King of the Murgos

Durnik sighed. "You're probably right," he agreed.

That evening, after they had all dined on some of the catch, they sat around the table in the aft cabin conversing idly.

"Do you think Agachak's caught up with Harakan yet?" Durnik asked Belgarath.

"I sort of doubt it," the old man replied. "Harakan's tricky. If Beldin couldn't catch him, I don't think Agachak's going to have much luck either."

"Lady Polgara," Sadi suddenly protested in a tone of outrage, "make her stop that."

"What's that, Sadi?"

"The Margravine Liselle. She's subverting my snake."

Velvet, with a mysterious little smile on her face, was delicately feeding Zith fish eggs taken from one of the large fish Durnik and Toth had caught. The little green snake was purring contentedly and was half-raised in anticipation of the next morsel.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The wind came up during the night, a raw, gusty wind, smelling strongly of dusty old ice, and the drizzle which had fallen for most of the previous day turned to sleet that rattled in the rigging and clattered on the deck like handfuls of pebbles. As usual, Garion rose early and tiptoed on unshod feet from the tiny cabin he shared with his sleeping wife. He made his way down the dark companionway past the doors to the cabins where the others slept and entered the aft cabin. He stood for a time at the windows running across the stem of the ship, looking out at the wind-tossed waves and listening to the slow creak of the tiller post running down through the center of the cabin to the rudder that probed the dark water beneath the stern.As he sat down to put on his boots, the door opened and Durnik came in, brushing the ice pellets of the sleet squall chattering on the decks from the folds of his cloak. "It's going to be slow going for a while, I'm afraid," he said to Garion. "The wind's swung around and it's coming directly up out of the south. We're running right straight into it. The sailors are breaking out the oars."

"Could you get any idea of how far it is to the tip of the peninsula?" Garion asked, standing up and stamping his feet to settle his boots into place.

"I talked with the captain a bit. From what he said, it's only a few leagues. There's a cluster of islands that runs off the south end of it, though, and he wants to let this blow over before he tries to thread his way through the passage. He's not much of a sailor, and this isn't much of a boat, so I guess he's a little timid."

Garion leaned forward, put his hands on the sill of one of the stern windows and looked out again at the stormy sea. "This could blow for a week," he observed. He turned to look at his friend. "Has our captain recovered his composure at all?" he asked. "He was a little wild-eyed when we sailed out of RakUrga."

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 mid afternoon 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!"