Guardians of the West

gone even farther had the stream not been in his way. And even that conclusion to the ride was fairly exciting, since the bank of the stream was several feet high and Errand and his sled sailed out over the dark water in a long, graceful arc which ended abruptly in a spectacular, icy splash.
    Polgara spoke to him at some length when he arrived home, shivering and with ice beginning to form up on his clothing and in his hair. Polgara, he noticed, tended to overdramatize things -particularly when an opportunity presented itself for her to speak to someone about his shortcomings. She took one long look at him and immediately fetched a vile-tasting medicine, which she spooned into him liberally. Then she began to pull off his frozen clothing, commenting extensively as she did so. She had an excellent speaking voice and a fine command of language. Her intonations and inflections added whole volumes of meaning to her commentary. On the whole, however, Errand would have preferred a shorter, somewhat less exhaustive discussion of his most recent misadventure -particularly in view of the fact that Belgarath and Durnik were both trying without much success to conceal broad grins as Polgara spoke to him while simultaneously rubbing him down with a large, rough towel.
    "Well," Durnik observed, "at least he won't need a bath this week."
    Polgara stopped drying the boy and slowly turned to gaze at her husband. There was nothing really threatening in her expression, but her eyes were frosty. "You said something?" she asked him.
    "Uh-no, dear," he hastily assured her. "Not really." He looked at Belgarath a bit uncomfortably, then he rose to his feet. "Perhaps I'd better bring in some firewood," he said.
    One of Polgara's eyebrows went up, and her gaze moved on to her father. "Well?" she said.
    He blinked, his face a study in total innocence.
    Her expression did not change, but the silence became ominous, oppressive.
    "Why don't I give you a hand, Durnik?" the old man suggested finally, also getting up. Then the two of them went outside, leaving Errand alone with Polgara.
    She turned back to him. "You slid all the way down the hill," she asked quite calmly, "and clear across the meadow?"
    He nodded.
    "And then through the woods?"
    He nodded again.
    "And then off the bank and into the stream?"
    "Yes, ma'am," he admitted.
    "I don't suppose it occurred to you to roll off the sled before it went over the edge and into the water?"
    Errand was not really a very talkative boy, but he felt that his position in this affair needed a bit of explanation. "Well," he began, "I didn't really think of rolling off -but I don't think I would have, even if I had thought of it."
    "I'm sure there's an explanation for that."
    He looked at her earnestly. "Everything had gone so splendidly up until then that -well, it just wouldn't have seemed right to get off just because a few things started to go wrong."
    There was a long pause. "I see," she said at last, her expression grave. "Then it was in the nature of a moral decision -this riding the sled all the way into the stream?"
    "I suppose you might say that, yes."
    She looked at him steadily for a moment and then slowly sank her face into her hands. "I'm not entirely certain that I have the strength to go through all of this again," she said in a tragic voice.
    "Through what?" he asked, slightly alarmed.
    "Raising Garion was almost more than I could bear," she replied, "but not even he could have come up with a more illogical reason for doing something." Then she looked at him, laughed fondly, and put her arms. about him. "Oh, Errand," she said, pulling him tightly to her, and everything was all right again.

CHAPTER TWO
    Belgarath the Sorcerer was a man with many flaws in his character. He had never been fond of physical labor and he was perhaps a bit too fond of dark brown ale. He was occasionally careless about the truth and had a certain grand indifference to some of the finer points of property ownership. The company of ladies of questionable reputation did not particularly offend his sensibilities, and his choice of language very frequently left much to be desired.
    Polgara the Sorceress was a woman of almost inhuman determination and she had spent several thousand years trying to reform her vagrant father, but without much notable success. She persevered, however, in the face of overwhelming odds. Down through the centuries she had fought a valiant rearguard action against his bad habits. She had