to draw him out; but after a while, one of the waves of panic caused by the thought of the open sky above swept over the zealot, and he began to talk - haltingly at first but then finally in a great rush. As Garion had feared, Relg's favorite topic was sin. Garion was amazed at the simple things that Relg considered sinful. Forgetting to pray before a meal, for example, was a major transgression. As the fanatic's gloomy catalogue of his faults expanded, Garion began to perceive that most of his sins were sins of thought rather than of action. The one matter that kept cropping up again and again was the question of lustful thoughts about women. To Garion's intense discomfort, Relg insisted on describing these lustful thoughts extensively.

  "Women are not the same as we are, of course," the zealot confided one afternoon as they rode together. "Their minds and hearts are not drawn to holiness the way ours are, and they set out deliberately to tempt us with their bodies and draw us into sin."

  "Why do you suppose that is?" Garion asked carefully.

  "Their hearts are filled with lust," Relg declared adamantly. "They take particular delight in tempting the righteous. I tell you truly, Belgarion, you would not believe the subtlety of the creatures. I have seen the evidence of this wickedness in the soberest of matrons - the wives of some of my most devout followers. They're forever touching - brushing as if by accident - and they take great pains to allow the sleeves of their robes to slip up brazenly to expose their rounded arms - and the hems of their garments always seem to be hitching up to display their ankles."

  "If it bothers you, don't look," Garion suggested.

  Relg ignored that. "I have even considered banning them from my presence, but then I thought that it might be better if I kept my eyes on them so that I could protect my followers from their wickedness. I thought for a time that I should forbid marriage among my followers, but some of the older ones told me that I might lose the young if I did that. I still think it might not be a bad idea."

  "Wouldn't that sort of eliminate your followers altogether?" Garion asked him. "I mean, if you kept it up long enough? No marriage, no children. You get my point?"

  "That's the part I haven't worked out yet," Relg admitted.

  "And what about the child - the new Gorim? If two people are supposed to get married so they can have a child - that particular, special child - and you persuade them not to, aren't you interfering with something that UL wants to happen?"

  Relg drew in a sharp breath as if he had not considered that. Then he groaned. "You see? Even when I'm trying my very hardest, I always seem to stumble straight into sin. I'm cursed, Belgarion, cursed. Why did UL choose me to reveal the child when I am so corrupt?"

  Garion quickly changed the subject to head off that line of thought. For nine days they crossed the endless sea of grass toward the eastern escarpment, and for nine days the others, with a callousness that hurt Garion to the quick, left him trapped in the company of the ranting zealot. He grew sulky and frequently cast reproachful glances at them, but they ignored him.

  Near the eastern edge of the plain, they crested a long hill and stared for the first time at the immense wall of the eastern escarpment, a sheer basalt cliff rising fully a mile above the rubble at its base and stretching off into the distance in either direction.

  "Impossible," Barak stated flatly. "We'll never be able to climb that."

  "We won't have to," Silk told him confidently. "I know a trail."

  "A secret trail, I suppose?"

  "Not exactly a secret," Silk replied. "I don't imagine too many people know about it, but it's right out in plain sight - if you know where to look. I had occasion to leave Mishrak ac Thull in a hurry once, and I stumbled across it."

  "One gets the feeling that you've had occasion to leave just about every place in a hurry at one time or another."

  Silk shrugged. "Knowing when it's time to run is one of the most important things people in my profession ever learn."

  "Will the river ahead not prove a barrier?" Mandorallen asked, looking at the sparkling surface of the Aldur River lying between them and the grim, black cliff. He was running his fingertips lightly over his side, testing f
or tender spots.

  "Mandorallen, stop that," Aunt Pol told him. "They'll never heal if you keep poking at them."

  "Me thinks, my Lady, that they are nearly whole again," the knight replied. "Only one still causes me any discomfort."

  "Well, leave it alone."

  "There's a ford a few miles upstream," Belgarath said in answer to the question. "The river's down at this time of year, so we won't have any difficulty crossing." He started out again, leading them down the gradual slope toward the Aldur.

  They forded late that afternoon and pitched their tents on the far side. The next morning they moved out to the foot of the escarpment.

  "The trail's just a few miles south," Silk told them, leading the way along the looming black cliff.

  "Do we have to go up along the face of it?" Garion asked apprehensively, craning his neck to look up the towering wall.

  Silk shook his head. "The trail's a streambed. It cuts down through the cliff. It's a little steep and narrow, but it will get us safely to the top."

  Garion found that encouraging.

  The trail appeared to be little more than a crack in the stupendous cliff, and a trickle of water ran out of the opening to disappear into the jumble of rocky debris along the base of the escarpment.

  "Are you sure it goes all the way to the top?" Barak asked, eyeing the narrow chimney suspiciously.

  "Trust me," Silk assured him.

  "Not if I can help it."

  The trail was awful, steep and strewn with rock. At times it was so narrow that the packhorses had to be unloaded before they could make it through and they had to be literally manhandled up over basalt boulders that had fractured into squares, almost like huge steps. The trickle of water running down the cut made everything slick and muddy. To make matters even worse, thin, high clouds swept in from the west and a bitterly cold draft spilled down the narrow cut from the arid plains of Mishrak ac Thull, lying high above.

  It took them two days, and by the time they reached the top, a mile or so back from the brink of the escarpment, they were all exhausted.

  "I feel as if somebody's been beating me with a stick," Barak groaned, sinking to the ground in the brushy gully at the top of the cut. "A very big, dirty stick."