Enchanters' End Game

by David Eddings

  ‘Trust me,’ Silk replied, grinning.

  ‘Not very likely,’ Belgarath grunted. ‘I’ll be Garion’s magician. I’ll carry a staff with a horned skull on it that will make most Morindim avoid us.’

  ‘Most?’ Silk asked quickly.

  ‘It’s considered bad manners to interfere with a quest, but it happens now and then.’ The old man looked critically at Garion’s tattoos. ‘Good enough,’ he said and turned to Silk with his quill.

  When it was all done, the three of them were scarcely recognizable. The markings the old man had carefully drawn on their arms and faces were not pictures so much as they were designs. Their faces had been changed into hideous devil masks, and the exposed parts of their bodies were covered with symbols etched in black ink. They wore fur-covered trousers and vests and bone necklaces clattered about their necks. Their stained arms and shoulders were bared and intricately marked.

  Then Belgarath went down into the valley lying just below the cave, seeking something. It did not take his probing mind long to find what he needed. As Garion watched with revulsion, the old man casually violated a grave. He dug up a grinning human skull and carefully tapped the dirt out of it. ‘I’ll need some deer horns,’ he told Garion. ‘Not too large and fairly well-matched.’ He squatted, fierce-looking in his furs and tattoos, and began to scrub at the skull with handfuls of dry sand.

  There were weather-bleached horns lying here and there in the tall grass, since the deer of the region shed their antlers each winter. Garion gathered a dozen or so and returned to the cave to find his grandfather boring a pair of holes in the top of the skull. He critically examined the horns Garion had brought him, selected a pair of them and screwed them down into the holes. The grating sound of horn against bone set Garion’s teeth on edge. ‘What do you think?’ Belgarath asked, holding up the horned skull.

  ‘It’s grotesque,’ Garion shuddered.

  ‘That was the general idea,’ the old man replied. He attached the skull firmly to the top of a long staff, decorated it with several feathers and then rose to his feet. ‘Let’s pack up and leave,’ he said.

  They rode down through the treeless foothills and out into the bending, waist-high grass as the sun swung down toward the southwestern horizon to dip briefly behind the peaks of the range they had just crossed. The smell of the uncured pelts Silk had sewn to their clothing was not very pleasant, and Garion did his best not to look at the hideously altered skull surmounting Belgarath’s staff as they rode.

  ‘We’re being watched,’ Silk mentioned rather casually after an hour or so of riding.

  ‘I was sure we would be,’ Belgarath replied. ‘Just keep going.’

  Their first meeting with the Morindim came just as the sun rose. They had paused on the sloping gravel bank of a meandering stream to water their mounts, and a dozen or so fur-clad riders, their dark faces tattooed into devil masks, cantered up to the opposite bank and stopped. They did not speak, but looked hard at the identifying marks Belgarath had so painstakingly contrived. After a brief, whispered consultation, they turned their horses and rode back away from the stream. Several minutes later, one came galloping back, carrying a bundle wrapped in a fox skin. He paused, dropped the bundle on the bank of the stream, and then rode off again without looking back.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Garion asked.

  ‘The bundle’s a gift – of sorts,’ Belgarath answered. ‘It’s an offering to any devils who might be accompanying us. Go pick it up.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘A bit of this, a bit of that. I wouldn’t open it, if I were you. You’re forgetting that you’re not supposed to talk.’

  ‘There’s nobody around,’ Garion replied, turning his head this way and that, looking for any sign of their being watched.

  ‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ the old man replied. ‘There could be a hundred of them hiding in the grass. Go pick up the gift and we’ll move along. They’re polite enough, but they’ll be a lot happier when we take our devils out of their territory.’

  They rode on across the flat, featureless plain with a cloud of flies, drawn by the smell of their untanned fur garments, plaguing them.

  Their next meeting, several days later, was less congenial. They had moved into a hilly region where huge, rounded, white boulders rose out of the grass and where shaggy-coated wild oxen with great, sweeping horns grazed. A high overcast had moved in, and the gray sky diffused the light, making the brief twilight that marked the passage of one day into the next an only slightly perceptible darkening. They were riding down a gentle slope toward a large lake, which lay like a sheet of lead under the cloudy sky, when there suddenly arose from the tall grass all around them tattooed and fur-clad warriors holding long spears and short bows that appeared to be made of bone.

  Garion reined in sharply and looked at Belgarath for instruction.

  ‘Just look straight at them,’ his grandfather told him quietly, ‘and remember that you’re not permitted to speak.’

  ‘More of them coming,’ Silk said tersely, jerking his chin toward the crest of a nearby hill where perhaps a dozen Morindim, mounted on paint-decorated ponies, were approaching at a walk.

  ‘Let me do the talking,’ Belgarath said.

  ‘Gladly.’

  The man in the lead of the mounted group was burlier than most of his companions, and the black tattooing on his face had been outlined with red and blue, marking him as a man of some significance in his clan and making the devil mask of his features all the more hideous. He carried a large wooden club, painted with strange symbols and inlaid with rows of sharp teeth taken from various animals. The way he carried it indicated that it was more a badge of office than a weapon. He rode without a saddle and with a single bridle strap. He pulled his pony to a stop perhaps thirty yards away. ‘Why have you come into the lands of the Weasel Clan?’ he demanded abruptly. His accent was strange and his eyes were flat with hostility.

  Belgarath drew himself up indignantly. ‘Surely the Headman of the Weasel Clan has seen the quest-mark before,’ he replied coldly. ‘We have no interest in the lands of the Weasel Clan, but follow the commands of the Devil-Spirit of the Wolf Clan in the quest he has laid upon us.’

  ‘I have not heard of the Wolf Clan,’ the Headman replied. ‘Where are their lands?’

  ‘To the west,’ Belgarath replied. ‘We have traveled for two waxings and wanings of the Moon-Spirit to reach this place.’

  The Headman seemed impressed by that.

  A Morind with long white braids and with a thin, dirty-looking beard drew his pony in beside that of the Headman. In his right hand he carried a staff surmounted by the skull of a large bird. The gaping beak of the skull had been decorated with teeth, giving it a ferocious appearance. ‘What is the name of the Devil-Spirit of the Wolf Clan?’ he demanded. ‘I may know him.’

  ‘That is doubtful, Magician of the Weasel Clan,’ Belgarath answered politely. ‘He seldom goes far from his people. In any case, I cannot speak his name, since he has forbidden it to any but the dreamers.’

  ‘Can you say what his aspect is and his attributes?’ the white-braided magician asked.

  Silk made a long-gurgling sound in the back of his throat, stiffened in his saddle and rolled his eyes gruesomely back in his head until only the whites showed. With a convulsive, jerking motion, he thrust both arms into the air. ‘Beware the Devil Agrinja, who stalks unseen behind us,’ he intoned in a hollow, oracular voice. ‘I have seen his three-eyed face and his hundred-fanged mouth in my dreams. The eye of mortal man may not behold him, but his seven-clawed hands reach out even now to rend apart all who would stand in the path of his chosen quester, the spear-bearer of the Wolf Clan. I have seen him feed in my nightmares. The ravener approaches and he hungers for man-meat. Flee his hunger.’ He shuddered, dropping his arms and slumping forward in his saddle as if suddenly exhausted.

  ‘You’ve been here before, I see,’ Belgarath muttered under his breath. ‘Try to restrain y
our creativity, though. Remember that I might have to produce what you dream up.’

  Silk cast him a sidelong wink. His description of the Devil had made a distinct impression on the Morindim. The mounted men looked about nervously, and those standing in the waist-high grass moved involuntarily closer together, grasping their weapons in trembling hands.

  Then a thin Morind with a white fur band around his left arm pushed through the cluster of frightened warriors. His right leg ended in a clubfoot, and he lurched grotesquely as he walked. He fixed Silk with a glare of pure hatred, then threw both hands wide, quivering and jerking. His back arched and he toppled over, threshing in the grass in the throes of an apparent seizure. He went completely stiff and then he started to speak. ‘The Devil-Spirit of the Weasel Clan, dread Horja, speaks to me. He demands to know why the Devil Agrinja sends his quester into the lands of the Weasel Clan. The Devil Horja is too awful to look upon. He has four eyes and a hundred and ten teeth, and each of his six hands has eight claws. He feeds on the bellies of men and he hungers.’

  ‘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 grass 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, brandishing 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 shimmering 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 shimmering became more pronounced, and it seemed that the shattered pieces of a rainbow infused it, flickering, shifting, undulating in waves almost like varihued flames rising from an invisible fire. As Garion watched, fascinated, a second shimmering became apparent, rising above the tall grass 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, shifting, changing, gathering form from the coruscating colors flashing about them in the shimmering air. Then it seemed that the shapes, having reached a certain point, flashed to completion, coalescing quite suddenly with a great rushing 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 grass 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 cluster 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 white-braided 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 unpronounceable 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 crushing the grass 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 grass 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 over, 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 shifting 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.’