of the city.
“What do you think I ought to call it–the city, I mean?” he asked me
when we were finished.
“What difference does it make?”
“A city ought to have a name, Belgarath.”
“Call it anything you like. Name it after yourself, if you want.”
“Val Riva?”
“Isn’t that a little ostentatious? Just call it Riva and let it go at
that.”
“That doesn’t really sound like a city, Belgarath.”
“It will, once people get used to it.”
Finally Anrak arrived.
“That’s the last of us, Riva,” he bellowed as he waded ashore.
“We’re all here now. Have you got anything to drink?”
The party there on the beach got rowdy that night, and after I’d had a
few tankards, the noise began to make my head hurt, so I climbed up the
steep valley to get away from the carousing and to think a bit. I
still had a number of things to do before I could go home, and I
considered various ways to get them all taken care of in a hurry. I
really wanted to get back to the Vale and to Poledra. I was
undoubtedly a father by now, and I sort of wanted to have a look at my
offspring.
It was probably a couple of hours past midnight when I glanced down
toward the beach. I jumped to my feet swearing. All the ships were on
fire!
I ran back down the valley to the beach and found Riva and his cousin
standing at the water’s edge singing an Alorn drinking song. They were
bleary-eyed and swaying back and forth, as drunk as lords, “What are
you doing?” I screamed at them.
“Oh, there you are Belgarath,” Riva said, blinking owlishly at me.
“We looked all over for you.” He gestured out at the burning ships.
“Nice fire, isn’t it?”
“It’s a splendid fire. Why did you set it?”
“That lumber you made for us is nice and dry, so it burns very well.”
“Riva, why are you burning the ships?”
He looked at his cousin.
“Why are we burning the ships, Anrak? I forget.”
“It’s to keep people from getting bored and running off,” Anrak
replied.
“Oh, yes. Now I remember. Isn’t that a good idea, Belgarath?”
“It’s a rotten idea!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“How am I supposed to get home now?”
“Oh,” he said.
“I hadn’t thought of that, I guess.” His eyes brightened.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Belgarath?” Riva said to me one morning a few days later when we were
standing at the upper end of the narrow valley stretching up from the
beach watching his Alorns clearing stair-stepped terraces across the
steep valley floor.
“Yes, Riva?”
“Am I supposed to have a sword?”
“You’ve already got one.”
“No, I mean a special sword.”
“Yes,” I replied. Where had he found out about that?
“Where is it then?”
“It doesn’t exist yet. You’re supposed to make it.”
“I can do that, I guess. What am I supposed to make it from?”
“Stars, as I understand it.”
“How am I going to get my hands on any stars?”
“They’ll fall out of the sky.”
“I guess it was Belar who talked to me last night, then.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I had a dream–at least I thought it was a dream. I seemed to hear
Belar’s voice. I recognized it because I used to watch him play dice
with Dras. He used to swear a lot while he was playing, because Dras
always won. Isn’t that odd? You’d think a God could make the dice
come up any way he wanted them to, but Belar doesn’t even think about
cheating.
Dras does, though. Dras could roll a ten with only one die.”
I tried to stay calm.
“Riva, you’re straying. You started to tell me about your dream. If
Belar spoke to you, it might be sort of important.”
“He used a lot of “thees” and ‘thous.” ” “The Gods do that. What did
he say?”
“I’m not sure if I got the first part of it right. I was dreaming
about something else, and I didn’t want to be interrupted.”
“Oh? What were you dreaming about?”
He actually blushed.
“It’s not really important,” he said evasively.
“You never know about dreams. What was it about?”
He blushed even redder.
“Well–there was a girl involved in it. That wouldn’t be too
significant, would it?”
“Ah–no, I suppose not. Did Belar finally manage to get your
attention?”
“He had to talk to me pretty loudly. I was really interested in that
girl.”
“I’m sure you were.”
“She had the blondest hair I’ve ever seen, and would you believe that
she didn’t have any clothes on?”
“Rival Forget about the girl! What did Belar say?”
“You don’t have to get excited, Belgarath,” he said in a slightly
injured tone.
“I’m getting to it.” He frowned.
“Let me see now. It seems to me that he said something like,
“Behold, Guardian of the Orb, I will cause two stars to fall from the
sky, and I will show thee where they lie, and thou shalt take up the
two stars and shall place them in a great fire and forge them. And the
one star shall be a blade, and the other a hilt, and it shall be a
sword that shall guard the Orb of my brother, Aldur.” Or something
like that.”
“We’ll have to put out watchmen at night, then.”
“Oh? What for?”
“To keep an eye on the sky, of course. We have to know where the stars
come down.”
“Oh, I already know where they came down, Belgarath. Belar took me to
the front of my tent and pointed at the sky. The two stars came down
side by side, and I saw them hit the ground. Then Belar went away, and
I went back to bed to see if I could find that girl again.”
“Will you forget about that girl?”
“No, I don’t think I ever will. She was the most beautiful girl I’ve
ever seen.”
“Do you happen to remember where the stars came down?”
“Up there.” He gestured vaguely at the snow-covered mountain peak
rearing up at the head of the valley.
“Let’s go get them.”
“Shouldn’t I stay here? I’m sort of in charge, I guess. Doesn’t that
mean that I’m supposed to supervise the work?”
“Is your cousin sober?”
“Anrak? Probably–more or less, anyway.”
“Why don’t you call him and let him take over here? We’d better go
find those stars before it snows again and buries them.”
“Oh, we’d still be able to find them. A little snow wouldn’t hide
them.”
I gave him a puzzled look “They’re stars, Belgarath, and stars shine.
We’ll be able to see the light even if they’re completely covered.”
You see what I mean about Riva’s innocence? He was far from being
simpleminded, but he just couldn’t bring himself to believe that
anything could go wrong. He bellowed down the hill to his cousin, and
then the two of us started up that narrow valley. There had evidently
been a stream or river running down along the bottom of it at some time
in the past, because there were rounded boulders at the bottom, but the
stream was gone now. It had probably changed course when Torak
rearranged the world.
Riva entertained me while we climbed by describing the girl he’d
dreamed about. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to think about
anything else.
The fallen stars weren’t really all that hard to find, of course.
They’d been white-hot when they hit the mountain, and they’d melted
huge craters in the snow.
“Those aren’t stars, Belgarath,” Riva objected when I picked them up
triumphantly.
“They’re nothing but a couple of lumps of iron.”
“The snow put out their light,” I told him. It wasn’t entirely true,
but it was easier than trying to explain.
“You can’t put out the light of a star,” he scoffed.
“These are special stars, Riva.” I was digging myself in deeper, but I
didn’t feel like arguing with him.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that, I guess. What do we do now?”
“We follow Belar’s instructions. Let’s build a fire.”
“Up here? In the snow?”
“There’s something else you have to do up here. You’ve still got the
Orb with you, haven’t you?”
“Of course. I’ve always got it.” He patted the lump under his
tunic.
“What are we going to use for a hammer? And an anvil?”
“I’ll take care of it. I don’t think ordinary tools would work. These
stars seem to be a little harder than ordinary iron.”
We went into a nearby grove of trees, and I built a fire. I cheated
quite a bit with that fire. You won’t get the kind of heat we were
going to need out of green wood.
“Throw them in the fire, Riva,” I instructed him.
“Anything you say,” he agreed, tossing the two lumps of celestial iron