"I warn you," Zedar cried again. "Get back!"
There was the sharp sound of a blow, of a fist striking solid bone.
"Zedar!" Belgarath roared, yanking at the iron door.
Then within the room there was a thunderous detonation.
"Durnik!" Aunt Pol shrieked.
In a sudden burst of fury, Belgarath raised his clenched hand, joined his flaming will with his arm and drove his fist at the locked door. The massive force of his blow ripped the iron door from its hinges as if it had been no more than paper.
The room beyond had a vaulted, curved ceiling supported by great iron girders, black with age. Garion seemed to see everything in the room at once with a curious kind of detachment, as if all emotion had been drained from him. He saw Ce'Nedra and Errand clinging to each other in fright beside one wall. Aunt Pol was standing as if locked in place, her eyes wide as she stared in stunned disbelief at the still form of Durnik the smith, who lay crumpled on the floor, and whose face had that deadly pale cast to it that could only mean one thing. A terrible flood of realization suddenly swept her face - a realization of an irrevocable loss.
"No!" she cried out. "My Durnik - No!"
She rushed to the fallen man, fell on her knees beside him and gathered his still form into her arms with a heartbroken wail of grief and despair.
And then Garion saw Zedar the Apostate for the first time. The sorcerer was also staring at Durnik's body. There was a desperate regret on his face - a knowledge that he had finally committed the one act that forever put him past all hope of redemption.
"You fool," he muttered. "Why? Why did you make me kill you? That's the one thing above all others I didn't want to do."
Then Belgarath, as inexorable as death itself, lunged through the shattered remains of the door and rushed upon the man he had once called brother.
Zedar flinched back from the old sorcerer's awful rage.
"I didn't mean to do it, Belgarath," he quavered, his hands raised to ward off Belgarath's rush. "The fool tried to attack me. He was-"
"You-" Belgarath grated at him from between teeth clenched with hate. "You - you -" But he was past speech. No word could contain his rage. He raised both arms and struck at Zedar's face with his fists. Zedar reeled back, but Belgarath was upon him, grappling, pounding at him with his hands.
Garion could feel flickers of will from one or the other of them; but caught up in emotions so powerful that they erased thought, neither was coherent enough to focus the force within him. And so, like two tavern brawlers, they rolled on the floor, kicking, gouging, pounding at each other, Belgarath consumed with fury and Zedar with fear and chagrin.
Desperately, the Apostate jerked a dagger from the sheath at his waist, and Belgarath seized his wrist in both hands and pounded it on the floor until the knife went skittering away. Then each struggled to reach the dagger, clawing and jerking at each other, their faces frozen into intense grimaces as each strove to reach the dagger first.
At some point during the frenzied seconds when they had burst into the room, Garion had, unthinking, drawn the great sword from its sheath across his back, but the Orb and the blade were cold and unresponsive in his hand as he stood watching the deadly struggle between the two sorcerers.
Belgarath's hands were locked about Zedar's throat, and Zedar, strangling, clawed desperately at the old man's arms. Belgarath's face was contorted into an animal snarl, his lips drawn back from clenched teeth as he throttled his ancient enemy. As if finally driven past all hope of sanity, he struggled to his feet, dragging Zedar up with him. Holding the Apostate by the throat with one hand, he began to rain blows on him with the other. Then, between one blow and the next, he swung his arm down and pointed at the stones beneath their feet. With a dreadful grinding, a great crack appeared, zigzagging across the floor. The rocks shrieked in protest as the crack widened. Still struggling, the two men toppled and fell into the yawning fissure. The earth seemed to shudder. With a terrible sound, the crack ground shut.
Incredulously, his mouth suddenly agape, Garion stared in stunned disbelief at the scarcely discernible crack through which the two men had fallen.
Ce'Nedra screamed, her hands going to her face in horror.
"Do something!" Silk shouted at Garion, but Garion could only stare at him in blank incomprehension.
"Polgara!" Silk said desperately, turning to Aunt Pol.
Still incapacitated by her sudden, overwhelming grief, she could not respond, but knelt with Durnik's lifeless body in her arms, weeping uncontrollably as she rocked back and forth, holding him tightly against her.
From infinitely far beneath there was a sullen detonation, and then another. Even in the bowels of the earth, the deadly struggle continued. As if compelled, Garion's eyes sought out the embrasure in the far wall; there in the dim light he could make out the recumbent form of Kal Torak. Strangely emotionless, Garion stared at the form of his enemy, meticulously noting every detail. He saw the black robe and the polished mask. And he saw Cthrek Goru, Torak's great black sword.
Although he did not - could not - move or even feel, a struggle, nonetheless, raged inside him - a struggle perhaps even more dreadful than that which had just plunged Belgarath and Zedar into the depths of the earth. The two forces which had first diverged and then turned and rushed at each other down the endless corridors of time had finally met within him. The EVENT which was the ultimate conclusion of the two Prophecies, had begun, and its first skirmishes were taking place within Garion's mind. Minute and very subtle adjustments were shifting some of his most deeply ingrained attitudes and perceptions.
Torak moved, stirring restlessly, as those same two forces met within him.
Dreadful flashes of the sleeping God's mind assailed Garion, and he saw clearly the terrible subterfuge that lay behind Torak's offer of friendship and love. Had his fear of their duel drawn him into yielding, fully half of creation would have shimmered and vanished. More than that, what Torak had offered was not love but an enslavement so vile that it was beyond imagining.
But he had not yielded. He had somehow evaded the overwhelming force of Torak's mind and had placed himself utterly in the hands of the Prophecy that had drawn him here. With an absolute denial of self, he had become the instrument of the Prophecy. He was no longer afraid. Sword in hand, the Child of Light awaited the moment when the Prophecy would release him to join in deadly struggle with the Dark God.
Then, even as Silk desperately tried to arouse either Garion or Polgara to action, the stones of the floor buckled upward, and Belgarath rose from the earth.