Disclaimer: The characters and the world belong to David Eddings.
I am about to leave. I suppose you could say die, but that's not exactly accurate. I won't die. I will be gone. And then, perhaps, I shall find the rest I need from this grief-filled agony that fills my soul. Every day it gnaws at me, making the hole in myself larger, and the pain greater. I cannot stand it anymore. I am going to give up. My brothers would say the idea is despicable. My brothers would say that there is always reason to live, always reason to continue. My brothers would say there is hope.
My brothers do not understand.
Belgarath, who has a veneer of foolishness but inside is more powerful than the rest of us combined, does not understand. Belzedar, who loves our Master more than anything in the world and yet is corrupted by this strange jewel, does not understand. Beltira and Belkira. They are gentle and kind, and they taught me when my nerves could not support myself any more, but they do not understand. Belmakor. Urbane, witty, and extremely intelligent. He is a Melcene, not an Angarak. He does not understand. Beldin. I helped him build his tower, a beautiful thing that looks as if it's made out of light, helped him design the beauty that reflects the heart within his dirty, horrendous body. Even he does not understand.
Beldin has ugliness without and beauty within. I have no great claim to my looks, but my insides are slowly being gnawed away, by guilt, pain, suffering, horror. I cannot stand it any longer. Perhaps the Master would help, but I cannot bring myself to tell Him. No one can help me. I am in the middle of a bottomless void, a gaping hole around me that nothing can fill. Not love, not joy, not happiness, not light, not victory. They are all falling, all gone, all hollow. I look out at the world and find it is changing, into something twisted and different, something horribly mutated from what it used to be. As the continent was reft apart into two, so were the hearts and souls of the human race. And I am caught in the middle. I am an Angarak, but I follow Aldur. And while the children of Torak tear apart the children of Aldur and Belar and Nedra and Chaldan and Issa and Mara, while the Angaraks tear apart the West, I do not know where to turn. I am an Angarak, but I fight against my people, destroying them with no thought to the fact that they are innocent lives, just driving toward the need to win.
A murderer is not someone who kills with remorse or chagrin or regret. A murderer is not someone who weeps over the body of one he has killed, or mourns one who has died by his hand. A murderer does not care who he kills, he kills without feeling, without emotion, simply aware that to get to his goal, he must kill. And so he kills.
I, Belsambar, am a murderer many times over.
But now, I must cease to wallow in my own grief and self-contempt, and at least attempt to begin at where everyone begins, if I am to write this Book.
I must begin at the beginning.
****
The first thing I was aware of was pain. Pain and light assaulted my senses. I was no longer in that warm dark place in which my awareness first formed, but in an open space. An open space that terrified me with its emptiness, though my mind was yet unformed. Always before there was a sense of enveloping love, and closeness. Now there was only emptiness.
Strange sounds came to my ears, jumbles of inflection and pitch, and I could not understand. I could have wailed. I could have let out the long, heart-broken cry of a newborn babe. But I did not. The pain increased. In the back of my mind, I somehow knew that they wanted me to cry, to submit to the pain. But my spirit rebelled, and I refused to cry, refused to make a sound.
The pain went on for what seemed forever, an interminably long time. But then it stopped, fading away to nothing, and the light diminished. Somewhere near me I felt a warmth, like the warmth I had been covered by a short while before, and I clung to it, burying my face in the darkness. And then my thoughts faded into oblivion, and I slept.
****
As I slowly grew older and learned to formulate the sounds that traveled through the air, I knew three people in my small world. First, there was Mother. Mother was the center of my life. When Mother was happy and joyful, I smiled too, and when she seemed worried or concerned, I wondered what was wrong, though I had no words to form a question. Mother was warmth, Mother was closeness, Mother radiated love and caring and peace.
Then there was Father. Father was quiet and morose, speaking mostly to Mother, and coming from time to time to look down at me with a grave face. Father was lean and tough, with a rangy form and deep eyes. He always had fainted lines of worry at his eyes, for reasons that I did not understand.
And then there was Handmaiden. I hated Handmaiden, for some unexplained reason. She wasn't very old but her mouth was always pinched, and her long dark hair was stiff and wiry. She paid little, if any, attention to me, and seemed to dislike Mother as well.
****
I also learned, as I grew older and learned how to toddle around on little legs and speak in short sentences, that there were two places I could go. One was Outside, and the other was Inside. Outside was a place with grass and a bench, with a small pond and a bed of flowers. Outside was surrounded by the Wall, a high tall thing of stone. A tree grew near the Wall, and climbing ivy covered it.
A door led from Outside to Inside. Inside was a large room with a window through which you could see Outside, and it was framed by thick red curtains of dyed wool. Near it was a dresser with a mirror and a stool. Braided rugs on the floor kept my feet from being stabbed by the sharp wooden splinters in the floor, and there was also a curtained-off tiny room, with a large earthenware tub that Handmaiden filled with water.
There were two other doors that led from Inside: one led to a room full of clothes, that mother called a Closet, the other door was usually locked. I supposed that this door also led to a Closet. The Handmaiden and Father came from this Closet, but Mother almost never went into the Closet. So, I thought, it must be a Father and Handmaiden Closet.
After a year or so, I became very curious about that closet, and finally, I found one day that they had forgotten to lock the door. I quietly opened the door, checked to see that Mother was safely Outside, and walked into the Closet. I found myself in a strange long room, lined with a few doors that looked like the one I had come from.
Curious, I wandered to the end of the long room, and found stairs. I had never seen stairs before, so to me they looked like a series of descending ledges. Scrambling down the ledges awkwardly, I found myself in a large room lined with table, piled high with furs.
Amazed, I wandered about, my young mind trying to make sense of these new and amazing sights. Finding a window, I looked out, expecting to see the familiar Outside, but instead a bewildering sight met my eyes.
There was a street down the middle of two lines of blocky grey objects, houses like the one I stood in. For a few minutes I just stared, trying to make sense of this strange new phenomenon.
Then I felt firm hands lifting me in the air, and turned to see Mother's stern face. Squirming as she carried me upstairs again, I was placed firmly in my bed, and Mother told me I was never to go through that door again.
But I had already found out that it was no longer just Inside and Outside.
I knew now there was the House and the World.
****
If you ever read White Fang, you may see similarities in their innocence. Belsambar's parents are quiet and hardly ever talk to him, so he doesn't know about the outside world, and he is just a child at this time.
I am about to leave. I suppose you could say die, but that's not exactly accurate. I won't die. I will be gone. And then, perhaps, I shall find the rest I need from this grief-filled agony that fills my soul. Every day it gnaws at me, making the hole in myself larger, and the pain greater. I cannot stand it anymore. I am going to give up. My brothers would say the idea is despicable. My brothers would say that there is always reason to live, always reason to continue. My brothers would say there is hope.
My brothers do not understand.
Belgarath, who has a veneer of foolishness but inside is more powerful than the rest of us combined, does not understand. Belzedar, who loves our Master more than anything in the world and yet is corrupted by this strange jewel, does not understand. Beltira and Belkira. They are gentle and kind, and they taught me when my nerves could not support myself any more, but they do not understand. Belmakor. Urbane, witty, and extremely intelligent. He is a Melcene, not an Angarak. He does not understand. Beldin. I helped him build his tower, a beautiful thing that looks as if it's made out of light, helped him design the beauty that reflects the heart within his dirty, horrendous body. Even he does not understand.
Beldin has ugliness without and beauty within. I have no great claim to my looks, but my insides are slowly being gnawed away, by guilt, pain, suffering, horror. I cannot stand it any longer. Perhaps the Master would help, but I cannot bring myself to tell Him. No one can help me. I am in the middle of a bottomless void, a gaping hole around me that nothing can fill. Not love, not joy, not happiness, not light, not victory. They are all falling, all gone, all hollow. I look out at the world and find it is changing, into something twisted and different, something horribly mutated from what it used to be. As the continent was reft apart into two, so were the hearts and souls of the human race. And I am caught in the middle. I am an Angarak, but I follow Aldur. And while the children of Torak tear apart the children of Aldur and Belar and Nedra and Chaldan and Issa and Mara, while the Angaraks tear apart the West, I do not know where to turn. I am an Angarak, but I fight against my people, destroying them with no thought to the fact that they are innocent lives, just driving toward the need to win.
A murderer is not someone who kills with remorse or chagrin or regret. A murderer is not someone who weeps over the body of one he has killed, or mourns one who has died by his hand. A murderer does not care who he kills, he kills without feeling, without emotion, simply aware that to get to his goal, he must kill. And so he kills.
I, Belsambar, am a murderer many times over.
But now, I must cease to wallow in my own grief and self-contempt, and at least attempt to begin at where everyone begins, if I am to write this Book.
I must begin at the beginning.
****
The first thing I was aware of was pain. Pain and light assaulted my senses. I was no longer in that warm dark place in which my awareness first formed, but in an open space. An open space that terrified me with its emptiness, though my mind was yet unformed. Always before there was a sense of enveloping love, and closeness. Now there was only emptiness.
Strange sounds came to my ears, jumbles of inflection and pitch, and I could not understand. I could have wailed. I could have let out the long, heart-broken cry of a newborn babe. But I did not. The pain increased. In the back of my mind, I somehow knew that they wanted me to cry, to submit to the pain. But my spirit rebelled, and I refused to cry, refused to make a sound.
The pain went on for what seemed forever, an interminably long time. But then it stopped, fading away to nothing, and the light diminished. Somewhere near me I felt a warmth, like the warmth I had been covered by a short while before, and I clung to it, burying my face in the darkness. And then my thoughts faded into oblivion, and I slept.
****
As I slowly grew older and learned to formulate the sounds that traveled through the air, I knew three people in my small world. First, there was Mother. Mother was the center of my life. When Mother was happy and joyful, I smiled too, and when she seemed worried or concerned, I wondered what was wrong, though I had no words to form a question. Mother was warmth, Mother was closeness, Mother radiated love and caring and peace.
Then there was Father. Father was quiet and morose, speaking mostly to Mother, and coming from time to time to look down at me with a grave face. Father was lean and tough, with a rangy form and deep eyes. He always had fainted lines of worry at his eyes, for reasons that I did not understand.
And then there was Handmaiden. I hated Handmaiden, for some unexplained reason. She wasn't very old but her mouth was always pinched, and her long dark hair was stiff and wiry. She paid little, if any, attention to me, and seemed to dislike Mother as well.
****
I also learned, as I grew older and learned how to toddle around on little legs and speak in short sentences, that there were two places I could go. One was Outside, and the other was Inside. Outside was a place with grass and a bench, with a small pond and a bed of flowers. Outside was surrounded by the Wall, a high tall thing of stone. A tree grew near the Wall, and climbing ivy covered it.
A door led from Outside to Inside. Inside was a large room with a window through which you could see Outside, and it was framed by thick red curtains of dyed wool. Near it was a dresser with a mirror and a stool. Braided rugs on the floor kept my feet from being stabbed by the sharp wooden splinters in the floor, and there was also a curtained-off tiny room, with a large earthenware tub that Handmaiden filled with water.
There were two other doors that led from Inside: one led to a room full of clothes, that mother called a Closet, the other door was usually locked. I supposed that this door also led to a Closet. The Handmaiden and Father came from this Closet, but Mother almost never went into the Closet. So, I thought, it must be a Father and Handmaiden Closet.
After a year or so, I became very curious about that closet, and finally, I found one day that they had forgotten to lock the door. I quietly opened the door, checked to see that Mother was safely Outside, and walked into the Closet. I found myself in a strange long room, lined with a few doors that looked like the one I had come from.
Curious, I wandered to the end of the long room, and found stairs. I had never seen stairs before, so to me they looked like a series of descending ledges. Scrambling down the ledges awkwardly, I found myself in a large room lined with table, piled high with furs.
Amazed, I wandered about, my young mind trying to make sense of these new and amazing sights. Finding a window, I looked out, expecting to see the familiar Outside, but instead a bewildering sight met my eyes.
There was a street down the middle of two lines of blocky grey objects, houses like the one I stood in. For a few minutes I just stared, trying to make sense of this strange new phenomenon.
Then I felt firm hands lifting me in the air, and turned to see Mother's stern face. Squirming as she carried me upstairs again, I was placed firmly in my bed, and Mother told me I was never to go through that door again.
But I had already found out that it was no longer just Inside and Outside.
I knew now there was the House and the World.
****
If you ever read White Fang, you may see similarities in their innocence. Belsambar's parents are quiet and hardly ever talk to him, so he doesn't know about the outside world, and he is just a child at this time.