"It wasn"t us," one of the soldiers said quickly. "It was Kador. We were just following orders."
"He might accept that as an excuse," she said doubtfully. "If it were me, though, I"d take him some kind of gift to prove my loyalty - something appropriate to the circ.u.mstances." She looked significantly at Kador.
Several of the legionnaires took her meaning, drew their swords and moved into position around the Grand Duke.
"What are you doing?" Kador demanded of them.
"I think you"ve lost more than a throne today, Kador," Aunt Pol said.
"You can"t do this," Kador told the legionnaires.
One of the soldiers put the point of his sword against the Grand Duke"s throat. "We"re loyal to the Emperor, my Lord," he said grimly. "We"re placing you under arrest for high treason, and if you give us any trouble, we"ll settle for just delivering your head to Tol Honeth - if you take my meaning."
One of the legion officers knelt respectfully before Ce"Nedra. "Your Imperial Highness," he said to her, "how may we serve you?"
The princess, still pale and trembling, drew herself up. "Deliver this traitor to my father," she said in a ringing voice, "and tell him what happened here. Inform him that you have arrested the Grand Duke Kador at my command."
"At once, your Highness," the officer said, springing to his feet. "Chain the prisoner!" he ordered sharply, then turned back to Ce"Nedra. "May we provide you an escort to your destination, your Highness?"
"That won"t be necessary, captain," she told him. "Just remove this traitor from my sight."
"As your Highness wishes," the captain said with a deep bow. He gestured sharply, and the soldiers led Kador away.
Garion was staring at the mark on his palm. There was no sign of the fire that had burned there.
Durnik, released now from the grip of the soldiers, looked at Garion, his eyes wide. "I thought I knew you," he whispered. "Who are you, Garion, and how did you do this?"
"Dear Durnik," Aunt Pol said fondly, touching his arm. "Still willing to believe only what you can see. Garion"s the same boy he"s always been."
"You mean it was you?" Durnik looked at Chamdar"s body and pulled his eyes quickly away.
"Of course," she said. "You know Garion. He"s the most ordinary boy in the world."
But Garion knew differently. The Will had been his, and the Word had come from him.
"Keep still!" her voice warned inside his head. "No one must know."
"Why did you call me Belgarion?" he demanded silently.
"Because it"s your name, " her voice replied. "Now try to act natural and don"t bother me with guestions. We"ll talk about it later. " And then her voice was gone.
The others stood around awkwardly until the legionnaires left with Kador. Then, when the soldiers were out of sight and the need for imperial self possession was gone, Ce"Nedra began to cry. Aunt Pol took the tiny girl in her arms and began to comfort her.
"I guess we"d better bury this," Barak said, nudging what was left of Chamdar with his foot. "The Dryads might be offended if we went off and left it still smoking."
"I"ll fetch my spade," Durnik said.
Garion turned away and brushed past Mandorallen and Hettar. His hands were trembling violently, and he was so exhausted that his legs barely held him.
She had called him Belgarion, and the name had rung in his mind as if he had always known that it was his - as if for all his brief years he had been incomplete until in that instant the name itself had completed him. But Belgarion was a being who with Will and Word and the touch of his hand could turn flesh into living fire.
"You did it!" he accused the dry awareness in one corner of his mind. "No, " the voice replied. "I only showed you how. The Will and the Word and the touch were all yours. "
Garion knew that it was true. With horror he remembered his enemy"s final supplication and the flaming, incandescent hand with which he had spurned that agonized appeal for mercy. The revenge he had wanted so desperately for the past several months was dreadfully complete, but the taste of it was bitter, bitter.
Then his knees buckled, and he sank to the earth and wept like a broken-hearted child.
Part Three - NYISSA
Chapter Twenty-three.
THE EARTH WAS STILL THE SAME. The trees had not changed, nor had the sky. It was still spring, for the seasons had not altered their stately march. But for Garion nothing would ever again be the way that it had been.
They rode down through the Wood of the Dryads to the banks of the River of the Woods which marked the southern boundary of Tolnedra, and from time to time as they rode he caught strange glances from his friends. The looks were speculative, thoughtful, and Durnik - good, solid Durnik - behaved as if he were almost afraid. Only Aunt Pol seemed unchanged, unconcerned. "Don"t worry about it, Belgarion, " her voice murmured in his mind.
"Don"t call me that," he replied with an irritated thought.
"It"s your name, " the silent voice said. "You might as well get used to it.
"Leave me alone. "
And then the sense of her presence in his mind was gone.
It took them several days to reach the sea. The weather remained intermittently cloudy, though it did not rain. A stiff onsh.o.r.e breeze was blowing when they rode out onto the wide beach at the mouth of the river. The surf boomed against the sand, and whitecaps flecked the tops of the waves.
Out beyond the surf, a lean, black Cherek war-boat swung at anchor, the air above her alive with screeching gulls. Barak pulled his horse in and shaded his eyes. "She looks familiar," he rumbled, peering intently at the narrow ship.
Hettar shrugged. "They all look the same to me."
"There"s all the difference in the world," Barak said, sounding a bit injured. "How would you feel if I said that all horses looked the same?"
"I"d think you were going blind."
Barak grinned at him. "It"s exactly the same thing," he said.
"How do we let them know we"re here?" Durnik asked.
"They know already," Barak said, "unless they"re drunk. Sailors always watch an unfriendly sh.o.r.e very carefully."
"Unfriendly?" Durnik asked.
"Every sh.o.r.e is unfriendly when a Cherek war-boat comes in sight," Barak answered. "It"s some kind of superst.i.tion, I think."
The ship came about and her anchor was raised. Her oars came out like long, spidery legs, and she seemed to walk through the froth-topped combers toward the mouth of the river. Barak led the way toward the riverbank, then rode along the broad flow until he found a spot deep enough so that the ship could be moored next to the sh.o.r.e.
The fur-clad sailors who threw Barak a mooring line looked familiar, and the first one who leaped across to the riverbank was Greldik, Barak"s old friend.
"You"re a long ways south," Barak said as if they had only just parted.
Greldik shrugged. "I heard you needed a ship. I wasn"t doing anything, so I thought I"d come down and see what you were up to."
"Did you talk to my cousin?"
"Grinneg? No. We made a run down from Kotu to the harbor at Tol Horb for some Drasnian merchants. I ran into Elteg - you remember him - black beard, only one eye?"
Barak nodded.
"He told me that Grinneg was paying him to meet you here. I remembered that you and Elteg didn"t get along very well, so I offered to come down instead."
"And he agreed?"
"No," Greldik replied, pulling at his beard. "As a matter of fact, he told me to mind my own business."
"I"m not surprised," Barak said. "Elteg always was greedy, and Grinneg probably offered him a lot of money."
"More than likely." Greldik grinned. "Elteg didn"t say how much, though."
"How did you persuade him to change his mind?"
"He had some trouble with his ship," Greldik said with a straight face.
"What kind of trouble?"
"It seems that one night after he and his crew were all drunk, some scoundrel slipped aboard and chopped down his mast."
"What"s the world coming to?" Barak asked, shaking his head.
"My thought exactly," Greldik agreed.
"How did he take it?"
"Not very well, I"m afraid," Greldik said sadly. "When we rowed out of the harbor, he sounded as if he was inventing profanities on the spot. You could hear him for quite some distance."
"He should learn to control his temper. That"s the kind of behavior that gives Chereks a bad name in the ports of the world."
Greldik nodded soberly and turned to Aunt Pol. "My Lady," he said with a polite bow, "my ship is at your disposal."
"Captain," she asked, acknowledging his bow. "How long will it take you to get us to Sthiss Tor?"
"Depends on the weather," he answered, squinting at the sky. "Probably ten days at the most. We picked up fodder for your horses on the way here, but we"ll have to stop for water from time to time."
"We"d better get started then," she said.
It took a bit of persuading to get the horses aboard the ship, but Hettar managed it without too much difficulty. Then they pushed away from the bank, crossed the bar at the mouth of the river and reached the open sea. The crew raised the sails, and they quartered the wind down along the gray-green coastline of Nyissa.
Garion went forward to his customary place in the bow of the ship and sat there, staring bleakly out at the tossing sea. The image of the burning man back in the forest filled his mind.
There was a firm step behind him and a faint, familiar fragrance.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Aunt Pol asked.
"What"s there to talk about?"
"Many things," she told him.
"You knew I could do that kind of thing, didn"t you?"
"I suspected it," she said, sitting down beside him. "There were several hints. One can never be sure, though, until it"s used for the first time. I"ve known any number of people who had the capability and just never used it."
"I wish I never had," Garion said.
"I don"t see that you really had much choice. Chamdar was your enemy."
"But did it have to be that way?" he demanded. "Did it have to be fire?"
"The choice was yours," she answered. "If fire bothers you so much, don"t do it that way next time."
"There isn"t going to be a next time," he stated flatly. "Not ever."
"Belgarion, " her voice snapped within his mind, "stop this foolishness at once. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. "
"Quit that," he said aloud. "Stay out of my mind - and don"t call me Belgarion."
"You are Belgarion," she insisted. "Like it or not, you will use the power again. Once it"s been released, you can never cage it up. You"ll get angry or frightened or excited, and you"ll use it without even thinking. You can no more choose not to use it than you can choose not to use one of your hands. The important thing now is to teach you how to control it. We can"t have you blundering through the world uprooting trees and flattening hills with random thoughts. You must learn to control it and yourself. I didn"t raise you to let you become a monster."
"It"s too late," he said. "I"m already a monster. Didn"t you see what I did back there?"
"All this self pity is very tedious, Belgarion, " her voice told him. "I don"t think we"re getting anywhere. " She stood up. "Do try to grow up a little, dear," she said aloud. "It"s very hard to instruct someone who"s so self absorbed that he won"t listen."
"I"ll never do it again," he told her defiantly.
"Oh yes, you will, Belgarion. You"ll learn and you"ll practice and you"ll develop the discipline this requires. If you don"t want to do it willingly, then we"ll have to do it the other way. Think about it, dear, and make up your mind - but don"t take too long. It"s too important to be put off. "She reached out and gently touched his cheek; then she turned and walked away.
"She"s right, you know, " the voice in his mind told him.
"You stay out of this, " Garion said.
In the days that followed, he avoided Aunt Pol as much as possible, but he could not avoid her eyes. Wherever he went on the narrow ship, he knew that she was watching him, her eyes calm, speculative.
Then, at breakfast on the third day out, she looked at his face rather closely as if noticing something for the first time. "Garion," she said, "you"re starting to look s.h.a.ggy. Why don"t you shave?"