King of the Murgos

by David Eddings

  ‘It’s definitely narrowing down to the Honeths then, isn’t it?’ Silk said.

  ‘It’s not definite proof, Kheldar,’ Velvet warned him.

  ‘It’s definite enough to satisfy me.’

  ‘You’re not going to do anything precipitous, are you?’ she asked him. ‘Javelin wouldn’t like that, you know.’

  ‘That’s Javelin’s problem.’

  ‘We don’t have time to get involved in Tolnedran politics, Silk,’ Belgarath added firmly. ‘We’re not going to be here that long.’

  ‘It’s not going to take me all that long.’

  ‘I’ll have to report what you’re planning to Javelin,’ Velvet warned.

  ‘Of course. But I’ll be finished with it by the time your report reaches Boktor.’

  ‘It’s important that you don’t embarrass us, Kheldar.’

  ‘Trust me,’ he said and quietly left the room.

  ‘It always makes me nervous when he says that,’ Durnik murmured.

  Early the following morning, Belgarath and Garion left the Imperial Palace to visit the library at the university. It was chilly in the broad streets of Tol Honeth, and a raw wind was blowing in off the Nedrane River. The few merchants abroad at that hour walked briskly along the marble thoroughfares with fur cloaks pulled tightly about them, and gangs of roughly dressed laborers thronged up out of the poorer sections of the city with their heads bent into the wind and their chapped hands burrowed deep into their clothing.

  Garion and his grandfather passed through the deserted central marketplace and soon reached a large cluster of buildings enclosed by a marble wall and entered through a gate stamped with the Imperial Seal. The grounds inside the compound were as neatly trimmed as those surrounding the palace, and there were broad marble walks stretching from building to building across the lawns. As they moved along one of those walks, they encountered a portly, black-robed scholar pacing along with his hands clasped behind his back and his face lost in thought.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Belgarath said to him, ‘but could you direct us to the library?’

  ‘What?’ The man looked up, blinking.

  ‘The library, good sir,’ Belgarath repeated. ‘Which way is it?’

  ‘Oh,’ the scholar said. ‘It’s over there someplace.’ He gestured vaguely.

  ‘Do you suppose you could be a bit more precise?’

  The scholar gave the shabbily dressed old man an offended look. ‘Ask one of the porters,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’m busy. I’ve been working on a problem for twenty years now and I’ve almost found the solution.’

  ‘Oh? Which problem is that?’

  ‘I doubt that it would be of much interest to an uneducated mendicant,’ the scholar replied loftily, ‘but if you really must know, I’ve been trying to calculate the exact weight of the world.’

  ‘Is that all? And it’s taken you twenty years?’ Belgarath’s face was astonished. ‘I solved that problem a long time ago—in about a week.’

  The scholar stared at him, his face going dead white. ‘That’s impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m the only man in the world who’s looking into it. No one has ever asked the question before.’

  Belgarath laughed. ‘I’m sorry, learned scholar, but it’s been asked several times already. The best solution I ever saw was by a man named Talgin—at the University of Melcena, I think. It was during the second millennium. There should be a copy of his calculations in your library.’

  The scholar began to tremble violently, and his eyes bulged. Without a word he spun on his heel and dashed across the lawn with the skirts of his robe flapping behind him.

  ‘Keep an eye on him, Garion,’ Belgarath said calmly. ‘The building he runs to should be the library.’

  ‘Just how much does the world weigh?’ Garion asked curiously.

  ‘How should I know?’ Belgarath replied. ‘No sane man would even be curious about it.’

  ‘But what about this Talgin you mentioned—the one who wrote the solution?’

  ‘Talgin? Oh, there’s no such person. I just made him up.’

  Garion stared at him. ‘That’s a dreadful thing to do, Grandfather,’ he accused. ‘You’ve just destroyed a man’s entire life work with a lie.’

  ‘But it did get him to lead us to the library,’ the old man said slyly. ‘Besides, maybe now he’ll turn his attention to something a bit more meaningful. The library’s in that building with the tower. He just ran up the steps. Shall we go?’

  There was a marble rotunda just inside the main entrance to the library, and in the precise center of that rotunda stood a high, ornately carved desk. A bald, skinny man sat behind the desk laboriously copying from a huge book. For some reason the man looked familiar to Garion, and he frowned as they approached the desk, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

  ‘May I help you?’ the skinny man asked, looking up from his copying as Belgarath stopped in front of his desk.

  ‘Possibly so. I’m looking for a copy of the Prophecies of the Western Grolims.’

  The skinny man frowned, scratching at one ear. ‘That would be in the comparative theology section,’ he mused. ‘Could you hazard a guess as to the date of composition?’

  Belgarath also frowned, staring up into the vault of the rotunda as he considered it. ‘My guess would be early third millennium,’ he said finally.

  ‘That would put it at the time of either the second Honethite Dynasty or the second Vorduvian,’ the scholar said. ‘We shouldn’t have too much trouble finding it.’ He rose to his feet. ‘It’s this way,’ he said, pointing toward one of the hallways fanning out from the rotunda. ‘If you’ll follow me, please.’

  Garion still felt the nagging certainty that he knew this polite, helpful scholar. The man certainly had better manners than the pompous, self-important world-weigher they had met outside, and—Then it came to him. ‘Master Jeebers?’ he said incredulously, ‘is that you?’

  ‘Have we met before, sir?’ Jeebers asked politely, looking at Garion with a puzzled squint.

  Garion grinned broadly. ‘We have indeed, Master Jeebers. You introduced me to my wife.’

  ‘I don’t seem to recall—’

  ‘Oh, I think you do. You crept out of the palace with her one night and rode south toward Tol Borune. Along the way, you joined a party of merchants. You left rather suddenly when my wife told you that leaving Tol Honeth was her idea instead of Ran Borune’s.’

  Jeebers blinked and then his eyes widened. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said with a bow. ‘Forgive me for not recognizing you at once. My eyes aren’t what they once were.’

  Garion laughed, clapping him on the shoulder in delight. ‘That’s quite all right, Jeebers,’ he said. ‘I’m not going about announcing who I am on this trip.’

  ‘And how is little Ce’Nedra—Uh, her Majesty, that is?’

  Garion was about to tell his wife’s former tutor about the abduction of their son, but Belgarath gave him a discreet nudge. ‘Uh—fine, just fine,’ he said instead.

  ‘I’m so glad to hear it,’ Jeebers said with a fond smile. ‘She was an absolutely impossible student, but strangely I find that much of the fun went out of my life after she and I parted company. I was delighted to hear of her fortuitous marriage and not nearly as surprised as my colleagues here when we heard that she had raised an army and marched on Thull Mardu. She always was a fiery little thing—and brilliant.’ He gave Garion a rather apologetic look. ‘To be honest, though, I have to tell you that she was an erratic and undisciplined student.’

  ‘I’ve noticed those qualities in her from time to time.’

  Jeebers laughed. ‘I’m sure you have, your Majesty,’ he said. ‘Please convey my regards to her—’ He hesitated. ‘And if you don’t think it’s presumptuous—my affection as well.’

  ‘I will, Jeebers,’ Garion promised. ‘I will.’

  ‘This is the comparative theology section of our library,’ the bald scholar said, pushing open a heavy door. ‘All the items are
catalogued and stored by Dynasty. The antiquity sections are back this way.’ He led them along a narrow aisle between tall book racks filled with leather-bound volumes and tightly rolled scrolls. The skinny man paused once and rubbed his finger along one of the shelves. ‘Dust,’ he sniffed disapprovingly. ‘I expect I’d better speak sharply to the custodians about that.’

  ‘It’s the nature of books to collect dust,’ Belgarath said.

  ‘And it’s the nature of custodians to avoid doing anything about it,’ Jeebers added with a wry smile. ‘Ah, here we are.’ He stopped in the center of a somewhat broader aisle where the books showed marked signs of extreme age. ‘Please be gentle with them,’ he said, touching the backs of the volumes with an odd kind of affection. ‘They’re old and brittle. The works written during the Second Honethite Dynasty are on this side, and those dating back to the Second Vordue Dynasty are over here. They’re further broken down into kingdom of origin, so it shouldn’t be hard for you to locate the one you want. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shouldn’t stay away from my desk for too long. Some of my colleagues get impatient and start rooting through the shelves on their own. It takes weeks sometimes to get things put right again.’

  ‘I’m sure we can manage from here, Master Jeebers,’ Belgarath assured him, ‘and thank you for your assistance.’

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ Jeebers replied with a slight bow. He looked back at Garion. ‘You will remember to give little Ce’Nedra my greetings, won’t you?’

  ‘You have my word on it, Master Jeebers.’

  ‘Thank you, your Majesty.’ And the skinny man turned and went on out of the book-lined room.

  ‘An enormous change there,’ Belgarath noted. ‘Probably the little fright Ce’Nedra gave him at Tol Borune that time knocked all the pomposity out of him.’ The old man was peering intently at the shelves. ‘I’ll have to admit that he’s a very competent scholar.’

  ‘Isn’t he just a librarian?’ Garion asked, ‘somebody who looks after books?’

  ‘That’s where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won’t help you if they’re just piled up in a heap.’ He bent slightly and pulled a black-wrapped scroll from a lower shelf. ‘Here we are,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Jeebers led us right to it.’ He moved to the end of the aisle where a table and bench sat before a tall, narrow window and where the pale winter sunlight fell golden on the stone floor. He sat and carefully undid the ties that held the scroll tightly rolled inside its black velvet cover. As he pulled the scroll out, he muttered a number of fairly sulfurous oaths.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Garion asked.

  ‘Grolim stupidity,’ Belgarath growled. ‘Look at this.’ He held out the scroll. ‘Look at the parchment.’

  Garion peered at it. ‘It looks like any other parchment to me.’

  ‘It’s human skin,’ the old man snorted disgustedly.

  Garion drew back in revulsion. ‘That’s ghastly.’

  ‘That’s not the point. Whoever provided the skin was finished with it anyway. The problem is that human skin won’t hold ink.’ He unrolled a foot or so of the scroll. ‘Look at that. It’s so faded that you can’t even make out the words.’

  ‘Could you use something to bring them out again—the way you did with Anheg’s letter that time?’

  ‘Garion, this scroll’s about three thousand years old. The solution of salts I used on Anheg’s letter would probably dissolve it entirely.’

  ‘Sorcery then?’

  Belgarath shook his head. ‘It’s just too fragile.’ He started to swear again even as he carefully unrolled the scroll inch by inch, moving it this way and that to catch the sunlight. ‘Here’s something,’ he grunted with some surprise.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘“. . . seek the path of the Child of Dark in the land of the serpents . . .”’ The old man looked up. ‘That’s something, anyway.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Just what it says. Zandramas went to Nyissa. We’ll pick up the trail there.’

  ‘Grandfather, we already knew that.’

  ‘We suspected it, Garion. There’s a difference. Zandramas has tricked us into following false trails before. Now we know for certain that we’re on the right track.’

  ‘It isn’t very much, Grandfather.’

  ‘I know, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Would you just look at that?’ Ce’Nedra said indignantly the following morning. She had just arisen and stood at the window, wrapped in a warm robe.

  ‘Hmmm?’ Garion murmured drowsily. ‘Look at what, dear?’ He was burrowed deeply under the warm quilts and was giving some serious thought to going back to sleep.

  ‘You can’t see it from there, Garion. Come over here.’

  He sighed, slipped out of bed, and padded barefoot over to the window.

  ‘Isn’t that disgusting?’ she demanded.

  The grounds of the Imperial Compound were blanketed in white, and large snowflakes were settling lazily through the dead-calm air.

  ‘Isn’t it sort of peculiar for it to snow in Tol Honeth?’ he asked.

  ‘Garion, it never snows in Tol Honeth. The last time I saw snow here was when I was five years old.’

  ‘It’s been an unusual winter.’

  ‘Well, I’m going back to bed, and I’m not going to get up until every bit of it melts.’

  ‘You don’t really have to go out in it, you know.’

  ‘I don’t even want to look at it.’ She flounced back to their canopied bed, let her robe drop to the floor, and climbed back under the quilts. Garion shrugged and started back toward the bed. Another hour or two of sleep seemed definitely in order.

  ‘Please pull the curtains on the bed shut,’ she told him, ‘and don’t make too much noise when you leave.’

  He stared at her for a moment, then sighed. He closed the heavy curtains around the bed and sleepily began to dress.

  ‘Do be a dear, Garion,’ she said sweetly. ‘Stop by the kitchen and tell them that I’ll want my breakfast in here.’

  Now that, he felt, was distinctly unfair. He pulled on the rest of his clothes, feeling surly.

  ‘Oh, Garion?’

  ‘Yes, dear?’ He kept it neutral with some effort.

  ‘Don’t forget to comb your hair. You always look like a straw stack in the morning.’ Her voice already sounded drowsy and on the edge of sleep.

  He found Belgarath sitting moodily before the window in an unlighted dining room. Although it was quite early, the old man had a tankard on the table beside him. ‘Can you believe this?’ he said disgustedly, looking out at the softly falling snow.

  ‘I don’t imagine that it’s going to last very long, Grandfather.’

  ‘It never snows in Tol Honeth.’

  ‘That’s what Ce’Nedra was just saying.’ Garion held out his hands to a glowing iron brazier.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She went back to bed.’

  ‘That’s probably not such a bad idea. Why didn’t you join her?’

  ‘She decided that it was time for me to get up.’

  ‘That hardly seems fair.’

  ‘The same thought occurred to me.’

  Belgarath scratched absently at his ear, still looking out at the snow. ‘We’re too far south for this to last for more than a day or so. Besides, the day after tomorrow is Erastide. A lot of people will be traveling after the holiday, so we won’t be quite so conspicuous.’

  ‘You think we should wait?’

  ‘It’s sort of logical. We wouldn’t make very good time slogging through all that, anyway.’

  ‘What do you plan to do today, then?’

  Belgarath picked up his tankard. ‘I think I’ll finish this and then go back to bed.’

  Garion pulled up one of the red velvet upholstered chairs and sat down. Something had been bothering him for several days now, and he decided that this might be a good time to bring it out into t
he open. ‘Grandfather?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why is it that all of this seems to have happened before?’

  ‘All of what?’

  ‘Everything. There are Angaraks in Arendia trying to stir up trouble—just as they were when we were following Zedar. There are intrigues and assassinations in Tolnedra—the same as last time. We ran into a monster—a dragon this time instead of the Algroths—but it’s still pretty close to the same sort of thing. It seems almost as if we were repeating everything that happened when we were trying to find the Orb. We’ve even been running into the same people—Delvor, that customs man, even Jeebers.’

  ‘You know, that’s a very interesting question, Garion.’ Belgarath pondered for a moment, absently taking a drink from his tankard. ‘If you think about it in a certain way, though, it does sort of make sense.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you.’

  ‘We’re on our way to another meeting between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark,’ Belgarath explained. ‘That meeting is going to be a repetition of an event that’s been happening over and over again since the beginning of time. Since it’s the same event, it stands to reason that the circumstances leading up to it should also be similar.’ He thought about it a moment longer. ‘Actually,’ he continued, ‘they’d almost have to be, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘That’s a little deep for me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘There are two Prophecies—two sides of the same thing. Something happened an unimaginably long time ago to separate them.’

  ‘Yes. I understand that.’

  ‘When they got separated, things sort of stopped.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘It’s kind of hard to put into words. Let’s call it the course of things that were supposed to happen—the future, I suppose. As long as those two forces are separate—and equal—the future can’t happen. We all just keep going through the same series of events over and over again.’