From the shattered tomb not far away, Belgarath emerged, shaken and drawn. The broken chain of his medallion dangled from his tightly clenched hand, and he stopped to stare for a moment at Garion and the fallen God.
The wind moaned in the shattered ruins, and somewhere, far off in the night, the Hounds of Torak howled a mournful dirge for their fallen master.
Belgarath straightened his shoulders; then, in a gesture peculiarly like that which Torak had made in the moment of his death, he raised his arms to the sky.
"Master!" he cried out in a huge voice. "It is finished!"
Chapter Twenty-four
IT WAS OVER, but there was a bitterness in the taste of Garion's victory. A man did not lightly kill a God, no matter how twisted or evil the God might be. And so Belgarion of Riva stood sadly over the body of his fallen enemy as the wind, smelling faintly of the approaching dawn, washed over the decaying ruins of the City of Night."Regrets, Garion?" Belgarath asked quietly, putting his hand on his grandson's shoulder.
Garion sighed. "No, Grandfather," he said. "I suppose not - not really. It had to be done, didn't it?"
Belgarath nodded gravely.
"It's just that he was so alone at the end. I took everything away from him before I killed him. I'm not very proud of that."
"As you say, it had to be done. It was the only way you could beat him."
"I just wish I could have left him something, that's all."
From the ruins of the shattered iron tower, a sad little procession emerged. Aunt Pol, Silk, and Ce'Nedra were bringing out the body of Durnik the smith, and walking gravely beside them came Errand.
A pang of almost unbearable grief ran through Garion. Durnik, his oldest friend, was pale and dead, and in that vast internal upheaval that had preceded the duel with Torak, Garion had not even been able to mourn.
"It was necessary, you understand," Belgarath said sadly.
"Why? Why did Durnik have to die, Grandfather?" Garion's voice was anguished, and tears stood openly in his eyes.
"Because his death gave your Aunt the will to resist Torak. That's always been the one flaw in the Prophecy - the possibility that Pol might yield. All Torak needed was one person to love him. It would have made him invincible."
"What would have happened if she had gone to him?"
"You'd have lost the fight. That's why Durnik had to die." The old man sighed regretfully. "I wish it could have been otherwise, but it was inevitable."
The three who had borne Durnik from the broken tomb gently laid his still form on the ground, and Ce'Nedra sadly joined Belgarath and Garion. Wordlessly, the tiny girl slipped her hand into Garion's, and the three of them stood, silently watching as Aunt Pol, past tears now, gently straightened Durnik's arms at his sides and then covered him with her cloak. She sat then upon the earth, took his head into her lap and almost absently stoked his hair, her head bowed over his in her grief.
"I can't bear it," Ce'Nedra suddenly sobbed, and she buried her face in Garion's shoulder and began to weep.
And then there was light where there had been only darkness before. As Garion stared, a single beam of brilliant blue light descended from the broken and tattered cloud rolling overhead. The entire ruin seemed bathed in its intense radiance as the light touched the earth. Like a great, glowing column, the beam of light reached down to the earth from the night sky, was joined by other beams, red and yellow and green and shades Garion could not even name. Like the colors at the foot of a sudden rainbow, the great columns of light stood side by side on the other side of Torak's fallen body. Then, indistinctly, Garion perceived that a glowing, incandescent figure stood within the center of each column of light. The Gods had returned to mourn the passing of their brother. Garion recognized Aldur, and he could easily identify each of the others. Mara still wept, and dead-eyed Issa seemed to undulate, serpentlike, as he stood within his glowing column of pale green light. Nedra's face was shrewd, and Chaldan's proud. Belar, the blondhaired, boyish God of the Alorns had a roguish, impudent look about him, though his face, like those of his brothers, was sad at the death of Torak. The Gods had returned to earth in glowing light and with sound as well. The reeking air of Cthol Mishrak was suddenly alive with that sound as each colored beam of light gave off a different note, the notes joining in a harmony so profound that it seemed the answer to every question that had ever been asked.
And finally, joining the other columns of light, a single, blindingly white beam slowly descended, and within the center of that radiance stood the white-robed form of UL, that strange God whom Garion had seen once in Prolgu.
The figure of Aldur, still embraced in its glowing blue nimbus, approached the ancient God of Ulgo.
"Father," Aldur said sadly, "our brother, thy son Torak, is slain."
Shimmering and incandescent, the form of UL, father of the other Gods, moved across the rubble-strewn ground to stand over the silent body of Torak.
"I tried to turn thee from this path, my son," he said softly, and a single tear coursed its way down his eternal cheek. Then he turned back to Aldur. "Take up the form of thy bother, my son, and place it upon some more suitable resting place. It grieves me to see him lie so low upon the earth."
Aldur, joined by his brethren, took up the body of Torak and placed it upon a large block of stone lying amid the ancient ruins, and then, standing in a quiet gleaming circle about the bier, they mourned the passing of the God of Angarak.
Unafraid as always, seemingly not even aware that the glowing figures which had descended from the sky were not human, Errand walked quite confidently to the shining form of UL. He reached out his small hand and tugged insistently at the God's robe.
"Father," he said.
UL looked down at the small face.
"Father," Errand repeated, perhaps echoing Aldur, who had, in his use of that name, revealed at last the true identity of the God of Ulgo. "Father," the little boy said again. Then he turned and pointed at the silent form of Durnik. "Errand!" It was in some strange way more a command than a request.
The face of UL became troubled. "It is not possible, child," he replied.
"Father," the little boy insisted, "Errand."
UL looked inquiringly at Garion, his eyes profoundly unsettled. "The child's request is serious," he said gravely, speaking not to Garion but to that other awareness, "and it places an obligation upon me - but it crosses the uncrossable boundary."
"The boundary must remain intact," the dry voice replied through Garion's lips. "Thy sons are passionate, Holy UL, and having once crossed this line, they may be tempted to do so again, and perhaps in one such crossing they may change that which must not be changed. Let us not provide the instrumentality whereby Destiny must once more follow two divergent paths."