"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.
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.
Peculiarly, Ce'Nedra seemed to be suffering a similar shrinkage, and she quite obviously did not like it very much. Her comments became increasingly waspish; her observations more acid. She found the loose‑fitting garments of the peasantry uncouth. She found fault with the construction of the gangplows that opened whole acres at a time behind patiently plodding herds of oxen. She didn't like the food. Even the water ‑as clear as crystal, and as cold and sweet as might have sprung from any crevice in the Tolnedran mountains ‑offended her taste.
Silk, his eyes alight with mischief, rode at her side on the sunny midmorning of the last day of their journey from Mal Gemila. "Beware, your Majesty," he warned her slyly as they neared the crest of a hillside sheathed in pale spring grass so verdant that it almost looked like a filmy green mist. "The first sight of Mal Zeth has sometimes struck the unwary traveler blind. To be safe, why don't you cover one eye with your hand? That way you can preserve at least partial sight."
Her face grew frosty, and she drew herself to her full height in her saddle ‑a move that might have come off better had she been only slightly taller ‑and said to him in her most imperious tone, "We are not amused, Prince Kheldar, and we do not expect to find a barbarian city at the far end of the world a rival to the splendors of Tol Honeth, the only truly imperial city in the‑"
And then she stopped -as they all did.
The valley beyond the crest stretched not for miles, but for leagues, and it was filled to overflowing with the city of Mal Zeth. The streets were as straight as tautly stretched strings, and the buildings gleamed ‑not with marble, for there was not marble enough in all the world to sheath the buildings of this enormous city ‑but rather with an intensely gleaming, thick white mortar that seemed somehow to shoot light at the eye. It was stupendous.
"It's not much," Zakath said in an exaggeratedly deprecating tone. " Just a friendly little place we like to call home." He looked at Ce'Nedra's stiff, pale little face with an artful expression. "We really should press on, your Majesty," he told her. "It's a half‑day's ride to the imperial palace from here."
PART TWO - MAL ZETH
CHAPTER SlX
The gates of Mal Zeth, like those of Tol Honeth, were of bronze, broad and burnished. The city lying within t
hose gates, however, was significantly different from the capital of the Tolnedran Empire. There was a peculiar sameness about the structures, and they were built so tightly against each other that the broad avenues of the city were lined on either side by solid, mortar-covered walls, pierced only by deeply inset, arched doorways with narrow white stairways leading up to the flat rooftops. Here and there, the mortar had crumbled away, revealing the fact that the buildings beneath that coating were constructed of squared‑off timbers. Durnik, who believed that all buildings should be made of stone, noted that fact with a look of disapproval.
As they moved deeper into the city, Garion noticed the almost total lack of windows. "I don't want to seem critical," he said to Zakath, "but isn't your city just a little monotonous?"
Zakath looked at him curiously.
"All the houses are the same, and there aren't very many windows."
"Oh," Zakath smiled, "that's one of the drawbacks of leaving architecture up to the military. They're great believers in uniformity, and windows have no place in military fortifications. Each house has its own little garden, though, and the windows face that. In the summertime, the people spend most of their time in the gardens ‑or on the rooftops."
"Is the whole city like this?" Durnik asked, looking at the cramped little houses all packed together.
"No, Goodman," the Emperor replied. "This quarter of the city was built for corporals. The streets reserved for officers are a bit more ornate, and those where the privates and workmen live are much shabbier. Military people tend to be very conscious of rank and the appearances that go with it."
A few doors down a side street branching off from the one they followed, a stout, red‑faced woman was shrilly berating a scrawny‑looking fellow with a hangdog expression as a group of soldiers removed furniture from a house and piled it in a rickety cart. "You had to go and do it, didn't you, Actas?" she demanded. "You had to get drunk and insult your captain. Now what's to become of us? I spent all those years living in those pigsty privates' quarters waiting for you to get promoted, and just when I think things are taking a turn for the better, you have to destroy it all by getting drunk and being reduced to private again." He mumbled something.
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