I broke off my fruitless search for Chamdar at that point, since it was fairly obvious that I wasn’t going to find him. I went on up to Asturia to have a look at Lelldorin, and I came away with the knowledge that he was indeed the Wildantor we’d been waiting for. Everything was coming together the way it was supposed to, so I crossed Ulgoland to the Vale.
When I got home, the twins advised me that Ildera would be delivered about midwinter.
‘Polgara’s going to move the family not long after the child’s birth,’ Beltira told me.
‘That’s probably not a bad idea,’ I said. ‘We’ve all been in and out of Annath quite frequently for about fifteen years now, and Chamdar’s on the loose out there somewhere. It’ll be safer if Pol moves on. Is Alara improving at all?’
Belkira shook his head sadly. ‘She still refuses to accept the fact that her husband’s dead. Polgara’s tried everything she can think of to bring her out of it, but nothing’s worked yet.’
‘A change of scene might bring her around,’ I suggested.
‘It’s hard to say.’ He didn’t sound very hopeful about it.
The twins and I talked about it at some length, and we agreed that I should probably go to Sendaria and let myself be seen in places other than Annath. The Grolim prophecies, and probably the Ashabine Oracles as well, were certainly keeping Ctuchik advised, so I was sure that he knew of the Godslayer’s imminent birth and the fact that he’d be born in Sendaria. It was time for me to start pulling Chamdar out of position, so I put on my story-teller’s costume and went to Sendaria.
I stopped by the city of Sendar to look in on the new king, Fulrach, and his giddy wife, Layla. Don’t misunderstand me here. I love Layla. She’s probably got the biggest heart in the world, but she was awfully silly as a girl - and almost perpetually pregnant. I sometimes wonder how Fulrach found time to run his kingdom.
Then I went out into the countryside. I tramped the back roads and country lanes of central Sendaria all during the autumn and early winter of that year, and I’m positive that Chamdar’s Grolims were watching my every move. I didn’t go out of my way to make it difficult for them.
It was almost Erastide by now, and my sense of anticipation was growing stronger. Erastide is a major holiday in Sendaria, since it fits so neatly into the traditional ecumenicism of the Sendars. The date of the holiday - midwinter - is really quite arbitrary. The creation of the world didn’t happen on a single day, but I guess the clergy just picked a day at random for the yearly celebration. As the holiday approached, I moved from Darine to Erat to Winold with a growing conviction that Erastide this year was going to be something rather special. It was the kind of thing Garion’s friend would do.
I was completely out of touch, of course. We’d had evidence in the past that the Grolims have ways of listening when we communicate with each other in our rather peculiar way, and the upcoming EVENT was so important that we didn’t want to inadvertently give Chamdar anything to work with. In retrospect, I can say that our extreme cautiousness was probably a mistake.
Polgara and I have gone over what happened in Annath that winter again and again and again, and we can now see exactly where we both made our mistakes. The death of Darral should have alerted us, for one thing. As Geran had suspected, that rockslide that had killed his father had not been a simple accident. In some way that we’ve never been able to determine, Chamdar had located my daughter and the family she’d protected for over thirteen centuries, and Darral’s death - murder, I can call it - was just the first step in his elaborate plan.
Alara’s insanity was the second step, I’m afraid, and Pol and I both missed it.
My daughter tells me that Alara’s condition had worsened that fall, and that she’d taken to wandering off into the surrounding mountains in search of her husband. I’m sure that Chamdar had a hand in that too; the Grolims are expert at tampering with the minds of others, after all.
At any rate, it was on the day before Erastide when Ildera went into false labor, and Polgara had gone from Darral’s house to the far end of the village to examine her, and Alara - at Chamdar’s instigation, I’m sure - had seized the opportunity to go off into the nearby mountains in search of her husband. Pol returned to Darral’s house and found that Alara was gone. It’d happened several times before, and Pol, quite naturally, went out to look for her.
And that’s how Chamdar got Pol out of the way. She’s blamed herself about that for years, but it wasn’t her fault.
I’m convinced now that Ildera’s false labor was also Chamdar’s doing. You almost have to admire how carefully he orchestrated the events during those dreadful two days. Once Pol had left the village, Ildera’s false labor turned into the real thing. There were other women in the village who knew what to do, of course, and Garion was born shortly after midnight on Erastide.
And Polgara, searching for Alara, was miles away!
That was when that familiar voice inside my head alerted me. ‘Belgarath!’ it almost shouted, ‘go to Annath immediately! The Child of Light is in danger!’
It didn’t have to tell me twice. I was in Muros at the time, and it took me about a quarter of an hour to get out of town and sprout feathers. I almost tore my wings off trying to make good time, but I still got there too late.
Following Ildera’s delivery, the village women had done what women do after the birth of a child, and then they’d gone home. It was a holiday, after all, and there was cooking to be done. You see how shrewdly Chamdar’d planned everything?
It was just about dawn, and I was still winging my way in from Muros. Geran, Ildera, and Garion were alone in their little house, and that was when Chamdar made his move.
He set fire to the house.
It was a stone house, but Chamdar was a Grolim, and stone will burn if you make the fire hot enough.
To this day, I can’t be entirely certain if Chamdar knew what Geran would do once he realized that there was no way he and Ildera could escape. It’s entirely possible that he’d given up his wild notion of delivering the Rivan King to Torak and had decided instead to follow Ctuchik’s instructions and to simply kill Iron-grip’s heir.
The doors and windows of the house were all engulfed in flames, and Geran, probably already in agony, realized that there was no possible way he could save himself or his wife, but there was a faint chance that he could save their son. His tools were in the house, and he was a stone-cutter. As closely as I can determine, he feverishly took up his hammer and chisel and chopped a small hole through the wall down close to the ground. Then, even as he was dying, he seized up the blanket-wrapped baby and pushed that precious bundle out through the hole he’d made.
And that was when I got there, just as dawn was breaking.
Either Chamdar had known what was going to happen, or he simply seized an opportunity when it presented itself. He dashed in, picked up the blanket-protected infant, and fled back out of range of the fire.
Even as I was changing form in that snow-clogged street, I took in everything that was happening. I came very close at that point to doing something that’s absolutely forbidden. I was right on the verge of obliterating Chamdar with the sheer force of my Will. I think that the only thing that pulled me back from that fatal mistake was the fact that I wanted to kill that murderous Grolim with my bare hands. I howled in fury as I ran through the snow at him, and that gave him just the moment of warning he needed. I’ve often wished that I’d kept my mouth shut.
Chamdar spun around, his eyes wide with fright. ‘You!’ he cried as I bore down on him with murder written all over my face. And then he did the only thing he could think of to save his own life.
He threw the baby at me.
Chapter 50
Chamdar’s panic-stricken response at that point altered the course of history. In order to save his own life, he threw the infant Garion to safety. Had he been just a little more dedicated, he’d have turned and thrown the baby back into the fire.
My own dedication was a little stronger. I choked back my homicidal rage long enough to snatch the hurtling little bundle out of the air, and that gave Chamdar enough time to escape. I made a desperate leap to catch Garion, rolling in the dirt in the process, and by the time I looked back, Chamdar was gone. My howl of frustration woke everyone in the still sleeping village, I think.
I have it on fairly good authority that it was precisely at that moment that Barak underwent his first metamorphosis up there in Cherek. It was momentary, but he did change over into ‘the Dreadful Bear’ for a while. Garion was in danger at that point, and, all unthinking, Barak responded in the way he was supposed to. He was boar-hunting at the time, and he’d spent the night carousing with some friends. He was still fairly drunk, so all that he really remembers is waking up out in the woods standing over the half-eaten carcass of a wild pig.
Several of his hunting companions, however, were a bit more sober. I’m told that most of them took the pledge at that point and lived out the rest of their lives in total and absolute sobriety.
‘Father!’ Polgara’s voice came to me.
‘You’d better get back here, Pol! Right now!’
Then I knelt on the ground and unwrapped the baby I’d just grabbed out of mid-air. So far as I could tell, Garion was all right. He wasn’t even crying. His expression was grave as he looked at me, and when our eyes met for the first time, I felt a powerful jolt at the very center of my being. I was suddenly filled with a kind of wonder; there was no question whatsoever that he was the one we’d all been waiting for.