Guardians of the West

"I suppose you're right."

"Have you been studying?"

Garion sat up quickly. "I'm glad you brought that up. Things have been so hectic that something sort of important had almost slipped my mind.

"Oh?"

"How careful were people when they made copies of those prophecies?"

Belgarath shrugged. "Fairly careful, I suppose. Why do you ask?"

"I think that something got left out of my copy of the Mrin Codex."

"What makes you think so?"

"There's a passage in there that just doesn't make sense."

"Maybe not to you, but you haven't been studying all that long."

"That's not what I mean, Grandfather. I'm not talking about an obscure meaning. When I'm getting at is a sentence that starts out and then just stops without going anywhere. I mean, it doesn't have any ending the way it should."

"You're concerned about grammar?"

Garion scratched at his head. "It's the only passage I found in there that breaks off that way. It goes, 'But behold, the stone which lies at the center of the light shall- ' And then there's a blot, and it takes up again with '-and this meeting will come to pass in a place which is no more, and there will the choice be made.' "

Belgarath frowned. "I think I know the passage," he said.

"The two just don't fit together, Grandfather. The first part is talking about the Orb -at least that's the way I read it- and the second part is talking about a meeting. I don't know what word is under that blot, but I can't for the life of me figure out how the two parts could be hooked together. I think there's something missing. That's why I was asking about how they went about copying these things. Could the scribe who was doing it have skipped a couple of lines?"

"I don't think so, Garion," Belgarath said. "The new copy is always compared with the old one by somebody other than the scribe. We are fairly careful about things like that."

"Then what's under the blot?"

Belgarath scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I can't quite recall," he admitted. "Anheg's here. Maybe he remembers -or you can ask him to transcribe that part from his copy and send it to you when he gets back to Val Alorn."

"That's a good idea."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Garion. It's only part of one passage, after all."

"There are a lot of things in there that are only one passage, Grandfather, and they turned out to be sort of important."

"If it bothers you so much, chase it down. That's a good way to learn."

"Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"

"I have other things on my mind. You're the one who found this discrepancy, so I'll give you all the glory of exposing it to the world and working out the solution."

"You're not being very much help, Grandfather."

Belgarath grinned at him. "I'm not really trying to be, Garion. You're grown up enough now to solve your own problems." He looked over at the decanter. "I believe I'll have just another little touch of that," he said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

" . . . And they shall number twelve, for twelve is a number which is pleasing to the Gods. I know this to be true, for a raven once came to me in a dream and told me so. I have always loved the number twelve, and it is for this reason that the Gods have chosen me to reveal this truth to all the nations. . . ."Garion scowled at the musty-smelling book. There had been some hope in the earlier pages -some obscure references to Light and Dark and a tantalizing fragment which had stated quite clearly that, "The holiest of things will always be the color of the sky, save only when it perceives great evil, and then will it burn hot with scarlet flame." When he had found that passage, he had read on avidly, convinced that he had stumbled across a genuine and hitherto undiscovered prophecy. The rest of the book, unfortunately, proved to be absolute gibberish. The brief biographical note at the beginning of the book indicated that its author had been a Drasnian merchant of some substance during the third millennium and that these secret jottings had been found only after his death. Garion wondered how a man with so disturbed a mind could have even functioned in a normal society.

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."