‘No. Geran and I’ve been at it since we got here. We’re on the third floor now.’
‘You’ve turned the Crown Prince of Riva into a cleaning boy? It’s very democratic, Pol, but isn’t it a little inappropriate?’
‘It won’t hurt him, father. Besides, he needs the exercise.’
Then Geran came warily down the stairway. He was wearing a dust-stained peasant smock, and he was holding a sword. It wasn’t a very big sword, but he handled it as if he knew how to use it. ‘Grandfather!’ he exclaimed when he saw me. He ran the rest of the way down the stairs. ‘Did you kill Salmissra?’ he asked eagerly.
‘She was dead the last time I looked,’ I replied evasively.
‘Did you hit her for me the way I asked you to?’
‘That he did, lad,’ Beldin stepped in to cover my tail-feathers. ‘That he did.’
Geran looked a bit apprehensively at the gnarled dwarf.
‘This is uncle Beldin, Geran,’ Pol introduced them.
‘You aren’t very tall, are you?’ Geran noted.
‘It has its advantages, lad,’ Beldin replied. ‘I almost never hit my head on a low-hanging limb.’
Geran laughed. ‘I like him, Aunt Pol.’
‘That wears off fairly soon.’
‘Don’t carry tales, Pol,’ Beldin chided. ‘Let the boy draw his own conclusions.’
‘I think we’d better bring Brand in on this,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a lot of things to talk about, and Brand’s the one who’s going to have to stand watch over the Orb, so he’ll need to know what’s coming.’
‘Do we know what’s coming, father?’ Pol asked.
‘Yer unspeakably clever old father’s actually devised a way t’ make sense outta th’ Mrin, me darlin’.’
Geran giggled. ‘I really like him, Aunt Pol,’ he said.
‘I was afraid you might feel that way,’ she sighed. ‘Try not to let it get ahead of you.’
‘You go with Pol back to the Vale,’ I told Beldin. ‘Between the two of you, you can hold off anything this side of Torak himself, and Torak’s turning to stone at Ashaba. I’ll go get Brand, and we’ll get down to business.’ Then I went outside, blurred into feathers, and flew off toward the Isle of the Winds.
It took Brand and me about three weeks to travel from the Isle of the Winds to the Vale, largely because nobody in his right mind goes through Ulgoland. When we arrived, we found that they’d started without us. The twins had picked up where I’d left off, and they’d roughed in the next several centuries. ‘Nothing much seems to be happening, Belgarath,’ Beltira told me. ‘So far as we can tell, the prophecies are concentrating on events in Mallorea. Are you and Brand hungry? Pol and I can fix something to eat if you’d like.’
‘A light snack, maybe. Something to tide us over till suppertime.’
Pol rose and went over to the kitchen area. I looked around for Prince Geran. He was sitting quietly on a chair in the corner. I’ve noticed that characteristic again and again in his family. Some children absolutely must be the center of attention. The long line of little boys in Garion’s family, though, are so self-effacing that you hardly notice them. They watch and listen, but they keep their mouths shut. It’s a very good trait. You seldom learn anything while your mouth’s flapping. He was wearing very ordinary clothes. Polgara was already beginning to come up with ways to make the heirs to the Rivan throne as inconspicuous as possible.
‘Oh, something else,’ Belkira added. ‘The Third Age has ended. We’re in the Fourth Age now. Evidently a Dal went to Ashaba, and the minute he laid eyes on Torak, the Third Age ended.’
‘That’s a relief,’ I replied.
‘How so?’
‘It means that we’ve got all our instructions. The Third Age was the Age of Prophecy. If it’s ended, it means that we’ve been told what’s going to happen and what to do about it. Nothing else is going to come along to confuse the issue. What’s going on in Mallorea that’s so interesting?’
He picked up his copy of the Mrin, referred to the concordance, and unrolled the scroll until he found the index mark he wanted. ‘The Darine simply says that one man will gain ascendancy over all Mallorea. Here’s what the Mrin says. “And it shall come to pass that children shall be exchanged in the kingdoms of the east, and one such child shall ascend the throne of one kingdom by marriage and shall achieve dominion over the other by threat of force. And he shall make one of that which was once two. And in the joining of the two shall the way be cleared for the EVENT which shall take place in the Lands of the Bull God.” That’s about as far as we’ve gotten so far.’
‘What’s that to do with anything?’ I demanded.
‘The one it’s talking about was a young Angarak named Kallath,’ Beldin explained, ‘and his name made a very loud noise in Mallorea. The Angaraks and the Melcenes had been stepping around each other rather carefully for a long time - the Angaraks have more manpower, but the Melcenes had elephant cavalry. Neither side wanted war. That exchange of children was a Melcene idea. It was supposed to promote greater understanding between the two races. When Kallath was about twelve or so, he was sent to the island of Melcena to grow up in the house of the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the emperor’s court. He got to know the daughter of the Melcene Emperor, and they got married. That technically made Kallath the heir to the Melcene throne. He was ambitious, and he was an Angarak, so the other candidates started having fatal accidents. He was also the youngest member of the Angarak General Staff at Mal Zeth, and the Governor General of the District of Delchin in eastern Mallorea Proper. He had a capital at Maga Renn, which just happened to be snuggled up against the Melcene border - and he already had a power base in Angarak territory. If anybody could unite all of Mallorea, it was Kallath.’
‘Evidently that’s what happened,’ Brand noted.
‘Excuse me,’ Prince Geran said politely. ‘What’s supposed to happen in Arendia?’
‘An EVENT, your Highness,’ Beltira told him.
‘What kind of event?’
‘The Mrin uses that word when it’s talking about a meeting between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark.’
‘A battle?’ The young Alorn’s eyes brightened.
‘Sometimes it is,’ I told him, ‘but not always. I was involved in one of those EVENTS, and there were only two people there.’
Polgara was busy in the kitchen area, but she was obviously not missing very much. ‘It’s peculiar that this Kallath came along so recently,’ she mused, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I don’t suppose it’s just a coincidence, is it?’
‘Not very likely, Pol,’ I said.
‘Excuse me again, please,’ Prince Geran said in that diffident, self-effacing tone. ‘If we’re coming up on one of those EVENTS you mentioned, wouldn’t Torak know about it, too?’
‘Inevitably,’ Beldin growled.
‘We can’t really surprise him then, can we?’
‘Not really,’ Beltira said. ‘We’re all more or less guided by our instructions.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ Geran said. ‘I don’t think that what happened to my family had anything to do with the Orb or where it is, or who’s taking care of it. This Kallath person was doing something that Torak wants to happen. He knows that we know about it - because of those prophecies. We’d have tried to stop Kallath, so Torak sent Zedar out to do something to distract us. You all ran off to Nyissa to punish Salmissra for killing my family, and that left Kallath - or whoever came after him - free to finish up the job that Torak needed to have done. Killing my family was a -’ He paused, groping for a word.
‘Diversion,’ Belkira supplied. ‘You know, Belgarath, I think this boy’s hit the nail right square on the head. We all know Zedar, and he knows us. He knew exactly how we’d react to the murder of Gorek and his family. Something crucial was going on in Mallorea, and you and Beldin and the Alorns were down in Nyissa when it happened. We were all looking one way, and Torak and his people were slipping something past us while our attention was distracted.’
Beldin swore. ‘It fits, Belgarath,’ he said to me. ‘It fits Torak, and it fits Zedar. How could we have been so stupid that we didn’t see it?’
‘Natural talent, I suppose,’ I replied glumly. ‘I think we’ve been had. Congratulations, Prince Geran. You came up with an answer we’d have pounded our heads on the wall for weeks to discover. How did you manage to pick it out so quickly?’
‘I can’t take any credit, grandfather,’ the boy replied modestly. ‘My tutors had started to teach me history before the Nyissans murdered my family. They were telling me about some of the things that used to happen in Tolnedra. As I understand it, the Vorduvians were very good at this sort of thing, and so were the Honeths.’
‘What a mind this boy has!’ Beltira marveled. ‘He put it all together in the blink of an eye!’
‘And we’ll have to protect that mind - and what’s going to come after it,’ Polgara said, with that steely glint coming into her eyes. ‘Zedar might have hoped that the assassination would extinguish the Rivan line, but the Ashabine Oracles obviously told Torak otherwise.’