Magician's Gambit

was coming. It was slow, but he felt the will begin to build in him. Remembering something, he reached inside his tunic and put the mark on his palm against the amulet. The force within him, amplified by that touch, built to a great roaring crescendo. He kept his eyes closed and stood up. Then he opened his eyes and looked hard at the stubborn white rock. "You will move," he muttered. He kept his right hand on the amulet and held out his left hand, palm up.
    "Now!" he said sharply and slowly began to raise his left hand in a lifting motion. The force within him surged, and the roaring sound inside his head became deafening.
    Slowly the edge of the rock came up out of the grass. Worms and burrowing grubs who had lived out their lives in the safe, comfortable darkness under the rock flinched as the morning sunlight hit them. Ponderously, the rock raised, obeying Garion's inexorably lifting hand. It teetered for a second on its edge, then toppled slowly over.
    The exhaustion he had felt after trying to lift the rock with his back was nothing compared to the bone-deep weariness that swept over him after he let the clenching of his will relax. He folded his arms on the grass and let his head sink down on them.
    After a moment or two, that peculiar fact began to dawn on him. He was still standing, but his arms were folded comfortably in front of him on the grass. He jerked his head up and looked around in confusion. He had moved the rock, certainly. That much was obvious, since the rock now lay on its rounded top with its damp underside turned up. Something else had also happened, however. Though he had not touched the rock, its weight had nonetheless been upon him as he had lifted it, and the force he had directed at it had not all gone at the rock.
    With dismay, Garion realized that he had sunk up to his armpits in the firm soil of the meadow.
    "Now what do I do?" he asked himself helplessly. He shuddered away from the idea of once again mustering his will to pull himself out of the ground. He was too exhausted even to consider it. He tried to wriggle, thinking that he might be able to loosen the earth around him and work his way up an inch at a time, but he could not so much as budge.
    "Look what you've done," he accused the rock. The rock ignored him.
    A thought occurred to him. "Are you in there?" he asked that awareness that seemed always to have been with him.
    The silence in his mind was profound. "Help!" he shouted.
    A bird, attracted by the exposed worms and bugs that had been under the rock, cocked one eye at him and then went back to its breakfast. Garion heard a light step behind him and craned around, trying to see. The colt was staring at him in amazement. Hesitantly, the small horse thrust out his nose and nuzzled Garion's face.
    "Good horse," Garion said, relieved not to be alone, at least. An idea came to him. "You're going to have to go get Hettar," he told the colt. The colt pranced about and nuzzled his face again.
    "Stop that," Garion commanded. "This is serious." Cautiously, he tried to push his mind into the colt's thoughts. He tried a dozen different ways until he finally struck the right combination by sheer accident. The colt's mind flitted from here to there without purpose or pattern. It was a baby's mind, vacant of thought, receiving only sense impressions. Garion caught flickering images of green grass and running and clouds in the sky and warm milk. He also felt the sense of wonder in the little mind, and the abiding love the colt had for him.
    Slowly, painfully, Garion began constructing a picture of Hettar in the colt's wandering thoughts. It seemed to take forever.
    "Hettar," Garion said over and over. "Go get Hettar. Tell him that I'm in trouble."
    The colt scampered around and came back to stick his soft nose in Garion's ear.
    "Please pay attention," Garion cried. "Please!"
    Finally, after what seemed hours, the colt seemed to understand. He went several paces away, then came back to nuzzle Garion again. "Go-get-Hettar," Garion ordered, stressing each word.
    The colt pawed at the ground, then turned and galloped away - going in the wrong direction. Garion started to swear. For almost a year now he had been exposed to some of the more colorful parts of Barak's vocabulary. After he had repeated all the phrases he remembered six or eight times, he began to extemporize.
    A flickering thought came back to him from the now-vanished colt. The little beast was chasing butterflies. Garion