David Eddings - Enchanter's End Game

“What happened, Zedar?” Her question was very direct. There was another long, painful pause.

“Oh, Polgara!” Zedar’s voice came in a strangled sob. “You cannot know! I was so sure of myself—so certain that I could keep a part of my mind free from Torak’s domination—but I was wrong—wrong! His mind and will overwhelm me. He took me in his hand and he crushed out all of my resistance. The touch of his hand, Polgara!” There was horror in Zedar’s voice. “It reaches down into the very depths of your soul. I know Torak for what he is—loathsome, twisted, evil beyond your understanding of the word—but when he calls me, I must go; and what he bids me do, I must do—even though my soul shrieks within me against it. Even now, as he sleeps, his fist is around my heart.” There was another hoarse sob.

“Didn’t you know that it’s impossible to resist a God?” Aunt Pol asked in that same compassionate voice. “Was it pride, Zedar? Were you so sure of your power that you thought you could trick him—that you could conceal your intention from him?”

Zedar sighed. “Perhaps,” he admitted. “Aldur was a gentle Master. He never brought his mind down on me, so I was not prepared for what Torak did to me. Torak is not gentle. What he wants, he takes—and if he must rip out your soul in the taking, it does not matter to him in the slightest. You’ll discover his power, Polgara. Soon he’ll awaken and he’ll destroy Belgarion. Not even the Rivan King is a match for that awful mind. And then Torak will take you as his bride—as he has always said he would. Don’t resist him, Polgara. Save yourself that agony. In the end, you’ll go to him anyway. You’ll go willingly—even eagerly.”

There was a sudden scraping sound in the room beyond the iron door, and a quick rush of feet.

“Durnik!” Aunt Pol cried sharply. “No!”

“What’s happening?” Garion demanded of Belgarath.

“That’s what it means!” Belgarath gasped. “Get that door open!”

“Get back, you fool!” Zedar was shouting.

There was a sudden crash, the sound of bodies locked in struggle smashing into furniture.

“I warn you,” Zedar cried again. “Get back!”

There was the sharp sound of a blow, of a fist striking solid bone.

“Zedar!” Belgarath roared, yanking at the iron door.

Then within the room there was a thunderous detonation.

“Durnik!” Aunt Pol shrieked.

In a sudden burst of fury, Belgarath raised his clenched hand, joined his flaming will with his arm and drove his fist at the locked door. The massive force of his blow ripped the iron door from its hinges as if it had been no more than paper.

The room beyond had a vaulted, curved ceiling supported by great iron girders, black with age. Garion seemed to see everything in the room at once with a curious kind of detachment, as if all emotion had been drained from him. He saw Ce’Nedra and Errand clinging to each other in fright beside one wall. Aunt Pol was standing as if locked in place, her eyes wide as she stared in stunned disbelief at the still form of Durnik the smith, who lay crumpled on the floor, and whose face had that deadly pale cast to it that could only mean one thing. A terrible flood of realization suddenly swept her face—a realization of an irrevocable loss.

“No!” she cried out. “My Durnik—No!”

She rushed to the fallen man, fell on her knees beside him and gathered his still form into her arms with a heartbroken wail of grief and despair.

And then Garion saw Zedar the Apostate for the first time. The sorcerer was also staring at Durnik’s body. There was a desperate regret on his face—a knowledge that he had finally committed the one act that forever put him past all hope of redemption.

“You fool,” he muttered. “Why? Why did you make me kill you? That’s the one thing above all others I didn’t want to do.”

Then Belgarath, as inexorable as death itself, lunged through the shattered remains of the door and rushed upon the man he had once called brother.

Zedar flinched back from the old sorcerer’s awful rage.

“I didn’t mean to do it, Belgarath,” he quavered, his hands raised to ward off Belgarath’s rush. “The fool tried to attack me. He was—”

“You—” Belgarath grated at him from between teeth clenched with hate. “You—you—” But he was past speech. No word could contain his rage. He raised both arms and struck at Zedar’s face with his fists. Zedar reeled back, but Belgarath was upon him, grappling, pounding at him with his hands.

Garion could feel flickers of will from one or the other of them; but caught up in emotions so powerful that they erased thought, neither was coherent enough to focus the force within him. And so, like two tavern brawlers, they rolled on the floor, kicking, gouging, pounding at each other, Belgarath consumed with fury and Zedar with fear and chagrin.

Desperately, the Apostate jerked a dagger from the sheath at his waist, and Belgarath seized his wrist in both hands and pounded it on the floor until the knife went skittering away. Then each struggled to reach the dagger, clawing and jerking at each other, their faces frozen into intense grimaces as each strove to reach the dagger first.

At some point during the frenzied seconds when they had burst into the room, Garion had, unthinking, drawn the great sword from its sheath across his back, but the Orb and the blade were cold and unresponsive in his hand as he stood watching the deadly struggle between the two sorcerers.

Belgarath’s hands were locked about Zedar’s throat, and Zedar, strangling, clawed desperately at the old man’s arms. Belgarath’s face was contorted into an animal snarl, his lips drawn back from clenched teeth as he throttled his ancient enemy. As if finally driven past all hope of sanity, he struggled to his feet, dragging Zedar up with him. Holding the Apostate by the throat with one hand, he began to rain blows on him with the other. Then, between one blow and the next, he swung his arm down and pointed at the stones beneath their feet. With a dreadful grinding, a great crack appeared, zigzagging across the floor. The rocks shrieked in protest as the crack widened. Still struggling, the two men toppled and fell into the yawning fissure. The earth seemed to shudder. With a terrible sound, the crack ground shut.

Incredulously, his mouth suddenly agape, Garion stared in stunned disbelief at the scarcely discernible crack through which the two men had fallen.

Ce’Nedra screamed, her hands going to her face in horror.

“Do something!” Silk shouted at Garion, but Garion could only stare at him in blank incomprehension.

“Polgara!” Silk said desperately, turning to Aunt Pol.

Still incapacitated by her sudden, overwhelming grief, she could not respond, but knelt with Durnik’s lifeless body in her arms, weeping uncontrollably as she rocked back and forth, holding him tightly against her.

From infinitely far beneath there was a sullen detonation, and then another. Even in the bowels of the earth, the deadly struggle continued. As if compelled, Garion’s eyes sought out the embrasure in the far wall; there in the dim light he could make out the recumbent form of Kal Torak. Strangely emotionless, Garion stared at the form of his enemy, meticulously noting every detail. He saw the black robe and the polished mask. And he saw Cthrek Goru, Torak’s great black sword.

Although he did not—could not—move or even feel, a struggle, nonetheless, raged inside him—a struggle perhaps even more dreadful than that which had just plunged Belgarath and Zedar into the depths of the earth. The two forces which had first diverged and then turned and rushed at each other down the endless corridors of time had finally met within him. The EVENT which was the ultimate conclusion of the two Prophecies, had begun, and its first skirmishes were taking place within Garion’s mind. Minute and very subtle adjustments were shifting some of his most deeply ingrained attitudes and perceptions.