Enchanters' End Game

by David Eddings

  ‘I can’t,’ Garion groaned, his stomach heaving violently again.

  ‘How long will Horja chase the others?’ Silk asked.

  ‘Until the sun goes down,’ Belgarath told him. ‘I imagine that the Weasel Clan is in for a bad afternoon.’

  ‘Is there any chance that he’ll turn around and come after us?’

  ‘He has no reason to. We didn’t try to enslave him. As soon as Garion gets his stomach under control again, we can go on. We won’t be bothered any more.’

  Garion stumbled to his feet, weakly wiping his mouth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Belgarath asked him.

  ‘Not really,’ Garion replied, ‘but there’s nothing left to come up.’

  ‘Get a drink of water and try not to think about it.’

  ‘Will you have to do that any more?’ Silk asked, his eyes a bit wild.

  ‘No,’ Belgarath pointed. There were several riders along the crest of a hill perhaps a mile away. ‘The other Morindim in the area watched the whole thing. The word will spread, and nobody will come anywhere near us now. Let’s mount up and get going. It’s still a long way to the coast.’

  In bits and pieces, as they rode for the next several days, Garion picked up as much information as he really wanted about the dreadful contest he had witnessed.

  ‘It’s the shape that’s the key to the whole thing,’ Belgarath concluded. ‘What the Morindim call Devil-Spirits don’t look that much different from humans. You form an illusion drawn out of your imagination and force the spirit into it. As long as you can keep it locked up in that illusion, it has to do what you tell it to. If the illusion falters for any reason, the spirit breaks free and resumes its real form. After that, you have no control over it whatsoever. I have a certain advantage in these matters. Changing back and forth from a man to a wolf has sharpened my imagination a bit.’

  ‘Why did Beldin say you were a bad magician then?’ Silk asked curiously.

  ‘Beldin’s a purist,’ the old man shrugged. ‘He feels that it’s necessary to get everything into the shape – down to the last scale and toenail. It isn’t, really, but he feels that way about it.’

  ‘Do you suppose we could talk about something else?’ Garion asked.

  They reached the coastline a day or so later. The sky had remained overcast, and the Sea of the East lay sullen and rolling under dirty gray clouds. The beach along which they rode was a broad shingle of black, round stones littered with chunks of white, bleached driftwood. Waves rolled foaming up the beach, only to slither back with an endless, mournful sigh. Sea birds hung in the stiff breeze, screaming.

  ‘Which way?’ Silk asked.

  Belgarath looked around. ‘North,’ he replied.

  ‘How far?’

  ‘I’m not positive. It’s been a long time, and I can’t be sure exactly where we are.’

  ‘You’re not the best guide in the world, old friend,’ Silk complained.

  ‘You can’t have everything.’

  They reached the land bridge two days later, and Garion stared at it in dismay. It was not at all what he had expected, but consisted of a series of round, wave-eroded white boulders sticking up out of the dark water and running in an irregular line off toward a dark smudge on the horizon. The wind was blowing out of the north, carrying with it a bitter chill and the smell of polar ice. Patches of white froth stretched from boulder to boulder as the swells ripped themselves to tatters on submerged reefs.

  ‘How are we supposed to cross that?’ Silk objected.

  ‘We wait until low tide,’ Belgarath explained. ‘The reefs are mostly out of the water then.’

  ‘Mostly?’

  ‘We might have to wade a bit from time to time. Let’s strip these furs off our clothes before we start. It will give us something to do while we’re waiting for the tide to turn, and they’re starting to get a bit fragrant.’

  They took shelter behind a pile of driftwood far up on the beach and removed the stiff, smelly furs from their clothing. Then they dug food out of their packs and ate. Garion noted that the stain that had darkened the skin on his hands had begun to wear thin and that the tattoo-drawings on the faces of his companions had grown noticeably fainter.

  It grew darker, and the period of twilight that separated one day from the next seemed longer than it had no more than a week ago.

  ‘Summer’s nearly over up here,’ Belgarath noted, looking out at the boulders gradually emerging from the receding water in the murky twilight.

  ‘How much longer before low tide?’ Silk asked.

  ‘Another hour or so.’

  They waited. The wind pushed at the pile of driftwood erratically and brushed the tall grass along the upper edge of the beach, bending and tossing it.

  Finally Belgarath stood up. ‘Let’s go,’ he said shortly. ‘We’ll lead the horses. The reefs are slippery, so be careful how you set your feet down.’

  The passage along the reef between the first steppingstones was not all that bad, but once they moved farther out, the wind became a definite factor. They were frequently drenched with stinging spray, and every so often a wave, larger than the others, broke over the top of the reef and swirled about their legs, tugging at them. The water was brutally cold.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be able to make it all the way across before the tide comes back in again?’ Silk shouted over the noise.

  ‘No,’ Belgarath shouted back. ‘We’ll have to sit it out on top of one of the larger rocks.’

  ‘That sounds unpleasant.’

  ‘Not nearly so unpleasant as swimming.’

  They were perhaps halfway across when it became evident that the tide had turned. Waves more and more frequently broke across the top of the reef, and one particularly large one pulled the legs of Garion’s horse out from under him. Garion struggled to get the frightened animal up again, pulling at the reins as the horse’s hoofs scrambled and slid on the slippery rocks of the reef. ‘We’d better find a place to stop, Grandfather,’ he yelled above the crash of the waves. ‘We’ll be neck-deep in this before long.’

  ‘Two more islands,’ Belgarath told him. ‘There’s a bigger one up ahead.’

  The last stretch of reef was completely submerged, and Garion flinched as he stepped down into the icy water. The breaking waves covered the surface with froth, making it impossible to see the bottom. He moved along blindly, probing the unseen path with numb feet. A large wave swelled and rose up as far as his armpits, and its powerful surge swept him off his feet. He clung to the reins of his horse, floundering and sputtering as he fought to get back up.

  And then they were past the worst of it. They moved along the reef with the water only ankle-deep now; a few moments later, they climbed up onto the large, white boulder. Garion let out a long, explosive breath as he reached safety. The wind, blowing against his wet clothing, chilled him to the bone but at least they were out of the water.

  Later, as they sat huddled together on the leeward side of the boulder, Garion looked out across the sullen black sea toward the low, forbidding coastline lying ahead. The beaches, like those of Morindland behind them, were black gravel, and the low hills behind them were dark under the scudding gray cloud. Nowhere was there any sign of life, but there was an implicit threat in the very shape of the land itself.

  ‘Is that it?’ he asked finally in a hushed voice.

  Belgarath’s face was unreadable as he gazed across the open water toward the coast ahead. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That’s Mallorea.’

  Part Two

  MISHRAK AC THULL

  Chapter Eight

  The crown had been Queen Islena’s first mistake. It was heavy and it always gave her a headache. Her decision to wear it had come originally out of a sense of insecurity. The bearded warriors in Anheg’s throne room intimidated her, and she felt the need of a visible symbol of her authority. Now she was afraid to appear without it. Each day she put it on with less pleasure and entered the main hall of Anheg’s palace with less certaint
y.

  The sad truth was that Queen Islena of Cherek was completely unprepared to rule. Until the day when, dressed in regal crimson velvet and with her gold crown firmly in place, she had marched into the vaulted throne room at Val Alorn to announce that she would rule the kingdom in her husband’s absence, Islena’s most momentous decisions had involved which gown she would wear and how her hair was to be arranged. Now it seemed that the fate of Cherek hung in the balance each time she was faced with a choice.

  The warriors lounging indolently with their ale cups about the huge, open fire pit or wandering aimlessly about on the rush-strewn floor were no help whatsoever. Each time she entered the throne room, all conversation broke off and they rose to watch as she marched to the banner-hung throne, but their faces gave no hint of their true feelings toward her. Irrationally, she concluded that the whole problem had to do with the beards. How could she possibly know what a man was thinking when his face was sunk up to the ears in hair? Only the quick intervention of Lady Merel, the cool blond wife of the Earl of Trellheim, had stopped her from ordering a universal shave.

  ‘You can’t, Islena,’ Merel had told her flatly, removing the quill from the queen’s hand, even as she had been in the act of signing the hastily drawn-up proclamation. ‘They’re attached to their beards like little boys attached to a favorite toy. You can’t make them cut off their whiskers.’

  ‘I’m the Queen.’

  ‘Only as long as they permit you to be. They accept you out of respect for Anheg, and that’s as far as it goes. If you tamper with their pride, they’ll take you off the throne.’ And that dreadful threat had ended the matter then and there.

  Islena found herself relying more and more on Barak’s wife, and it was not long before the two of them, one in green and the other in royal crimson, were seldom apart. Even when Islena faltered, Merel’s icy stare quelled the hints of disrespect which cropped up from time to time – usually when the ale had been distributed a bit too freely. It was Merel, ultimately, who made the day-to-day decisions which ran the kingdom. When Islena sat upon the throne, Merel, her blond braids coiled about her head to form her own crown, stood to one side in plain view of the hesitant queen. Cherek was ruled by the expressions on her face. A faint smile meant yes; a frown, no; a scarcely perceptible shrug, maybe. It worked out fairly well.

  But there was one person who was not intimidated by Merel’s cool gaze. Grodeg, the towering, white-bearded High Priest of Belar, inevitably requested private audience with the queen, and once Merel left the council room, Islena was lost.

  Despite Anheg’s call for a general mobilization, the members of the Bear-cult had not yet left to join the campaign. Their promises to join the fleet later all sounded sincere, but their excuses and delays grew more and more obvious as time went on. Islena knew that Grodeg was behind it all. Nearly every able-bodied man in the kingdom was off with the fleet, which was even now rowing up the broad expanse of the Aldur River to join Anheg in central Algaria. The household guard in the palace at Val Alorn had been reduced to grizzled old men and downy-cheeked boys. Only the Bear-cult remained, and Grodeg pushed his advantage to the limit.

  He was polite enough, bowing to the queen when the occasion demanded, and never mentioning her past links with the cult, but his offers to help became more and more insistent; and when Islena faltered at his suggestions concerning this matter or that, he smoothly acted to implement them as if her hesitancy had been acceptance. Little by little, Islena was losing control, and Grodeg, with the armed might of the cult behind him, was taking charge. More and more the cult members infested the palace, giving orders, lounging about the throne room and openly grinning as they watched Islena’s attempts to rule.

  ‘You’re going to have to do something, Islena,’ Merel said firmly one evening when the two were alone in the queen’s private apartment. She was striding about the carpeted room, her hair gleaming like soft gold in the candlelight, but there was nothing soft in her expression.

  ‘What can I do?’ Islena pleaded, wringing her hands. ‘He’s never openly disrespectful, and his decisions always seem to be in the best interests of Cherek.’

  ‘You need help, Islena,’ Merel told her.

  ‘Whom can I turn to?’ The Queen of Cherek was almost in tears.

  The Lady Merel smoothed the front of her green velvet gown. ‘I think it’s time that you wrote to Porenn,’ she declared.

  ‘What do I say?’ Islena begged of her.

  Merel pointed at the small table in the corner where parchment and ink lay waiting. ‘Sit down,’ she instructed, ‘and write what I tell you to write.’

  Count Brador, the Tolnedran ambassador, was definitely growing tiresome, Queen Layla decided. The plump little queen marched purposefully toward the chamber where she customarily gave audiences and where the ambassador awaited her with his satchel full of documents.

  The courtiers in the halls bowed as she passed, her crown slightly askew and her heels clicking on the polished oak floors, but Queen Layla uncharacteristically ignored them. This was not the time for polite exchanges or idle chitchat. The Tolnedran had to be dealt with, and she had delayed too long already.

  The ambassador was an olive-skinned man with receding hair and a hooked nose. He wore a brown mantle with the gold trim that indicated his relationship to the Borunes. He lounged rather indolently in a large, cushioned chair near the window of the sunny room where he and Queen Layla were to meet. He rose as she entered and bowed with exquisite grace. ‘Your Highness,’ he murmured politely.

  ‘My dear Count Brador,’ Queen Layla gushed at him, putting on her most helpless and scatterbrained expression, ‘please do sit down. I’m sure we know each other well enough by now to skip all these tedious formalities.’ She sank into a chair, fanning herself with one hand. ‘It’s turned warm, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Summers are lovely here in Sendaria, your Highness,’ the count replied, settling back in his chair. ‘I wonder – have you had the chance to think over the proposals I gave you at our last meeting?’

  Queen Layla stared at him blankly. ‘Which proposals were those, Count Brador?’ She gave a helpless little giggle. ‘Please forgive me, but my mind seems to be absolutely gone these days. There are so many details. I wonder how my husband keeps them all straight.’

  ‘We were discussing the administration of the port at Camaar, your Highness,’ the count reminded her gently.

  ‘We were?’ The queen gave him a blank look of total incomprehension, secretly delighted at the flicker of annoyance that crossed his face. It was her best ploy. By pretending to have forgotten all previous conversations, she forced him to begin at the beginning every time they met. The count’s strategy, she knew, depended upon a gradual build-up to his final proposal, and her pretended forgetfulness neatly defeated that. ‘Whatever led us into such a tedious subject as that?’ she added.

  ‘Surely your Highness recalls,’ the count protested with just the slightest hint of annoyance. ‘The Tolnedran merchant vessel, Star of Tol Horb, was kept standing at anchor for a week and a half in the harbor before moorage could be found for her. Every day’s delay in unloading her was costing a fortune.’

  ‘Things are so hectic these days,’ the queen of Sendaria sighed. ‘It’s the manpower shortage, you understand. Everybody who hasn’t gone off to war is busy freighting supplies to the army. I’ll send a very stern note to the port authorities about it, though. Was there anything else, Count Brador?’

  Brador coughed uncomfortably. ‘Uh – your Highness has already forwarded just such a note,’ he reminded her.

  ‘I have?’ Queen Layla feigned astonishment. ‘Wonderful. That takes care of everything then, doesn’t it? And you’ve dropped by to thank me.’ She smiled girlishly. ‘How exquisitely courteous of you.’ She leaned forward to put one hand impulsively on his wrist, quite deliberately knocking the rolled parchment he was holding out of his hand. ‘How clumsy of me,’ she exclaimed, bending quickly to pick up the parchment befor
e he could retrieve it. Then she sat back in her chair, tapping the rolled document absently against her cheek as if lost in thought.

  ‘Uh – actually, your Highness, our discussions had moved somewhat beyond your note to the port authorities,’ Brador told her, nervously eyeing the parchment she had so deftly taken from him. ‘You may recall that I offered Tolnedran assistance in administering the port. I believe we agreed that such assistance might help to alleviate the manpower shortage your Highness just mentioned.’

  ‘What an absolutely marvelous idea,’ Layla exclaimed. She brought her plump little fist down on the arm of her chair as if in an outburst of enthusiasm. At that prearranged signal, two of her younger children burst into the room, arguing loudly.

  ‘Mother!’ Princess Gelda wailed in outrage, ‘Fernie stole my red ribbon!’

  ‘I did not!’ Princess Ferna denied the charge indignantly. ‘She gave it to me for my blue beads.’

  ‘Did not!’ Gelda snapped.

  ‘Did so!’ Ferna replied.

  ‘Children, children,’ Layla chided them. ‘Can’t you see that Mother’s busy? What will the dear count think of us?’

  ‘But she stole it, Mother!’ Gelda protested. ‘She stole my red ribbon.’

  ‘Did not!’ Ferna said, spitefully sticking her tongue out at her sister.

  Trailing behind them with a look of wide-eyed interest came little Prince Meldig, Queen Layla’s youngest child. In one hand the prince held a jam pot, and his face was liberally smeared with the contents. ‘Oh, that’s just impossible,’ Layla exclaimed, jumping to her feet. ‘You girls are supposed to be watching him.’ She bustled over to the jam-decorated prince, crumpled the parchment she was holding and began wiping his face with it. Abruptly she stopped. ‘Oh dear,’ she said as if suddenly realizing what she was doing. ‘Was this important, Count Brador?’ she asked the Tolnedran, holding out the rumpled, sticky document.