He gave me a slightly startled look. ‘And the lady?’ he asked to cover his confusion.

‘My daughter, Polgara the Sorceress.’ I think that might have been the first time anyone had ever called her that, but I wanted to get Hatturk’s undivided attention, and I didn’t want him to be distracted by Pol’s beauty. It seemed that planting the notion in his mind that she could turn him into a toad might be the best way to head off any foolishness. To her credit, Pol didn’t even turn a hair at my somewhat exotic introduction.

Hatturk’s bloodshot eyes took on a rather wild look. ‘My house is honored,’ he said with a stiff bow. I got the distinct impression that Hatturk wasn’t used to bowing to anybody. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Algar Fleet-foot tells me that you’ve got a crazy man here in Darine,’ I told him. ‘Polgara and I need to have a look at him.’

‘Oh, he’s not really all that crazy, Belgarath. He just has spells now and then when he starts raving. He’s an old man, and old men are always a little strange.’

‘Yes,’ Polgara agreed mildly.

Hatturk’s eyes widened as he realized what he’d just said. ‘Nothing personal intended there, Belgarath,’ he hastened to apologize.

‘That’s all right, Hatturk,’ I forgave him. ‘It takes quite a bit to offend me. Tell me a little bit more about this strange old man.’

‘He was a berserker when he was younger - an absolute terror in a fight. Maybe that explains it. Anyway, his family’s fairly well-off, and when he started getting strange, they built a house for him on the outskirts of town. His youngest daughter’s a spinster - probably because she’s cross-eyed - and she looks after him.’

‘Poor girl,’ Pol murmured. Then she sighed rather theatrically. ‘I imagine I’ve got that to look forward to as well. My father here is stranger than most, and sooner or later he’s going to need a keeper.’

‘That’ll do, Pol,’ I said firmly. ‘If you’ve got a couple of minutes, Hatturk, we’d like to see this old fellow.’

‘Of course.’ He led us out of the room and down the stairs to the street. We talked a bit as we walked through the muddy streets to the eastern edge of town. The idea of paving streets came late to the Alorns, for some reason. I put a few rather carefully phrased questions to Hatturk, and his answers confirmed my worst suspicions. The man was a Bear-Cultist to the bone, and it didn’t take very much to set him off on a rambling diatribe filled with slogans and clichés. Religious fanatics are so unimaginative. There’s no rational explanation for their beliefs, so they’re free to speak without benefit of logic, untroubled by petty concerns such as truth or even plausibility.

‘Are your scribes getting down everything your berserker’s saying?’ I cut him off.

‘That’s just a waste of time and money, Belgarath,’ he said indifferently. ‘One of the priests of Belar had a look at what the scribes had taken down, and he told me to quit wasting my time.’

‘King Algar gave you very specific orders, didn’t he?’

‘Sometimes Algar’s not right in the head. The priest told me that as long as we’ve got THE BOOK OF ALORN, we don’t need any of this other gibberish.’

Naturally a priest who was a member of the Bear-Cult wouldn’t want those prophecies out there. It might interfere with their agenda. I swore under my breath.

The Darine Prophet and his caretaker daughter lived in a neat, well-tended cottage on the eastern edge of town. He was a very old, stringy man with a sparse white beard and big, knobby hands. His name was Bormik, and his daughter’s name was Luana. Hatturk’s description of her was a gross understatement. She seemed to be intently examining the tip of her own nose most of the time. Alorns are a superstitious people, and physical defects of any kind make them nervous, so Luana’s spinsterhood was quite understandable.

‘How are you feeling today, Bormik?’ Hatturk said, almost in a shout. Why do people feel they have to yell when they’re talking to those who aren’t quite right in the head?

‘Oh, not so bad, I guess,’ Bormik replied in a wheezy old voice. ‘My hands are giving me some trouble.’ He held out those big, swollen hands.

‘You broke your knuckles on other people’s heads too many times when you were young,’ Hatturk boomed. ‘This is Belgarath. He wants to talk with you.’

Bormik’s eyes immediately glazed over. ‘Behold!’ he said in a thunderous voice. ‘The Ancient and Beloved hath come to receive instruction.’

‘There he goes again,’ Hatturk muttered to me. ‘All that garbled nonsense makes me nervous. I’ll wait outside.’ And he turned abruptly and left.

‘Hear me, Disciple of Aldur,’ Bormik continued. His eyes seemed fixed on my face, but I’m fairly sure he didn’t see me. ‘Hear my words, for my words are truth. The division will end, for the Child of Light is coming.’

That was what I’d been waiting to hear. It confirmed that Bormik was the voice of prophecy, and what he’d been saying all these years had contained vital information - and we’d missed it! I started to swear under my breath, and to think up all sorts of nasty things to do to the thick-headed Hatturk. I glanced quickly at Polgara, but she was sitting in a corner of the room speaking intently to Bormik’s cross-eyed daughter.

‘And the Choice shall be made in the holy place of the children of the Dragon-God,’ Bormik continued, ‘for the Dragon-God is error, and was not intended. Only in the Choice shall error be mended, and all made whole again. Behold, in the day that Aldur’s Orb burns hot with crimson fire shall the name of the Child of Dark be revealed. Guard well the son of the Child of Light, for he shall have no brother. And it shall come to pass that those which once were one and now are two shall be rejoined, and in that joining shall one of them be no more.’

Then Bormik’s weary old head drooped, as if the effort of prophecy had exhausted him. I might have tried to shake him awake, but I knew that it would be fruitless. He was too old and feeble to go on. I stood, picked up a quilt from a nearby bench, and gently covered the drowsing old man. I certainly didn’t want him to take a chill and die on me before he’d said what he was supposed to say. ‘Pol,’ I said to my daughter.

‘In a minute, father,’ she said, waving me off. She continued to speak with that same low intensity to the cross-eyed Luana. ‘Agreed, then?’ she said to the spindly spinster.

‘As you say, Lady Polgara,’ Bormik’s middle-aged daughter replied. ‘A bit of verification first, if you don’t mind.’ She rose, crossed the room, and looked intently at the image of her face in a polished brass mirror. ‘Done!’ was all she said. Then she turned and looked around the room, and her eyes were as straight as any I’ve ever seen - very pretty eyes, as I recall.

What was going on here?

‘All right, father,’ Pol said in an off-hand sort of way. ‘We can go now.’ And she walked on out of the room.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked her as I opened the front door for her.

‘Something for something, father,’ she replied. ‘You might call it a fair trade.’

‘There’s our problem,’ I told her, pointing at the brutish Hatturk impatiently waiting in the street. ‘He’s a Bear-Cultist, and even if I could dragoon him into transcribing Bormik’s ravings, he’d let the priests of the Bear-Cult see them before he passed them on to me. Revisionism is the soul of theology, so there’s no telling what sort of garbage would filter through to me.’

‘It’s already been taken care of, father,’ she told me in that offensively superior tone of hers. ‘Don’t strain Hatturk’s understanding by trying to explain the need for accuracy to him. Luana’s going to take care of it for us.’

‘Bormik’s daughter?’

‘Of course. She’s closest to him, after all. She’s been listening to his ravings for years now, and she knows exactly how to get him to repeat things he’s said in the past. All it takes is a single word to set him off.’ She paused. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘here’s your purse.’ She held out my much-lighter money pouch, which she’d somehow managed to steal from me. ‘I gave her money to hire the scribes.’

‘And?’ I said, hefting my diminished purse.

‘And what?’

‘What’s in it for her?’

‘Oh, father,’ she said. ‘You saw her, didn’t you?’

‘Her eyes, you mean?’

‘Of course. As I said, something for something.’

‘She’s too old for it to make any difference, Pol,’ I objected. ‘She’ll never catch a husband now.’

‘Maybe not, but at least she’ll be able to look herself straight in the eye in the mirror.’ She gave me that long-suffering look. ‘You’ll never understand, old wolf. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. What now?’

‘I guess we might as well go on to Drasnia. We seem to have finished up here.’ I shrugged. ‘How did you straighten her eyes?’