"I'm sure we can manage from here, Master Jeebers," Belgarath assured him, "and thank you for your assistance."
"It's my pleasure," Jeebers replied with a slight bow. He looked back at Garion. "You will remember to give little Ce'Nedra my greetings, won't you?"
"You have my word on it, Master Jeebers.
Thank you, your Majesty." And the skinny man turned and went on out of the book-lined room.
"An enormous change there," Belgarath noted. "Probably the little fright Ce'Nedra gave him at Tol Borune that time knocked all the pomposity out of him." The old man was peering intently at the shelves. "I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar."
"Isn't he just a librarian?" Garion asked, "somebody who looks after books?"
"That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap." He bent slightly and pulled a black-wrapped scroll from a lower shelf. "Here we are/' he said triumphantly. "Jeebers led us right to it." He moved to the end of the aisle where a table and bench sat before a tall, narrow window and where the pale winter sunlight fell golden on the stone floor. He sat and carefully undid the ties that held the scroll tightly rolled inside its black velvet cover. As he pulled the scroll out, he muttered a number of fairly sulfurous oaths.
"What's the matter?" Garion asked. "Grolim stupidity," Belgarath growled. "Look at this." He held out the scroll. "Look at the parchment." Garion peered at it. "It looks like other parchment to me.
It's human skin," the old man snorted disgustedly. Garion drew back in revulsion. "That's ghastly.
That's not the point. Whoever provided the skin was finished with it anyway. The problem is that human skin won't hold ink." He unrolled a foot or so of the scroll. "Look at that. It's so faded that you can't even make out the words."
"Could you use something to bring them out again way you did with Anheg's letter that time?"
"Garion, this scroll's about three thousand years old. The solution of salts I used on Anheg's letter would probably dissolve it entirely."
"Sorcery then?"
Belgarath shook his head. "It's just too fragile." He started to swear again even as he carefully unrolled the scroll inch by inch, moving it this way and that to catch the sunlight. "Here's something," he grunted with some surprise.
"What does it say?"
"'. . . seek the path of the Child of Dark in the land of the serpents . . . '" The old man looked up. "That's something, anyway."
"What does it mean?"
"Just what it says. Zandramas went to Nyissa. We'll pick up the trail there."
"Grandfather, we already knew that."
"We suspected it, Garion. There's a difference. Zandramas has tricked us into following false trails before. Now we know for certain that we're on the right track."
"It isn't very much, Grandfather."
"I know, but it's better than nothing."
CHAPTER FIVE
"Would you just look at that?" Ce'Nedra said indignantly the following morning. She had just arisen and stood at the window, wrapped in a warm robe."Hmmm?" Garion murmured drowsily. "Look at what, dear?" He was burrowed deeply under the warm quilts and was giving some serious thought to going back to sleep. "You can't see it from there, Garion. Come over here " He sighed, slipped out of bed, and padded barefoot over to the window.
"Isn't that disgusting?" she demanded.
The grounds of the Imperial Compound were blanketed m white, and large snowflakes were settling lazily through the dead-calm air.
"Isn't it sort of peculiar for it to snow in Tol Honeth?" he asked.
"Garion, it never snows in Tol Honeth. The last time I saw snow here was when I was five years old."
"It's been an unusual winter."
"Well, I'm going back to bed, and I'm not going to get up until every bit of it melts."
"You don't really have to go out in it, you know."
"I don't even want to look at it." She flounced back to their canopied bed, let her robe drop to the floor, and climbed back under the quilts. Garion shrugged and started back toward the bed. Another hour or two of sleep seemed definitely in order.
"Please pull the curtains on the bed shut," she told him, "and don't make too much noise when you leave."
He stared at her for a moment, then sighed. He closed the heavy curtains around the bed and sleepily began to dress.
"Do be a dear, Garion," she said sweetly. "Stop by the kitchen and tell them that I'll want my breakfast in here."
Now that, he felt, was distinctly unfair. He pulled on the rest of his clothes, feeling surly.
"Oh, Garion?"
"Yes, dear?" He kept it neutral with some effort.
"Don't forget to comb your hair. You always look like a straw stack in the morning." Her voice already sounded drowsy and on the edge of sleep.
He found Belgarath sitting moodily before the window in an unlighted dining room. Although it was quite early, the old man had a tankard on the table beside him. "Can you believe this?" he said disgustedly, looking out at the softly felling snow.
"I don't imagine that it's going to last very long, Grandfather."
"It never snows in To! Honeth."
"That's what Ce'Nedra was just saying." Garion held out his hands to a glowing iron brazier.
"Where is she?"
"She went back to bed."
"That's probably not such a bad idea. Why didn't you join her?"
"She decided that it was time for me to get up,"
"That hardly seems fair."
"The same thought occurred to me."
Belgarath scratched absently at his ear, still looking out at the snow. "We're too far south for this to last for more than a day or so. Besides, the day after tomorrow is Erastide. A lot of people will be traveling after the holiday, so we won't be quite so conspicuous."
"You think we should wait?"
"It's sort of logical. We wouldn't make very good time slogging through all that, anyway."
"What do you plan to do today, then?"
Belgarath picked up his tankard. "I think I'll finish this and then go back to bed."
Garion pulled up one of the red velvet upholstered chairs and sat down. Something had been bothering him for several days now, and he decided that this might be a good time to bring it out into the open. "Grandfather?"