choose shall endure until the end of days.
BOOK 4
THE BOOK OF
GENERATIONS
Now These are the Generations of the Seers:
KNOW BEFORE ALL ELSE that thou art not
exalted above others by the sight. We know not
from whence it comes; we know not why some
are chosen to receive it and others are not. Know also that
the sight is not the instrument. Thou art but the tool of
the sight, and it will use thee for its own purpose, and
thou wilt never know what that purpose may be. Submit,
therefore, in humility and in patience.
The sight first came to the woman called Ninal. Now
Ninal had been a wife and a mother, but when the sight
came to her, she turned forever from her husband and
children. And the rapture of seeing brought her to her feet,
and to darken her eyes against the common light of day
that she might more clearly see what the sight revealed to
her, she bound a cloth about her eyes. And from that day
until her last, Ninal never again unbound her eyes. And
she spake unto the people of what had been revealed to
her. And the people listened in wonder as she told them of
the Feast of Life and of the Beloved Guest who would one
day come. And all knew that her words were truth
because of the way her voice reached into their hearts.
And when Ninal had finished speaking, the people stood
in awe of her – all save one.
Among the people at that time there was an unfortunate
man called jord. And he was taller than any other man
and his thews were mighty But Jord had never spoken or
uttered a single sound since the day of his birth- And Jord
took up a staff from the earth and went with it to Ninal and
put her hand upon the staff and led her out from the midst
of the people. And ever after, Ninal and Jord dwelt apart
from the people, and he cared for her and protected her
from all harm, and though she may have revealed many
secrets to him, those secrets were forever locked behind his
silent lips. And it hath ever been thus: for every Seer upon
whom the sight descends there is a mute to be the guide
and protector.
In the years that followed the great revelation, the
Seeress Ninal spoke unto the people many times, and the
words she spoke were sometimes clear and sometimes
dark and obscure. And in time the Sight descended upon
others, and they too bound their eyes against the common
light that they might better see; and for each of them as
well a mute came forth to guide and protect. Now some of
the Seers spoke of the revelation which had come to Ninal,
and others spoke to other matters. Some spoke clearly
while the words of others were a mystery.
But because she was the first and because the great
revelation came first to her, the Seers of the First Age of
man are called the Generations of Ninal in her honor. And
when she was old and filled with years, the Seeress Ninal
died, and within the same hour mute jord also passed
from this earth, and they were buried side by side in great
honor.
And the Seers aided the scholars who sought to read the
Book of the Heavens and those who sought to translate the
words spoken in the voices of the rocks. And we
discovered that the Seers could speak to each other over great
distances and that they seemed all to share in one
universal
soul which was the source of the Sight; but they spoke
not of this, and our questions remained unanswered.
Now it came to pass that the Generations of Ninal
ended with the end of the First Age, and the Generations
of Vigun began. The Seer Vigun arose and spoke to us
upon the day when the Dragon God of Angarak raised the
stone which he called Cthrag-Yaska and by its power
cracked the earth asunder.. And with the cracking of the
earth the First Age ended and the First Fate and the First
Task, and it became the concern of the Second Generation
to seek out the children of the Gods to learn from them the
things which they knew of the Gods and of the two Fates
which contended for the mastery of creation.
And the Seers of the Generations of Vigun were called
the searchers, for they wandered up and down the world,
touching the minds of the children of the Gods to learn
from them. And the searchers found many strange things
concerning the Gods, for Behold! Each God was so caught
UP in a single idea that he was in all other ways
incomplete. But when at last the searchers went up unto the Vale
where the God Aldur dwelt with his Disciples, they found
a God caught up with the idea of knowing, and the
despair which had descended upon them was banished as
they came into contact with the mind of Aldur. And Aldur
comforted them with his wisdom and counseled them to
endure the coming of the Angaraks, who would soon
invade their lands. And when they went away, one of
their number remained behind for a time. And this was
the Seeress Kammah, who awaited the return of the first
Disciple of Aldur and she who was to be his wife. And
when Belgarath, his task completed, returned to the Vale,
his only companion was a snowy owl. And Kammah
perceived this in wonder and even unbound her eyes so
that they might confirm by common sight what that other
Sight had revealed. And Behold! Poledra was an owl, and
the Sight revealed to Kammah that she was also a wolf,
but that one day she would become a woman and wife to
Belgarath. And Kammah began to tremble and she fell
down upon the earth in the presence of Poledra, for the
vision which came to her shook her very soul. Kammah
knew in that instant that Poledra would bear two
daughters, and that the one would wed the King who would be
the Guardian of the stone called the Orb, and that from
their line would spring the Godslayer whom men would
call ‘Belgarion’. The other daughter of Poledra, Kammah
perceived, would be the mightiest Sorceress the world
would ever know, and the name ‘Polgara’ would be
inscribed beside that of ‘Belgarath’ in the Book of the
Heavens. But it was not Polgara’s power which so awed
Kammah. Rather it was the knowledge that the childless
Sorceress would be mother to Belgarion, and even more
so to the Beloved Guest who would one day come to the
Feast of Life.
And of all the things which were learned by the Seers
of the Generations of Vigun, this was the most important.
And the Seers of the lands of the east and of the lands of
the west contemplated it in wonder until the end of the
Second Age.
Now, as all men know, the Third Age began when
ancient Belgarath, in the company of the King of the
Alorns and the King’s three sons, went up unto Cthol
Mishrak, the City of Endless Night, to reclaim the Orb of
Aldur from the iron tower of the maimed God of Angarak.
But what some men do not know is that at the same time
indeed within the same moment – another EVENT of
equal importance took place half around the world in the
Vale of Aldur. There it was at that particular time that
Poledra, Wolf-wife to Belgarath, labored and brought forth
twin daughters and died in bearing them. And the birth of
Polgara and Beldaran and the death of Poledra shaped the
future as much as did the recapture of the Orb. And as we
read in wonder of these EVENTS in the Book of the
Heavens, a strange Seeress came down to us from the
mountains above Darshiva, and she spake unto us, laying
upon us the task of gathering. And we went up and down
in the world, gathering the Prophecies whispered into the
hearts of diverse men by the two Fates which rule creation.
And Behold, there arose yet another generation of Seers
to consider the Prophecies and to speak of their meaning.
And these were the Generations of the unknown Seeress,
whom men called the Speakers. And we carried to the
Speakers both Prophecy and the ravings of the demented,
for we determined that no possible word of either Fate
should escape us. And the Speakers who were of the
Generations of the unknown Seeress went down to the
city of Kell, where the priests of the God of Angarak
feared to come, and there they received what we had
gathered. And we beheld there a wonder, for the