Enchanter's End Game Part 32

Although he did not - could not - move or even feel, a struggle, nonetheless, raged inside him - a struggle perhaps even more dreadful than that which had just plunged Belgarath and Zedar into the depths of the earth. The two forces which had first diverged and then turned and rushed at each other down the endless corridors of time had finally met within him. The EVENT which was the ultimate conclusion of the two Prophecies, had begun, and its first skirmishes were taking place within Garion's mind. Minute and very subtle adjustments were s.h.i.+fting some of his most deeply ingrained att.i.tudes and perceptions.

Torak moved, stirring restlessly, as those same two forces met within him.

Dreadful flashes of the sleeping G.o.d's mind a.s.sailed Garion, and he saw clearly the terrible subterfuge that lay behind Torak's offer of friends.h.i.+p and love. Had his fear of their duel drawn him into yielding, fully half of creation would have s.h.i.+mmered and vanished. More than that, what Torak had offered was not love but an enslavement so vile that it was beyond imagining.

But he had not yielded. He had somehow evaded the overwhelming force of Torak's mind and had placed himself utterly in the hands of the Prophecy that had drawn him here. With an absolute denial of self, he had become the instrument of the Prophecy. He was no longer afraid. Sword in hand, the Child of Light awaited the moment when the Prophecy would release him to join in deadly struggle with the Dark G.o.d.

Then, even as Silk desperately tried to arouse either Garion or Polgara to action, the stones of the floor buckled upward, and Belgarath rose from the earth.

Garion, still abstracted and bemused, saw that all traces of the sometimes foolish old man he had known before were gone. The thieving old storyteller had vanished. Even the irritable old man who had led the quest for the Orb no longer existed. In their place stood the form of Belgarath the sorcerer, the Eternal Man, s.h.i.+mmering in the aura of his full power.

Chapter Twenty-three.

"WHERE IS ZEDAR?" Aunt Pol asked, raising her tearstreaked face from Durnik's lifeless body to stare with a dreadful intensity at her father.

"I left him down there," Belgarath replied bleakly.

"Dead?"

"No."

"Bring him back."

"Why?"

"To face me." Her eyes burned.

The old man shook his head. "No, Pol," he said to her. "You've never killed anyone. Let's leave it that way."

She gently lowered Durnik's body to the floor and rose to her feet, her pale face twisted with grief and an awful need. "Then I will go to him," she declared, raising both arms as if to strike at the earth beneath her feet.

"No," Belgarath told her, extending his own hand, "you will not. "

They stood facing each other, locked in a dreadful, silent struggle. Aunt Pol's look at first was one of annoyance at her father's interference. She raised one arm again to bring the force of her will cras.h.i.+ng down at the earth, but once again Belgarath put forth his hand.

"Let me go, father."

"No."

She redoubled her efforts, twisting as if trying to free herself from his unseen restraint. "Let me go, old man," she cried.

"No. Don't do this, Pol. I don't want to hurt you."

She tried again, more desperately this time, but once again Belgarath smothered her will with his. His face hardened, and he set his jaw.

In a last effort, she flung the whole force of her mind against the barrier he had erected. Like some great rock, however, the old man remained firm. Finally her shoulders slumped, and she turned, knelt beside Durnik's body, and began to weep again.

"I'm sorry, Pol," he said gently. "I never wanted to have to do that. Are you all right?"

"How can you ask that?" she demanded brokenly, wringing her hands over Durnik's silent body.

"That's not what I meant."

She turned her back on him and buried her face in her hands.

"I don't think you could have reached him anyway, Pol," the old man told her. "You know as well as I that what one of us does, another cannot undo."

Silk, his ferretlike face shocked, spoke in a hushed voice. "What did you do to him?"

"I took him down until we came to solid rock. And then I sealed him up in it."

"Can't he just come up out of the earth the way you did?"

"No. That's impossible for him now. Sorcery is thought, and no man can exactly duplicate the thought of another. Zedar's imprisoned inside the rock forever - or until I choose to free him." The old man looked mournfully at Durnik's body. "And I don't think I'll choose to do that."

"He'll die, won't he?" Silk asked.

Belgarath shook his head. "No. That was part of what I did to him. He'll lie inside the rock until the end of days."

"That's monstrous, Belgarath," Silk said in a sick voice.

"So was that," Belgarath replied grimly, pointing at Durnik.

Garion could hear what they were saying and could see them all quite clearly, but it seemed somehow that they were actually someplace else. The others in the underground crypt seemed to be on the periphery of his attention. For him there was only one other in the vaulted chamber, and that other was Kal Torak, his enemy.

The restless stirring of the drowsing G.o.d became more evident. Garion's peculiarly multiple awareness - in part his own, in part derived from the Orb, and as ever overlaid by the consciousness which he had always called the dry voice in his mind - perceived in that stirnng the pain that lay beneath the maimed G.o.d's movements. Torak was actually writhing as he half slept. An injured man would heal in time, and his pain would gradually diminish and ultimately disappear, because injury was a part of the human condition. A man was born to be hurt from time to time, and the mechanism for recovery was born with him. A G.o.d, on the other hand, was invulnerable, and he had no need for the ability to heal. Thus it was with Torak. The fire which the Orb had loosed upon him when he had used it to crack the world still seared his flesh, and his pain had not diminished in the slightest down through all the endless centuries since his maiming. Behind that steel mask, the flesh of the Dragon-G.o.d's face still smoked, and his burned eye still boiled endlessly in its socket. Garion shuddered, almost pitying that perpetual agony.

The child, Errand, pulled himself free from Ce'Nedra's trembling arms and crossed the flagstone floor of the tomb, his small face intent. He stopped, bent and put his hand on Durnik's shoulder. Gently he shook the dead man as if trying to wake him. His little face became puzzled when the smith did not respond. He shook again, a bit harder, his eyes uncomprehending.

"Errand," Ce'Nedra called to him, her voice breaking, "come back. There's nothing we can do."

Errand looked at her, then back at Durnik. Then he gently patted the smith's shoulder with a peculiar little gesture, sighed, and went back to the princess. She caught him suddenly in her arms and began to weep, burying her face against his small body. Once again with that same curious little gesture, he patted her flaming hair.

Then from the alcove in the far wall there came a long, rasping sigh, a shuddering expiration of breath. Garion looked sharply toward the alcove, his hand tightening on the hilt of his cold sword. Torak had turned his head, and his eyes were open. The hideous fire burned in the eye that was not as the G.o.d came awake.

Belgarath drew in his breath in a sharp hiss as Torak raised the charred stump of his left hand as if to brush away the last of his sleep, even as his right hand groped for the ma.s.sive hilt of Cthrek Goru, his black sword. "Garion!" Belgarath said sharply.

But Garion, still locked in stasis by the forces focusing upon him, could only stare at the awakening G.o.d. A part of him struggled to shake free, and his hand trembled as he fought to lift his sword.

"Not yet," the voice whispered.

"Garion!" Belgarath actually shouted this time. Then, in a move seemingly born of desperation, the old sorcerer lunged past the bemused young man to fling himself upon the still rec.u.mbent form of the Dark G.o.d.

Torak's hand released the hilt of his sword and almost contemptuously grasped the front of Belgarath's tunic, lifting the struggling old man from him as one might lift a child. The steel mask twisted into an ugly sneer as the G.o.d held the helpless sorcerer out from him. Then, like a great wind, the force of Torak's mind struck, hurling Belgarath across the room, ripping away the front of his tunic. Something glittered across Torak's knuckles, and Garion realized that it was the silver chain of Belgarath's amulet-the polished medallion of the standing wolf. In a very peculiar way the medallion had always been the center of Belgarath's power, and now it lay in the grip of his ancient enemy.

With a dreadfully slow deliberation, the Dark G.o.d rose from his bier, towering over all of them, Cthrek Goru in his hand.

"Garion!" Ce'Nedra screamed. "Do something!"

With deadly pace Torak strode toward the dazed Belgarath, raising his sword. But Aunt Pol sprang to her feet and threw herself between them.

Slowly Torak lowered his sword, and then he smiled a loathsome smile. "My bride," he rasped in a horrid voice.

"Never, Torak," she declared.

He ignored her defiance. "Thou hast come to me at last, Polgara," he gloated.

"I have come to watch you die."

"Die, Polgara? Me? No, my bride, that is not why thou hast come. My will has drawn thee to me as was foretold. And now thou art mine. Come to me, my beloved."

"Never!"

"Never, Polgara?" There was a dreadful insinuation in the G.o.d's rasping voice. "Thou wilt submit to me, my bride. I will bend thee to my will. Thy struggles shall but make my victory over thee the sweeter. In the end, I will have thee. Come here."

So overwhelming was the force of his mind that she swayed almost as a tree sways in the grip of a great wind. "No," she gasped, closing her eyes and turning her face away sharply.

"Look at me, Polgara," he commanded, his voice almost purring. "I am thy fate. All that thou didst think to love before me shall fall away, and thou shall love only me. Look at me."

Helplessly she turned her head and opened her eyes to stare at him. The hatred and defiance seemed to melt out of her, and a terrible fear came into her face.

"Thy will crumbles, my beloved," he told her. "Now come to me."

She must resist! All the confusion was gone now, and Garion understood at last. Thts was the real battle. If Aunt Pol succ.u.mbed, they were all lost. It had all been for this.

"Help her, " the voice within him said.

"Aunt Poll" Garion threw the thought at her, "Remember Durnik!"

He knew without knowing how he knew that this was the one thing that could sustain her in her deadly struggle. He ranged through his memory, throwing images of Durnik at her - of the smith's strong hands at work at his forge - of his serious eyes - of the quiet sound of his voice - and most of all of the good man's unspoken love for her, the love that had been the center of Durnik's entire life.

She had begun involuntarily to move, no more than a slight s.h.i.+fting of her weight in preparation for that first fatal step in response to Torak's overpowering command. Once she had made that step, she would be lost. But Garion's memories of Durnik struck her like a blow. Her shoulders, which had already begun to droop in defeat, suddenly straightened, and her eyes flashed with renewed defiance.

"Never!" she told the expectantly waiting G.o.d. "I will not!"

Torak's face slowly stiffened. His eyes blazed as he brought the full, crus.h.i.+ng force of his will to bear upon her, but she stood firmly against all that he could do, clinging to the memory of Durnik as if to something so solid that not even the will of the Dark G.o.d could tear her from it.

A look of baffled frustration contorted Torak's face as he perceived that she would never yield - that her love would be forever denied to him. She had won, and her victory was like a knife twisting slowly inside him. Thwarted, enraged, maddened by her now-unalterable will to resist, Torak raised his face and suddenly howled - a shocking, animallike sound of overwhelming frustration.

"Then perish both!" he raged. "Die with thy father!"

And with that, he once more raised his deadly sword.

Unflinching, Aunt Pol faced the raging G.o.d.

"Now, Belgarionl" The voice cracked in Garion's mind.

The Orb, which had remained cold and dead throughout all the dreadful confrontation between Aunt Pol and the maimed G.o.d, suddenly flared into life, and the sword of the Rivan King exploded into fire, filling the crypt with an intense blue light. Garion leaped forward, extending his sword to catch the deadly blow which was already descending upon Aunt Pol's unprotected face.

The steel sound of blade against blade was like the striking of a great bell, and it rang within the crypt, s.h.i.+mmering and echoing from the walls. Torak's sword, deflected by the flaming blade, plowed a shower of sparks from the flagstone floor. The G.o.d's single eye widened as he recognized all in one glance the Rivan King, the flaming sword and the blazing Orb of Aldur. Garion saw in the look that Torak had already forgotten Aunt Pol and that now the maimed G.o.d's full attention was focused on him.

"And so thou hast come at last, Belgarion," the G.o.d greeted him gravely. "I have awaited thy coming since the beginning of days. Thy fate awaits thee here. Hail, Belgarion, and farewell."

His arm lashed back, and he swung a vast blow, but Garion, without even thinking, raised his own sword and once again the crypt rang with the bell note of blade against blade.

"Thou art but a boy, Belgarion," Torak said. "Wilt thou pit thyself against the might and invincible will of a G.o.d? Submit to me, and I will spare thy life."

The will of the G.o.d of Angarak was now directed at him, and in that instant, Garion fully understood how hard Aunt Pol's struggle had been. He felt the terrible compulsion to obey draining the strength from him. But suddenly a vast chorus of voices rang down through all the centuries to him, crying out the single word, "No!" All the lives of all who preceded him had been directed at this one moment, and those lives infused him now. Though he alone held Iron-grip's sword, Belgarion of Riva was not alone, and Torak's will could not sway him.

In a move of absolute defiance, Garion again raised his flaming sword.

"So be it, then," Torak roared. "To the death, Belgarion!"

At first it seemed but some trick of the flickering light that filled the tomb, but almost as soon as that thought occurred, Garion saw that Torak was growing larger, swelling upward, towering, expanding. With an awful wrenching sound, he shouldered aside the rusted iron roof of the tomb, bursting upward.

Once again without thinking, without even stopping to consider how to do it, Garion also began to expand, and he too exploded through the confining ceiling, shuddering away the rusty debris as he rose.

In open air among the decaying ruins of the City of Night the two t.i.tanic adversaries faced each other beneath the perpetual cloud that blotted out the sky.

"The conditions are met," the dry voice spoke through Garion's lips.

"So it would seem," another, equally unemotional voice came from Torak's steel-encased mouth.

"Do you wish to involve others?" Garion's voice asked.

"It hardly seems necessary. These two have sufficient capacity for what must be brought to bear upon them."

"Then let it be decided here."

"Agreed."

And with that Garion felt a sudden release as all constraint was removed from him. Torak, also released, raised Cthrek Goru, his lips drawn back in a snarl of hate.

Their struggle was immense. Rocks shattered beneath the colossal force of deflected blows. The sword of the Rivan King danced in blue flames, and Cthrek Goru, Torak's blade of shadows, swept a visible darkness with it at every blow. Beyond thought, beyond any emotion but blind hatred, the two swung and parried and lurched through the broken ruins, crus.h.i.+ng all beneath them. The elements themselves erupted as the fight continued. The wind shrieked through the rotting city, tearing at the trembling stones. Lightning seethed about them, glaring and flickering. The earth rumbled and shook beneath their ma.s.sive feet. The featureless cloud that had concealed the City of Night beneath its dark mantle for five millenia began to boil and race above them. Great patches of stars appeared and disappeared in the roiling middle of the surging cloud. The Grolims, both human and nonhuman, aghast at the towering struggle that had suddenly erupted in their very midst, fled shrieking in terror.

Garion's blows were directed at Torak's blind side, and the Dark G.o.d flinched from the fire of the Orb each time the flaming sword struck, but the shadow of Cthrek Goru put a deathly chill into Garion's blood each time it pa.s.sed over him.

They were more evenly matched than Garion had imagined possible. Torak's advantage of size had been erased when they had both swelled into immensity, and Garion's inexperience was offset by Torak's maiming.

It was the uneven ground that betrayed Garion. Retreating before a sudden flurry of ma.s.sive blows, he felt one heel catch on a heap of tumbled rock, and the rotten stones crumbled and rolled beneath his feet. Despite his scrambling attempt to keep his balance, he fell.

Torak's single eye blazed in triumph as he raised the dark sword. But, seizing his sword hilt in both hands, Garion raised his burning blade to meet that vast blow. When the swords struck, edge to edge, a huge shower of sparks cascaded down over Garion.