10
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the darkness became paler as the softly falling snow made indistinct even the arrival of morning. Their seemingly inexhaustible horses pounded on through the growing light, the sound of their hooves muffled by the snow now lying fetlock-deep on the broad surface of the Great North Road. Garion glanced back once and saw the jumbled tracks of their passage stretching behind them and, already at the hazy gray limit of his vision, beginning to fill with concealing snow.
When it was fully light, Mister Wolf reined in his steaming horse and proceeded at a walk for a time.
"How far have we come?" he asked Silk.
The weasel-faced man who had been shaking the snow out of the folds of his cloak looked around, trying to pick out a landmark in the misty veil of dropping flakes.
"Ten leagues," he said finally. "Perhaps a bit more."
"This is a miserable way to travel," Barak rumbled, wincing slightly as he shifted his bulk in the saddle.
"Think of how your horse must feel." Silk grinned at him.
"How far is it to Camaar?" Aunt Pol asked.
"Forty leagues from Muros," Silk told her.
"We’ll need shelter then," she said. "We can’t gallop forty leagues without rest, no matter who’s behind us."
"I don’t think we need to worry about pursuit just now," Wolf said. "The Algars will detain Brill and his hirelings or even Asharak if they try to follow us."
"At least there’s something Algars are good for," Silk said dryly.
"If I remember correctly, there should be an imperial hostel about five leagues farther to the west," Wolf said. "We ought to reach it by noon."
"Will we be allowed to stay there?" Durnik asked doubtfully. "I’ve never heard that Tolnedrans are noted for hospitality."
"Tolnedrans will sell anything for a price," Silk said. "The hostel would be a good place to stop. Even if Brill or Asharak should evade the Algars and follow us there, the legionnaires won’t permit any foolishness within their walls."
"Why should there be Tolnedran soldiers in Sendaria?" Garion asked, feeling a brief surge of patriotic resentment at the thought.
"Wherever the great roads are, you’ll find the legions," Silk said. "Tolnedrans are even better at writing treaties than they are at giving short weight to their customers."
Mister Wolf chuckled. "You’re inconsistent, Silk," he said. "You don’t object to their highways, but you dislike their legions. You can’t have the one without the other."
"I’ve never pretended to be consistent," the sharp-nosed man said airily. "If we want to reach the questionable comfort of the imperial hostel by noon, hadn’t we better move along? I wouldn’t want to deny His Imperial Majesty the opportunity to pick my pocket."
"All right," Wolf said, "let’s ride." And he put his heels to the flanks of the Algar horse which had already begun to prance impatiently under him.
The hostel, when they reached it in the full light of snowy noon, proved to be a series of stout buildings surrounded by an even stouter wall. The legionnaires who manned it were not the same sort of men as the Tolnedran merchants Garion had seen before. Unlike the oily men of commerce, these were hard-faced professional fighting men in burnished breastplates and plumed helmets. They carried themselves proudly, even arrogantly, each bearing the knowledge that the might of all Tolnedra was behind him.
The food in the dining hall was plain and wholesome, but dreadfully expensive. The tiny sleeping cubicles were scrupulously clean, with hard, narrow beds and thick woolen blankets, and were also expensive. The stables were neat, and they too reached deeply into Mister Wolf’s purse. Garion wondered at the thought of how much their lodging was costing, but Wolf paid for it all with seeming indifference as if his purse were bottomless.
"We’ll rest here until tomorrow," the white-bearded old man announced when they had finished eating. "Maybe it will snow itself out by morning. I’m not happy with all this plunging blindly through a snowstorm. Too many things can hide in our path in such weather."
Garion, who by now was numb with exhaustion, heard these words gratefully as he half drowsed at the table. The others sat talking quietly, but he was too tired to listen to what they said.
"Garion," Aunt Pol said finally, "why don’t you go to bed?"
"I’m all right, Aunt Pol," he said, rousing himself quickly, mortified once more at being treated like a child.
"Now, Garion," she said in that infuriating tone he knew so well. It seemed that all his life she had been saying "Now, Garion," to him. But he knew better than to argue.
He stood up and was surprised to feel that his legs were trembling. Aunt Pol also rose and led him from the dining hall.
"I can find my way by myself," he objected.
"Of course," she said. "Now come along."
After he had crawled into bed in his cubicle, she pulled his blankets up firmly around his neck. "Stay covered," she told him. "I don’t want you taking cold." She laid her cool hand briefly on his forehead as she had done when he was a small child.
"Aunt Pol?" he asked drowsily.
"Yes, Garion?"
"Who were my parents? I mean, what were their names?"
She looked at him gravely. "We can talk about that later," she said.
"I want to know," he said stubbornly.
"All right. Your father’s name was Geran; your mother’s was Ildera."
Garion thought about that.
"The names don’t sound Sendarian," he said finally.
"They’re not," Aunt Pol said.
"Why was that?"
"It’s a very long story," she said, "and you’re much too tired to hear it just now."
On a sudden impulse he reached out and touched the white lock at her brow with the mark on the palm of his right hand. As had some times happened before, a window seemed to open in his mind at the tingling touch, but this time that window opened on something much more serious. There was anger, and a single face—a face that was strangely like Mister Wolf’s, but was not his face, and all the towering fury in the world was directed at that face.
Aunt Pol moved her head away. "I’ve asked you not to do that, Garion," she said, her tone very matter-of-fact. "You’re not ready for it yet.
"You’re going to have to tell me what it is someday," he said.
"Perhaps," she said, "but not now. Close your eyes and go to sleep."
And then, as if that command had somehow dissolved his will, he fell immediately into a deep, untroubled sleep.
By the next morning it had stopped snowing. The world outside the walls of the imperial hostel was mantled in thick, unbroken white, and the air was filmy with a kind of damp haze that was almost—but not quite-fog.
"Misty Sendaria," Silk said ironically at breakfast. "Sometimes I’m amazed that the entire kingdom doesn’t rust shut."
They traveled all that day at a mile-eating canter, and that night there was another imperial hostel, almost identical to the one they had left that morning—so closely identical in fact that it almost seemed to Garion that they had ridden all day and merely arrived back where they had started. He commented on that to Silk as they were putting their horses in the stable.
"Tolnedrans are nothing if not predictable," Silk said. "All their hostels are exactly the same. You can find these same buildings in Drasnia, Algaria, Arendia and any place else their great roads go. It’s their one weakness—this lack of imagination."
"Don’t they get tired of doing the same thing over and over again?"
"It makes them feel comfortable, I guess." Silk laughed. "Let’s go see about supper."
It snowed again the following day, but by noon Garion caught a scent other than that faintly dusty odor snow always seemed to have. Even as he had done when they had approached Darine, he began to smell the sea, and he knew their journey was almost at an end.
Camaar, the largest city in Sendaria and the major seaport of the north, was a sprawling place which had existed at the mouth of the Greater Camaar River since antiquity. It was the natural western terminus of the Great North Road which stretched to Boktor in Drasnia and the equally natural northern end of the Great West Road which reached down across Arendia into Tolnedra and the imperial capital at Tol Honeth. With some accuracy it could be said that all roads ended at Camaar.