The University of Melcena was a sprawling complex of buildings situated in a vast park. The buildings were old and stately, and the trees dotting the close-clipped lawns were gnarled with age. There was a kind of secure serenity about the place that bespoke a dedication to the life of the mind. A calm came over Garion as he walked with the two old sorcerers across the green lawn, but there was a kind of melancholy as well. He sighed.
“What’s the problem?” Belgarath asked him.
“Oh, I don’t know, Grandfather. Sometimes I wish I might have had the chance to come to a place like this. It might be kind of nice to study something for no reason except that you want to know about it. Most of my studying has been pretty urgent—you know, find the answer, or the world will come to an end.”
“Universities are overrated places,” Beldin said. “Too many young men attend simply because their fathers insist, and they spend more time carousing than they do studying. The noise is distracting to the serious student. Stick to studying alone. You get more done.” He looked at Belgarath. “Have you got even the remotest idea where we’re going to find this Senji?”
“Vetter said that he’s a member of the faculty of the College of Applied Alchemy. I’d imagine that’s the place to start.”
“Logic, Belgarath? You? The next question that pops to mind is where we’re going to find the College of Applied Alchemy.”
Belgarath stopped a robed scholar who was walking across the lawn with an open book in his hand. “Excuse me, learned sir,” he said politely, “but could you direct me to the College of Applied Alchemy?”
“Umm?” the scholar said, looking up from his book.
“The College of Applied Alchemy. Could you tell me where I could find it?”
“The sciences are all down that way,” the scholar said, “near the theology department.” He waved rather vaguely toward the south end of the campus.
“Thank you,” Belgarath said. “You’re too kind.”
“It’s a scholar’s duty to provide instruction and direction,” the fellow replied pompously.
“Ah, yes,” Belgarath murmured. “Sometimes I lose sight of that.”
They walked on in the direction the scholar had indicated. “If he doesn’t give his students any more specific directions than that, they probably come out of this place with another vague idea of the world,” Beldin observed. The directions they received from others gradually grew more precise, and they finally reached a blocky-looking building constructed of thick gray rock and solidly buttressed along its walls. They went up the steps in front and entered a hallway that was also shored up with stout buttresses.
“I don’t quite follow the reason for all the interior reinforcement,” Garion confessed.
As if in answer to his question, there came a thunderous detonation from behind a door partway up the hall. The door blew outward violently, and clouds of reeking smoke came pouring out.
“Oh,” Garion said. “Now I understand.”
A fellow with a dazed look on his face and with his clothes hanging from his body in smoking tatters came staggering out through the smoke. “Too much sulfur,” he was muttering over and over again. “Too much sulfur.”
“Excuse me,” Belgarath said, “do you by any chance know where we might find the alchemist Senji?”
“Too much sulfur,” the experimenter said, looking blankly at Belgarath.
“Senji,” the old man repeated. “Could you tell us where to find him?”
The tattered fellow frowned. “What?” he said blankly.
“Let me,” Beldin said. “Can you tell us where to find Senji?” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “He’s got a clubfoot.”
“Oh,” the man replied, shaking his head to clear his befuddlement. “His laboratory’s on the top floor—down toward the other end.”
“Thank you,” Beldin shouted at him.
“Too much sulfur. That’s the problem, all right. I put in too much sulfur.”
“Why were you shouting at him?” Belgarath asked curiously as the three of them went on down the hall.
“I’ve been in the middle of a few explosions myself.” The hunchback shrugged. “I was always deaf as a post for a week or two afterward.”
“Oh.”
They went up two flights of stairs to the top floor. They passed another door that had only recently been exploded out of its casement. Belgarath poked his head through the opening. “Where can we find Senji?” he shouted into the room.
There was a mumbled reply.
“Last door on the left,” the old man grunted, leading the way.
“Alchemy seems to be a fairly dangerous occupation,” Garion noted.
“Also fairly stupid,” Beldin growled. “If they want gold so badly, why don’t they just go dig it up?”
“I don’t think that’s occurred to very many of them,” Belgarath said. He stopped before the last door on the left, a door showing signs of recent repair. He knocked.
“Go away,” a rusty-sounding voice replied.
“We need to talk with you, Senji,” Belgarath called mildly.
The rusty voice told him at some length what he could do with his need to talk. Most of the words were very colorful. Belgarath’s face grew set. He gathered himself up and spoke a single word. The door disappeared with a shocking sound.
“Now that’s something you don’t see around here very much,” the grubby little man sitting in the midst of the splintered remains of his door said in a conversational tone. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a door blow in.” He started picking splinters out of his beard.
“Are you all right?” Garion asked him.
“Of course, just a little surprised is all. When you’ve been blown up as many times as I have, you sort of get used to the idea. Does one of you want to pull this door off me?” Beldin stumped forward and lifted the remains of the door.
“You’re an ugly one, aren’t you?” the man on the floor said.
“You’re no beauty yourself.”
“I can live with it.”
“So can I.”
“Good. Are you the one who blew my door in?”
“He did.” Beldin pointed at Belgarath and then helped the fellow to his feet.
“How did you manage that?” the grubby little man asked Belgarath curiously. “I don’t smell any chemicals at all.”
“It’s a gift,” Belgarath replied. “You’re Senji, I take it.”
“I am. Senji the clubfoot. senior member of the faculty the College of Applied Alchemy.” He thumped on the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “Explosions always make my ears ring,” he noted. “You—my ugly friend,” he said to Beldin. “There’s a barrel of beer over there in the corner. Why don’t you bring me some? Get some for yourself and your friends as well.”
“We’re going to get along fairly well,” Beldin said.
Senji limped toward a stone table in the center of the room. His left leg was several inches shorter than his right, and his left foot was grotesquely deformed. He leafed through several sheets of parchment. “Good,” he said to Belgarath. “At least your explosion didn’t scatter my calculations all over the room.” He looked at them. “As long as you’re here, you might as well find something to sit down on.”
Beldin brought him a cup of beer, then went back to the corner where the barrel was and filled three more cups.
“That is really an ugly fellow,” Senji noted, hauling himself up and sitting on top of the table. “I sort of like him, though. I haven’t met anybody quite like that for almost a thousand years.”
Belgarath and Garion exchanged a quick look. “That’s quite a long time,” Belgarath said cautiously.
“Yes,” Senji agreed, taking a drink from his cup. He made a face. “It’s gone flat again,” he said. “You there,” he called to Beldin. “There’s an earthenware jar on the shelf just above the barrel. Be a good fellow and dump a couple handfuls of that powder into the beer. It wakes it up again.” He looked back at Belgarath. “What was it you wanted to talk about?” he asked. “What’s so important that you have to go around blowing doors apart?”
“In a minute,” Belgarath said. He crossed to where the little clubfoot sat. “Do you mind?” he asked. He reached out and lightly touched his fingertips to the smelly man’s bald head.
“Well?” Beldin asked.
Belgarath nodded. “He doesn’t use it very often, but it’s there. Garion, fix the door. I think we’ll want to talk in private.”
Garion looked helplessly at the shattered remains of the door. “It’s not in very good shape, Grandfather,” he said dubiously.
“Make a new one then.”
“Oh. I guess I forgot about that.”
“You need some practice anyway. Just make sure that you can get it open later. I don’t want to have to blow it down again when the time comes to leave.” Garion gathered in his will, concentrated a moment, pointed at the empty opening, and said, “Door.” The opening was immediately filled again.
“Door?” Beldin said incredulously.
“He does that sometimes,” Belgarath said. “I’ve been trying to break him of the habit, but he backslides from time to time.”
Senji’s eyes were narrow as he looked at them. “Well, now,” he said. “I seem to have some talented guests. I haven’t met a real sorcerer in a long, long time.”
“How long?” Belgarath asked bluntly.
“Oh, a dozen centuries or so, I guess. A Grolim was here giving lectures in the College of Comparative Theology. Stuffy sort of fellow, as I recall, but then, most Grolims are.”
“All right, Senji,” Belgarath said, “just how old are you?”
“I think I was born during the fifteenth century,” Senji replied. “What year is it now?”
“Fifty-three seventy-nine,” Garion told him.
“Already?” Senji said mildly. “Where does the time go?” He counted it up on his fingers. “I guess that would make me about thirty-nine hundred or so.”
“When did you find out about the Will and the Word?” Belgarath pressed.
“The what?”
“Sorcery.”
“Is that what you call it?” Senji pondered a bit. “I suppose the term is sort of accurate, at that,” he mused. “I like that. The Will and the Word. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“When did you make the discovery?” Belgarath repeated.
“During the fifteenth century, obviously. Otherwise I’d died in the normal course of time, like everybody
“You didn’t have any instruction?”
“Who was around in the fifteenth century to instruct me? I just stumbled over it.”
Belgarath and Beldin looked at each other. Then Belgarath sighed and covered his eyes with one hand.
“It happens once in a while,” Beldin said. “Some people just fall into it.”
“I know, but it’s so discouraging. Look at all the centuries our Master took instructing us, and this fellow just picks it up on his own.” He looked back at Senji. “Why don’t you tell us about it?” he suggested. “Try not to leave too much out.”
“Do we really have time, Grandfather?” Garion asked.
“We have to make time,” Beldin told him. “It was one of our Master’s final commandments. Any time we come across somebody who’s picked up the secret spontaneously, we’re supposed to investigate. Not even the Gods know how it happens.”
Senji slid down from the table and limped over to an overflowing bookcase. He rummaged around for a moment and finally selected a book that looked much the worse for wear. “Sorry about the shape it’s in,” he apologized. “It’s been blown up a few times.” He limped back to the table and opened the book. “I wrote this during the twenty-third century,” he said. “I noticed that I was starting to get a little absentminded, so I wanted to get it all down while it was still fresh in my memory.”
“Makes sense,” Beldin said. “My grim-faced friend over there has been suffering from some shocking lapses of memory lately—of course, that’s to be expected from somebody who’s nineteen thousand years old.”
“Do you mind?” Belgarath said acidly.
“You mean it’s been longer?”
“Shut up, Beldin.”
“Here we are,” Senji said. Then he began to read aloud. “ ‘For the next fourteen hundred years the Melcene Empire prospered, far removed from the theological and political squabbles of the western part of the continent. Melcene culture was secular, civilized, and highly educated. Slavery was unknown, and trade with the Angaraks and their subject peoples in Karanda and Dalasia was extremely profitable. The old imperial capital at Melcena became a major center of learning.’ “
“Excuse me,” Belgarath said, “but isn’t that taken directly from Emperors of Melcena and Mallorea?”
“Naturally,” Senji replied without any embarrassment. “Plagiarism is the first rule of scholarship. Please don’t interrupt.”
“Sorry,” Belgarath said.
“ ‘Unfortunately,’ “ Senji read on, “ ‘some of the thrust of Melcene scholarship turned toward the arcane. Their major field of concentration lay in the field of alchemy.’ “ He looked at Belgarath. “This is where it gets original,” he said. He cleared his throat. “ ‘It was a Melcene alchemist, Senji the clubfooted, who inadvertently utilized sorcery during the course of one of his experiments.’ “
“You speak of yourself in the third person?” Beldin asked.
“It was a twenty-third-century affectation,” Senji replied. “Autobiography was considered to be in terribly bad taste—immodest, don’t you know. It was a very boring century. I yawned all the way through it.” He went back to reading. “ ‘Senji, a fifteenth-century practitioner of alchemy at the university in the imperial city, was notorious for his ineptitude.’ “ He paused. “I might want to edit that part just a bit,” he noted critically. He glanced at the next one. “And this just won’t do at all,” he added. “ ‘To be quite frank about it,’ “ he read with distaste, “ ‘Senji’s experiments more often turned gold into lead than the reverse. In a fit of colossal frustration at the failure of his most recent experiment, Senji accidentally converted a half ton of brass plumbing into solid gold. An immediate debate arose, involving the Bureau of Currency, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Sanitation, the faculty of the College of Applied Alchemy and the faculty of the College of Comparative Theology about which organization should have control of Senji’s discovery. After about three hundred years of argumentation, it suddenly occurred to the disputants that Senji was not merely talented, but also appeared to be immortal. In the name of scientific experimentation, the varying bureaus, departments, and faculties agreed that an effort should be made to have him assassinated to verify that fact.’ “
“They didn’t!” Beldin said.
“Oh, yes,” Senji replied with a grim smugness. “Melcenes are inquisitive to the point of idiocy. They’ll go to any lengths to prove a theory.”
“What did you do?”
Senji smirked so hard that his long nose and pointed chin almost touched. “ ‘A well-known defenestrator was retained to throw the irascible old alchemist from a high window in one of the towers of the university administration building,’ “ he read.
“The experiment had a threefold purpose. What the curious bureaus wished to find out was: (A) if Senji was in fact unkillable, (B) what means he would take to save his life while plummeting toward the paved courtyard, and (C) if it might be possible to discover the secret of flight by giving him no other alternative.’ “ The clubfooted alchemist tapped the back of his hand against the text. “I’ve always been a little proud of that sentence,” he said. “It’s so beautifully balanced.”
“It’s a masterpiece,” Beldin approved, slapping the little man on the shoulder so hard that it nearly knocked him off the table. “Here,” he said, taking Senji’s cup, “let me refill that for you.” His brow creased, there was a surge, and the cup was full again. Senji took a sip and fell to gasping.
“It’s a drink that a Nadrak woman of my acquaintance brews,” Beldin told him. “Robust, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Senji agreed in a hoarse voice.
“Go on with your story, my friend.”
Senji cleared his throat—several times—and went on. “ ‘What the officials and learned men actually found out as a result of their experiment was that it is extremely dangerous to threaten the life of a sorcerer—even one as inept as Senji. The defenestrator found himself suddenly translocated to a position some fifteen hundred meters above the harbor, five miles distant. At one instant he had been wrestling Senji toward the window; at the next, he found himself standing on insubstantial air high above a fishing fleet. His demise occasioned no particular sorrow—except among the fishermen, whose nets were badly damaged by his rapid descent.’ “
“That was a masterful passage,” Beldin chortled, “but where did you discover the meaning of the word ‘translocation’?”
“I was reading an old text on the exploits of Belgarath the Sorcerer, and I—” Senji stopped, going very pale, turned, and gaped at Garion’s grandfather.
“It’s a terrible letdown, isn’t it?” Beldin said. “We always told him he ought to try to look more impressive.”
“You’re in no position to talk,” the old man said.
“You’re the one with the earthshaking reputation.” Beldin shrugged. “I’m just a flunky. I’m along for comic relief.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, Beldin?”
“I haven’t had so much fun in years. Wait until I tell Pol.”
“You keep your mouth shut, you hear me?”
“Yes, O mighty Belgarath,” Beldin said mockingly.
Belgarath turned to Garion. “Now you understand why Silk irritates me so much,” he said.
“Yes, Grandfather, I think I do.”
Senji was still a little wild-eyed.
“Take another drink, Senji,” Beldin advised. “It’s not nearly so hard to accept when your wits are half-fuddled.”
Senji began to tremble. Then he drained his cup in one gulp without so much as a cough.
“Now there’s a brave lad,” Beldin congratulated him. “Please read on. Your story is fascinating.”
Falteringly, the little alchemist continued. “ ‘In an out-burst of righteous indignation, Senji then proceeded to chastise the department heads who had consorted to do violence to his person. It was finally only a personal appeal from the emperor himself that persuaded the old man to desist from some fairly exotic punishments. After that, the department heads were more than happy to allow Senji to go his own way unmolested.
“On his own, Senji established a private academy and advertised for students. While his pupils never became sorcerers of the magnitude of Belgarath, Polgara, Ctuchik, or some of them were, nonetheless, able to perform rudimentary applications of the principle their master inadvertently discovered. This immediately elevated them far above the magicians and witches practicing their art forms within the confines of the university.’ “ Senji looked up. “There’s more,” he said, “but most of it deals with my experiments in the field of alchemy.”
“I think that’s the crucial part,” Belgarath said. “Let’s go back a bit. What were you feeling at the exact moment that you changed all that brass into gold?”
“Irritation,” Senji shrugged, closing his book. “Or maybe more than that. I’d worked out my calculations so very carefully, but the bar of lead I was working on just lay there not doing anything. I was infuriated. Then I just sort of pulled everything around me inside, and I could feel an enormous power building up. I shouted ‘Change!’—mostly at the lead bar, but there were some pipes running through the room as well, and my concentration was a little diffused.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t change the walls, too,” Beldin told him. “Were you ever able to do it again?”
Senji shook his head. “I tried, but I never seemed to be able to put together that kind of anger again.”
“Are you always angry when you do this sort of thing?” the hunchback asked.
“Almost always,” Senji admitted. “If I’m not angry, I can’t be certain of the results. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“That seems to be the key to it, Belgarath,” Beldin said. “Rage is the common element in every case we've come across.”
“As I remember, I was irritated the first time I did it as well,” Belgarath conceded.
“So was I,” Beldin said. “With you, I think.”
“Why did you take it out on that tree, then?”
“At the last second I remembered that our Master was fond of you, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by obliterating you.”
“That probably saved your life. If you’d said ‘be not,’ you wouldn’t be here now.”
Beldin scratched at his stomach. “That might explain why we find so few cases of spontaneous sorcery,” he mused. “When somebody’s enraged at something, his first impulse is usually to destroy it. This might have happened many, many times, but the spontaneous sorcerers probably annihilated themselves in the moment of discovery.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised that you've hit it,” Belgarath agreed.
Senji had gone pale again. “I think there’s something I need to know here,” he said.
“It’s the first rule,” Garion told him. “The universe won’t let us unmake things. If we try, all the force turns inward, and we’re the ones who vanish.” With a shudder he remembered the obliteration of Ctuchik. He looked at Beldin. “Did I get that right?” he asked.
“Fairly close. The explanation is a little more complex, but you described the process pretty accurately.”
“Did that by any chance happen to any of your students?” Belgarath asked Senji.
The alchemist frowned. “It might have,” he admitted. “Quite a few of them disappeared. I thought they’d just gone off someplace, but maybe not.”
“Are you taking any more students these days?”
Senji shook his head. “I don’t have the patience for it any more. Only about one in ten could even grasp the concept, and the rest stood around whining and sniveling and blaming me for not explaining it any better. I went back to alchemy. I almost never use sorcery any more.”
“We were told that you can actually do it,” Garion said. “Turn brass or lead into gold, I mean.”
“Oh, yes,” Senji replied in an offhand way. “It’s really fairly easy, but the process is more expensive than the gold is worth. That’s what I’m trying to do now—simplify the process and substitute less expensive chemicals. I can’t get anyone to fund my experiments, though.”
Garion felt a sudden throbbing against his hip. Puzzled, he looked down at the pouch in which he was carrying the Orb. There was a sound in his ears, an angry sort of buzz that was unlike the shimmering sound the Orb usually made.
“What’s that peculiar sound?” Senji asked.
Garion untied the pouch from his belt and opened it. The Orb was glowing an angry red.
“Zandramas?” Belgarath asked intently.
Garion shook his head. “No, Grandfather. I don’t think so.”
“Does it want to take you someplace?”
“It’s pulling.”
“Let’s see where it wants to go.” Garion held the Orb out in his right hand and it drew him steadily toward the door. They went out into the corridor with Senji limping along behind them, his face afire with curiosity. The Orb led them down the stairs and out the front door of the building.
“It seems to want to go toward that building over there,” Garion said, pointing toward a soaring tower of pure white marble.
“The College of Comparative Theology,” Senji sniffed. “They’re a sorry group of scholars with an inflated notion of their contribution to the sum of human knowledge.”
“Follow it, Garion,” Belgarath instructed. They crossed the lawn. Startled scholars scattered before them like frightened birds after one look at Belgarath’s face.
They entered the ground floor of the tower. A thin man in ecclesiastical robes sat at a high desk just inside the door. “You’re not members of this college,” he said in an outraged voice. “You can’t come in here.”
Without even slowing his pace, Belgarath translocated the officious doorman some distance out onto the lawn, desk and all.
“It does have its uses, doesn’t it?” Senji conceded. “Maybe I should give it a little more study. Alchemy’s beginning to bore me.”
“What’s behind this door?” Garion asked, pointing.
“That’s their museum.” Senji shrugged. “It’s a hodgepodge of old idols, religious artifacts, and that sort of thing.”
Garion tried the handle. “It’s locked.”
Beldin leaned back and kicked the door open, splintering the wood around the lock.
“Why did you do that?” Belgarath asked him.
“Why not?” Beldin shrugged. “I’m not going to waste the effort of pulling in my will for an ordinary door.”
“You’re getting lazy.”
“I’ll put it back together, and you can open it.”
“Never mind.”
They went into the dusty, cluttered room. There were rows of glass display cases in the center, and the walls were lined with grotesque statues. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and dust lay everywhere.
“They don’t come in here very often,” Senji noted. “They’d rather cook up addlepated theories than look at the real effects of human religious impulses.”
“This way,” Garion said as the Orb continued to pull steadily at his hand. He noticed that the stone was glowing redder and redder, and it was getting uncomfortably warm.
Then it stopped before a glass case where a rotting cushion lay behind the dusty panes. Aside from the cushion, the case was empty. The Orb was actually hot now, and its ruddy glow filled the entire room.
“What was in this case?” Belgarath demanded.
Senji leaned forward to read the inscription on the corroded brass plate attached to the case. “Oh,” he said, “now I remember. This is the case where they used to keep Cthrag Sardius—before it was stolen.’
Suddenly, without any warning, the Orb seemed to jump in Garion’s hand, and the glass case standing empty before them exploded into a thousand fragments.