..'almost entirely painless'...'recoveredin a day', before he eventually placed his head gently against the backof the sofa and drifted off into sleep...And still asleep Jim was, when the others eventually stopped talking,some fifteen minutes later. As the two girls walked back to the sofa,Simon took a large, clean, heavy, cotton sheet from his holdall andcovered the dining table with it. As Simon took a further small leathervalise from his holdall, Karen gently took the empty glass from. The line of Rivan kings was finally and irrevocably broken….....Barak manhandling a crying and struggling Ce’Nedra towards the royal bedroom, Ce’Nedra couldn’t understand why the usually kind Barak had suddenly gone completely mad along with almost everyone else, all because Torak and this goddess Laure had joined forces and according to Belgarath and Polgara changed the fates completely – Both the ancient sorcerer and his daughter had gone off on their own and all this when Laure had appeared. Again I only intended to stay two days on the island, time to take a tour and have an overview of your teachings. -Do not worry about it replied our guide, we told your newspaper, they agree that you should follow a full course here and send your report each week as a series to follow. -Each week ?? but how hard a course? -The minimum is 6 months. -6 months! But it does not matter that I stay here six months .. and then I'm not alone, I doubt that Robert, my photographer, agrees to be. It stung. I gritted my teeth as I scraped the remains of half a dozen Blue Plate Specials into the plastic trash barrel. I stank."Oh, it's not all that bad, Dave. You're young. You'll learn. By the time you're my age, you'll probably have gone through quite a few wives and girlfriends. And besides, underneath several layers of dirt -- and your youthful ignorance and clumsiness -- you're actually kinda cute." Damn it, Marn, you're just saying that to take the edge off the kick in the the teeth.