David Eddings - Enchanter's End Game

He was about to protest, but she put her hand firmly to his lips. “Don’t argue, Garion,” she told him. “You know that I love you and that you’re going to be leaning on me for the rest of your life anyway, so you might as well get used to the idea.”

“I think my life’s going to be different now, Master,” Belgarath was saying to Aldur. “Pol’s always been there, ready to come when I called her—not always willingly, perhaps—but she always came. Now she’ll have other concerns.” He sighed. “I suppose our children all grow up and get married sometime.”

“This particular pose doth not become thee, my son,” Aldur told him.

Belgarath grinned. “I’ve never been able to slip anything past you, Master,” he said. Then his face grew serious again. “Polgara’s been almost like a son to me,” he told Aldur, “but perhaps it’s time that I let her be a woman. I’ve denied her that for too long.”

“As it seems best to thee, my son,” Aldur said. “And now, I pray thee, go apart a little way and permit us our family grief.” He looked at Torak’s body lying on the bier and then at Garion. “I have but one more task for thee, Belgarion,” he said. “Take the Orb and place it upon my brother’s breast.”

“Yes, Master,” Garion replied immediately. He removed his arm from about Ce’Nedra’s shoulders and walked to the bier, trying not to look at the dead God’s seared and twisted face. He reached out and laid the round blue stone upon the motionless chest of Kal Torak. Then he stepped back. Once again his little princess wormed her way beneath his arm and clasped him about the waist. It was not unpleasant, but he had the brief, irrational thought that things would be awkward if she were going to insist on this close embrace for the rest of their lives.

Once again the Gods formed their circle, and once again the Orb began to glow. Gradually, the seared face started to change, its maiming slowly disappearing. The light surrounding the Gods and the bier grew stronger, and the glow of the Orb became incandescent. The last Garion saw of the face of Torak, it was calm, composed and unmarked. It was a beautiful face, but it was nonetheless still a dead face.

And then the light grew so intense that Garion could no longer look at it. When it subsided, and when Garion looked back at the bier, the Gods and the body of Torak were gone. Only the Orb remained, glowing slightly as it lay on the rough stone.

Errand, once again with that confident look, went to the bier. Standing on his tiptoes, he reached across the block to retrieve the glowing stone. Then he carried it to Garion. “Errand, Belgarion,” he said firmly, handing the Orb back, and in their touch as the Orb exchanged hands, Garion felt something profoundly different.

Drawn together by what had happened, the little group silently gathered about Aunt Pol and Durnik. To the east, the sky had begun to lighten, and the rosy blush of dawn touched the few last remaining tatters of the cloud that had covered Cthol Mishrak. The events of the dreadful night had been titanic, but now the night was nearly over, and they stood together, not speaking as they watched the dawn.

The storm that had raged through the long night had passed. For years beyond counting, the universe had been divided against itself, but now it was one again. If there were such things as beginnings, this was a beginning. And so it was, through broken cloud, that the sun rose on the morning of the first day.

Belgarion of Riva slept very fitfully the night before his wedding. Had he and Ce’Nedra been married in some simple, private little ceremony shortly after his meeting with Torak, things might have gone more smoothly. At that time both he and his flighty little princess had been too tired and too overwhelmed by the events which had taken place to be anything but absolutely honest with each other. During those few short days he had found her to be almost a different person. She had watched his every move with a kind of patient adoration, and she was forever touching him—his hair, his face, his arms—her fingers gentle and curious. The peculiar way she had of coming up to him, no matter who was present or what was going on, and worming her way into the circle of his arm had been, on the whole, rather nice.

Those days had not, however, lasted. Once she had reassured herself that he was all right and that he was really there and not some figment of her imagination which might be snatched away at any moment, Ce’Nedra had gradually changed. He felt somehow like a possession; following her initial delight in ownership, his princess had rather deliberately embarked upon some grand plan of alteration.

And now the day upon which her possession of him was to be formalized was only hours away. His sleep came in fits and starts with dreams mingling peculiarly with memories as he dipped in and out of sleep like a sea bird skimming across the waves.

He was at Faldor’s farm again. Even in his sleep he could hear the ringing of Durnik’s hammer and smell the odors coming from Aunt Pol’s kitchen. Rundorig was there—and Zubrette—and Doroon—and there was Brill, creeping around a corner. He half woke and turned restlessly in the royal bed. That wasn’t possible. Doroon was dead, drowned in the River Mardu, and Brill had vanished forever over the parapet of mile-high Rak Cthol.

And then he was in the palace at Sthiss Tor, and Salmissra, her blatant nudity glowing through her filmy gown, was touching his face with her cold fingers.

But Salmissra was no longer a woman. He had watched her himself as she had changed into a serpent.

Grul the Eldrak hammered at the frozen ground with his iron-shod club, bellowing, “Come ’Grat, fight!” and Ce’Nedra was screaming. In the chaotic world of dreams half mixed with memories he saw Ctuchik, his face contorted with horror, exploding once more into nothingness in the hanging turret at Rak Cthol.

And then he stood once again in the decaying ruin of Cthol Mishrak, his sword ablaze, and watched as Torak raised his arms to the rolling cloud, weeping tears of fire, and once again he heard the stricken God’s final cry, “Mother!”

He stirred, half rousing and shuddering as he always did when that dream recurred, but dipped almost immediately into sleep again.

He was standing on the deck of Barak’s ship just off the Mallorean coast, listening as King Anheg explained why Barak was chained to the mast.

“We had to do it, Belgarath,” the coarse-faced monarch said mournfully. “Right during the middle of that storm, he turned into a bear! He drove the crew to row toward Mallorea all night long, and then, just before daybreak, he turned back into a man again.”

“Unchain him, Anheg,” Belgarath said disgustedly. “He’s not going to turn into a bear again—not as long as Garion’s safe and well.” Garion rolled over and sat up. That had been a startling revelation.

There had been a purpose behind Barak’s periodic alterations.

“You’re Garion’s defender,” Belgarath had explained to the big man. “That’s why you were born. Any time Garion was in mortal danger, you changed into a bear in order to protect him.”

“You mean to say that I’m a sorcerer?” Barak had demanded incredulously.

“Hardly. The shape-change isn’t all that difficult, and you didn’t do it consciously. The Prophecy did the work, not you.”

Barak had spent the rest of the voyage back to Mishrak ac Thull trying to come up with a tastefully understated way to add that concept to his coat of arms.

Garion climbed out of his high, canopied bed and went to the window. The stars in the spring sky looked down at the sleeping city of Rivan and at the dark waters of the Sea of the Winds beyond the harbor. There was no sign that dawn was anywhere near yet. Garion sighed, poured himself a drink of water from the pitcher on the table, and went back to bed and his troubled sleep.