Guardians of the West

  He closed the book in disgust and added it to the growing pile of ravings that was accumulating on the table in front of him. Next he picked up a slender volume that had been found in a deserted house in Arendia. The first few pages were devoted to the household accounts of a very minor Arendish nobleman. Then, on the fourth page, the mundane broke off quite suddenly. ‘The Child of Light shall take up the sword and go in search of that which is hidden,’ Garion read. This was immediately followed by a tediously detailed account of the purchase of a dozen or so pigs from a neighbor. Then once again the unknown writer jumped into prophecy. ‘The quest of the Child of Light shall be for one whose soul has been reft away, for a stone that is empty at its center and for the babe who will hold the Light in one hand and the Dark in the other.’ That definitely seemed to be getting somewhere. Garion pulled one of his guttering candles closer and hunched over the book, reading each page carefully. Those two passages, however, proved to be the only ones in the entire volume that did not speak of the day-to-day business of that forgotten farm somewhere in Arendia.

  Garion sighed, leaned back, and looked around at the dimly lighted library. The bound books stood in their dusty rows on the dark shelves, and the linen-covered scrolls lay along the top of each bookcase. The light of his two candles flickered, making the room seem almost to dance.

  ‘There has to be a faster way to do this,’ he muttered.

  ‘Actually there is,’ the dry voice in his mind said to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said that there had to be a faster way. I said that there is.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  Garion knew this other awareness well enough by now to be certain that it would tell him only what it wanted him to know. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘what is this faster way?’

  ‘You don’t have to read every single word the way you have been doing. Open your mind and just leaf through the pages. The things I put in each book will sort of leap out at you.’

  ‘Are the prophecies always mixed right in with all this other nonsense?’

  ‘Usually, yes.’

  ‘Why did you do it that way?’

  ‘Several reasons. Most of the time I didn’t want the man who was doing the actual writing even to know what I was hiding in his book. Then, of course, it’s a good way to keep things from falling into unfriendly hands.’

  ‘And friendly ones, too, for that matter.’

  ‘Did you want me to explain, or were you just looking for an excuse to make clever remarks?’

  ‘All right.’ Garion sighed, giving up.

  ‘I think I’ve told you before that the word gives meaning to the event. The word has to be there, but it doesn’t have to be right out in the open where just anybody can find it.’

  Garion frowned. ‘Do you mean that you put all these things in all these books for just a few people to read?’

  ‘The term “a few” isn’t really accurate. Try “one” instead.’

  ‘One? Who?’

  ‘You, obviously.’

  ‘Me? Why me?’

  ‘Are we going to go through that again?’

  ‘Are you trying to say that all of this was sort of like a personal letter—just to me?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘What if I hadn’t gotten around to reading it?’

  ‘Why are you reading it now?’

  ‘Because Belgarath told me to.’

  ‘Why do you think Belgarath told you that?’

  ‘Because—’ Garion broke off. ‘You told him to say it to me?’

  ‘Naturally. He didn’t know about it, of course, but I sort of nudged him. All sorts of people have access to the Mrin Codex. That’s why I made it so cryptic. These personal instructions to you, however, should be fairly clear—if you pay attention.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what I’m supposed to do?’

  ‘I’m not permitted to do that.’

  ‘Permitted?’

  ‘We have our rules, my opposite and I. We’re very carefully balanced and we have to stay that way. We agreed only to act through our instruments, and if I intervene in person—with such things as telling you directly what you must do—then my opposite will also be free to step over the line. That’s why we both work through what are called prophecies.’

  ‘Isn’t that a little complicated?’

  ‘The alternative would be absolute chaos. My opposite and I are limitless. If we confront each other directly, whole suns will be destroyed.’

  Garion shuddered and swallowed hard. ‘I didn’t realize that,’ he admitted. Then an idea occurred to him. ‘Would you be permitted to tell me about that line in the Mrin Codex—the one that’s got the blotted word in the middle of it?’

  ‘That depends on how much you want to know about it.’

  ‘What’s the word under the blot?’

  ‘There are several words there. If you look at it in the right kind of light, you should be able to see them. As for these other books, try reading them the way I told you to. I think you’ll find that it saves a lot of time—and you really don’t have all that much time to spare.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  But the voice was gone.

  The door to the library opened, and Ce’Nedra came in, wearing her nightdress and a warm robe. ‘Garion,’ she said, ‘aren’t you ever coming to bed?’

  ‘What?’ He looked up. ‘Oh—yes. Right away.’

  ‘Who was in here with you?’

  ‘Nobody. Why?’

  ‘I heard you talking to someone.’

  ‘I was just reading, that’s all.’

  ‘Come to bed, Garion,’ she said firmly. ‘You can’t read the whole library in one evening.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ he agreed.

  Not long after that, when spring had begun to touch the lower meadows on the slopes behind the Citadel, the promised letter from King Anheg arrived. Garion immediately took the copy of that baffling passage in the Mrin Codex to the library to compare it with his copy. When he put the two side by side, he began to swear. Anheg’s copy was blotted in exactly the same place. ‘I told him!’ Garion fumed. ‘I told him specifically that I needed to see that particular spot! I even showed him!’ Swearing angrily, he began to pace up and down, waving both arms in the air.

  Rather surprisingly, Ce’Nedra took her husband’s near-obsession with the Mrin Codex in stride. Of course, the little queen’s attention was almost totally riveted on her new son, and Garion was fairly certain that anything he said or did was only on the very edge of her awareness. Young Prince Geran was grossly overmothered. Ce’Nedra held him in her arms almost every minute that he was awake and frequently even when he was asleep. He was a good-natured baby and seldom cried or fussed. He took his mother’s constant attention quite calmly and accepted all the cuddling and cooing and impulsive kisses with equanimity. Garion, however, felt that Ce’Nedra really overdid things just a bit. Since she insisted on holding Geran constantly, it definitely cut into the time when he might be able to hold his son. Once he almost asked her when his turn was going to come, but decided at the last minute not to. The thing that he really felt was unfair was Ce’Nedra’s sense of timing. Whenever she did put Geran in his cradle for a few moments and Garion finally got the chance to pick him up, the little queen’s hands seemed almost automatically to go to the buttons on the front of her dress, and she would placidly announce that it was time for Geran to nurse. Garion certainly did not begrudge his son his lunch, but the baby really didn’t look all that hungry most of the time.

  After a time, however, when he finally became adjusted to Geran’s undeniable presence in their lives, the call of the dim, musty library began to reassert itself. The procedure that had been suggested to him by the dry voice worked surprisingly well. After a little practice, he found that he could skim rapidly over page after page of mundane material and that his eye would stop automatically at the prop
hetic passages buried in the midst of ordinary text. He was surprised to find so many of these passages hidden away in the most unlikely places. In most cases it was obvious that the writers had not even been aware of what they had inserted. A sentence would frequently break off, leap into prophecy, and then take up again exactly where it had stopped. Garion was positive that upon rereading the text, the unconscious prophet who had inserted the material would not even see what he had just written.

  The Mrin Codex, however, and to a lesser degree the Darine, remained the core of the whole thing. Passages from other works clarified or expanded, but the two major prophecies put it all down in uncontaminated form. Garion began to cross index as he went along, identifying each new passage with a number and then linking those numbers to the series of letter codes he had assigned to the paragraphs of the Mrin scroll. Each paragraph of the Mrin, he discovered, usually had three or four corroborating or explanatory lines gleaned from other works—all except that crucial blotted passage.

  ‘And how did the search go today, dear?’ Ce’Nedra asked brightly one evening when he returned, grouchy and out of sorts, to the royal apartment. She was nursing Geran at the time, and her face was aglow with tenderness as she held her baby to her breast.

  ‘I’m just about to give it all up,’ he declared, flinging himself into a chair. ‘I think it might be better just to lock up that library and throw away the key.’

  She looked at him fondly and smiled. ‘Now you know that wouldn’t do any good, Garion. You know that after a day or so you wouldn’t be able to stand it, and no door is so stout that you can’t break it down.’

  ‘Maybe I should just burn all those books and scrolls,’ he said morosely. ‘I can’t concentrate on anything else any more. I know there’s something hidden under that blot, but I can’t find a single clue anywhere to what it might be.’

  ‘If you burn that library, Belgarath will probably turn you into a radish,’ she warned with a smile. ‘He’s very fond of books, you know.’

  ‘It might be nice to be a radish for a while,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s really very simple, Garion,’ she said with that infuriating placidity. ‘Since all the copies are blotted, why don’t you go look at the original?’

  He stared at her.

  ‘It has to be somewhere, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well—I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘Find out where it is, then, and go look—or send for it.’

  ‘I never thought of that.’

  ‘Obviously. It’s much more fun to rant and rave and be unpleasant about it.’

  ‘You know, that’s really a very good idea, Ce’Nedra.’

  ‘Naturally. You men always want to complicate things so much. Next time you have a problem, dear, just bring it to me. I’ll tell you how to solve it.’

  He let that pass.

  The first thing the following morning, Garion went down into the city and called on the Rivan Deacon in the Temple of Belar. The Rivan Deacon was a sober-faced, gentle man. Unlike the priests of Belar in the major temples on the continent, who were frequently more involved in politics than in the care of their flocks, the leader of the Rivan Church concerned himself almost exclusively with the well-being—physical as well as spiritual—of the common people. Garion had always rather liked him.

  ‘I’ve never actually seen it myself, your Majesty,’ the deacon replied in response to Garion’s question, ‘but I’ve always been told that it’s kept in that shrine on the banks of the Mrin River—between the edge of the fens and Boktor.’

  ‘Shrine?’

  ‘The ancient Drasnians erected it on the site where the Mrin Prophet was kept chained,’ the deacon explained. ‘After the poor man died, King Bull-neck directed that a memorial of some sort be put up there. They built the shrine directly over his grave. The original scroll is kept there in a large crystal case. A group of priests is there to protect it. Most people wouldn’t be allowed to touch it; but considering the fact that you’re the Rivan King, I’m sure that they’ll make an exception.’

  ‘Then it’s always been there?’

  ‘Except during the time of the Angarak invasion during the fourth millennium. It was taken by ship to Val Alorn for safekeeping just before Boktor was burned. Torak wanted to get his hands on it, so it was felt wiser to get it out of the country.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Garion said. ‘Thank you for the information, your Reverence.’

  ‘Glad to be of help, your Majesty.’

  It was going to be hard to get away. This week was completely out of the question, since there was that meeting with the port authorities the day after tomorrow. And next week would be even worse. There were always so many official meetings and state functions. Garion sighed as he climbed back up the long stairs to the Citadel with his inevitable guard at his side. It somehow seemed that he was almost a prisoner here on this island. There were always so many demands on his time. He could remember a time, not really that long ago when he started each day on horseback and seldom slept in the same bed two nights in a row. Upon consideration, however, he was forced to admit that even then he had not been free to do as he wished. Though he had not known it, this burden of responsibility had descended upon him on that windy autumn night so many years ago when he, Aunt Pol, Belgarath, and Durnik had crept through the gate at Faldor’s farm and out into the wide world that lay before them.

  ‘Well,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘this is important too. Brand can manage here. They’ll just have to get along without me for a while.’

  ‘What was that, your Majesty?’ the guard asked politely.

  ‘Just thinking out loud,’ Garion replied, a little embarrassed.

  Ce’Nedra seemed moody and out of sorts that evening. She held Geran almost abstractedly, paying scant attention to him as he played with the amulet at her throat with a look of serious concentration on his face.

  ‘What’s the matter, dear?’ Garion asked her.

  ‘Just a headache, that’s all,’ she replied shortly. ‘And a strange sort of ringing in my ears.’

  ‘You’re tired.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it.’ She arose. ‘I think I’ll put Geran in his cradle and go to bed,’ she declared. ‘Maybe a good night’s sleep will make me feel better.’

  ‘I can put him to bed,’ Garion offered.

  ‘No,’ she said with a strange look. ‘I want to be sure that he’s safely in his cradle.’

  ‘Safe?’ Garion laughed. ‘Ce’Nedra, this is Riva. It’s the safest place in the world.’

  ‘Go tell that to Arell,’ she told him and went into the small room adjoining their bedchamber where Geran’s cradle stood.

  Garion sat up and read until rather late that evening. Ce’Nedra’s restless moodiness had somehow communicated itself to him, and he did not feel ready for bed. Finally, he put aside his book and went to the window to look out across the moon-touched waters of the Sea of the Winds lying far below. The long, slow waves seemed almost like molten silver in the pale light, and their stately pace was oddly hypnotic. Finally he blew out the candles and went quietly into the bedroom.

  Ce’Nedra was tossing restlessly in her sleep and muttering half-formed phrases—meaningless snatches of fragmentary conversation. Garion undressed and slipped into bed, trying not to disturb her.

  ‘No,’ she said in a peremptory tone of voice. ‘I won’t let you do that.’ Then she moaned and tossed her head on the pillow.

  Garion lay in the soft darkness, listening to his wife talking in her sleep.

  ‘Garion!’ she gasped, coming suddenly awake. ‘Your feet are cold!’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  She drifted almost immediately back into sleep, and the muttering resumed.

  It was the sound of a different voice that awoke him several hours later. The voice was oddly familiar, and Garion lay, still almost asleep, trying to remember exactly where he had heard it before. It was a woman’s voice, low and musical and speaking in a peculiar
ly soothing tone.

  Then he suddenly realized that Ce’Nedra was not in the bed beside him and he came fully awake instantly.

  ‘But I have to hide him so that they can’t find him,’ he heard Ce’Nedra say in a strangely numb voice. He tossed back the covers and slid out of bed.

  A faint light gleamed through the open door to the nursery, and the voices seemed to be coming from there. Garion moved quickly to that door, his bare feet making no sound on the carpet.

  ‘Uncover your baby, Ce’Nedra,’ the other woman was saying in a calm, persuasive voice. ‘You’ll hurt him.’

  Garion looked through the doorway. Ce’Nedra was standing by the cradle in her white nightdress, her eyes vacant and staring, with another figure beside her. On the chair at the foot of the cradle was a great heap of blankets and pillows. Dreamily, the Rivan Queen was methodically piling the bedclothes on top of her baby.

  ‘Ce’Nedra,’ the woman said to her. ‘Stop. Listen to me.’

  ‘I have to hide him,’ Ce’Nedra replied stubbornly. ‘They want to kill him.’

  ‘Ce’Nedra. You’ll smother him. Now take all the blankets and pillows out again.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Do as I said, Ce’Nedra,’ the woman said firmly. ‘Now.’

  Ce’Nedra made a little whimpering sound and began to remove the bedding from the cradle.

  ‘That’s better. Now listen to me. You must ignore him when he tells you things like this. He is not your friend.’

  Ce’Nedra’s face grew puzzled. ‘He isn’t?’

  ‘He’s your enemy. He is the one who wants to hurt Geran.’

  ‘My baby?’

  ‘Your baby’s all right, Ce’Nedra, but you have to fight this voice that comes to you in the night.’

  ‘Who—?’ Garion started, but then the woman turned to look at him, and he broke off, his mouth agape with astonishment. The woman had tawny-colored hair and warm, golden eyes. Her dress was plain and brown, almost earth-colored. Garion knew her. He had met her once before on the moors of eastern Drasnia when he and Belgarath and Silk had been on their way to that dreadful meeting in the haunted ruins of Cthol Mishrak.

  Aunt Pol’s mother closely resembled her daughter. Her face had that same calm, flawless beauty, and her head that same proud, erect carriage. There was about this timeless face, however, a strange, almost eternal kind of regret that caught at Garion’s throat. ‘Poledra!’ he gasped. ‘What—?’