Chapter Twelve
"WHY DID YOU try to lift it?" Belgarath asked Garion the next morning after he and Aunt Pol had returned and Silk and Hettar had solemnly informed them of the predicament in which they had found the young man the afternoon before.
"It seemed like the best way to tip it over," Garion answered. "You know, kind of get hold of it from underneath and then roll it-sort of."
"Why didn't you just push against it - close to the top? It would have rolled over if you'd done it that way."
"I didn't think of it."
"Don't you realize that soft earth won't accept that kind of pressure?" Aunt Pol asked.
"I do now," Garion replied. "But wouldn't pushing on it have just moved me backward?"
"You have to brace yourself," Belgarath explained. "That's part of the whole trick. As much of your will goes to holding yourself immobile as it does to pushing against the object you're trying to move. Otherwise all you do is just shove yourself away."
"I didn't know that," Garion admitted. "It's the first time I've ever tried to do anything unless it was an emergency . . . Will you stop that?" he demanded crossly of Ce'Nedra, who had collapsed into gales of laughter as soon as Silk had finished telling them about Garion's blunder.
She laughed even harder.
"I think you're going to have to explain a few things to him, father," Aunt Pol said. "He doesn't seem to have even the most rudimentary idea about the way forces react against each other." She looked at Garion critically. "It's lucky you didn't decide to throw it," she told him. "You might have flung yourself halfway back to Maragor."
"I really don't think it's all that funny," Garion told his friends, who were all grinning openly at him. "This isn't as easy as it looks, you know." He realized that he had just made a fool of himself and he was not sure if he were more embarrassed or hurt by their amusement.
"Come with me, boy," Belgarath said firmly. "It looks as if we're going to have to start at the very beginning."
"It's not my fault I didn't know," Garion protested. "You should have told me."
"I didn't know you were planning to start experimenting so soon," the old man replied. "Most of us have sense enough to wait for guidance before we start rearranging local geography."
"Well, at least I did manage to move it," Garion said defensively as he followed the old man across the meadow toward the tower.
"Splendid. Did you put it back the way you found it?"
"Why? What difference does it make?"
"We don't move things here in the Vale. Everything that's here is here for a reason, and they're all supposed to be exactly where they are."
"I didn't know," Garion apologized.
"You do now. Let's go put it back where it belongs." They trudged along in silence.
"Grandfather?" Garion said finally.
"Yes?"
"When I moved the rock, it seemed that I was getting the strength to do it from all around me. It seemed just to flow in from everyplace. Does that mean anything?"
"That's the way it works," Belgarath explained. "When we do something, we take the power to do it from our surroundings. When you burned Chamdar, for example, you drew the heat from all around you - from the air, from the ground, and from everyone who was in the area. You drew a little heat from everything to build the fire. When you tipped the rock over, you took the force to do it from everything nearby."
"I thought it all came from inside."
"Only when you create things," the old man replied. "That force has to come from within us. For anything else, we borrow. We gather up a little power from here and there and put it all together and then turn it loose all at one spot. Nobody's big enough to carry around the kind of force it would take to do even the simplest sort of thing."
"Then that's what happens when somebody tries to unmake something," Garion said intuitively. "He pulls in all the force, but then he can't let it go, and it just " He spread his hands and jerked them suddenly apart.
Belgarath looked narrowly at him. "You've got a strange sort of mind, boy. You understand the difficult things quite easily, but you can't seem to get hold of the simple ones. There's the rock." He shook his head. "That will never do. Put it back where it belongs, and try not to make so much noise this time. That racket you raised yesterday echoed all over the Vale."
"What do I do?" Garion asked.
"Gather in the force," Belgarath told him. "Take it from everything around."
Garion tried that.
"Not from me!" the old man exclaimed sharply.
Garion excluded his grandfather from his field of reaching out and pulling in. After a moment or two, he felt as if he were tingling all over and that his hair was standing on end. "Now what?" he asked, clenching his teeth to hold it in.
"Push out behind you and push at the rock at the same time.''
"What do I push at behind me?"
"Everything - and at the rock as well. It has to be simultaneous."
"Won't I get - sort of squeezed in between?"
"Tense yourself up."
"We'd better hurry, Grandfather," Garion said. "I feel like I'm going to fly apart."
"Hold it in. Now put your will on the rock, and say the word." Garion put his hands out in front of him and straightened his arms. "Push," he commanded. He felt the surge and the roaring.
With a resounding thud, the rock teetered and then rolled back smoothly to where it had been the morning before. Garion suddenly felt bruised all over, and he sank to his knees in exhaustion.
"Push?" Belgarath said incredulously.
"You said to say push."
"I said to push. I didn't say to say push."
"It went over. What difference does it make what word I used?"
"It's a question of style," the old man said with a pained look. "Push sounds so - so babyish."
Weakly, Garion began to laugh.
"After all, Garion, we do have a certain dignity to maintain," the old man said loftily. "If we go around saying 'push' or 'flop' or things like that, no one's ever going to take us seriously."
Garion wanted to stop laughing, but he simply couldn't. Belgarath stalked away indignantly, muttering to himself.
When they returned to the others, they found that the tents had been struck and the packhorses loaded.
"There's no point in staying here," Aunt Pol told them, "and the others are waiting for us. Did you manage to make him understand anything, father?"
Belgarath grunted, his face set in an expression of profound disapproval.
"Things didn't go well, I take it."
"I'll explain later," he said shortly.
During Garion's absence, Ce'Nedra, with much coaxing and a lapful of apples from their stores, had seduced the little colt into a kind of ecstatic subservience. He followed her about shamelessly, and the rather distant look he gave Garion showed not the slightest trace of guilt.
"You're going to make him sick," Garion accused her.
"Apples are good for horses," she replied airily.
"Tell her, Hettar," Garion said.
"They won't hurt him," the hook-nosed man answered. "It's a customary way to gain the trust of a young horse."
Garion tried to think of another suitable objection, but without success. For some reason the sight of the little animal nuzzling at Ce'Nedra offended him, though he couldn't exactly put his finger on why.
"Who are these others, Belgarath?" Silk asked as they rode. "The ones Polgara mentioned."
"My brothers," the old sorcerer replied. "Our Master's advised them that we're coming."