Aunt Pol gasped as she stared incredulously at the rose. It was unlike any flower that had ever existed. With a trembling hand she took it from him, her eyes filled with sudden tears. "How is it possible?" she asked in an awed voice.
"Durnik's a very special man now," Belgarath told her. "So far as I know, he's the only man who ever died and then lived again. That could not help changing him - at least a little. But then, I suspect that there's always been a poet lurking under the surface of our good, practical friend. Maybe the only real difference is that now he has a way of letting that poet out."
Durnik, looking just a bit embarrassed, touched the rose with a tentative finger. "It does have one advantage, my Pol," he noted. "The steel is still in it, so it will never fade or wilt. It will stay just as it is now. Even in the middle of winter, you'll have at least one flower."
"Oh, Durnik!" she cried, embracing him.
Durnik looked a bit abashed as he awkwardly returned her embrace. "If you really like it, I could make you some others," he told her. "A whole garden of them, I suppose. It's not really all that hard, once you get the hang of it."
Aunt Pol's eyes, however, had suddenly widened. With one arm still about Durnik, she turned slightly to look at the crystal wren perched upon its glass twig. "Fly," she said, and the glowing bird spread its wings and flew to her outstretched hand. Curiously it inspected the rose, dipped its beak into a dew drop, and then it lifted its head and began to sing a trilling little song. Gently Aunt Pol raised her hand aloft, and the crystal bird soared back to its glass twig. The echo of its song still hung in the silent air.
"I expect it's time for Garion and me to be going," Belgarath said, his face rather sentimental and misty.
Aunt Pol, however, had quite obviously realized something. Her eyes narrowed slightly, then went very wide. "Just a moment, Old Wolf," she said to Belgarath with a faint hint of steel in her voice. "You knew about this from the very beginning, didn't you?"
"About what, Pol?" he asked innocently.
"That Durnik - that I -" For the first time in his life Garion saw her at a loss for words. "You knew!" she flared.
"Naturally. As soon as Durnik woke up, I could feel something different in him. I'm surprised you didn't feel it yourself. I had to work with him a bit to bring it out, though."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't ask, Pol."
"You - I -" With an enormous effort she gained control of herself. "All of these months you let me go on thinking that my power was gone, and it was there all the time! It was still there, and you put me through all of that?"
"Oh, really, Pol. If you'd just stopped to think, you'd have realized that you can't give it up like that. Once it's there, it's there."
"But our Master said-"
Belgarath raised one hand. "If you'll just stop and remember, Pol, all he really asked was if you'd be willing to limit your independence in marriage and go through life with no more power than Durnik has. Since there's no way he could remove your power, he obviously had something else in mind."
"You let me believe-"
"I have no control over what you believe, Pol," he replied in his most reasonable tone of voice.
"You tricked me!"
"No, Pol," he corrected, "you tricked yourself." Then he smiled fondly at her. "Now, before you go off into a tirade, think about it for a moment. All things considered, it didn't really hurt you, did it? And isn't it really nicer to find out about it this way?" His smile became a grin. "You can even consider it my wedding present to you, if you'd like," he added.
She stared at him for a moment, obviously wanting to be cross about the whole thing, but the look he returned her was impish. The confrontation between them had been obscure, but he had quite obviously won this time. Finally, no longer able to maintain even the fiction of anger, she laughed helplessly and put her hand affectionately on his arm. "You're a dreadful old man, father," she told him.
"I know," he admitted. "Coming, Garion?"
Once they were in the hall outside, Belgarath began to chuckle.
"What's so funny?" Garion asked him.
"I've been waiting for that moment for months," his grandfather said, still chortling. "Did you see her face when she finally realized what had happened? She's been moping around with that look of noble self sacrifice for all this time, and then she suddenly finds out that it was absolutely unnecessary." His face took on a wicked little smirk. "Your Aunt's always been just a little too sure of herself, you know. Maybe it was good for her to go for a little while thinking that she was just an ordinary person. It might give her some perspective."
"She was right." Garion laughed. "You are a dreadful old man."
Belgarath grinned. "One does one's best."
They went along the hallway to the royal apartment where the clothes Garion was to wear for his wedding were already laid out. "Grandfather," Garion said, sitting down to pull off his boots, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you. Just before Torak died, he called out to his mother."
Belgarath, tankard in hand, nodded.
"Who is his mother?"
"The universe," the old man replied.
"I don't understand."
Belgarath scratched thoughtfully at his short, white beard. "As I understand it, each of the Gods began as an idea in the mind of UL, the father of the Gods, but it was the universe that brought them forth. It's very complicated. I don't understand it entirely myself. Anyway, as he was dying, Torak cried out to the one thing that he felt still loved him. He was wrong, of course. UL and the other Gods did still love him, even though they knew that he had become twisted and totally evil. And the universe grieved for him."
"The universe?"
"Didn't you feel it? That instant when everything stopped and all the lights went out?"
"I thought that was just me."
"No, Garion. For that single instant all the light in the universe went out, and everything stopped moving - everything - everywhere. A part of that was the grief of the universe for her dead son."
Garion thought about that. "He had to die, though, didn't he?"
Belgarath nodded. "It was the only way that things could get back on the right course. Torak had to die so that things could go toward what they're supposed to. Otherwise, everything would have ultimately wound up in chaos."