The figure of a naked woman with her arms chopped off and a sword thrust through her body was suddenly in front of Garion. She shrieked and moaned at him, and the stumps of her arms spurted blood directly into his face. Garion reached up to wipe off the blood, but his face was dry. Unconcerned, his horse walked through the gibbering ghost.

"We have to get things back on the right course," the voice went on. "This certain thing you have to do is the key to the whole business. For a long time, what was supposed to happen and what was actually happening went off in different directions. Now they're starting to converge again. The point where they meet is the point where you'll have to act. If you succeed, things will be all right again; if you don't, everything will keep going wrong, and the purpose for which the universe came into existence will fail."

"How long ago was it when this started?"

"Before the world was made. Even before the G.o.ds."

"Will I succeed?" Garion asked.

"I don't know," the voice replied. "I know what's supposed to happen - not what will. There's something else you need to know too. When this mistake occurred, it set off two separate lines of possibility, and a line of possibility has a kind of purpose. To have a purpose, there has to be awareness of that purpose. To put it rather simply, that's what I am - the awareness of the original purpose of the universe."

"Only now there's another one, too, isn't there?" Garion suggested. "Another awareness, I mean - one connected with the other set of possibilities."

"You're even brighter than I thought."

"And wouldn't it want things to keep going wrong?"

"I'm afraid so. Now we come to the important part. The spot in time where all this is going to be decided one way or another is getting very close, and you've got to be ready."

"Why me?" Garion asked, brushing away a disconnected hand that appeared to be trying to clutch at his throat. "Can't somebody else do it?"

"No," the voice told him. "That's not the way it works. The universe has been waiting for you for more millions of years than you could even imagine. You've been hurtling toward this event since before the beginning of time. It's yours alone. You're the only one who can do what needs to be done, and it's the most important thing that will ever happen - not just in this world but in all the worlds in all the universe. There are whole races of men on worlds so far away that the light from their suns will never reach this world, and they'll cease to exist if you fail. They'll never know you or thank you, but their entire existence depends on you. The other line of possibility leads to absolute chaos and the ultimate destruction of the universe, but you and I lead to something else."

"What?"

"If you're successful, you'll live to see it happen."

"All right," Garion said. "What do I have to do - now, I mean?"

"You have enormous power. It's been given to you so that you can do what you have to do, but you've got to learn how to use it. Belgarath and Polgara are trying to help you learn, so stop fighting with them about it. You've got to be ready when the time comes, and the time is much closer than you might think."

A decapitated figure stood in the trail, holding its head by the hair with its right hand. As Garion approached, the figure raised the head. The twisted mouth shrieked curses at him.

After he had ridden through the ghost, Garion tried to speak to the mind within his mind again, but it seemed to be gone for the moment. They rode slowly past the tumbled stones of a ruined farmstead.

Ghosts cl.u.s.tered thickly on the stones, beckoning and calling seductively.

"A disproportionate number seem to be women," Aunt Pol observed calmly to Mister Wolf.

"It was a peculiarity of the race," Wolf replied. "Eight out of nine births were female. It made certain adjustments necessary in the customary relationships between men and women."

"I imagine you found that entertaining," she said dryly.

"The Marags didn't look at things precisely the way other races do. Marriage never gained much status among them. They were quite libieral about certain things."

"Oh? Is that the term for it?"

"Try not to be so narrow-minded, Pol. The society functioned; that's what counts."

"There's a bit more to it than that, father," she said. "What about their cannibalism?"

"That was a mistake. Somebody misinterpreted a pa.s.sage in one of their sacred texts, that's all. They did it out of a sense of religious obligation, not out of appet.i.te. On the whole, I rather liked the Marags. They were generous, friendly, and very honest with each other. They enjoyed life. If it hadn't been for the gold here, they'd probably have worked out their little aberration."

Garion had forgotten about the gold. As they crossed a small stream, he looked down into the sparkling water and saw the b.u.t.ter-yellow flecks glittering among the pebbles on the bottom.

A naked ghost suddenly appeared before him. "Don't you think I'm beautiful?" she leered. Then she took hold of the sides of the great slash that ran up her abdomen, pulled it open and spilled out her entrails in a pile on the bank of the stream.

Garion gagged and clenched his teeth together.

"Don't think about the gold!" the voice in his mind said sharply. "The ghosts come at you through your greed. If you think about gold, you'll go mad."

They rode on, and Garion tried to push the thought of gold out of his mind.

Mister Wolf, however, continued to talk about it. "That's always been the problem with gold. It seems to attract the worst kind of people - the Tolnedrans in this case."

"They were trying to stamp out cannibalism, father," Aunt Pol replied. "That's a custom most people find repugnant."

"I wonder how serious they'd have been about it if all that gold hadn't been lying on the bed of every stream in Maragor."

Aunt Pol averted her eyes from the ghost of a child impaled on a Tolnedran spear. "And now no one has the gold," she said. "Mara saw to that."

"Yes," Wolf agreed, lifting his face to listen to the dreadful wail that seemed to come from everywhere. He winced at a particularly shrill note in the wailing. "I wish he wouldn't scream so loud."

They pa.s.sed the ruins of what appeared to have been a temple. The white stones were tumbled, and gra.s.s grew up among them. A broad tree standing nearby was festooned with hanging bodies, twisting and swinging on their ropes. "Let us down," the bodies murmured. "Let us down."

"Father!" Aunt Pol said sharply, pointing at the meadow beyond the fallen temple. "Over there! Those people are real."

A procession of robed and hooded figures moved slowly through the meadow, chanting in unison to the sound of a mournfully tolling bell supported on a heavy pole they carried on their shoulders.

"The monks of Mar Terrin," Wolf said. "Tolnedra's conscience. They aren't anything to worry about."

One of the hooded figures looked up and saw them. "Go back!" he shouted. He broke away from the others and ran toward them, recoiling often from things Garion could not see. "Go back!" he cried again. "Save yourselves! You approach the very center of the horror. Mar Amon lies just beyond that hill. Mara himself rages through its haunted streets!"

Chapter Six.

THE PROCESSION OF monks moved on, the sound of their chanting and slowly tolling bell growing fainter as they crossed the meadow. Mister Wolf seemed deep in thought, the fingers of his good hand stroking his beard. Finally he sighed rather wryly. "I suppose we might as well deal with him here and now, Pol. He'll just follow us if we don't."

"You're wasting your time, father," Aunt Pol replied. "There's no way to reason with him. We've tried before."

"You're probably right," he agreed, "but we should try at least. Aldur would be disappointed if we didn't. Maybe when he finds out what's happening, he'll come around to the point where we can at least talk to him."

A piercing wail echoed across the sunny meadow, and Mister Wolf made a sour face. "You'd think that he'd have shrieked himself out by now. All right, let's go to Mar Amon." He turned his horse toward the hill the wild-eyed monk had pointed out to them. A maimed ghost gibbered at him from the air in front of his face. "Oh, stop that!" he said irritably. With a startled flicker, the ghost disappeared.

There had perhaps been a road leading over the hill at some time in the past. The faint track of it was dimly visible through the gra.s.s, but the thirty-two centuries which had pa.s.sed since the last living foot had touched its surface had all but erased it. They wound to the top of the hill and looked down into the ruins of Mar Amon. Garion, still detached and unmoved, perceived and deduced things about the city he would not have otherwise noted. Though the destruction had been nearly total, the shape of the city was clearly evident. The street - for there was only one - was laid out in a spiral, winding in toward a broad, circular plaza in the precise center of the ruins. With a peculiar flash of insight, Garion became immediately convinced that the city had been designed by a woman. Men's minds ran to straight lines, but women thought more in terms of circles.

With Aunt Pol and Mister Wolf in the lead and the rest following in wooden-faced unconsciousness, they started down the hill to the city. Garion rode at the rear, trying to ignore the ghosts rising from the earth to confront him with their nudity and their hideous maiming. The wailing sound which they had heard from the moment they had entered Maragor grew louder, more distinct. The wail had sometimes seemed to be a chorus, confused and distorted by echoes, but now Garion realized that it was one single, mighty voice, filled with a grief so vast that it reverberated through all the kingdom.

As they approached the city, a terrible wind seemed to come up, deadly chill and filled with an overpowering charnel-house stench. As Garion reached automatically to draw his cloak tighter about him, he saw that the cloak did not in any way react to that wind, and that the tall gra.s.s through which they rode did not bend before it. He considered it, turning it over in his mind as he tried to close his nostrils to the putrid stench of decay and corruption carried on that ghostly wind. If the wind did not move the gra.s.s, it could not be a real wind. Furthermore, if the horses could not hear the wails, they could not be real wails either. He grew colder and he shivered, even as he told himself that the chill - like the wind and the grief laden howling - was spiritual rather than real.

Although Mar Amon, when he had first glimpsed it from the top of the hill, had appeared to be in total ruin, when they entered the city Garion was startled to see the substantial walls of houses and public buildings surrounding him; and somewhere not far away he seemed to hear the sound of laughing children. There was also the sound of singing off in the distance.

"Why does he keep doing this?" Aunt Pol asked sadly. "It doesn't do any good."

"It's all he has, Pol," Mister Wolf replied.

"It always ends the same way, though."

"I know, but for a little while it helps him forget."

"There are things we'd all like to forget, father. This isn't the way to do it."

Wolf looked admiringly at the substantial-seeming houses around them. "It's very good, you know."

"Naturally," she said. "He's a G.o.d, after all - but it's still not good for him."

It was not until Barak's horse inadvertently stepped directly through one of the walls - disappearing through the solid-looking stone and then reemerging several yards farther down the street - that Garion understood what his Aunt and grandfather were talking about. The walls, the buildings, the whole city was an illusion - a memory. The chill wind with its stink of corruption seemed to grow stronger and carried with it now the added reek of smoke. Though Garion could still see the sunlight shining brightly on the gra.s.s, it seemed for some reason that it was growing noticeably darker. The laughter of children and the distant singing faded; instead, Garion heard screams.

A Tolnedran legionnaire in burnished breastplate and plumed helmet, as solid-looking as the walls around them, came running down the long curve of the street. His sword dripped blood, his face was fixed in a hideous grin, and his eyes were wild.

Hacked and mutilated bodies sprawled in the street now, and there was blood everywhere. The waiting climbed into a piercing shriek as the illusion moved on toward its dreadful climax.

The spiral street opened at last into the broad circular plaza at the center of Mar Amon. The icy wind seemed to howl through the burning city, and the dreadful sound of swords chopping through flesh and bone seemed to fill Garion's entire mind. The air grew even darker.

The stones of the plaza were thick with the illusory memory of uncounted scores of Marag dead lying beneath rolling clouds of dense smoke. But what stood in the center of the plaza was not an illusion, nor even a ghost. The figure towered and seemed to shimmer with a terrible presence, a reality that was in no way dependent upon the mind of the observer for its existence. In its arms it held the body of a slaughtered child that seemed somehow to be the sum and total of all the dead of haunted Maragor; and its face, lifted in anguish above the body of that dead child, was ravaged by an expression of inhuman grief. The figure wailed; and Garion, even in the half somnolent state that protected his sanity, felt the hair on the back of his neck trying to rise in honor.

Mister Wolf grimaced and climbed down from his saddle. Carefully stepping over the illusions of bodies littering the plaza, he approached the enormous presence. "Lord Mara," he said, respectfully bowing to the figure.

Mara howled.

"Lord Mara," Wolf said again. "I would not lightly intrude myself upon thy grief, but I must speak with thee."

The dreadful face contorted, and great tears streamed down the G.o.d's cheeks. Wordlessly, Mara held out the body of the child and lifted his face and wailed.

"Lord Mara!" Wolf tried once again, more insistent this time.

Mara closed his eyes and bowed his head, sobbing over the body of the child.

"It's useless, father," Aunt Pol told the old man. "When he's like this, you can't reach him."

"Leave me, Belgarath," Mara said, still weeping. His huge voice rolled and throbbed in Garion's mind. "Leave me to my grief."

"Lord Mara, the day of the fulfillment of the prophecy is at hand," Wolf told him.

"What is that to me?" Mara sobbed, clutching the body of the child closer. "Will the prophecy restore my slaughtered children to me? I am beyond its reach. Leave me alone."

"The fate of the world hinges upon the outcome of events which will happen very soon, Lord Mara," Mister Wolf insisted. "The kingdoms of East and West are girding for the last war, and Torak One-Eye, thy accursed brother, stirs in his slumber and will soon awaken."

"Let him awaken," Mara replied and bowed down over the body in his arms as a storm of fresh weeping swept him.

"Wilt thou then submit to his dominion, Lord Mara?" Aunt Pol asked him.

"I am beyond his dominion, Polgara," Mara answered. "I will not leave this land of my murdered children, and no man of G.o.d will intrude upon me here. Let Torak have the world if he wants it."

"We might as well leave, father," Aunt Pol said. "Nothing's going to move him."

"Lord Mara," Mister Wolf said to the weeping G.o.d, "we have brought before thee the instruments of the prophecy. Wilt thou bless them before we go?"

"I have no blessings, Belgarath," Mara replied. "Only curses for the savage children of Nedra. Take these strangers and go."

"Lord Mara," Aunt Pol said firmly, "a part is reserved for thee in the working-out of the prophecy. The iron destiny which compels us all compels thee as well. Each must play that part laid out for him from the beginning of days, for in the day that the prophecy is turned aside from its terrible course, the world will be unmade."

"Let it be unmade," Mara groaned. "It holds no more joy for me, so let it perish. My grief is eternal, and I will not abandon it, though the cost be the unmaking of all that has been made. Take these children of the prophecy and depart."

Mister Wolf bowed with resignation, turned, and came back toward the rest of them. His expression registered a certain hopeless disgust.

"Wait!" Mara roared suddenly. The images of the city and its dead wavered and shimmered away. "What is this?" the G.o.d demanded.

Mister Wolf turned quickly.

"What hast thou done, Belgarath?" Mara accused, suddenly towering into immensity. "And thou, Polgara. Is my grief now an amus.e.m.e.nt for thee? Wilt thou cast my sorrow into my teeth?"

"My Lord?" Aunt Pol seemed taken aback by the G.o.d's sudden fury.

"Monstrous!" Mara roared. "Monstrous!" His huge face convulsed with rage. In terrible anger, he strode toward them and then stopped directly in front of the horse of Princess Ce'Nedra. "I will rend thy flesh!" he shrieked at her. "I will fill thy brain with the worms of madness, daughter of Nedra. I will sink thee in torment and horror for all the days of thy life."

"Leave her alone!" Aunt Pol said sharply.

"Nay, Polgara," he raged. "Upon her will fall the brunt of my wrath." His dreadful, clutching fingers reached out toward the uncomprehending princess, but she stared blankly through him, unflinching and unaware.

The G.o.d hissed with frustration and whirled to confront Mister Wolf. "Tricked!" he howled. "Her mind is asleep."

"They're all asleep, Lord Mara," Wolf replied. "Threats and horrors don't mean anything to them. Shriek and howl until the sky falls down; she cannot hear thee."

"I will punish thee for this, Belgarath," Mara snarled, "and Polgara as well. You will all taste pain and terror for this arrogant despite of me. I will wring the sleep from the minds of these intruders, and they will know the agony and madness I will visit upon them all." He swelled suddenly into vastness.

"That's enough! Mara! Stop!" The voice was Garion's, but Garion knew that it was not he who spoke.

The Spirit of Mara turned on him, raising his vast arm to strike, but Garion felt himself slide from his horse to approach the vast threatening figure. "Your vengeance stops here, Mara," the voice coming from Garion's mouth said. "The girl is bound to my purpose. You will not touch her." Garion realized with a certain alarm that he had been placed between the raging G.o.d and the sleeping princess.

"Move out of my way, boy, lest I slay thee," Mara threatened.

"Use your mind, Mara," the voice told him, "if you haven't howled it empty by now. You know who I am."