Guardians of the West

and pathetic beans. She clenched her teeth tightly together to keep in certain words and phrases which she knew might shock her strait-laced and proper husband.
    She raised her face to the sky and lifted her arms in supplication. "Why me?" she demanded in a loud, tragic voice. "Why me?"
    "Why, dear," Durnik said mildly, "whatever is wrong?"
    Polgara told him what was wrong -at some length.
    Durnik spent the next week putting in an irrigation system leading from the upper end of their valley to Polgara's garden, and she forgave him for his mistake almost as soon as he had finished it.
    The winter came late that year, and autumn lingered in the Vale. The twins, Beltira and Belkira, came by just before the snows set in and told them that, after several weeks of discussion, both Belgarath and Beldin had left the Vale, and that each of them had gone away with that serious expression on his face that meant that there was trouble somewhere.
    Errand missed Belgarath's company that winter. To be sure, the old sorcerer had, more often than not, managed to get him in trouble with Polgara, but Errand felt somehow that he shouldn't really be expected to devote every waking moment to staying out of trouble. When the snow came, he took up sledding again. After she had watched him come flying down the hill and across the meadow a few times, Polgara prudently asked Durnik to erect a barrier at the stream bank to prevent a recurrence of the previous winter's mishap. It was while the smith was erecting a woven wattle fence to keep Errand on dry land that he happened to glance down into the water. Because the often muddy little rills that emptied into their stream were all locked in ice now, the water was low and as clear as crystal. Durnik could very clearly see the long, narrow shapes hovering like shadows in the current above the beds of gravel that formed the bottom.
    "What a curious thing," he murmured, his eyes taking on that peculiarly abstracted look. "I've never noticed them there before."
    "I've seen them jumping," Errand said. "But most of the time, the water's too cloudy to see them when they're lying underwater."
    "I imagine that's the reason for it, all right," Durnik agreed. He tied the end of the wattle fence to a tree and thoughtfully walked through the snow toward the shed he had built at the back of the cottage. A moment or so later he emerged with the skein of waxed cord in his hand; five minutes later he was fishing. Errand smiled and turned to trudge back up the long hill, towing his sled behind him. When he reached the top of the hill, a strange, hooded young woman awaited him.
    "Can I help you?" he asked politely.
    The young woman pushed back her hood to reveal the fact that a dark cloth was tightly bound across her eyes. "Thou art the one they call Errand?" she asked. Her voice was low and musical, and there was a peculiar lilt to her archaic speech.
    "Yes," Errand replied, "I am. Did you hurt your eyes?"
    "Nay, gentle child," she replied. "I must needs look upon the world by a light other than that of the mundane sun."
    "Would you like to come down to our cottage?" Errand asked her. "You could warm yourself by our fire, and Polgara would welcome company."
    "Though I revere the Lady Polgara, the time has not yet arrived for us to meet," the young woman said, "and it is not cold where I am." She paused and bent forward slightly as if she were in fact peering at him, though the cloth over her eyes was quite thick. "It is true, then," she murmured softly. "We could not be certain at such great distance, but now that I am face to face with thee, I know that there can be no mistake." She straightened then. "We will meet again," she told him.
    "As you wish, ma'am," Errand replied, remembering his manners.
    She smiled, and her smile was so radiant that it seemed almost to bring sunlight to the murky winter afternoon. "I am Cyradis," she said, "and I bear thee friendship, gentle Errand, even though the time may come when I must needs decide against thee." And then she vanished, disappearing so suddenly that she was there and then gone in the space of a single heartbeat.
    Startled a bit, Errand glanced at the snow where she had stood and saw that there were no marks or footprints. He sat down on his sled to think about it. Nothing that the strange young woman had said really seemed to make much sense, but he was fairly sure that a time would come when it would. After a bit of thought, he concluded that this peculiar