Free Magician's Gambit by David Eddings Page B

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 God, 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 grass, 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 God'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