that which I have made.’
‘Who shall forbid anything to the God Aldur?’ Belmakor asked.
‘It is beyond thine understanding, my son,’ our Master said. ‘To thee and to other men it may seem that my brothers and I are limitless, but it is not so. And, I tell thee, my sons, I would not unmake the jewel even if it were permitted. Look about thee at the world in its childhood and at man in his infancy. All living things must grow or they will die. Through this Orb shall the world be changed and shall man achieve that state for which he was made. This jewel which I have made is not of itself evil. Evil is a thing which lies only in the minds and hearts of men – and of Gods also.’ And then my Master fell silent, and he sighed, and we went from him and left him in his sadness.
In the years which followed, we saw little of our Master. Alone in his tower he communed with the spirit of the jewel which he had made. We were saddened by his absence, and our work had little joy in it.
And then one day a stranger came into the Vale. He was beautiful as no being I have ever seen was or could be, and he walked as if his foot spurned the earth.
As was customary, we went to greet him.
‘I would speak with my brother, thy Master,’ he told us, and we knew we were in the presence of a God.
As the eldest, I stepped forward. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I said. I was not all that familiar with Gods, since Aldur was the only one I had ever met, but something about this over-pretty stranger did not sit quite well with me.
‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in a tone that sat even less well 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.
At the foot of the tower the stranger looked me full in the face. ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service to me. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake when next we meet I hope thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.’ His eyes seemed to bore directly into me, and his voice chilled me.
But, because I was still who I was and even the two thousand years I had lived in the Vale had not entirely put the wild, rebellious boy in me to sleep, I answered him somewhat tartly. ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I said. ‘Will you require anything else?’ He was a God, after all, and didn’t need me to tell him how to open the tower door. I waited watching closely for some hint of confusion.
‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he told me. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.’
‘I’m always eager to learn,’ I told him.
He turned and gestured negligently. The great stone in the wall of the tower opened, and he went inside.
We never knew exactly what passed between our Master and the strange, beautiful God who met with him. They spoke together for long hours, and then a summer storm broke above our heads, and we were forced to take shelter. We missed, therefore, the departure of the strange God.
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 upon his cheek which I did not understand.
But Belzedar, ever quick, saw at once what I did not see. ‘Master,’ he said, and his voice had the sound of panic in it, ‘where is the jewel? Where is the Orb of power which thou hast made?’
‘Torak, my brother, hath taken it away with him,’ my Master said, and his voice had almost the sound of weeping in it.
‘Quickly,’ Belzedar said, ‘we must pursue him and reclaim it before he escapes us. We are many, and he is but one.’
‘He is a God, my son,’ Aldur said. ‘Thy numbers would mean nothing to him.’
‘But, Master,’ Belzedar said most desperately, ‘we must reclaim the Orb. It must be returned to us.’
‘How did he obtain it from thee, Master?’ the gentle Beltira asked.
‘Torak conceived a desire for the thing,’ 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.’
A rage seized me at that. Though the jewel was wondrous, it was still only a stone. The fact that someone had struck my Master brought flames into my brain. I cast off my robe, 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 though a wall had been placed before me.
‘Open!’ I commanded, slashing at the wall with the sword I had just made.
‘No!’ my Master said, and it would not let me through.
‘He hath struck thee, Master,’ I raged. ‘For that I will slay him though he be ten times a God.’
‘No,’ my Master said again. ‘Torak would crush thee as easily as thou would* crush a fly which annoyed thee. I love thee much, my eldest son, and I would not lose thee so.’
‘There must be war, Master,’ Belmakor said. ‘The blow and the theft must not go unpunished. We will forge weapons, and Belgarath shall lead us, and we shall make war upon this thief who calls himself a God.’
‘My son,’ our Master said to him, ‘there will be war enough to glut thee of it before thy life ends. The Orb is as nothing. Gladly would I have given it unto my brother, Torak, were it not that the Orb itself had told me that one day it would destroy him. I would have spared him had I been able, but his lust for the thing was too great, and he would not listen.’ He sighed and then straightened.
‘There will be war,’ he said. ‘My brother, Torak, hath the Orb in his possession. It is of great power, and in his hands can do great mischief. We must reclaim it or alter it before Torak learns its full power.’
‘Alter?’ Belzedar said, aghast. ‘Surely, Master, surely thou wouldst not destroy this precious thing?’
‘No,’ Aldur said. ‘It may not be destroyed but will abide even unto the end of days; but if Torak can be pressed into haste, he will attempt to use it in a way that it will not be used. Such is its power.’
Belzedar stared at him.
‘The world is inconstant, my son,’ our Master explained, ‘but good and evil are immutable and unchanging. The Orb is an object of good, and is not merely a bauble or a toy. It hath understanding – not such as thine – but understanding nonetheless – and it hath a will. Beware of it, for the will of the Orb 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 whomever would so use it – be he man or be he God. Thus we must make haste. Go thou, my Disciples, unto my other brothers and tell them that I bid them come to me. I am the eldest, and they will come out of respect, if not love.’
And so we went down from our Master’s tower and divided ourselves and went out
