Magician's Gambit

his eyes off the looming cloud to stare at his grandfather.
    "He's never done it before, father," Aunt Pol pointed out.
    "He's going to have to learn sometime."
    "This is hardly the time or place for experimentation."
    "He'll do just fine. Walk him through it a time or two until he gets the hang of it."
    "Exactly what is it I'm supposed to do?" Garion asked apprehensively.
    Aunt Pol gave Belgarath a hard look and then turned to Garion. "I'll show you dear," she said. "The first thing you have to do is stay calm. It really isn't all that difficult."
    "But you just said-"
    "Never mind what I said, dear. Just pay attention."
    "What do you want me to do?" he asked doubtfully.
    "The first thing is to relax," she replied, "and think about sand and rock."
    "That's all?"
    "Just do that first. Concentrate."
    He thought about sand and rock.
    "No, Garion, not white sand. Black sand - like the sand all around us."
    "You didn't say that."
    "I didn't think I had to."
    Belgarath started to laugh.
    "Do you want to do this, father?" she demanded crossly. Then she turned back to Garion. "Do it again, dear. Try to get it right this time."
    He fixed it in his mind.
    "That's better," she told him. "Now, as soon as you get sand and rock firmly in your mind, I want you to sort of push the idea out in a half circle so that it covers your entire right side. I'll take care of the left."
    He strained with it. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. "Don't push quite so hard, Garion. You're wrinkling it, and it's very hard for me to make the seams match when you do that. Just keep it steady and smooth."
    "I'm sorry." He smoothed it out.
    "How does it look, father?" she asked the old man.
    Garion felt a tentative push against the idea he was holding.
    "Not bad, Pol," Belgarath replied. "Not bad at all. The boy's got talent."
    "Just exactly what are we doing?" Garion asked. In spite of the chill, he felt sweat standing out on his forehead.
    "You're making a shield," Belgarath told him. "You enclose yourself in the idea of sand and rock, and it merges with the real sand and rock all around us. When Grolims go looking for things with their minds, they're looking for men and horses. They'll sweep right past us, because all they'll see here is more sand and more rock."
    "That's all there is to it?" Garion was quite pleased with how simple it was.
    "There's a bit more, dear," Aunt Pol said. "We're going to extend it now so that it covers all of us. Go out slowly, a few feet at a time."
    That was much less simple. He tore the fabric of the idea several times before he got it pushed out as far as Aunt Pol wanted it. He felt a strange merging of his mind with hers along the center of the idea where the two sides joined.
    "I think we've got it now, father," Aunt Pol said.
    "I told you he could do it, Pol."
    The purple-black cloud was rolling ominously up the sky toward them, and faint rumbles of thunder growled along its leading edge.
    "If that ash is anything like what it was in Nyissa, we're going to be wandering blind out here, Belgarath," Barak said.
    "Don't worry about it," the sorcerer replied. "I've got a lock on Rak Cthol. The Grolims aren't the only ones who can locate things that way. Let's move out."
    They started along the ridge again as the cloud blotted out the sky overhead. The thunder shocks were a continuous rumble, and lightning seethed in the boiling cloud. The lightning had an arid, crackling quality about it as the billions of tiny particles seethed and churned, building enormous static discharges. Then the first specks of drifting ash began to settle down through the icy air, as Belgarath led them down off the ridge and out onto the sand flats.
    By the end of the first hour, Garion found that holding the image in his mind had grown easier. It was no longer necessary to concentrate all his attention on it as it had been at first. By the end of the second hour, it had become no more than tedious. To relieve the boredom of it as they rode through the thickening ashfall, he thought about one of the huge skeletons they had passed when they had first entered the wasteland. Painstakingly he constructed one of them and placed it in the image he was holding. On the whole he thought it looked rather good, and it gave him something to do.
    "Garion," Aunt Pol said crisply, "please don't try to be creative."
    "What?"
    "Just stick to sand. The skeleton's very nice, but it looks a bit peculiar with only one side."
    "One side?"
    "There wasn't a