"I'll blow out the candle," Lelldorin agreed. He got up out of bed and stepped to the table. "Are you ready?" he asked Garion.

Garion slept again almost immediately, and almost immediately heard a sibilant whisper in his ear and felt a dry, cold touch. "Are you ready?" the whispering voice hissed, and he turned to look with uncomprehending eyes at the face of Queen Salmissra, a face that shifted back and forth from woman to snake to something midway between.

Then he stood beneath the shimmering dome of the cave of the Gods and moved without thought to touch the unblemished, walnut-colored shoulder of the stillborn colt, thrusting his hand into the absolute silence of death itself.

"Are you ready?" Belgarath asked quite calmly.

"I think so."

"All right. Put your will against it and push."

"It's awfully heavy, Grandfather."

"You don't have to pick it up, Garion. Just push it. It will roll over if you do it right. Hurry up. We have a great deal more to do."

Garion began to gather his will.

And then he sat on a hillside with his cousin Adara. In his hand he held a dead twig and a few wisps of dry grass.

"Are you ready?" the voice in his mind asked him.

"Is this going to mean anything?" Garion asked. "I mean, will it make any difference?"

"That depends on you and how well you do it."

"That's not a very good answer."

"It wasn't a very good question. If you're ready, turn the twig into a flower."

Garion did that and looked critically at the result. "It's not a very good flower, is it?" he apologized.

"It will have to do," the voice told him.

"Let me try it again."

"What are you going to do with this one?"

"I'll just " Garion raised his hand to obliterate the defective bloom he had just created.

"That's forbidden, you know," the voice reminded him.

"I made it, didn't I?"

"That has nothing to do with it. You can't unmake it. It will be fine. Come along now. We have to hurry."

"I'm not ready yet."

"That's too bad. We can't wait any longer."

And then Garion woke up. He felt oddly light-headed, as if his troubled sleep had done him more harm than good. Lelldorin was still deep in slumber, and Garion found his clothes in the dark, pulled them on and quietly left the room. The strange dream nagged at his mind as he wandered in the dimly lighted corridors of Iron-grip's Citadel. He still felt that pressing urgency and the peculiar sense that everyone was waiting impatiently for him to do something.

He found a windswept courtyard where snow had piled up in the corners and the stones were black and shiny with ice. Dawn was just breaking, and the battlements surrounding the courtyard were etched sharply against a sky filled with scudding cloud.