Guardians of the West

said, handing him back the refilled tankard.
    "Compared to Urvon, they did. He's a natural-born bootlicker, a fawning, contemptible sneak. Even Torak despised him. But, like all people with those charming traits, as soon as he got the least little bit of power, he went absolutely berserk with it. He's not satisfied with bows as a sign of respect; he wants people to grovel before him."
    "You seem moderately unfond of him," Belgarath noted.
    "I loathe that piebald back stabber."
    "Piebald?"
    "He's got patches of skin on his face and hands with no color at all, so he looks all splotchy -as if he had some gruesome disease. I'm viewed in some quarters as passing ugly, but Urvon could scare a troll into fits. Anyway, if Kal Zakath wants to turn the Grolim church into a state religion with his face on the altars instead of Torak's, he's going to have to deal with Urvon first, and Urvon always stays holed up in Mal Yaska, completely surrounded by Grolim sorcerers. Zakath won't be able to get near him. I can't even get near him. I give it a try every hundred years or so, hoping that somebody might get careless or that I might get lucky enough to get a large, sharp hook into his guts. What I'd really like to do, though, is drag him face down over red-hot coals for a few weeks."
    Belgarath looked a little surprised at the little man's vehemence. "That's all he's doing then? Staying under cover in Mal Yaska?"
    "Not hardly! Urvon plots and schemes even in his sleep. In the last year and a half -ever since Belgarion ran his sword through Torak- Urvon's been scrambling around, trying to preserve what's left of his church. There are some old, moth-eaten prophecies -the Grolims call them Oracles- from a place called Ashaba in the Karandese Mountains. Urvon dusted them off and he's been twisting them around so that they seem to say that Torak will return -that he's not dead, or that he'll be resurrected or possibly reborn."
    Belgarath snorted. "What nonsense!"
    "Of course it is, but he had to do something. The Grolim church was convulsing like a headless snake, and Zakath was right on the verge of putting his fist around everybody's throat to make sure that every time any Angarak bowed, it would be to him. Urvon made sure that there were very few copies of these Ashabine Oracles left lying about and he's been inventing all sorts of things and claiming that he found them in the prophecies. That's about the only thing holding Zakath off right now and probably that wouldn't even work, if the emperor weren't so busy trying to decorate every tree he comes across with a Murgo or two."
    "Did you have any trouble moving around in Mallorea?"
    Beldin snorted a crude obscenity. "Of course not. Nobody even notices the face of a deformed man. Most people couldn't tell you if I'm an Alorn or a Marag. They can't see past the hump on my back." He rose from his chair, went to the cask, and refilled his tankard again. "Belgarath," he said very seriously, "does the name Cthrag Sardius mean anything to you?"
    "Sardius? Sardonyx, you mean?"
    Beldin shrugged. "The Mallorean Grolims call it Cthrag Sardius. What's the difference?"
    "Sardonyx is a gemstone -sort of orange colored with milky-white stripes. It's not really very rare -or very attractive."
    "That doesn't quite match up with the way I heard the Malloreans talk about it." Beldin frowned. "From the way they use the name Cthrag Sardius, I gather that it's a single stone -and that it' s got a certain kind of importance."
    "What sort of importance?"
    "I can't say for sure. About all I could gather was that just about every Grolim in Mallorea would trade his soul for the chance to get his hands on it."
    "It could just be some kind of internal symbol -something to do with the power struggle that's going on over there."
    "That's possible, I suppose, but why would its name be Cthrag Sardius then? They called the Orb of Aldur 'Cthrag Yaska,' remember? There'd almost have to be a connection between Cthrag Sardius and Cthrag Yaska, wouldn't there? And if there is, maybe we ought to have a look into it."
    Belgarath gave him a long look and then sighed. "I thought that, once Torak was dead, we might get a chance to rest."
    "You've had a year or so." Beldin shrugged. "Much more than that and you start to get flabby."
    "You're a very disagreeable fellow, do you know that?"
    Beldin gave him a tight, ugly grin. "Yes," he agreed. "I thought you might have noticed that."
    The next morning Belgarath began meticulously