“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 aftereffect 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‑blown 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?” Eriond 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 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?”