I instructed the stranger as my Master had bade me. I set him impossible tasks and waited. To my mortification, within six months he learned the secret of the Will and the Word. My Master named him Belzedar and accepted him as a pupil.
And then came the others. Kira and Tira were twin shepherd boys who had become lost and wandered to us one day – and stayed. Makor came from so far away that I could not conceive how he had even heard of my Master, and Din from so near that I wondered that his whole tribe did not come with him. Sambar simply appeared one day and sat down upon the earth in front of the tower and waited until we accepted him.
And to me it fell to instruct each of them until he found the secret of the Will and the Word – which is not a secret, after all, but lies within every man. And in time each of them became my Master’s pupil, and he named them even as he had named me. Zedar became Belzedar, Kira and Tira became Beltira and Belkira. Makor and Din and Sambar became Belmakor and Beldin and Belsambar. To each of our names our Master joined the symbol of the Will and the Word, and we became his Disciples.
(#litres_trial_promo)
And we built other towers so that our labors and our studies should not interfere with our Master’s work or each other’s.
At first I was jealous that my Master spent time with these others, but, since time was meaningless to us anyway and I knew that my Master’s love was infinite, so that his love for the others in no way diminished his love for me, I soon outgrew that particular childishness. And also, I grew to love the others as the bonds of our brotherhood grew. I could sense their minds as they worked, and I shared their joy at each new discovery they made. Because I was the first Disciple, they often came to me as to an older brother with those things they were embarrassed to lay before our Master, and I guided them as best I could.
Thus passed a period of perhaps a thousand years, and we were content. The world beyond our Vale changed and the people also, and no more pupils came to us. It was a question I always intended to pursue but never found the time to examine. Perhaps the other Gods grew jealous and forbade their people to seek us out, or perhaps it was that in their long passage through the endless generations, men somehow lost that tiny spark that is the source of the power of Will and Word and is the lodestone that draws their spirits inevitably to the spirit of Aldur. So it was that we were seven only and were unlike any other men on earth.
And through all this time of study and learning, our Master, Aldur, labored in infinite patience with that grey stone he had shown me on the night he had accepted me as his Disciple. Once I marveled to him that he should devote so much time to it, and he laughed.
‘Truly, my son,’ he said, ‘I labored once at least so long to create a flower which is now so common that none take note of it. It blooms beside every dusty path, and men pass it by without even looking at it. But I know it is there, and I joy in its perfection.’
As I look back, I think I would give my life, which has stretched over so many years, if my Master had never conceived the idea of that grey stone which has brought so much woe into this world.
The stone, which he called a jewel, was grey (as I have said) and quite round and perhaps the size of a man’s heart. My Master found it, I believe, in the bed of a stream. To me it appeared to be a very ordinary stone, but things are concealed from me that Aldur in his wisdom perceived quite easily. It may be that there was something in the stone which he alone could see, or it may be that this ordinary grey stone became what it became because of his efforts and his will and his spirit with which he infused it. Whatever it may have been, I wish with all my heart that he had never seen it, never stooped and touched it, never picked it up.
At any rate, one day, a very long time ago, it was finished, and our Master called us together so that he might show it to us.
‘Behold this Orb,’ he told us. ‘In it lies the fate of the world.’ And the grey stone, so ordinary a thing, but which had been polished by the touch of our Master’s hand for a thousand years and more, began to glow as if a tiny blue fire flickered deep within it.
And Belzedar, always quick, asked, ‘How, Great Master, can so small a thing be so important?’
And our Master smiled, and the Orb grew brighter. Flickering dimly within it I seemed to see images. ‘The past lies herein,’ our Master said, ‘and the present and the future also. This is but a small part of the virtue of this thing which I have made. With it may man – or the earth itself – be healed – or destroyed. Whatsoever one would do, even if it be beyond the power of the Will and the Word, with this may it come to pass.’
‘Truly a wondrous thing, Master,’ Belzedar said, and it seemed to me that his eyes glittered as he spoke, and his fingers seemed to twitch.
‘But, Master,’ I said, ‘thou hast said that the fate of the world lies within this Orb of thine. How may that be?’
‘It hath revealed the future unto me, my son,’ my Master said sadly. ‘The stone shall be the cause of much contention and great suffering and great destruction. Its power reaches from where it now sits to blow out the lives of men yet unborn as easily as thou wouldst snuff a candle.’
‘It is an evil thing then, Master,’ I said, and Belsambar and Belmakor agreed.
‘Destroy it, Master,’ Belsambar pleaded, ‘before it can bring this evil to the world.’
‘That may not be,’ our Master said.
‘Blessed is the wisdom of Aldur,’ Belzedar said. ‘With us to aid him, our Master may wield this wondrous jewel for good and not ill. Monstrous would it be to destroy so precious a thing.’
(#litres_trial_promo)
‘Destroy it, Master,’ Belkira and Beltira said as in one voice, their minds as always linked into the same thought. ‘We beseech thee, unmake this evil thing which thou hast made.’
‘That may not be,’ our Master said again. ‘The unmaking of things is forbidden. Even I may not unmake that which I have made.’
‘Who shall forbid anything to the God Aldur?’ Belmakor asked.
‘It is beyond thine understanding, my son,’ our Master said. ‘To thee and to other men it may seem that my brothers and I are limitless, but it is not so. And, I tell thee, my sons, I would not unmake the jewel even if it were permitted. Look about thee at the world in its childhood and at man in his infancy. All living things must grow or they will die. Through this Orb shall the world be changed and shall man achieve that state for which he was made. This jewel which I have made is not of itself evil. Evil is a thing which lies only in the minds and hearts of men – and of Gods also.’ And then my Master fell silent, and he sighed, and we went from him and left him in his sadness.
In the years which followed, we saw little of our Master. Alone in his tower he communed with the spirit of the jewel which he had made. We were saddened by his absence, and our work had little joy in it.
And then one day a stranger came into the Vale. He was beautiful as no being I have ever seen was or could be, and he walked as if his foot spurned the earth.
As was customary, we went to greet him.
‘I would speak with my brother, thy Master,’ he told us, and we knew we were in the presence of a God.
As the eldest, I stepped forward. ‘I shall tell my Master you have come,’ I said. I was not all that familiar with Gods, since Aldur was the only one I had ever met, but something about this over-pretty stranger did not sit quite well with me.
‘That is not needful, Belgarath,’ he told me in a tone that sat even less well than his manner. ‘My brother knows I am here. Convey me to his tower.’
I turned and led the way without trusting myself to answer.
At the foot of the tower the stranger looked me full in the face. ‘A bit of advice for thee, Belgarath, by way of thanks for thy service to me. Seek not to rise above thyself. It is not thy place to approve or disapprove of me. For thy sake when next we meet I hope thou wilt remember this and behave in a manner more seemly.’ His eyes seemed to bore directly into me, and his voice chilled me.
But, because I was still who I was and even the two thousand years I had lived in the Vale had not entirely put the wild, rebellious boy in me to sleep, I answered him somewhat tartly. ‘Thank you for the advice,’ I said. ‘Will you require anything else?’ He was a God, after all, and didn’t need me to tell him how to open the tower door. I waited watching closely for some hint of confusion.
‘Thou art pert, Belgarath,’ he told me. ‘Perhaps one day I shall give myself leisure to instruct thee in proper behavior.’
‘I’m always eager to learn,’ I told him.
He turned and gestured negligently. The great stone in the wall of the tower opened, and he went inside.
We never knew exactly what passed between our Master and the strange, beautiful God who met with him. They spoke together for long hours, and then a summer storm broke above our heads, and we were forced to take shelter. We missed, therefore, the departure of the strange God.
When the storm had cleared, our Master called us to him, and we went up into his tower. He sat at the table where he had labored so long over the Orb. There was a great sadness in his face, and my heart wept to see it. There was also a reddened mark upon his cheek which I did not understand.
But Belzedar, ever quick, saw at once what I did not see. ‘Master,’ he said, and his voice had the sound of panic in it, ‘where is the jewel? Where is the Orb of power which thou hast made?’
‘Torak, my brother, hath taken it away with him,’ my Master said, and his voice had almost the sound of weeping in it.
‘Quickly,’ Belzedar said, ‘we must pursue him and reclaim it before he escapes us. We are many, and he is but one.’
‘He is a God, my son,’ Aldur said. ‘Thy numbers would mean nothing to him.’
‘But, Master,’ Belzedar said most desperately, ‘we must reclaim the Orb. It must be returned to us.’
‘How did he obtain it from thee, Master?’ the gentle Beltira asked.
‘Torak conceived a desire for the thing,’ Aldur said, ‘and he besought me that I should give it to him. When I would not, he smote me and took the Orb and ran.’
A rage seized me at that. Though the jewel was wondrous, it was still only a stone. The fact that someone had struck my Master brought flames into my brain. I cast off my robe, bent my will into the air before me and forged a sword with a single word. I seized the sword and leapt to the window.
‘No!’ my Master said, and the word stopped me as though a wall had been placed before me.
