The old man came out with three brimming tankards, set them down on the table, and moved a chair around until it faced the fireplace. Then he took one of the tankards, sat, and stretched his feet out toward the fire. Pull up a chair, Garion, he invited. We might as well be comfortable.
Garion did that. Its been quite a night, he said.
That it has, boy, the old man replied. That it has.
Shouldnt we say goodnight to Aunt Pol?
Durniks with her. Lets not disturb them. This is a special sort of time for married people.
Yes, Garion agreed, remembering that night a few weeks ago when his daughter had been born.
Will you be going back to Riva soon?
I probably should, Garion replied. I think Ill wait a few days, though at least until Aunt Pols back on her feet again.
Dont wait too long, Belgarath advised with a sly grin. CeNedras sitting on the throne all by herself right now, you know.
Shell be all right. She knows what to do.
Yes, but do you want her doing things on her own?
Oh, I dont think shell declare war on anybody while Im gone.
Maybe not, but with CeNedra you never really know, do you?
Quit making fun of my wife, grandfather.
Im not making fun of her. I love her dearly, but I do know her. All Im saying is that shes a little unpredictable. Then the old sorcerer sighed.
Is something the matter, grandfather?
I was just chewing on some old regrets. I dont think you and Durnik realize just how lucky you are. I wasnt around when my twins were born. I was off on a business trip.
Garion knew the story, of course. You didnt have any choice, grandfather, he said. Aldur ordered you to go to Mallorea. It was time to recover the Orb from Torak, and you had to go along to help Cherek Bear-shoulders and his sons.
Dont try to be reasonable about it, Garion. The bald fact is that I abandoned my wife when she needed me the most. Things might have turned out very differently if I hadnt.
Are you still feeling guilty about that?
Of course I am. Ive been carrying that guilt around for three thousand years. You can hand out all the royal pardons you want, but its still there.
Grandmother forgives you.
Naturally she does. Your grandmothers a wolf, and wolves dont hold grudges. The whole point, though, is that she can forgive me, and you can forgive me, and you can get up a petition signed by everybody in the known world that forgives me, but I still wont forgive myself. Why dont we talk about something else?
Durnik came back out of the bedroom. Shes asleep, he said softly. Then he went to the fireplace and stacked more wood on the embers. Its a cold night out there, he noted. Lets keep this fire going.
I should have thought of that, Garion apologized.
Are the babies still asleep? Belgarath asked the smith.
Durnik nodded.
Enjoy it while you can. Theyre resting up.
Durnik smiled. Then he too pulled a chair closer to the fire. Do you remember what we were talking about earlier? he asked, reaching for the remaining tankard on the table.
We talked about a lot of things, Belgarath told him.
I mean the business of the same things happening over and over again. What happened tonight isnt one of those, is it?
Would it come as a surprise to you if I told you that Pol isnt the first to give birth to twins?
I know that, Belgarath, but this seems different somehow. I get the feeling that this isnt something thats happened before. This seems like something new to me. This has been a very special night. UL himself blessed it. Has that ever happened before?
Not that I know of, the old sorcerer conceded. Maybe this is something new. If it is, its going to make things a little strange for us.
Hows that? Garion asked.
The nice thing about repetitions is that you sort of know what to expect. If everything did stop when the accident happened, and now its all moving again, well be breaking into new territory.
Wont the prophecies give us some clues?
Belgarath shook his head. No. The last passage in the Mrin Codex reads, And there shall come a great light, and in that light shall that which was broken be healed, and interrupted Purpose shall proceed again, as was from the beginning intended. All the other prophecies end in more or less the same way. The Ashabine Oracles even use almost exactly the same words. Once that light reached Korim, we were on our own.
Will there be a new set of prophecies now? Durnik asked.
Next time you see Eriond, why dont you ask him? Hes the one in charge now. Belgarath sighed. I dont think well be involved in any new ones, though. Weve done what we were supposed to do. He smiled just a bit wryly. To be perfectly frank about it, Im just as glad to pass it on. Im getting a little old to be rushing out to save the world. It was an interesting career right at first, but it gets exhausting after the first six or eight times.
Thatd be quite a story, Durnik said.
What would?
Everything youve been through saving the world, fighting Demons, pushing the Gods around, things like that.
Tedious, Durnik. Very, very tedious, Belgarath disagreed. There were long periods when nothing was happening. You cant make much of a story out of a lot of people just sitting around waiting.
Oh, Im sure there were enough lively parts to keep it interesting. Someday Id really like to hear the whole thing you know, how you met Aldur, what the world was like before Torak cracked it, how you and Cherek Bear-shoulders stole the Orb back all of it.
Belgarath laughed. If I start telling that story, well still be sitting here a year from now, and we wont even be half-way through by then. Weve all got better things to do.
Do we really, grandfather? Garion asked. You just said that our part of this is over. Wouldnt this be a good time to sum it all up?
What good would it do? Youve got a kingdom to run, and Durniks got this farm to tend. Youve both got more important things to do than sit around listening to me tell stories.
Write it down, then. The notion suddenly caught fire in Garions mind. You know, grandfather, the more I think about it, the more I think you ought to do just that. Youve been here since the very beginning. Youre the only one who knows the whole story. You really should write it down, you know. Tell the world what really happened.
Belgaraths expression grew pained. The world doesnt care, Garion. All Id do is offend a lot of people. Theyve got their own preconceptions, and theyre happy with them. Im not going to spend the next fifty years scribbling on scraps of paper just so that people can travel to the Vale from the other side of the world to argue with me. Besides, Im not a historian. I dont mind telling stories, but writing them down doesnt appeal to me. If I took on a project like that, my hand would fall off after a couple of years.
Dont be coy, grandfather. Durnik and I both know that you dont have to do it by hand. You can think the words onto paper without ever picking up a pen.
Forget it, Belgarath said shortly. Im not going to waste my time on something as ridiculous as that.
Youre lazy, Belgarath, Durnik accused.
Are you only just noticing that? I thought you were more observant.
You wont do it then? Garion demanded.
Not unless somebody comes up with a better reason than you two have so far.
The bedroom door opened, and Poledra came out into the kitchen. Are you three going to talk all night? she demanded in a quiet voice. If you are, go do it someplace else. If you wake the babies she left it hanging ominously.
We were just thinking about going to bed, dear, Belgarath lied blandly.
Well, do it then. Dont just sit there and talk about it.
Belgarath stood up and stretched perhaps just a bit theatrically. Shes right, you know, he said to his two friends. Itll be daylight before long, and the twins have been resting up all night. If were going to get any sleep, wed better do it now.
Later, after the three of them had climbed up into the loft and rolled themselves into blankets on the pallets Durnik kept stored up there, Garion lay looking down at the slowly waning firelight and the flickering shadows in the room below. He thought of CeNedra and his own children, of course, but then he let his mind drift back over the events of this most special of nights. Aunt Pol had always been at the very center of his life, and with the birth of her twins, her life was now fulfilled.
Near to sleep, the Rivan King found his thoughts going back over the conversation he had just had with Durnik and his grandfather. He was honest enough with himself to admit that his desire to read Belgaraths history of the world was not entirely academic. The old sorcerer was a very strange and complex man, and his story promised to provide insights into his character that could come from no other source. Hed have to be pushed, of course. Belgarath was an expert at avoiding work of any kind. Garion, however, thought he knew of a way to pry the story out of his grandfather. He smiled to himself as the fire burned lower and lower in the room below. He knew he could find out how it all began.
And then, because it was really quite late, Garion fell asleep, and, perhaps because of all the familiar things in Aunt Pols kitchen down below, he dreamed of Faldors farm, where his story had begun.
PART ONE
The Vale
Chapter 1
The problem with any idea is the fact that the more it gets bandied about, the more feasible it seems to become. What starts out as idle speculation something mildly entertaining to while away a few hours before going to bed can become, once others are drawn into it, a kind of obligation. Why cant people understand that just because Im willing to talk about something, it doesnt automatically follow that Im actually willing to do it?
As a case in point, this all started with Durniks rather inane remark about wanting to hear the whole story. You know how Durnik is, forever taking things apart to see what makes them work. I can forgive him in this case, however. Pol had just presented him with twins, and new fathers tend to be a bit irrational. Garion, on the other hand, should have had sense enough to leave it alone. I curse the day when I encouraged that boy to be curious about first causes. He can be so tedious about some things. If hed have just let it drop, I wouldnt be saddled with this awful chore.
But no. The two of them went on and on about it for day after day as if the fate of the world depended on it. I tried to get around them with a few vague promises nothing specific, mind you and fervently hoped that theyd forget about the whole silly business.
Then Garion did something so unscrupulous, so underhanded, that it shocked me to the very core. He told Polgara about the stupid idea, and when he got back to Riva, he told CeNedra. That would have been bad enough, but would you believe that he actually encouraged those two to bring Poledra into it?
Ill admit right here that it was my own fault. My only excuse is that I was a little tired that night. Id inadvertently let something slip that Ive kept buried in my heart for three eons. Poledra had been with child, and Id gone off and left her to fend for herself. Ive carried the guilt over that for almost half of my life. Its like a knife twisting inside me. Garion knew that, and he coldly, deliberately, used it to force me to take on this ridiculous project. He knows that under these circumstances, I simply cannot refuse anything my wife asks of me.
Poledra, of course, didnt put any pressure on me. She didnt have to. All she had to do was suggest that shed rather like to have me go along with the idea. Under the circumstances, I didnt have any choice. I hope that the Rivan King is happy about what hes done to me.
This is most certainly a mistake. Wisdom tells me that it would be far better to leave things as they are, with event and cause alike half-buried in the dust of forgotten years. If it were up to me, Id leave it that way. The truth is going to upset a lot of people.
Few will understand and fewer still accept what I am about to set forth, but as my grandson and son-in-law so pointedly insisted, if I dont tell the story, somebody else will; and, since I alone know the beginning and middle and end of it, it falls to me to commit to perishable parchment, with ink that begins to fade before it even dries, some ephemeral account of what really happened and why.
Thus, let me begin this story as all stories are begun, at the beginning.
I was born in the village of Gara, which no longer exists. It lay, if I remember it correctly, on a pleasant green bank beside a small river that sparkled in the summer sun as if its surface were covered with jewels and Id trade all the jewels Ive ever owned or seen to sit again beside that unnamed river.
Our village was not rich, but in those days none were. The world was at peace, and our Gods walked among us and smiled upon us. We had enough to eat and huts to shelter us from the weather. I dont recall who our God was, nor his attributes, nor his totem. I was very young at the time, and it was, after all, long ago.
I played with the other children in the warm, dusty streets, ran through the long grass and the wildflowers in the meadows, and paddled in that sparkling river which was drowned by the Sea of the East so many years ago that they are beyond counting.
My mother died when I was quite young. I remember that I cried about it for a long time, though I must honestly admit that I can no longer even remember her face. I remember the gentleness of her hands and the warm smell of fresh-baked bread that came from her garments, but I cant remember her face. Isnt that odd?