“As it was with Asharak?”
Durnik nodded. “It’s always best in the long run to be what you are. It isn’t proper to behave as if you were more, but it isn’t good to behave as if you were less, either. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“The whole problem seems to be finding out just exactly what you really are,” Garion observed.
Durnik smiled again. “That’s the part that gets most of us in trouble at times,” he agreed. Suddenly the smile fell away from his face and he gasped. Then he fell writhing to the ground, clutching at his stomach.
“Durnik!” Garion cried, “What’s wrong?”
But Durnik could not answer. His face was ashen and contorted with agony as he twisted in the dirt.
Garion felt a strange, alien pressure and he understood instantly. Thwarted in their attempts to kill Errand, the Hierarchs were directing their attacks at the others in the hope of forcing Aunt Pol to drop her shield. A terrible rage boiled up in him. His blood seemed to burn, and a fierce cry came to his lips.
“Calmly.” It was the voice within his mind again.
“What do I do?”
“Get out into the sunlight.”
Garion did not understand that, but he ran out past the horses into the pale morning light.
“Put yourself into your shadow. ”
He looked down at the shadow stretching out on the ground in front of him and obeyed the voice. He wasn’t sure exactly how he did it, but he poured his will and his awareness into the shadow.
“Now, follow the trail of their thought back to them. Quickly.” Garion felt himself suddenly flying. Enclosed in his shadow, he touched the still-writhing Durnik once like a sniffing hound, picked up the direction of the concerted thought that had felled his friend, and then flashed through the air back over the miles of wasteland toward the wreckage of Rak Cthol. He had, it seemed, no weight, and there was an odd purplish cast to everything he saw.
He felt his immensity as he entered the room with the cracked wall where the nine black-robed old men sat, trying with the concerted power of their minds to kill Durnik. Their eyes were all focused on a huge ruby, nearly the size of a man’s head, which lay flickering in the center of the table around which they sat. The slanting rays of the morning sun had distorted and enlarged Garion’s shadow, and he filled one corner of the room, bending slightly so that he could fit under the ceiling. “Stop!” he roared at the evil old men. “Leave Durnik alone!”
They flinched back from his sudden apparition, and he could feel the thought they were directing at Durnik through the stone on the table falter and begin to fall apart. He took a threatening step and saw them cringe away from him in the purple light that half clouded his vision.
Then one of the old men-very thin and with a long dirty beard and completely hairless scalp—seemed to recover from his momentary fright. “Stand firm!” he snapped at the others. “Keep the thought on the Sendar!”
“Leave him alone!” Garion shouted at them.
“Who says so?” the thin old man drawled insultingly.
“I do.”
“And just who are you?”
“I am Belgarion. Leave my friends alone.”
The old man laughed, and his laugh was as chilling as Ctuchik’s had been. “Actually, you’re only Belgarion’s shadow,” he corrected. “We know the trick of the shadow. You can talk and bluster and threaten, but that’s all you can do. You’re just a powerless shade, Belgarion.”
“Leave us alone!”
“And what will you do if we don’t?” The old man’s face was filled with contemptuous amusement.
“Is he right?” Garion demanded of the voice within his mind.
“Perhaps perhaps not,” the voice replied. “A few men have been able to go beyond the limitation. You won’t know unless you try.”
Despite his dreadful anger, Garion did not want to kill any of them. “Ice!” he said, focusing on the idea of cold and lashing out with his will. It felt odd—almost tenuous, as if it had no substance behind it, and the roaring was hollow and puny-sounding.
The bald old man sneered and waggled his beard insultingly. Garion ground his insubstantial teeth and drew himself in with dreadful concentration. “Burn!” he said then, driving his will. There was a flicker and then a sudden flash. The force of Garion’s will burst forth, directed not at the bald man himself, but rather at his whiskers.
The Hierarch jumped up and stumbled back with a hoarse exclamation, trying desperately to beat the flames out of his beard.
The concerted thought of the Hierarchs shattered as the rest of them scrambled to their feet in terrified astonishment. Grimly, Garion gathered his swelling will and began to lay about him with his immensely long arms. He tumbled the Hierarchs across the rough stone floor and slammed them into walls. Squealing with fright, they scurried this way and that, trying to escape, but he methodically reached out and grasped them one by one to administer his chastisement. With a peculiar kind of detachment, he even stuffed one of them headfirst into the crack in the wall, pushing quite firmly until only a pair of wriggling feet were sticking out.
Then, when it was done, he turned back to the bald Hierarch, who had managed finally to beat the last of the fire out of his beard.
“It’s impossible—impossible,” the Hierarch protested, his face stunned. “How did you do it?”
“I told you—I am Belgarion. I can do things you can’t even imagine.”
“The jewel,” the voice told him. “They’re using the jewel to focus their attacks. Destroy it.”
“How?”
“It can only hold so much. Look.”
Garion suddenly found that he could actually see into the interior of the still-flickering ruby on the table. He saw the minute stress lines within its crystalline structure, and then he understood. He turned his will on it and poured all his anger into it. The stone blazed with light and began to pulsate as the force within it swelled. Then, with a sharp detonation, the stone exploded into fragments.
“No!” the bald Hierarch wailed. “You idiot! That stone was irreplaceable.”
“Listen to me, old man,” Garion said in an awful voice, “you will leave us alone. You will not pursue us, or try to injure any of us any more.” He reached out with his shadowy hand and slid it directly into the bald man’s chest. He could feel the heart flutter like a terrified bird and the lungs falter as the Hierarch’s breath stopped and he gaped with horror at the arm sticking out of his chest. Garion slowly opened his fingers very wide. “Do you understand me?” he demanded.
The Hierarch gurgled and tried to take hold of the arm, but his fingers found nothing to grasp.
“Do you understand me?” Garion repeated and suddenly clenched his fist.
The Hierarch screamed.
“Are you going to leave us alone?”
“Please, Belgarion! No more! I’m dying!”
“Are you going to leave us alone?” Garion demanded again.
“Yes, yes—anything, but please stop! I beg you! I’ll do anything. Please!”
Garion unclenched his fist and drew his hand out of the Hierarch’s heaving chest. He held it up, clawlike, directly in front of the old man’s face. “Look at this and remember it,” he said in a dreadfully quiet voice. “Next time I’ll reach into your chest and pull your heart out.”
The Hierarch shrank back, his eyes filled with horror as he stared at the awful hand. “I promise you,” he stammered. “I promise.”
“Your life depends on it,” Garion told him, then turned and flashed back across the empty miles toward his friends. Quite suddenly he was standing at the mouth of the ravine staring down at his shadow slowly reforming on the ground before him. The purple haze was gone; strangely enough, he didn’t even feel tired.
Durnik drew in a shuddering breath and struggled to rise.
Garion turned quickly and ran back to his friend. “Are you all right?” he asked, taking hold of the smith’s arm.