And with his Queen at his side, the Dark God shall be invincible and shall prevail over his enemy, and the Light shall flee. But be not discouraged. That which was burnt shall be whole once more, that which was broken shall be mended, and no darkness is so deep that a beam of light cannot penetrate it. The Ancient and Beloved shall champion us once more, though he must seek another. Light shall pierce Dark, and Dark shall engulf Light, and East and West shall stand in turmoil until the final choice. Seek thou knowledge, Ancient and Beloved, for thou must find the stones of power and the one who must wield the sword of Light. The moment of choosing, once past, shall come no more.
"Yield!" Torak cried triumphantly. "Thou art helpless before me. Yield!"
Garion stared mutely at the towering figure of the Dragon God. He had nothing left. His Aunt Pol's Will had been crushed by Torak after the death of Durnik, and the figure that had guided his life since his birth had submitted to his greatest enemy. Through that frozen moment, as the Rivan King lay defenceless beneath the God of Angarak and Cthrek Goru, images of the quest for the Orb flickered before his eyes. For a moment he was back in Faldor's farm, then he fought a boar in Cherek. In Tolnedra he sat beside a pool with his tiny Princess, and an instant later was slapping Asharak across the face. Grul the Eldrak, the Vale of Aldur, Rak Cthol, and the Hall of the Rivan King all flashed through his awareness, and lastly that dreadful journey through Morindland and Mallorea with the voice of Torak whispering in his mind all the while. He knew, finally, that he had failed.
The Child of Dark's exultation stood plainly on his features. "Dost thou yield?" he demanded.
"I do," Garion gasped in utter defeat.
"Goodbye, Garion ..." whispered the dry voice in his mind. For a brief instant, an absolute silence fell. Lying on the ground, though the massive figure of Torak blotted out half the sky, he could still see that every other star in the sky had winked out. The universe held its breath, and all light, all sound, had ceased.
Then, breaking the dreadful silence, a despairing wail for all to hear signalled the flight of the Prophecy of Light, and he felt an almost seismic lateral shift as the universe realigned itself to fit this new order. Light was no more. Dark reigned supreme.
Titanic and victorious, Torak's Will bore down on Garion, once but no longer Child of Light, crushing all opposition. "From this time forward, thou wilt obey only me," the God commanded. "My Will stands above thine in all things."
Garion could but stare, rendered incapable even of commanding his own body by the force of the Will of the God of Angarak, and in any case sinking into the blackest of despairs at the knowledge that his defeat doomed the very universe.
"Lay thy hand on the Stone which thou dost wield and which hath done unto me grievous harm."
Garion's hand moved like that of a puppeteer's doll to rest on the Orb.
"Command Cthrag Yaska now to heal my wounds."
He was incapable of gathering his Will, but Garion could still communicate with the Orb. He felt the Will of Torak flooding over him, compelling him towards this one act which only he could perform.
He opened his mouth and said, "Heal," and felt the release of that awful Will through him into the Orb of Aldur.
The light of the Orb flared up, and surrounded Torak in blue incandescence. After a moment, the God reached up to his face and removed the steel mask he had worn for more than fifty centuries, to reveal features on the left side of that face that perfectly mirrored those on the right. Handsome features, certainly; many had even called them beautiful before his maiming, though that beauty had always stood in stark contrast to the malevolence burning in those newly restored eyes.
As Garion watched, though, stunned and bereft of all control as he was, a strange change came over those eyes, still bathed in the Orb's glow. The malevolence faded, and a kind of serenity replaced it; and, on a different level, Garion felt a subtle change in the unyielding force that pinned his conscious mind in immobility. His command, given under duress, to "Heal" had, as far as the Orb was concerned, evidently encompassed far more than the simple physical healing that Torak had demanded.
The Orb had not only healed Torak's body, but his madness too.
The blue light dimmed, and the God spoke. Not the roar of a few minutes previously, nor the sibilant whisper that had haunted Garion for months; simply a calm, strong, resonant voice. "I have not been as I might have been; but now it seems I am not what I was." In an odd way, it was a confession. The God's pride still overlaid his personality, and he held back from anything less oblique.
Again he spoke, almost to himself. "The Child of Light is no more. My Destiny reigns supreme. But scant joy can I have in the victory - unless ..."
He reached out toward Garion's unresisting hand, which still held the Orb of Aldur, and laid his hand on that stone which he had called Cthrag Yaska and with which he had striven in vain for two millennia.
The God was unharmed.
Into the dead silence which had reigned in the ancient crypt since the end of the titanic battle, he spoke a third time, in a voice now tinged with unwonted joy. "Now, in repayment, I must rectify the great harm I inflicted upon my creation five eons past. All shall be one again."
And, with that, he raised the Orb and mended the world.