Belgarath the Sorcerer

‘Do you not find it remarkable?’ she asked me quite calmly. How are you going to argue with a wolf?

‘I do,’ I replied, ‘but one should not say that too often, lest one be thought simple.’ It was a spiteful thing to say, I’ll grant you, but her calm indifference to the death of over half my species offended me. Over the years I’ve come to realize that my helpless irritation with her quirks is one of the keystones of our relationship.

She sniffed. That’s a maddening trait of hers. ‘I will say as I wish to say,’ she told me with that infuriating superiority of all females. ‘You need not listen if it does not please you, and if you choose to think me simple, that is your concern – and your mistake.’

And now we were confounded. The broad sea stood between us and the Angaraks, and Torak stood on one shore and we upon the other.

‘What do we do, Master?’ I demanded of Aldur.

‘We can do nothing,’ he replied. ‘It is finished. The war is over.’

‘Never!’ Belar cried. ‘My people are Alorns. I shall teach them the ways of the sea. If we cannot come upon the traitor Torak by land, my Alorns shall build a great fleet, and we shall come upon him by sea. The war is not done, my brother. Torak hath smote thee, and he hath stolen away that which was thine, and now he hath drowned this fair land in the death-cold sea. Our homes and our fields and forests are no more. This I tell thee, my beloved brother, and my words are true. Between Alorn and Angarak there shall be endless war until the traitor Torak be punished for his iniquities – yea, even if it prevail so until the end of days!’ Oh, Belar could be eloquent when he set his mind to it. He loved his beer tankard and his adoring Alorn girls, but he’d set all that aside for the chance to make a speech.

‘Torak is punished, Belar,’ my Master said to his enthusiastic younger brother. ‘He burns even now – and will burn forever. He hath raised the Orb against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that. Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It came to us in peace and love. Now it hath been raised in hate and war. Torak hath betrayed it and turned its gentle soul to stone. Now its heart shall be as ice and iron-hard, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the Orb, but small pleasure shall he find in the having. He may no longer touch it, neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.’

My Master, you’ll note, was at least as eloquent as Belar.

‘Nonetheless,’ Belar replied, ‘I will make war upon him until the Orb be returned to thee. To this I pledge all of Aloria.’

‘As thou wouldst have it, my brother,’ Aldur said. ‘Now, however, we must raise some barrier against this encroaching sea, lest it swallow up all the dry land that is left to us. Join, therefore, thy Will with mine, and let us put limits upon this new sea.’

Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods differed from us. As I watched, Aldur and Belar joined their hands and looked out over the broad plain and the approaching sea.

‘Stay,’ Belar said to the sea, raising one hand. His voice wasn’t loud, but the sea heard him and stopped. It built up, angry and tossing, behind the barrier of that single word, and a great wind tore at us.

‘Rise up,’ Aldur said just as softly to the earth. My mind was staggered by the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly wounded by Torak, groaned and heaved and swelled. And then, before my very eyes, it rose up. Higher and higher it rose as the rocks beneath cracked and shattered. Out of the plain there shouldered up mountains which hadn’t been there before, and they shuddered away the loose earth the way a dog shakes off water, to stand as an eternal barrier to the sea which Torak had let in.

Have you ever stood about a half-mile from the center of that sort of thing? Don’t, if you can possibly avoid it. We were all hurled to the ground by the most violent earthquake I’ve ever been through. I lay clutching at the ground while the tremors actually rattled my teeth. The freshly broken earth groaned and even seemed to howl. And she wasn’t alone. My companion crouched at my side, raised her face to the sky and also howled. I put my arms about her and held her tightly against me – which probably wasn’t a very good idea, considering how frightened she was. Oddly, she didn’t try to bite me – or even growl at me. She licked my face instead, as if she were trying to comfort me. Isn’t that peculiar?

When the shaking subsided, we all regained our composure somewhat and stared first at that new range of mountains and then toward the east, where Torak’s new sea was sullenly retreating.

‘How remarkable,’ the wolf said as calmly as if nothing had happened.

‘Truly,’ I could not but agree.

And then the other Gods and their peoples came to the place where we were and marveled at what Belar and my Master had done to hold back the sea.

‘Now is the time of sundering,’ my Master told them sadly. ‘This land which was once so fair and sustained our children in their infancy is no more. That which remains here on this shore is bleak and harsh and will no longer support your people. This then is mine advice to ye, my brothers. Let each take his own people and journey into the west. Beyond the mountains wherein lies Prolgu ye shall find another fair plain – not so broad perhaps nor so beautiful as that which Torak hath drowned this day – but it will sustain the races of man.’

‘And what of thee, my brother?’ Mara asked him.

‘I shall take my disciples and return even to the Vale,’ Aldur replied. ‘This day hath evil been unloosed in the world, and its power is great. The Orb revealed itself to me, and through its power hath the evil been unloosed. Upon me, therefore, falls the task of preparation for the day when good and evil shall meet in that final battle wherein shall be decided the fate of the world.’

‘So be it then,’ Mara said. ‘Hail and farewell, my brother.’ And he turned and with Issa and Chaldan and Nedra and all their people, they went away toward the west.

But Belar lingered. ‘Mine oath and my pledge bind me still,’ he declared. ‘I will not go to the west with the others, but will take my Alorns to the unpeopled lands of the northwest instead. There we will seek a way by which we may come again on Torak and his children. Thine Orb shall be returned unto thee, my brother. I shall not rest until it be so.’ And then he turned and put his face to the north, and his tall warriors followed after him.

My master watched them go with a great sadness on his face, and then he turned westward and my brothers and I followed after him as, sorrowing, we began our journey back to the Vale.

PART TWO (#ulink_5bc4f868-34eb-5aba-aa2c-0427b8714b88)

The Apostate (#ulink_5bc4f868-34eb-5aba-aa2c-0427b8714b88)

Chapter 7 (#ulink_b7f4cea6-2c8b-57c3-9199-bed797627928)

My brothers and I were badly shaken by the outcome of our war with the Angaraks. We certainly hadn’t anticipated Torak’s desperate response to our campaign, and I think we all felt a gnawing personal guilt for the death of half of mankind. We were a somber group when we reached the Vale. We had ongoing tasks, of course, but we took to gathering in our Master’s tower in the evenings, seeking comfort and reassurance in his presence and the familiar surroundings of the tower.

Each of us had his own chair, and we normally sat around a long table, discussing the events of the day and then moving on to more wide-ranging topics. I don’t know that we solved any of the world’s problems with those eclectic conversations, but that’s not really why we held them. We needed to be together during that troubled time, and we needed the calm that always pervaded that familiar room at the top of the tower. For one thing, the light there was somehow different from the light in our own towers. The fact that our Master didn’t bother with firewood might have had something to do with that. The fire on his hearth burned because he wanted it to burn, and it continued to burn whether he fed it or not. Our chairs were large and comfortable and made of dark, polished wood, and the room was neat and uncluttered. Aldur stored his things in some unimaginable place, and they came to him when he called them rather than laying about collecting dust.

Our evening gatherings continued for six months or so, and they helped us to gather our wits and to ward off the nightmares which haunted our sleep.

Sooner or later, one of us was bound to ask the question, and as it turned out, it was Beltira. ‘What started it all, Master?’ he asked reflectively. ‘This goes back much further than what’s been happening recently, doesn’t it?’

You’ll notice that Durnik wasn’t the first to be curious about beginnings.

Aldur looked gravely at the gentle Alorn shepherd. ‘It doth indeed, Beltira – further back than thou canst possibly imagine. Once, when the universe was all new and long before my brothers and I came into being, an event occurred which had not been designed to occur, and it was that event which divided the purpose of all things.’

‘An accident then, Master?’ Beldin surmised.

‘A most apt term, my son,’ Aldur complimented him. ‘Like all things, the stars are born; they exist for a certain time; and then they die. The “accident” of which we speak came about when a star died in a place and at a time which were not a part of the original design of all creation. The death of a star is a titanic event, and the death of this particular star was made even more so by its unfortunate proximity to other stars. Ye have all studied the heavens, and therefore ye know that the universe is comprised of clusters of stars. The particular cluster of which we speak consisted of so many suns that they were beyond counting, and the wayward sun which died in their very midst ignited others, and they in turn ignited more. The conflagration spread until the entire cluster exploded.’

‘Was that anywhere near where we are now, Master?’ Belsambar asked him.

‘Nay, my son. The EVENT took place on the far side of the universe – so far in fact that the light of that catastrophe hath not yet reached this world.’

‘How is that possible, Master?’ Belsambar looked confused.

‘Sight isn’t instantaneous, brother,’ Beldin explained. ‘There’s a lag between the time when something happens and the time when we see it. There are a lot of things we see in the night sky that aren’t really there any more. Someday when we’ve both got some time, I’ll explain it to you.’

‘How could so remote an event have any meaning here, Master?’ Belzedar asked, his tone baffled.

Aldur sighed. “The universe came into being with a Purpose, Belzedar,’ he replied with a strange kind of wonder in his voice. ‘The accident divided that Purpose, and what was once one became two. Awareness came out of that division, and the two Purposes have contended with each other since that EVENT took place. In time, the two agreed that this world – which did not even exist as yet – would be their final battleground. That is why my brothers and I came into existence, and that is why we made this world. It is here that the division of the Purpose of the universe will be healed. A series of EVENTS, some great and some very small, have been leading up to the final EVENT, and that EVENT shall be a Choice.’

‘Who’s supposed to make that choice?’ Beldin asked.

‘We are not permitted to know that,’ Aldur replied.

‘Oh, fine!’ Beldin exploded with heavy sarcasm. ‘It’s all a game, then! When’s this supposed to happen?’

‘Soon, my son. Very soon.’

‘Could you be a little more specific, Master? I know how long you’ve been around, and you and I might have very different ideas about what the word “soon” means.’

‘The Choice must be made when the light of that exploding star-cluster reaches this world.’

‘And that could happen at any time, couldn’t it? It could come popping out of the sky sometime after midnight this very night, for all we know.’

‘Curb thine impatience, Beldin,’ Aldur told him. ‘There will be signs to advise us that the moment of the Choice draws nigh. The cracking of the world was one such sign. There will be others as well.’