The Seeress of Kell

Cralto and even Brill. He saw Doroon and Rundorig and, last, Zubrette blond and pretty and artfully deceitful. A vast kind of calm came over him, not unlike the calm that had engulfed him when he had stood in the tomb of the one-eyed God in the City of Endless Night so long ago.
    “That’s better,” the voice said. “Try to hold on to that. You 're going to have to think very clearly in the next few days and you can't do that with your mind racing every which way. You can fly to pieces after it's all over.”
    "That's if I'm still around. "
    "We can hope." Then the voice was gone.
    The guards at the king's door admitted them, and the king went directly to a cabinet, unlocked it, and removed a roll of ancient, crackling parchment. "It is much faded, I do fear me," he said. "We have tried to protect it from the light, but it is very old." He went to a table and carefully unrolled the chart, weighting down the comers with books. Once again Garion felt the tense excitement as he held back slightly, reaching back into his memories of Faldor's farm to steady himself.
    The King of Perivor pointed with his finger. "Here lieth Perivor," he told them, "and here doth lie the reef of Korim."
    Garion knew that if he looked too long at that fateful spot on the map, the wild excitement and sense of triumph would return, so he merely glanced at it, then let his eyes rove over the rest of the map. The spellings were strangely archaic. His eyes automatically sought his own kingdom. "Ryva" it was spelled. There were also "Aryndia," "Kherech," and "Tol Nydra" as well as "Draksnya" and "Chthall Margose."
    "It's misspelled," Zakath noted. "The proper name is the Kurim reef."
    Beldin began to explain, but Garion already knew the answer. “Things change," the dwarf said, "and among those things are the way we say certain words. The sounds of words shift over the centuries. The name of that reef has probably changed several times over the last few thousand years. It's a common phenomenon. If Belgarath were to speak in the language the people spoke in the village where he grew up, for example, none of us would be able to understand him. I'd guess that for a time the reef was called Korim or something like that, and it finally settled into Kurim. It may change again a few times. I’ve made a study of that sort of thing. You see, what happens is that "
    "Will you get on with it?" Belgarath demanded in exasperation.
    "Aren't you interested in expanding your education?"
    "Not at the moment, no."
    Beldin sighed. "Anyway," he continued, "what we call writing is just a way to reproduce the sound of a word. As the sound changes, so does the spelling. The difference is easily explained."
    "Thine answer to the question was cogent, gentle Beldin," Cyradis said, "but in this particular case, the change of the sound was imposed."
    "Imposed?" Silk said, "by who whom?"
    "It was the two prophecies, Prince Kheldar. In furtherance of their game, they altered the sound of the word to conceal the location from Ancient Belgarath and from Zandramas. These two were both required to solve the riddle ere the final meeting could take place."
    "Game?" Silk asked incredulously. "They were playing games with something this important?"
    "These two eternal awarenesses are not as we, Prince Kheldar. They contend with each other in myriad ways. Ofttimes, one will attempt to alter the course of a star, while the other strives to hold it in place. At other times, one will attempt to move a grain of sand while the other exerts all its energy to keep the grain motionless. Such struggles ofttimes consume whole eons. The riddle game they have played with Belgarath and Zandramas is but another of the ways they have used to formalize their contention, for should it ever come to pass that they confront each other directly, they would rend the universe apart."
    Garion suddenly remembered an image that had come to him in the throne room at Vo Mimbre just before he had exposed the Murgo Nachak to King Korodullin. He had seemed to see two faceless players seated at a game where the moves had been so complex that his mind could not follow them. With absolute certainty now he saw that he had caught a momentary glimpse of the higher reality Cyradis had just described. "Did you do that on purpose?" he asked the voice in his mind.
    "Naturally. You needed a bit of encouragement to get you to do something that was necessary. You 're a competitive sort of boy, so I thought the image of the