Durnik smiled. “I think he’s been talking to himself very hard. He’s trying to convince himself that he didn’t really see what happened back there. He still tends to cringe a lot when Pol goes out on deck, though.”
“Good. Is she awake?”
Durnik nodded. “I fixed her morning tea for her before I went out on deck.”
“How do you think she’d react if I asked her to bully the captain for me—just a little bit?”
“I don’t know that I’d use the word ‘bully,’ Garion,” Durnik advised seriously. “Try ‘talk to’ or ‘persuade’ instead. Pol doesn’t really think of what she does as bullying.”
“It is, though.”
“Of course, but she doesn’t think of it that way.”
“Let’s go see her.”
The cabin Polgara shared with Durnik was as tiny and cramped as all the rest aboard this ungainly vessel. Two-thirds of the space inside was given over to the high-railed bed, built of planks and seeming to grow out of the bulkheads themselves. Polgara sat in the center of the bed in her favorite blue dressing gown, holding a cup of tea and gazing out the porthole at the sleet-spattered waves.
“Good morning, Aunt Pol,” Garion greeted her.
“Good morning, dear. How nice of you to visit.”
“Are you all right, now?” he asked. “What I mean is, I understand that you were quite upset about what happened back at the harbor.”
She sighed. “I think the worst part was that I had no choice in the matter. Once Chabat raised the demon, she was doomed—but I was the one who had to destroy her soul.” Her expression was somber with a peculiar overtone of a deep and abiding regret. “Could we talk about something else?” she asked.
“All right. Would you like to speak to someone for me?”
“Who’s that?”
“The ship’s captain. He wants to drop his anchor until this weather clears, and I’d rather not wait.”
“Why don’t you talk with him yourself, Garion?”
“Because people tend to listen to you more attentively than they do me. Could you do it, Aunt Pol—talk to him, I mean?”
“You want me to bully him.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say ‘bully,’ Aunt Pol,” he protested.
“But that’s what you mean, Garion. Always say what you mean.”
“Will you?”
“All right, if you want me to. Now, will you do something for me?”
“Anything, Aunt Pol.”
She held out her cup. “Do you suppose you could fix me another cup of tea?”
After breakfast, Polgara put on her blue cloak and went out on deck. The Murgo captain changed his plans almost as soon as she began to speak to him. Then he climbed the mainmast and spent the rest of the morning with the lookout
. in the wildly swaying crow’s nest high aloft.
At the southern tip of the Urga peninsula, the steersman swung his tiller over, and the ship heeled sharply to port. It was not hard to understand why the captain had originally wanted to avoid the passage through the islands in anything remotely resembling rough weather. The currents and tides swirled through the narrow channels, the wind tore the tops of the dark-rolling waves to tatters, and the surf boomed and crashed on the knife-edged rocks rearing up out of the sea.
The Murgo sailors rowed fearfully, casting wild-eyed looks at the looming cliffs on all sides of them. After the first league or so, the captain clambered down the mast to stand tensely beside the steersman as the ship cautiously crawled through the gale-lashed islands.
It was midafternoon when they finally passed the last of the rocky islets, and the sailors began to row away from the land toward open water where the wind-driven sleet sizzled into the whitecaps.
Belgarath and Garion, with their cloaks pulled tightly about them, stood on the deck watching the oarsmen for a few minutes; then the old man went to the companionway door. “Urgit!” he shouted down the narrow hall, “come out here!”
The Murgo King stumbled up the stairs out onto the deck, his eyes fearful.
“Don’t your people know how to set their rigging so that they can quarter into the wind?” Belgarath demanded.
Urgit looked at him blankly. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Durnik!” Belgarath shouted.
The smith, standing with Toth at the stern of the ship, was intently watching his trailing lure and did not answer.
“Durnik!”
“Hmmm?”
“We have to reset the rigging. Come and show the captain how it’s done.”
“In a minute.”
“Now, Durnik!”
The smith sighed and began to coil up his line. The fish struck without warning, and Durnik’s excited whoop was whipped away by the rising wind. He seized the line and jerked hard to set his hook. The great, silver-sided fish came boiling up put of the water, shaking his head angrily and threshing his way across the wind-driven chop. Durnik’s shoulders bowed as he pulled hard on his line, struggling manfully to haul the huge fish in hand over hand.
Belgarath started to swear.
“I’ll show the captain how to set his rigging, Grandfather,” Garion said.
“How much do you know about it?”
“I’ve been on at least as many ships as Durnik has. I know how it’s done.” He went toward the bow to talk to the Murgo captain who now stood staring ahead at the tossing sea. “You want to slack off your lines on this side over here,”
Garion explained to him, “and draw them in on the other. The idea is to angle your sails so that they catch the wind. Then you put your rudder over to compensate.”
“Nobody’s ever done it that way before,” the captain de-dared stubbornly.
“The Alorns do, and they’re the best sailors in the world.”
“The Alorns control the wind by sorcery. You can’t use your sails unless the wind is behind you.”
“Just try it, Captain,” Garion said patiently. He looked at the heavy-shouldered sailor and saw that he was wasting his time. “If you’d rather not do it because I ask you to,” he added, “I could probably persuade Lady Polgara to ask you—as a personal favor.”
The captain stared at him. Then he swallowed hard. “How was it you said you wanted the rigging reset, my Lord?” he asked in a much milder tone.
It took perhaps a quarter of an hour to set the lines to Garion’s satisfaction. Then, with the dubious captain in tow, he went aft and took the tiller from the steersman. “All right,” he said, “raise the sails.”
“It’s not going to work,” the captain predicted under his breath. Then he lifted his voice to a bellow. “Hoist the sails!”
The pulleys began to creak, and the sails, flapping in the wind, crawled up the masts. Then they boomed and bellied out, angled sharply to catch the wind. Garion pulled the tiller over as the ship heeled sharply to leeward. The prow knifed sharply through the heaving waves.
The Murgo captain gaped up at his sails. “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “Nobody’s ever done that before.”
“You see how it works now, don’t you?” Garion asked him.
“Of course. It’s so simple that I can’t understand why I didn’t think of it myself.”
Garion had an answer, but he decided to keep it to himself. The captain had already had a bad enough day. He turned to the steersman. “You have to keep your tiller over like tills to compensate for the force of the wind coming in on your starboard beam,” he explained.
“I understand, my Lord.”
Garion relinquished the tiller and stepped back to watch Durnik and Toth. They were still hauling at their line, and the great fish, no longer dancing on the sleet-swept surface, swept back and forth in long arcs across the boiling wake; the stout rope connecting his jaw to the two fishermen sizzled through the water as if it were hot.
“Nice fish,” Garion called to the struggling pair.
Durnik’s quick answering grin was like the sun coming up.
They quartered into an increasingly stiff wind for the remainder of the day. As the light began to fade, they were far from land. Garion was by now certain that the captain and the steersman could manage and he went forward to join the little group standing amidships around Durnik’s huge fish.
“Now that you’ve got him, where are you going to find a pan big enough to cook him in?” Silk was asking the smith.
A brief frown crossed Durnik’s face, but then he smiled again. “Pol will know how to take care of it,” he said and went back to admiring the monster lying on the deck. “Pol knows how to take care of everything.”
The sleet had abated, and the dark-rolling waves stretched sullenly to the faintly luminous line of the horizon that divided the black waves from an even blacker sky. The Murgo captain came forward in the windy twilight with a worried look on his face. Respectfully, he touched Urgit’s sleeve.