The cabin door opened, and General Atesca, the commander of the Mallorean forces occupying the Isle of Verkat, emerged. From the moment they had been turned over to him, Atesca had been polite and strictly correct in all his dealings with them. He had also been very firm about his intention to deliver them personally to Kal Zakat in Rak Hagga. He was a tall, lean man, and his uniform was bright scarlet, adorned with numerous medals and decorations. He carried himself with erect dignity, though the fact that his nose had been broken at some time in the past made him look more like a street brawler than a general in an imperial army. He came up the slush-covered deck, heedless of his highly polished boots.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he greeted them with a stiff, military bow. “I trust you slept well?”
“Tolerably,” Silk replied.
“It seems to be snowing,” the general said, looking about and speaking in the tone of one making small talk for the sake of courtesy.
“I noticed that,” Silk said. “How long is it likely to take us to reach Rak Hagga?”
“ A few more hours to reach the coast, your Highness, and then a two‑day ride to the city.”
Silk nodded. “Have you any idea why your Emperor wants to see us?” he asked.
“He didn’t say,” Atesca answered shortly, “and I didn’t think it appropriate to ask. He merely told me to apprehend you and to bring you to him at Rak Hagga. You are all to be treated with utmost courtesy as long as you don’t try to escape. If you do that, his Imperial Majesty instructed me to be more firm.” His tone as he spoke was neutral, and his face remained expressionless. “I hope you gentlemen will excuse me now,” he, said. “I have some matters that need my attention.” He bowed curtly, turned, and left them.
“He’s a gold mine of information, isn’t he?” Silk noted dryly. “ Most Melcenes love to gossip, but you’ve got to pry every word out of this one.”
“Melcene?” Garion said. “I didn’t know that.”
Silk nodded. “ Atesca’s a Melcene name. Kal Zakath has some peculiar ideas about the aristocracy of talent. Angarak officers don’t like the idea, but there’s not too much they can do about it ‑if they want to keep their heads.”
Garion was not really that curious about the intricacies of Mallorean politics, so he let the matter drop, to return to the subject they had been discussing previously. “I’m not quite clear about what you were saying, Grandfather, “ he said, “about our going to Rak Hagga, I mean.”
“Cyradis believes that she has a choice to make,” the old man replied,” and there are certain conditions that have to be met before she can make it. I’ve got a suspicion that your meeting with Zakath might be one of those conditions.”
“You don’t actually believe her, do you?”
“I’ve seen stranger things happen and I always walk very softly around the Seers of Kell.”
“I haven’t seen anything about a meeting of that kind in the Mrin Codex.”
“ Neither have I, but there are more things in the world than the Mrin Codex. You’ve got to keep in mind the fact that Cyradis is drawing on the prophecies of both sides, and if the prophecies are equal, they have equal truth. Not only that, Cyradis is probably drawing on some prophecies that only the Seers know about. Wherever this list of preconditions came from, though, I’m fairly certain that she won’t let us get to this ‘place which is no more’ until every item’s been crossed off her list.”
“Won’t let us?” Silk said.
“Don’t underestimate Cyradis, Silk,” Belgarath cautioned. “She’s the receptacle of all the power the Dals possess. That means that she can probably do things that the rest of us couldn’t even begin to dream of. Let’s look at things from a practical point of view, though. When we started out, we were a half a year behind Zandramas and we were planning a very tedious and time‑consuming trek across Cthol Murgos ‑but we kept getting interrupted.” .
“Tell me about it,” Silk said sardonically.
“Isn’t it curious that after all these interruptions, we’ve reached the eastern side of the continent ahead of schedule and cut Zandramas’ lead down to a few weeks?”
Silk blinked, and then his eyes narrowed.
“Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it?” The old man pulled his cloak more tightly about him and looked around at the settling snow. “Let’s go inside,” he suggested. “It’s really unpleasant out here.”
The coast of Hagga was backed by low hills, filmy-looking and white in the thick snowfall. There were extensive salt marshes at the water’s edge, and, the brown reeds bent under their burden of wet, clinging snow. A black‑looking wooden pier extended out across the marshes to deeper water, and they disembarked from the Mallorean ship without incident. At the landward end of the pier a wagon track ran up into the hills, its twin ruts buried in snow.
Sadi the eunuch looked upward with a slightly bemused expression as they rode off the pier and onto the road. He lightly brushed one long‑fingered hand across his shaved scalp. “They feel like fairy wings,” he smiled.
“What’s that?” Silk asked him.
“The snowflakes. I’ve almost never seen snow before ‑only when I was visiting a northern kingdom‑ and I actually believe that this is the first time I’ve ever been out of doors when it was snowing. It’s not too bad, is it?”
Silk gave him a sour look. “The first chance I get, I’ll buy you a sled,” he said.
Sadi looked puzzled. “Excuse me, Kheldar, but what’s a sled?” he asked.
Silk sighed. “Never mind, Sadi. I was only trying to be funny.”
At the top of the first hill a dozen or so crosses leaned at various angles beside the road. Hanging from each cross was a skeleton with a few tattered rags clinging to its bleached bones and a clump of snow crowning its vacant‑eyed skull.
“One is curious to know the reason for that, General Atesca,” Sadi said mildly, pointing at the grim display at the roadside.
“Policy, your Excellency.” Atesca replied curtly. “His Imperial Majesty seeks to alienate the Murgos from their king. He hopes to make them realize that Urgit is the cause of their misfortunes.”
Sadi shook his head dubiously. “I’d question the reasoning behind that particular policy,” he disagreed.
“Atrocities seldom endear one to the victims. I’ve always preferred bribery myself.”
“Murgos are accustomed to being treated atrociously.” Atesca shrugged. “It’s all they understand.”
“Why haven’t you taken them down and buried them?” Durnik demanded, his face pale and his voice thick with outrage.
Atesca gave him a long, steady look. “Economy, Goodman,” he replied. “ An empty cross really doesn’t prove very much. If we took them down, we’d just have to replace them with fresh Murgos. That gets to be tedious after a while, and sooner or later one starts to run out of people to crucify. Leaving the skeletons there proves our point ‑and it saves time.”
Garion did his best to keep his body between Ce’Nedra and the gruesome object lesson at the side of the road, trying to shield her from that hideous sight. She rode on obliviously, however, her face strangely numb and her eyes blank and unseeing. He threw a quick, questioning glance at Polgara and saw a slight frown on her face. He dropped back and pulled his horse in beside hers. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked in a tense whisper.
“I’m not entirely sure, Garion,” she whispered back.
“Is it the melancholia again?” There was a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“I don’t think so,” Her eyes were narrowed in thought, and she absently pulled the hood of her blue robe forward to cover the white lock in the midnight of her hair. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“What can I do?”
“Stay with her. Try to get her to talk. She might say something to give us some clues.”
Ce’Nedra, however, made few responses to Garion’s efforts to engage her in conversation, and her answers for the remainder of that snowy day quite frequently had little relevance to either his questions or his observations.
As evening began to settle over the war‑ravaged countryside of Hagga, General Atesca called a halt, and his soldiers began to erect several scarlet pavilions in the lee of a fire‑blackened stone wall, all that remained of a burned‑out village. “We should reach Rak Hagga by late tomorrow afternoon,” he advised them. “ That large pavilion in the center of the encampment will be yours for the night. My men will bring you your evening meal in a little while. Now, if you’ll all excuse me‑“ He inclined his head briefly, then turned his horse around to supervise his men.