’Zakath’s humor continued to remain uncharacteristically sunny, though his discussions with Belgarath and Polgara centered on the nature of demons, a subject about which there was very little to smile. Finally, one day when they had been at sea for about a week, a servant came up to Garion, who stood at the portside rail watching the dance of the wind atop the sparkling waves, and advised him that the Emperor would like to see him.
Garion nodded and made his way aft to the cabin where ’Zakath customarily held audience. Like most of the cabins aboard the floating palace, this one was quite large and ostentatiously decorated. Owing to the broad windows stretching across the ship’s stern, the room was bright and airy. The drapes at the sides of the windows were of crimson velvet, and the fine Mallorean carpet was a deep blue. ’Zakath, dressed as always in plain white linen, sat on a low, leather-upholstered divan at the far end of the cabin, looking out at the whitecaps and the flock of snowy gulls trailing the ship. His cat lay purring in his lap as he absently stroked her ears.
“You wanted to see me, ’Zakath?” Garion asked as he entered.
“Yes. Come in, Garion,” the Mallorean replied. “I haven’t seen much of you for the past few days. Are you cross with me?”
“No,” Garion said. “You’ve been busy learning about demons. I don’t know that much about them, so I couldn’t have added all that much to the discussions.” He crossed the cabin, pausing at one point to stoop and unwrap a ferociously playful kitten from around his left ankle.
“They love to pounce.” ’Zakath smiled.
A thought came to Garion, and he looked around warily. “Zith isn’t in here, is she?”
’Zakath laughed. “No. Sadi’s devised a means of keeping her at home.” He looked whimsically at Garion. “Is she really as deadly as he says?”
Garion nodded. “She bit a Grolim at Rak Urga,” he said. “He was dead in about a half a minute.”
’Zakath shuddered. “You don’t have to tell Sadi about this,” he said, “but snakes make my flesh creep.”
“Talk to Silk. He could give you a whole dissertation about how much he dislikes them.”
“He’s a complicated little fellow, isn’t he?”
Garion smiled. “Oh, yes. His life is filled with danger and excitement, and so his nerves are as tightly wound as lute strings. He’s erratic sometimes, but you get used to that after a while.” He looked at the other man critically. “You’re looking particularly fit,” he noted, sitting down on the other end of the leather couch. “Sea air must agree with you.”
“I don’t think it’s really the air, Garion. I think it has to do with the fact that I’ve been sleeping eight to ten hours a night.”
“Sleep? You?”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” ’Zakath’s face went suddenly quite somber. “I’d rather that this didn’t go any further, Garion,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Urgit told you what happened when I was young?”
Garion nodded. “Yes.”
“My habit of not sleeping very much dates from then.
A face that had been particularly dear to me haunted my dreams, and sleep became an agony to me.”
“That didn’t diminish? Not even after some thirty years?”
“Not one bit. I lived in continual grief and guilt and remorse. I lived only to revenge myself on Taur Urgas.
Cho-Hag’s saber robbed me of that. I had planned a dozen different deaths for the madman—each more horrible than the one before—but he cheated me by dying cleanly in battle.”
“No,” Garion disagreed. “His death was worse than anything you could possibly have devised. I’ve talked with Cho-Hag about it. Taur Urgas went totally mad before Cho-Hag killed him, but he lived long enough to realize that he had finally been beaten. He died biting and clawing at the earth in frustration. Being beaten was more than he could bear.”
’Zakath thought about it. “Yes,” he said finally. “That would have been quite dreadful for him, wouldn’t it? I think that maybe I’m less disappointed now.”
“And was it your discovery that the Urga line is now extinct that finally laid the ghost that’s haunted your sleep all these years?”
“No, Garion. I don’t think that had anything to do with it. It’s just that instead of the face that had always been there before, now I see a different face.”
“Oh?”
“A blindfolded face.”
“Cyradis? I don’t know that I’d recommend thinking about her in that fashion.”
“You misunderstand, Garion. She’s hardly more than a child, but somehow she’s touched my life with more peace and comfort than I’ve ever known. I sleep like a baby and I walk around all day with this silly euphoria bubbling up in me.” He shook his head. “Frankly, I can’t stand myself like this, but I can’t help it for some reason.”
Garion stared out the window, not even seeing the play of sunlight on the waves nor the hovering gulls. Then it came to him so clearly that he knew that it was undeniably true. “It’s because you’ve come to that crossroads in your life that Cyradis mentioned,” he said. “You’re being rewarded because you’ve chosen the right fork.”
“Rewarded? By whom?”
Garion looked at him and suddenly laughed. “I don’t think you’re quite ready to accept that information yet,” he said. “Could you bring yourself to believe that it’s Cyradis who’s making you feel good right now?”
“In some vague way, yes.”
“It goes a little deeper, but that’s a start.” Garion looked at the slightly perplexed man before him. “You and I are caught up together in something over which we have absolutely no control,” he said seriously. “I’ve been through it before, so I’ll try to cushion the shocks that are in store for you as much as I can. Just try to keep an open mind about a peculiar way of looking at the world.” He thought about it some more. “I think that we’re going to be working together—at least up to a point—so we might as well be friends.” He held out his right hand.
’Zakath laughed. “Why not?” he said, taking Garion’s hold in a firm grip. “I think we’re both as crazy as Taur Urgas, but why not? We’re the two most powerful men in the world. We should be deadly enemies, and you propose friendship. Well, why not?” He laughed again delightedly.
“We have much more deadly enemies, ’Zakath,” Garion said gravely, “and all of your armies—and all of mine—won’t mean a thing when we get to where we’re going.”
“And where’s that, my young friend?”
“I think it’s called ‘the place which is no more.’ ”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. The whole phrase, is a contradiction in terms. How can you go someplace which doesn’t exist any more?”
“I don’t really know,” Garion told him. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Two days later, they arrived at Mal Gemila, a port in southern Mallorea Antiqua, and took to horse. They rode eastward at a canter on a well-maintained highway that crossed a pleasant plain, green with spring. A regiment of red-tunicked cavalrymen cleared the road ahead of them, and their pace left the entourage which usually accompanied the Emperor far behind. There were way-stations along the highway—not unlike the Tolnedran hostels dotting the roads in the west—and the imperial guard rather brusquely ejected other guests at these roadside stops to make way for the Emperor and his party.
As they pressed onward, day after day, Garion began slowly to comprehend the true significance of the word “boundless” as it was applied to Mallorea. The plains of Algaria, which had always before seemed incredibly vast, shrank into insignificance. The snowy peaks of the Dalasian mountains, lying to the south of the road they traveled, raked their white talons at the sky. Garion drew in on himself, feeling smaller and smaller the deeper they rode into this vast domain.