The Seeress of Kell

determine, this is the first one and probably the last of its kind."
    "I think you're wrong, friend," Captain Kresca disagreed. "There's nothing new in the way of weather in the world. It's all happened before."
    "Just let it lie," Belgarath said quietly to Beldin. "He's a Melcene. He's not really prepared for this sort of thing."
    "All right," the captain said, pushing their soup bowls out of the way and laying his charts on the table. "We're here." He pointed. "Now, which part of the reef was it you propose to land on?"
    "The highest pinnacle," Belgarath told him.
    Kresca sighed. "I might have known," he said. "That's the one part of the reef where my charts aren't too accurate. About the time I got to taking soundings around that one, a squall came out of nowhere, and I had to back off." He thought about it. "No matter," he decided. "We'll stand a half mile or so offshore and go in with the longboat. There's something you ought to know about that part of the reef, though."
    "Oh?" Belgarath said.
    "I think there are some people there."
    "I sort of doubt it."
    "I don't really know of any other creature that builds fires, do you? There's a cave on the north side of that pinnacle, and sailors have been seeing the light of fires coming out of the mouth of it for years now. It's my guess that there's a band of pirates living in there. It wouldn't be all that hard for them to come out in small boats on dark nights and waylay merchantmen in the straits on the landward side of the reef."
    “Can you see the fire from where we are right now?” Garion asked him.
    “I 'd guess so. Let's go topside and have a look.”
    The ladies, Sadi, and Toth remained in the cabin, and Garion and his other friends followed Captain Kresca up the companionway to the deck. The wind, which had been howling through the rigging when the sailors had dropped anchor, had fallen off, and the surf along the reef was no longer frothy.
    "There," Kresca said, pointing. "It's not quite as visible from this angle, but you can make it out. When you're standing out to sea from the cave mouth, it's really bright."
    Dimly, Garion could see a sooty red glow a short way up the side of a bulky-looking peak jutting up out of the sea. The other rocks that formed the reef appeared to be little more than slender spires, but the central peak had a different shape. For some reason, it reminded Garion of the truncated mountain that was the site of far-off Prolgu in Ulgoland.
    "Nobody's ever explained to my satisfaction how the top of that mountain got sliced off like that," Kresca said.
    "It's probably a very long story," Silk told him. The little man shivered. "It's still a little chilly out here," he noted. "Why don't we go below again?"
    Garion fell back to walk beside Belgarath. "What's making that light, Grandfather?" he asked quietly.
    "I'm not entirely sure," Belgarath replied, "but I think it might be the Sardion. We know it's in that cave."
    "We do?"
    "Of course we do. At the time of the meeting, the Orb and the Sardion have to come into each other's presence in the same way you and Zandramas do. That Melcene scholar who stole the Sardion the one Senji told us about sailed around the southern tip of Gandahar and disappeared into these waters. That was all too convenient to be mere coincidence. The Sardion was controlling the scholar, and the scholar delivered the stone to the precise place it wanted to go. It's probably been waiting for us in that cave for about five hundred years."
    Garion looked back over his shoulder. The hilt of his sword was covered by the leather sleeve, but he was still fairly certain that he'd be able to see the muted glow of the Orb. "Doesn't the Orb usually react to the presence of the Sardion?" he asked.
    "We may not be close enough yet, and we're still at sea. Open water confuses the Orb. Then, too, maybe it's trying to conceal itself from the Sardion.”
    “Could it actually think its way through that complex an idea? It's usually fairly childish, I’ve noticed."
    "Don't underestimate it, Garion."
    "Everything's fitting together, then, isn't it?"
    "It all has to, Garion. Otherwise what's going to happen tomorrow couldn't happen."
    "Well, father?" Polgara asked as they reentered the cabin.
    "There's a fire of some kind in that cave, all right," he told her. His fingers, however, were telling her something else. We'll talk about it in more detail after the captain leaves. He turned toward Kresca. "When's the next low tide?" he