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had been warned by Belgarath to listen for the Voice of
Prophecy and to record it when it came. And so it was that
King Bull-neck sent scribes to the village of the Prophet to
record his words.
And we marveled at this, for the God of Angarak dwelt
in a great palace high in the mountains of Karanda, and
the Prophet of the River Mrin dwelt in a mud and wattle
kennel by the riverbank, and yet the rapture of Prophecy
was equally upon them - and it seemed in some wise that
the higher and more exalted Torak became, the lower and
more degraded became the one who spoke the Prophecies
of the Destiny which opposed him. And behold, in his
final days, after he had Prophesied for twenty years, the
mind of the Prophet of Mrin broke entirely, and his idiocy
became tainted with madness, and King Bull-neck
perforce was obliged to have him chained to a post before
his kennel lest he do himself injury or run into the fens to
live with the beasts.
And from afar we watched and we waited, and when
the rapture of Prophecy had passed we sent certain of our
number to copy down the Prophecies of the idiot of Mrin
and the God of Angarak that we might compare them and
learn from them.
And there were lesser Prophecies as well during this
time. The First Destiny spake through the mouth of a
merchant of Darine in far-off Sendaria, and the Second
Destiny spake from the mouth of a slave at Rak Cthol in the
wasteland of Murgos. And a scholar in Melcena was seized
by an ecstasy and spake in the voice of the First Destiny for
three hundred and nine hours - and then he died. And a
seaman and warrior of the far northern kingdom of Cherek
leapt from his sleep aboard a Cherek warboat to speak
Prophecies of the coming of Torak, and his shipmates
bound him in chains and cast him into the sea.
And there was in all of this a design which we could
not perceive. The Destinies which contended with each
other at the center of creation moved mysteriously to
counter each other, and whom they chose to speak and
where the Prophecies were spoken were as vital as what
was said - and it was beyond our understanding.
But with the beginning of the Fourth Age, the time of
Prophecy ended and the time of EVENT began. And the
first EVENT was the slaying of the King of Riva, who was
the keeper of the Orb. And Torak exulted in the death of
the King of Riva, which Zedar the Apostate had caused to
come to pass. But the Dragon God knew not that by that
act had his own fate been sealed. For behold, the death of
the Rivan King consumed the heart of Polgara the
Sorceress with eternal hatred for the maimed God, and if
he could not win Polgara's love, he was doomed.
And the next EVENT was the coming of Angarak
against the Kingdoms of the West. And upon the field at
Vo Mimbre was Torak overcome by the power of the Orb
and bound by it to await the coming of his enemy
And EVENTS, both large and small, followed the
overthrow of Torak, and we saw in the course of those
EVENTS the hands of the two Fates, and we saw also the
intricate moves of their eternal game. But no EVENT
resounded more in the stars than the birth of Belgarion.