Castle of Wizardry (20 page)

Garion sighed. "Yes," he said, "it did, sort of, but it was best for all of us, I think. I get a feeling that I'm going to spend a lot of my life travelling about, and Zubrette's really not the sort of person you can ask to sleep on the ground."

"You people never hesitated to ask me to sleep on the ground," Ce'Nedra pointed out a trifle indignantly.

Garion looked at her. "We didn't, did we? I guess I never thought about that before. Maybe it's because you're braver."

The following morning after extended farewells and many promises to return, the four of them set out for Sendar.

"Well, Garion?" Aunt Pol said as they rode across the hill that put Faldor's farm irrevocably behind them.

"Well what?"

She gave him a long, silent look.

He sighed. There was really not much point in trying to hide things from her. "I won't be able to go back there, will I?"

"No, dear."

"I guess I always thought that when this was all finished, maybe we could go back to the farm - but we won't, will
we
?"

"No, Garion, we won't. You had to see it again to realize it, though. It was the only way to get rid of the little bits and pieces of it you've been trailing behind you all these months. I'm not saying that Faldor's is a bad place, you understand. It's just that it's not right for certain people."

"We make the trip all the way up there just so I could find that out?"

"It is fairly important, Garion - of course I enjoyed visiting with Faldor, too - and there were a few special things I left in the kitchen - things I've had for a very long time and that I'd rather not lose."

A sudden thought had occurred to Garion, however. "What about Ce'Nedra? Why did you insist that she come along?"

Aunt Pol glanced back once at the little princess, who was riding some yards behind them with her eyes lost in thought. "It didn't hurt her, and she saw some things there that were important for her to see."

"I'm fairly sure that I'll never understand that."

"No, dear," she agreed, "probably not."

It snowed fitfully for the next day and a half as they rode along the road that crossed the white central plain toward the capital at Sendar. Though it was not particularly cold, the sky remained overcast and periodic flurries swept in on them as they rode west. Near the coastline, the wind picked up noticeably, and the occasional glimpses of the sea were disquieting. Great waves ran before the wind, their tops ripped to frothy tatters.

At King Fulrach's palace, they found Belgarath in a foul humor. It was little more than a week until Erastide, and the old man stood glaring out a window at the stormy sea as if it were all some kind of vast, personal insult. "So nice you could join us," he said sarcastically to Aunt Pol when she and Garion entered the room where he brooded.

"Be civil, father," she replied calmly, removing her blue cloak and laying it across a chair.

"Do you see what it's doing out there, Pol?" He jabbed an angry finger toward the window.

"Yes, father," she said, not even looking. Instead, she peered intently at his face. "You aren't getting enough rest," she accused him.

"How can I rest with all that going on?" He waved at the window again.

"You're just going to agitate yourself, father, and that's bad for you. Try to keep your composure."

"We have to be in Riva by Erastide, Pol."

"Yes, father, I know. Have you been taking your tonic?"

"There's just no talking with her." The old man appealed directly to Garion. "You can see that, can't you?"

"You don't really expect me to answer a question like that, do you, Grandfather? Not right here in front of her?"

Belgarath scowled at him. "Turncoat," he muttered spitefully.

The old man's concern, however, was unfounded. Four days before Erastide, Captain Greldik's familiar ship sailed into the harbor out of a seething sleet storm. Her masts and bulwarks were coated with ice, and her main sail was ripped down the center.

When the bearded sailor arrived at the palace, he was escorted to the room where Belgarath waited with Captain - now Colonel - Brendig; the sober baronet who had arrested them all in Camaar so many months before. Brendig's rise had been very rapid, and he was now, along with the Earl of Seline, among King Fulrach's most trusted advisors.

"Anheg sent me," Greldik reported laconically to Belgarath. "He's waiting at Riva with Rhodar and Brand. They were wondering what was keeping you."

"I can't find any ship captain willing to venture out of the harbor during this storm," Belgarath replied angrily.

"Well, I'm here now," Greldik told him. "I've got to patch my sail, but that won't take too long. We can leave in the morning. Is there anything to drink around here?"

"How's the weather out there?" Belgarath asked.

"A little choppy," Greldik admitted with an indifferent shrug. He glanced through a window at the twelve-foot waves crashing green and foamy against the icy stone wharves in the harbor below. "Once you get out past the breakwater it isn't too bad."

"We'll leave in the morning then," Belgarath decided. "You'll have twenty or so passengers. Have you got room?"

"We'll make room," Greldik said. "I hope you're not planning to take horses this time. It took me a week to get my bilges clean after the last trip."

"Just one," Belgarath replied.
"A colt that seems to have become attached to Garion.
He won't make that much mess. Do you need anything?"

"I could still use that drink," Greldik replied hopefully.

The following morning the queen of Sendaria went into hysterics. When she learned that she was going to accompany the party to Riva, Queen Layla went all to pieces. King Fulrach's plump little wife had an absolute horror of sea travel - even in the calmest weather. She could not so much as look at a ship without trembling. When Polgara informed her that she had to go with them to Riva, Queen Layla promptly collapsed.

"Everything will be all right, Layla," Polgara kept repeating over and over again, trying to calm the agitated little queen. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"We'll all drown like rats," Queen Layla wailed in stark terror. "Like rats! Oh, my poor orphaned children."

"Now stop that at once!" Polgara told her.

"The sea monsters will eat us all up," the queen added morbidly, "crunching all our bones with their horrid teeth."

"There aren't any monsters in the Sea of the Winds, Layla," Polgara said patiently. "We have to go. We must be in Riva on Erastide."

"Couldn't you tell them that I'm sick - that I'm dying?" Queen Layla pleaded. "If it would help, I will die. Honestly, Polgara, I'll die right here and now on this very spot. Only, please, don't make me get on that awful ship. Please."

"You're being silly, Layla," Polgara chided her firmly. "You have no choice in the matter - none of us do. You and Fulrach and Seline and Brendig all have to go to Riva with the rest of us. That decision was made long before any of you were born. Now stop all this foolishness and start packing."

"I can't!" the queen sobbed, flinging herself into a chair.

Polgara looked at the panic-stricken queen with a kind of understanding sympathy, but when she spoke there was no trace of it in her voice. "Get up, Layla," she commanded briskly. "Get on your feet and pack your clothes. You are going to Riva. You'll go even if I have to drag you down to the ship and tie you to the mast until we get there."

"You wouldn't!" Queen Layla gasped, shocked out of her hysteria as instantly as if she had just been doused with a pail full of cold water. "You wouldn't do that to me, Polgara."

"Wouldn't I?" Polgara replied. "I think you'd better start packing, Layla."

The queen weakly struggled to her feet. "I'll be seasick every inch of the way," she promised.

"You can if it makes you happy, dear," Polgara said sweetly, patting the plump little queen gently on the cheek.

THEY WERE TWO DAYS at sea from Sendar to Riva, running before a quartering wind with their patched sail booming and the driving spray that froze to everything it touched. The cabin belowdecks was crowded, and Garion spent most of his time topside, trying to stay out of the wind and out from under the sailors' feet at the same time. Inevitably, he moved finally to the sheltered spot in the prow, sat with his back against the bulwark and his blue hooded cloak tight about him, and gave himself over to some serious thinking. The ship rocked and pitched in the heavy swells and frequently slammed head-on into monstrous black waves, shooting spray in all directions. The sea around them was flecked with whitecaps, and the sky was a threatening, dirty gray.

Garion's thoughts were almost as gloomy as the weather. His life for the past fifteen months had been so caught up in the pursuit of the Orb that he had not had time to look toward the future. Now the quest was almost over, and he began to wonder what would happen once the Orb had been restored to the Hall of the Rivan King. There would no longer be any reason for his companions to remain together. Barak would return to Val Alorn; Silk would certainly find some other part of the world more interesting; Hettar and Mandorallen and Relg would return home; and even Ce'Nedra, once she had gone through the ceremony of presenting herself in the throne room, would be called back to Tol Honeth. The adventure was almost over, and they would all pick up their lives again. They would promise to get together someday and probably be quite sincere about it; but Garion knew that once they parted, he would never see them all together again.

He wondered also about his own life. The visit to Faldor's farm had forever closed that door to him, even if it had ever really been open. The bits and pieces of information he had been gathering for the past year and more told him quite plainly that he was not going to be in a position to make his own decisions for quite some time.

"I don't suppose you'd consider telling me what I'm supposed to do next?" He didn't really expect any kind of satisfactory answer from that other awareness.

"It's a bit premature," the dry voice in his mind replied.

"We'll be in Riva tomorrow," Garion pointed out. "As soon as we put the Orb back where it belongs, this part of the adventure will be all finished. Don't you think that a hint or two might be in order along about now?"

"I wouldn't want to spoil anything for you."

"You know, sometimes I think you keep secrets just because you know that it irritates people."

"What an interesting idea."

The conversation got absolutely nowhere after that.

It was about noon on the day before Erastide when Greldik's icecoated ship tacked heavily into the sheltered harbor of the city of Riva on the east coast of the Isle of the Winds. A jutting promentory of wind-lashed rock protected the harbor basin and the city itself. Riva, Garion saw immediately, was a fortress. The wharves were backed by a high, thick city wall, and the narrow, snow-choked gravel strand stretching out to either side of the wharves was also cut off from access to the city. A cluster of makeshift buildings and low, varicolored tents stood on the strand, huddled against the city wall and half buried in snow. Garion thought he recognized Tolnedrans and a few Drasnian merchants moving quickly through the little enclave in the raw wind.

The city itself rose sharply up the steep slope upon which it was built, each succeeding row of gray stone houses towering over the ones below. The windows facing out toward the harbor were all very narrow and very high up in the buildings, and Garion could see the tactical advantage of such construction. The terraced city was a series of successive barriers. Breaching the gates would accomplish virtually nothing. Each terrace would be as impregnable as the main wall. Surmounting the entire city and brooding down at it
rose
the final fortress, its towers and battlements as gray as everything else in the bleak city of the Rivans. The blue and white sword-banners of Riva stood out stiffly in the wind above the fortress, outlined sharply against the dark gray clouds scudding across the winter sky.

King Anheg of Cherek, clad in fur, and Brand, the Rivan Warder, wearing his gray cloak, stood on the wharf before the city gates waiting for them as Greldik's sailors rowed the ship smartly up to the wharf. Beside them, his reddish-gold hair spread smoothly out over his greencloaked shoulders, stood Lelldorin of Wildantor. The young Asturian was grinning broadly. Garion took one incredulous look at his friend; then, with a shout of joy, he jumped to the top of the rail and leaped across to the stone wharf. He and Lelldorin caught each other in a rough bear hug, laughing and pounding each other on the shoulders with their fists.