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Beltira and Belkira, the twin sorcerers whose minds were so closely linked that they inevitably completed each other's sentences. A short while later they rode by a tower so delicately constructed of rose quartz that it seemed almost to float like a pink jewel in the lambent air. This tower, Belgarath told him, belonged to the hunchbacked Beldin, who had surrounded his own ugliness with a beauty so exquisite that it snatched one's breath away.
    At last they reached Belgarath's own squat, functional tower and dismounted. "Well," the old man said, "here we are. Let's go up."
    The room at the top of the tower was large, round, and incredibly cluttered. As he looked around at it, Belgarath's eyes took on a defeated look. "This is going to take weeks," he muttered.
    A great many things in the room attracted Errand's eye, but he knew that, in Belgarath's present mood, the old man would not be inclined to show him or explain to him much of anything. He located the fireplace, found a tarnished brass scoop and a short-handled broom, and knelt in front of the cavernous, soot-darkened opening.
    "What are you doing?" Belgarath asked.
    "Durnik says that the first thing you should do in a new place is get a spot ready for your fire."
    "Oh, he does, does he?"
    "It's not usually a very big chore, but it gets you started and once you get started, the rest of the job doesn't look so big. Durnik's very wise about things like that. Do you have a pail or a dust bin of some kind?"
    "You're going to insist on cleaning the fireplace?"
    "Well -if you don't mind too much. It is pretty dirty, don't you think?"
    Belgarath sighed. "Pol and Durnik have corrupted you already, boy," he said. "I tried to save you, but a bad influence like that always wins out in the end."
    "I suppose you're right," Errand agreed. "Where did you say that pail was?"
    By evening they had cleared a semicircular area around the fireplace, finding in the process a couple of couches, several chairs, and a sturdy table.
    "I don't suppose you have anything to eat stored anyplace?" Errand said wistfully. His stomach told him that it was definitely moving on toward suppertime.
    Belgarath looked up from a parchment scroll he had just fished out from under one of the couches. "What?" he asked. "Oh yes. I'd almost forgotten. We'll go visit the twins. They're bound to have something on the fire."
    "Do they know we're coming?"
    Belgarath shrugged. "That doesn't really matter, Errand. You must learn that that's what friends and family are for -to be imposed upon. One of the cardinal rules, if you want to get through life without overexerting yourself, is that, when all else fails, fall back on friends and relations."
    The twin sorcerers, Beltira and Belkira, were overjoyed to see them, and the "something on the fire" turned out to be a savory stew that was at least as good as one that might have emerged from Polgara's kitchen.
    When Errand commented on that, Belgarath looked amused. "Who do think taught her how to cook?" he asked.
    It was not until several days later, when the cleaning of Belgarath's tower had progressed to the point where the floor was receiving its first scrubbing in a dozen or more centuries, that Beldin finally stopped by.
    "What are you doing, Belgarath?" the filthy, misshapen hunchback demanded. Beldin was very short, dressed in battered rags, and he was gnarled like an old oak stump. His hair and beard were matted, and twigs and bits of straw clung to him in various places.
    "Just a little cleaning," Belgarath replied, looking almost embarrassed.
    "What for?" Beldin asked. "It's just going to get dirty again." He looked at a number of very old bones lying along the curved wall. "What you really ought to do is render down your floor for soup stock."
    "Did you come by to visit or just to be disagreeable?"
    "I saw the smoke from your chimney. I wanted to see if anybody was here or if all this litter had just taken fire spontaneously."
    Errand knew that Belgarath and