‘Wasn’t she happy in Darine?’ Pol asked him.
He shrugged. ‘She may have been, but she’s done us a great service, and Darine isn’t going to be the safest place in the world later on this summer.’
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘The Bear-Cult’s starting to get out of hand there, so it’s time for me to go explain a few things to them. Hatturk’s beginning to annoy me. Oh, Dras sent these.’ He opened another pouch and took out several scrolls. ‘This isn’t complete yet, because the Mrin prophet’s still talking, but these are copies of everything he’s said so far.’
‘That’s what I’ve been waiting for,’ I told him eagerly.
‘Don’t get your hopes up too much,’ he told me. ‘I looked into them a few times on my way down here. Are you sure that fellow who’s chained to a post up in Drasnia is really a prophet? That thing you’ve got in your hands is pure gibberish. I’d hate to see you following instructions that turn out to be no more than the ravings of a genuine madman.’
‘The Mrin prophet can’t rave, Algar,’ I assured him. ‘He can’t talk.’
‘He’s talked enough to fill up four scrolls so far.’
‘That’s the whole point. Everything that’s in these scrolls is pure prophecy, because the poor fellow’s incapable of speech except when he’s passing on the words of the Necessity.’
‘Whatever you say, Belgarath. Are you coming to the Alorn Council this summer?’
‘I think that might be nice, father,’ Pol said. ‘I haven’t seen Beldaran for quite a while, and you should probably look in on your grandson.’
‘I really ought to work on these, Pol,’ I objected, pointing at the scrolls.
‘Bring them with you, father,’ she suggested. ‘They’re not that heavy, after all.’ Then she turned back to Algar. ‘Send word to Riva,’ she told him. ‘Let him know that we’re coming. Now, how’s your wife?’
And so we went to the Isle of the Winds for the meeting of the Alorn Council - which was more in the nature of a family gathering in those days than it was a formal meeting of heads of state. We had a brief business meeting to get that out of the way, and then we were free to enjoy ourselves.
I was a bit surprised to discover that my grandson was about seven years old now. I tend to lose track of time when I’m working on something, and the years had slipped by without my noticing them.
Daran was a sturdy little boy with sandy-colored hair and a serious nature. We got along well together. He loved to listen to stories, and, though it’s probably immodest of me to say it, I’m most likely one of the best story-tellers in the world.
‘What really happened in Cthol Mishrak, grandfather?’ he asked me one rainy afternoon when the two of us were in a room high up in one of the towers feasting on some cherry tarts I’d stolen from the pastry kitchen. ‘Father’s started to tell me the story several times, but something always seems to come up just when he’s getting to the good part.’
I leaned back in my chair. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let me see -’ And then I told him the whole story, embellishing it only slightly - for artistic purposes, you understand.
‘Well, then,’ he said gravely as darkness settled over Riva’s citadel, ‘I guess that sort of tells me what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life.’ He sighed.
‘Why so great a sigh, Prince Daran?’ I asked him.
‘It might have been nice to be just an ordinary person,’ he said with uncommon maturity for one so young. ‘I’d kind of like to be able to get up in the morning and go out to look at what’s beyond the next hill.’
‘It’s not all that much different from what’s on this side,’ I told him.
‘Maybe not, grandfather, but I would sort of like to see it - just once.’ He looked at me with those very serious blue eyes of his. ‘But I can’t. That stone on the hilt of father’s sword won’t let me, will it?’
‘I’m afraid not, Daran,’ I replied.
‘Why me?’
Dear God! How many times have I heard that? How should I know why him? I wasn’t in charge. I took a chance at that point. ‘It has to do with what we are, Daran. We’re sort of special, and that means we’ve got special responsibilities. If it makes you feel any better, we aren’t required to like them.’ Saying that to a seven-year-old might have been a little brutal, but my grandson wasn’t your ordinary child. ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ I told him then. ‘We’re both going to get a good night’s sleep, and we’re going to get up early tomorrow morning, and we’re going to go out and see what’s on the other side of that hill.’
‘It’s raining. We’ll get wet.’
‘We’ve both been wet before, Daran. We won’t melt.’
I managed to offend both of my daughters with that little project.
The boy and I had fun, though, so all the scoldings we got several days later didn’t bother either of us all that much. We tramped the steep hills of the Isle of the Winds, and we camped out and fished for trout in deep, swirling pools in mountain streams, and we talked. We talked about many things, and I think I managed to persuade Daran that what he had to do was necessary and important. At least he wasn’t throwing that ‘Why me?’ in my face at every turn. I’ve been talking to a long series of sandy-haired boys for about three thousand years now. I’ve been obliged to do a lot of things down through those endless centuries, but explaining our rather unique situation to those boys could very well have been the most important.
The Alorn Council lasted for several weeks, and then we all left for home. Pol, Beldin and I sailed across the Sea of the Winds and made port at Camaar on a blustery afternoon. We took lodgings in the same well-appointed inn in which Beldaran and Riva had first met.
‘How old is Beldaran now?’ Beldin asked that evening after supper.
‘Twenty-five, uncle,’ Pol told him, ‘the same age as I am.’
‘She looks older.’
‘She’s been sick. I don’t think the climate on that island agrees with her. She catches cold every winter, and it’s getting harder and harder for her to shake them off.’ She looked at me. ‘You didn’t help her by sneaking off with her son the way you did.’
‘We didn’t sneak,’ I objected. ‘I left her a note.’
‘Belgarath’s very good at leaving notes when he sneaks off,’ Beldin told her.
I shrugged. ‘It avoids arguments. Daran and I needed to talk. He’s reached the age where he has questions, and I’m the best one to answer them. I think we got it all settled - at least for now. He’s a good boy, and now that he knows what’s expected of him, he’ll probably do all right.’
It was late summer by the time we got back to the Vale, and I immediately went to work on the Darine Codex, since it was complete. I’d decided to hold off on the Mrin Codex, which was clearly the more difficult of the two. Difficulty is a relative term when you’re talking about those two documents, however. The need to conceal the meaning of the prophecy made both of them very obscure.
After several years of intensive study, I began to develop a vague perception of what lay in store for us. I didn’t like it very much, but at least I had a fuzzy sort of idea about what was coming. The Darine Codex is more general than the Mrin, but it does identify a number of cautionary signals. Each time one of those meetings is about to take place, it’ll be preceded by a very specific event. At least that would give us a bit of warning.
It must have been ten years or so later when Dras Bull-neck sent a messenger to the Vale to advise us that the Mrin prophet had died and to deliver copies of the entire Mrin Codex. I laid aside Bormik’s prophecy and dug into the ravings of that madman who’d spent most of his life chained to a post. As I just mentioned, the Darine Codex had given me a generalized idea of what was coming, and that made the Mrin Codex at least marginally comprehensible. It was still very rough going, though.
Polgara continued her own studies, and Beldin went back to Mallorea, so I was able to concentrate. As usually happens when I’m deeply into something, I lost track of time, so I can’t really tell you exactly when it was that the Master came to me again, only that he had some very specific instructions. I regretfully set my studies aside and left for southern Tolnedra the very next morning.
I stopped by Prolgu to speak with the Gorim, and then I went to Tol Borune to have a few words with the Grand Duke. He wasn’t very happy when I told him of the plans I had for his son, but when I advised him that what I was proposing would prepare the way for his family to ascend the imperial throne in Tol Honeth, he agreed to think about it. I didn’t think it was really necessary to tell him that the elevation of the Borunes wasn’t going to take place for about five hundred years. There’s no real point in confusing people with picky little details, is there?
Then I ventured down to the Wood of the Dryads.
It was that time of year again, and it wasn’t very long before I was accosted on a forest path by a golden-haired Dryad name Xalla. As usual, she had an arrow pointed directly at my heart. ‘Oh, put that down,’ I told her irritably.