Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress: 2-Book Collection. David Eddings

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СКАЧАТЬ brother is a part of one of them, yes. Each of the Destinies is comprised of innumerable parts, and each hath a consciousness which doth exceed the awareness of any of those parts.’

      ‘Which one came first, Master?’ Belkira asked.

      ‘We do not know. We are not permitted to know.’

      ‘More games,’ Beldin said in a tone of profoundest disgust. ‘I hate games.’

      ‘We must all play this one, however, gentle Beldin. The rules may not be to our liking, but we must abide by them, for they are laid down by the contending Purposes.’

      ‘Why? It’s their fight. Why involve the rest of us? Why don’t they just pick a time and place, meet, and have it out once and for all?’

      ‘That they may not do, my son, for should they ever confront each other directly, their struggle would destroy the whole of the universe.’

      ‘I don’t think we’d want that,’ Belkira said mildly. The twins are Alorns, after all, and Alorns take a childish delight in gross understatement.

      ‘You are the other Destiny, aren’t you, Master?’ Belsambar asked. ‘Torak is the one, and you are the other.’

      ‘I am a part of it, my son,’ Aldur conceded. ‘We are all parts of it. That is why what we do is so important. One will come in the fullness of time, however, who will be even more important. It is he who will meet Torak and prepare the way for the Choice.’

      And that was the very first time I ever heard of Belgarion. Aldur knew he was coming, though, and he’d been patiently preparing for him since he and his brothers had built the world. If you want to put it in the simplest terms, I suppose you could say that the Gods created this world to give Belgarion something to stand on while he set things right again. It was a lot of responsibility for somebody like Garion, but I suppose he was up to it. Things did turn out all right – more or less.

      Our Master’s explanation of what we were doing laid a heavy responsibility on us as well, and we felt it keenly. Even in the midst of our labors, however, we all noticed that the world had been enormously changed by what Torak had done to it. The presence of a new ocean in what had been the center of the continent had a profound effect on the climate, and the mountain range our Master and Belar had raised to confine that ocean changed it even more. Summers became dryer and hotter for one thing, and the winters became longer and colder. That’s one of the reasons that I tend to get very angry when someone starts playing around with the weather. I’ve seen what happens when something or someone tampers with normal weather patterns. Garion and I had a very long talk about that on one occasion, as I recall – that is, I talked. He listened. At least I hope he did. Garion has enormous power, and sometimes he turns it loose before he thinks his way completely through a given course of action.

      With the change of climate there also came a gradual alteration of the world around us. The vast primeval forest on the northern edge of the Vale began to thin out, for one thing, and it was replaced by grassland. I’m sure the Algars approve of that, but I preferred the trees myself.

      There was also a rather brutal alteration of the climate of the far north. Belar, however, persisted in his plan to find some way to close with the Angaraks again, and his Alorns were obliged to endure truly savage winters.

      There in the Vale, however, we had more on our minds than the weather. The cracking of the world set a lot of things in motion, and Aldur kept the seven of us very busy making sure that things which were supposed to happen did happen. We surmised that the Angaraks were doing the same thing. The two contending Purposes were undoubtedly maneuvering for position.

      About twenty years after the cracking of the world, our Master summoned us all to his tower and suggested that one of us ought to go to what is now Mallorea to find out what Torak and his people were up to.

      ‘I’ll go,’ Beldin volunteered. ‘I fly better than the rest of you, and I can move around among the Angaraks without attracting any attention.’

      ‘Somehow your reasoning there escapes me, old boy,’ Belmakor said. ‘You’re a rather remarkable-looking fellow, you know.’

      ‘That’s the whole point. When people look at me, all they can see is this hump on my back and the fact that my arms are longer than my legs. They don’t bother to look at my face to find out what my race is. There’s a kind of anonymity that goes with being deformed.’

      ‘Do you want me to go with you?’ Belsambar offered. ‘I’m an Angarak, after all, and I know the customs.’

      ‘Thanks, brother, but no. You’ve got some fairly strong opinions about Grolims. We wouldn’t be anonymous for very long if you started turning every single priest of Torak inside out. I’m just going there to look, and I’d rather that Torak didn’t know that I’m around.’

      ‘I wouldn’t interfere, Beldin.’

      ‘Let’s not take the chance. I love you too much to risk your life.’

      ‘You really shouldn’t go alone, Beldin,’ Belzedar told him, his eyes strangely intent. ‘I think perhaps I’d better go too.’

      ‘I’m not a child, Belzedar. I can take care of myself.’

      ‘I’m sure of it, but we can cover more ground if there are two of us. The other continent’s quite large, and the Angaraks have probably spread out by now. The Master wants information, and two of us can get it faster than one.’

      Now that I think back about it, Belzedar’s arguments were just a bit thin. Angarak society was the most tightly controlled in the world. Torak was not going to let his people spread out; he would keep them under his thumb. Belzedar had his own reasons for wanting to go to Mallorea, and I should have realized that helping Beldin wasn’t one of them.

      The two of them argued for a while, but Beldin finally gave in. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Come along if it means so much to you.’

      And so the next morning the two of them took the forms of hawks and flew off toward the east.

      We all dispersed not long after that. The Master had some fairly extensive tasks for me in Arendia and Tolnedra.

      The young she-wolf went with me, of course. I hadn’t even considered leaving her behind, and it probably wouldn’t have done me any good if I had. When we’d first met, she’d said, ‘I will go along with you for a while.’ Evidently, we hadn’t come to the end of that ‘while’ yet. I didn’t really mind, though. She was good company.

      The shortest route to northern Arendia lay across Ulgoland, so the wolf and I went up into those mountains and proceeded in a generally northwesterly direction. I made us a proper camp every night. Fire had made her nervous right at first, but now she rather liked having a fire in the evening.

      After a few days I realized that we were going to be passing fairly close to Prolgu. I didn’t really like the current Gorim very much. This particular successor seemed to be terribly impressed by the fact that the Ulgos were the children of the father of the Gods. I guess that made him feel that Ulgos were better than the rest of mankind. I reluctantly concluded that it’d be bad manners to bypass Prolgu without paying a courtesy call, so I veered slightly north in order to reach the city.

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