Magician's Gambit

by David Eddings

  Ce'Nedra had only the faintest idea of what these people were doing. They seemed to be following someone or something, and the trail had led them here into the snake-infested swamps of Nyissa. Murgos seemed to be somehow involved, throwing frightful obstacles in their path, and Queen Salmissra also seemed to take an interest, even going so far as to have young Garion abducted.

  Ce'Nedra interrupted her musing to look across the cabin at the boy. Why would the queen of Nyissa want him? He was so ordinary. He was a peasant, a scullion, a nobody. He was a nice enough boy, certainly, with rather plain, sandy hair that kept tumbling down across his forehead, making her fingers itch to push it back. He had a nice enough face - in a plain sort of way - and he was somebody she could talk to when she was lonely or frightened, and somebody she could fight with when she felt peevish, since he was only slightly older than she was. But he completely refused to treat her with the respect due her - he probably didn't even know how. Why all this excruciating interest in him? She pondered that, looking thoughtfully at him.

  She was doing it again. Angrily she jerked her eyes from his face. Why was she always watching him? Each time her thoughts wandered, her eyes automatically sought out his face, and it wasn't really that exciting a face to look at. She had even caught herself making up excuses to put herself into places where she could watch him. It was stupid!

  Ce'Nedra nibbled at her hair and thought and nibbled some more, until once again her eyes went back to their minute study of Garion's features.

  "Is he going to be all right?" Barak, the Earl of Trellheim, rumbled, tugging absently at his great red beard as he watched the Lady Polgara put the finishing touches on Belgarath's sling.

  "It's a simple break," she replied professionally, putting away her bandages. "And the old fool heals fast."

  Belgarath winced as he shifted his newly splinted arm. "You didn't have to be so rough, Pol." His rust-colored old tunic showed several dark mud smears and a new rip, evidence of his encounter with a tree.

  "It had to be set, father," she told him. "You didn't want it to heal crooked, did you?"

  "I think you actually enjoyed it," he accused.

  "Next time you can set it yourself," she suggested coolly, smoothing her gray dress.

  "I need a drink," Belgarath grumbled to the hulking Barak.

  The Earl of Trellheim went to the narrow door. "Would you have a tankard of ale brought for Belgarath?" he asked the sailor outside.

  "How is he?" the sailor inquired.

  "Bad-tempered," Barak replied. "And he'll probably get worse if he doesn't get a drink pretty soon."

  "I'll go at once," the sailor said.

  "Wise decision."

  This was yet another confusing thing for Ce'Nedra. The noblemen in their party all treated this shabby-looking old man with enormous respect; but so far as she could tell, he didn't even have a title. She could determine with exquisite precision the exact difference between a baron and a general of the Imperial Legions, between a grand duke of Tolnedra and a crown prince of Arendia, between the Rivan Warder and the king of the Chereks; but she had not the faintest idea where sorcerers fit in. The materially oriented mind of Tolnedra refused even to admit that sorcerers existed. While it was quite true that Lady Polgara, with titles from half the kingdoms of the West, was the most respected woman in the world, Belgarath was a vagabond, a vagrant, frequently a public nuisance. And Garion, she reminded herself, was his grandson.

  "I think it's time you told us what happened, father," Lady Polgara was saying to her patient.

  "I'd really rather not talk about it," he replied shortly.

  She turned to Prince Kheldar, the peculiar little Drasnian nobleman with the sharp face and sardonic wit, who lounged on a bench with an impudent expression on his face. "Well, Silk?" she asked him.

  "I'm sure you can see my position, old friend," the prince apologized to Belgarath with a great show of regret. "If I try to keep secrets, she'll only force things out of me - unpleasantly, I imagine."

  Belgarath looked at him with a stony face, then snorted with disgust.

  "It's not that I want to say anything, you realize."

  Belgarath turned away.

  "I knew you'd understand."

  "The story, Silk!" Barak insisted impatiently. "It's really very simple," Kheldar told him.

  "But you're going to complicate it, right?"

  "Just tell us what happened, Silk," Polgara said.

  The Drasnian sat up on his bench. "It's not really much of a story," he began. "We located Zedar's trail and followed it down into Nyissa about three weeks ago. We had a few encounters with some Nyissan border guards - nothing very serious. Anyway, the trail of the Orb turned east almost as soon as it crossed the border. That was a surprise. Zedar had been headed for Nyissa with so much single-mindedness that we'd both assumed that he'd made some kind of arrangement with Salmissra. Maybe that's what he wanted everybody to think. He's very clever, and Salmissra's notorious for involving herself in things that don't really concern her."

  "I've attended to that," Lady Polgara said somewhat grimly.

  "What happened?" Belgarath asked her.

  "I'll tell you about it later, father. Go on, Silk."

  Silk shrugged. "There isn't a great deal more to it. We followed Zedar's trail into one of those ruined cities up near the old Marag border. Belgarath had a visitor there - at least he said he did. I didn't see anybody. At any rate, he told me that something had happened to change our plans and that we were going to have to turn around and come on downriver to Sthiss Tor to rejoin all of you. He didn't have time to explain much more, because the jungles were suddenly alive with Murgos - either looking for us or for Zedar, we never found out which. Since then we've been dodging Murgos and Nyissans both - traveling at night, hiding - that sort of thing. We sent a messenger once. Did he ever get through?"

  "The day before yesterday," Polgara replied. "He had a fever, though, and it took a while to get your message from him."

  Kheldar nodded. "Anyway, there were Grolims with the Murgos, and they were trying to find us with their minds. Belgarath was doing something to keep them from locating us that way. Whatever it was must have taken a great deal of concentration, because he wasn't paying too much attention to where he was going. Early this morning we were leading the horses through a patch of swamp. Belgarath was sort of stumbling along with his mind on other things, and that was when the tree fell on him."

  "I might have guessed," Polgara said. "Did someone make it fall?"

  "I don't think so," Silk answered. "It might have been an old deadfall, but I rather doubt it. It was rotten at the center. I tried to warn him, but he walked right under it."

  "All right," Belgarath said.

  "I did try to warn you."

  "Don't belabor it, Silk."

  "I wouldn't want them to think I didn't try to warn you," Silk protested.

  Polgara shook her head and spoke with a profound note of disappointment in her voice. "Father!"

  "Just let it lie, Polgara," Belgarath told her.

  "I dug him out from under the tree and patched him up as best I could," Silk went on. "Then I stole that little boat and we started downriver. We were doing fine until all this dust started falling."

  "What did you do with the horses?" Hettar asked. Ce'Nedra was a little afraid to this tall, silent Algar lord with his shaved head, his black leather clothing, and his flowing black scalp lock. He never seemed to smile, and the expression on his hawklike face at even the mention of the word "Murgo" was as bleak as stone. The only thing that even slightly humanized him was his overwhelming concern for horses.

  "They're all right," Silk assured him. "I left them picketed where the Nyissans won't find them. They'll be fine where they are until we pick them up."

  "You said when you came aboard that Ctuchik has the Orb now," Polgara said to Belgarath. "How did that happen?"

  The old man shrugged. "Beltira didn't go into any of the details. All he told me
was that Ctuchik was waiting when Zedar crossed the border into Cthol Murgos. Zedar managed to escape, but he had to leave the Orb behind."

  "Did you speak with Beltira?"

  "With his mind," Belgarath answered.

  "Did he say why the Master wants us to go to the Vale?"

  "No. It probably never occurred to him to ask. You know how Beltira is."

  "It's going to take months, father," Polgara objected with a worried frown. "It's two hundred and fifty leagues to the Vale."

  "Aldur wants us to go there," he answered. "I'm not going to start disobeying him after all these years."

  "And in the meantime, Ctuchik's got the Orb at Rak Cthol."

  "It's not going to do him any good, Pol. Torak himself couldn't make the Orb submit to him, and he tried for over two thousand years. I know where Rak Cthol is; Ctuchik can't hide it from me. He'll be there with the Orb when I decide to go take it away from him. I know how to deal with that magician." He said the word "magician" with a note of profound contempt in his voice.

  "What's Zedar going to be doing all that time?'

  "Zedar's got problems of his own. Beltira says that he's moved Torak from the place where he had him hidden. I think we can depend on him to keep Torak's body as far away from Rak Cthol as he possibly can. Actually, things have worked out rather well. I was getting a little tired of chasing Zedar anyway."

  Ce'Nedra found all this a bit confusing. Why were they all so caught up in the movements of a strangely named pair of Angarak sorcerers and this mysterious jewel which everyone seemed to covet? To her, one jewel was much the same as another. Her childhood had been surrounded by such opulence that she had long since ceased to attach much importance to ornaments. At the moment, her only adornment consisted of a pair of tiny gold earrings shaped like little acorns, and her fondness for them arose not so much from the fact that they were gold but rather from the tinkling sound the cunningly contrived clappers inside them made when she moved her head.

  All of this sounded like one of the Morn myths she'd heard from a storyteller in her father's court years before. There had been a magic jewel in that, she remembered. It was stolen by the God of the Angaraks, Torak, and rescued by a sorcerer and some Alorn kings who put it on the pommel of a sword kept in the throne room at Riva. It was somehow supposed to protect the West from some terrible disaster that would happen if it were lost. Curious - the name of the sorcerer in the legend was Belgarath, the same as that of this old man.

  But that would make him thousands of years old, which was ridiculous! He must have been named after the ancient myth hero - unless he'd assumed the name to impress people.

  Once again her eyes wandered to Garion's face. The boy sat quietly in one corner of the cabin, his eyes grave and his expression serious. She thought perhaps that it was his seriousness that so piqued her curiosity and kept drawing her eyes to him. Other boys she had known - nobles and the sons of nobles - had tried to be charming and witty, but Garion never tried to joke or to say clever things to try to amuse her. She was not entirely certain how to take that. Was he such a lump that he didn't know how he was supposed to behave? Or perhaps he knew but didn't care enough to make the effort. He might at least try - even if only occasionally. How could she possibly deal with him if he was going to refuse flatly to make a fool of himself for her benefit?

  She reminded herself sharply that she was angry with him. He had said that Queen Salmissra had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and it was far, far too early to forgive him for such an outrageous statement. She was definitely going to have to make him suffer extensively for that insulting lapse. Her fingers toyed absently with one of the curls cascading down the side of her face, her eyes boring into Garion's face.

  The following morning ashfall that was the result of a massive volcanic eruption somewhere in Cthol Murgos had diminished sufficiently to make the deck of the ship habitable again. The jungle along the riverbank was still partially obscured in the dusty haze, but the air was clear enough to breathe, and Ce'Nedra escaped from the sweltering cabin below decks with relief.

  Garion was sitting in the sheltered spot near the bow of the ship where he usually sat and he was deep in conversation with Belgarath. Ce'Nedra noted with a certain detachment that he had neglected to comb his hair that morning. She resisted her immediate impulse to go fetch comb and brush to rectify the situation. She drifted instead with artful dissimulation to a place along the rail where, without seeming to, she could conveniently eavesdrop.

  "-It's always been there," Garion was saying to his grandfather. "It used to just talk to me - tell me when I was being childish or stupid - that sort of thing. It seemed to be off in one corner of my mind all by itself."

  Belgarath nodded, scratching absently at his beard with his good hand. "It seems to be completely separate from you," he observed. "Has this voice in your head ever actually done anything? Besides talk to you, I mean."

  Garion's face grew thoughtful. "I don't think so. It tells me how to do things, but I think that I'm the one who has to do them. When we were at Salmissra's palace, I think it took me out of my body to go look for Aunt Pol." He frowned. "No," he corrected. "When I stop and think about it, it told me how to do it, but I was the one who actually did it. Once we were out, I could feel it beside me - it's the first time we've ever been separate. I couldn't actually see it, though. It did take over for a few minutes, I think. It talked to Salmissra to smooth things over and to hide what we'd been doing."

  "You've been busy since Silk and I left, haven't you?"

  Garion nodded glumly. "Most of it was pretty awful. I burned Asharak. Did you know that?"

  "Your Aunt told me about it."

  "He slapped her in the face," Garion told him. "I was going to go after him with my knife for that, but the voice told me to do it a different way. I hit him with my hand and said 'burn.' That's all, just 'burn'and he caught on fire. I was going to put it out until Aunt Pol told me he was the one who killed my mother and father. Then I made the fire hotter. He begged me to put it out, but I didn't do it." He shuddered.

  "I tried to warn you about that," Belgarath reminded him gently. "I told you that you weren't going to like it very much after it was over."

  Garion sighed. "I should have listened. Aunt Pol says that once you've used this-" He floundered, looking for a word.

  "Power?" Belgarath suggested.

  "All right," Garion assented. "She says that once you've used it, you never forget how, and you'll keep doing it again and again. I wish I had used my knife instead. Then this thing in me never would have gotten loose."

  "You're wrong, you know," Belgarath told him quite calmly. "You've been bursting at the seams with it for several months now. You've used it without knowing it at least a half dozen times that I know about."

  Garion stared at him incredulously.

  "Remember that crazy monk just after we crossed into Tolnedra? When you touched him, you made so much noise that I thought for a moment you'd killed him."

  "You said Aunt Pol did that."

  "I lied," the old man admitted casually. "I do that fairly often. The whole point, though, is that you've always had this ability. It was bound to come out sooner or later. I wouldn't feel too unhappy about what you did to Chamdar. It was a little exotic perhaps - not exactly the way I might have done it - but there was a certain justice to it, after all."

  "It's always going to be there, then?"

  "Always. That's the way it is, I'm afraid."

  The Princess Ce'Nedra felt rather smug about that. Belgarath had just confirmed something she herself had told Garion. If the boy would just stop being so stubborn, his Aunt and his grandfather and of course she herself - all of whom knew much better than he what was right and proper and good for him - could shape his life to their satisfaction with little or no difficulty.

  "Let's get back to this other voice of yours," Belgarath suggested. "I need to know more about it. I don't want you carrying an enemy around in your
mind."

  "It's not an enemy," Garion insisted. "It's on our side."

  "It might seem that way," Belgarath observed, "but things aren't always what they seem. I'd be a lot more comfortable if I knew just exactly what it is. I don't like surprises."

  The Princess Ce'Nedra, however, was already lost in thought. Dimly, at the back of her devious and complex little mind, an idea was beginning to take shape - an idea with very interesting possibilities.

  Chapter Two

  THE TRIP UP to the rapids of the River of the Serpent took the better part of a week. Although it was still swelteringly hot, they had all by now grown at least partially accustomed to the climate. Princess Ce'Nedra spent most of her time sitting on deck with Polgara, pointedly ignoring Garion. She did, however, glance frequently his way to see if she could detect any signs of suffering.

  Since her life was entirely in the hands of these people, Ce'Nedra felt keenly the necessity for winning them over. Belgarath would be no problem. A few winsome little-girl smiles, a bit of eyelash fluttering, and a spontaneous-seeming kiss or two would wrap him neatly around one of her fingers. That particular campaign could be conducted at any time she felt it convenient, but Polgara was a different matter. For one thing, Ce'Nedra was awed by the lady's spectacular beauty. Polgara was flawless. Even the white lock in the midnight of her hair was not so much a defect as it was a sort of accent - a personal trademark. Most disconcerting to the princess were Polgara's eyes. Depending on her mood, they ranged in color from gray to a deep, deep blue and they saw through everything. No dissimulation was possible in the face of that calm, steady gaze. Each time the princess looked into those eyes, she seemed to hear the clink of chains. She definitely had to get on Polgara's good side.

  "Lady Polgara?" the princess said one morning as they sat together on deck, while the steaming, gray-green jungle slid by on either bank and the sweating sailors labored at their oars.