‘I think I’ve seen enough,’ Sadi said. He rose and went back down the ridge.
The surviving elephants, looking almost like ants in the distance, wheeled and fled in panic back down the gorge, and the agonized squeals of the animals were suddenly accompanied by human screams as the great beasts crushed their way through rank after rank of Darshivan soldiers.
Beldin came soaring up from below and settled back on the boulder from which he had started.
‘What’s that?’ Silk exclaimed. ‘There at the mouth of the gorge.’
There seemed to be some vast disturbance in the murky air at the edge of the plain, a sort of shimmering filled with flickering, rainbow-hued light and sullen flashes of heat lightning. Then, quite suddenly, the disturbance coalesced into a nightmare.
‘Belar!’ Silk swore. ‘It’s as big as a barn!’
The thing was hideous. It had a dozen or more snakelike arms that writhed and lashed at the air. It had three blazing eyes and a vast muzzle filled with great fangs. It towered over the elephants and kicked them aside contemptuously with huge, clawed feet. Then with thunderous stride, it started up the gorge, walking indifferently through the flames and paying no more attention to the boulders bouncing off its shoulders than it might have to snowflakes.
‘What is that thing?’ Zakath asked in a shaken voice.
‘That’s Mordja,’ Belgarath told him. ‘I’ve seen him before—in Morindland—and that’s not the sort of face one forgets.’
The demon in the gorge was reaching out with his many arms now, catching whole platoons of Karands in his clawed hands and almost casually hurling them with terrific force against the surrounding rocks.
‘It looks to me as if the tide of battle just turned,’ Silk said. ‘What’s our general feeling about leaving—along about right now?’
The Demon Lord Mordja raised his huge muzzle and thundered something in a language too hideous for human comprehension.
‘Stay put!’ Belgarath ordered, catching Silk’s arm. ‘This isn’t played out yet. That was a challenge, and Nahaz won’t be able to refuse it.’
Another of those flickering disturbances appeared in the air above the upper end of the gorge, and another towering form appeared out of its center. Garion could not see its face, a fact for which he was profoundly grateful, but it, too, had snaky arms growing in profusion from its vast shoulders. ‘Thou darest to face me, Mordja?’ it roared in a voice which shook the nearby mountains.
‘I do not fear thee, Nahaz,’ Mordja bellowed back. ‘Our enmity hath endured for a thousand thousand years. Let it end here. I shall carry word of thy death back to the King of Hell and bear thy head with me as proof of my words.’
‘My head is thine,’ Nahaz said with a chilling laugh. ‘Come and take it—if thou canst.’
‘And thou wouldst bestow the stone of power on the mad Disciple of maimed Torak?’ Mordja sneered.
‘Thy sojourn in the land of the Morindim hath bereft thee of thy wits, Mordja. The stone of power shall be mine, and I shall rule these ants that creep upon the face of this world. I will raise them like cattle and feed upon them when I hunger.’
‘How wilt thou feed, Nahaz—without thy head? It is I who will rule and feed here, for the stone of power shall lie in my hand.’
‘That we will soon discover, Mordja. Come. Let us contend for a head and for the stone we both desire.’ Suddenly Nahaz spun about, his baleful eyes searching the top of the cliff where Garion and his friends lay hidden. A volcanic hiss burst from the demon’s distorted lips. ‘The Child of Light!’ he roared. ‘Praise the name of the King of Hell, who hath brought him within my reach. I will rend him asunder and seize the stone which he carries. Thou art doomed, Mordja. That stone in my hand shall be thy undoing.’ With hideous speed the Demon Lord Nahaz clambered over the tumbled rocks at the foot of the cliff and reached out with his dozens of clawed hands at the sheer rock face. His vast shoulders heaved.
‘He’s climbing straight up the rock!’ Silk exclaimed in a strangled voice. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
The Demon Lord Mordja stood for a moment in stunned chagrin, then he, too, ran forward and began to claw his way up the face of the cliff.
Garion rose to his feet, looking down at the two vast monsters clambering up the sheer rock. He felt a peculiar detachment as he reached back over his shoulder and drew his sword. He untied the leather sleeve covering the hilt and slipped it off. The Orb glowed, and when he took the sword in both hands, the familiar blue flame ran up the blade.
‘Garion!’ Zakath exclaimed.
‘They want the Orb,’ Garion said grimly. ‘Well, they’re going to have to take it, and I may have something to say about that.’
But then Durnik was there. His face was calm, and he was stripped to the waist. In his right hand he carried an awesome sledge hammer that glowed as blue as Garion’s sword. ‘Excuse me, Garion,’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘but this is my task.’
Polgara had come with him, and her face showed no fear. She had drawn her blue cloak about her, and the snowy lock at her brow glowed.
‘What’s happening here?’ Belgarath demanded.
‘Stay out of it, father,’ Polgara told him. ‘This is something that has to happen.’
Durnik advanced to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the two horrors struggling up the sheer face toward him. ‘I abjure ye,’ he said to them in a great voice, ‘return to the place from whence ye came, lest ye die.’ Overlaying his voice was another voice, calm, almost gentle, but with a power in it that shook Garion as a tree is shaken by a hurricane. He knew that voice.
‘Begone!’ Durnik commanded, emphasizing that word with a dreadful blow of his sledge that shattered a boulder into fragments.
The demons clawing their way up the cliff hesitated.
At first it was barely perceptible. At first it seemed that Durnik was only swelling his chest and shoulders in preparation for an impossible struggle. Then Garion saw his oldest friend begin to grow. At ten feet, the smith was awesome. At twenty, he was beyond belief. The great hammer in his hand grew with him, and the blue nimbus about it grew more intense as he expanded and grew, thrusting the sullen air aside with his massive shoulders. The very rocks seemed to cringe back from him as, with long sweeps of his dreadful, glowing hammer, he loosened his arm.
The Demon Lord Mordja paused, clinging to the rock. His bestial face suddenly showed fear. Again Durnik destroyed whole square yards of rock with a single ringing blow.
Nahaz, however, his eyes ablaze and empty of thought, continued to slather and claw his way up the rock face, screeching imprecations in that dreadful language which only demons know.
‘So be it, then,’ Durnik said, and the voice in which he spoke was not his own, but that other, more profound voice, which rang in Garion’s ears like the very crack of doom.
The Demon Lord Mordja looked up, his terrible face filled with terror. Then suddenly he released his grip on the face of the rock cliff to topple and tumble to the rocks below. Howling, and with his multitudinous arms covering his scabrous head, he fled.
Nahaz, however, his blazing eyes filled with madness, continued to sink his claws into naked rock and to haul his vast body up the cliff.
Almost politely, it seemed, Durnik stepped back from the awful brink and wrapped both enormous hands about the glowing handle of his sledge.
‘Durnik!’ Silk cried. ‘No! Don’t let him get his feet under him!’
Durnik did not reply, but a faint smile touched his honest face. Again he tested his vast hammer, swinging it in both hands. The sound of its passage through the air was not a whistle, but a roar.
Nahaz clambered up over the edge of the cliff and rose enormously, clawing at the sky and roaring insanely in the hideous language of the demons.
Durnik spat on his left hand; then on his right. He twisted his huge hands on the handle of his sledge to set them in place, then he swung a vast, overhand blow that took the Demon Lord full in the chest. ‘Begone!
’ the smith roared in a voice louder than thunder. The sledge struck fiery sparks from the demon’s body, sullen orange sparks that sizzled and jumped on the ground like burning roaches.
Nahaz screamed, clutching at his chest.
Unperturbed, Durnik swung again.
And again.
Garion recognized the rhythm of his friend’s strokes. Durnik was not fighting; he was hammering with the age-old precision of a man whose tools are but an extension of his arms. Again and again the glowing hammer crashed into the body of the Demon Lord. With each blow, the sparks flew. Nahaz cringed, trying to shield his body from those awful, shattering strokes. Each time Durnik struck, he roared, ‘Begone!’ Gradually, like a man splitting a huge rock, he began to hammer Nahaz into pieces. Pythonlike arms fell writhing into the abyss, and great, craterlike holes appeared in the demon’s chest.
Unable to watch the dreadful work any longer, Garion averted his eyes. Far below, he saw Urvon’s throne. The two dozen bearers who had carried it had fled, and the mad Disciple capered on the rocks howling insanely.
Durnik struck again. ‘Begone!’
And again. ‘Begone!’
And again. ‘Begone!’
Beaten beyond endurance, the Demon Lord Nahaz flinched back, missed his footing, and toppled off the cliff with a howl of rage and despair. Down and down he plunged, glowing with green fire like a streaking comet. As he drove into the earth, one snakelike arm lashed out and caught the last Disciple of Torak in a deathly grip. Urvon, shrieking, was pulled along as Nahaz sank into the earth like a stick into water.
When Garion looked back, Durnik had resumed his normal size. His chest and arms were covered with sweat, and he was breathing hard from his exertions. He held his glowing sledge out at arm’s length, and its fire grew brighter and brighter until it was incandescent. Then the fire gradually faded, and the smith was holding a silver amulet in his hand with its chain draped across the backs of his fingers.
The voice which had overlain Durnik’s during that awful encounter with the Demon Lord now spoke in no more than a whisper. ‘Know that this good man is also my beloved Disciple, since he was best suited of all of ye for this task.’
Belgarath bowed in the direction the voice was coming from. ‘It shall be as You say, Master,’ he said in a voice thick with emotion. ‘We welcome him as a brother.’
Polgara came forward with a look of wonder on her face and gently took the amulet from Durnik’s hand. ‘How very appropriate,’ she said softly, looking at the silver disc. She lovingly hung the chain around her husband’s neck, then she kissed him and held him to her tightly.
‘Please, Pol,’ he objected with flaming cheeks, ‘we’re not alone, you know.’
She laughed her warm, rich laugh and held him even tighter.
Beldin was grinning crookedly. ‘Nice job, brother mine,’ he said to Durnik. ‘Hot work though, I’d imagine.’ He reached out his hand and took a foaming tankard out of the air and handed it to Aldur’s newest Disciple.
Durnik drank gratefully.
Belgarath clapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s been a long, long time since we last had a new brother,’ he said. Then he quickly embraced Durnik.
‘Oh,’ Ce’Nedra said with a little catch in her voice, ‘that’s just beautiful.’
Wordlessly, Velvet handed her the wispy little handkerchief. ‘What is that on his amulet?’ the blond girl asked, sounding just a bit awed.
‘It’s a hammer,’ Belgarath told her. ‘What else could it be?’
‘If I might make a suggestion, Ancient One,’ Sadi said diffidently, ‘the armies down there on the plain seem to be in a state of total confusion. Wouldn’t this be an excellent time to depart—before they regain their wits?’
‘My thought exactly,’ Silk approved, putting his hand on the eunuch’s shoulder.
‘They’re right, Belgarath,’ Beldin agreed. ‘We’ve done what we were sent here to do—or Durnik has, at least.’ The hunchback sighed and looked over the edge of the cliff. ‘I really wanted to kill Urvon myself,’ he said, ‘but I suppose this is even better. I hope he enjoys his sojourn in Hell.’
A shrill laugh suddenly came from the top of the ridge, a laugh of triumph. Garion whirled, then stopped, frozen with surprise. Atop the ridge stood the black-robed figure of the Sorceress of Darshiva. Beside her stood a blond little boy. Geran’s features had changed in the year and more since he had been abducted, but Garion knew him instantly. ‘Ye have done my work well,’ Zandramas declared. ‘I myself could not have found a more fitting end for Torak’s last Disciple. Now, Child of Light, only thou standest between me and Cthrag Sardius. I will await thy coming in the Place Which Is No More. There shalt thou be a witness when I raise up a New God over Angarak, whose dominion over all the world shall endure until the end of days!’
Geran reached out his hand imploringly to Ce’Nedra, but then he and Zandramas vanished.
‘How remarkable,’ the she-wolf said in surprise.
Here ends Book IV of The Malloreon.
Book V, Seeress of Kell, will take up the final result of the War of Destinies and of the people involved.
Sorceress of Darshiva Page 38
