And he turned from them and rode north with the Aged One and
the Queenly Woman as always by his side. And they did take ship at
Camaar in Sendaria and set sail for Riva, and returned no more to
the kingdoms of the West.
AFTERWORD
To me it has fallen to wrestle the chaos of documents, ancient and modern,
herein contained into some kind of order. This has not been a task which I
have undertaken willingly. The documents, for the most part, have no
verifiable authenticity and no scholar wishes to have his name appended to such
questionable material. Moreover, it is clearly evident that many perhaps all
of the manuscripts in hand were pilfered from one source or another, and I
personally find it odious to deal with material so obtained.
Unfortunately, in my capacity as tutor to the Imperial Household, I
am subject to Imperial whim. Thus it was that when her Highness, Ce’Nedra,
Imperial Princess of Tolnedra, and now (unfortunately) queen of Riva,
charged me with this task, I had no choice but to comply as graciously as
possible. This is small reward for the support and protection I gave her on
that ghastly journey ten years ago. True to her nature – and, I might add,
to the nature of all the Borunes – Princess Ce’Nedra has chosen to ignore
one of the most time-honored traditions in the scholarly community It is
customary, if I may be so bold as to point it out to Her Majesty, for an
Imperial tutor to be named to a major chair at the Imperial University upon
the completion of his service to his pupil. It was for this reason and for this
reason only that I accepted my post in the Palace in the first place. I assure
her that my fidelity to the near-impossible task of hammering some minimal
semblance of education into a willful. arrogant, spoiled and over-pampered
pupil had no other motive.
My enemies at this point are undoubtedly gloating over the fate which my
frankness here must inevitably bring down upon my head. To immediately
rob them of even that minuscule enjoyment, let me state here that it is my
intention, when this loathsome chore is completed, to enter the Monastery at
Mar Terin and to pass my final years in peace and quiet with nothing but the
shrieks of the spirit Of Mara and the wails Of the Marag ghosts to disturb my
slumbers. From that sanctuary, beyond the reach of Imperial punishment or
reward, I shall have that last and best laugh at the discomfort my words here
shall cause those who have so cruelly betrayed me.
It is certainly fitting that those remarkable events of ten years ago be
recorded by a competent Scholar, but this present mass of gibberish is
certainly not that record. Once I am safely within the sanctuary at Mar Terin
I shall undertake that study. Let the mighty tremble at that prospect. It is my
intention to present those events precisely as they occurred. I will not
genuflect before some high-sounding but empty concept of Borune dignity nor
will I quiver in awe at the mention of the name of the Rivan King. I know
that Ran Borune >(Xlil is a doddering old fool, a fitting crown to the third
(and hopefully last) Borune Dynasty. I know that Ce’Nedra is a spoiled brat.
I know that Garion (or Belgarion as he now prefers to be called) is nothing
more than a scullery boy who sits by sheerest accident on the throne at Riva.
I know that Belgarath is a charlatan or a madman or worse. And I know
that Polgara, that impossible woman, is no better than she should be.
But now to the documents in hand. When this mass of disorganized
material was delivered to me by the ape-like Barak, I laughed at what was so
obviously a fraud. The rambling, self-congratulatory preface by Belgarath
provides an immediate clue as to how seriously one should take this entire
thing. If we are to believe this absurd testimony, Belgarath is somewhat over
seven thousand years old, consorts freely with Gods, converses with beasts
and performs miracles with the wave of a hand. I am amazed that even the
feeble intelligence of my former pupil accepted so ludicrous a story,. for,
though she has the typical Borune pig-headedness, she at least had the
benefit of my tutelage during her formative years.
The next collection in this welter of documents consists of a series of
extracts from the sacred writings of the various peoples of the known world.
The manuscripts (all stolen, I’m sure) are hardly subject to verification. ‘The
Proverbs of Nedra, for example, are from the list approved by the priests in
the great Temple at Tol Honeth. The Lament of Mara presented here differs
only marginally from a copy in my own library The Book of Alorn is in
keeping with the spirit of that barbaric race. The Book of Torak, however, is
a translation from old Angarak (a language with which I am unfamiliar) and
is subject to all the woeful errors common in translations. And the so-called
Book of Ulgo is a patent absurdity I have always been of the opinion that
Ulgos are nothing more than a race of fanatical heretics who should have
been forcibly converted to a proper religion centuries ago.
The section dealing with the history of the twelve kingdoms of the West,
by contrast, is a solid and respectable piece of work – as well it should be.
The document was stolen from (and still bears the seal oO the Imperial
Library at Tol Honeth. My only quarrel with the manuscript is the fact that
it is the official version prepared with all that toadying flattery of the House
of Borune of which our present Dynasty is so fond.
The final section, the Arendish fairy-tale account of the Battle of Vo
Mimbre, is a fitting conclusion to this entire work, since it is filled from
beginning to end with utter nonsense.
And now my task is complete. I wish Her Imperial Highness all the joy
in it she so richly deserves.
I leave behind me one wish before I depart for Mar Terin. With all my
heart I pray to great Nedra that the Borune Dynasty which has so blighted
the Empire be succeeded by the Honethites – a family with a proper respect
for tradition, and one which knows how to suitably reward those who have
served them.
And now, farewell.
JEEbERS
Fellow of the Imperial Society
Tutor to the Imperial Household
Done and scaled at Tol Honeth
in the year 5378.
INTERMISSION
Are you still there? What an amazing thing! If you’ve read the
Belgariad, I’m sure you can see now where most of it originated. (If
you haven’t read the Belgariad, why are you reading this?) The
studies you’ve just so bravely endured gave us the story Our
charactersketches gave us our people. The dialogue grew,out of the actual
writing. I’m sure you noticed a certain amount of bickering among
the troops. Grand and noble companionship sounds sort of nice, but
both my wife and I have been in the military’ so we know how
unreal that notion is. Part of our aim was to create an epic fantasy
with a heavy overlay of realism. The immediacy – that sense of
actually knowing these characters which many readers have noticed
derives from that realism in dialogue and details. We can blame my
wife for a lot of that. I’d be trying for ‘grand sweep’, and she’d jerk
me up short with such things as, ‘It’s all black and white. It needs
color.’ or ‘They haven’t eaten for three days.’ or ‘Don’t you think it’s
about time that they took a bath?’ Here I am trying to save the
world, and ‘Polgara’ is nagging me about bathing!
Women! (Does that sound familiar?)
I’d also frequently run into that stone wall named, ‘A woman
wouldn’t talk that way.,That’s a male expression. Women don’t use
it.’ I’d grumble a bit and then surrender and do it her way. My
personal writing strategy is ‘Blast on through and get the story in
place, and then go back and clean and polish it.’ She wants it done
right in the first place, and I’ve learned not to argue with the lady
who runs the kitchen – unless I want boiled dog-food for supper.
Now let’s answer all the critics who proudly announce that they
find our work derivative. What else is new? Chaucer was derivative.
So was Shakespeare. The literary value of any story is in its
presentation. Any plot-hne can be reduced to absurdity if one chooses to do
so. There’s a story, probably apocryphal, which tells us of an early
movie producer who simplified all movie plots down to ‘Cinderella’
and ‘goldilocks’. He’d buy ‘Goldilocks’, but he wouldn’t buy
‘Cinderella’.
Back to work. We’d completed the Belgariad, and now we were