The Seeress of Kell

by David Eddings

  ‘I suppose we should have known,’ Silk sighed. ‘Once – just once – I’d like to see one of these stupendous events happen in good weather.’

  Garion fully understood what lay behind the apparently light-hearted banter. None of them approached tomorrow without a certain apprehension. The pronouncement Cyradis had made at Rheon that one of them would not survive the meeting lay heavily on each of their minds, and in the fashion as old as man himself, each tried to make light of his fears. That reminded him of something, and he dropped back to have a word with the Seeress of Kell. ‘Cyradis,’ he said to the blindfolded girl, ‘should Zakath and I wear our armor when we get to the reef?’ He plucked at the front of the doublet he had put on with some relief that morning in the hope that he might never again be obliged to encase himself in steel. ‘What I’m getting at is that if the meeting is going to be entirely spiritual, there’s no real need for it, is there? But if there’s a possibility of some fighting, we should probably be prepared, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Thou art as transparent as glass, Belgarion of Riva,’ she said, chiding him gently. ‘Thou thinkest to trick answers from me to questions which I am forbidden to discuss with thee. Do as it pleaseth thee, King of Riva. Prudence, however, doth suggest that a bit of steel here and there in thine apparel might not be inappropriate when approaching a situation where surprises might await thee.’

  ‘I will be guided by thee,’ Garion grinned. ‘Thy prudent advice seemeth me the course of wisdom.’

  ‘Makest thou a rather feeble attempt at humor, Belgarion?’

  ‘Would I do that, Holy Seeress?’ He grinned at her and strode back to where Belgarath and Poledra walked hand in hand just behind Zakath and Sadi. ‘Grandfather, I think I just managed to sneak an answer out of Cyradis,’ he said.

  ‘That might be a first,’ the old man replied.

  ‘I think there might be some fighting when we get to the reef. I asked her if Zakath and I should wear armor when we get there. She didn’t answer me directly, but she said that it might not be a bad idea – just in case.’

  ‘You might want to pass that on to the others. Let’s not have them walking into something blind.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  The king, along with most of his gaily-clad court, awaited them on a long wharf extending out into the choppy waters of the harbor. Despite the temperate morning, the king wore an ermine robe and a heavy gold crown. ‘Gladly do I greet thee and thy noble companions, Belgarion of Riva,’ he declaimed, ‘and in sadness do I await thy departure. Many here have pled with me that I might permit them also to speak to this matter, but in thy behalf I have steadfastly refused such permission, knowing full well the urgency of thy quest.’

  ‘Thou art a true and faithful friend, your Majesty,’ Garion said with genuine gratitude at being spared a morning of windy speeches. He clasped the king’s hand warmly. ‘Know that if the Gods grant us victory on the morrow, we will return straightway to this happy isle so that we may more fulsomely express our gratitude to thee and the members of thy court who have all treated us with such noble courtesy.’ Besides, they had to come back for the horses anyway. ‘And now, your Majesty, our fate awaits us. We must, with scant and niggard farewell, take ship to go forth with resolute hearts to meet that fate. An it please the Gods, we shall return anon. Goodbye, my friend.’

  ‘Fare thee well, Belgarion of Riva,’ the king said in a voice near to tears. ‘May the Gods grant thee and thy companions victory.’

  ‘Pray that it may be so.’ Garion turned with a rather melodramatic swirl of his cloak and led his friends up the gangway. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw Durnik pushing his way through the crowd. That would help. As soon as the smith was on board, Garion could give the order to cast off all lines and thus avoid the necessity of more extended farewells shouted across the ship’s rail.

  Directly behind Durnik came the several carts carrying their packs. Their belongings were quickly transferred to the ship, and Garion went aft to speak with the captain, a grizzled old seaman with a weathered face.

  Unlike western vessels, whose bare plank decks were usually holy-stoned into some semblance of whiteness, the quarter-deck and its surrounding railings were finished with a dark, glossy varnish, and snowy ropes hung in neat coils from highly polished belaying pins. The effect was almost ostentatiously neat, evidence that the vessel’s master took great pride in his ship. The captain himself wore a somewhat weathered blue doublet. He was, after all, in port. A jaunty velvet cap was cocked rakishly over one of his ears.

  ‘I guess that’s everything, Captain,’ Garion said. ‘We may as well cast off and get clear of the harbor before the tide turns.’

  ‘You’ve been to sea before I see, young master,’ the captain said approvingly. ‘I hope your friends have as well. It’s always a trial to have landsmen aboard. They never seem to realize that throwing up into the wind isn’t a good idea.’ He raised his voice to an ear-splitting bellow. ‘Cast off all lines! Prepare to make sail!’

  ‘Your speech doesn’t seem to be that of the island, Captain,’ Garion observed.

  ‘I’d be surprised if it were, young master. I’m from the Melcene Islands. About twenty years ago, there were some ugly rumors about me being circulated in some quarters back home, so I thought it might be prudent to absent myself for a while. I came here. You wouldn’t believe what these people were calling a ship when I got here.’

  ‘Sort of like a sea-going castle?’ Garion suggested.

  ‘You’ve seen them then?’

  ‘In another part of the world.’

  ‘Make sail!’ the captain roared at his crew. ‘There, young master,’ he grinned at Garion. ‘I’ll have you out of earshot in no time at all. That should spare us all that drasty eloquence. Where was I? Oh, yes. When I got here, the ships of Perivor were so top-heavy that a good sneeze would capsize them. Would you believe it only took me five years to explain that to these people?’

  ‘You must have been amazingly eloquent, Captain,’ Garion laughed.

  ‘A bout or two with belaying pins helped a bit,’ the captain conceeded. ‘Finally I had to issue a challenge, though. None of these blockheads can refuse a challenge, so I proposed a race around the island. Twenty ships started out, and only mine finished. They started listening about then. I spent the next five years in the yards supervising construction. Then the king finally let me go back to sea. I got me a baronetcy out of it – not that it matters. I think I’ve even got a castle somewhere.’

  A brazen blast came from the wharf as, in true Mimbrate fashion, the knights of the king’s court saluted them on their horns. ‘Isn’t that pitiful?’ the captain said. ‘I don’t think there’s a man on the whole island who can carry a tune.’ He looked appraisingly at Garion. ‘I heard tell that you’re making for the Turim reef.’

  ‘Korim reef,’ Garion corrected absently.

  ‘You’ve been listening to the landsmen, I see. They can’t even pronounce the name right. Anyway, before you get your mind set in stone about where you want to land, send for me. There’s some very ugly water around that reef. It’s not the sort of place where you want to make mistakes, and I’ve got some fairly accurate charts.’

  ‘The king told us there weren’t any charts of the reef.’

  The captain winked slyly. ‘The rumors I mentioned earlier stirred some ship-captains to try to follow me,’ he admitted, ‘although “chase” would probably be a more accurate word. Rewards cause that sort of thing sometimes. Anyhow, I was passing near the reef in calm weather once, and I decided to take some soundings. It never hurts to have a place to hide where others are afraid to follow you.’

  ‘What’s your name, Captain?’ Garion asked him.

  ‘Kresca, young master.’

  ‘I think we can drop that. Garion will do just fine.’

  ‘Whatever you like, Garion. Now get off my quarterdeck so I can maneuver this old tub out of the harbor.’

  The speech was different
, and it was half-way around the world, but Captain Kresca was so much like Barak’s friend Greldik that Garion felt suddenly very secure. He went below to join the others. ‘We’ve had a bit of luck,’ he told them. ‘Our captain is a Melcene. He’s not overburdened with scruples, but he has got charts of the reef. He’s probably the only man in these waters who does. He’s offered to advise us when the time comes to decide on where we want to land.’

  ‘That was helpful of him,’ Silk said.

  ‘Maybe, but I think his main concern is not ripping the bottom out of his ship.’

  ‘I can relate to that,’ Silk said. ‘– As long as I’m on board, anyway.’

  ‘I’m going back up on deck,’ Garion said then. ‘Staying in a stuffy compartment on the first day of a voyage always makes me a little queasy for some reason.’

  ‘And you’re the ruler of an island?’ Poledra said.

  ‘It’s just a question of getting adjusted, Grandmother.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The sea and sky were unsettled. The heavy cloud-bank was still coming in from the west, sending long, ponderous combers rolling in from that direction, waves which had in all probability started somewhere off the east coast of Cthol Murgos. Although, as king of an island nation, Garion knew that the phenomenon was not unusual, he nonetheless felt a certain sense of superstitious apprehension when he saw that the surface winds were moving westward while those aloft as proclaimed by the movement of the clouds, moved east. He had seen this happen many times before, but this time he could not be positive that the weather was responding to natural causes or to something else. Idly, he wondered what those two eternal awarenesses might have done had he and his friends not found a ship. He had a momentary vision of the sea parting to provide a broad highway across its bottom, a highway littered with startled fish. He began to feel less and less in charge of his own destiny. Even as he had on the long trek to Cthol Mishrak, he became increasingly certain that the two prophecies were herding him toward Korim for a meeting which, though he himself might not have chosen it, was the ultimate Event toward which the entire universe had been yearning since the beginning of days. A plaintive ‘why me?’ hovered on his lips.

  And then Ce’Nedra was there, burrowing under his arm as she had during those first few heady days when they had finally discovered that they did, in fact, love each other. ‘What are you thinking about, Garion?’ she asked softly. She had changed out of the antique green satin gown she had worn at the palace and now wore a gray dress of utilitarian wool.

  ‘I’m not, really. Probably worrying comes a lot closer.’

  ‘What’s there to worry about? We’re going to win, aren’t we?’

  ‘That hasn’t been decided yet.’

  ‘Of course you’re going to win. You always do.’

  ‘This time’s a little different, Ce’Nedra.’ He sighed. ‘It’s not just the meeting, though. I’ve got to choose my successor, and the one I choose is going to be the new Child of Light – and most probably a God. If I pick the wrong person, it’s possible that I’ll create a God who’ll be an absolute disaster. Could you imagine Silk as a God? He’d be out there picking the pockets of the other Gods and inscribing off-color jokes in the constellations.’

  ‘He doesn’t really seem to have the right kind of temperament for it,’ she agreed. ‘I like him well enough, but I’m afraid UL might disapprove very strongly. What else is bothering you?’

  ‘You know what else. One of us isn’t going to live through tomorrow.’

  ‘You don’t really have to concern yourself about that, Garion,’ she said wistfully. ‘It’s going to be me. I’ve known that from the very beginning.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. I can make sure it’s not you.’

  ‘Oh? How?’

  ‘I’ll just tell them that I won’t make the choice if they hurt you in any way.’

  ‘Garion!’ she gasped. ‘You can’t do that! You’ll destroy the universe if you do!’

  ‘So what? The universe doesn’t mean anything to me without you, you know.’

  ‘That’s very sweet, but you can’t do it. You wouldn’t do it anyway. You’ve got too great a sense of responsibility.’

  ‘What makes you think you’re going to be the one?’

  ‘The tasks, Garion. Every one of us has a task – some of us more than one. Belgarath had to find out where the meeting’s going to take place. Velvet had to kill Harakan. Even Sadi had a task. He had to kill Naradas. I have no task – except to die.’

  Garion decided at that point to tell her. ‘You did have a task, Ce’Nedra,’ he told her, ‘and you did it very well.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember it. After we left Kell, you were very drowsy for several days.’

  ‘Yes, I remember that.’

  ‘It wasn’t because you were sleepy. Zandramas was tampering with your mind. She’s done it before. You remember that you got sick on your way to Rak Hagga?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was a different kind of sickness, but it was Zandramas again. She’s been trying to take control of you for more than a year now.’

  Ce’Nedra stared at him.

  ‘Anyway, after we left Kell, she managed to put your mind to sleep. You wandered off and, out there in the forest, you thought you met Arell.’

  ‘Arell? She’s dead.’

  ‘I know, but you thought you met her all the same, and she gave you what you thought was our baby. Then this supposed Arell asked you some questions, and you answered them.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Zandramas had to find out where the meeting was supposed to take place, and she couldn’t go to Kell. She posed as Arell so she could ask you those questions. You told her about Perivor, about the map and about Korim. That was your task.’

  ‘I betrayed you?’ Her look was stricken.

  ‘No. You saved the universe. Zandramas absolutely has to be at Korim at the right time. Somebody had to tell her where to go, and that was your task.’

  ‘I don’t remember any of this.’

  ‘Of course not. Aunt Pol erased the memory of it from your mind. It wasn’t really your fault, and you’d have been overcome with remorse if you’d been able to remember what happened.’

  ‘I still betrayed you.’

  ‘You did what had to be done, Ce’Nedra.’ Garion smiled a bit wistfully. ‘You know, both sides in this have been trying to do the same thing. We – and Zandramas, of course – have been trying to find Korim and to keep the other side from finding out where it is so that we can win by default. It was never going to happen that way, though. The meeting absolutely has to take place before Cyradis can choose. The Prophecies weren’t going to let it happen any other way. Both sides have wasted a great deal of effort trying to do something that simply could not be done. We should have all realized that from the very beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. About the only consolation I have is that Zandramas wasted a lot more effort than we did.’

  ‘I’m still certain that it’s going to be me.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘I just hope they let me hold my baby before I die,’ she said sadly.

  ‘You’re not going to die, Ce’Nedra.

  She ignored him. ‘I want you to take care of yourself, Garion,’ she said firmly. ‘Be sure that you eat right, dress warmly in winter, and make sure that our son doesn’t forget me.’

  ‘Ce’Nedra, will you stop this?’

  ‘One last thing, Garion,’ she plowed on relentlessly. ‘After I’ve been gone for a while, I want you to marry again. I don’t want you moping around the way Belgarath has for the last three thousand years.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Besides, nothing’s going to happen to you.’

  ‘We’ll see. Promise, Garion. You weren’t meant to be alone, and you need somebody to take care of you.’

  ‘Have you almost finished with this?’ It was Poledra. She stepped out from b
ehind the foremast in a businesslike way. ‘It’s all very pretty and sweetly melancholy, I’m sure, but isn’t it just a trifle overdramatic? Garion’s right, Ce’Nedra. Nothing’s going to happen to you, so why don’t you fold up all this nobility and put it away in a closet someplace?’

  ‘I know what I know, Poledra,’ Ce’Nedra said stubbornly.

  ‘I hope you won’t be too disappointed when you wake up the day after tomorrow and find that you’re in perfect health.’

  ‘Who’s it going to be, then?’

  ‘Me,’ Poledra said simply. ‘I’ve known about it for over three thousand years now, so I’ve had time to get used to it. At least I have this day with the ones I love before I have to leave for good. Ce’Nedra, that wind is very chilly. Let’s go below before you catch cold.’

  ‘She’s just like your Aunt Pol, isn’t she?’ Ce’Nedra said over her shoulder as Poledra firmly led her toward the stair leading below decks.

  ‘Naturally,’ Garion called back.

  ‘It’s started, I see,’ Silk said from not far away.

  ‘What’s started?’

  ‘The gushy farewells. Just about everybody’s convinced that he’s the one who won’t see the sun go down tomorrow. I’d imagine that they’ll all come up here one by one to say good-bye to you. I thought I’d be first – sort of to get it out of the way – but Ce’Nedra beat me to it.’

  ‘You? Nothing could kill you, Silk. You’re too lucky.’

  ‘I’ve made my own luck, Garion. It’s not that hard to tamper with dice.’ The little man’s face grew reflective. ‘We’ve really had some good times, haven’t we? I think they outweigh the bad ones, and that’s about all a man can hope for.’

  ‘You’re as maudlin as Ce’Nedra and my grandmother were.’

  ‘It does sort of seem that way, doesn’t it? And that’s very unbecoming. Don’t be too sad about it, Garion. If I do happen to be the one, it should spare me the discomfort of making a very unpleasant decision.’