The Seeress of Kell

[sawyl]

Time to cross the finishing line of Eddings' The Malloreon with The Seeress of Kell, one of the earliest books I remember having to wait for. I don't think they came out in hardback in the UK so at least I was spared having to save up for that, but I was obviously eager enough that I bought it as a trade paperback rather than waiting for the mass market edition. It still stands up reasonably well — certainly I like it more than its immediate predecessor! — and I think it rounds the series out nicely.

As the book opens the party, now including Zakath Emperor of Boundless Mallorea, is travelling through the mountains on its way to the city of Kell where Belgarath hopes to find the location of the final meeting place in an original copy of the Mallorean Gospels. Along the way they encounter an Eldrak, one of the monsters they met in Ulgo back in Magician's Gambit, and Belgarath finally remembers a very important fact about the city that ought to keep Zandramas off their backs. On arrival, Beldin is less than impressed to discover that Kell is an alcohol-free zone, but the others like it well enough, apart from an annoying humming noise that only some of them seem to be able hear. Garion and Polgara manage to obtain an interview with Cyradis, Belgarath gets his book and discovers that the place he is looking for is in the mountains of Korim, which were destroyed thousands of years before when Torak used the power of the Orb of Aldur to crack the world.

I think Kell marks the first appearance of Eddings' enthusiasm for writing pastoral idylls. The scenes in the Algar stronghold at the start of Castle of Wizardry carry hints of it and the village on the Island of Verkat in King of the Murgos possesses it in latent form, but for all that Kell is supposed to be a great city, it is portrayed as a simple place where everyone is happily engaged in the same task, where food is plentiful, fruit is never allowed to go off — or to ferment, much to Beldin's disgust — and everyone has a knowing sense of superiority that comes from their hidden superpowers — because no shepherd is ever just a shepherd. But despite my grousing the journey through the mountains is nicely drawn and the battle with the Eldrak adds a certain amount of drama, while the reference back to Belgarath's conversation with Beldin back towards the beginning of Guardians of the West and the use of Korim, which appears in the prologue of Enchanters' End Game, as the place of the final meeting just goes to show quite how carefully Eddings must have plotted things out ahead of time.

On the advice of Cyradis, the group leave Kell bound for the Island of Perivor in the south. Meanwhile, elsewhere, Garion's friends from the quest for the Orb — Barak, Hettar, Mandorallen and Relg — are nearing the coast of Mallorea; unknown to them they are being closely followed by King Anheg of Cherek and Emperor Varana of Tol Nedra, who are determined to prevent Barak and company from getting close enough to the final meeting to wreck the prophecy. Arriving in Perivor, Garion finds it packed full of Mimbrate Arends — all thee's and thou's and chivalry and suits of armour. Tricked into competing in a tourney by the grolim Naradas, who has been sent by Zandramas to find a chart pointing to the final meeting place and who is now posing as the king's advisor, Garion and Zakath find themselves fighting the world's only dragon — a real one this time.

Having made it this far without too much in the way of gratuitous chivalry and wobbly Early Modern English, Eddings introduces a whole island of Mimbrates from nowhere. Fortunately the people of Dal Perivor, having cross-married the much brainier Dals, aren't nearly so dim as their Western counterparts, having gone so far as to abolish serfdom and to replace wars with formalised tourneys. Their Mimbrate dialect seems considerably less dodgy too; either because Eddings improved as he went along or because I've become inured to it. The fight with the dragon is fun — because what's a big fat fantasy series with maps if it doesn't have at least one with with a dragon? — as is the way the various different members of the party neatly spike Zandramas' plans.

Eventually shaking themselves free of Naradas, the group — Garion, Ce'Nedra, Belgarath, Beldin, Silk, Liselle, Zakath, Sadi, Eriond, with the late addition of Belgarath's wife Poledra — travel with Cyradis, the Seeress of Kell, the Place Which Is No More for their meeting with destiny. This all passes off as expected, with Barak and Anheg arriving in time to witness the aftermath. Everyone returns to Dal Perivor where there is much rejoicing and many lengthy speeches. Seizing the opportunities afforded by such a unique gathering of the powerful, the group hammer out a rough and ready peace and trade treaty which promises to bury the thousands of years old enmity between the Alorns and the Angaraks. With everything finally settled, the Alorns drift back to the West and Zakath returns to his capital in the company of Cyradis, who has given up her role as seeress, and Beldin and Vella decide to make a go of it.

The outcome of The Choice is never really in any doubt, nor is it a great surprise which of the characters has to die before the quest sees its end, but Eddings stokes the tension nicely with a couple of good fights and with the two prophecies indulging in careful game playing right up until the last. A bit of a sucker for sentimentality, I rather like the endings Eddings comes up with for his characters: Zakath and Cyradis going off together; both Ce'Nedra and Polgara in the early stages of pregnancy, which particularly significant for Polgara, who has spent a thousand years watching over Garion's family and brining up children not her own; Belgarath and Poledra reunited after three thousand years apart; and finally Beldin and Vella fall in love against the odds, largely because she is able to look past his physical appearance and rough manners to his rather gentle soul, brilliant mind, and his ability to transform himself into a hawk.

In most fantasies this would mark the end of the story, but Eddings adds a substantial coda. Sometime after their return to Riva, Garion's grandmother Poledra arrives to deliver Ce'Nedra's daughter, whom Garion names Beldaran after Aunt Pol's twin sister and the mother of his dynastic line. Leaving Ce'Nedra and the baby, Garion and his grandmother sail back to the mainland and take the form of wolves, travelling as swiftly as they can to the Vale of Aldur where Polgara too is about to give birth. Waiting on a snowy hilltop above the cottage, Garion, Durnik and Belgarath get to witness a touching ending: as Polgara gives birth to twins the gods appear, the New God of Angarak with them, and UL announces that the story has finished as the three sorcerers walk down the hill to the greet Durnik's newly born children.

The ending, which started with the sudden outbreak of world peace in Dal Perivor, is finally completed on the snowy Algarian hillside as Eddings has UL mark the completion of his story. This is clearly a deliberate marker, making it explicit to fans of the series that there will be no further stories in this world and that the next set of books will feature something quite different. Eddings didn't entirely stick to his pledge returning to tell the stories of Belgarath's and Polgara's early lives in a pair of sequels, but I've studiously avoided reading, preferring to adhere to the author's original intent.