Magician's Gambit

perhaps he knew but didn't care enough to make the effort. He might at least try - even if only occasionally. How could she possibly deal with him if he was going to refuse flatly to make a fool of himself for her benefit?
    She reminded herself sharply that she was angry with him. He had said that Queen Salmissra had been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and it was far, far too early to forgive him for such an outrageous statement. She was definitely going to have to make him suffer extensively for that insulting lapse. Her fingers toyed absently with one of the curls cascading down the side of her face, her eyes boring into Garion's face.
    The following morning ashfall that was the result of a massive volcanic eruption somewhere in Cthol Murgos had diminished sufficiently to make the deck of the ship habitable again. The jungle along the riverbank was still partially obscured in the dusty haze, but the air was clear enough to breathe, and Ce'Nedra escaped from the sweltering cabin below decks with relief.
    Garion was sitting in the sheltered spot near the bow of the ship where he usually sat and he was deep in conversation with Belgarath. Ce'Nedra noted with a certain detachment that he had neglected to comb his hair that morning. She resisted her immediate impulse to go fetch comb and brush to rectify the situation. She drifted instead with artful dissimulation to a place along the rail where, without seeming to, she could conveniently eavesdrop.
    "-It's always been there," Garion was saying to his grandfather. "It used to just talk to me - tell me when I was being childish or stupid - that sort of thing. It seemed to be off in one corner of my mind all by itself."
    Belgarath nodded, scratching absently at his beard with his good hand. "It seems to be completely separate from you," he observed. "Has this voice in your head ever actually done anything? Besides talk to you, I mean."
    Garion's face grew thoughtful. "I don't think so. It tells me how to do things, but I think that I'm the one who has to do them. When we were at Salmissra's palace, I think it took me out of my body to go look for Aunt Pol." He frowned. "No," he corrected. "When I stop and think about it, it told me how to do it, but I was the one who actually did it. Once we were out, I could feel it beside me - it's the first time we've ever been separate. I couldn't actually see it, though. It did take over for a few minutes, I think. It talked to Salmissra to smooth things over and to hide what we'd been doing."
    "You've been busy since Silk and I left, haven't you?"
    Garion nodded glumly. "Most of it was pretty awful. I burned Asharak. Did you know that?"
    "Your Aunt told me about it."
    "He slapped her in the face," Garion told him. "I was going to go after him with my knife for that, but the voice told me to do it a different way. I hit him with my hand and said 'burn.' That's all, just 'burn'and he caught on fire. I was going to put it out until Aunt Pol told me he was the one who killed my mother and father. Then I made the fire hotter. He begged me to put it out, but I didn't do it." He shuddered.
    "I tried to warn you about that," Belgarath reminded him gently. "I told you that you weren't going to like it very much after it was over."
    Garion sighed. "I should have listened. Aunt Pol says that once you've used this-" He floundered, looking for a word.
    "Power?" Belgarath suggested.
    "All right," Garion assented. "She says that once you've used it, you never forget how, and you'll keep doing it again and again. I wish I had used my knife instead. Then this thing in me never would have gotten loose."
    "You're wrong, you know," Belgarath told him quite calmly. "You've been bursting at the seams with it for several months now. You've used it without knowing it at least a half dozen times that I know about."
    Garion stared at him incredulously.
    "Remember that crazy monk just after we crossed into Tolnedra? When you touched him, you made so much noise that I thought for a moment you'd killed him."
    "You said Aunt Pol did that."
    "I lied," the old man admitted casually. "I do that fairly often. The whole point, though, is that you've always had this ability. It was bound to come out sooner or later. I wouldn't feel too unhappy about what you did to Chamdar. It was a little exotic perhaps - not exactly the way I might have done it - but there was a certain justice to it, after all."
    "It's always going to be there, then?"
    "Always. That's