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And there it was! Garion stared at it incredulously, not believing what he saw The blot was exactly the same as it was on all the copies He al of defeat, he read once again that fatal line: "And the Child of Light shall meet with the Child of Dark and shall overcome him, and the Darkness shall flee
But behold, the Stone which lies at the center of the Light shall-" And there was that accursed blot again
A peculiar thing happened as he read it again An odd sort of indifference see such a fuss about a single blotted word? What difference could one word make? He al the scroll back in its case and leaving this foul-s place for ho all the hours he had spent trying to puzzle out the e Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to read it oneway
He started over again, but his distaste beca his time with this nonsense? He had traveled all this way to wear out his eyes on this , half-rotten sheet of poorly tanned sheepskin He shoved the Codex away in disgust This was sheer idiocy He pushed back the chair and stood up, shifting Iron-grip's great sword on his back His ship would still be there, moored to that rickety dock He could be halfway to Kotu by nightfall and back at Riva within the week He would lock the library once and for all and tend to his business A king, after all, did not have time for all this idle, brainsickly speculation Decisively, he turned his back on the scroll and started toward the door
As soon as he was no longer looking at the scroll, however, he stopped What was he doing? The puzzle was still there He had made no effort to solve it He had to find out But as he turned back and looked at the scroll again, that saust al that it ain he turned his back, and once again the feeling vanished There was so to drive hi his eyes away from the scroll What had the dry voice in his mind told him? "There are several words there If you look at theht, you should be able to see theht? The candles in this vaulted rooht? That hardly seemed likely Poledra had said that he must read the hidden words, but how could he, when the Codex literally drove him away each time he looked at it?
Then he stopped What else had she said? So able to see without
The wave of disgust which struck hi that he felt his stomach constrict He spun quickly so that his back was toward that hateful docurip's sword jabbed hirily he reached over his shoulder to grasp the handle and push it back, but instead, his hand touched the Orb The feeling of revulsion evaporated instantly, and his ht! Of course! He had to read the Codex by the light of the Orb! That is what both Poledra and the dry voice had been trying to tell hi the Orb "Come off," he muttered to it With a faint click, the Orb cae sword strapped across his back very nearly drove hi weightlessness of the great weapon had been the work of the Orb itself Struggling under that gross weight, he fumbled with the buckle at his chest, unfastened it, and felt the enorrip's sword fell to the floor with a loud clatter
Holding the Orb in front of him, Garion turned and looked directly at the scroll He could al in the air, but his mind remained clear He stepped to the table and pulled the scroll open with one hand, holding the glowing Orb above it with the other
At last he saw theIt was not soe was there -all of it, but the words had all been written down on top of one another! The entire prophecy lay in that one single spot! By the blue, unwavering light of Aldur's Orb, his eyes seee down and down beneath the surface of the parchment, and the words, hidden for eons, rose like bubbles out of the substance of the scroll
"But Behold," the crucial passage read, "the Stone which lies at the center of the Light shall burn red, and ht and reveal the naht will take up the Guardian's sword and go forth to seek out that which is hidden Long will be his quest, and it shall be threefold And ye shall know that the quest hath begun when the Keeper's Line is renewed Guard well the seed of the Keeper, for there shall be no other Guard it well, for should that seed fall into the hands of the Child of Dark and be taken to the place where the evil dwells, then blind choice alone can decide the outcome Should the Keeper's seed be reft away, then must the Beloved and Eternal lead the way And he shall find the path to the place where the evil dwells in the Mysteries And in each Mystery shall lie but a part of the path, and he must find them all -all- or the path will lead awry, and the Dark shall triu where the three-fold quest will end And thiswill come to pass in a place which is no ain, and then a third ti an oh his consciousness Finally he rose and went to the door of the candlelit, vaulted cha to write with," he told the priest standing just outside " And send someone down to the river Have his ready Just as soon as I finish here, I have to leave for Kotu" The priest was staring wide-eyed at the incandescently glowing Orb in Garion's hand "Don't just stand there,on this!" The priest blinked and then scurried away
The following day, Garion was in Kotu, and about a day and a half later, he reached Aldurford in northern Algaria As luck had it, a herd of half-wild Algarian cattle was being driven across that wide, shallow place in the hty river on their way to Muros, and Garion went i to need two horses," he said, skipping the customary courtesies "The best you have I have to be in the Vale of Aldur before the week is out"