Enchanters' End Game

With a dreadfully slow deliberation, the Dark God rose from his bier, towering over all of them, Cthrek Goru in his hand.

"Garion!" Ce'Nedra screamed. "Do something!"

With deadly pace Torak strode toward the dazed Belgarath, raising his sword. But Aunt Pol sprang to her feet and threw herself between them.

Slowly Torak lowered his sword, and then he smiled a loathsome smile. "My bride," he rasped in a horrid voice.

"Never, Torak," she declared.

He ignored her defiance. "Thou hast come to me at last, Polgara," he gloated.

"I have come to watch you die."

"Die, Polgara? Me? No, my bride, that is not why thou hast come. My will has drawn thee to me as was foretold. And now thou art mine. Come to me, my beloved."

"Never!"

"Never, Polgara?" There was a dreadful insinuation in the God's rasping voice. "Thou wilt submit to me, my bride. I will bend thee to my will. Thy struggles shall but make my victory over thee the sweeter. In the end, I will have thee. Come here."

So overwhelming was the force of his mind that she swayed almost as a tree sways in the grip of a great wind. "No," she gasped, closing her eyes and turning her face away sharply.

"Look at me, Polgara," he commanded, his voice almost purring. "I am thy fate. All that thou didst think to love before me shall fall away, and thou shall love only me. Look at me."

Helplessly she turned her head and opened her eyes to stare at him. The hatred and defiance seemed to melt out of her, and a terrible fear came into her face.

"Thy will crumbles, my beloved," he told her. "Now come to me."

She must resist! All the confusion was gone now, and Garion understood at last. Thts was the real battle. If Aunt Pol succumbed, they were all lost. It had all been for this.

"Help her, " the voice within him said.

"Aunt Poll" Garion threw the thought at her, "Remember Durnik!"

He knew without knowing how he knew that this was the one thing that could sustain her in her deadly struggle. He ranged through his memory, throwing images of Durnik at her - of the smith's strong hands at work at his forge - of his serious eyes - of the quiet sound of his voice - and most of all of the good man's unspoken love for her, the love that had been the center of Durnik's entire life.

She had begun involuntarily to move, no more than a slight shifting of her weight in preparation for that first fatal step in response to Torak's overpowering command. Once she had made that step, she would be lost. But Garion's memories of Durnik struck her like a blow. Her shoulders, which had already begun to droop in defeat, suddenly straightened, and her eyes flashed with renewed defiance.

"Never!" she told the expectantly waiting God. "I will not!"

Torak's face slowly stiffened. His eyes blazed as he brought the full, crushing force of his will to bear upon her, but she stood firmly against all that he could do, clinging to the memory of Durnik as if to something so solid that not even the will of the Dark God could tear her from it.

A look of baffled frustration contorted Torak's face as he perceived that she would never yield - that her love would be forever denied to him. She had won, and her victory was like a knife twisting slowly inside him. Thwarted, enraged, maddened by her now-unalterable will to resist, Torak raised his face and suddenly howled - a shocking, animallike sound of overwhelming frustration.

"Then perish both!" he raged. "Die with thy father!"

And with that, he once more raised his deadly sword.

Unflinching, Aunt Pol faced the raging God.

"Now, Belgarionl" The voice cracked in Garion's mind.

The Orb, which had remained cold and dead throughout all the dreadful confrontation between Aunt Pol and the maimed God, suddenly flared into life, and the sword of the Rivan King exploded into fire, filling the crypt with an intense blue light. Garion leaped forward, extending his sword to catch the deadly blow which was already descending upon Aunt Pol's unprotected face.

The steel sound of blade against blade was like the striking of a great bell, and it rang within the crypt, shimmering and echoing from the walls. Torak's sword, deflected by the flaming blade, plowed a shower of sparks from the flagstone floor. The God's single eye widened as he recognized all in one glance the Rivan King, the flaming sword and the blazing Orb of Aldur. Garion saw in the look that Torak had already forgotten Aunt Pol and that now the maimed God's full attention was focused on him.

"And so thou hast come at last, Belgarion," the God greeted him gravely. "I have awaited thy coming since the beginning of days. Thy fate awaits thee here. Hail, Belgarion, and farewell."

His arm lashed back, and he swung a vast blow, but Garion, without even thinking, raised his own sword and once again the crypt rang with the bell note of blade against blade.

"Thou art but a boy, Belgarion," Torak said. "Wilt thou pit thyself against the might and invincible will of a God? Submit to me, and I will spare thy life."

The will of the God of Angarak was now directed at him, and in that instant, Garion fully understood how hard Aunt Pol's struggle had been. He felt the terrible compulsion to obey draining the strength from him. But suddenly a vast chorus of voices rang down through all the centuries to him, crying out the single word, "No!" All the lives of all who preceded him had been directed at this one moment, and those lives infused him now. Though he alone held Iron-grip's sword, Belgarion of Riva was not alone, and Torak's will could not sway him.

In a move of absolute defiance, Garion again raised his flaming sword.

"So be it, then," Torak roared. "To the death, Belgarion!"

At first it seemed but some trick of the flickering light that filled the tomb, but almost as soon as that thought occurred, Garion saw that Torak was growing larger, swelling upward, towering, expanding. With an awful wrenching sound, he shouldered aside the rusted iron roof of the tomb, bursting upward.

Once again without thinking, without even stopping to consider how to do it, Garion also began to expand, and he too exploded through the confining ceiling, shuddering away the rusty debris as he rose.

In open air among the decaying ruins of the City of Night the two titanic adversaries faced each other beneath the perpetual cloud that blotted out the sky.

"The conditions are met," the dry voice spoke through Garion's lips.

"So it would seem," another, equally unemotional voice came from Torak's steel-encased mouth.

"Do you wish to involve others?" Garion's voice asked.