Polgara the Sorceress. David Eddings

grudgingly handed him the scroll. ‘Don’t lose my place,’ he told his gnarled little brother.

      ‘Oh, shut up.’ Beldin looked at the twins. ‘How many copies do we need?’

      ‘One for each of us, anyway,’ Beltira replied. ‘Where do you keep your ink-pots, Belgarath?’

      ‘We won’t need any of that,’ Beldin told him. He looked around and then pointed at one of father’s work-tables which stood not far from where I was busy preparing supper. ‘Clear that off,’ he ordered.

      ‘I’m working on some of those things,’ father protested.

      ‘Not very hard, I see. The dust and cobwebs are fairly thick.’

      The twins were already stacking father’s books, notes, and meticulously constructed little models of obscure mechanical devices on the floor.

      My father’s always taken credit for what Beldin did on that perfect evening, since he can annex an idea as quickly as he can annex any other piece of property, but my memory of the incident is very clear. Beldin laid the oversized scroll Luana had prepared for us on the table and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. ‘I’m going to need some light here,’ he announced.

      Beltira held out his hand, palm-up, and concentrated for a moment. A blazing ball of pure energy appeared there, and then it rose to hang like a miniature sun over the table.

      ‘Show-off,’ father muttered at him.

      ‘I told you to shut up,’ Beldin reminded him. Then his ugly face contorted in thought. We all felt and heard the surge as he released his Will.

      Six blank scrolls appeared on the table, three on either side of the original Darine. Then my dwarfed uncle began to unroll the Darine Codex with his eyes fixed on the script. The blank scrolls, now no longer blank, unrolled in unison as he passed his eyes down the long, seamless parchment Fleet-foot had sent to us.

      ‘Now that’s something that’s never occurred to me,’ Beltira said admiringly. ‘When did you come up with the idea?’

      ‘Just now,’ Beldin admitted. ‘Hold that light up a little higher, would you, please?’

      Father’s expression was growing sulkier by the minute.

      ‘What’s your problem?’ Beldin demanded.

      ‘You’re cheating.’

      ‘Of course I am. We all cheat. It’s what we do. Are you only just now realizing that?’

      Father spluttered at that point.

      ‘Oh, dear,’ I sighed.

      ‘What’s the matter, Pol?’ Belkira asked me.

      ‘I’m living with a group of white-haired little boys, uncle. When are you old men ever going to grow up?’

      They all looked slightly injured by that particular suggestion. Men always do, I’ve noticed.

      Beldin continued to unroll the original codex while the twins rapidly compared the copies to it line by line. ‘Any mistakes yet?’ the dwarf asked.

      ‘Not a one,’ Beltira replied.

      ‘Maybe I’ve got it right then.’

      ‘How much longer are you going to be at that?’ father demanded.

      ‘As long as it takes. Give him something to eat, Pol. Get him out of my hair.’

      Father stamped away, muttering to himself.

      Actually, it took Beldin no more than an hour, since he wasn’t actually reading the text he was copying. He explained the process to us later that evening. All he was really doing was transferring the image of the original to those blank scrolls. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘that’s that. Now we can all snuggle up to the silly thing.’

      ‘Which one’s the original?’ father demanded, looking at the seven scrolls lined up on the table.

      ‘What difference does it make?’ Beldin growled.

      ‘I want my original copy.’

      And then I laughed at them, even as I checked the ham we were having for dinner.

      ‘It’s not funny, Pol,’ father reprimanded me.

      ‘I found it fairly amusing. Now, why don’t you all go wash up? Supper’s almost ready.’

      After we’d eaten, we each took up our own copy of Bormik’s ravings and retired to various chairs scattered about father’s tower to be alone with the word of the Gods – or with the word of that unseen Purpose that controlled the lives of every living thing on the face of the earth.

      I took my copy to my favorite oversized chair beside the fireplace in the kitchen area and untied the ribbon that kept it rolled up. There was a brief note from Luana inside. ‘Lady Polgara,’ Bormik’s daughter began. “Thus I’ve kept my part of our bargain. I feel I must thank you once more for your gift to me. I’m living in central Algaria now, and would you believe that I actually have a suitor? He’s older, of course, but he’s a good, solid man who’s very kind to me. I thought that I’d never marry, but Belar’s seen fit to provide me a chance for happiness. I can’t begin to thank you enough.’

      It hadn’t been Belar who’d rewarded Luana, of course. Over the years I’ve noticed again and again that the Purpose that created everything that is, that was, or ever will be has a sense of obligation, and it always rewards service. I don’t have to look any further than the faces of my own children and my husband to see mine.

      The handwriting on Luana’s note was identical to the script in which our copies of the Darine Codex were cast, a clear indication that she’d meticulously copied off the document her scribes had produced. It hadn’t really been necessary, of course, but Luana appeared to take her obligations very seriously.

      The Darine Codex, despite its occasional soarings, is really a rather pedestrian document, since it seems almost driven by a need to keep track of time. I know why now, but when I first read through it, it was tedious going. I thought that the tediousness was no more than a reflection of Bormik’s deranged mentality, but I now know that such was not the case.

      Uncle Beldin ploughed his way through the Darine in about six months, and then one evening in midwinter he trudged through the snow to father’s tower. ‘I’m starting to get restless,’ he announced. ‘I think I’ll go back to Mallorea and see if I can catch Urvon off guard long enough to disembowel him just a little bit.’

      ‘How can you disembowel somebody just a little bit?’ father asked with an amused expression.

      ‘I thought I’d take him up to the top of a cliff, rip him open, wrap a loop of his guts around a tree stump and then kick him off the edge.’

      ‘Uncle, please!’ I objected in revulsion.

      ‘It’s something in the nature of a scientific experiment, Pol,’ he explained with a hideous grin. ‘I want to find out if his guts break when he comes to the end or if he bounces instead.’

      ‘That will do, uncle!’

      He was still laughing that wicked laugh of his as he went down the stairs.

      ‘He’s an evil man,’ I told my father.

      ‘Fun, though,’ father added.

      The twins had watched Beldin’s mode of copying the Darine Codex very closely and had duplicated the procedure with the uncompleted Mrin. I think it was that incompleteness that made us all pay only passing attention to the Mrin – that and the fact that it was largely incomprehensible.

      ‘It’s all jumbled together,’ father complained to the twins and me one snowy evening after we’d eaten supper and were sitting by the fire in his tower. ‘That idiot in Braca has absolutely no concept of time. He starts out talking