"Really, Barak," she protested. "You must learn to pay attention. You'll never make anything of yourself if you keep blundering around with your ears closed like this."
"A son?" he repeated, his sword sliding out of his fingers.
"Now you've dropped it," she chided him. "Pick it up immediately, and let's get on with this. It's very inconsiderate to take all day to kill yourself like this."
"I'm not going to kill myself," he told her indignantly.
"You're not?"
"Of course not," he sputtered, and then he saw the faint flicker of a smile playing about the corners of her mouth. He hung his head sheepishly.
"You great fool," she said. Then she took hold of his beard with both hands, pulled his head down and kissed his ash-dusted face soundly. Greldik began to chortle, and Mandorallen stepped forward and caught Barak in a rough embrace. "I rejoice with thee, my friend," he said. "My heart soars for thee."
"Brink up a cask," Greldik told the sailors, pounding on his friend's back. "We'll salute Trellheim's heir with the bright brown ale of timeless Cherek."
"I expect this will get rowdy now," Aunt Pol said quietly to Garion. "Come with me." She led the way back toward the ship's prow.
"Will she ever change back?" Garion asked when they were alone again.
"What?"
"The queen," Garion explained. "Will she ever change back again?"
"In time she won't even want to," Aunt Pol answered. "The shapes we assume begin to dominate our thinking after a while. As the years go by, she'll become more and more a snake and less and less a woman."
Garion shuddered. "It would have been kinder to have killed her."
"I promised Lord Issa that I wouldn't," she said.
"Was that really the God?"
"His spirit," she replied, looking out into the hazy ashfall. "Salmissra infused the statue with Issa's spirit. For a time at least the statue was the God. It's all very complicated." She seemed a bit preoccupied. "Where is he?" She seemed suddenly irritated.
"Who?"
"Father. He should have been here days ago."
They stood together looking out at the muddy river.
Finally she turned from the railing and brushed at the shoulders of her cloak with distaste. The ash puffed from under her fingers in tiny clouds. "I'm going below," she told him, making a face. "It's just too dirty up here."
"I thought you wanted to talk to me," he said.
"I don't think you're ready to listen. It'll wait." She stepped away, then stopped. "Oh, Garion."
"Yes?"
"I wouldn't drink any of that ale the sailors are swilling. After what they made you drink at the palace, it would probably make you sick."
"Oh," he agreed a trifle regretfully. "All right."
"It's up to you, of course," she said, "but I thought you ought to know." Then she turned again and went to the hatch and disappeared down the stairs.
Garion's emotions were turbulent. The entire day had been vastly eventful, and his mind was filled with a welter of confusing images.
"Be quiet, " the voice in his mind said.
"What?"
"I'm trying to hear something. Listen. "
"Listen to what?"
"There. Can't you hear it?"
Faintly, as if from a very long way ofi, Garion seemed to hear a muffled thudding.
"What is it?"
The voice did not answer, but the amulet about his neck began to throb in time with the distant thudding.
Behind him he heard a rush of tiny feet.
"Garion!" He turned just in time to be caught in Ce'Nedra's embrace. "I was so worried about you. Where did you go?"
"Some men came on board and grabbed me," he said, trying to untangle himself from her arms. "They took me to the palace."
"How awful!" she said. "Did you meet the queen?"
Garion nodded and then shuddered, remembering the hooded snake lying on the divan looking at itself in the mirror.
"What's wrong?" the girl asked.
"A lot of things happened," he answered. "Some of them weren't very pleasant." Somewhere at the back of his awareness, the thudding continued.
"Do you mean they tortured you?" Ce'Nedra asked, her eyes growing very wide.
"No, nothing like that."
"Well, what happened?" she demanded. "Tell me."
He knew that she would not leave him alone until he did, so he described what had happened as best he could. The throbbing sound seemed to grow louder while he talked, and his right palm began to tingle. He rubbed at it absently.
"How absolutely dreadful," Ce'Nedra said after he had finished. "Weren't you terrified?"
"Not really," he told her, still scratching at his palm. "Most of the time the things they made me drink made my head so foggy I couldn't feel anything."
"Did you really kill Maas?" she asked, "Just like that?" She snapped her fingers.
"It wasn't exactly just like that," he tried to explain. "There was a little more to it."
"I knew you were a sorcerer," she said. "I told you that you were that day at the pool, remember?"
"I don't want to be," he protested. "I didn't ask to be."
"I didn't ask to be a princess either."
"It's not the same. Being a king or a princess is what one is. Being a sorcerer has to do with what one does."
"I really don't see that much difference," she objected stubbornly.
"I can make things happen," he told her. "Awful things, usually."
"So?" she said maddeningly. "I can make awful things happen too or at least I could back in Tol Honeth. One word from me could have sent a servant to the whipping-post - or to the headsman's block. I didn't do it of course, but I could have. Power is power, Garion. The results are the same. You don't have to hurt people if you don't want to."
"It just happens sometimes. It's not that I want to do it." The throbbing had become a nagging thing, almost like a dull headache.
"Then you have to learn to control it."
"Now you sound like Aunt Pol."
"She's trying to help you," the princess said. "She keeps trying to get you to do what you're going to have to do eventually anyway. How many more people are you going to have to burn up before you finally accept what she says?"