‘What do I say?’
‘I don’t care! Try “now”, or “burn”, or “kill”! Just say something!’
‘Go.’ He said it rather tentatively.
I controlled myself with a certain amount of effort. ‘You’re giving orders here, Riva,’ I told him. ‘Don’t make it sound like a question.’
‘Go!’ he thundered.
It wasn’t the Word I’d have used, but it turned the trick. The advancing Angaraks began exploding. Whole strings of them blew up one after another – bright flashes and sharp detonations running in sequence from one riverbank to the other. Cherek’s youngest son obliterated the front rank. Then he went back and methodically destroyed the second rank, then the third.
‘Can’t you do more than one at a time?’ I asked him.
‘Do you want to do this?’ he demanded from between clenched teeth.
‘No. It’s not allowed.’
‘Then do you want to shut up and let me do it?’
Now do you see how Garion comes by his short temper? Riva was normally the most even-tempered Alorn I’ve ever come across, but you didn’t want to irritate him.
After he’d turned the first five or six ranks of Angaraks into puffs of smoke and floating ashes, the rest of them got the message. They turned and fled, giving the raging Torak a wide berth.
Torak may have been raging, but I noticed that he was covering his steel-encased face with his remaining hand. He definitely didn’t want to lose his other eye. Finally, even he turned and fled howling.
‘You can turn it off now,’ I suggested to Riva.
‘I could go after them,’ he offered eagerly. ‘I could chase down every Angarak on the whole continent. Torak wouldn’t have a single worshiper left.’
‘Never mind,’ I told him. ‘You’ve gone as far as you’re supposed to. Put the Orb away.’
Cherek, Dras, and Algar came back. ‘Nice little fight,’ the King of Aloria noted. ‘That Orb’s a handy thing to have along, isn’t it?’
Alorns!
It seems to me I’ve said that before. You might as well get used to it. I’ve been rolling my eyes up at the sky and sighing, ‘Alorns’ for so long now that I don’t even know I’m doing it any more.
We went down to the mouth of the river and started slogging out across the ice. The Hounds were keeping their distance now, but they were still following us.
– Are they going to be a problem? – I asked my friend.
– Not for long. They’ll have to turn back when we get about half-way across. –
– Why? –
– They’re Grolims, Belgarath. They don’t have any power on your side of the Sea of the East. –
– Zedar did. –
– That’s because he’s a disciple. Different rules apply to disciples. Ctuchik or Urvon could keep coming, but ordinary Grolims can’t. –
– Why not? –
– Beldin explained it to you once, remember? –
– Oh, now that you mention it, I guess I do. Grolims don’t have any power in a place where there aren’t any Angaraks. –
– Amazing. You remembered after all. –
– What now? –
– Pick up one foot and put it in front of the other one. I’ll let you decide which foot. Don’t try to pick them both up at the same time, though. –
– Very funny. –
We continued across that awful broken sea-ice for the next couple of days with the Hounds still not too far behind us.
There was no boundary line out there, of course, but I knew when we’d reached the half-way point, because the Hounds suddenly broke off their pursuit. They lined up along an ice-ridge and sat howling in frustration.
‘Our luck’s still holding,’ I told the Alorns.
‘How’s that?’ Cherek asked me.
‘That’s as far as the Hounds can come. We’re home free now.’
That turned out to be premature, because there was suddenly a Hound directly in front of us – a Hound that was twice the size of the ones howling behind us. It seemed to emanate a reddish glow.
‘Don’t bother,’ I told Riva as his hand dug into the neck of his tunic. ‘The dog’s an illusion. It’s not really there.’
‘You haven’t heard the last of this, Belgarath,’ the monstrous creature growled at me, seeming almost to chew on the words with its long fangs.
‘You would be Urvon,’ I said calmly, ‘or possibly Ctuchik.’
‘I’ll let you worry about that. You and I are going to meet again, old man; you’ve got my promise on that. You’ve won this time. Next time you won’t be so lucky.’
And then it vanished.
We reached the coast of Morindland a couple of days later. The sun was rising a little higher and staying up a little longer each day, and the bitter cold seemed to be moderating. Spring was coming to the north.
We decided not to retrace our steps and cross the arctic wastes of Morindland again. We went south instead. We weren’t in any danger now, and we all wanted to find a warmer climate. We followed the shoreline until we reached present-day Gar og Nadrak, which in those days was eastern Aloria. Cherek was king there, but he didn’t have very many subjects in that part of his kingdom – unless you count the deer. The Alorns who were there were all members of the Bear-Cult anyway, so we avoided them. Bear-Cultists have wanted to get their hands on the Orb since their order was founded, and Cherek and the rest of us weren’t very eager for any more confrontations.
Once we were beyond the North Range, we turned west again and proceeded through that vast forest, crossed the mountains, and reached the Drasnian moors. Then we turned southwesterly, passed Lake Atun, and eventually reached the banks of the Aldur River on a fine spring morning.
There was someone waiting for us there.
‘Well, boy,’ the humorous old man in the rickety cart said to me, ‘I see you’re still headed west.’
‘I guess it’s sort of a habit by now,’ I replied in as casual a way as I could manage.
‘You two know each other, I take it,’ Cherek noted.
‘We’ve run across each other a few times,’ I replied. I assumed that my Master had reasons for wanting to remain anonymous, so I didn’t give him away.
‘Have you had breakfast yet?’ the old man asked.
‘If you want to call it that,’ Dras replied. ‘A few chunks of dried beef is hardly what I’d call breakfast.’
‘I’ve got a camp set up a mile or so down-river,’ the old man told us, ‘and I’ve had an ox roasting all night. You’re welcome to join me, if you’re of a mind. Are you thirsty too? I’ve got a barrel of good ale chilling in the river back at camp.’
That settled it, of course. The Alorns followed along behind the cart like a litter