"The Mrin Codex, Take off the cover and start unrolling it. I'll tell you when to stop."

It took Garion a moment or two to get the knack of unrolling the bottom of the scroll with one hand and rolling up the top with the other.

"There," the voice said. "That's the passage. Read it."

Garion struggled over the words. The script was spidery, and he still did not read very well. "It doesn't make any sense," he complained.

"The man who wrote it down was insane, " the voice apologized, "and he was an imbecile besides, but he was all I had to work with. Try it again but loud "

Garion read: "Behold, it shall come to pass that in a certain moment, that which must be and that which must not be shall meet, and in that meeting shall be decided all that has gone before and all that will come after. Then will the Child of Light and the Child of Dark face each other in the broken tomb, and the stars will shudder and grow dim." Garion's voice trailed off. "It still doesn't make any sense," he objected.

"It's a bit obscure,"the voice admitted. "As I said, the man who wrote it was insane. I put the ideas there, but he used his own words to express them. "

"Who is the Child of Light?" Garion asked.

"You are for the moment at least. It changes. "

"Me?"

"Of course."

"Then who's this Child of Dark I'm supposed to meet?"

"Torak."

"Torak!"

"I should have thought that would be obvious by now. I told you once about the two possible destinies coming together finally. You and Torak - the Child of Light and the Child of Dark - embody those destinies."

"But Torak's asleep."

"Not any more. When you first put your hand on the Orb, the touch signalled his awakening. Even now he stirs on the edge of awareness, and his hand fumbles for the hilt of Cthrek-Goru, his black sword."

Garion went very cold. "Are you trying to say that I'm supposed to fight Torak? Alone?"

"It's going to happen, Belgarion. The universe itself rushes toward it. You can gather an army if you want, but your army - or Torak's - won't mean anything. As the Codex says, everything will be decided when you finally meet him. In the end, you'll face each other alone. That's what I meant by an alternative."

"What you're trying to say is that I'm just supposed to go off alone and find him and fight him?" Garion demanded incredulously.

"Approximately, yep "

"I won't do it."

"That's up to you. "

Garion struggled with it. "If I take an army, I'll just get a lot of people killed, and it won't make any difference in the end anyway?"

"Not the least bit. In the end it will just be you, Torak, Cthrek-Goru, and the sword of the Rivan King. "

"Don't I have any choice at all?"

"None whatsoever. "