Enchanter's End Game Part 9

"An imitator," Silk sniffed disdainfully, his head still down. "He can't even think up his own dream."

The magician of the Weasel Clan gave the dreamer lying supine in the gra.s.s a look of disgust, then turned back to Belgarath. "The Devil-Spirit Horja defies the Devil-Spirit Agrinja," he declared. "He bids him to begone or he will rip out the belly of the quester of Agrinja."

Belgarath swore under his breath.

"What now?" Silk muttered.

"I have to fight him," Belgarath replied sourly. "That's what this was leading up to from the beginning. White-braids there is trying to make a name for himself. He's probably been attacking every magician who crosses his path."

"Can you handle him?"

"We're about to find out." Belgarath slid out of his saddle. "I warn you to stand aside," he boomed, "lest I loose the hunger of our Devil Spirit upon you." With the tip of his staff he drew a circle on the ground and a five-pointed star within the circle. Grimly, he stepped into the center of the design.

The white-braided magician of the Weasel Clan sneered and also slid off his pony. Quickly he drew a similar symbol on the ground and stepped into its protection.

"That's it," Silk muttered to Garion. "Once the symbols are drawn, neither one can back down."

Belgarath and the white-braided magician had each begun muttering incantations in a language Garion had never heard, brandis.h.i.+ng their skull-surmounted staffs at each other. The dreamer of the Weasel Clan, suddenly realizing that he was in the middle of the impending battle, miraculously recovered from his seizure, scrambled to his feet, and lurched away with a terrified expression.

The Headman, trying to maintain his dignity, carefully backed his pony out of the immediate vicinity of the two muttering old men. Atop a large, white boulder, twenty yards or so to the left of the two magicians, there was a s.h.i.+mmering disturbance in the air, somewhat like heatwaves rising from a red tile roof on a hot day. The movement caught Garion's eye, and he stared in puzzlement at the strange phenomenon. As he watched, the s.h.i.+mmering became more p.r.o.nounced, and it seemed that the shattered pieces of a rainbow infused it, flickering, s.h.i.+fting, undulating in waves almost like varihued flames rising from an invisible fire. As Garion watched, fascinated, a second s.h.i.+mmering became apparent, rising above the tall gra.s.s off to the right. The second disturbance also began to gather shards of color into itself. As he stared, first at one, then at the other, Garion saw - or imagined that he saw - a shape beginning to emerge in the center of each. The shapes at first were amorphous, s.h.i.+fting, changing, gathering form from the coruscating colors flas.h.i.+ng about them in the s.h.i.+mmering air. Then it seemed that the shapes, having reached a certain point, flashed to completion, coalescing quite suddenly with a great rus.h.i.+ng together, and two towering forms faced each other, snarling and slavering with mindless hatred. Each stood as high as a house, and their shoulders bulked wide. Their skins were multihued, with waves of color rippling through them.

The one standing in the gra.s.s had a third eye glaring balefully from between its other two, and his great arms ended in seven-clawed hands stretched out with a hideously hungry curving. His jutting, muzzlelike mouth gaped wide, filled with row upon row of needlelike teeth as he roared a thunderous howl of hatred and dreadful hunger.

Crouched upon the boulder stood the other. He had a great cl.u.s.ter of shoulders at the top of his trunk, and a nest of long, scaly arms that writhed out in all directions like snakes, each arm terminating in a widespread, many-clawed hand. Two sets of eyes, one atop the other, glared insanely from beneath heavy brow-ridges, and his muzzle, like that of the other figure, sprouted a forest of teeth. He raised that awful face and bellowed, his jaws drooling foam.

But even as the two monsters glared at each other, there seemed to be a kind of writhing struggle going on inside them. Their skins rippled, and large moving lumps appeared in odd places on their chests and sides. Garion had the peculiar feeling that there was something else - something quite different and perhaps even worse - trapped inside each apparition. Growling, the two devils advanced upon each other, but despite their apparent eagerness to fight, they seemed almost driven, whipped toward the struggle. It was as if there was a dreadful reluctance in them, and their grotesque faces jerked this way and that, each snarling first at his opponent and then at the magician who controlled him. That reluctance, Garion perceived, stemmed from something deep inside the nature of each Devil. It was the enslavement, the compulsion to do the bidding of another, that they hated. The chains of spell and incantation in which Belgarath and the white-braided Morind had bound them were an intolerable agony, and there were whimpers of that agony mingled with their snarls.

Belgarath was sweating. Droplets of perspiration trickled down his dark-stained face. The incantations which held the Devil Agrinja locked within the apparition he had created to bind it rippled endlessly from his tongue. The slightest faltering of either the words or the image he had formed in his mind would break his power over the beast he had summoned, and it would turn upon him.

Writhing like things attempting to tear themselves apart from within, Agrinja and Horja closed on each other, grappling, clawing, tearing out chunks of scaly flesh with their awful jaws. The earth shuddered beneath them as they fought.

Too stunned to even be afraid, Garion watched the savage struggle. As he watched, he noted a peculiar difference between the two apparitions. Agrinja was bleeding from his wounds - a strange, dark blood, so deep red as to be almost black. Horja, however, did not bleed. Chunks ripped from his arms and shoulders were like bits of wood. The whitebraided magician saw that difference as well, and his eyes grew suddenly afraid. His voice became shrill as he desperately cast incantations at Horja, struggling to keep the Devil under his control. The moving lumps beneath Horja's skin became larger, more agitated. The vast Devil broke free from Agrinja and stood, his chest heaving and a dreadful hope burning in his eyes.

White-braids was screaming now. The incantations tumbled from his mouth, faltering, stumbling. And then one unp.r.o.nounceable formula tangled his tongue. Desperately he tried it again, and once again it stuck in his teeth.

With a bellow of triumph the Devil Horja straightened and seemed to explode. Bits and fragments of scaly hide flew in all directions as the monster shuddered free of the illusion which had bound him. He had two great arms and an almost human face surmounted by a pair of curving, needle-pointed horns. He had hoofs instead of feet, and his grayish skin dripped slime. He turned slowly and his burning eyes fixed on the gibbering magician.

"Horja!" the white-braided Morind shrieked, "I command you to-" The words faltered as he gaped in horror at the Devil which had suddenly escaped his control. "Horja! I am your master!" But Horja was already stalking toward him, his great hoofs crus.h.i.+ng the gra.s.s as, step by step, he moved toward his former master.

In wild-eyed panic, the white-braided Morind flinched back, stepping unconsciously and fatally out of the protection of the circle and star drawn upon the ground.

Horja smiled then, a chilling smile, bent and caught the shrieking magician by each ankle, ignoring the blows rained on his head and shoulders by the skull-topped staff. Then the monster stood up, lifting the struggling man to hang upside down by the legs. The huge shoulders surged with an awful power, and, leering hideously, the Devil deliberately and with a cruel slowness tore the magician in two.

The Morindim fled.

Contemptuously the immense Devil hurled the chunks of his former master after them, spattering the gra.s.s with blood and worse. Then, with a savage hunting cry, he leaped in pursuit of them.

The three-eyed Agrinja had stood, still locked in a half crouch, watching the destruction of the white-braided Morind almost with indifference. When it was aver, he turned to cast eyes burning with hatred upon Belgarath.

The old sorcerer, drenched with sweat, raised his skull-staff in front of him, his face set with extreme concentration. The interior struggle rippled more intensely within the form of the monster, but gradually Belgarath's will mastered and solidified the shape. Agrinja howled in frustration, clawing at the air until all hint of s.h.i.+fting or changing was gone. Then the dreadful hands dropped, and the monster's head bowed in defeat.

"Begone," Belgarath commanded almost negligently, and Agrinja instantly vanished.

Garion suddenly began to tremble violently. His stomach heaved; he turned, tottered a few feet away, and fell to his knees and began to retch.

"What happened?" Silk demanded in a shaking voice.

"It got away from him," Belgarath replied calmly. "I think it was the blood that did it. When he saw that Agrinja was bleeding and that Horja wasn't, he realized that he'd forgotten something. That shook his confidence, and he lost his concentration. Garion, stop that."

"I can't," Garion groaned, his stomach heaving violently again. "How long will Horja chase the others?" Silk asked.

"Until the sun goes down," Belgarath told him. "I imagine that the Weasel Clan is in for a bad afternoon."

"Is there any chance that he'll turn around and come after us?"

"He has no reason to. We didn't try to enslave him. As soon as Garion gets his stomach under control again, we can go on. We won't be bothered any more."

Garion stumbled to his feet, weakly wiping his mouth. "Are you all right?" Belgarath asked him.

"Not really," Garion replied, "but there's nothing left to come up."

"Get a drink of water and try riot to think about it."

"Will you have to do that any more?" Silk asked, his eyes a bit wild.

"No." Belgarath pointed. There were several riders along the crest of a hill perhaps a mile away. "The other Morindim in the area watched the whole thing. The word will spread, and n.o.body will come anywhere near us now. Let's mount up and get going. It's still a long way to the coast."

In bits and pieces, as they rode for the next several days, Garion picked up as much information as he really wanted about the dreadful contest he had witnessed.

"It's the shape that's the key to the whole thing," Belgarath concluded. "What the Morindim call Devil-Spirits don't look that much different from humans. You form an illusion drawn out of your imagination and force the spirit into it. As long as you can keep it locked up in that illusion, it has to do what you tell it to. If the illusion falters for any reason, the spirit breaks free and resumes its real form. After that, you have no control over it whatsoever. I have a certain advantage in these matters. Changing back and forth from a man to a wolf has sharpened my imagination a bit."

"Why did Beldin say you were a bad magician then?" Silk asked curiously.

"Beldin's a purist," the old man shrugged. "He feels that it's necessary to get everything into the shape - down to the last scale and toenail. It isn't, really, but he feels that way about it."

"Do you suppose we could talk about something else?" Garion asked.

They reached the coastline a day or so later. The sky had remained overcast, and the Sea of the East lay sullen and rolling under dirty gray clouds. The beach along which they rode was a broad s.h.i.+ngle of black, round stones littered with chunks of white, bleached driftwood. Waves rolled foaming up the beach, only to slither back with an endless, mournful sigh. Sea birds hung in the stiff breeze, screaming.

"Which way?" Silk asked.

Belgarath looked around. "North," he replied.

"How far?"

"I'm not positive. It's been a long time, and I can't be sure exactly where we are."

"You're not the best guide in the world, old friend," Silk complained.

"You can't have everything."

They reached the land bridge two days later, and Garion stared at it in dismay. It was not at all what he had expected, but consisted of a series of round, wave-eroded white boulders sticking up out of the dark water and running in an irregular line off toward a dark smudge on the horizon. The wind was blowing out of the north, carrying with it a bitter chill and the smell of polar ice. Patches of white froth stretched from boulder to boulder as the swells ripped themselves to tatters on submerged reefs.

"How are we supposed to cross that?" Silk objected.

"We wait until low tide," Belgarath explained. "The reefs are mostly out of the water then."

"Mostly?"

"We might have to wade a bit from time to time. Let's strip these furs off our clothes before we start. It will give us something to do while we're waiting for the tide to turn, and they're starting to get a bit fragrant."

They took shelter behind a pile of driftwood far up on the beach and removed the stiff, smelly furs from their clothing. Then they dug food out of their packs and ate. Garion noted that the stain that had darkened the skin on his hands had begun to wear thin and that the tattoodrawings on the faces of his companions had grown noticeably fainter.

It grew darker, and the period of twilight that separated one day from the next seemed longer than it had no more than a week ago.

"Summer's nearly over up here," Belgarath noted, looking out at the boulders gradually emerging from the receding water in the murky twilight.

"How much longer before low tide?" Silk asked.

"Another hour or so."

They waited. The wind pushed at the pile of driftwood erratically and brushed the tall gra.s.s along the upper edge of the beach, bending and tossing it.

Finally Belgarath stood up. "Let's go," he said shortly. "We'll lead the horses. The reefs are slippery, so be careful how you set your feet down."

The pa.s.sage along the reef between the first steppingstones was not all that bad, but once they moved farther out, the wind became a definite factor. They were frequently drenched with stinging spray, and every so often a wave, larger than the others, broke over the top of the reef and swirled about their legs, tugging at them. The water was brutally cold.

"Do you think we'll be able to make it all the way across before the tide comes back in again?" Silk shouted over the noise.

"No," Belgarath shouted back. "We'll have to sit it out on top of one of the larger rocks."

"That sounds unpleasant."

"Not nearly so unpleasant as swimming."

They were perhaps halfway across when it became evident that the tide turned. Waves more and more frequently broke across the top of the reef, and one particularly large pulled the legs of Garion's horse out from under him. Garion struggled to get the frightened animal up again, pulling at the reins as the horse's hoofs scrambled and slid on the slippery rocks of the reef. "We'd better find a place to stop, Grandfather," he yelled above the crash of the waves. "We'll be neck-deep in this before long."

"Two more islands," Belgarath told . "'here's a bigger one up ahead."

The last stretch of reef was completely submerged, and Garion flinched as he stepped down into the icy water, The breaking waves covered the surface with froth, making it impossible to see the bottom. He moved along blindly, probing the unseen path with numb feet. A large wave swelled and rose up as far as his armpits, and its powerful surge swept him of his feet. He clung to the reins of his horse, floundering and sputtering as he fought to get back up.

And then they were past the worst of it. They moved along the reef with the water only ankle-deep now; a few moments later, they climbed up onto the large, white boulder. Garion let out a long, explosive breath as he reached safety. The wind, blowing against his wet clothing, chilled him to the bone but at least they were out of the water.

Later, as they sat huddled together on the leeward side of the boulder, Garion looked out across the sullen black sea toward the low, forbidding coastline lying ahead. The beaches, like those of Morindland behind them, were black gravel, and the low hills behind them were dark under the scudding gray cloud. Nowhere was there any sign of life, but there was an implicit threat in the very shape of the land itself.

"Is that it?" he asked finally in a hushed voice.

Belgarath's face was unreadable as he gazed across the open water toward the coast ahead. "Yes," he replied. "That's Mallorea."

Part Two - MISHRAK AC THULL

Chapter Eight.

THE CROWN HAD been Queen Islena's first mistake. It was heavy and it always gave her a headache. Her decision to wear it had come originally out of a sense of insecurity. The bearded warnors in Anheg's throne room intimidated her, and she felt the need of a visible symbol of her authority. Now she was afraid to appear without it. Each day she put it on with less pleasure and entered the main hall of Anheg's palace with less certainty.

The sad truth was that Queen Islena of Cherek was completely unprepared to rule. Until the day when, dressed in regal crimson velvet and with her gold crown firmly in place, she had marched into the vaulted throne room at Val Alorn to announce that she would rule the kingdom in her husband's absence, Islena's most momentous decisions had involved which gown she would wear and how her hair was to be arranged. Now it seemed that the fate of Cherek hung in the balance each time she was faced with a choice.

The warriors lounging indolently with their ale cups about the huge, open fire pit or wandering aimlessly about on the rush-strewn floor were no help whatsoever. Each time she entered the throne room, all conversation broke off and they rose to watch as she marched to the bannerhung throne, but their faces gave no hint of their true feelings toward her. Irrationally, she concluded that the whole problem had to do with the beards. How could she possibly know what a man was thinking when his face was sunk up to the ears in hair? Only the quick intervention of Lady Merel, the cool blond wife of the Earl of Trellheim, had stopped her from ordering a universal shave.

"You can't, Islena," Merel had told her flatly, removing the quill from the queen's hand, even as she had been in the act of signing the hastily drawn-up proclamation. "They're attached to their beards like little boys attached to a favorite toy. You can't make them cut off their whiskers."

"I'm the Queen."

"Only as long as they permit you to be. They accept you out of respect for Anheg, and that's as far as it goes. If you tamper with their pride, they'll take you off the throne." And that dreadful threat had ended the matter then and there.

Islena found herself relying more and more on Barak's wife, and it was not long before the two of them, one in green and the other in royal crimson, were seldom apart. Even when Islena faltered, Merel's icy stare quelled the hints of disrespect which cropped up from time to time - usually when the ale had been distributed a bit too freely. It was Merel, ultimately, who made the day-to-day decisions which ran the kingdom. When IsIena sat upon the throne, Merel, her blond braids coiled about her head to form her own crown, stood to one side in plain view of the hesitant queen. Cherek was ruled by the expressions on her face. A faint smile meant yes; a frown, no; a scarcely perceptible shrug, maybe. It worked out fairly well.

But there was one person who was not intimidated by Merel's cool gaze. Grodeg, the towering, white-bearded High Priest of Belar, inevitably requested private audience with the queen, and once Merel left the council room, Islena was lost.

Despite Anheg's call for a general mobilization, the members of the Bear-cult had not yet left to join the campaign. Their promises to join the fleet later all sounded sincere, but their excuses and delays grew more and more obvious as time went on. Islena knew that Grodeg was behind it all. Nearly every able-bodied man in the kingdom was off with the fleet, which was even now rowing up the broad expanse of the Aldur River to join Anheg in central Algaria. The household guard in the palace at Val Alorn had been reduced to grizzled old men and downy-cheeked boys. Only the Bear-cult remained, and Grodeg pushed his advantage to the limit.

He was polite enough, bowing to the queen when the occasion demanded, and never mentioning her past links with the cult, but his offers to help became more and more insistent; and when Islena faltered at his suggestions concerning this matter or that, he smoothly acted to implement them as if her hesitancy had been acceptance. Little by little, Islena was losing control, and Grodeg, with the armed might of the cult behind him, was taking charge. More and more the cult members infested the palace, giving orders, lounging about the throne room and openly grinning as they watched Islena's attempts to rule.

"You're going to have to do something, Islena," Merel said firmly one evening when the two were alone in the queen's private apartment. She was striding about the carpeted room, her hair gleaming like soft gold in the candlelight, but there was nothing soft in her expression.

"What can I do?" Islena pleaded, wringing her hands. "He's never openly disrespectful, and his decisions always seem to be in the best interests of Cherek."

"You need help, Islena," Merel told her.

"Whom can I turn to?" The Queen of Cherek was almost in tears. The Lady Merel smoothed the front of her green velvet gown.

"I think it's time that you wrote to Porenn," she declared.

"What do I say?" Islena begged of her.

Merel pointed at the small table in the corner where parchment and ink lay waiting. "Sit down," she instructed, "and write what I tell you to write."

Count Brador, the Tolnedran amba.s.sador, was definitely growing tiresome, Queen Layla decided. The plump little queen marched purposefully toward the chamber where she customarily gave audiences and where the amba.s.sador awaited her with his satchel full of doc.u.ments.

The courtiers in the halls bowed as she pa.s.sed, her crown slightly askew and her heels clicking on the polished oak floors, but Queen Layla uncharacteristically ignored them. This was not the time for polite exchanges or idle chitchat. The Tolnedran had to be dealt with, and she had delayed too long already.