I listened very carefully while Zedar described my confrontation with the Morindim and their demons. He exaggerated a bit. Zedar’s language was always a bit excessive, but he had a very good reason for it this time. His continued good health depended on his persuading Torak that I was well-nigh invincible.
There was a long silence after Zedar had finished his extravagant description of my Demon Lord.
– I will consider this and consult with the Necessity. – Torak said finally. – Dog the steps of thy brother whilst I devise some new means to delay him. We need not destroy him. The TIME of the EVENT is as important as the EVENT itself. –
The implications there were clear. There weren’t any other traps out there. They’d hung everything on the Morindim. I felt like grinning, but that’s a little hard to do with a hooked beak. There was no need now to wait any longer. I knew what I had to know. I decided to put Zedar out of action right here and now. I could fly over the top of him, change back to my own form, and fall on him like a collapsing roof.
– Not yet – the voice told me. – It isn’t time yet. –
– When then? –
– Just a few more minutes, and you might want to reconsider your plan. I think it might have some holes in it. –
After a moment’s thought, I realized that the voice was right. Falling on top of Zedar wasn’t a very good idea. I’d have just as much chance of knocking myself senseless as I would him. Besides, I wanted to talk with him a little first.
The sense of Torak’s somewhat nebulous presence was gone now. The maimed God in Cthol Mishrak was busy consulting with that other awareness. Zedar started down the hill through the evergreens, angling back to pick up our trail.
I flew over him and landed in the snow several hundred yards in front of him. Then I changed back into my own form and waited for him, leaning rather casually against a tree.
I could see that greenish light of his bobbing through the trees as he came toward me, and I took advantage of the time to put a lid on my towering anger. It’s not a good idea to let your emotions run away with you when you’re involved in a confrontation.
Then he came out of the trees on the other side of the clearing where I’d stationed myself.
‘What kept you?’ I asked him in a calm, run-of-the mill tone of voice.
‘Belgarath!’ he gasped.
‘You must be half-asleep, Belzedar. Couldn’t you feel my presence? I wasn’t trying to hide it.’
‘Thank the Gods you’re here,’ he said with feigned enthusiasm. He was quick on his feet; I’ll give him that. ‘Weren’t you listening? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you?’
‘I’ve been running as a wolf. That might have dulled my perceptions. What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been trying to catch up with you. You and the Alorns are running into an unnecessary danger.’
‘Oh?’
‘There’s no need for you to go to Mallorea. I’ve already retrieved the Orb. This absurd quest of yours is just a waste of time.’
‘What an amazing thing. Let’s see it.’
‘Ah – I didn’t think it was safe to bring it up here with me. I wasn’t positive I could catch up with you, and I didn’t want to take it back to Mallorea, so I put it in a safe place.’
‘Good idea. How did you manage to get it away from Torak?’ As long as he was being so creative, I thought I’d give him a chance to expand on his wild story.
‘I’ve been at this for two thousand years, Belgarath. I’ve been working on Urvon all this time. He’s still a Grolim, but he’s afraid of the power of our Master’s jewel. He distracted Torak, and I was able to slip into that iron tower at Cthol Mishrak and steal the Orb.’
‘Where did Torak keep it?’ That particular bit of information might be very useful later on.
‘It was in a room adjoining the one where he spends all his time. He didn’t want that iron box in the same room with him. The temptation to open it might have been too great for him.’
‘Well,’ I said blandly, ‘I guess that takes care of all of that, then. I’m glad you came along when you did, brother. I wasn’t really too eager to go to Mallorea. I’ll go fetch Cherek and his sons while you go pick up the Orb. Then we can all go back to the Vale.’ I waited for a little bit to give him a moment to exult over his success in deceiving me. ‘Isn’t that sort of what you’d expect from a drunken lecher with scant morality and little seriousness?’ I added, throwing his own words back in his teeth. Then I sighed with genuine regret. ‘Why, Belzedar?’ I asked him. ‘Why have you betrayed our Master?’
His head came up sharply, and his look was stricken.
‘You ought to pay more attention, old boy,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been almost on top of you for the past ten hours. Did you really think it was necessary to set fire to Etchquaw?’ I’ll admit that I was goading him. He was still my brother, and I didn’t want to be the one to strike the first blow. I bored in inexorably. ‘You’re Torak’s third disciple, aren’t you, Zedar? You’ve gone over to the other side. You’ve sold your soul to that one-eyed monster in Cthol Mishrak. What did he offer you, Zedar? What is there in this whole world that was worth what you’ve done?’
He actually broke down at that point. ‘I had no choice, Belgarath,’ he sobbed. ‘I’d thought that I could deceive Torak – that I could pretend to accept him and serve him – but he put his hand on my soul and tore it out of me. His touch, Belgarath! Dear God, his touch!’
I braced myself. I knew what was coming. Zedar always overacted. It was his one great weakness.
He started by throwing fire into my face. Between one spurious sob and the next, his arm whipped back and then flashed forward with a great blob of incandescent flame nestled in his palm.
I brushed it aside with a negligent gesture. ‘Not good enough, brother,’ I told him. Then I knocked him cart-wheeling through the snow with my fist. It was tactically sound. He’d have felt my Will building anyway, and I got an enormous satisfaction out of punching him in the mouth.
He came up spitting blood and teeth, and trying to gather his wits. I didn’t give him time for that, however. He spent the next several minutes dancing in the snow, dodging the lightning bolts I threw at him. I still didn’t want to kill him, so I gave him an instant of warning before I turned each bolt loose. It did keep him off-balance, though, and the sizzling noise when the bolts hit the snow really distracted him.
Then he enveloped himself in a cloud of absolute darkness, trying to hide. I dissolved his cloud and kept shooting lightning at him. He really didn’t like that. Zedar’s afraid of a lot of things, and lightning’s one of them. My thunder-claps and the sizzle and steam definitely upset him.
He tried more fire, but I smothered each of his flames before he even got it well-started. I suppose I might have toyed with him longer, but by now he fully understood that I had the upper hand. There was no real point in grinding his face in that any more, so I jumped on him and quite literally beat him into the ground with my bare hands. I could have done it any number of other ways, I guess, but his betrayal seemed to call for a purely physical chastisement. I hammered on him with my fists for a while, and right at first he gave as good as he got. We banged on each other for several minutes, but I was enjoying it far more than he was. I had a great deal of pent-up anger, and hitting him felt very, very good.
I finally gave him a good solid punch on the side of his head, and his eyes glazed over, and he slumped senseless into the