Going north was obviously out of the question. Torak already had people in place at the land-bridge, and I didn’t want to have to fight my way through them, assuming we could. Going west was probably quite nearly as dangerous. I had to operate on the theory that Ctuchik could do almost anything I could do, and I’d certainly be able to sense those traces I mentioned before. I didn’t even consider going east. There wasn’t much point in going deeper into Mallorea when safety lay in the other direction.
That left only south. ‘Are you gentlemen feeling up to a bit of a scuffle?’ I asked Cherek and his sons.
‘What did you have in mind?’ Cherek asked me.
‘Why don’t we go pick a fight with the guards at the north gate?’
‘I can think of a dozen reasons why we shouldn’t,’ Riva said dubiously.
‘But I can think of a better one why we should. We don’t know how long it’s going to be until Torak wakes up, and he’s not going to take the loss of the Orb philosophically. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he’s going to be organizing a pursuit.’
‘That stands to reason, I suppose,’ Iron-grip conceded.
‘We want those pursuers to go off in the wrong direction if we can possibly arrange it. A pile of dead Grolims at the north gate would probably suggest that we went that way, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It would to me, I guess.’
‘Let’s go kill some Grolims, then.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Cherek objected. ‘If we’re going to go back the way we came, we won’t want to draw attention to that gate.’
‘But we aren’t going back the way we came.’
‘Which way are we going then?’
‘South, actually – well, southwest would probably be closer.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Trust me.’
He started to swear. Evidently hearing that remark irritated him as much as it always irritated me.
There were six black-robed Grolims at the north gate, and we made quick work of them. There were a few muffled cries, of course, and some fairly pathetic groaning, but the fact that there weren’t any windows in the houses of Cthol Mishrak kept any people inside from hearing them.
‘All right,’ Dras said, wiping his bloody axe on a fallen Grolim, ‘now what?’
‘Let’s go back to your tunnel.’
‘Belgarath,’ he objected, ‘We want to get away from the city. We don’t want to go back over the wall.’
‘We’ll go out through the gate, crawl through your tunnel, and circle around the city until we come to the river on the south side of it.’
‘There’s a trail around the outside of the wall,’ Riva pointed out. ‘Why use the tunnel at all?’
‘Because the Hounds would pick up our scent. We want them to think we’ve gone north. We’ll need some time to get out ahead of them.’
‘Very clever,’ Algar murmured.
‘I don’t understand,’ Dras said.
‘The river’s probably frozen, isn’t it?’ Algar asked him.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Wouldn’t that make it sort of like a highway – without any trees or hills to slow us down?’
Dras considered it. Then comprehension slowly dawned on his big face. ‘You know, Algar,’ he said, ‘I think you’re right. Belgarath is a very clever old man.’
‘Do you suppose we could congratulate him some other time,’ Riva said to them. ‘I’m the one who’s carrying the loot, and I’d like to put some distance between this place and my backside.’
I saw that I was going to have to rearrange Riva’s thinking. ‘Loot’ wasn’t really a proper term to use when he was referring to my Master’s Orb.
We hurried past the sprawled bodies of the gate-guards, rounded the bend in the path and plunged back into the snowbank on the left side. It wasn’t too long until we came out of the tunnel at the city wall. There was a sort of beaten pathway in the snow along the outside of the wall where Grolims or ordinary Angaraks had been patrolling, and we followed that eastward until we reached the corner. Then we turned and followed it south through the drifts toward the river. Altogether, I’d imagine that it took us about two hours to reach the riverbank.
As I’d been fairly sure it would be, the frozen river was clear of snow. It wound like a wide black ribbon through the snow-clogged countryside.
‘That’s lucky,’ Dras noted. ‘We won’t leave any tracks.’
‘That was sort of the idea,’ I told him just a bit smugly.
‘How did you know that there wouldn’t be about three feet of snow on top of the ice?’ he asked me.
‘That blizzard came in out of the west. There’s nothing out there in that river for the wind to pile snow up behind, so it swept the ice clean for us. The snow’s probably all stacked up against the mountains of western Karanda.’
‘You think of everything, don’t you, Belgarath?’
‘I try. Let’s get out on the ice and head down to the coast. I’m starting to get homesick.’
We rather carefully brushed out the tracks we made going down the riverbank. Then we crossed the ice to the far side to avoid the light of the torches atop the city wall and started down-river.
We didn’t exactly skate along, but there was a certain amount of sliding. After about three hours, the murky clouds hovering over the region began to lighten along the southern horizon.
‘The sun’s coming up,’ Algar noted. ‘Is that going to wake Torak up?’
I wasn’t certain about that. ‘I’ll check,’ I replied. The passenger riding along between my ears had told me not to try to talk to him until we were clear of the city. Well, we were clear now, so I chanced it. – Do you want to wake up? – I asked.
– Don’t be insulting. –
– I didn’t do it on purpose. The question of someone waking up is looming rather large right now. We’ve got what we came for. Is that the end of this particular EVENT? –
– More or less. It’s not completely over until you get back across the Sea of the East. –
– Can you tell me when Torak’s going to wake up? –
– No. You’ll know when it happens. –
– A hint or two would help here. –
– Sorry, Belgarath. Just keep going. You’re doing well so far.
– Thanks. – I didn’t say it very graciously.
– I liked the way you dealt with those two Hounds. It never would have occurred to me. Where did you come up with the idea? –
– I came out second best in an encounter with a skunk when I was a boy. It’s the sort of thing you remember. –
– I can imagine. Keep going, and keep your ears open. –
Then it was gone again.
It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later when I found out what he meant by keeping my ears open – although I don’t think I’d have missed it even if I’d been asleep. There’s a version of the BOOK OF TORAK which describes what the Dragon God did when he woke up – and Algar had shrewdly put his finger on when it was going to happen. Evidently a part of the arrangement between the voice in my head and the one in Torak’s had been the length of time Torak would remain comatose. Sunrise is a natural transition, and it was then that old One-eye finally woke up. We were ten miles away from the city by then, but we could still hear him as he screamed his fury and then wrecked the entire city – even going so far as to knock down his own tower. It was one of the more spectacular temper-tantrums in the history of the world.
‘Why don’t we run for a while?’ Algar suggested as the awful sound of the destruction of Cthol Mishrak knocked all the snow off the trees along the riverbank.
‘We are running,’ Dras told him.
‘Why don’t we run faster?’ That was when I found out why Algar was called Fleet-foot. Lord, that boy could run!
The BOOK OF ALORN tells the story of what happened there in Mallorea. It’s a very good story, filled with drama, excitement, and mythic significance. I’ve recited it myself on any n
umber of occasions. It’s related to what really happened only by implication, but it’s still a good story. The fellow who wrote it was an Alorn, after all, and he overstated the significance of the land-bridge – largely, I suspect, because a pair of Alorns discovered it. In actuality, I didn’t even see the land-bridge during that journey – mainly because there were probably several hundred Angaraks standing on each one of those rocky islets waiting for us. We had traveled to Mallorea across the frozen Sea of the East, and we went back home the same way.
Torak’s outburst – for which I’ll take partial credit, since my goading as we were leaving his tower undoubtedly contributed to his rage – completely demoralized the Grolims, Chandim, and ordinary Angaraks who’d lived in Cthol Mishrak. Beldin has since discovered that it was ultimately Ctuchik who restored order – with his customary brutality. It still took him several hours, however, and even then our ruse diverted him. The Angaraks found the six butchered Grolims at the north gate, and Ctuchik sent the Hounds off to the north and the west without stopping to consider the possibility of trickery.
The day up there didn’t last very long, but nightfall didn’t slow the Alorns and me. We followed Algar on down-river, moving as fast as we possibly could.
When the sun put in its brief appearance the following day, however, the Hounds returned to the ruins of Cthol Mishrak and reported to Ctuchik that they’d found no trace of us. That’s when Torak’s disciple expanded his search. Inevitably, some sharp-nosed Hound picked up our scent. Then the chase was on. Ctuchik crammed several hundred ordinary Grolims into the shape of Hounds, killing about half of them in the process, and that huge, ravening pack came galloping down the river after us.
‘What are we going to do, Belgarath?’ Cherek gasped. ‘The boys and I are starting to get winded. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to run.’
‘I’m going to try something,’ I told him. ‘Let’s stop and catch our breath here while I work out the details.’ I went over it in my mind again. Riva had ultimate power tucked inside his tunic, but he wasn’t supposed to use it. If my reasoning was correct, though, he wouldn’t have to. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘this is how we’ll work it. Riva, when those Hounds behind us come into sight, I want you to take out the Orb and hold it up so that they can see it.’
‘I thought you said I wasn’t supposed to.’
‘I didn’t say that you were going to use it. I just told you to hold it up. I want the Chandim to be able to see it – and I want it to be able to see them.’
‘What good’s that going to do?’
Actually, I wasn’t really sure, but I had a strong hunch about what would happen. ‘It’d take too long to explain. Have I been wrong yet?’
‘Well – I suppose not.’
‘Then you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that I know what I’m doing.’ I was praying rather fervently that I did, in fact, know what I was doing.
It wasn’t very long before several dozen Hounds came loping around a bend in that frozen river. ‘All right, Riva,’ I said. ‘Now’s the time. Raise up the Orb. Don’t give it any orders, just hold it up. Don’t squeeze it. I know how strong your hands are. If you get excited and crush the Orb, we’re in trouble.’
‘I thought we already were,’ Cherek muttered somewhere behind me.
‘I heard that,’ I threw back over my shoulder at him.
Riva sighed, took out the Orb, and held it over his head. ‘Good bye, father,’ he said mournfully.
The Hounds running after us skidded to a stop on the slippery river as they caught sight of the glowing Orb in Riva’s upraised hand.
Then the Orb stopped glowing. It flickered and then went dark.
Riva groaned.
Then the Orb woke up again, and it didn’t glow blue this time. The light that blazed forth from it was pure white, and it was about three times brighter than the sun.
The Chandim fled, howling in pain, stumbling, bumping into each other, and with their toenails shrieking across the ice.
I don’t know if any of those Grolims ever regained their sight, but I do know that they were all totally blind when they ran back up the river.
‘Well,’ I said with a certain astonishment, ‘what do you know? It worked after all. What an amazing thing!’
‘Belgarath!’ There was a note of anguish in Cherek’s voice. ‘Are you saying that you didn’t know?’
‘It was theoretically sound,’ I replied, ‘but you never really know about theories until you try them out.’
‘What happened?’ Dras demanded.
I shrugged. ‘Riva’s forbidden to use the Orb. That’s why the Orb permits him to touch it. He couldn’t do anything, but the Orb could – and it did. The Orb doesn’t like Torak – or the Angaraks. It does like Riva, though. I deliberately put him in danger, and that forced the Orb to take matters into its own hands. It worked out rather well, don’t you think?’
They stared at me in absolute horror. ‘Remind me never to play dice with you, Belgarath,’ Dras said in a trembling voice. ‘You take too many chances.’
With Ctuchik and Torak both to drive them, more of the Hounds came back down the river after us, and a fair number of Grolims as well. There were mounted men following along behind the Grolims, helmeted men in mail shirts and carrying assorted weapons. Those were the first Murgos I ever saw. I didn’t like them then, and my opinion of them hasn’t improved over the years. Their horses were somewhat bigger than the scrubby little ponies found on the other side of the Sea of the East, but the Murgos were still too big for their mounts.
All right, I’ll be mentioning Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls from time to time as we go along, so I’m going to sort them out for you. The three Angarak tribes that migrated to the western continent after the destruction of Cthol Mishrak were not, in fact, tribes at all. They were all Angaraks, but the almost two thousand years that they had lived in the City of Night had modified them. The differences between them were not racial nor tribal, but rather were based on class. The word ‘Murgo’ in old Angarak meant warrior; the word ‘Nadrak’ meant townsman; and the word ‘Thull’ meant peasant or serf. Murgos are built like soldiers, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted and generally athletic. Nadraks tend to be leaner. Thulls are built like oxen. Torak had been so intent on trying to subdue the Orb that he hadn’t paid any attention to what was happening to the inhabitants of Cthol Mishrak as a result of two thousand years of what might be called selective breeding, and he assumed that they differed from each other because they were of different tribes. That’s one of the reasons that the Angarak societies he exported to the west didn’t work very well. Murgos felt that work was beneath their dignity; Thulls were too stupid to set up anything even resembling a government; and Nadraks had nobody to swindle but each other.
Have you got all that straight? Try to remember it. I don’t want to have to go through it all again. I repeat myself often enough as it is.
The Hounds had been made wary by what had happened to their pack-mates, so they held back while the Murgos and Grolims rushed to the attack. I didn’t even have to tell Riva what to do this time. He took out the Orb and held it up over his head.
Once again the Orb flickered and went out, and once again it took fire. It went a little further this time, however. It was probably the first time in its history that Cthol Mishrak had been fully illuminated, and the western slopes of the Karandese mountains and the Sea of the East as far north as the pole and as far west as the shores of Morindland were engulfed in a light that was at least as bright as the light that reached us at Korim three thousand years later.
The charging Murgos and Grolims were instantly incinerated by that awful light. I discovered something about the Orb in that moment. It had a certain innate sense of decency. It warned people before it unleashed its power on them. That’s what the blinding of the Hounds had been – a warning. There was only one, though. If people chose to ignore the Orb’s first warning, they didn’t get a second.
&
nbsp; The Alorns and I were stunned by the enormity of what had just happened, and the Hounds took advantage of our momentary confusion to circle around along the riverbanks to get ahead of us, and that made it possible for them to slow us down. That single flash of brilliant light had temporarily blinded us, too, and we floundered along in the darkness after it subsided. Our near-blindness, coupled with the periodic suicidal charges of individual Hounds, slowed us to the point that we continued down-river at a crawl.
‘How much farther to the coast?’ Cherek panted.
‘I have no idea,’ I admitted.
‘This isn’t turning out well, Belgarath.’
‘You worry too much.’ I turned teary eyes at his youngest son. ‘Keep holding it up in the air, Riva. Let it see what’s coming after us.’
We kept going down the river, our trip punctuated by a series of bright flashes and what sounded like thunderclaps as the Orb exploded the Hounds that came rushing at us from the riverbanks.
‘They’re coming up from behind us, Belgarath!’ Dras called from the rear. ‘Torak’s with them!’
I swore. I hadn’t expected this. It’s not like the Gods to take a hand in these skirmishes. – Is he supposed to do that? – I threw the question into the echoing vaults of my mind.
– No, he’s not! – My passenger sounded suddenly very angry. – He’s cheating! –
– Does that mean that the rules have been suspended? –
– I think it does. Be careful though. We don’t want to blow up this whole side of the universe. –
I choked a little on that – Do you want me to do it? –
– Absolutely not! If you take up the Orb, it’ll attach itself to you, and you’ll never be able to get rid of it. You’d have to become its guardian, and you don’t have time for that. Tell Riva what to do. Don’t let him destroy Torak, whatever happens. He’s not the one who’s supposed to do that. –
‘Cherek!’ I said sharply, ‘Take Dras and Algar! Hold those people back while I talk to Riva!’
Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress Page 24
