"The stone you mentioned. Was it-"
"The Orb," Wolf confirmed. "Just an ordinary rock until my Master touched it. Anyway, I learned the secret of the Will and the Word which isn't really that much of a secret, after all. It's there in all of us or did I say that before?"
"I think so."
"Probably so. I tend to repeat myself." The old man picked up a roll of parchment and glanced at it, then laid it aside again. "So much that I started and haven't finished." He sighed.
"Grandfather?"
"Yes, Garion?"
"This - thing of ours - how much can you actually do with it?"
"That depends on your mind, Garion. The complexity of it lies in the complexity of the mind that puts it to use. Quite obviously, it can't do something that can't be imagined by the mind that focuses it. That was the purpose of our studies - to expand our minds so that we could use the power more fully."
"Everybody's mind is different, though." Garion was struggling toward an idea.
"Yes."
"Wouldn't that mean that - this thing-" He shied away from the word "power." "What I mean is, is it different? Sometimes you do things, and other times you have Aunt Pol do them."
Wolf nodded. "It's different in each one of us. There are certain things we can all do. We can all move things, for example."
"Aunt Pol called it trans-" Garion hesitated, not remembering the word.
"Translocation," Wolf supplied. "Moving something from one place to another. It's the simplest thing you can do - usually the thing you do first - and it makes the most noise."
"That's what she told me." Garion remembered the slave he had jerked from the river at Sthiss Tor-the slave who had died.
"Polgara can do things that I can't," Wolf continued. "Not because she's any stronger than I am, but because she thinks differently than I do. We're not sure how much you can do yet, because we don't know exactly how your mind works. You seem to be able to do certain things quite easily that I wouldn't even attempt. Maybe it's because you don't realize how difficult they are."
"I don't quite understand what you mean."
The old man looked at him. "Perhaps you don't, at that. Remember the crazy monk who tried to attack you in that village in northern Tolnedra just after we left Arendia?"
Garion nodded.
"You cured his madness. That doesn't sound like much until you realize that in the instant you cured him, you had to understand fully the nature of his insanity. That's an extremely difficult thing, and you did it without even thinking about it. And then, of course, there was the colt."
Garion glanced down through the window at the little horse friskily running through the field surrounding the tower.
"The colt was dead, but you made him start to breathe. In order for you to do that, you had to be able to understand death."
"It was just a wall," Garion explained. "All I did was reach through it."
"There's more to it than that, I think. What you seem to be able to do is to visualize extremely difficult ideas in very simple terms. That's a rare gift, but there are some dangers involved in it that you should be aware of."
"Dangers? Such as what?"
"Don't oversimplify. If a man's dead, for example, he's usually dead for a very good reason - like a sword through the heart. If you bring him back, he'll only die immediately again anyway. As I said before, just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should."
Garion sighed. "I'm afraid this is going to take a very long time, Grandfather," he said. "I have to learn how to keep myself under control; I have to learn what I can't do, so I don't kill myself trying to do something impossible; I have to learn what I can do and what I should do. I wish this had never happened to me."
"We all do sometimes," the old man told him. "The decision wasn't ours to make, though. I haven't always liked some of the things I've had to do, and neither has your Aunt; but what we're doing is more important than we are, so we do what's expected of us - like it or not."
"What if I just said, 'No. I won't do it'?"
"You could do that, I suppose, but you won't, will you?"
Garion sighed again. "No," he said, "I guess not."
The old sorcerer put his arm around the boy's shoulders. "I thought you might see things that way, Belgarion. You're bound to this the same way we all are."
The strange thrill he always felt at the sound of his other, secret name ran through Garion. "Why do you all insist on calling me that?" he asked.
"Belgarion?" Wolf said mildly. "Think, boy. Think what it means. I haven't been talking to you and telling you stories all these years just because I like the sound of my own voice."
Garion turned it over carefully in his mind. "You were Garath," he mused thoughtfully, "but the God Aldur changed your name to Belgarath. Zedar was Zedar first and then Belzedar - and then he went back to being Zedar again."
"And in my old tribe, Polgara would have just been Gara. Pol is like Bel. The only difference is that she's a woman. Her name comes from mine - because she's my daughter. Your name comes from mine, too."
"Garion-Garath," the boy said. "Belgarath-Belgarion. It all fits together, doesn't it?"
"Naturally," the old man replied. "I'm glad you noticed it."
Garion grinned at him. Then a thought occurred. "But I'm not really Belgarion yet, am I?"
"Not entirely. You still have a way to go."
"I suppose I'd better get started then." Garion said it with a certain ruefulness. "Since I don't really have any choice."
"Somehow I knew that eventually you'd come around," Mister Wolf said.
"Don't you sometimes wish that I was just Garion again, and you were the old storyteller coming to visit Faldor's farm - with Aunt Pol making supper in the kitchen as she did in the old days - and we were hiding under a haystack with a bottle I'd stolen for you?" Garion felt the homesickness welling up in him.
"Sometimes, Garion, sometimes," Wolf admitted, his eyes far away.
"We won't ever be able to go back there again, will we?"
"Not the same way, no."
"I'll be Belgarion, and you'll be Belgarath. We won't even be the same people any more."
"Everything changes, Garion," Belgarath told him.
"Show me the rock," Garion said suddenly.
"Which rock?"
"The one Aldur made you move - the day you first discovered the power."
"Oh," Belgarath said, "that rock. It's right over there - the white one. The one the colt's sharpening his hooves on."
"It's a very big rock."
"I'm glad you appreciate that," Belgarath replied modestly. "I thought so myself."
"Do you suppose I could move it?"
"You never know until you try, Garion," Belgarath told him.