The last stretch of reef was completely submerged, and Garion flinched as he stepped down into the icy water, The breaking waves covered the surface with froth, making it impossible to see the bottom. He moved along blindly, probing the unseen path with numb feet. A large wave swelled and rose up as far as his armpits, and its powerful surge swept him of his feet. He clung to the reins of his horse, floundering and sputtering as he fought to get back up.
And then they were past the worst of it. They moved along the reef with the water only ankle-deep now; a few moments later, they climbed up onto the large, white boulder. Garion let out a long, explosive breath as he reached safety. The wind, blowing against his wet clothing, chilled him to the bone but at least they were out of the water.
Later, as they sat huddled together on the leeward side of the boulder, Garion looked out across the sullen black sea toward the low, forbidding coastline lying ahead. The beaches, like those of Morindland behind them, were black gravel, and the low hills behind them were dark under the scudding gray cloud. Nowhere was there any sign of life, but there was an implicit threat in the very shape of the land itself.
“Is that it?” he asked finally in a hushed voice.
Belgarath’s face was unreadable as he gazed across the open water toward the coast ahead. “Yes,” he replied. “That’s Mallorea.”
PART TWO
MISHRAK AC THULL
Chapter Eight
THE CROWN HAD been Queen Islena’s first mistake. It was heavy and it always gave her a headache. Her decision to wear it had come originally out of a sense of insecurity. The bearded warnors in Anheg’s throne room intimidated her, and she felt the need of a visible symbol of her authority. Now she was afraid to appear without it. Each day she put it on with less pleasure and entered the main hall of Anheg’s palace with less certainty.
The sad truth was that Queen Islena of Cherek was completely unprepared to rule. Until the day when, dressed in regal crimson velvet and with her gold crown firmly in place, she had marched into the vaulted throne room at Val Alorn to announce that she would rule the kingdom in her husband’s absence, Islena’s most momentous decisions had involved which gown she would wear and how her hair was to be arranged. Now it seemed that the fate of Cherek hung in the balance each time she was faced with a choice.
The warriors lounging indolently with their ale cups about the huge, open fire pit or wandering aimlessly about on the rush-strewn floor were no help whatsoever. Each time she entered the throne room, all conversation broke off and they rose to watch as she marched to the bannerhung throne, but their faces gave no hint of their true feelings toward her. Irrationally, she concluded that the whole problem had to do with the beards. How could she possibly know what a man was thinking when his face was sunk up to the ears in hair? Only the quick intervention of Lady Merel, the cool blond wife of the Earl of Trellheim, had stopped her from ordering a universal shave.
“You can’t, Islena,” Merel had told her flatly, removing the quill from the queen’s hand, even as she had been in the act of signing the hastily drawn-up proclamation. “They’re attached to their beards like little boys attached to a favorite toy. You can’t make them cut off their whiskers.”
“I’m the Queen.”
“Only as long as they permit you to be. They accept you out of respect for Anheg, and that’s as far as it goes. If you tamper with their pride, they’ll take you off the throne.” And that dreadful threat had ended the matter then and there.
Islena found herself relying more and more on Barak’s wife, and it was not long before the two of them, one in green and the other in royal crimson, were seldom apart. Even when Islena faltered, Merel’s icy stare quelled the hints of disrespect which cropped up from time to time – usually when the ale had been distributed a bit too freely. It was Merel, ultimately, who made the day-to-day decisions which ran the kingdom. When IsIena sat upon the throne, Merel, her blond braids coiled about her head to form her own crown, stood to one side in plain view of the hesitant queen. Cherek was ruled by the expressions on her face. A faint smile meant yes; a frown, no; a scarcely perceptible shrug, maybe. It worked out fairly well.
But there was one person who was not intimidated by Merel’s cool gaze. Grodeg, the towering, white-bearded High Priest of Belar, inevitably requested private audience with the queen, and once Merel left the council room, Islena was lost.
Despite Anheg’s call for a general mobilization, the members of the Bear-cult had not yet left to join the campaign. Their promises to join the fleet later all sounded sincere, but their excuses and delays grew more and more obvious as time went on. Islena knew that Grodeg was behind it all. Nearly every able-bodied man in the kingdom was off with the fleet, which was even now rowing up the broad expanse of the Aldur River to join Anheg in central Algaria. The household guard in the palace at Val Alorn had been reduced to grizzled old men and downy-cheeked boys. Only the Bear-cult remained, and Grodeg pushed his advantage to the limit.
He was polite enough, bowing to the queen when the occasion demanded, and never mentioning her past links with the cult, but his offers to help became more and more insistent; and when Islena faltered at his suggestions concerning this matter or that, he smoothly acted to implement them as if her hesitancy had been acceptance. Little by little, Islena was losing control, and Grodeg, with the armed might of the cult behind him, was taking charge. More and more the cult members infested the palace, giving orders, lounging about the throne room and openly grinning as they watched Islena’s attempts to rule.
“You’re going to have to do something, Islena,” Merel said firmly one evening when the two were alone in the queen’s private apartment. She was striding about the carpeted room, her hair gleaming like soft gold in the candlelight, but there was nothing soft in her expression.
“What can I do?” Islena pleaded, wringing her hands. “He’s never openly disrespectful, and his decisions always seem to be in the best interests of Cherek.”
“You need help, Islena,” Merel told her.
“Whom can I turn to?” The Queen of Cherek was almost in tears. The Lady Merel smoothed the front of her green velvet gown.
“I think it’s time that you wrote to Porenn,” she declared.
“What do I say?” Islena begged of her.
Merel pointed at the small table in the corner where parchment and ink lay waiting. “Sit down,” she instructed, “and write what I tell you to write.”
Count Brador, the Tolnedran ambassador, was definitely growing tiresome, Queen Layla decided. The plump little queen marched purposefully toward the chamber where she customarily gave audiences and where the ambassador awaited her with his satchel full of documents.
The courtiers in the halls bowed as she passed, her crown slightly askew and her heels clicking on the polished oak floors, but Queen Layla uncharacteristically ignored them. This was not the time for polite exchanges or idle chitchat. The Tolnedran had to be dealt with, and she had delayed too long already.
The ambassador was an olive-skinned man with receding hair and a hooked nose. He wore a brown mantle with the old trim that indicated his relationship to the Borunes. He lounged rather indolently in a large cushioned chair near the window of the sunny room where he and Queen Layla were to meet. He rose as she entered and bowed with exquisite grace. “Your Highness,” he murmured politely.
“My dear Count Brador,” Queen Layla gushed at him, putting on her most helpless and scatterbrained expression, “please do sit down. I’m sure we know each other well enough by now to skip all these tedious formalities.” She sank into a chair, fanning herself with one hand. “It’s turned warm, hasn’t it?”
“Summers are lovely here in Sendaria, your Highness,” the count replied, settling back in his chair. “I wonder – have you had the chance to think over the proposals I gave you at our last meeting?”
Queen Layla stared at him blankly. “Which proposals were those, Count Brador?” She gave a helpless little giggle. “Please forgive me, but my mind seems to be absolutely gone these days. There are so many details. I wonder how my husband keeps them all straight.”
“We were discussing the administration of the port at Camaar, your Highness,” the count reminded her gently.
“We were?” The queen gave him a blank look of total incomprehension, secretly delighted at the flicker of annoyance that crossed his face. It was her best ploy. By pretending to have forgotten all previous conversations, she forced him to begin at the beginning every time they met. The count’s strategy, she knew, depended upon a gradual build-up to his final proposal, and her pretended forgetfulness neatly defeated that. “Whatever led us into such a tedious subject as that?” she added.