Magician's Gambit

mine, too."
    "Garion-Garath," the boy said. "Belgarath-Belgarion. It all fits together, doesn't it?"
    "Naturally," the old man replied. "I'm glad you noticed it."
    Garion grinned at him. Then a thought occurred. "But I'm not really Belgarion yet, am I?"
    "Not entirely. You still have a way to go."
    "I suppose I'd better get started then." Garion said it with a certain ruefulness. "Since I don't really have any choice."
    "Somehow I knew that eventually you'd come around," Mister Wolf said.
    "Don't you sometimes wish that I was just Garion again, and you were the old storyteller coming to visit Faldor's farm - with Aunt Pol making supper in the kitchen as she did in the old days - and we were hiding under a haystack with a bottle I'd stolen for you?" Garion felt the homesickness welling up in him.
    "Sometimes, Garion, sometimes," Wolf admitted, his eyes far away.
    "We won't ever be able to go back there again, will we?"
    "Not the same way, no."
    "I'll be Belgarion, and you'll be Belgarath. We won't even be the same people any more."
    "Everything changes, Garion," Belgarath told him.
    "Show me the rock," Garion said suddenly.
    "Which rock?"
    "The one Aldur made you move - the day you first discovered the power."
    "Oh," Belgarath said, "that rock. It's right over there - the white one. The one the colt's sharpening his hooves on."
    "It's a very big rock."
    "I'm glad you appreciate that," Belgarath replied modestly. "I thought so myself."
    "Do you suppose I could move it?"
    "You never know until you try, Garion," Belgarath told him.

Chapter Eleven
    THE NEXT MORNING when Garion awoke, he knew immediately that he was not alone.
    "Where have you been?" he asked silently.
    "I've been watching, " the other consciousness in his mind said. "I see that you've finally come around. "
    "What choice did I have?"
    "None. You'd better get up. Aldur's coming. "
    Garion quickly rolled out of his blankets. "Here? Are you sure?" The voice in his mind didn't answer.
    Garion put on a clean tunic and hose and wiped off his half boots with a certain amount of care. Then he went out of the tent he shared with Silk and Durnik.
    The sun was just coming up over the high mountains to the east, and the line between sunlight and shadow moved with a stately ponderousness across the dewy grass of the Vale. Aunt Pol and Belgarath stood near the small fire where a pot was just beginning to bubble. They were talking quietly, and Garion joined them.
    "You're up early," Aunt Pol said. She reached out and smoothed his hair.
    "I was awake," he replied. He looked around, wondering from which direction Aldur would come.
    "Your grandfather tells me that the two of you had a long talk yesterday."
    Garion nodded. "I understand a few things a little better now. I'm sorry I've been so difficult."
    She drew him to her and put her arms around him. "It's all right, dear. You had some hard decisions to make."
    "You're not angry with me, then?"
    "Of course not, dear."
    The others had begun to get up, coming out of their tents, yawning and stretching and rumpled-looking.
    "What do we do today?" Silk asked, coming to the fire and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
    "We wait," Belgarath told him. "My Master said he'd meet us here."
    "I'm curious to see him. I've never met a God before."
    "Thy curiosity, me thinks, will soon be satisfied, Prince Kheldar," Mandorallen said. "Look there."
    Coming across the meadow not far from the great tree beneath which they had pitched their tents, a figure in a blue robe was approaching. A soft nimbus of blue light surrounded the figure, and the immediate sense of presence made it instantly clear that what approached was not a man. Garion was not prepared for the impact of that presence. His meeting with the Spirit of Issa in Queen Salmissra's throne room had been clouded by the narcotic effects of the things the Serpent Queen had forced him to drink. Similarly, half his mind had slept during the confrontation with Mara in the ruins of Mar Amon. But now, fully awake in the first light of morning, he found himself in the presence of a God.
    Aldur's face was kindly and enormously wise. His long hair and beard were white - from conscious choice, Garion felt, rather than from any result of age. The face was very familiar to him somehow. It bore a startling resemblance to Belgarath's, but Garion perceived immediately, with a sudden curious inversion of his original notion, that it was Belgarath who resembled Aldur - as if their centuries of