When they reached the hilltop, Garion was breathless and laughing with sheer delight. He reined in, and Chretienne reared, pawing at the air with his hooves, wanting to be off again.
“Now you know, don’t you?” Eriond asked with a broad smile.
“Yes,” Garion admitted, still laughing, “I guess I do.
“I wonder how I missed it all these years.”
“You have to have the right horse,” Eriond told him wisely. He gave Garion a sidelong glance. “You know that you’ll never be the same again, don’t you?”
“That’s all right,” Garion replied. “I was getting tired of the old way anyhow.” He pointed at a low string of hills outlined against the crisp blue sky a league or so on ahead. “Why don’t we go over there and see what’s on the other side?” he suggested.
“Why not?” Eriond laughed.
And so they did.
The Emperor’s household staff was well organized, and a goodly number of them rode on ahead to prepare their night’s encampment at a spot almost precisely halfway to the coast. The column started early the following morning, riding again along a frosty track beneath a deep blue sky. It was late afternoon when they crested a hill to look out over the expanse of the Sea of the East, rolling a dark blue under the winter sun and with smoky-looking cloud banks the color of rust blurring the far horizon. Two dozen ships with their red sails furled stood at anchor in the indented curve of a shallow bay far below, and Garion looked with some puzzlement at ’Zakath.
“Another symptom of the vulgar ostentation I mentioned.” The Emperor shrugged. “I ordered this fleet down here from the port at Cthan. A dozen or so of those ships are here to transport all my hangers-on and toadies—as well as the humbler people who actually do the work. The other dozen are here to escort our royal personages with suitable pomp. You have to have pomp, Garion. Otherwise people might mistake a King or an Emperor for an honest man.”
“You’re in a whimsical humor this afternoon.”
“Maybe it’s another of those lingering symptoms Liselle mentioned. We’ll sleep on board ship tonight and sail at first light tomorrow.”
Garion nodded, touching Chretienne’s bowed neck with an odd kind of regret as he handed his reins to a waiting groom.
The vessel to which they were ferried from the sandy beach was opulent. Unlike the cramped cabins on most of the other ships Garion had sailed aboard, the chambers on this one were nearly as large as the rooms in a fair-sized house. It took him a little while to pin down the reason for the difference. The other ships had devoted so little room to cabins because the bulk of the space on board had been devoted to cargo. The only cargo this ship customarily carried, however, was the Emperor of Mallorea.
They dined that evening on lobster, served in the low-beamed dining room aboard ’Zakath’s floating palace. So much of Garion’s attention for the past week or more had been fixed on the unpredictable Emperor that he had not had much opportunity to talk with his friends. Thus, when they took their places at the table, he rather deliberately sat at the opposite end from the Mallorean. It was with a great deal of relief that he took his seat between Polgara and Durnik, while Ce’Nedra and Velvet diverted the Emperor with sparkling feminine chatter.
“You look tired, Garion,” Polgara noted.
“I’ve been under a certain strain,” he replied. “I wish that man wouldn’t keep changing every other minute. Every time I think I’ve got him figured out, he turns into somebody else.”
“It’s not a good idea to categorize people, dear,” she advised placidly, touching his arm. “That’s the first sign of fuzzy thinking.”
“Are we actually supposed to eat these things?” Durnik asked in a disgusted sort of voice, pointing his knife at the bright red lobster staring up at him from his plate with its claws seemingly at the ready.
“That’s what the pliers are for, Durnik,” Polgara explained in a peculiarly mild tone. “You have to crack it out of its shell.”
He pushed his plate away. “I’m not going to eat something that looks like a big red bug,” he declared with uncharacteristic heat. “I draw the line at some things.”
“Lobster is a delicacy, Durnik,” she said.
He grunted. “Some people eat snails, too.”
Her eyes flashed, but then she gained control of her anger and continued to speak to him in that same mild tone. “I’m sure we can have them take it away and bring you something else,” she said.
He glared at her.
Garion looked back and forth between the two of them, Then he decided that they had all known each other for far too long to step delicately around any problems.
“What’s the matter, Durnik?” he asked bluntly. “You’re as cross as a badger with a sore nose.”
“Nothing,” Durnik almost snapped at him.
Garion began to put a few things together. He remembered the plea Andel had made to Aunt Pol concerning Toth. He looked down the table to where the big mute, his eyes lowered to his plate, seemed almost to be trying to make himself invisible. Then he looked back at Durnik, who kept his face stiffly turned away from his former friend. “Oh,” he said, “now I think I understand. Aunt Pol told you something you didn’t want to hear. Someone you liked very much did something that made you angry. You said some things to him that you wish now you hadn’t said. Then you found out that he didn’t really have any choice in the matter and that what he did was really right after all. Now you’d like to make friends with him again, but you don’t know how. Is that sort of why you’re behaving this way—and being so impolite to Aunt Pol?”
Durnik’s look was at first stricken. Then his face grew red—then pale. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he burst out, coming to his feet.
“Oh, sit down, Durnik,” Garion told him. “We all love each other too much to behave this way. Instead of being embarrassed and bad-tempered about it, why don’t we see what we can do to fix it?”
Durnik tried to meet Garion’s eyes, but finally lowered his head, his face flaming. “I treated him badly, Garion,” he mumbled, sinking back into his chair again.
“Yes,” Garion agreed, “you did. But it was because you didn’t understand what he was doing—and why. I didn’t understand myself until the day before yesterday—when ’Zakath finally changed his mind and decided to take us all to Mal Zeth. Cyradis knew that he was going to do that, and that’s why she made Toth turn us over to Atesca’s men. She wants us to get to the Sardion and meet Zandramas, and so she’s going to arrange it. Toth will be the one who does what she thinks has to be done to accomplish that. Under the present circumstances, we couldn’t find a better friend.”
“How can I possibly—I mean, after the way I treated him?”
“Be honest. Admit that you were wrong and apologize.”
Durnik’s face grew stiff.
“It doesn’t have to be in words, Durnik,” Garion told his friend patiently. “You and Toth have been talking together without words for months.” He looked speculatively up at the low-beamed ceiling. “This is a ship,” he noted, “and we’re going out onto an ocean. Do you imagine that there might be a few fish out there in all that water?”
Durnik’s smile was immediate.
Polgara’s sigh, however, was pensive.
The smith looked almost shyly across the table. “How did you say that I’m supposed to get this bug out of its shell, Pol?” he asked, pointing at the angry-looking lobster on his plate.
They sailed northeasterly from the coast of Hagga and soon left winter behind. At some point during the voyage they crossed that imaginary line equidistant from the poles and once again entered the northern half of the world. Durnik and Toth, shyly at first, but then with growing confidence, resumed their friendship and spent their days at the ship’s stern, probing the sea with lines, bright-colored lures, and various baits gleaned from the galley.