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In the light of all that has happened, this is most certainly a mistake.
It would be far better to leave things as they are, with event and
cause alike half-buried in the dust of forgotten years. If it were up to
me, I would so leave them. I have, however, been so importuned by
an undutiful daughter, so implored by a great (and many times
over) grandson, and so cajoled by that tiny and willful creature who
is his wife - a burden he will have to endure for all his days - that I
must, if only to have some peace, set down the origins of the titanic
events which have so rocked the world.
Few will understand this, and fewer still will acknowledge its
truth. I am accustomed to that. But, since I alone know the beginning,
the middle, and the end of these events, it is upon me to commit to
perishable parchment and to ink that begins to fade before it even
dries some ephemeral account of what happened and why.
Thus, let me begin this story as all stories are begun, at the beginning.
I was born in a village so small that it had no name.
* The name of the village was added in Belgarath the Sorcerer to justify his
name
linguistically. 'Garath' could mean 'of the village of Gara in the archaic form
of several languages.
It lay, if I
remember it correctly, on a pleasant green bank beside a small river
that sparkled in the summer sun as if its surface were covered with
jewels - and I would trade all the jewels I have ever owned or seen
to sit beside that river again.
Our village was not rich, but in those days none were. The world
was at peace, and our Gods walked among us and smiled upon us.
We had enough to eat and huts to shelter us from the weather. I do
not recall who our God was, nor his attributes, nor his totem. It was,
after all, a very~ very long time ago.
Like the other children, I played in the warm, dusty streets and
ran through the long grass in the meadows and paddled in that
sparkling river which was drowned by the eastern sea so many
years ago that they are beyond counting.
My mother died when I was quite young. I remember that I cried
about it for a very long time, though I must honestly admit that I can
no longer even remember her face. I remember the gentleness of her
hands and the warm smell of fresh-baked bread that came from her
garments, but I can not remember her face - but then, there have
been so many faces.
The people of my village cared for me and saw to it that I was fed
and clothed and sheltered in one house or another, but I grew up
wild. I never knew my father, and my mother was dead, and I
was not content with the simple, drowsy life of a small, unnamed
village beside a sparkling river in a time when the world was very
young. I began to wander out into the hills above my village, at first
with only a stick and a sling, but later with more manly weapons
though I was still but a child.
And then came a day in early spring when the air was cool and
the clouds raced overhead in the fresh, young wind, and I had
climbed to the top of the highest hill to the west of our river. And I
looked down at the tiny patch of dun-colored huts beside a small