The Seeress of Kell

crumbles before the encroaching waves. Garion's son looked upon his father with unquestioning trust and pride, and Garion took a certain comfort in that clear-eyed gaze.
    Cyradis was weeping. All else in Garion's mind was drawn from reflection and random impressions. The one incontrovertible fact, however, was that the Seeress of Kell was crushed by her grief. At this particular time she was the most important person in the universe, and perhaps it had always been so. It might very well be, Garion thought, that the world had been created for the one express purpose of bringing this frail girl to this place at this time to make this single Choice. But could she do that now? Might it not be that the death of her guide and protector the one person in all the world she had truly loved had rendered her incapable of making the Choice?
    Cyradis was weeping, and so long as she wept, the minutes ticked by. Garion saw now as clearly as if he were reading in that book of the heavens which guided the seers that the time of the meeting and of the Choice was not only this particular day, but would come in a specific instant of this day, and if Cyradis, bowed down by her unbearable grief, were unable to choose in that instant, all mat had been, all that was, and all that was yet to be would shimmer and vanish like an ephemeral dream. Her weeping must cease, or all would be forever lost.
    It began with a clear-toned single voice, a voice that rose and rose in elegiac sadness that contained within it the sum of human woe. Then other voices emerged singly or in trios or hi octets to join that aching song. The chorus of the group mind of the seers plumbed the depths of the grief of the Seeress of Kell and then sank in an unbearable diminuendo of blackest despair and faded off into a silence more profound than the silence of the grave.
    Cyradis was weeping, but she did not weep alone. Her entire race wept with her.
    That lone voice began again, and the melody was similar to the one that had just died away. To Garion's untrained ear, it seemed almost the same, but a subtle chord change had somehow taken place, and as the other voices joined in, more chords insinuated themselves into the song, and the grief and unutterable despair were questioned in the final notes.
    Yet once again the song began, not this time with a single voice but with a mighty chord that seemed to shake the very roots of heaven with its triumphant affirmation. The melody remained basically the same, but what had begun as a dirge was now an exultation.
    Cyradis gently laid Toth's hand on his motionless chest, smoothed his hair, and groped across his body to touch Durnik's tear-wet face consolingly.
    She rose, no longer weeping, and Garion's fears dissolved and faded as the morning fog that had obscured the reef had faded beneath the onslaught of the sun. "Go," she said in a resolute voice, pointing at the now-unguarded portal. "The time approaches. Go thou, Child of Light, and thou, Child of Dark, even into the grot, for we have choices to make which; once made, may never be unmade. Come ye with me, therefore, into the Place Which Is No More, there to decide the fate of all men." And with firm and unfaltering step, the Seeress of Kell led the way toward that portal surmounted by the stony image of the face of Torak.
    Garion found himself powerless in the grip of that clear voice and he fell in beside satin-robed Zandramas to follow the slender Seeress. He felt a faint brush against his armored right shoulder as he and the Child of Dark entered the portal. It was almost with a wry amusement that he realized that the forces controlling this meeting were not so entirely sure of themselves. They had placed a barrier between him and the Sorceress of Darshiva. Zandramas' unprotected throat lay quite easily within the reach of his vengeful hands, but the barrier made her as unassailable as if she had been on the far side of the moon. Faintly, he was aware that the others were coming up behind, his friends following him, and Geran and the violently trembling Otrath trailing after Zandramas.
    "This need not be so, Belgarion of Riva," Zandramas whispered urgently. "Will we, the two most powerful ones in all the universe, submit to the haphazard choice of this brain-sickly girl? Let us bestow our choices upon ourselves. Thus will we both become Gods. Easily will we be able to set aside UL and the others and rule all creation jointly." The swirling lights beneath the skin of her