Quite clearly in the flickering torchlight Garion could see the tears in Toth’s eyes and the anguish on his face. The giant reached out toward the glowing image, then let his hand fall helplessly.
Cyradis also raised her hand, it seemed almost involuntarily.
Then she vanished.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Are you sure she said Ashaba?” Belgarath asked intently.
“I heard her, too, Grandfather,” Garion confirmed what Silk had just reported. “She said that the Child of Dark had reached Mallorea and was journeying to the House of Torak at Ashaba.”
“But there’s nothing there,” Belgarath objected. “Beldin and I ransacked that place right after Vo Mimbre.” He began to pace up and down, scowling darkly. “What could Zandramas possibly want there? It’s just an empty house.”
“Maybe you can find some answers in the Book of Ages,” Silk suggested.
Belgarath stopped and stared at him.
“Oh, I guess we hadn’t got to that part yet,” the little man said. “Cyradis told Yard that he was supposed to give you the book. He didn’t like it very much, but she insisted.”
Belgarath’s hands began to tremble, and he controlled himself with an obvious effort.
“Is it important?” Silk asked curiously.
“So that’s what this has all been about!” the old man burst out. “I knew there was a reason for bringing us here.”
“What’s the Book of Ages, Belgarath?” Ce’Nedra asked him.
“It’s a part of The Malloreon Gospels—the holy book of the Seers at Kell. It looks as if we were led here specifically for the purpose of putting that book into my hands.”
“This is all just a little obscure for me, old friend,” Silk said, shivering. “Let’s go get cleaned up, Garion. I’m soaked all the way through.”
“How did you two get so wet?” Velvet asked.
“We were crawling around in the grass.”
“That would account for it, I suppose.”
“Do you really have to do that, Liselle?”
“Do what?”
“Never mind. Come on, Garion.”
“What is it about her that irritates you so much?” Garion asked as the two of them went down the hall toward the back of the house.
“I’m not really sure,” Silk replied. “I get the feeling that she’s laughing at me all the time—and that she’s got something on her mind that she isn’t telling me. For some reason, she makes me very nervous.”
After they had dried themselves and changed into clean clothing, they returned to the warm, firelit main room of the house to find that Toth had returned. He sat impassively on a bench near the door, with his huge hands folded on his knees. All traces of the anguish Garion had seen on his face in the clearing were gone now, and his expression was as enigmatic as ever.
Belgarath sat beside the fire holding a large leather-bound book tilted to catch the light, his eyes poring over it intently.
“Is that the book?” Silk asked.
“Yes,” Polgara replied. “Toth brought it.”
“I hope that it says something to make this trip worth all the trouble.”
As Garion, Silk, and Toth ate, Belgarath continued to read, turning the crackling pages of the Book of Ages impatiently.
“Listen to this,” he said. He cleared his throat and began to read aloud: ‘“Know ye, oh my people, that all adown the endless avenues of time hath division marred all that is—for there is division at the very heart of creation. But the stars and the spirits and the voices within the rocks speak of the day when the division will end and all will be made one again, for creation itself knows that the day will come. And two spirits contend with each other at the very center of time, and these spirits are the two sides of that which hath divided creation. Now the day must come when we must choose between them, and the choice we must make is the choice between absolute good and absolute evil, and that which we choose—good or evil—will prevail until the end of days. But how may we know which is good and which is evil?
“ ‘Behold also this truth; the rocks of the world and of all other worlds murmur continually of the two stones which lie at the center of the division. Once these stones were one, and they stood at the very center of all of creation, but, like all else, they were divided, and in the instant of division were they rent apart with a force that destroyed whole suns. And where these stones are found together, there surely will be the last confrontation between the two spirits. Now the day will come when all division will end and all will be made as one again—except that the division between the two stones is so great that they can never be rejoined. And in the day when the division ends shall one of the stones cease forever to exist, and in that day also shall one of the spirits forever vanish.’”
“Are they trying to say that the Orb is only half of this original stone?” Garion asked incredulously.
“And the other half would be the Sardion,” Belgarath agreed. “That would explain a great deal.”
“I didn’t know there was any connection between the two.”
“Neither did I, but it does sort of fit together, doesn’t it? Everything about this whole business has come in pairs from the very beginning—two Prophecies, two fates, a Child of Light and a Child of Dark—it only stands to reason that there’d have to be two stones, doesn’t it?”
“And the Sardion would have the same power as the Orb,” Polgara added gravely.
Belgarath nodded. “In the hands of the Child of Dark, it could do just about anything that Garion can do with the Orb—and we haven’t even tested the limits of that yet.”
“It gives us just a little more incentive to keep Zandramas from reaching the Sardion, doesn’t it?” Silk said.
“I already have all the incentive in the world,” Ce’Nedra said sadly.
Garion rose early the next morning. When he came out of the room he shared with Ce’Nedra, he found Belgarath seated at the table in the main room with the Book of Ages lying before him in the light of a guttering candle.
“Didn’t you go to bed, Grandfather?”
“What? Oh—no. I wanted to read this all the way through without any interruptions.”
“Did you find anything helpful?”
“A great deal, Garion. A very great deal. Now I know what Cyradis is doing.”
“Is she really involved in this?”
“She believes that she is.” He closed the book and leaned back, staring thoughtfully at the far wall. “You see, these people, and the ones at Kell in Dalasia, believe that it’s their task to choose between the two Prophecies—the two forces that have divided the universe—and they believe that it’s their choice that’s going to settle the matter once and for all.”
“A choice? That’s all? You mean that all they have to do is pick one or the other, and that’s the end of it?”
“Roughly, yes. They believe that the choice has to be made during one of the meetings of the Child of Light and the Child of Dark—and both stones, the Orb and the Sardion, have to be present. Down through history, the task of making the choice has always been laid on just one of the seers. At every meeting between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark, that particular seer has been present. I expect that there was one lurking about somewhere at Cthol Mishrak when you met Torak. At any rate, the task has finally fallen to Cyradis. She knows where the Sardion is and she knows when this meeting is going to take place. She’ll be there. If all the conditions have been met, she’ll choose.”
Garion sat down in a chair by the dying fire. “You don’t actually believe all that, do you?”
“I don’t know, Garion. We’ve spent our entire lives living out the pronouncements of the Prophecy, and it’s gone to a great deal of trouble to get me here and put this book into my hands. I may not entirely believe all this mysticism, but I’m certainly not going to ignore it.”
“Did it say anything at all about Geran? What’s his part in all this?”
“I’m not sure. It could be as a sacrifice—the way Agachak believes. Or, it’s possible that Zandramas abducted him just to force you to come after her and bring the Orb with you. Nothing is ever going to be settled until the Orb and the Sardion are brought together in the same place.”
“The place which is no more,” Garion added sourly.
Belgarath grunted. “There’s something about that phrase that keeps nagging at me,” he said. “Sometimes I can almost put my finger on it, but it keeps slipping away from me. I’ve seen it or heard it before, but I can’t seem to remember where.”