Guardians of the West

already charging, Grandfather. I didn't have a lot of time to consider alternatives."
    "Haven't I told you again and again that we don't tamper with the weather?"
    "Well -it was sort of an emergency."
    "If you thought that was an emergency, you should have seen the blizzard you touched off in the Vale with your foolishness -and the hurricanes it spawned in the Sea of the East- not to mention the droughts and tornadoes you kicked up all over the world. Don't you have any sense of responsibility at all?"
    "I didn't know it was going to do that." Garion was aghast.
    "Boy, it's your business to know!" Belgarath suddenly roared at him, his face mottled with rage. "It's taken Beldin and me six months of constant travel and the Gods only know how much effort to quiet things down. Do you realize that with that one thoughtless storm of yours you came very close to changing the weather patterns of the entire globe? And that change would have been a universal disaster!"
    "One tiny little storm?"
    "Yes, one tiny little storm," Belgarath said scathingly. "Your one tiny little storm in the right place at the right time came very close to altering the weather for the next several eons -all over the world- you blockhead!"
    "Grandfather," Garion protested.
    "Do you know what the term ice age means?"
    Garion shook his head, his face blank.
    "It's a time when the average temperature drops -just a bit. In the extreme north, that means that the snow doesn't melt in the summer. It keeps piling up, year after year. It forms glaciers, and the glaciers start to move farther and farther south. In just a few centuries, that little display of yours could have had a wall of ice two hundred feet high moving down across the moors of Drasnia. You'd have buried Boktor and Val Alorn under solid ice, you idiot. Is that what you wanted?"
    "Of course not. Grandfather, I honestly didn't know. I wouldn't have started it if I'd known."
    "That would have been a great comfort to the millions of people you very nearly entombed in ice," Belgarath retorted with a vast sarcasm. "Don't ever do that again! Don't even think about putting your hands on something until you're absolutely certain you know everything there is to know about it. Even then, it's best not to gamble."
    "But -but- you and Aunt Pol called down the rainstorm in the Wood of the Dryads," Garion pointed out defensively.
    "We knew what we were doing," Belgarath almost screamed. "There was no danger there." With an enormous effort, the old man got control of himself. "Don't ever touch the weather again, Garion -not until you've had at least a thousand years of study."
    "A thousand years!"
    "At least. In your case, maybe two thousand. You seem to have this extraordinary luck. You always manage to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
    "I won't do it again, Grandfather," Garion promised fervently, shuddering at the thought of towering ice walls creeping inexorably across the world.
    Belgarath gave him a long, hard look and then let the matter drop. Later, when he had regained his composure, he lounged in a chair by the fire with a tankard of ale in one hand. Garion knew his Grandfather well enough to be aware of the fact that ale mellowed the old man's disposition and he had prudently sent for some as soon as the initial explosion had subsided. "How are your studies going, boy?" the old sorcerer asked.
    "I've been a little pressed for time lately, Grandfather," Garion replied guiltily.
    Belgarath gave him a long, cold stare, and Garion could clearly see the mottling on his neck that indicated that the old man's interior temperature was rising again.
    "I'm sorry Grandfather," he apologized quickly. "From now on, I'll make the time to study."
    Belgarath's eyes widened slightly. "Don't do that," he said quickly. "You got into enough trouble fooling around with the weather. If you start in on time, not even the Gods could predict the outcome."
    "I didn't exactly mean it that way, Grandfather."
    "Say what you mean, then. This isn't a good area for misunderstandings, you know." He turned his attention then to Errand. "What are you doing here, boy?" he asked.
    "Durnik and Polgara are here," Errand replied. "They thought I ought to come along."
    "Polgara's here?" Belgarath seemed surprised.
    "I asked her to come," Garion told him. "There's a little bit of a problem she's fixing for me -at least I think she's fixing it. She's been acting sort of mysterious."
    "She overdramatizes things sometimes. Exactly