“She’s asleep,” he said softly.
Then he went to the fireplace and stacked more wood on the embers.
“It’s a cold night out there,” he noted.
“Let’s keep this fire going.”
“I should have thought of that,” Garion apologized.
“Are the babies still asleep?” Belgarath asked the smith.
Durnik nodded.
“Enjoy it while you can. They’re resting up.”
Durnik smiled. Then he too pulled a chair closer to the fire.
“Do you remember what we were talking about earlier?” he asked,
reaching for the remaining tankard on the table.
“We talked about a lot of things,” Belgarath told him.
“I mean the business of the same things happening over and over again.
What happened tonight isn’t one of those, is it?”
“Would it come as a surprise to you if I told you that Pol isn’t the
first to give birth to twins?”
“I know that, Belgarath, but this seems different somehow. I get the
feeling that this isn’t something that’s happened before. This seems
like something new to me. This has been a very special night. UL
himself blessed it. Has that ever happened before?”
“Not that I know of,” the old sorcerer conceded.
“Maybe this is something new. If it is, it’s going to make things a
little strange for us.”
“How’s that?” Garion asked.
“The nice thing about repetitions is that you sort of know what to
expect. If everything did stop when the “accident” happened, and now
it’s all moving again, we’ll be breaking into new territory.”
“Won’t the prophecies give us some clues?”
Belgarath shook his head.
“No. The last passage in the Mrin Codex reads,
“And there shall come a great light, and in that light shall that which
was broken be healed, and interrupted Purpose shall proceed again, as
was from the beginning intended.” All the other prophecies end in more
or less the same way. The Ashabine Oracles even use almost exactly the
same words. Once that light reached Korim, we were on our own.”
“Will there be a new set of prophecies now?” Durnik asked.
“Next time you see Eriond, why don’t you ask him? He’s the one in
charge now.” Belgarath sighed.
“I don’t think we’ll be involved in any new ones, though. We’ve done
what we were supposed to do.” He smiled just a bit wryly.
“To be perfectly frank about it, I’m just as glad to pass it on. I’m
getting a little old to be rushing out to save the world.
It was an interesting career right at first, but it gets exhausting
after the first six or eight times.”
“That’d be quite a story,” Durnik said.
“What would?”
“Everything you’ve been through–saving the world, fighting Demons,
pushing the Gods around, things like that.”
“Tedious, Durnik. Very, very tedious,”
Belgarath disagreed.
“There were long periods when nothing was happening. You can’t make
much of a story out of a lot of people just sitting around waiting.”
“Oh, I’m sure there were enough lively parts to keep it interesting.
Someday I’d really like to hear the whole thing–you know, how you met
Aldur, what the world was like before Torak cracked it, how you and
Cherek Bear-shoulders stole the Orb back–all of it.”
Belgarath laughed.
“If I start telling that story, we’ll still be sitting here a year from
now, and we won’t even be halfway through by then. We’ve all got
better things to do.”
“Do we really, Grandfather?” Garion asked.
“You just said that our part of this is over. Wouldn’t this be a good
time to sum it all up?”
“What good would it do? You’ve got a kingdom to run, and Durnik’s got
this farm to tend. You’ve got more important things to do than sit
around listening to me tell stories.”
“Write it down, then.” The notion suddenly caught fire in Garion’s
mind.
“You know, Grandfather, the more I think about it, the more I think you
ought to do just that. You’ve been here since the very beginning.
You’re the only one who knows the whole story. You really should write
it down, you know. Tell the world what really happened.”
Belgarath’s expression grew pained.
“The world doesn’t care, Garion. All I’d do is offend a lot of people.
They’ve got their own preconceptions, and they’re happy with them. I’m
not going to spend the next fifty years scribbling on scraps of paper
just so that people can travel to the Vale from the other side of the
world to argue with me. Besides, I’m not a historian. I don’t mind
telling stories, but writing them down doesn’t appeal to me. If I took
on a project like that, my hand would fall off after a couple of
years.”
“Don’t be coy, Grandfather. Durnik and I both know that you don’t have
to do it by hand. You can think the words onto paper without ever
picking up a pen.”
“Forget it,” Belgarath said shortly.
“I’m not going to waste my time on something as ridiculous as that.”
“You’re lazy, Belgarath,” Durnik accused.
“Are you only just noticing that? I thought you were more
observant.”
“You won’t do it then?” Garion demanded.
“Not unless somebody comes up with a better reason than you two have so
far.”
The bedroom door opened, and Poledra came out into the kitchen.
“Are you three going to talk all night?” she demanded in a quiet
voice.
“If you are, go do it someplace else. If you wake the babies . . .”
She left it hanging ominously.
“We were just thinking about going to bed, dear,” Belgarath lied
blandly.
“Well, do it then. Don’t just sit there and talk about it.”
Belgarath stood up and stretched–perhaps just a bit theatrically.
“She’s right, you know,” he said to his two friends.
“It’ll be daylight before long, and the twins have been resting up all
night. If we’re going to get any sleep, we’d better do it now.”
Later, after the three of them had climbed up into the loft and rolled
themselves into blankets on the pallets Durnik kept stored up there,
Garion lay looking down at the slowly waning firelight and the
flickering shadows in the room below. He thought of Ce’Nedra and his
own children, of course, but then he let his mind drift back over the
events of this most special of nights. Aunt Pol had always been at the
very center of his life, and with the birth of her twins, her life was
now fulfilled.
Near to sleep, the Rivan King found his thoughts going back over the
conversation he had just had with Durnik and his grandfather. He was
honest enough with himself to admit that his desire to read Belgarath’s
history of the world was not entirely academic. The old sorcerer was a
very strange and complex man, and his story promised to provide
insights into his character that could come from no other source. He’d
have to be pushed, of course. Belgarath was an expert at avoiding work
of any kind.
Garion, however, thought he knew of a way to pry the story out of his
grandfather. He smiled to himself as the fire burned lower and lower
in the room below. He knew he could find out how it all began.
And then, because it was really quite late, Garion fell asleep, and,
perhaps because of all the familiar things in Aunt Pol’s kitchen down
below, he dreamed of Faldor’s farm, where his story had begun.
Part 1
THE VALE
CHAPTER
ONE
The problem with any idea is the fact that the more it gets bandied
about, the more feasible it seems to become.
What starts out as idle speculation –something mildly entertaining to
wile away a few hours before going to bed–can become, once others are
drawn into it, a kind of obligation. Why can’t people understand that
just because I’m willing to talk about something, it doesn’t
automatically follow that I’m actually willing to do it?
As a case in point, this all started with Durnik’s rather inane remark
about wanting to hear the whole story. You know how Durnik is, forever
taking things apart to see what makes them work. I can forgive him in
this case, however. Pol had just presented him with twins, and new
fathers tend to be a bit irrational. Garion, on the other hand, should
have had sense enough to leave it alone. I curse the day when I
encouraged that boy to be curious about first causes. He can be so
tedious about some things. If he’d have just let it drop, I wouldn’t
be saddled with this awful chore.
But no. The two of them went on and on about it for day after day as
if the fate of the world depended on it. I tried to get around them
with a few vague promises–nothing specific, mind you–and fervently
hoped that they’d forget about the whole silly business.
Then Garion did something so unscrupulous, so underhanded, that it
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