LITMIR.BIZ

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it, Master,’ Belsambar pleaded, ‘before it can bring its evil into the world.’

      ‘That may not be,’ our Master replied.

      ‘Blessed be the wisdom of Aldur,’ Belzedar said, his eyes glittering strangely. ‘With us to aid him, our Master may wield this wondrous jewel for good instead of ill. It would be monstrous to destroy so precious a thing.’ Now that I look back at everything that’s happened, I suppose I shouldn’t really blame Belzedar for his unholy interest in the Orb. It was a part of something that absolutely had to happen. I shouldn’t blame him for it – but I do.

      ‘I tell ye, my sons,’ our Master continued, ‘I would not destroy the Orb even were it possible. Ye have all just returned from looking at the world in its childhood and at man in his infancy. All living things must grow or they will die. Through this jewel shall the world be changed and man shall achieve that state for which he was made. The Orb is not of itself evil. Evil is a thing which lieth only in the hearts and minds of men – and of Gods also.’ And then our Master fell silent, and he sighed, and we went away and left him in his sad communion with the Orb.

      We saw little of our Master in the centuries which followed. Alone in his tower he continued his study of the Orb, and he learned much from it, I think. We were all saddened by his absence, and our work had little joy in it.

      I think it was about twenty centuries after I came to serve my Master when a stranger came into the Vale. He was beautiful as no being I have ever seen, and he walked as if his foot spurned the earth.

      As was customary, we went out to greet him.

      ‘I would speak with thy Master Aldur,’ he told us, and we knew that we were in the presence of a God.

      As the eldest, I stepped forward. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I said politely. I wasn’t certain which God he was, but something about this over-pretty stranger didn’t sit very well with me.

      ‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in a tone that irritated me even more than his manner. ‘My brother knows I am here. Convey me to his tower.’

      I turned and led the way without trusting myself to answer.

      When we reached the tower, the stranger looked me full in the face. ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath,’ he said, ‘by way of thanks for thy service. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or to disapprove of me. For thy sake, I hope that when next we meet, thou wilt remember this instruction and behave in a more seemly manner.’ His eyes seemed to bore directly into me, and his voice chilled me.

      But, because I was still who I was and not even the two thousand years and more I had lived in the Vale had entirely put the wild, rebellious boy in me to sleep, I answered him somewhat tartly. ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I told him. ‘Will you require anything else?’ It wasn’t up to me to tell him where the door was or how to open it. I waited, watching hopefully for some hint of confusion.

      ‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he observed. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior and customary respect.’

      ‘I’m always eager to learn,’ I replied. As you can see, Torak and I got off on the wrong foot almost immediately. You’ll notice that I’d deduced his identity by now.

      He turned and gestured, and the stone door of the tower opened. Then he went inside.

      We never knew exactly what passed between our Master and his brother. They spoke together for hours, then a summer storm broke above our heads, so we were forced to take shelter and thus missed Torak’s departure.

      When the storm had cleared, our Master called us to him, and we went up into his tower. He sat at the table where he had labored so long over the Orb. There was a great sadness in his face, and my heart wept to see it. There was also a reddened mark on his cheek that I didn’t understand.

      But Belzedar saw what I hadn’t almost at once. ‘Master!’ he said with a note of panic in his voice, ‘where is the jewel? Where is the Orb of power?’ I wish I’d paid closer attention to the sound of his voice. I might have been able to avert a lot of things if I had.

      ‘Torak, my brother, hath taken it away with him,’ our Master replied, and his voice had almost the sound of weeping in it.

      ‘Quickly!’ Belzedar exclaimed. ‘We must pursue him and reclaim the Orb before he escapes us! We are many, and he is but one!’

      ‘He is a God, my son,’ Aldur said. ‘Numbers mean nothing to him.’

      ‘But, Master,’ Belzedar said desperately, ‘we must reclaim the Orb! It must be returned to us!’ And I still didn’t realize what was going on in Belzedar’s mind. My brains must have been asleep.

      ‘How did thy brother obtain thine Orb from thee, Master?’ Beltira asked.

      ‘Torak conceived a desire for the jewel,’ Aldur said, ‘and he besought me that I should give it to him. When I would not, he smote me and took the Orb and ran.’

      That did it! Though the jewel was wondrous, it was still only a stone. The fact that Torak had struck my Master, however, brought flames into my brain. I threw off my cloak, bent my will into the air before me, and forged a sword with a single word. I seized the sword and leapt to the window.

      ‘No!’ my Master said, and the word stopped me as if a wall had been placed before me.

      ‘Open!’ I commanded, slashing at that unseen wall with the sword I’d just made.

      ‘No!’ my Master said again, and the wall wouldn’t let me through.

      ‘He hath struck thee, Master!’ I raged. ‘For that I will kill him though he be ten times a God!’

      ‘No. Torak would crush thee as easily as thou wouldst crush an insect which annoyed thee. I love thee much, mine eldest son, and I would not lose thee so.’

      ‘There must be war, Master,’ Belmakor said. That should give you some idea of how seriously we took the matter. The word ‘war’ was the last I’d have ever expected to hear coming from the ultra-civilized Belmakor. ‘The blow and the theft must not go unpunished. We will forge weapons, and Belgarath shall lead us. We will make war on this thief who calls himself a God.’

      ‘My son,’ Aldur said with a kind of gentle sorrow, ‘there will be war enough to glut thee of it before thy life ends. Gladly would I have given the Orb to Torak, save that the Orb itself hath told me that one day it would destroy him. I would have spared him had I been able, but his lust for the jewel was too great, and he would not listen.’ He sighed and then straightened. ‘There will be war, Belmakor. It is unavoidable now. My brother hath the Orb in his possession, and with its power can he do great mischief. We must reclaim it or alter it before Torak can subdue it and bend it to his will.’

      ‘Alter?’ Belzedar said, aghast. ‘Surely, Master, surely thou wouldst not weaken this precious thing!’ It seemed that was all he could think about, and I still didn’t understand.

      ‘It may not be weakened, Belzedar,’ Aldur replied, ‘but will retain its power even unto the end of days. The purpose of our war shall be to press Torak into haste, that he will attempt to use it in a way that it will not be used.’

      Belzedar stared at him. He evidently had thought that the Orb was a passive object. He hadn’t counted on the fact that it had its own ideas about things.

      ‘The world is inconstant, Belzedar,’ our Master explained, ‘but good and evil are immutable and unchanging. The Orb is an object of good and not merely some bauble or toy. It hath understanding not such as thine, but understanding nonetheless. And it hath a will. Beware of it, for its will is the will of a stone. It is, as I say, a thing of good. If it be raised to do evil, it will strike down whoever would so use it – be he man or be he God.’ Aldur obviously saw what I did not, and this was his way to try to warn Belzedar. I don’t

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