"Wait!" Mara roared suddenly. The images of the city and its dead wavered and shimmered away. "What is this?" the God demanded.
Mister Wolf turned quickly.
"What hast thou done, Belgarath?" Mara accused, suddenly towering into immensity. "And thou, Polgara. Is my grief now an amusement for thee? Wilt thou cast my sorrow into my teeth?"
"My Lord?" Aunt Pol seemed taken aback by the God'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 God 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 God 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."
"I will have her!" Mara howled. "I will give her a multitude of lives and tear each one from her quivering flesh."
"No," the voice replied, "you won't. "
The God Mara drew himself up again, raising his dreadful arms; but at the same time, his eyes were probing - and more than his eyes. Garion once again felt a vast touch on his mind as he had in Queen Salmissra's throne room when the Spirit of Issa had touched him. A dreadful recognition began to dawn in Mara's weeping eyes. His raised arms fell. "Give her to me," he pleaded. "Take the others and go, but give the Tolnedran to me. I beg it of thee."
"No." What happened then was not sorcery - Garion knew it instantly. The noise was not there nor that strange, rushing surge that always accompanied sorcery. Instead, there seemed to be a terrible pressure as the full force of Mara's mind was directed crushingly at him. Then the mind within his mind responded. The power was so vast that the world itself was not large enough to contain it. It did not strike back at Mara, for that dreadful collision would have shattered the world, but it stood rather, calmly unmoved and immovable against the raging torrent of Mara's fury. For a fleeting moment, Garion shared the awareness of the mind within his mind, and he shuddered back from its immensity. In that instant, he saw the birth of uncounted suns swirling in vast spirals against the velvet blackness of the void, their birth and gathering into galaxies and ponderously turning nebulae encompassing but a moment. And beyond that, he looked full in the face of time itself - seeing its beginning and its ending in one awful glimpse.
Mara fell back. "I must submit," he said hoarsely, and then he bowed to Garion, his ravaged face strangely humble. He turned away and buried his face in his hands, weeping uncontrollably.
"Your grief will end, Mara," the voice said gently. "One day you will find joy again."
"Never," the God sobbed. "My grief will last forever."
"Forever is a very long time, Mara," the voice replied, "and only I can see to the end of it."
The weeping God did not answer, but moved away from them, and the sound of his wailing echoed again through the ruins of Mar Amon. Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol were both staring at Garion with stunned faces. When the old man spoke, his voice was awed. "Is it possible?"
"Aren't you the one who keeps saying that anything is possible, Belgarath?"
"We didn't know you could intervene directly," Aunt Pol said.
"I nudge things a bit from time to time - make a few suggestions. If you think back carefully, you might even remember some of them."
"Is the boy aware of any of this?" she asked.
"Of course. We had a little talk about it."
"How much did you tell him?"
"As much as he could understand. Don't worry, Polgara, I'm not going to hurt him. He realizes how important all this is now. He knows that he needs to prepare himself and that he doesn't have a great deal of time for it. I think you'd better leave here now. The Tolnedran girl's presence is causing Mara a great deal of pain."
Aunt Pol looked as if she wanted to say more, but she glanced once at the shadowy figure of the God weeping not far away and nodded. She turned to her horse and led the way out of the ruins.
Mister Wolf fell in beside Garion after they had remounted to follow her. "Perhaps we could talk as we ride along," he suggested. "I have a great many questions."
"He's gone, Grandfather," Garion told him.
"Oh," Wolf answered with obvious disappointment.
It was nearing sundown by then, and they stopped for the night in a grove about a mile away from Mar Amon. Since they had left the ruins, they had seen no more of the maimed ghosts. After the others had been fed and sent to their blankets, Aunt Pol, Garion, and Mister Wolf sat around their small fire. Since the presence in his mind had left him, following the meeting with Mara, Garion had felt himself sinking deeper toward sleep. All emotion was totally gone now, and he seemed no longer able to think independently.
"Can we talk to the - other one?" Mister Wolf asked hopefully.
"He isn't there right now," Garion replied.