Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress Read online

  Now that’s what I call an unpromising start. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I replied. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

  That evoked the ugliest laugh I’ve ever heard. ‘You?’ the voice said scornfully, ‘You? Hurt me?’ And then the bushes parted and the most hideous creature I’ve ever seen emerged. He was grotesquely deformed with a huge hump on his back, gnarled, dwarfed legs, and long, twisted arms. This combination made it possible – even convenient – for him to go on all fours like a gorilla. His face was monumentally ugly, his hair and beard were matted, he was unbelievably filthy, and he was partially dressed in a ratty-looking fur of some kind. ‘Enjoying the view?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You’re not so pretty yourself, you know.’

  ‘You startled me, that’s all,’ I replied, trying to be civil.

  ‘Have you seen an old man in a rickety, broken-down cart around here anywhere?’ the creature demanded. ‘He told me he’d meet me here.’

  I stared at him in absolute astonishment.

  ‘You’d better close your mouth,’ he advised me in that raspy growl. ‘You’ll catch flies if you don’t.’

  All sorts of things clicked into place. ‘This old man you’re looking for,’ I said. ‘Did he have a humorous way of talking?’

  ‘That’s him,’ the dwarf said. ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I replied with a broad grin. ‘I’ve known him for longer than you could possibly imagine. Come along, my ugly little friend. I’ll take you to him.’

  ‘Don’t be too quick to throw the word “friend” around,’ he growled. ‘I don’t have any friends, and I like it that way.’

  ‘You’ll get over that in a few hundred years,’ I replied, still grinning at the little monster.

  ‘You don’t sound quite right in the head to me.’

  ‘You’ll get used to that, too. Come along. I’ll introduce you to your Master.’

  ‘I don’t have a master.’

  ‘I wouldn’t make any large wagers on that.’

  And that was our introduction to Din. My brothers thought at first that I’d come across a tame ape. Din rather quickly disabused them of that notion. He had by far the foulest mouth I’ve ever come across, even when he was not trying to be insulting, and I honestly believe he could swear for a day and a half without once repeating himself. He was even ungracious to our Master. His very first words to him were, ‘What did you do with that stupid cart of yours? I tried to follow the tracks, but they just disappeared on me.’

  Aldur, with that inhuman patience of his, simply smiled. Would you believe that he actually liked the foul-mouthed little monster? ‘Is that what took thee so long?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Of course that’s what took me so long!’ Din exploded. ‘You didn’t leave me a trail to follow! I had to reason out your location!’ Din had turned losing his temper into an art-form. The slightest thing could set him off. ‘Well?’ he said then, ‘now what?’

  ‘We must see to thine education.’

  ‘What does somebody like me need with an education? I already know what I need to know.’

  Aldur gave him a long, steady look, and even Din couldn’t face that for long. Then our Master looked around at the rest of us. He obviously dismissed Beltira and Belkira out of hand. They hadn’t the proper temperament to deal with our newest recruit. Belzedar was in a state verging on inarticulate rage. Belzedar may have had his faults, but he wouldn’t tolerate any disrespect for our Master. Belmakor was too fastidious. Din was filthy, and he smelled like an open sewer. Belsambar, for obvious reasons, was totally out of the question. Guess who that left.

  I wearily raised my hand. ‘Don’t trouble thyself, Master,’ I said. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘Why, Belgarath,’ he said, ‘how gracious of thee to volunteer thy service.’

  I chose not to answer that.

  ‘Ah, Belgarath?’ Belmakor said tentatively.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you possibly wash him off before you bring him inside again?’

  Despite my show of reluctance, I wasn’t quite as displeased with the arrangement as I pretended to be. I still wanted to finish my tower, and this powerful dwarf seemed well-suited to the task of carrying rocks. If things worked out the way I thought they might, I wouldn’t have to strain my creativity in the slightest to find things for my ugly little servant to do.

  I took him outside and showed him my half-finished tower. ‘You understand the situation here?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’m supposed to do what you tell me to do.’

  ‘Exactly.’ This was going to work out just fine. ‘Now, let’s go back to the edge of the woods. I’ve got a little chore for you.’

  It took us quite some time to return to the woods. When we got there, I pointed at a dry stream-bed filled with nice round rocks of a suitable size. ‘See those rocks?’ I asked him.

  ‘Naturally I can see them, you dolt! I’m not blind!’

  ‘I’m so happy for you. I’d like for you to pile them all beside my tower – neatly, of course.’ I sat down under a shady tree. ‘Be a good fellow and see to it, would you?’ I was actually enjoying this.

  He glowered at me for a moment and then turned to glare at the rocky stream-bed.

  Then, one by one, the rocks began to vanish! I could actually feel him doing it! Would you believe it? Din already knew the secret! It was the first case of spontaneous sorcery I’d ever seen. ‘Now what?’ he demanded.

  ‘How did you learn to do that?’ I demanded incredulously.

  He shrugged. ‘Picked it up somewhere,’ he replied. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you can’t?’

  ‘Of course I can, but – ’ I got hold of myself at that point. ‘Are you sure you translocated them to the right spot?’

  ‘You wanted them piled up beside your tower, didn’t you? Go look, if you want. I know where they are. Was there anything else you wanted me to do here?’

  ‘Let’s go back,’ I told him shortly.

  It took me a while to regain my composure. We were about half-way back before I could trust myself to start asking questions. ‘Where are you from?’ It was banal, but it was a place to start.

  ‘Originally, you mean? That’s sort of hard to say. I move around a lot. I’m not very welcome in most places. I’m used to it, though. It’s been going on since the day I was born.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I gather that my mother’s people had a fairly simple way to rid themselves of defectives. As soon as they laid eyes on me, they took me out in the woods and left me there to starve – or to provide some wolf with a light snack. My mother was a sentimentalist, though, so she used to sneak out of the village to feed me.’

  And I thought my childhood had been hard.

  ‘She stopped coming a year or so after I’d learned to walk, though,’ he added in a deliberately harsh tone. ‘Died, I suppose – or they caught her sneaking out and killed her. I was on my own after that.’

  ‘How did you survive?’

  ‘Does it really matter?’ There was a distant pain in his eyes, however. ‘There are all sorts of things to eat in a forest – if you’re not too particular. Vultures and ravens manage fairly well. I learned to watch for them. I found out early on that anyplace you see a vulture, there’s probably something to eat. You get used to the smell after a while.’

  ‘You’re an animal!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘We’re all animals, Belgarath.’ It was the first time he’d used my name. ‘I’m better at it than most, because I’ve had more practice. Now, do you suppose we could talk about something else?’

  Chapter 4

  And now we were seven, and I think we all knew that for the time being there wouldn’t be any more of us. The others came later. We were an oddly assorted group, I’ll grant you, but the fact that we lived in separate towers helped to keep down the frictions to some degree.

  The addition of Beldin to our fellowship was not as disruptive as I’d first imagined it might be. This is not to sa
y that our ugly little brother mellowed very much, but rather that we grew accustomed to his irascible nature as the years rolled by. I invited him to stay in my tower with me during what I suppose you could call his novitiate – that period when he was Aldur’s pupil before he achieved full status. I discovered during those years that there was a mind lurking behind those bestial features, and what a mind it was! With the possible exception of Belmakor, Beldin was clearly the most intelligent of us all. The two of them argued for years about points of logic and philosophy so obscure that the rest of us hadn’t the faintest idea of what they were talking about, and they both enjoyed those arguments enormously.

  It took me a while, but I finally managed to persuade Beldin that an occasional bath probably wouldn’t be harmful to his health, and that if he bathed, the fastidious Belmakor might be willing to come close enough to him that they wouldn’t have to shout during their discussions. As my daughter’s so fond of pointing out, I’m not an absolute fanatic about bathing, but Beldin sometimes carries his indifference to extremes.

  During the years that we lived and studied together, I came to know Beldin and eventually at least to partially understand him. Mankind was still in its infancy in that age, and the virtue of compassion hadn’t really caught on as yet. Humor, if you want to call it that, was still quite primitive and brutal. People found any sort of anomaly funny, and Beldin was about as anomalous as you can get. Rural folk would greet his entry into their villages with howls of laughter, and after they’d laughed their fill, they would normally stone him out of town. It’s not really very hard to understand his foul temper, is it? His own people tried to kill him the moment he was born, and he’d spent his whole life being chased out of every community he tried to enter. I’m really rather surprised that he didn’t turn homicidal. I probably would have.

  He’d lived with me for a couple hundred years, and then on one rainy spring day, he raised a subject I probably should have known would come up eventually. He was staring moodily out the window at the slashing rain, and he finally growled, ‘I think I’ll build my own tower.’

  ‘Oh?’ I replied, laying aside my book. ‘What’s wrong with this one?’

  ‘I need more room, and we’re starting to get on each other’s nerves.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed that.’

  ‘Belgarath, you don’t even notice the seasons. When you’re face-down in one of your books, I could probably set fire to your toes, and you wouldn’t notice. Besides, you snore.’

  ‘I snore? You sound like a passing thunderstorm every night, all night.’

  ‘It keeps you from getting lonesome.’ He looked pensively out the window again. ‘There’s another reason, too, of course.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He looked directly at me, his eyes strangely wistful. ‘In my whole life, I’ve never really had a place of my own. I’ve slept in the woods, in ditches, and under haystacks, and the warm, friendly nature of my fellow-man has kept me pretty much constantly on the move. I think that just once, I’d like to have a place that nobody can throw me out of.’

  What could I possibly say to that? ‘You want some help?’ I offered.

  ‘Not if my tower’s going to turn into something that looks like this one,’ he growled.

  ‘What’s wrong with this tower?’

  ‘Belgarath, be honest. This tower of yours looks like an ossified tree-stump. You have absolutely no sense of beauty whatsoever.’

  This? Coming from Beldin?

  ‘I think I’ll go talk with Belmakor. He’s a Melcene, and they’re natural builders. Have you ever seen one of their cities?’

  ‘I’ve never had occasion to go into the east.’

  ‘Naturally not. You can’t pull yourself out of your books long enough to go anyplace. Well? Are you coming along, or not?’

  How could I turn down so gracious an invitation? I pulled on my cloak, and we went out into the rain. Beldin, of course, didn’t bother with cloaks. He was absolutely indifferent to the weather.

  When we reached Belmakor’s somewhat overly ornate tower, my stumpy little friend bellowed up, ‘Belmakor! I need to talk with you!’

  Our civilized brother came to the window. ‘What is it, old boy?’ he called down to us.

  ‘I’ve decided to build my own tower. I want you to design it for me. Open your stupid door.’

  ‘Have you bathed lately?’

  ‘Just last month. Don’t worry, I won’t stink up your tower.’

  Belmakor sighed. ‘Oh, very well,’ he gave in. His eyes went slightly distant, and the latch on his heavy iron-bound door clicked. The rest of us had taken our cue from our Master and used rocks to close the entrances to our towers, but Belmakor felt the need for a proper door. Beldin and I went in and mounted the stairs.

  ‘Have you and Belgarath had a falling out?’ Belmakor asked curiously.

  ‘Is that any business of yours?’ Beldin snapped.

  ‘Not really. Just wondering.’

  ‘He wants a place of his own,’ I explained. ‘We’re starting to get under each other’s feet.’

  Belmakor was very shrewd. He got my point immediately. ‘What did you have in mind?’ he asked the dwarf.

  ‘Beauty,’ Beldin said bluntly. ‘I may not be able to share it, but at least I’ll be able to look at it.’

  Belmakor’s eyes filled with sudden tears. He always was the most emotional of us.

  ‘Oh, stop that!’ Beldin told him. ‘Sometimes you’re so gushy you make me want to spew. I want grace. I want proportion, I want something that soars. I’m tired of living in the mud.’

  ‘Can you manage that?’ I asked our brother.

  Belmakor went to his writing desk, gathered his papers, and inserted them in the book he’d been studying. Then he put the book upon a top shelf, spun a large sheet of paper and one of those inexhaustible quill pens he was so fond of out of air itself, and sat down. ‘How big?’ he asked Beldin.

  ‘I think we’d better keep it a little lower than the Master’s, don’t you?’

  ‘Wise move. Let’s not get above ourselves.’ Belmakor quickly sketched in a fairy castle that took my breath away – all light and delicacy with flying buttresses that soared out like wings, and towers as slender as toothpicks.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Beldin accused. ‘You couldn’t house butterflies in that piece of gingerbread.’

  ‘Just a start, brother mine,’ Belmakor said gaily. ‘We’ll modify it down to reality as we go along. You have to do that with dreams.’

  And that started an argument that lasted for about six months and ultimately drew us all into it. Our own towers were, for the most part, strictly utilitarian. Although it pains me to admit it, Beldin’s description of my tower was probably fairly accurate. It did look somewhat like a petrified tree-stump when I stepped back to look at it. It kept me out of the weather, though, and it got me up high enough so that I could see the horizon and look at the stars. What else is a tower supposed to do?

  It was at that point that we discovered that Belsambar had the soul of an artist. The last place in the world you would look for beauty would be in the mind of an Angarak. With surprising heat, given his retiring nature, he argued with Belmakor long and loud, insisting on his variations as opposed to the somewhat pedestrian notions of the Melcenes. Melcenes are builders, and they think in terms of stone and mortar and what your material will actually let you get away with. Angaraks think of the impossible, and then try to come up with ways to make it work.

  ‘Why are you doing this, Belsambar?’ Beldin once asked our normally self-effacing brother. ‘It’s only a buttress, and you’ve been arguing about it for weeks now.’

  ‘It’s the curve of it, Beldin,’ Belsambar explained, more fervently than I’d ever heard him say anything else. ‘It’s like this.’ And he created the illusion of the two opposing towers in the air in front of them for comparison. I’ve never known anyone else who could so fully build illusions as Belsambar. I think it’s an Angarak tr
ait; their whole world is built on an illusion.

  Belmakor took one look and threw his hands in the air. ‘I bow to superior talent,’ he surrendered. ‘It’s beautiful, Belsambar. Now, how do we make it work? There’s not enough support.’

  ‘I’ll support it, if necessary.’ It was Belzedar, of all people! ‘I’ll hold up our brother’s tower until the end of days, if need be.’ What a soul that man had!

  ‘You still didn’t answer my question – any of you!’ Beldin rasped. ‘Why are you all taking so much trouble with all of this?’

  ‘It is because thy brothers love thee, my son,’ Aldur, who had been standing in the shadows unobserved, told him gently. ‘Canst thou not accept their love?’

  Beldin’s ugly face suddenly contorted grotesquely, and he broke down and wept.

  ‘And that is thy first lesson, my son,’ Aldur told him. ‘Thou wilt warily give love, all concealed beneath this gruff exterior of thine, but thou must also learn to accept love.’

  It all got a bit sentimental after that.

  And so we all joined together in the building of Beldin’s tower. It didn’t really take us all that long. I hope Durnik takes note of that. It’s not really immoral to use our gift on mundane things, Sendarian ethics notwithstanding.

  I missed having my grotesque little friend around in my own tower, but I’ll admit that I slept better. I wasn’t exaggerating in the least in my description of his snoring.

  Life settled down in the Vale after that. We continued our studies of the world around us and expanded our applications of our peculiar talent. I think it was one of the twins who discovered that it was possible for us to communicate with each other by thought alone. It would have been one – or both – of the twins, since they’d been sharing their thoughts since the day they were born. I do know that it was Beldin who discovered the trick of assuming the forms of other creatures. The main reason I can be so certain is that he startled several years’ growth out of me the first time he did it. A large hawk with a bright band of blue feathers across its tail came soaring in, settled on my window ledge, and blurred into Beldin. ‘How about that?’ he demanded. ‘It works after all.’