DAVID EDDINGS – SORCERESS OF DARSHIVA

“Well, for one thing, Zandramas is ahead of us again,” Garion replied. “She went through here a few days ago. She knows that Urvon’s army is coming down through the mountains. He might be moving a little faster than we thought, though, because she’s ordering the civilian population to delay him. They’re more or less ignoring her.”

“Wise decision.” Beldin grunted. “Anything else?”

“She told them that this is all going to be settled before the summer’s over.”

“That agrees with what Cyradis toid us at Ashaba,” Belgarath said. “All right, then. We all know when the meeting’s going to happen. The only thing that’s left to find out is where.”

“That’s why we’re all in such a hurry to get to Kell,” Beldin said. “Cyradis is sitting on that information like a mother hen on a clutch of eggs.”

“What is it?” Belgarath burst out irritably.

“What’s what?”

“I’m missing something. It’s something important and it’s something you told me.”

“I’ve told you lots of things, Belgarath. You don’t usually listen, though.”

“This was a while back. It seems to me we were sitting in my tower, talking.”

“We’ve done that from time to time over the last several thousand years.”

“No. This was more recent. Eriond was there and he was just a boy.”

“That would put it at about ten years or so ago, then.”

“Right.”

“What were we doing ten years ago?” Belgarath began to pace up and down, scowling. “I’d been helping Durnik. We were making Poledra’s cottage livable. You’d been here in Mallorea.”

Beldin scratched reflectively at his stomach. “I think I remember the time. We were sharing a cask of ale you’d stolen from the twins, and Eriond was scrubbing the floor.”

“What were you telling me?”

Beldin shrugged. “I’d just come back from Mallorea. I was describing conditions here and telling you about the Sardion—although we didn’t know very much about it at that point.”

“No,” Belgarath shook his head. “That wasn’t it. You said something about Kell.”

Beldin frowned, thinking back. “It must not have been very important, because neither of us seems to be able to remember it.”

“It seems to me it was just something you said in passing.”

“I say a lot of things in passing. They help to fill up the blank spaces in a conversation. Are you certain it was all that important? “

Belgarath nodded. “I’m sure of it.”

“All right. Let’s see if we can track it down.”

“Won’t this wait, father?” Polgara asked.

“No, Pol. I don’t think so. We’re right on the edge of it, and I don’t want to lose it again.”

“Let’s see,” Beldin said, his ugly face creased with thought. “I came in, and you and Eriond were cleaning. You offered me some of the ale you’d stolen from the twins. You asked me what I’d been doing since Belgarion’s wedding, and I told you I’d been keeping an eye on the Angaraks.”

“Yes,” Belgarath agreed. “I remember that part.”

“I told you that the Murgos were in general despair about the death of Taur Urgas, and that the western Grolims had gone to pieces over the death of Torak.”

“Then you told me about Zakath’s campaign in Cthol Murgos and about how he’d added the Kal to his name.”

“That actually wasn’t my idea,” Zakath said with a slightly pained look. “Brador came up with it—as a means of unifying Mallorean society.” He made a wry face. “It didn’t really work all that well, I guess.”

“Things do seem a bit disorganized here,” Silk agreed.

“What did we talk about then?” Belgarath asked.

“Well,” Beldin replied, “as I remember it, we told Eriond the story of Vo Mimbre, and then you asked me what was going on in Mallorea. I told you that things were all pretty much the same—that the bureaucracy’s the glue that holds everything together, that there were plots and intrigues in Melcena and Mal Zeth, that Karanda and Darshiva and Gandahar were on the verge of open rebellion, and that the Grolims—” He stopped, his eyes suddenly going very wide.

“Are still afraid to go near Kell!” Belgarath completed it in a shout of triumph. “That’s it!”

Beldin smacked his forehead with his open palm. “How could I have been so stupid?” he exclaimed. Then he fell over on his back, howling with laughter and kicking at the ground in sheer delight. “We’ve got her, Belgarath!” he roared. “We’ve got them all—Zandramas, Urvon, even Agachak! They can’t go to Kell!”

Belgarath was also laughing uproariously. “How did we miss it?”

“Father,” Polgara said ominously. “This is beginning to make me cross. Will one of you please explain all this hysteria?”

Beldin and Belgarath were capering hand in hand in a grotesque little dance of glee.

“Will you two stop that?” Polgara snapped.

“Oh, this is just too rare, Pol,” Beldin gasped, catching her in a bear hug.

“Don’t do that! Just talk!”

“All right, Pol,” he said, wiping the tears of mirth from his eyes. “Kell is the holy place of the Dais. It’s the center of their whole culture.”

“Yes, uncle. I know that.”

“When the Angaraks overran Dalasia, the Grolims came in to erase the Dalasian religion and to replace it with the worship of Torak—the same way they did in Karanda. When they found out the significance of Kell, they moved to destroy it. The Dais had to prevent that, so they put their wizards to work on the problem. The wizards laid curses on the entire region around Kell.” He frowned. “Maybe curses isn’t the right word,” he admitted. “Enchantments might be closer, but it amounts to the same thing. Anyway, since the Grolims were the real danger to Kell, the enchantments were directed at them. Any Grolim who tries to approach Kell is struck blind.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier?” she asked him tartly.

“I’ve never really paid that much attention to it. I probably even forgot about it. I don’t bother to go into Dalasia because the Dais are all mystics, and mysticism has always irritated me. The seers all talk in riddles, and necromancy seems like a waste of time to me. I wasn’t even sure if the enchantments really worked. Grolims are very gullible sometimes. A suggestion of a curse would probably work just as well as a real one.”

“You know,” Belgarath mused, “I think the reason we missed it was because we’ve been concentrating on the fact that Urvon, Zandramas, and Agachak are all sorcerers. We kept overlooking the fact that they’re also Grolims.”

“Is this curse—or whatever you call it—aimed specifically at the Grolims,” Garion asked, “or would it affect us, too?”

Beldin scratched at his beard. “It’s a good question, Belgarath,” he said. “That’s not the sort of thing you’d want to risk lightly.”

“Senji!” Belgarath snapped his fingers.

“I didn’t quite follow that.”

“Senji went to Kell, remember? And even as inept as he is, he’s still a sorcerer.”

“That’s it, then,” Beldin grinned. “We can go to Kell, and they can’t. They’ll have to follow us for a change.”

“What about the demons?” Dumik asked soberly. “Nahaz is already marching toward Kell, and as far as we know, Zandramas has Mordja with her. Would they be able to go to Kell? What I’m getting at is that even if Urvon and Zandramas can’t go there, couldn’t they just send the demons instead to get the information for them?”

Beldin shook his head. “It wouldn’t do them any good. Cyradis won’t let a demon anywhere near her copy of the Maflorean Gospels. No matter what other faults they have, the seers refuse to have anything to do with the agents of chaos.”

“Could she prevent either of the demons from just taking what they want, though?” Durnik looked worried. “Let’s face it, Beldin. A demon is a fairly awful thing.”

“She can take care of herself,” Beldin replied. “Don’t worry about Cyradis.”

“Master Beldin,” Zakath objected, “she’s little more than a child, and with her eyes bound like that, she’s utterly helpless.”

Beldin laughed coarsely. “Helpless? Cyradis? Man, are you out of your mind? She could probably stop the sun if she needed to. We can’t even begin to make guesses about how much power she has.”

“I don’t understand.” Zakath looked baffled.

“Cyradis is the focus of all the power of her race, Zakath,” Polgara explained. “Not only the power of the Dais who are presently alive, but also that of all of them who have ever lived.”

“Or who might live in the future, for all we know,” Belgarath added.

“That’s an interesting idea,” Beldin said. “We might want to discuss it someday. Anyway,” he continued to Zakath, “Cyradis can do just about anything she has to do to make sure the final meeting takes place at the correct time and the correct place. Demons aren’t a part of that meeting, so she’ll probably just ignore them; and if they get too troublesome, she’ll just send them back where they came from.”

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