Magician's Gambit

you."
    "Don't belabor it, Silk."
    "I wouldn't want them to think I didn't try to warn you," Silk protested.
    Polgara shook her head and spoke with a profound note of disappointment in her voice. "Fatherl"
    "Just let it lie, Polgara," Belgarath told her.
    "I dug him out from under the tree and patched him up as best I could," Silk went on. "Then I stole that little boat and we started downriver. We were doing fine until all this dust started falling."
    "What did you do with the horses?" Hettar asked. Ce'Nedra was a little afraid to this tall, silent Algar lord with his shaved head, his black leather clothing, and his flowing black scalp lock. He never seemed to smile, and the expression on his hawklike face at even the mention of the word "Murgo" was as bleak as stone. The only thing that even slightly humanized him was his overwhelming concern for horses.
    "They're all right," Silk assured him. "I left them picketed where the Nyissans won't find them. They'll be fine where they are until we pick them up."
    "You said when you came aboard that Ctuchik has the Orb now," Polgara said to Belgarath. "How did that happen?"
    The old man shrugged. "Beltira didn't go into any of the details. All he told me was that Ctuchik was waiting when Zedar crossed the border into Cthol Murgos. Zedar managed to escape, but he had to leave the Orb behind."
    "Did you speak with Beltira?"
    "With his mind," Belgarath answered.
    "Did he say why the Master wants us to go to the Vale?"
    "No. It probably never occurred to him to ask. You know how Beltira is."
    "It's going to take months, father," Polgara objected with a worried frown. "It's two hundred and fifty leagues to the Vale."
    "Aldur wants us to go there," he answered. "I'm not going to start disobeying him after all these years."
    "And in the meantime, Ctuchik's got the Orb at Rak Cthol."
    "It's not going to do him any good, Pol. Torak himself couldn't make the Orb submit to him, and he tried for over two thousand years. I know where Rak Cthol is; Ctuchik can't hide it from me. He'll be there with the Orb when I decide to go take it away from him. I know how to deal with that magician." He said the word "magician" with a note of profound contempt in his voice.
    "What's Zedar going to be doing all that time?'
    "Zedar's got problems of his own. Beltira says that he's moved Torak from the place where he had him hidden. I think we can depend on him to keep Torak's body as far away from Rak Cthol as he possibly can. Actually, things have worked out rather well. I was getting a little tired of chasing Zedar anyway."
    Ce'Nedra found all this a bit confusing. Why were they all so caught up in the movements of a strangely named pair of Angarak sorcerers and this mysterious jewel which everyone seemed to covet? To her, one jewel was much the same as another. Her childhood had been surrounded by such opulence that she had long since ceased to attach much importance to ornaments. At the moment, her only adornment consisted of a pair of tiny gold earrings shaped like little acorns, and her fondness for them arose not so much from the fact that they were gold but rather from the tinkling sound the cunningly contrived clappers inside them made when she moved her head.
    All of this sounded like one of the Morn myths she'd heard from a storyteller in her father's court years before. There had been a magic jewel in that, she remembered. It was stolen by the God of the Angaraks, Torak, and rescued by a sorcerer and some Alorn kings who put it on the pommel of a sword kept in the throne room at Riva. It was somehow supposed to protect the West from some terrible disaster that would happen if it were lost. Curious - the name of the sorcerer in the legend was Belgarath, the same as that of this old man.
    But that would make him thousands of years old, which was ridiculous! He must have been named after the ancient myth hero - unless he'd assumed the name to impress people.
    Once again her eyes wandered to Garion's face. The boy sat quietly in one corner of the cabin, his eyes grave and his expression serious. She thought perhaps that it was his seriousness that so piqued her curiosity and kept drawing her eyes to him. Other boys she had known - nobles and the sons of nobles - had tried to be charming and witty, but Garion never tried to joke or to say clever things to try to amuse her. She was not entirely certain how to take that. Was he such a lump that he didn't know how he was supposed to behave? Or