Guardians of the West

celebration went on for weeks. There were banquets and formal presentations of gifts, both by the visitors and by the ambassadors of various friendly kingdoms. And, of course, there were hours of reminiscences and a fair amount of serious drinking. Ce'Nedra was in her glory, since she and her infant son were the absolute center of attention. Garion found that the festivities, coupled with his normal duties, left him almost no free time at all. He wished that he could find an hour or two to talk with Barak, Hettar, Mandorallen, and Lelldorin; but no matter how he tried to rearrange his days, the time simply was not there.
    Very late one evening, however, Belgarath came looking for him. Garion looked up from a report he had been reading as the old sorcerer entered his study. "I thought we might want to talk for a bit," the old man said.
    Garion tossed aside the report. "I haven't meant to neglect you, Grandfather," he apologized, "but they're keeping my days pretty well filled up."
    Belgarath shrugged. "Things are bound to settle down in a while. Did I ever get around to congratulating you?"
    "I think so."
    "Good. That's taken care of, then. People always make such a fuss about babies. I don't really care that much for them myself. They're all squally and wet, most of the time, and it's almost impossible to talk to them. You don't mind if I help myself, do you?" He pointed at a crystal decanter of pale wine standing on a table.
    "No. Go ahead."
    "You want some?"
    "No thanks, Grandfather."
    Belgarath poured himself a goblet of wine and then settled down in a chair across from Garion's. "How's the king business?" he asked.
    "Tedious," Garion replied ruefully.
    "Actually, that's not a bad thing, you know. When it gets exciting, that usually means that something pretty awful is happening."
    "I suppose you're right."
    "Have you been studying?"
    Garion sat up quickly. "I'm glad you brought that up. Things have been so hectic that something sort of important had almost slipped my mind.
    "Oh?"
    "How careful were people when they made copies of those prophecies?"
    Belgarath shrugged. "Fairly careful, I suppose. Why do you ask?"
    "I think that something got left out of my copy of the Mrin Codex."
    "What makes you think so?"
    "There's a passage in there that just doesn't make sense."
    "Maybe not to you, but you haven't been studying all that long."
    "That's not what I mean, Grandfather. I'm not talking about an obscure meaning. When I'm getting at is a sentence that starts out and then just stops without going anywhere. I mean, it doesn't have any ending the way it should."
    "You're concerned about grammar?"
    Garion scratched at his head. "It's the only passage I found in there that breaks off that way. It goes, 'But behold, the stone which lies at the center of the light shall- ' And then there's a blot, and it takes up again with '-and this meeting will come to pass in a place which is no more, and there will the choice be made.' "
    Belgarath frowned. "I think I know the passage," he said.
    "The two just don't fit together, Grandfather. The first part is talking about the Orb -at least that's the way I read it- and the second part is talking about a meeting. I don't know what word is under that blot, but I can't for the life of me figure out how the two parts could be hooked together. I think there's something missing. That's why I was asking about how they went about copying these things. Could the scribe who was doing it have skipped a couple of lines?"
    "I don't think so, Garion," Belgarath said. "The new copy is always compared with the old one by somebody other than the scribe. We are fairly careful about things like that."
    "Then what's under the blot?"
    Belgarath scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I can't quite recall," he admitted. "Anheg's here. Maybe he remembers -or you can ask him to transcribe that part from his copy and send it to you when he gets back to Val Alorn."
    "That's a good idea."
    "I wouldn't worry too much about it, Garion. It's only part of one passage, after all."
    "There are a lot of things in there that are only one passage, Grandfather, and they turned out to be sort of important."
    "If it bothers you so much, chase it down. That's a good way to learn."
    "Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"
    "I have other things on my mind. You're the one who found this discrepancy, so I'll give you all the glory of exposing it to the world and working out the solution."
    "You're not being very much help,