"You're very old, aren't you?" Garion asked as the thought occurred to him.
"That term doesn't have any meaning in my case."
"Older than my grandfather?" Garion persisted.
"I knew him when he was a child. It might make you feel better to know that he was even more stubborn than you are. It took me a very long time to get him started in the direction he was supposed to go."
"Did you do it from inside his mind?"
"Naturally."
Garion noted that his horse was walking obliviously through one of the filmy images that was taking shape in front of him. "Then he knows you, doesn't he - if you were in his mind, I mean?"
"He didn't know I was there."
"I've always known you were there."
"You're different. That's what we need to talk about."
Rather suddenly, a woman's head appeared in the air directly in front of Garion's face. The eyes were bulging, and the mouth was agape in a soundless scream. The ragged, hacked-off stump of its neck streamed blood that seemed to dribble off into nowhere. "Kiss me," it croaked at him. Garion closed his eyes as his face passed through the head.
"You see," the voice pointed out conversationally. "It's not as bad as you thought it was going to be."
"In what way am I different?" Garion wanted to know.
"Something needs to be done, and you're the one who's going to do it. All the others have just been in preparation for you."
"What is it exactly that I have to do?"
"You'll know when the time comes. If you find out too soon, it might frighten you." The voice took on a somewhat wry note. "You're difficult enough to manage without additional complications."
"Why are we talking about it then?"
"You need to know why you have to do it. That might help you when the time comes."
"All right," Garion agreed.
"A very long time ago, something happened that wasn't supposed to happen," the voice in his mind began. "The universe came into existence for a reason, and it was moving toward that purpose smoothly. Everything was happening the way it was supposed to happen, but then something went wrong. It wasn't really a very big thing, but it just happened to be in the right place at the right time - or perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time might be a better way to put it. Anyway, it changed the direction of events. Can you understand that?"
"I think so," Garion replied, frowning with the effort. "Is it like when you throw a rock at something but it bounces off something else instead and goes where you don't want it to go - like the time Doroon threw that rock at the crow and it hit a tree limb and bounced off and broke Faldor's window instead?"
"That's exactly it," the voice congratulated him. "Up to that point there had always been only one possibility - the original one. Now there were suddenly two. Let's take it one step further. If Doroon - or you had thrown another rock very quickly and hit the first rock before it got to Faldor's window, it's possible that the first rock might have been knocked back to hit the crow instead of the window."
"Maybe, " Garion conceded doubtfully. "Doroon wasn't really that good at throwing rocks."
"I'm much better at it than Doroon," the voice told him. "That's the whole reason I came into existence in the first place. In a very special way, you are the rock that I've thrown. If you hit the other rock just right, you'll turn it and make it go where it was originally intended to go.
"And if I don't?"
"Faldor's window gets broken."
The figure of a naked woman with her arms chopped off and a sword thrust through her body was suddenly in front of Garion. She shrieked and moaned at him, and the stumps of her arms spurted blood directly into his face. Garion reached up to wipe off the blood, but his face was dry. Unconcerned, his horse walked through the gibbering ghost.
"We have to get things back on the right course," the voice went on. "This certain thing you have to do is the key to the whole business. For a long time, what was supposed to happen and what was actually happening went off in different directions. Now they're starting to converge again. The point where they meet is the point where you'll have to act. If you succeed, things will be all right again; if you don't, everything will keep going wrong, and the purpose for which the universe came into existence will fail."
"How long ago was it when this started?"
"Before the world was made. Even before the Gods."
"Will I succeed?" Garion asked.
"I don't know," the voice replied. "I know what's supposed to happen - not what will. There's something else you need to know too. When this mistake occurred, it set off two separate lines of possibility, and a line of possibility has a kind of purpose. To have a purpose, there has to be awareness of that purpose. To put it rather simply, that's what I am - the awareness of the original purpose of the universe."
"Only now there's another one, too, isn't there?" Garion suggested. "Another awareness, I mean - one connected with the other set of possibilities."
"You're even brighter than I thought."
"And wouldn't it want things to keep going wrong?"
"I'm afraid so. Now we come to the important part. The spot in time where all this is going to be decided one way or another is getting very close, and you've got to be ready."
"Why me?" Garion asked, brushing away a disconnected hand that appeared to be trying to clutch at his throat. "Can't somebody else do it?"
"No," the voice told him. "That's not the way it works. The universe has been waiting for you for more millions of years than you could even imagine. You've been hurtling toward this event since before the beginning of time. It's yours alone. You're the only one who can do what needs to be done, and it's the most important thing that will ever happen - not just in this world but in all the worlds in all the universe. There are whole races of men on worlds so far away that the light from their suns will never reach this world, and they'll cease to exist if you fail. They'll never know you or thank you, but their entire existence depends on you. The other line of possibility leads to absolute chaos and the ultimate destruction of the universe, but you and I lead to something else."
"What?"
"If you're successful, you'll live to see it happen."
"All right," Garion said. "What do I have to do - now, I mean?"