must, my children. Be not unquiet. We will speak more of this
anon.”
And then he was gone.
“Evidently we’re doing it right,” Beldin noted, “at least so far.”
“You worry too much, Beldin,” Belkira told him.
“I don’t think we could do it wrong.”
Beltira, however, was looking at Pol with a kind of wonder on his
face.
“Dear sister,” he said to her.
That came crashing down on me.
“Please don’t do that, Beltira,” I told him.
“But she is, Belgarath. She is one of our fellowship.”
“Yes, I know, but it puts me in a peculiar situation. I know that Pol
and I are related, but this turn of events makes it very
complicated.”
“Be not dismayed, dear brother,” Pol told me sweetly.
“I’ll explain it all to you later–in simple terms, of course. Now, if
you gentlemen will get out of my kitchen, I’ll finish fixing supper.”
Things went on quietly in the Vale for the next several years. Polgara
continued her education, and I think she startled us all by how rapidly
she was progressing. Pol had joined us late, but she was more than
making up for lost time. There were levels of subtlety in some of the
things she did that were absolutely exquisite. I didn’t tell her, of
course, but I was terribly proud of her.
It was spring, I think, when Algar Fleet-foot came down into the Vale
to deliver copies of the now-completed Darine Codex to us.
“Bormik died last autumn,” he told us.
“His daughter spent the winter putting everything together and then
sent word to me that the Codex was finished. I went there to pick it
up and to persuade her to come back to Algaria with me.”
“Wasn’t she happy in Darine?” Pol asked him.
He shrugged.
“She may have been, but she’s done us a great service, and Darine isn’t
going to be the safest place in the world later on this summer.”
“Oh?” I said.
“The Bear-cult’s starting to get out of hand there, so it’s time for me
to go explain a few things to them. Hatturk’s beginning to annoy me.
Oh, Dras sent these.” He opened another pouch and took out several
scrolls.
“This isn’t complete yet, because the Mrin Prophet’s still talking, but
these are copies of everything he’s said so far.”
“That’s what I’ve been waiting for,” I told him eagerly.
“Don’t get your hopes up too much,” he told me.
“I looked into them a few times on my way down here. Are you sure that
fellow who’s chained to a post up in Drasnia is really a prophet? That
thing you’ve got in your hands is pure gibberish. I’d hate to see you
following instructions that turn out to be no more than the ravings of
a genuine madman.”
“The Mrin Prophet can’t rave, Algar,” I assured him.
“He can’t talk.”
“He’s talked enough to fill up four scrolls so far.”
“That’s the whole point. Everything that’s in these scrolls is pure
prophecy, because the poor fellow’s incapable of speech except when
he’s passing on the words of the Necessity.”
“Whatever you say, Belgarath. Are you coming to the Alorn Council this
summer?”
“I think that might be nice, father,” Pol said.
“I haven’t seen Beldaran for quite a while, and you should probably
look in on your grandson.”
“I really ought to work on these, Pol,” I objected, pointing at the
scrolls.
“Bring them with you, father,” she suggested.
“They’re not that heavy, after all.” Then she turned back to Algar.
“Send word to Riva,”
she told him.
“Let him know that we’re coming. Now, how’s your wife?”
And so we went to the Isle of the Winds for the meeting of the Alorn
Council–which was more in the nature of a family gathering in those
days than it was a formal meeting of heads of state. We had a brief
business meeting to get that out of the way, and then we were free to
enjoy ourselves.
I was a bit surprised to discover that my grandson was about seven
years old now. I tend to lose track of time when I’m working on
something, and the years had slipped by without my noticing them.
Daran was a sturdy little boy with sandy-colored hair and a serious
nature. We got along well together. He loved to listen to stories,
and, though it’s probably immodest of me to say it, I’m most likely one
of the best storytellers in the world.
“What really happened in Cthol Mishrak, grandfather?” he asked me one
rainy afternoon when the two of us were in a room high up in one of the
towers feasting on some cherry tarts I had stolen from the pastry
kitchen.
“Father’s started to tell me the story several times, but something
always seems to come up just when he’s getting to the good part.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“Well,” I said, “let me see–” And then I told him the whole story,
embellishing it only slightly–for artistic purposes, you understand.
“Well, then,” he said gravely as darkness settled over Riva’s Citadel,
“I guess that sort of tells me what I’m supposed to do for the rest of
my life.” He sighed.
“Why so great a sigh, Prince Daran?” I asked him.
“It might have been nice to be just an ordinary person,” he said with
uncommon maturity for one so young.
“I’d kind of like to be able to get up in the morning and go out to
look at what’s beyond the next hill.”
“It’s not all that much different from what’s on this side,” I told
him.
“Maybe not, grandfather, but I would sort of like to see it–just
once.” He looked at me with those very serious blue eyes of his.
“But I can’t. That stone on the hilt of father’s sword won’t let me,
will it?”
“I’m afraid not, Daran,” I replied.
“Why me?”
Dear God! How many times have I heard that? How should I know why
him? I wasn’t in charge. I took a chance at that point.
“It has to do with what we are, Daran. We’re sort of special, and that
means we’ve got special responsibilities. If it makes you feel any
better, we aren’t required to like them.” Saying that to a
seven-year-old might have been a little brutal, but my grandson wasn’t
your ordinary child.
“This is what we’re going to do,” I told him then.
“We’re both going to get a good night’s sleep, and we’re going to get
up early tomorrow morning, and we’re going to go out and see what’s on
the other side of that hill.”
“It’s raining. We’ll get wet.”
“We’ve both been wet before, Daran. We won’t melt.”
I managed to offend both of my daughters with that little project.
The boy and I had fun, though, so all the scoldings we got several days
later didn’t bother either of us all that much. We tramped the steep
hills of the Isle of the Winds, and we camped out and fished for trout
in deep, swirling pools in mountain streams, and we talked. We talked
about many things, and I think I managed to persuade Daran that what he
had to do was necessary and important. At least he wasn’t throwing
that
“Why me?” in my face at every turn. I’ve been talking to a long
series of sandy-haired boys for about three thousand years now. I’ve
been obliged to do a lot of things down through those endless
centuries, but explaining our rather unique situation to those boys
could very well have been the most important.
The Alorn Council lasted for several weeks, and then we all left for
home. Pol, Beldin, and I sailed across the Sea of the Winds and made
port at Camaar on a blustery afternoon. We took lodgings in the same
well-appointed inn in which Beldaran and Riva had first met.
“How old is Beldaran now?” Beldin asked that evening after supper.
“Twenty-five, uncle,” Pol told him, “the same age as I am.”
“She looks older.”
“She’s been sick. I don’t think the climate on that island agrees with
her. She catches cold every winter, and it’s getting harder and harder
for her to shake them off.” She looked at me.
“You didn’t help her by sneaking off with her son the way you did.”
“We didn’t sneak,” I objected.
“I left her a note.”
“Belgarath’s very good at leaving notes when he sneaks off,” Beldin
told her.
I shrugged.
“It avoids arguments. Daran and I needed to talk. He’s reached the
age where he has questions, and I’m the best one to answer them. I
think we got it all settled–at least for now. He’s a good boy, and
now that he knows what’s expected of him, he’ll probably do all
right.”
It was late summer by the time we got back to the Vale, and I
immediately went to work on the Darine Codex, since it was complete.