Their eyes locked, and the ugly hunchback finally turned away. He stumped back toward the dais, pausing long enough to kick a chair to pieces on his way, muttering curses all the while.
“Is everyone all right?” Silk asked, looking around as he re-sheathed his knife.
“So it would seem,” Polgara replied, pushing back the hood of her blue cloak.
“It was a bit tight there for a while, wasn’t it?” The little man’s eyes were very bright.
“Also unnecessary,” she said, giving Garion a hard look. “You’d better take a quick look through the rest of the house, Kheldar. Let’s make sure that it’s really empty. Durnik, you and Toth go with him.”
Silk nodded and started back up the blood-splashed aisle, stepping over bodies as he went, with Durnik and Toth close behind him.
“I don’t understand,” Ce’Nedra said, staring in bafflement at the gnarled Beldin, who was once again dressed in rags and had the usual twigs and bits of straw clinging to him. “How did you change places with Feldegast—and where is he?”
A roguish smile crossed Beldin’s face. “Ah, me little darlin’,” he said to her in the juggler’s lilting brogue, “I’m right here, don’t y’ know. An’ if yer of a mind, I kin still charm ye with me wit an’ me unearthly skill.”
“But I liked Feldegast,” she almost wailed.
“All ye have t’ do is transfer yer affection t’ me, darlin’.”
“It’s not the same,” she objected.
Belgarath was looking steadily at the twisted sorcerer. “Have you got any idea of how much that particular dialect irritates me?” he said.
“Why, yes, brother.” Beldin grinned. “As a matter of fact I do. That’s one of the reasons I selected it.”
“I don’t entirely understand the need for so elaborate a disguise,” Sadi said as he put away his small poisoned dagger.
“Too many people know me by sight in this part of Mallore,” Beldin told him. “Urvon’s had my description posted on every tree and fence post within a hundred leagues of Mal Yaska for the last two thousand years, and let’s be honest about it, it wouldn’t be too hard to recognize me from even the roughest description.”
“You are a unique sort of person, Uncle,” Polgara said to him, smiling fondly.
“Ah, yer too kind t’ say it, me girl,” he replied with an extravagant bow.
“Will you stop that?” Belgarath said. Then he turned to Garion. “As I remember, you said that you were going to explain something later. All right—it’s later.”
“I was tricked,” Garion admitted glumly.
“By whom?”
“’Zandramas”
“She’s still here?” Ce’Nedra exclaimed.
Garion shook his head. “No. She sent a projection here—a projection of herself and of Geran.”
“Couldn’t you tell the difference between a projection and the real thing?” Belgarath demanded.
“I wasn’t in any condition to tell the difference when it happened.”
“I suppose you can explain that.”
Garion took a deep breath and sat down on one of the benches. He noticed that his bloodstained hands were shaking. “She’s very clever,” he said. “Ever since we left Mal Zeth, I’ve been having the same dream over and over again.”
“Dream?” Polgara asked sharply. “What kind of dream?”
“Maybe dream isn’t the right word,” he replied, “but over and over again, I kept hearing the cry of a baby. At first I thought that I was remembering the cry of that sick child we saw in the streets back in Mal Zeth, but that wasn’t it at all. When Silk and Beldin and I were in that room just above this one, we could see down into the throne room here and we saw Urvon come in with Nahaz right behind him. He’s completely insane now. He think’s he’s a God. Anyway, he summoned Mengha—only Mengha turned out to be Harakan, and then—”
“Wait a minute,” Belgarath interrupted him. "Harakan is Mengha?”
Garion glanced over at the limp form sprawled in front of the altar. Zith was still coiled atop the black stone, muttering and hissing to herself. “Well, he was,” he said.
“Urvon made the announcement before all this broke out,” Beldin added. “We didn’t have the time to fill you in.”
“That explains a great many things, doesn’t it?” Belgarath mused. He looked at Velvet. “Did you know about this?” he asked her.
“No, Ancient One,” she replied, “as a matter of fact, I didn’t. I just seized the opportunity when it arose.”
Silk, Durnik, and Toth came back into the body-strewn throne room. “The house is empty,” the little man reported. “We’ve got it all to ourselves.”
“Good,” Belgarath said. “Garion was just telling us why he saw fit to start his own private war.”
“Zandramas told him to.” Silk shrugged. “I’m not sure why he started taking orders from her, but that’s what happened.”
“I was just getting to that,” Garion said. “Urvon was down here telling all the Chandim that Harakan—Mengha—was going to be his first disciple. That’s when Zandramas came in—or at least she seemed to. She had a bundle under her cloak. I didn’t know it at first, but it was Geran. She and Urvon shouted at each other for a while, and Urvon finally insisted that he was a God. She said something like, ‘All right. Then I will summon the Godslayer to deal with you.’ That’s when she put the bundle on the altar. She opened it, and it was Geran. He started to cry, and I realized all at once that it was his cry I’d been hearing all along. I just totally stopped thinking at that point.”
“Obviously,” Belgarath said.
“Well, anyway, you know all the rest.” Garion looked around at the corpse-littered throne room and shuddered. “I hadn’t altogether realized just how far things went,” he said. “I guess I was sort of crazy.”
“The word is berserk, Garion,” Belgarath told him. “It’s fairly common among Alorns. I’d sort of thought you might be immune, but I guess I was wrong.”
“There was some justification for it, father,” Polgara said.
“There’s never a justification for losing your wits, Pol,” he growled.
“He was provoked.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully, then came over and lightly placed her hands on Garion’s temples. “It’s gone now,” she said.
“What is?” Ce’Nedra sounded concerned.
“The possession.”
“Possession?”
Polgara nodded. “Yes. That’s how Zandramas tricked him. She filled his mind with the sound of a crying child.Then, when she laid the bundle that seemed to be Geran on the altar and Garion heard that same crying, he had no choice but to do what she wanted him to do.” She looked at Belgarath. “This is very serious, father. She’s already tampered with Ce’Nedra, and now it’s Garion. She may try the same thing with others as well.”
“What would be the point?” he asked. “You can catch her at it, can’t you?”
“Usually, yes—if I know what’s going on. But Zandramas is very skilled at this and she’s very subtle. In many ways she’s even better at it than Asharak the Murgo was.” She looked around at them. “Now listen carefully, all of you,” she told them. “If anything unusual begins to happen to you—dreams, notions, peculiar ideas, strange feelings—anything at all, I want you to tell me about it at once. Zandramas knows that we’re after her and she’s using this to delay us. She tried it with Ce’Nedra while we were on our way to Rak Hagga, and now—”
“Me?” Ce’Nedra said in amazement. “I didn’t know that.”
” Remember your illness on the road from Rak Verkat?” Polgara said. “It wasn’t exactly an illness. It was Zandramas putting her hand on your mind.”
“But nobody told me.”
“Once Andel and I drove Zandramas away, there was no need to worry you about it. Anyway, Zandramas tried it first with Ce’Nedra and now with Garion. She could try it on any one of the rest of us as well, so let me know if you start feeling in the least bit peculiar.”