King of the Murgos

"Excuse me," Belgarath said to him, "but could you direct us to the library?"

"What?" The man looked up, blinking.

"The library, good sir," Belgarath repeated. "Which way is it?"

"Oh," the scholar said. "It's over there someplace." He gestured vaguely.

"Do you suppose you could be a bit more precise?"

The scholar gave the shabbily dressed old man an offended look. "Ask one of the porters," he said brusquely. "I'm busy. I've been working on a problem for twenty years now and I've almost found the solution."

"Oh? Which problem is that?"

"I doubt that it would be of much interest to an uneducated mendicant," the scholar replied loftily, "but if you really must know, I've been trying to calculate the exact weight of the world."

"Is that all? And it's taken you twenty years?" Belgarath's face was astonished. "I solved that problem a long time ago—in about a week."

The scholar stared at him, his face going dead white. "That's impossible!" he exclaimed. "I'm the only man in the world who's looking into it. No one has ever asked the question before."

Belgarath laughed. "I'm sorry, learned scholar, but it's been asked several times already. The best solution I ever saw was by a man named Talgin—at the University of Melcene, I think. It was during the second millennium. There should be a copy of his calculations in your library."

The scholar began to tremble violently, and his eyes bulged. Without a word he spun on his heel and dashed across the lawn with the skirts of his robe flapping behind him.

"Keep an eye on him, Garion," Belgarath said calmly. "The building he runs to should be the library."

"Just how much does the world weigh?" Garion asked curiously.

"How should I know?" Belgarath replied. "No sane man would even be curious about it."

"But what about this Talgin you mentioned—the one who wrote the solution?"

"Talgin? Oh, there's no such person. I just made him up."

Garion stared at him. "That's a dreadful thing to do, Grandfather," he accused. "You've just destroyed a man's entire life work with a lie."

"But it did get him to lead us to the library," the old man said slyly. "Besides, maybe now he'll turn his attention to something a bit more meaningful. The library's in that building with the tower. He just ran up the steps. Shall we go?"

There was a marble rotunda just inside the main entrance to the library, and in the precise center of that rotunda stood a high, ornately carved desk. A bald, skinny man sat behind the desk laboriously copying from a huge book. For some reason the man looked familiar to Garion, and he frowned as they approached the desk, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

"May I help you?" the skinny man asked, looking up from his copying as Belgarath stopped in front of his desk.

"Possibly so. I'm looking for a copy of the Prophecies of the Western Grolims."

The skinny man frowned, scratching at one ear. "That would be in the comparative theology section," he mused. "Could you hazard a guess as to the date of composition?"

Belgarath also frowned, staring up into the vault of the rotunda as he considered it. "My guess would be early third millennium," he said finally.

"That would put it at the time of either the second Honethite Dynasty or the second Vorduvian," the scholar said. "We shouldn't have too much trouble finding it." He rose to his feet. "It's this way," he said, pointing toward one of the hallways fanning out from the rotunda. "If you'll follow me, please."

Garion still felt the nagging certainty that he knew this polite, helpful scholar. The man certainly had better manners than the pompous, self-important world-weigher they had met outside, and—Then it came to him. "Master Jeebers?" he said incredulously, "is that you?"

"Have we met before, sir?" Jeebers asked politely, looking at Garion with a puzzled squint.

Garion grinned broadly. "We have indeed, Master Jeebers. You introduced me to my wife."

"I don't seem to recall—"

"Oh, I think you do. You crept out of the palace with her one night and rode south toward Tol Borune. Along the way, you joined a party of merchants. You left rather suddenly when my wife told you that leaving Tol Honeth was her idea instead of Ran Borune's."

Jeebers blinked and then his eyes widened. "Your Majesty," he said with a bow. "Forgive me for not recognizing you at once. My eyes aren't what they once were." Garion laughed, clapping him on the shoulder in delight. "That's quite all right, Jeebers," he said. "I'm not going about announcing who I am on this trip."

"And how is little Ce'Nedra—Uh, her Majesty, that is?"

Garion was about to tell his wife's former tutor about the abduction of their son, but Belgarath gave him a discreet nudge. "Uh—fine, just fine," he said instead.

"I'm so glad to hear it," Jeebers said with a fond smile. "She was an absolutely impossible student, but strangely I find that much of the fun went out of my life after she and I parted company. I was delighted to hear of her fortuitous marriage and not nearly as surprised as my colleagues here when we heard that she had raised an army and marched on Thull Mardu. She always was a fiery little thing—and brilliant." He gave Garion a rather apologetic look. "To be honest, though, I have to tell you that she was an erratic and undisciplined student."

"I've noticed those qualities in her from time to time."

Jeebers laughed. "I'm sure you have, your Majesty," he said. "Please convey my regards to her—" He hesitated, "And if you don't think it's presumptuous—my affection as well."

"I will, Jeebers," Garion promised. "I will."

"This is the comparative theology section of our library," the bald scholar said, pushing open a heavy door. "All the items are catalogued and stored by Dynasty. The antiquity sections are back this way." He led them along a narrow aisle between tall book racks filled with leather-bound volumes and tightly rolled scrolls. The skinny man paused once and rubbed his finger along one of the shelves. "Dust," he sniffed disapprovingly. "I expect I'd better speak sharply to the custodians about that."

"It's the nature of books to collect dust," Belgarath said.

"And it's the nature of custodians to avoid doing anything about it," Jeebers added with a wry smile. "Ah, here we are." He stopped in the center of a somewhat broader aisle where the books showed marked signs of extreme age. "Please be gentle with them," he said, touching the backs of the volumes with an odd kind of affection. "They're old and brittle. The works written during the Second Honethite Dynasty are on this side, and those dating back to the Second Vordue Dynasty are over here. They're further broken down into kingdom of origin, so it shouldn't be hard for you to locate the one you want. Now, if you'll excuse me, I shouldn't stay away from my desk for too long. Some of my colleagues get impatient and start rooting through the shelves on their own. It takes weeks sometimes to get things put right again."