“Don’t touch it,” Garion warned again. “Just look.”
But ‘Zakath’s eyes were already locked on the stone as its blue light grew stronger and stronger. His hands gripped the edge of the table in front of him so tightly that his knuckles grew white. For a long moment he stared into that blue incandescence. Then, slowly, his fingers lost their grip on the table edge and fell back onto the arms of his chair. An expression of agony crossed his face. “They have escaped me,” he groaned with tears welling out of his closed eyes, “and I have slaughtered tens of thousands for nothing.” The tears began to stream down his contorted face.
“I’m sorry, Zakath,” Garion said quietly, lowering his hand. “I can’t change what’s already happened, but you had to know the truth.”
“I cannot thank you for this truth,” Zakath said, his shoulders shaking in the storm of his weeping. “Leave me, Belgarion. Take that accursed stone from my sight.” Garion nodded with a great feeling of compassion and shared sorrow. Then he replaced the Orb on the pommel of his sword, re‑covered the hilt, and picked up the great weapon. “I’m very sorry, Zakath,” he said again, and then he quietly went out of the room, leaving the Emperor of boundless Mallorea alone with his grief.
CHAPTER THREE
“Really, Garion, I’m perfectly fine,” Ce’Nedra objected again.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Then you’ll let me get out of bed?”
“No.”
“That’s not fair,” she pouted.
“Would you like a little more tea?” he asked, going to the fireplace, taking up a poker, and swinging out the iron arm from which a kettle was suspended.
“No, I don’t,” she replied in a sulky little voice. “It smells, and it tastes awful.”
“Aunt Pol says that it’s very good for you. Maybe if you drink some more of it, she’ll let you get out of bed and sit in a chair for a while.” He spooned some of the dried, aromatic leaves from an earthenware pot into a cup, tipped the kettle carefully with the poker, and filled the cup with steaming water.
Ce’Nedra’s eyes had momentarily come alight, but narrowed again almost immediately. “Oh, very clever, Garion,” she said in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “Don’t patronize me.”
“Of course not,” he agreed blandly, setting the cup on the stand beside the bed. “You probably ought to let that steep for a while,” he suggested.
“It can steep all year if it wants to. I’m not going to drink it.”
He sighed with resignation. “I’m sorry, Ce’Nedra,” he said with genuine regret, “but you’re wrong. Aunt Pol says that you’re supposed to drink a cup of this every other hour. Until she tells me otherwise, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
“What if I refuse?” Her tone was belligerent.
“I’m bigger than you are,” he reminded her.
Her eyes went wide with shock. “You wouldn’t actually force me to drink it, would you?”
His expression grew mournful. “I’d really hate to do something like that,” he told her.
“But you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” she accused.
He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Probably,” he admitted, “if Aunt Pol told me to.”
She glared at him. “ All right,” she said finally. “Give me the stinking tea.”
“It doesn’t smell all that bad, Ce’Nedra.”
“Why don’t you drink it, then?”
“I’m not the one who’s been sick.”
She proceeded then to tell him -at some length- exactly what she thought of the tea and him and her bed and the room and of the whole world in general. Many of the terms she used were very colorful -even lurid- and some of them were in languages that he didn’t recognize.
“What on earth is all the shouting about?” Polgara asked, coming into the room.
“I absolutely hate this stuff!” Ce’Nedra declared at the top of her lungs, waving the cup about and spilling most of the contents.
“I wouldn’t drink it then.” Aunt Pol advised calmly.
“Garion says that if I don’t drink it, he’ll pour it down my throat.”
“Oh. Those were yesterday’ s instructions.” Polgara looked at Garion. “Didn’t I tell you that they change today?”
“No,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, you didn’t.” He said it in a very level tone. He was fairly proud of that.
“I’m sorry, dear. I must have forgotten.”
“When can I get out of bed?” Ce’Nedra demanded.
Polgara gave her a surprised look. “Any time you want, dear “ she said. “As a matter of fact, I just came by to ask if you planned to join us for breakfast.”
Ce’Nedra sat up in bed, her eyes like hard little stones.
She slowly turned an icy gaze upon Garion and then quite deliberately stuck her tongue out at him.
Garion turned to Polgara. “Thanks awfully,” he said to her.
“Don’t be snide, dear,” she murmured. She looked at the fuming little Queen. “Ce’Nedra, weren’t you told as a child that sticking out one’s tongue is the worst possible form of bad manners?”
Ce’Nedra smiled sweetly. “Why, yes, Lady Polgara, as a matter of fact I was. That’s why I only do it on special occasions.”
“I think I’ll take a walk,” Garion said to no one in particular. He went to the door, opened it, and left.
Some days later he lounged in one of the sitting rooms that had been built in the former women’s quarters where he and the others were lodged. The room was peculiarly feminine. The furniture was softly cushioned in mauve, and the broad windows had filmy curtains of pale lavender. Beyond the windows lay a snowy garden, totally embraced by the tall wings of this bleak Murgo house. A cheery fire crackled in the half‑moon arch of a broad fireplace, and at the far corner of the room an artfully contrived grotto, thick with green fern and moss, flourished about a trickling fountain. Garion sat brooding out at a sunless noon ‑at an ash‑colored sky spitting white pellets that were neither snow nor hail, but something in between‑ and realized all of a sudden that he was homesick for Riva. It was a peculiar thing to come to grips with here on the opposite end of the world. Always before, the word “homesick” had been associated with Faldor’s farm ‑the kitchen, the broad central courtyard, Durnik’s smithy, and all the other dear, treasured memories. Now, suddenly, he missed that storm‑lashed coast, the security of that grim fortress hovering above the bleak city lying below, and the mountains, heavy with snow, rising stark white against a black and stormy sky.
There was a faint knock at the door.
“Yes?” Garion said absently, not looking around.
The door opened almost timidly. “Your Majesty?” a vaguely familiar voice said.
Garion turned, looking back over his shoulder. The man was chubby and bald and he wore brown, a plain serviceable color, though his robe was obviously costly, and the heavy gold chain about his neck loudly proclaimed that this was no minor official. Garion frowned slightly. “Haven’t we met before?” he asked. “Aren’t you General Atesca’s friend‑uh‑“
“Brador, your Majesty,” the brown‑robed man supplied. “Chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.”
“Oh, yes. Now I remember. Come in, your Excellency, come in.”
“Thank you, your Majesty.” Brador came into the room and moved toward the fireplace, extending his hands to its warmth. “Miserable climate.” He shuddered.
“You should try a winter in Riva,” Garion said, “although it’s summer there right now.”
Brador looked out the window at the snowy garden. “Strange place, Cthol Murgos,” he said. “One’s tempted to believe that all of Murgodom is deliberately ugly, and then one comes across a room like this.”
“I suspect that the ugliness was to satisfy Ctuchik -and Taur Urgas,” Garion replied. “Underneath, Murgos probably aren’t much different from the rest of us.”
Brador laughed. “That sort of thinking is considered heresy in Mal Zeth,” he said.
“The people in Val Alorn feel much the same way.” Garion looked at the bureaucrat. “I expect that this isn’t just a social call, Brador,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Your Majesty,” Brador said soberly, “I absolutely have to speak with the Emperor. Atesca tried to arrange it before he went back to Rak Verkat, but‑“ He spread his hands helplessly. “Could you possibly speak to him about it? The matter is of the utmost urgency.”
“I really don’t think there’s very much I can do for you, Brador,” Garion told him. “Right now I’m probably the last person he’d want to talk to.”
“Oh?”
“I told him something that he didn’t want to hear.”
Brador’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “You were my last hope, your Majesty.” he said.
“What’s the problem?”
Brador hesitated, looking around nervously as if to assure himself that they were alone. “Belgarion,” he said then in a very quiet voice, “have you ever seen a demon?”
“A couple of times, yes. It’s not the sort of experience I’d care to repeat.”