The others stood around awkwardly until the legionnaires left with Kador. Then, when the soldiers were out of sight and the need for imperial self possession was gone, Ce'Nedra began to cry. Aunt Pol took the tiny girl in her arms and began to comfort her.

"I guess we'd better bury this," Barak said, nudging what was left of Chamdar with his foot. "The Dryads might be offended if we went off and left it still smoking."

"I'll fetch my spade," Durnik said.

Garion turned away and brushed past Mandorallen and Hettar. His hands were trembling violently, and he was so exhausted that his legs barely held him.

She had called him Belgarion, and the name had rung in his mind as if he had always known that it was his - as if for all his brief years he had been incomplete until in that instant the name itself had completed him. But Belgarion was a being who with Will and Word and the touch of his hand could turn flesh into living fire.

"You did it!" he accused the dry awareness in one corner of his mind. "No, " the voice replied. "I only showed you how. The Will and the Word and the touch were all yours. "

Garion knew that it was true. With horror he remembered his enemy's final supplication and the flaming, incandescent hand with which he had spurned that agonized appeal for mercy. The revenge he had wanted so desperately for the past several months was dreadfully complete, but the taste of it was bitter, bitter.

Then his knees buckled, and he sank to the earth and wept like a broken-hearted child.

Part Three
NYISSA

Map Here

Chapter Twenty-three

THE EARTH WAS STILL THE SAME. The trees had not changed, nor had the sky. It was still spring, for the seasons had not altered their stately march. But for Garion nothing would ever again be the way that it had been.

They rode down through the Wood of the Dryads to the banks of the River of the Woods which marked the southern boundary of Tolnedra, and from time to time as they rode he caught strange glances from his friends. The looks were speculative, thoughtful, and Durnik - good, solid Durnik - behaved as if he were almost afraid. Only Aunt Pol seemed unchanged, unconcerned. "Don't worry about it, Belgarion, " her voice murmured in his mind.

"Don't call me that," he replied with an irritated thought.

"It's your name, " the silent voice said. "You might as well get used to it.

"Leave me alone. "

And then the sense of her presence in his mind was gone.

It took them several days to reach the sea. The weather remained intermittently cloudy, though it did not rain. A stiff onshore breeze was blowing when they rode out onto the wide beach at the mouth of the river. The surf boomed against the sand, and whitecaps flecked the tops of the waves.