“No. Not really. All I know is that something in that direction has been-” Errand hesitated. “I want tosay inviting me to come by. Would that be the proper word?”
“It’s talking to you, not me. Pick any word you like. All right, let’s go then.”
“Would you like to ride?” Errand offered. “Horse can carry us both.”
“Haven’t you given him a name yet?”
“Horse is good enough. He doesn’t seem to feel that he needs one. Would you like to ride?”
“Why would I want to ride when I can fly?”
Errand felt a sudden curiosity. “What’s it like?” he asked. “Flying, I mean?”
Beldin’s eyes suddenly changed, to become distant and almost soft. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine,” he said. “Just keep your eyes on me. When I get over the tree, I’ll circle to show you where it is.” He stooped in the tall grass, curved out his arms, and gave a strong leap. As he rose into the air, he shimmered into feathers and swooped away.
The tree stood in solitary immensity in the middle of a broad meadow, its trunk larger than a house, its wide-spread branches shading entire acres, and its crown rising hundreds of feet into the air. It was incredibly ancient. Its roots reached down almost into the very heart of the world, and its branches touched the sky. It stood alone and silent, as if forming a link between earth and sky, a link whose purpose was beyond the understanding of man.
As Errand rode up to the vast shaded area beneath the tree’s shelter, Beldin swooped in, hovered, and dropped, almost seeming to stumble into his natural form. “All right,” he growled, “there it is. Now what?”
“I’m not sure.” Errand slid down off the horse’s back and walked across the soft, springy turf toward the immense trunk. The sense of the tree’s awareness was very strong now, and Errand approached it curiously, still unable to determine exactly what it wanted with him.
Then he put out his hand and touched the rough bark; in the instant that he touched it, he understood. He quite suddenly knew the whole of the tree’s existence. He found that he could look back over a million million mornings to the time when the world had just emerged out of the elemental chaos from which the Gods had formed it. All at once, he knew of the incredible length of time that the earth had rolled in silence, awaiting the coming of man. He saw the endless turning of the seasons and felt the footsteps of the Gods upon the earth. And even as the tree knew, Errand came to know the fallacy which lay behind man’s conception of the nature of time. Man needed to compartmentalize time, to break it into manageable pieces -eons, centuries, years, and hours.
This eternal tree, however, understood that time was all one piece -that it was not merely an endless repetition of the same events, but rather that it moved from its beginning toward a final goal. All of that convenient segmenting which men used to make time more manageable had no real meaning. It was to tell him this simple truth that the tree had summoned him here. As he grasped that fact, the tree acknowledged him in friendship and affection.
Slowly Errand let his fingertips slide from the bark, then turned, and walked back to where Beldin stood.
“That’s it?” the hunchbacked sorcerer asked. “That’s all it wanted?”
“Yes. That’s all. We can go back now.”
Beldin gave him a penetrating look. “What did it say?”
“lt’s not the kind of thing you can put into words.”
“Try.”
Well -it was sort of saying that we pay too much attention to years.”
“That’s enormously helpful, Errand.”
Errand struggled with it, trying to formulate words that would express what he had just learned. “Things happen in their own time,” he said finally, “It doesn’t make any difference how many -or few- of what we call years come between things.”
“What things are we talking about?”
“The important ones. Do you really have to follow me all the way home?”
“I need to keep an eye on you. That’s about all. Are you going back now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be up there.” Beldin made a gesture toward the arching blue dome of the sky. He shuddered into the form of a hawk and drove himself into the air with strong thrusts of his wings.
Errand pulled himself up onto the chestnut stallion’s back. His pensive mood was somehow communicated to the animal; instead of a gallop, the horse turned and walked north, back toward the cottage nestling in its valley.
The boy considered the message of the eternal tree as he rode slowly through the golden, sun-drenched grass and, all lost in thought, he paid but little attention to his surroundings. It was thus that he was not actually aware of the robed and hooded figure standing beneath a broad-spread pine until he was almost on top of it. It was the horse that warned him with a startled snort as the figure made a slight move.
“And sothou art the one,” it snarled in a voice which seemed scarcely human.
Errand calmed the horse with a reassuring hand on its quivering neck and looked at the dark figure before him. He could feel the waves of hatred emanating from that shadowy shape and he knew that, of all the things he had ever encountered,this was the thing he should most fear. Yet, surprising even himself, he remained calm and unafraid.
The shape laughed, an ugly, dusty kind of sound. “Thou art a fool, boy,” it said. “Fear me, for the day will come when I shall surely destroy thee.”
“Not surely,” Errand replied calmly. He peered closely at the shadow-shrouded form and saw at once that -like the figure of Cyradis he had met on the snowy hilltop- this seemingly substantial shape was not reallyhere, but somewhere else, sending its malevolent hatred across the empty miles. “Besides,” he added, “I’m old enough now not to be afraid of shadows.”
“We will meet in the flesh, boy,” the shadow snarled, “and in that meeting shalt thou die.”
“That hasn’t been decided yet, has it?” Errand said.
“That’s why we have to meet -to decide which of us will stay and which must go.” The dark-robed shape drew in its breath with a sharp hiss.
“Enjoy thy youth, boy,” it snarled, “for it is all the life thou wilt have. Iwill prevail.” Then the dark shape vanished.
Errand drew in a deep breath and glanced skyward at the circling Beldin. He realized that not even the hawk’s sharp eyes could have penetrated the spreading treelimbs to where that strange, cowled figure had stood. Beldin could not know of the meeting. Errand nudged the stallion’s flanks, and they moved away from the solitary tree at a flowing canter, riding in the golden sunlight toward home.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The years that followed were quiet years at the cottage. Belgarath and Beldin were often away for long periods of time, and when they returned, travel-stained and weary, their faces usually wore the frustrated look of men who have not found what they were looking for. Although Durnik was often on the stream bank, bending all of his attention to the problem of convincing some wary trout that a thumbnail-sized bit of polished metal with a few strands of red yarn trailing behind it in the current was not merely edible but irresistibly delicious, he nonetheless maintained the cottage and its immediate surroundings in that scrupulously tidy condition which announced louder than words that the proprietor of any given farmstead was a Sendar. Although rail fences, by their very nature, zigzagged and tended to meander with the lay of the ground, Durnik firmly insisted thathis fence lines be absolutely straight. He was quite obviously constitutionally incapable of goingaround any obstacle.
Thus, if a large rock happened to intrude itself in the path of one of his fences, he immediately stopped being a fence builder and became an excavator.
Polgara immersed herself in domesticity. The interior of her cottage was immaculate. Her doorstep was not merely swept but frequently scrubbed. The rows of beans, turnips, and cabbages in her garden were as straight as any of Durnik’s fences, and weeds were absolutely forbidden. Her expression as she toiled at these seemingly endless tasks was one of dreamy contentment, and she hummed or sang very old songs as she worked.
The boy, Errand, however, tended on occasion toward vagrancy. This was not to say that he was indolent, but many of the chores around a rural farmstead were tedious, involving repeating the same series of actions over and over again. Stacking firewood was not one of Errand’s favorite pastimes. Weeding the garden seemed somehow futile, since the weeds grew back overnight. Drying the dishes seemed an act of utter folly, since, left alone, the dishes would dry themselves without any assistance whatsoever. He made some effort to sway Polgara to his point of view in this particular matter. She listened gravely to his impeccable logic, nodding her agreement as he demonstrated with all the eloquence at his command that the dishes did not reallyneed to be dried. And when he had finished, summing up all his arguments with a dazzling display of sheer brilliance, she smiled and said, “Yes, dear,” and implacably handed him the dishtowel.