Belgarath the Sorcerer

‘I am quick to learn, Master,’ I boasted, glossing over the fact that it had taken me five years to learn his first lesson. ‘I shall make thee proud of me,’ I actually meant that.

And then he laughed, and my heart soared, even as it had when that old vagabond in the rickety cart had laughed. I had a few suspicions at that point. ‘Very well, then, Belgarath,’ he relented. ‘I shall accept thee as my pupil.’

‘And thy disciple also, Master?’

‘That we will see in the fullness of time, Belgarath.’

And then, because I was still very young and much impressed with my recent accomplishment, I turned to a winter-dried bush and spoke to it fervently. ‘Bloom,’ I said, and the bush quite suddenly produced a single flower. It wasn’t much of a flower, I’ll admit, but it was the best that I could do at the time. I was still fairly new at this. I plucked it and offered it to him. ‘For thee, Master,’ I said, ‘because I love thee.’ I don’t believe I’d ever used the word ‘love’ before, and it’s become the center of my whole life. Isn’t it odd how we make these simple little discoveries?

And he took my crooked little flower and held it between his hands. ‘I thank thee, my son,’ he said. It was the first time he’d ever called me that. ‘And this flower shall be thy first lesson. I would have thee examine it most carefully and tell me all that thou canst perceive of it. Set aside thine axe and thy broom, Belgarath. This flower is now thy task.’

And that task took me twenty years, as I recall. Each time I came to my Master with the flower that never wilted nor faded – how I grew to hate that flower! – and told him what I’d learned, he would say, ‘Is that all, my son?’ And, crushed, I’d go back to my study of that silly little flower.

In time my distaste for it grew less. The more I studied it, the better I came to know it, and I eventually grew fond of it.

Then one day my Master suggested that I might learn more about it if I burned it and studied its ashes. I indignantly refused.

‘And why not, my son?’ he asked me.

‘Because it is dear to me, Master,’ I said in a tone probably more firm than I’d intended.

‘Dear?’ he asked.

‘I love the flower, Master! I will not destroy it!’

‘Thou art stubborn, Belgarath,’ he noted. ‘Did it truly take thee twenty years to admit thine affection for this small, gentle thing?’

And that was the true meaning of my first lesson. I still have that little flower somewhere, and although I can’t put my hands on it immediately, I think of it often and with great affection.

It was not long after that when my Master suggested that we journey to a place he called Prolgu, since he wanted to consult with someone there. I agreed to accompany him, of course, but to be quite honest about it, I didn’t really want to be away from my studies for that long. It was spring, however, and that’s always a good season for traveling. Prolgu is in the mountains, and if nothing else, the scenery was spectacular.

It took us quite some time to reach the place – my Master never hurried – and I saw creatures along the way that I’d never imagined existed. My Master identified them for me, and there was a peculiar note of pain in his voice as he pointed out unicorns, Hrulgin, Algroths and even an Eldrak.

‘What troubles thee, Master?’ I asked him one evening as we sat by our fire. ‘Are the creatures we have encountered distasteful to thee?’

‘They are a constant rebuke to me and my brothers, Belgarath,’ he replied sadly. ‘When the earth was all new, we dwelt with each other in a cave deep in these mountains, laboring to bring forth the beasts of the fields, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea. It seemeth me I have told thee of that time, have I not?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, Master,’ I replied. ‘It was before there was such a thing as man.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Man was our last creation. At any rate, some of the creatures we brought forth were unseemly, and we consulted and decided to unmake them, but UL forbade it.’

‘UL?’ The name startled me. I’d heard it quite often in the encampment of the old people the winter before I went to serve my Master.

‘Thou hast heard of him, I see.’ There was no real point in my trying to hide anything from my Master. ‘UL, as I told thee,’ he continued, ‘forbade the unmaking of things, and this greatly offended several of us. Torak in particular was put much out of countenance. Prohibitions or restraints of any kind do not sit well with my brother Torak. It was at his urging, methinks, that we sent such unseemly creatures to UL, telling them that he would be their God. I do sorely repent our spitefulness, for what UL did, he did out of a Necessity which we did not at the time perceive.’

‘It is UL with whom thou wouldst consult at Prolgu, is it not, Master?’ I asked shrewdly. You see? I’m not totally without some degree of perception.

My Master nodded. ‘A certain thing hath come to pass,’ he told me sadly. ‘We had hoped that it might not, but it is another of those Necessities to which men and Gods alike must bow,’ He sighed. ‘Seek thy bed, Belgarath,’ he told me then. ‘We still have far to go ere we reach Prolgu, and I have noted that without sleep, thou art a surly companion.’

‘A weakness of mine, Master,’ I admitted, spreading my blankets on the ground. My Master, of course, required sleep no more than he required food.

In time we reached Prolgu, which is a strange place on the top of a mountain which looks oddly artificial. We had no more than started up its side when we were greeted by a very old man and by someone who was quite obviously not a man. That was the first time I met UL, and the overpowering sense of his presence quite nearly bowled me over. ‘Aldur,’ he said to my Master, ‘well-met.’

‘Father,’ my Master replied, politely inclining his head. The Gods, I’ve noted, have an enormous sense of propriety. Then my Master reached inside his robe and took out that ordinary, round grey rock he’d spent the last couple of decades studying. ‘Our hopes notwithstanding,’ he announced, holding the rock out for UL to see, ‘it hath arrived.’

UL nodded gravely. ‘I had thought I sensed its presence. Wilt thou accept the burden of it?’

My Master sighed. ‘If I must,’ he said.

‘Thou art brave, Aldur,’ UL said, ‘and wiser far than thy brothers. That which commands us all hath brought it to thy hand for a purpose. Let us go apart and consider our course.’

I learned that day that there was something very strange about that ordinary-looking stone.

The old man who had accompanied UL was named Gorim, and he and I got along well. He was a gentle, kindly old fellow whose features were the same as those of the old people I’d met some years before. We went up into the city, and he took me to his house. We waited there while my Master – and his – spoke together for quite some time. To pass the long hours, he told me the story of how he had come to enter the service of UL. It seemed that his people were Dals, the ones who had somehow been left out when the Gods were selecting the various races of man to serve them. Despite my peculiar situation, I’ve never been a particularly religious man, so I had a bit of difficulty grasping the concept of the spiritual pain the Dals suffered as outcasts. The Dals, of course, traditionally live to the south of the cluster of mountains known only as Korim, but it appeared that quite early in their history, they divided themselves into various groups to go in search of a God. Some went to the north to become Morindim and Karands; some went to the east to become Melcenes; some stayed south of Korim and continued to be Dals; but Gorim’s people, Ulgos, he called them, came west.

Eventually, after the Ulgos had wandered around in the wilderness for generations, Gorim was born, and when he reached manhood, he volunteered to go alone in search of UL. That was long before I was born, of course. Anyway, after many years he finally found UL. He took the good news back to his people, but not too many of them believed him. People are like that sometimes. Finally he grew disgusted with them and told them to follow him or stay where they were, and he didn’t much care which. Some followed, and some didn’t. As he told me of this, he grew pensive. ‘I have oft-times wondered whatever happened to those who stayed behind,’ he said sadly.

‘I can clear that up for you, my friend,’ I advised him. ‘I happened across them some twenty-five or so years ago. They had a large camp quite a ways north of my Master’s Vale. I spent a winter with them and then moved on. I doubt that you’d find any of them still alive, though. They were all very old when I saw them.’

He gave me a stricken look, and then he bowed his head and wept.

‘What’s wrong, Gorim?’ I exclaimed, somewhat alarmed.

‘I had hoped that UL might relent and set aside my curse on them,’ he replied brokenly.

‘Curse?’

‘That they would wither and perish and be no more. Their women were made barren by my curse.’

‘It was still working when I was there,’ I told him. ‘There wasn’t a single child in the entire camp. I wondered why they made such a fuss over me. I guess they hadn’t seen a child in a long, long time. I couldn’t get any details from them, because I couldn’t understand their language.’

‘They spoke the old tongue,’ he told me sadly, ‘even as do my people here in Prolgu.’

‘How is it that you speak my language then?’ I asked him.

‘It is my place as leader to speak for my people when we encounter other races,’ he explained.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That stands to reason, I guess.’

My Master and I returned to the Vale not long after that, and I took up other studies. Time seemed meaningless in the Vale, and I devoted years of study to the most commonplace of things. I examined trees and birds, fish and beasts, insects and vermin. I spent forty-five years on the study of grass alone. In time it occurred to me that I wasn’t aging as other men did. I’d seen enough old people to know that aging is a part of being human, but for some reason I seemed to be breaking the rules.

‘Master,’ I said one night high in the tower as we both labored with our studies, ‘why is it that I do not grow old?’

‘Wouldst thou grow old, my son?’ he asked me. ‘I have never seen much advantage in it, myself.’

‘I don’t really miss it all that much, Master,’ I admitted, ‘but isn’t it customary?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, but not mandatory. Thou hast much yet to learn, and one or ten or even a hundred lifetimes would not be enough. How old art thou, my son?’