Sorceress of Darshiva

flatly, "we go to Kell."
    "But we're right behind Zandramas," Garion objected.
    "And that's where we'll stay if we don't go to Kell," Beldin told him. "Behind her. Going to Kell is the only way we can get ahead of her."
    Belgarath had turned to the last page of the Oracles. "I think this is a personal message, Garion," he said in an awed sort of voice, holding out the book.
    "What?"
    "Torak wants to talk to you."
    "He can talk all he wants. I'm not going to listen to him. I almost made that mistake once—when he tried to tell me he was my father, remember?"
    "This is a little different. He's not lying this time."
    Garion took hold of the book, and a deathly chill seemed to run up through his hands and into his arms.
    "Read it," Belgarath said implacably.
    Compelled—driven, even—Garion lowered his eyes to the spidery script on the page before him. " 'Hail, Belgarion,' " he read aloud in a faltering voice. " 'If it should ever come to pass that thine eyes fall upon this, then it means that I have fallen beneath thy hand. I mourn that not. I will have cast myself into the crucible of destiny, and, if I have failed, so he it. Know that I hate thee, Belgarion. For hate's sake I will throw myself into the darkness. For hate's sake will I spit out my last breath at thee, my damned brother.’ " Garion's voice failed him. He could actually feel the maimed God's towering hatred reaching down to him through the eons. He now understood the full import of what had happened in the terrible City of Endless Night.
    "Keep reading," Belgarath told him. "There's more."
    "Grandfather, this is more than I can bear."
    "Read!" Belgarath's voice was like the crack of a whip. Helplessly, Garion again lifted the book. " 'Know that '; we are brothers, Belgarion, though our hate for each other may one day sunder the heavens. We are brothers in that we share a dreadful task. That thou art reading my words means that thou hast been my destroyer. Thus must I charge thee with the task. What is foretold in these pages is an abomination. Do not let it come to pass. Destroy the world. Destroy the universe if need be, but do not permit this to come to pass. In thy hand is now the fate of all that was; all that f is; and all that is yet to be. Hail, my hated brother, and farewell. We will meet—or have met—in the City of Endless Night, and there will our dispute be concluded. The task, however, still lies before us in the Place Which Is No More. One of us must go there to face the ultimate horror. Should it be thou, fail us not. Failing all else, thou must reave the life from thine only son, even as thou hath reft mine from me.' "
    The book fell from Garion's hands as his knees failed and he sank to the floor, weeping uncontrollably. He howled like a wolf in absolute despair and hammered at the floor with both his fists and with tears streaming openly down his face.

Part Two – PELDANE



CHAPTER NINE
    There was a man in a sea coat talking alone with Silk in the second floor sitting room when Garion, Belgarath, and Beldin returned. The man was stocky. He had silver-shot hair and beard and he wore a large gold earring in his left ear.
    "Ah, there you are," Silk said, looking up as the three them entered. The rat-faced little man had changed clothes and now wore plain doublet and hose of a nondescrip brown. "This is Captain Kadian. He's the one who took our friends to the mainland."
    He looked back at the boatman. "Why don't you tell them what you just told me?" he suggested.
    "If you want me to, your Highness," Kadian agreed. He had that rusty sort of voice seafaring men often have—the resultt of bad weather and strong drink, Garion surmised.
    He took a swallow from the silver tankard he was holding. "Well, sir," he began, "it was three days ago when it happened. I'd just come up from Bashad in Gandahar. It's down by the mouth of the Magan." He made a face. "It's an unhealthy sort of a place—all swamps and jungles. Anyhow, I'd carried a cargo of ivory up here for the Consortium, and we'd just off-loaded, so I was sort of looking around for a cargo. A ship doesn't make any money for her owner when she's tied up to a wharf, y'know. I went to a certain tavern I know of. The tavern keeper's an old friend of mine—we was shipmates when we was younger—and he sort of keeps his ear to the ground for me.
    "Well sir, I no sooner got there and set myself down, when my friend, he comes over to me and he asks me if I'd be interested in a short, easy