‘I have every right to kill her, Garion. You told Cyradis you didn’t think you could do it because Zandramas is a woman. I don’t suffer from the same kind of delicacy as you do. I’m going to carve out her heart – if she has one – slowly.’ She said it with a fierceness he had never heard in her voice before. ‘I want blood, Garion! Lots of blood, and I want to hear her scream as I twist the knife in her. You’ll lend me your dagger, won’t you?’
‘Absolutely not!’
‘That’s all right, Garion,’ she said in an icy tone. ‘I’m sure Liselle will lend me one of hers. Liselle’s a woman and she knows how I feel.’ Then she turned her back on him.
‘Ce’Nedra,’ he said placatingly.
‘Yes?’ Her tone was sulky.
‘Be reasonable, dear.’
‘I don’t want to be reasonable. I want to kill Zandramas.’
‘I’m not going to let you put yourself in that kind of danger. We have much more important things to do tomorrow.’
She sighed. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just—’
‘Just what?’
She turned back and put her arms around his neck. ‘Never mind, Garion,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to sleep now.’ She nestled down against him, and after a few moments her regular breathing told him that she had drifted off.
‘You should have given her the knife,’ the voice in his mind told him. ‘Silk could have stolen it back from her sometime tomorrow.’
‘But—’
‘We’ve got something else to talk about, Garion. Have you been thinking about your successor?’
‘Well – sort of It doesn’t really fit any of them, you know.’
‘Have you given serious consideration to each of them?’
‘I suppose I have, but I haven’t been able to make any decisions yet.’
‘You’re not supposed to make your choice yet. All you had to do was think about each one of them and get them all firmly fixed in your mind.’
‘When do I make the choice then?’
‘At the last possible moment, Garion. Zandramas might be able to hear your thoughts, but she can’t hear what you haven’t decided yet.’
‘What if I make a mistake?’
‘I really don’t think you can, Garion. I really don’t.’
Garion’s sleep was troubled that night. His dreams seemed chaotic, disconnected, and he woke often only to sink back into restless doze. There was at first a kind of distorted recapitulation of the strange dreams which had so disturbed him that night long ago on the Isle of the Winds just before his life had been unalterably changed. The question, ‘are you ready?’ seemed to echo again and again in the vaults of his mind. Again, he faced Rundorig with Aunt Pol’s matter-of-fact instruction to kill his boyhood friend roaring in his mind. And then the boar he had encountered in the snowy wood outside Val Alorn was there, pawing at the snow, its eyes aglow with rage and hate. ‘Are you ready?’ Barak asked him before releasing the beast. Then he stood on the colorless plain surrounded by the pieces of the incomprehensible game trying to decide which piece to move while the voice in his mind urged him to hurry.
The dream subtly changed and took on a different tone. Our dreams, no matter how bizarre, have a familiarity to them, since they are formed and shaped by our own minds. Now it seemed as if Garion’s dreams were being formed by a different and unfriendly awareness almost in the same way that Torak had intruded Himself in dreams and in thoughts before the meeting at Cthol Mishrak.
Again he faced Asharak the Murgo in the loamy Wood of the Dryads, and once again he unleashed his will with that single, open-handed slap and the fatal word, ‘burn!’ This was a familiar nightmare. It had haunted Garion’s sleep for years. He saw Asharak’s cheek begin to seethe and smoke. He heard the Grolim shriek and saw him clutch at his burning face. He heard the dreadful plea, ‘Master, have mercy!’ He spurned that plea and intensified the flame, but this time the act was not overlaid with the sense of self-loathing which had always accompanied the dream, but a kind of cruel exultation, a hideous joy as he watched his enemy writhe and burn before him. Deep within him something cried out, trying to repudiate that unholy joy.
And then he was at Cthol Mishrak, and his flaming sword slid again and again into the body of the One-Eyed God. Torak’s despairing ‘Mother!’ did not this time fill him with pity but with a towering satisfaction. He felt himself laughing, and the savage, unpitying laughter erased his humanity.
Soundlessly shrieking in horror, Garion recoiled, not so much from the awful images of those whom he had destroyed, but more from his own enjoyment of their despairing agony.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THEY WERE A somber group when they gathered in the main cabin before daybreak the following morning. With a sudden, even surprising, insight, Garion was very certain that the nightmares had not been his alone. Insight and intuitive perception were not normal for Garion. His sensible Sendarian background rejected such things as questionable, even in some peculiar way immoral. ‘Did you do that?’ he asked the voice.
‘No. Rather surprisingly, you came up with it all on your own. You seem to be making some progress – slowly, of course, but progress all the same.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
Silk looked particularly shaken as he entered the cabin. The little man’s eyes were haunted, and his hands were shaking. He slumped onto a bench and buried his face in his hands. ‘Have you got any of that ale left?’ he asked Beldin in a hoarse voice.
‘A little quivery this morning, Kheldar?’ the dwarf asked him.
‘No,’ Garion said. ‘That’s not what’s bothering him. He had some bad dreams last night.’
Silk raised his face sharply. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.
‘I had some myself. I got to relive what I did to Asharak the Murgo, and I killed Torak again – several times. It didn’t get any better as we went along.’
‘I was trapped in a cave,’ Silk said with a shudder. ‘There wasn’t any light, but I could feel the walls closing in on me. I think the next time I see Relg, I’m going to hit him in the mouth – gently, of course. Relg’s sort of a friend.’
‘I’m glad I wasn’t the only one,’ Sadi said. The eunuch had placed a bowl of milk on the table, and Zith and her babies were gathered around it, lapping and purring. Garion was a bit surprised to note that no one really paid any attention to Zith and her brood any more. People, it seemed, could get used to almost anything. Sadi rubbed his long-fingered hand over his shaved scalp. ‘It seemed to me that I was adrift in the streets of Sthiss Tor, and I was trying to survive by begging. It was ghastly.’