‘I saw Zandramas sacrificing my baby,’ Ce’Nedra said in a stricken voice. ‘There was crying and so much blood – so very much blood.’
‘Peculiar,’ Zakath said. ‘I was presiding over a trial. I had to condemn a number of people. There was one of them I cared a great deal about, but I was forced to condemn her anyway.’
‘I had one, too,’ Velvet admitted.
‘I rather expect we all did,’ Garion told them. ‘The same thing happened to me on the way to Cthol Mishrak. Torak kept intruding in my dreams.’ He looked at Cyradis. ‘Does the Child of Dark always fall back on this?’ he asked her. ‘We’ve found that events keep repeating themselves when we’re leading up to one of these meetings. Is this one of those events that keeps happening over and over again?’
‘Thou art very perceptive, Belgarion of Riva,’ the Seeress told him. ‘In all the uncounted eons since these meetings began, thou art the first Child of either Light or Dark to have realized that the sequence must be endlessly repeated until the division hath ended.’
‘I not sure I can take much credit for it, Cyradis,’ he admitted. ‘As I understand it, the meetings are getting closer and closer together. I’m probably the first in history to have been the Child of Light – or Dark – during two meetings, and even then it took me a while to realize that it was happening. The nightmares are part of that pattern then?’
‘Thy guess is shrewd, Belgarion,’ she smiled gently. ‘Unfortunately, it is not correct. It seemeth me a shame to waste such a clever perception, though.’
‘Are you trying to be funny, Holy Seeress?’
‘Would I do that, noble Belgarion?’ she said, perfectly imitating Silk’s inflection.
‘You could spank her,’ Beldin suggested.
‘With that human mountain standing guard over her?’ Garion said, grinning at Toth. His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not permitted to help us with this, are you Cyradis?’ he asked her.
She sighed and shook her head.
‘That’s all right, Holy Seeress,’ he said. ‘I think we can come up with a workable answer to the question by ourselves.’ He looked at Belgarath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Torak tried to frighten me with nightmares, and now it looks as if Zandramas is trying to do the same thing, except that this time, she’s doing it to all of us. If it’s not one of those usual repetitions, what is it?’
‘That boy’s beginning to develop a rather keen analytical mind, Belgarath,’ Beldin said.
‘Naturally,’ the old man said modestly.
‘Don’t wrench your shoulder out of its socket trying to pat yourself on the back,’ Beldin said sourly. He rose to his feet and started pacing up and down, his forehead creased in thought. ‘Now then,’ he began, ‘first; this isn’t just one of the tedious repetitions that have been dogging us since the beginning, right?’
‘Right,’ Belgarath agreed.
‘Second; it happened in about the same way last time.’ He looked at Garion. ‘Right?’ he asked.
‘Right,’ Garion said.
‘That’s only two times. Twice can be a coincidence, but let’s assume that it’s not. We know that the Child of Light always has companions, but that the Child of Dark is always solitary.’
‘So Cyradis tells us,’ Belgarath agreed.
‘She doesn’t have any reason to lie to us. All right, if the Child of Light has companions but the Child of Dark is alone, wouldn’t that put the Dark at a serious disadvantage?’
‘You’d think so.’
‘But the two have always been so evenly matched that not even the Gods can predict the outcome. The Child of Dark is using something to offset the apparant advantage of our side. I think these nightmares might be part of it.’
Silk rose and came over to Garion. ‘Discussions like this make my head ache,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going up on deck for a while.’ He left the cabin, and for no apparent reason the gangly young wolf followed him.
‘I don’t really think a few nightmares would make that much difference, Beldin,’ Belgarath disagreed.
‘But what if the nightmares are only a part of it, Old Wolf?’ Poledra asked him. ‘You and Pol were both at Vo Mimbre, and that was one of these meetings, too. You two have been companions of the Child of Light twice already. What happened at Vo Mimbre?’
‘We did have nightmares,’ Belgarath conceded to Beldin.
‘Anything else?’ the dwarf asked intently.
‘We saw things that weren’t there, but that could have come from all the Grolims in the vicinity.’
‘And?’
‘Everybody went sort of crazy. It was all we could do to keep Brand from trying to attack Torak with his teeth, and at Cthol Mishrak I entombed Belzedar in solid rock, and then Pol wanted to dig him up so that she could drink his blood.’
‘Father! I did not!’ she objected.
‘Oh, really? You were very angry that day, Pol.’
‘It fits the same pattern, Old Wolf,’ Poledra said somberly. ‘Our side fights with normal weapons. Garion’s sword might be a little abnormal, but it’s still just a sword.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d been at Cthol Mishrak,’ her husband told her.
‘I was there, Belgarath,’ she replied.
‘You were?’
‘Of course. I was hiding in the ruins watching. Anyway, the Child of Dark doesn’t attack the body; it attacks the mind. That’s how it manages to keep everything so perfectly balanced.’
‘Nightmares, hallucinations, and ultimately madness,’ Polgara mused. ‘That’s a formidable array of things to throw against us. It might even have worked – if Zandramas hadn’t been so clumsy.’
‘I don’t quite follow that, Pol,’ Durnik said.
‘She blundered,’ Polgara shrugged. ‘If only one person has a nightmare, he’ll probably try to shrug it off and he certainly won’t mention it on the morning of the meeting. Zandramas sent nightmares to all of us, though. This conversation probably wouldn’t have taken place if she hadn’t.’
‘It’s nice to know that she can stumble, too,’ Belgarath said. ‘All right then, we know that she’s been tampering with us. The best way to defeat that tactic is to put those nightmares out of our minds.’