The Chandim fled, howling in pain, stumbling, bumping into each other, and with their toenails shrieking across the ice.
I don’t know if any of those Grolims ever regained their sight, but I do know that they were all totally blind when they ran back up the river.
‘Well,’ I said with a certain astonishment, ‘what do you know? It worked after all. What an amazing thing!’
‘Belgarath!’ There was a note of anguish in Cherek’s voice. ‘Are you saying that you didn’t know?’
‘It was theoretically sound,’ I replied, ‘but you never really know about theories until you try them out.’
‘What happened?’ Dras demanded.
I shrugged. ‘Riva’s forbidden to use the Orb. That’s why the Orb permits him to touch it. He couldn’t do anything, but the Orb could – and it did. The Orb doesn’t like Torak – or the Angaraks. It does like Riva, though. I deliberately put him in danger, and that forced the Orb to take matters into its own hands. It worked out rather well, don’t you think?’
They stared at me in absolute horror. ‘Remind me never to play dice with you, Belgarath,’ Dras said in a trembling voice. ‘You take too many chances.’
With Ctuchik and Torak both to drive them, more of the Hounds came back down the river after us, and a fair number of Grolims as well. There were mounted men following along behind the Grolims, helmeted men in mail shirts and carrying assorted weapons. Those were the first Murgos I ever saw. I didn’t like them then, and my opinion of them hasn’t improved over the years. Their horses were somewhat bigger than the scrubby little ponies found on the other side of the Sea of the East, but the Murgos were still too big for their mounts.
All right, I’ll be mentioning Murgos and Nadraks and Thulls from time to time as we go along, so I’m going to sort them out for you. The three Angarak tribes that migrated to the western continent after the destruction of Cthol Mishrak were not, in fact, tribes at all. They were all Angaraks, but the almost two thousand years that they had lived in the City of Night had modified them. The differences between them were not racial nor tribal, but rather were based on class. The word ‘Murgo’ in old Angarak meant warrior; the word ‘Nadrak’ meant townsman; and the word ‘Thull’ meant peasant or serf. Murgos are built like soldiers, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted and generally athletic. Nadraks tend to be leaner. Thulls are built like oxen. Torak had been so intent on trying to subdue the Orb that he hadn’t paid any attention to what was happening to the inhabitants of Cthol Mishrak as a result of two thousand years of what might be called selective breeding, and he assumed that they differed from each other because they were of different tribes. That’s one of the reasons that the Angarak societies he exported to the west didn’t work very well. Murgos felt that work was beneath their dignity; Thulls were too stupid to set up anything even resembling a government; and Nadraks had nobody to swindle but each other.
Have you got all that straight? Try to remember it. I don’t want to have to go through it all again. I repeat myself often enough as it is.
The Hounds had been made wary by what had happened to their pack-mates, so they held back while the Murgos and Grolims rushed to the attack. I didn’t even have to tell Riva what to do this time. He took out the Orb and held it up over his head.
Once again the Orb flickered and went out, and once again it took fire. It went a little further this time, however. It was probably the first time in its history that Cthol Mishrak had been fully illuminated, and the western slopes of the Karandese mountains and the Sea of the East as far north as the pole and as far west as the shores of Morindland were engulfed in a light that was at least as bright as the light that reached us at Korim three thousand years later.
The charging Murgos and Grolims were instantly incinerated by that awful light. I discovered something about the Orb in that moment. It had a certain innate sense of decency. It warned people before it unleashed its power on them. That’s what the blinding of the Hounds had been – a warning. There was only one, though. If people chose to ignore the Orb’s first warning, they didn’t get a second.
The Alorns and I were stunned by the enormity of what had just happened, and the Hounds took advantage of our momentary confusion to circle around along the riverbanks to get ahead of us, and that made it possible for them to slow us down. That single flash of brilliant light had temporarily blinded us, too, and we floundered along in the darkness after it subsided. Our near-blindness, coupled with the periodic suicidal charges of individual Hounds, slowed us to the point that we continued down-river at a crawl.
‘How much farther to the coast?’ Cherek panted.
‘I have no idea,’ I admitted.
‘This isn’t turning out well, Belgarath.’
‘You worry too much.’ I turned teary eyes at his youngest son. ‘Keep holding it up in the air, Riva. Let it see what’s coming after us.’
We kept going down the river, our trip punctuated by a series of bright flashes and what sounded like thunderclaps as the Orb exploded the Hounds that came rushing at us from the riverbanks.
‘They’re coming up from behind us, Belgarath!’ Dras called from the rear. ‘Torak’s with them!’
I swore. I hadn’t expected this. It’s not like the Gods to take a hand in these skirmishes. – Is he supposed to do that? – I threw the question into the echoing vaults of my mind.
– No, he’s not! – My passenger sounded suddenly very angry. – He’s cheating! –
– Does that mean that the rules have been suspended? –
– I think it does. Be careful though. We don’t want to blow up this whole side of the universe. –
I choked a little on that – Do you want me to do it? –
– Absolutely not! If you take up the Orb, it’ll attach itself to you, and you’ll never be able to get rid of it. You’d have to become its guardian, and you don’t have time for that. Tell Riva what to do. Don’t let him destroy Torak, whatever happens. He’s not the one who’s supposed to do that. –
‘Cherek!’ I said sharply, ‘Take Dras and Algar! Hold those people back while I talk to Riva!’
The King of Aloria nodded grimly, and the three of them spread out on the ice, their weapons ready. The Murgo skirmishers in the forefront of the advancing Angaraks got a quick lesson in the virtue of prudence at that point. It’s not a good idea to try to attack large Alorns when they’re ready for you.
‘Listen very carefully, Riva,’ I told Iron-grip. ‘I want you to concentrate on your hand.’
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to understand. Just look at the Angaraks and think about what you’d like to do to them, but think about your hand at the same time. The Orb’s a weapon, but you don’t have to swing it. Just be aware of it, and it’ll do what you want it to do.’
‘I thought you said that I wasn’t supposed to do that,’ he objected.
‘The rules have changed. The other side’s cheating, so we’re going to cheat a little, too. Don’t try to hurt Torak, though. You’ll destroy the world if you do.’
‘I’ll do what?’
‘You heard me. Concentrate on obliterating the Angaraks instead. Torak’s clever enough to get the point – eventually. He probably won’t cheat again.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Riva didn’t sound too sure of himself. He raised the Orb, though, and I could feel his Will building as he concentrated on the advancing Angaraks.
But nothing