“Water?” Garion suggested.
“I’m thirsty, Garion, not dirty.”
“Here.” Belgarath handed the suffering man a wineskin. “But don’t overdo it.”
“Trust me,” Silk said, taking a long drink. He shuddered and made a face. “Where did you buy this?” he inquired. “It tastes like somebody’s been boiling old shoes in it.”
“You don’t have to drink it.”
“I’m afraid I do.” Silk took another drink, then restoppered the wineskin and handed it back. He looked sourly around at the moors. “Hasn’t changed much,” he observed. “Drasnia has very little to recommend it, I’m afraid. It’s either too wet or too dry.” He shivered in the chilly wind. “Are either of you aware of the fact that there’s nothing between us and the pole to break the wind but an occasional stray reindeer?”
Garion began to relax. Silk’s sallies and comments grew broader and more outrageous as they rode through the afternoon. By the time the caravan stopped for the night, he seemed to be almost his old self again.
21
The caravan wound its slow way through the dreary moors of eastern Drasnia with the sound of mule bells trailing mournfully behind it. Sparse patches of heath, which had but lately begun to bloom with tiny, pink flowers, dotted the low, rolling hills. The sky had turned cloudy, and the wind, seemingly perpetual, blew steadily out of the north.
Garion found his mood growing as sad and bleak as the moors around him. There was one inescapable fact which he no longer could hide from himself. Each mile, each step, brought him closer to Mallorea and closer to his meeting with Torak. Even the whispered song of the Orb, murmuring continually in his ears from the pommel of the great sword strapped to his back, could not reassure him. Torak was a God—invincible, immortal; and Garion. not even yet full-grown, was quite deliberately trekking to Mallorea to seek him out and to fight him to the death. Death was a word Garion tried very hard not to think about. It had been a possibility once or twice during their long pursuit of Zedar and the Orb; but now it seemed a certainty. He would meet Torak alone. Mandorallen or Barak or Hettar could not come to his aid with their superior skill at swordsmanship; Belgarath or Aunt Pol could not intercede for him with sorcery; Silk would not be able to devise some clever ruse to allow him to escape. Titanic and enraged, the Dark God would rush upon him, eager for blood. Garion began to fear sleep, for sleep brought nightmares which would not go away and which haunted his days, making each worse than the last.
He was afraid. The fear grew worse with each passing day until the sour taste of it was always in his mouth. More than anything, he wanted to run, but he knew that he could not. Indeed, he did not even know any place where he could run. There was no place in all the world for him to hide. The Gods themselves would seek him out if he tried and sternly drive him to that awful meeting which had been fated to take place since the beginning of time. And so it was that, sick with fear, Garion rode to meet his fate.
Belgarath, who was not always asleep when he seemed to doze in his saddle, watched, shrewdly waiting until Garion’s fear had reached its peak before he spoke. Then, one cloudy morning when the lead-gray sky was as dreary as the moors around them, he pulled his horse in beside Garion’s. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked calmly.
“What’s the point, Grandfather?”
“It might help.”
“Nothing’s going to help. He’s going to kill me.”
“If I thought it was that inevitable, I wouldn’t have let you start on this journey.”
“How can I possibly fight with a God?”
“Bravely,” was the unhelpful reply. “You’ve been brave at some pretty inappropriate times in the past. I don’t imagine you’ve changed all that much.”
“I’m so afraid, Grandfather,” Garion confessed, his voice anguished. “I think I know how Mandorallen felt now. The fear’s so awful that I can’t live with it.”
“You’re stronger than you think you are. You can live with it if you have to.”
Garion brooded about that. It didn’t seem to help much. “What’s he like?” he asked, suddenly filled with a morbid curiosity.
“Who?”
“Torak.”
“Arrogant. I never cared much for him.”
“Is he like Ctuchik was—or Asharak?”
“No. They tried to be like him. They didn’t succeed, of course, but they tried. If it’s any help to you, Torak’s probably as much afraid of you as you are of him. He knows who you are. When you meet him, he isn’t going to see a Sendarian scullery boy named Garion; he’s going to see Belgarion, the Rivan King, and he’s going to see Riva’s sword thirsting for his blood. He’s also going to see the Orb of Aldur. And that will probably frighten him more than anything.”
“When was the first time you met him?” Garion suddenly wanted the old man to talk—to tell stories as he had so long ago. Stories somehow always helped. He could lose himself in a story, and for a little while it might make things bearable.
Belgarath scratched at his short, white beard. “Let’s see,” he mused. “I think the first time was in the Vale—it was a very long time ago. The others had gathered there—Belzedar, Beldin, all the rest—and each of us was involved in his own studies. Our Master had withdrawn into his tower with the Orb, and sometimes months would pass during which we didn’t see him.
“Then one day a stranger came to us. He seemed to be about the same height as I, but he walked as if he were a thousand feet tall. His hair was black and his skin was very pale, and he had, as I remember, greenish-colored eyes. His face was beautiful to the point of being pretty, and his hair looked as if he spent a lot of time combing it. He appeared to be the kind of person who always has a mirror in his pocket.”
“Did he say anything?” Garion asked.
“Oh, yes,” Belgarath replied. “He came up to us and said, ‘I would speak with my brother, thy Master,’ and I definitely didn’t care for his tone. He spoke as if we were servants—it’s a failing he’s always had. Still, my Master had—after a great deal of trouble—taught me at least a few manners. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I told him as politely as I could manage.
“‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in that irritatingly superior tone of his. ‘My brother knows I am here.’ ”
“How did he know your name, Grandfather?”
Belgarath shrugged. “I never found that out. I assume that my Master had communicated with him—and the other Gods—from time to time and told them about us. At any rate, I led this over-pretty visitor to my Master’s tower. I didn’t bother to speak to him along the way. When we got there, he looked me straight in the face and said, ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake I hope that when next we meet thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.’”
“ ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I told him—a bit tartly, I’ll admit. ‘Will you require anything else?’
“‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he said to me. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.’ And then he went into the tower. As you can see, Torak and I got off on the wrong foot right at the very beginning. I didn’t care for his attitude, and he didn’t care for mine.”
“What happened then?” Garion’s curiosity had begun to quiet the fear somewhat.
“You know the story,” Belgarath replied. “Torak went up into the tower and spoke with Aldur. One thing led to another and finally Torak struck my Master and stole the Orb.” The old man’s face was bleak. “The next time I saw him, he wasn’t nearly so pretty,” he continued with a certain grim satisfaction. “That was after the Orb had burned him and he’d taken to wearing a steel mask to hide the ruins of his face.”