"Are you all right?" Ce'Nedra demanded of him, even as she ducked her head beneath his arm and firmly pulled it about her tiny shoulders. He nodded, though his knees almost buckled.

"Lean on me," she told him.

He was about to protest, but she put her hand firmly to his lips. "Don't argue, Garion," she told him. "You know that I love you and that you're going to be leaning on me for the rest of your life anyway, so you might as well get used to the idea."

"I think my life's going to be different now, Master," Belgarath was saying to Aldur. "Pol's always been there, ready to come when I called her - not always willingly, perhaps - but she always came. Now she'll have other concerns." He sighed. "I suppose our children all grow up and get married sometime."

"This particular pose doth not become thee, my son," Aldur told him.

Belgarath grinned. "I've never been able to slip anything past you, Master," he said. Then his face grew serious again. "Polgara's been almost like a son to me," he told Aldur, "but perhaps it's time that I let her be a woman. I've denied her that for too long."

"As it seems best to thee, my son," Aldur said. "And now, I pray thee, go apart a little way and permit us our family grief." He looked at Torak's body lying on the bier and then at Garion. "I have but one more task for thee, Belgarion," he said. "Take the Orb and place it upon my brother's breast."

"Yes, Master," Garion replied immediately. He removed his arm from about Ce'Nedra's shoulders and walked to the bier, trying not to look at the dead God's seared and twisted face. He reached out and laid the round blue stone upon the motionless chest of Kal Torak. Then he stepped back. Once again his little princess wormed her way beneath his arm and clasped him about the waist. It was not unpleasant, but he had the brief, irrational thought that things would be awkward if she were going to insist on this close embrace for the rest of their lives.

Once again the Gods formed their circle, and once again the Orb began to glow. Gradually, the seared face started to change, its maiming slowly disappearing. The light surrounding the Gods and the bier grew stronger, and the glow of the Orb became incandescent. The last Garion saw of the face of Torak, it was calm, composed and unmarked. It was a beautiful face, but it was nonetheless still a dead face.

And then the light grew so intense that Garion could no longer look at it. When it subsided, and when Garion looked back at the bier, the Gods and the body of Torak were gone. Only the Orb remained, glowing slightly as it lay on the rough stone.