The Seeress of Kell

limbs and snow down silvery hair upon thy raven locks."
    "Eld?" Mandorallen protested.
    "I'm only teasing, Mandorallen." She laughed. "Put away your sword. No one else wants to play with you today."
    They bade farewell to Mandorallen, Lelldorin, and Relg, who intended to return to Taiba and their children in Maragor from Vo Mimbre.
    "Mandorallen!" King Anheg bellowed as they rode away from the city. "When winter gets here, come up to Val Alorn, and we'll take Barak and go boar-hunting."
    "I surely will, your Majesty," Mandorallen promised from the battlements.
    "I like that man," Anheg said expansively.
    They took ship again and sailed north to the city of Sendar to advise King Fulrach of the Accords of Dal Perivor. Silk and Velvet were to sail north on Seabird with Barak and Anheg, and the rest of them planned a leisurely ride across the mountains to Algaria and from thence down into the Vale.
    The farewells at wharfside were brief, in part because they would all see each other again shortly, and in part because none of them wanted to appear overemotional. Garion took his leave of Silk and Barak in particular with a great deal of reluctance. The two oddly matched men had been his companions for more than half his life, and the prospect of being separated from them caused him an obscure kind of pain. The earthshaking adventures were over now, and things would not ever really be the same.
    "Do you think you can stay out of trouble now?" Barak asked him gruffly, obviously feeling the same way. "It upsets Merel when she wakes up in the morning to find that she's been sharing her bed with a bear.”
    "I'll do my best," Garion promised.
    "Do you remember what I told you that time just outside Winold when it was so frosty that morning?" Silk asked.
    Garion frowned, trying to remember.
    "I said that we were living in momentous times, and that now was the time to be alive to share in those events."
    "Oh, yes, now I remember."
    “I’ve had some time to think about it, and I believe I'd like to reconsider." Silk grinned suddenly, and Garion knew that the little man did not mean one word he said.
    "We'll see you at the Alorn Council later this summer, Garion," Anheg shouted across the rail as Seabird prepared to depart. "It's at your place this year. Maybe if we work on it, we can teach you to sing properly."
    They left the city of Sendar early the next morning and took the high road to Muros. Although it was not, strictly speaking, necessary, Garion had decided to see his friends all home. The gradual eroding of their company as they had sailed north had been depressing, and Garion was not quite ready yet to be separated from all of them.
    They rode across Sendaria in late-spring sunshine, crossed the mountains into Algaria, and reached the Stronghold a week or so later. King Cho-Hag was overjoyed at the outcome of the meeting at Korim, and startled at the results of the impromptu conference at Dal Perivor. Because Cho-Hag was far more stable than the brilliant but sometimes erratic Anheg, Belgarath and Garion went into somewhat greater detail about the astonishing elevation of Eriond.
    “He always was a strange boy,” Cho-Hag mused in his deep, quiet voice when they had finished, "but then, this entire series of events had been strange. We’ve been privileged to live in important times, my friends."
    "We have indeed," Belgarath agreed. "Let's hope that things quiet down now for a while, at least."
    “Father," Hettar said then, ”King Urgit of the Murgos asked me to convey his appreciation to you."
    "You met the Murgo King? And we're not at war?" Cho-Hag was amazed.
    "Urgit's not like any other Murgo you’ve ever met, Father," Hettar told him. "He wanted to thank you for killing Taur Urgas."
    "That's a novel sentiment coming from a son."
    Garion explained Urgit's peculiar background, and the normally reserved King of Algaria burst out in peal after peal of laughter. "I knew Prince Kheldar's father," he said. "That's exactly the kind of thing he would have done."
    The ladies were gathered about Geran and about Adara's growing brood of children. Garion's cousin was at the ungainly stage of her pregnancy, and she sat most of the time now with a dreamy smile on her face as she listened to the inexorable changes nature was imposing on her body. The revelation of the dual pregnancies of Ce'Nedra and Polgara filled Adara and Queen Silar with wonder, and Poledra sat among them, smiling mysteriously. Poledra, Garion was sure,