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happen.
Finally there came that dreadful night. As we watched
helplessly, the vast pages of the Book of the Heavens
moved so rapidly that we could not read them. And then
the Book stopped, and we read the one terrible line, 'Torak
is slain,' and the Book shuddered, and all the light in all of
creation went out. And in that dreadful instant of
darkness and silence, the Fourth Age ended and the Fifth Age
began.
And Behold, when the light returned, we could no
longer read the Book of the Heavens! Its language, which
had been clear to us, was now foreign and obscure, and
we were compelled to begin once again to piece together
its meaning even as we had during the First Age. And
when we could once again read the pages written in the
stars, we found therein a mystery. Before, all had moved
toward the meeting between Belgarion and Torak, but
now events moved toward a different meeting. There
were signs among the stars which told us that the Fates
had selected yet other aspects for their next meeting, and
we could feel the movements of those presences, but we
knew not who or what they might be, for the pages which
told of their births or origins had been forever lost to us
during those years when the Book spake in an alien
tongue. There was, moreover, a great confusion in the
signs which we read, for the Book seemed to say that the
Keeper of the Orb was destined to succeed Torak as the
Aspect of the Second Fate which was called the Child of
Dark. But this we knew to be impossible, for Belgarion
was the Keeper of the Orb, and Belgarion was the Child of
Light. Further, we read that the mothers of the Child of
Light and the Child of Dark would guide them to the
meeting, and the signs said most clearly that Polgara was
the mother of the Child of Light. But Polgara's Destiny
was to be forever childless, and this had been in her
stars since before her birth,
* Eriond changed this.
Moreover, even should the
impossible occur and Belgarion be won over to the other
Fate and, like Zedar, become Apostate, Belgarion's mother,
Ildera, had died when he was but an infant. Yet we felt a
presence, shrouded and veiled in darkness, moving through
the affairs of men, and the moon spake most clearly,
advising us that this dark presence was a woman, and that her
power was even as great as Polgara's. But this Mother of
Dark was also childless.
And the riddles of the stars baffled us and left us as
helpless as the unlettered serf for whom the lights in the
night sky were only stars and for whom the voices in the
earth were only the sighing of wind or the beat of
raindrops. One thing we saw most clearly, however. The Ages
of Man grew shorter as each one passed, and the EVENTS
which were the meetings between the two Fates were
growing closer and closer together. Once there had been
time for leisurely consideration of all that we had learned,
but now we knew that we must hasten, lest the EVENT
come upon us all unaware.
And so it was in the tenth year following the death of