‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I’m going with you. What we are going to fight about is your incredible lack of common courtesy.’
Garion stared at him for a moment and then suddenly doubled over in a gale of helpless laughter.
Zakath’s face was still red, and his fists were clenching and unclenching. Then a slightly sheepish expression came over his face, and he too began to laugh.
Belgarath let out an explosive breath. ‘Garion,’ he said irritably, ‘let me know when you’re going to do something like that. My veins aren’t what they used to be.’
Zakath wiped at his eyes, though he was still laughing. ‘How long do you think it might take for you and your friends to get packed?’ he asked them.
‘Not too long,’ Garion replied. ‘Why?’
‘I’m suddenly homesick for Mal Zeth. It’s spring there now, and the cherry trees are in bloom. You and Ce’Nedra will love Mal Zeth, Garion.’
Garion was not entirely sure if the omission of the ‘Bel’ was inadvertent or an overture of friendship. He was, however, quite sure that the Emperor of Mallorea was a man of even greater complexity than he had imagined.
‘I hope you’ll all excuse me now,’ Zakath said, ‘but I want to talk with Brador and get a few more details about what’s going on in Karanda. This Mengha he told me about seems to be mounting an open insurrection against the crown, and I’ve always had a violent prejudice against that sort of thing.’
‘I can relate to that,’ Garion agreed blandly.
For the next few days the road between Rak Hagga and the port city of Rak Cthan was thick with imperial messengers. Finally, on a frosty morning when the sun was bright and the sky dark blue and when misty steam rose from the dark waters of Lake Hagga, they set out, riding across a winter-browned plain toward the coast. Garion, his gray Rivan cloak drawn about him, rode at the head of the column with Zakath, who seemed for some reason to be in better spirits than he had been at any time since the two had met. The column which followed them stretched back for miles.
‘Vulgar, isn’t it?’ the Mallorean said wryly, looking back over his shoulder. ‘I’m absolutely surrounded by parasites and toadies, and they proliferate like maggots in rotten meat.’
‘If they bother you so much, then why not dismiss them?’ Garion suggested.
‘I can’t. They all have powerful relatives. I have to balance them very carefully—one from this tribe to match the one from that clan. As long as no one family has too many high offices, they spend all their time plotting against each other. That way they don’t have the time to plot against me.’
‘I suppose that’s one way to keep things under control.’
As the sun moved up through the bright blue winter sky at this nether end of the world, the frost gently dissolved from the long stems of dead grass or fell lightly from the fern and bracken to leave ghostly white imprints of those drooping brown fronds on the short green moss spread beneath.
They paused for a noon meal that was every bit as sumptuous as one that might have been prepared back in Rak Hagga and was served on snowy damask beneath a widespread canvas roof. ‘Adequate, I suppose,’ Zakath said critically after they had eaten.
‘You’re overpampered, my lord,’ Polgara told him. ‘A hard ride in wet weather and a day or so on short rations would probably do wonders for your appetite.’
Zakath gave Garion an amused look. ‘I thought it was just you,’ he said, ‘but this blunt outspokenness seems to be a characteristic of your whole family.’
Garion shrugged. ‘It saves time.’
‘Forgive my saying this, Belgarion,’ Sadi interjected, ‘but what possible interest can an immortal have in time?’ He sighed rather mournfully. ‘Immortality must give one a great deal of satisfaction—watching all one’s enemies grow old and die.’
‘It’s much overrated,’ Belgarath said, leaning back in his chair with a brimming silver tankard. ‘Sometimes whole centuries go by when one doesn’t have any enemies and there’s nothing to do but watch the years roll by.’
Zakath suddenly smiled broadly. ‘Do you know something?’ he said to them all. ‘I feel better right now than I’ve felt in over twenty-five years. It’s as if a great weight has been lifted from me.’
‘Probably an after-effect of the poison,’ Velvet suggested archly. ‘Get plenty of rest, and it should pass in a month or so.’
‘Is the Margravine always like this?’ Zakath asked.
‘Sometimes she’s even worse,’ Silk replied morosely.
As they emerged from beneath the wide-spread canvas, Garion looked around for his horse, a serviceable roan with a long, hooked nose, but he could not seem to see the animal. Then he suddenly noticed that his saddle and packs were on a different horse, a very large dark gray stallion. Puzzled, he looked at Zakath, who was watching him intently. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Just a little token of my unbounded respect, Garion,’ Zakath said, his eyes alight. ‘Your roan was an adequate mount, I suppose, but he was hardly a regal animal. A King needs a kingly horse, and I think you’ll find that Chretienne can lend himself to any occasion that requires ceremony.’
‘Chretienne?’
‘That’s his name. He’s been the pride of my stable here in Cthol Murgos. Don’t you have a stable at Riva?’
Garion laughed. ‘My kingdom’s an island, Zakath. We’re more interested in boats than in horses.’ He looked at the proud gray standing with his neck arched and with one hoof lightly pawing the earth and was suddenly overcome with gratitude. He clasped the Mallorean Emperor’s hand warmly. ‘This is a magnificent gift, Zakath,’ he said.
‘Of course it is. I’m a magnificent fellow—or hadn’t you noticed? Ride him, Garion. Feel the wind in your face and let the thunder of his hooves fill your blood.’
‘Well,’ Garion said, trying to control his eagerness, ‘maybe he and I really ought to get to know each other.’
Zakath laughed with delight. ‘Of course,’ he said.
Garion approached the big gray horse, who watched him quite calmly.
‘I guess we’ll be sharing a saddle for a while,’ he said to the animal.
Chretienne nickered and nudged at Garion with his nose.
‘He wants to run,’ Eriond said. ‘I’ll ride with you, if you don’t mind. Horse wants to run, too.’
‘All right,’ Garion agreed. ‘Let’s go then.’ He gathered the reins, set his foot in the stirrup, and swung up into the saddle. The gray was running almost before Garion was in place.
It was a new experience. Garion had spent many hours riding—sometimes for weeks on end. He had always taken care of his mounts, as any good Sendar would, but there had never really been any personal attachment before. For him, a horse had simply been a means of conveyance, a way to get from one place to another, and riding had never been a particular source of pleasure. With this great stallion, Chretienne, however, it was altogether different. There was a kind of electric thrill to the feel of the big horse’s muscles bunching and flowing beneath him as they ran out across the winter-brown grass toward a rounded hill a mile or so distant, with Eriond and his chestnut stallion racing alongside.
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?’ Erion
d 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 the 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 place 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.
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 h
er 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.’
Demon Lord of Karanda Page 10