Guardians of the West

  The wolf seemed to shimmer in the same way that Beldin shimmered as he assumed the shape of the hawk. When the air around her cleared, there stood in the animal’s place a tawny-haired woman with golden eyes and a faintly amused smile on her lips. Though her gown was a plain brown such as one might see on any peasant woman, she wore it in a regal manner which any queen in jeweled brocade might envy. ‘Do you always greet wolves with such courtesy?’ she asked him.

  ‘I haven’t met many wolves,’ he replied, ‘but I was fairly certain who you were.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you would have been, at that.’

  Errand slid down off the horse’s back.

  ‘Does he know where you are this morning?’

  ‘Belgarath? Probably not. He’s talking with Beltira and Belkira, so the horse and I just came out to look at someplace new.’

  ‘It would be best perhaps if you didn’t go too much farther into the Ulgo mountains,’ she advised. ‘There are creatures in these hills that are quite savage.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  ‘Will you do something for me?’ she asked quite directly.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Speak to my daughter.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Tell Polgara that there is a great evil in the world and a great danger.’

  ‘Zandramas?’ Errand asked.

  ‘Zandramas is a part of it, but the Sardion is at the center of the evil. It must be destroyed. Tell my husband and my daughter to warn Belgarion. His task is not yet finished.’

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ Errand promised, ‘but couldn’t you just as easily tell Polgara yourself?’

  The tawny-haired woman looked off down the shady ravine. ‘No,’ she replied sadly. ‘It causes her too much pain when I appear to her.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘It reminds her of all the lost years and brings back all the anguish of a young girl who had to grow up without her mother to guide her. All of that comes back to her each time she sees me.’

  ‘You’ve never told her then? Of the sacrifice you were asked to make?’

  She looked at him penetratingly. ‘How is it that you know what even my husband and Polgara do not?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he replied. ‘I do, though—just as I know that you did not die.’

  ‘And will you tell Polgara that?’

  ‘Not if you’d rather I didn’t.’

  She sighed. ‘Someday, perhaps, but not yet. I think it’s best if she and her father aren’t aware of it. My task still lies ahead of me and it’s a thing I can face best without any distractions.’

  ‘Whatever you wish,’ Errand said politely.

  ‘We’ll meet again,’ she told him. ‘Warn them about the Sardion. Tell them not to become so caught up in the search for Zandramas that they lose sight of that. It is from the Sardion that the evil stems. And be a trifle wary of Cyradis when next you meet her. She means you no ill, but she has her own task as well and she will do what she must to complete it.’

  ‘I will, Poledra,’ he promised.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, almost as an afterthought, ‘there’s someone waiting for you just ahead there.’ She gestured toward the long tongue of a rock-strewn ridge thrusting out into the grassy Vale. ‘He can’t see you yet, but he’s waiting.’ Then she smiled, shimmered back into the form of the blue-tinged wolf, and loped away without a backward glance.

  Curiously, Errand remounted and rode up out of the ravine and continued on southward, skirting the higher hills that rose toward the glistening white peaks of the land of the Ulgos as he rode toward the ridge. Then, as his eyes searched the rocky slope, he caught a momentary flicker of sunlight reflected from something shiny in the middle of a bushy outcrop halfway up the slope. Without hesitation, he rode in that direction.

  The man who sat among the thick bushes wore a peculiar shirt of mail, constructed of overlapping metal scales. He was short but had powerful shoulders, and his eyes were veiled with a gauzey strip of cloth that was not so much a blindfold as it was a shield against the bright sunlight.

  ‘Is that you, Errand?’ the veiled man asked in a harsh-sounding voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Errand replied. ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time, Relg.’

  ‘I need to talk with you,’ the harsh-voiced zealot said. ‘Can we get back out of the light?’

  ‘Of course.’ Errand slid down off his horse and followed the Ulgo through the rustling bushes to a cave mouth running back into the hillside. Relg stooped slightly under the overhanging rock and went inside. ‘I thought I recognized you,’ he said as Errand joined him in the cool dimness within the cave, ‘but I couldn’t be sure out there in all that light.’ He untied the cloth from across his eyes and peered at the boy. ‘You’ve grown.’

  Errand smiled. ‘It’s been a few years. How is Taiba?’

  ‘She has given me a son,’ Relg said, almost in a kind of wonder. ‘A very special son.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’

  ‘When I was younger and filled with the notion of my own sanctity, UL spoke to me in my soul. He told me that the child who will be the new Gorim would come to Ulgo through me. In my pride I thought that he meant that I was to seek out the child and reveal him. How could I know that what he meant was a much simpler thing? It is my son that he spoke of. The mark is on my son—my son!’ There was an awed pride in the zealot’s voice.

  ‘UL’s ways are not the ways of men.’

  ‘How truly you speak.’

  ‘And are you happy?’

  ‘My life is filled,’ Relg said simply. ‘But now I have another task. Our aged Gorim has sent me to seek out Belgarath. It is urgent that he come with me to Prolgu.’

  ‘He’s not far away,’ Errand said. He looked at Relg and saw how, even in this dim cave, the zealot kept his eyes squinted almost shut to protect them from the light. ‘I have a horse,’ he said. ‘I can go and bring him back here in a few hours, if you want. That way you won’t have to go out into the sunlight.’

  Relg gave him a quick, grateful look and then nodded. ‘Tell him that he must come. The Gorim must speak with him.’

  ‘I will,’ Errand promised. Then he turned and left the cave.

  ‘What does he want?’ Belgarath demanded irritably when Errand told him that Relg wanted to see him.

  ‘He wants you to go with him to Prolgu,’ Errand replied. ‘The Gorim wants to see you—the old one.’

  ‘The old one? Is there a new one?’

  Errand nodded. ‘Relg’s son,’ he said.

  Belgarath stared at Errand for a moment and then he suddenly began to laugh.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘It appears that UL has a sense of humor,’ the old man chortled. ‘I wouldn’t have suspected that of him.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow.’

  ‘It’s a very long story,’ Belgarath said, still laughing. ‘I guess that, if the Gorim wants to see me, we’d better go.’

  ‘You want me to go along?’

  ‘Polgara would skin me alive if I left you here alone. Let’s get started.’

  Errand led the old man back across the Vale to the ridge line in the foothills and the cave where Relg waited. It took a few minutes to explain to the young horse that he was supposed to go back to Belgarath’s tower alone. Errand spoke with him at some length, and it finally appeared that the animal had grasped the edges, at least, of the idea.

  The trip through the dark galleries to Prolgu took several days. For most of the way, Errand felt that they were groping along blindly; but for Relg, whose eyes were virtually useless in open daylight, these lightless passageways were home, and his sense of direction was unerring. And so it was that they came at last to the faintly lighted cavern with its shallow, glass-clear lake and the island rising in the center where the aged Gorim awaited them.

  “Yad ho, Belgarath,’ the saintly old man in his white robe called when they reached the shore of the subterranean lake, ‘Groja UL.’ r />
  ‘Gorim,’ Belgarath replied with a respectful bow, ‘Yad ho, Groja UL.’ Then they crossed the marble causeway to join the Gorim. Belgarath and the old man clasped each others’ arms warmly. ‘It’s been a few years, hasn’t it?’ the sorcerer said. ‘How are you bearing up?’

  ‘I feel almost young.’ The Gorim smiled. ‘Now that Relg has found my successor, I can at last see the end of my task.’

  ‘Found?’ Belgarath asked quizzically.

  ‘It amounts to the same thing.’ The Gorim looked fondly at Relg. ‘We had our disagreements, didn’t we, my son?’ he said. ‘But as it turned out, we were all working toward the same end.’

  ‘It took me a little longer to realize it, Holy Gorim,’ Relg replied wryly. ‘I’m a bit more stubborn than most men. Sometimes I’m amazed that UL didn’t lose patience with me. Please excuse me, but I must go to my wife and son. I’ve been many days away from them.’ He turned and went quickly back across the causeway.

  Belgarath grinned. ‘A remarkably changed man.’

  ‘His wife is a marvel,’ the Gorim agreed.

  ‘Are you sure that their child is the chosen one?’

  The Gorim nodded. ‘UL has confirmed it. There were those who objected, since Taiba is a Marag rather than a daughter of Ulgo, but UL’s voice silenced them.’

  ‘I’m sure it did. UL’s voice is very penetrating, I’ve noticed. You wanted to see me?’

  The Gorim’s expression became grave. He gestured toward his pyramid-shaped house. ‘Let’s go inside. There’s a matter of urgency we need to discuss.’

  Errand followed along behind the two old men as they entered the house. The room inside was dimly lighted by a glowing crystal globe hanging on a chain from the ceiling, and there was a table with low stone benches. They sat at the table, and the old Gorim looked solemnly at Belgarath. ‘We are not like the people who live above in the light of the sun, my friend,’ he said. ‘For them, there is the sound of the wind in the trees, of rushing streams, and of birds filling the air with song. Here in our caves, however, we hear only the sounds of the earth herself.’

  Belgarath nodded.

  ‘The earth and the rocks speak to the people of Ulgo in peculiar ways,’ the Gorim continued. ‘A sound can come to us from half around the world. Such a sound has been muttering in the rocks for some years now, growing louder and more distinct with each passing month.’

  ‘A fault perhaps?’ Belgarath suggested. ‘Some place where the stone bed of a continent is shifting?’

  ‘I don’t believe so, my friend,’ the Gorim disagreed. ‘The sound we hear is not the shifting of the restless earth. It is a sound caused by the awakening of a single stone.’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you,’ Belgarath said, frowning.

  ‘The stone we hear is alive, Belgarath.’

  The old sorcerer looked at his friend. ‘There’s only one living stone, Gorim.’

  ‘I had always believed so myself. I have heard the sound of Aldur’s Orb as it moves about the world, and this new sound is also the sound of a living stone. It awakens, Belgarath, and it feels its power. It is evil, my friend—so evil that earth herself groans under its weight.’

  ‘How long has this sound been coming to you?’

  ‘It began not long after the death of accursed Torak.’

  Belgarath pursed his lips. ‘We’ve known that something has been moving around over in Mallorea,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know it was quite this serious, however. Can you tell me anything more about this stone?’

  ‘Only its name,’ the Gorim replied. ‘We hear it whispered through the caves and galleries and the fissures of earth. It is called “Sardius.”’

  Belgarath’s head came up. ‘Cthrag Sardius? The Sardion?’

  ‘You have heard of it?’

  ‘Beldin ran across it in Mallorea. It was connected with something called Zandramas.’

  The Gorim gasped, and his face went deathly pale. ‘Balgarath!’ he exclaimed in a shocked voice.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘That’s the most dreadful curse in our language.’

  Belgarath stared at him. ‘I thought I knew most of the words in the Ulgo tongue. How is it that I’ve never heard that one before?’

  ‘No one would have repeated it to you.’

  ‘I didn’t think Ulgos even knew how to curse. What does it mean—in general terms?’

  ‘It means confusion—chaos—absolute negation. It’s a horrible word.’

  Belgarath frowned. ‘Why would an Ulgo curse word show up in Darshiva as the name of someone or something? And why in connection with the Sardion?’

  ‘Is it possible that they are using the two words to mean the same thing?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Belgarath admitted. ‘I suppose they could be. The sense seems to be similar.’

  Polgara had rather carefully instructed Errand that he must not interrupt when his elders were talking, but this seemed so important that he felt that the rule needed to be broken. ‘They aren’t the same,’ he told the two old men.

  Belgarath gave him a strange look.

  ‘The Sardion is a stone, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Gorim replied.

  ‘Zandramas isn’t a stone. It’s a person.’

  ‘How could you know that, my boy?’

  ‘We’ve met,’ Errand told him quietly. ‘Not exactly face to face, but—well—’ It was a difficult thing to explain. ‘It was kind of like a shadow—except that the person who was casting the shadow was someplace else.’

  ‘A projection,’ Belgarath explained to the Gorim. ‘It’s a fairly simple trick that the Grolims are fond of.’ He turned back to the boy. ‘Did this shadow say anything to you?’

  Errand nodded. ‘It said that it was going to kill me.’

  Belgarath drew in his breath sharply. ‘Did you tell Polgara?’ he demanded.

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Didn’t you think it was fairly significant?’

  ‘I thought it was just a threat—meant to frighten me.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Frighten me? No, not really.’

  ‘Aren’t you being just a little blasé, Errand?’ Belgarath asked. ‘Do people go around threatening to kill you so often that it bores you or something?’

  ‘No. That was the only time. It was only a shadow, though, and a shadow can’t really hurt you, can it?’

  ‘Have you run across many more of these shadows?’

  ‘Just Cyradis.’

  ‘And who is Cyradis?’

  ‘I’m not really sure. She talks the way Mandorallen does—thee’s and thou’s and all that—and she wears a blindfold over her eyes.’

  ‘A seeress.’ Belgarath grunted. ‘And what did she tell you?’

  ‘She said that we were going to meet again and that she sort of liked me.’

  ‘I’m sure that was comforting,’ Belgarath said drily. ‘Don’t keep secrets like this, Errand. When something unusual happens, tell somebody.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Errand apologized. ‘I just thought that—well—you and Polgara and Durnik had other things on your minds, that’s all.’

  ‘We don’t really mind being interrupted all that much, boy. Share these little adventures with us.’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  Belgarath turned back to the Gorim. ‘I think we’re starting to get somewhere,’ he said, ‘thanks to our reticent young friend here. We know that Zandramas, if you’ll pardon the word, is a person—a person that’s somehow connected to this living stone that the Angaraks call Cthrag Sardius. We’ve had warnings about Zandramas before, so I think we’ll have to assume that the Sardion is also a direct threat.’

  ‘What must we do now, then?’ the Gorim asked him.

  ‘I think we’re all going to have to concentrate on finding out just exactly what’s going on over there in Mallorea—even if we have to take the place apart stone by stone. Up until now, I was only curious. Now it looks as if
I’d better start taking this whole thing seriously. If the Sardion is a living stone, then it’s like the Orb, and I don’t want something with that kind of power in the hands of the wrong person—and from everything I’ve been able to gather, this Zandramas is most definitely the wrong person.’ He turned then to look at Errand, his expression puzzled. ‘What’s your connection with all of this, boy?’ he asked. ‘Why is it that everyone and everything involved in this whole thing stops by to pay you a visit?’

  ‘I don’t know, Belgarath,’ Errand replied truthfully.

  ‘Maybe that’s the place we should start. I’ve been promising myself that I was going to have a long talk with you one of these days. Maybe it’s time we did just that.’

  ‘If you wish,’ Errand said. ‘I don’t know how much help I’ll be, though.’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to find out, Errand. That’s what we’re going to find out.’

  Part Two

  RIVA

  Chapter Nine

  Belgarion of Riva had not actually been prepared to occupy a throne. He had grown up on a farm in Sendaria, and his childhood had been that of an ordinary farm boy. When he had first come to the basalt throne in the Hall of the Rivan King, he had known much more about farm kitchens and stables than he had about throne rooms and council chambers. Statecraft had been a mystery to him, and he had known no more of diplomacy than he had of algebra.

  Fortunately, the Isle of the Winds was not a difficult kingdom to rule. The Rivan people were orderly, sober, and had a strong regard for duty and civic responsibility. This had made things much easier for their tall, sandy-haired monarch during the trying early years of his reign while he was learning the difficult art of ruling well. He made mistakes, naturally, but the consequences of those early slips and miscalculations were never dire, and his subjects were pleased to note that this earnest, sincere young man who had come so startlingly to the throne never made the same mistake twice. Once he had settled in and had become accustomed to his job, it was probably safe to say that Belgarion—or Garion, as he preferred to be called—almost never encountered major problems in his capacity as King of Riva.