Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

In the old stories, the God Torak stole an object of great power from his brother the God Aldur. The object was far too powerful for Torak, causing the earth to split and Torak himself to be severely injured. But still Torak would not relinquish Aldur’s talisman and if fell to one of Aldur’s students, the sorcerer Belgarath, to find and protect the talisman. All of this happened at least seven thousand years ago, and as far as young Garion is concerned it’s just an exciting story about impossible things.

Garion has been raised on a quiet Sendarian farm by his Aunt Pol, who runs the kitchens of the large farmstead. But Garion’s idyllic days of playing in the fields and haunting the warm corners of the kitchen abruptly come to an end when the traveling storyteller Pol mockingly calls old Wolf urges Aunt Pol and Garion to leave the farm as quickly and quietly as possible. That night Garion is thrown into an impossible story and everything he thought he knew about his life, his place in the world and even his beloved Aunt Pol are challenged.

The young man is dragged from his quiet, rural farm into the parlors and war counsels of kings and queens and into a dangerous quest to stop an ancient evil from reawakening. Along the way their growing party is tracked by someone Garion has seen on the periphery for his entire life, a shadowless stranger who been following Garion, tracking him even across the sea to the kingdom of Cherek. Now Garion must figure out why the man has been watching him for so long, but the truth may place him in more danger than he expected.

Pawn of Prophecy is the first book of the Belgariad series, and as such spends much of the time setting up the back-story that fuel the rest of the series. The series is considered high fantasy, much like Lord of the Rings, but is for more accessible to the average reader.