"That's another number you wouldn't understand. You might ask Cyradis. She could probably tell you. She had a very special reason to have it calculated rather precisely."

Garion slowly began to understand. "That's it then," he said, excited in spite of himself. "The instant of the Choice was the instant when the light from the accident reached this world."

"Very good, Garion."

“Did that cluster of stars that exploded come back again after Cyradis made the Choice? I mean there has to be something to patch that hole in the universe, doesn't there?"

"Better and better. Garion, I'm proud of you. You remember how the Sardion and Zandramas broke up into little flecks of intense light when they blew the roof off the grotto?"

"It's not the sort of thing I'd be likely to forget." Garion shuddered.

"There was a reason for that. Zandramas and the Sardion or the pieces of them, at any rate are on their way back toward that 'hole’, as you put it. They're going to be the patch. They'll get bigger along the way, of course."

"And how long " Garion broke off. "Another meaningless number, I suppose?"

"Very meaningless."

“I noticed some things about Zandramas back there. She had this all worked out, didn't she? Right from the very beginning?”

"My opposite was always very methodical."

"What I'm getting at is that she made all of her arrangements in advance. She had everything in place in Nyissa before she ever went to Cherek to pick up those Bear-cultists. Then, when she went to Riva to steal Geran, everything was ready. She'd even put things in place so that we all suspected the cult instead of her.”

"She'd have probably made a very good general."

"But she went even further. No matter how good her plans were, she always had a contingency to fall back on in case the original plan failed." A thought came to him. "Did Mordja get her? I mean, she blew all apart when the Sardion exploded, didn't she? Is her spirit still mixed up in those stars, or did it get pulled down into Hell? She sounded so very much afraid just before she dissolved."

"I really wouldn't know, Garion. My opposite and I dealt with this universe, not with Hell which, of course, is a universe all its own."

“What would have happened if Cyradis had chosen Geran instead of Eriond?"

"You and the Orb would be moving to a new address about now."

Garion felt his skin begin to crawl. "And you didn't warn me?" he demanded incredulously.

"Would you really have wanted to know? And what difference would it have made?"

Garion decided to let that pass. "Was Eriond always a God?" he asked.

"Weren't you listening earlier when he explained? Eriond was intended to be the seventh God. Torak was a mistake caused by the accident."

"He's always been around then? Eriond, I mean?"