And when may I meet the God?
I was getting tired of him anyway, so I took him to the tower.
Will the God Aldur wish to know my name? he asked as we started across the meadow.
I shrugged. Not particularly. If youre lucky enough to prove worthy, hell give you a name of his own choosing. When we reached the tower, I commanded the grey stone in the wall to open, and we went inside and on up the stairs.
My Master looked the stranger over and then turned to me. Why hast thou brought this man to me, my son? he asked me.
He besought me, Master, I replied. I felt it was not my place to say him yea or nay. I could mangle language as well as Zedar could, I guess. Thy will must decide such things, I continued. If it turns out that he doesnt please thee, Ill take him outside and turn him into a carrot, and thatll be the end of it.
That was unkindly said, Belgarath, Aldur chided.
Forgive me, Master, I said humbly.
Thou shalt instruct him, Belgarath. Should it come to pass that he be apt, inform me.
I groaned inwardly, cursing my careless tongue. My casual offer to vegetabilize the stranger had saddled me with him. But Aldur was my Lord, so I said, I will, Master.
What is thy current study, my son?
I examine the reason for mountains, Master.
Lay aside thy mountains, Belgarath, and study man instead. It may be that the study shall make thee more kindly disposed toward thy fellow-creatures.
I knew a rebuke when I heard one, so I didnt argue. I sighed. As my Master commands, I submitted regretfully. I had almost found the secret of mountains, and I didnt want it to escape me. But then I remembered how patient my Master had been when I first came to the Vale, so I swallowed my resentment at least right there in front of him.
I was not nearly so agreeable once I got Zedar back outside, though. I put that poor man through absolute hell, Im ashamed to admit. I degraded him, I berated him, I set him to work on impossible tasks and then laughed scornfully at his efforts. To be quite honest about it, I secretly hoped that I could make his life so miserable that hed run away.
But he didnt. He endured all my abuse with a saintly patience that sometimes made me want to scream. Didnt the man have any spirit at all? To make matters even worse to my profoundest mortification he learned the secret of the Will and the Word within six months. My Master named him Belzedar and accepted him as his pupil.
In time Belzedar and I made peace with each other. I reasoned that as long as we were probably going to spend the next dozen or so centuries together, we might as well learn to get along. Actually, once I ground away his tendency toward hyperbole and excessively ornamental language, he wasnt such a bad fellow. His mind was extraordinarily quick, but he was polite enough not to rub my nose in the fact that mine really wasnt.
The three of us, our Master, Belzedar, and I, settled in and learned to get along with a minimum of aggravation on all sides.
And then the others began to drift in. Kira and Tira were twin Alorn shepherd boys who had become lost and wandered into the Vale one day and stayed. Their minds were so closely linked that they always had the same thoughts at the same time and even finished each others sentences. Despite the fact that theyre Alorns, Belkira and Beltira are the gentlest men Ive ever known. Im quite fond of them, actually.
Makor was the next to arrive, and he came to us from so far away that I couldnt understand how he had ever heard of my Master. Unlike the rest of us, whod been fairly shabby when wed arrived, Makor came strolling down the Vale dressed in a silk mantle, somewhat like the garb currently in fashion in Tol Honeth. He was a witty, urbane, well-educated man, and I took to him immediately.
Our Master questioned him briefly and decided that he was acceptable with all the usual provisos.
But, Master, Belzedar objected vehemently, he cannot become one of our fellowship. He is a Dal one of the Godless ones.
Melcene, actually, old boy, Makor corrected him in that ultra-civilized manner of his that always drove Belzedar absolutely wild. Now do you see why I was so fond of Makor?
Whats the difference? Belzedar demanded bluntly.
All the difference in the world, old chap, Makor replied, examining his fingernails. We Melcenes separated from the Dals so long ago that were no more like them than Alorns are like Marags. Its not really up to you, however. I was summoned, the same as the rest of you were, and thats an end on it.
I remembered the odd compulsion that had dragged me out of Gara, and I looked sharply at my Master. Would you believe that he actually managed to look slightly embarrassed?
Belzedar spluttered for a while, but, since there was nothing he could do about it anyway, he muffled his objections.
The next to join us was Sambar, an Angarak. Sambar or Belsambar as he later became was not his real name, of course. Angarak names are so universally ugly that my Master did him a favor when he renamed him. I felt a great deal of sympathy for the boy he was only about fifteen when he joined us. Ive never seen anyone so abject. He simply came to the tower, seated himself on the earth, and waited for either acceptance or death. Beltira and Belkira fed him, of course. They were shepherds, after all, and shepherds wont let anything go hungry. After a week or so, when it became obvious that he absolutely would not enter the tower, our Master went down to him. Now that was something Id never seen Aldur do before. He spoke with the lad at some length in a hideous language old Angarak, Ive since discovered and turned him over to Beltira and Belkira for tutelage. If anyone ever needed gentle handling, it was Belsambar.
In time, the twins taught him to speak a normal language that didnt involve so much spitting and snarling, and we learned his history. My distaste for Torak dates from that point in time. It may not have been entirely Toraks fault, however. Ive learned over the years that the views of any priesthood are not necessarily the views of the Gods they serve. Ill give Torak the benefit of the doubt in this case the practice of human sacrifice might have been no more than a perversion of his Grolim priests. But he did nothing to put a stop to it, and thats unforgivable.
To cut all this windy moralizing short, Belsambars parents both of them had been sacrificed, and Belsambar had been required to watch as a demonstration of his faith. It didnt really work out that way, though. Grolims can be so stupid sometimes. Anyway, at the tender age of nine, Belsambar became an atheist, rejecting not only Torak and his stinking Grolims, but all Gods.
That was when our Master summoned him. In his particular case, the summoning must have been a bit more spectacular than the vague urge that turned my face toward the Vale. Belsambar was clearly in a state of religious ecstasy when he reached us. Of course he was an Angarak, and theyre always a little strange in matters of religion.
It was Belmakor who first raised the notion of building our own towers. He was a Melcene, after all, and theyre obsessed with building things. Ill admit that our Masters tower was starting to get a bit crowded, though.