‘I thought that’s what we’ve been doing.’
‘Not entirely. We’re doing all this because we’re compelled to. What I was talking about was doing it just for fun.’
‘I haven’t done anything just for fun in years.’
‘Didn’t you rather enjoy threatening to crucify King Gethel of the Thulls? Ce’Nedra told me about that.’
Zakath laughed. ‘That wasn’t too bad,’ he admitted. ‘I wouldn’t have done it, of course. Gethel was an idiot, but he was sort of necessary at that point.’
‘It always comes to that, doesn’t it? You and I do what’s necessary, not what we’d really prefer to do. Neither of us sought this eminence, but we’ll do what’s necessary and what’s expected of us. If we don’t, this world will die, and good, honest men will die with it. I won’t permit that if I can help it. I won’t betray those good, honest men, and neither will you. You’re too good a man yourself.’
‘Good? Me?’
‘You underestimate yourself, Zakath, and I think that very soon someone will come and teach you not to hate yourself any more.’
Zakath started visibly.
‘You didn’t think I knew?’ Garion said, boring in relentlessly. ‘But that’s nearly over now. Your suffering and pain and remorse are almost done, and if you need any instructions in how to be happy, look me up. After all, that’s what friends are for, aren’t they?’
A choked sob came from behind Zakath’s visor.
The she-wolf had been standing between their horses. She looked up at Garion. ‘Very well done,’ she said. ‘Perhaps one has misjudged you, young wolf. Perhaps you are not a puppy after all.’
‘One can but do one’s best,’ Garion replied, also in the language of wolves. ‘One hopes that one has not been too much a disappointment.’
‘One feels that you have some promise, Garion.’
And that confirmed something that Garion had suspected for some time now. ‘Thank you, Grandmother,’ he said, sure at last just to whom he was speaking.
‘And it took you so very, very long to say it?’
‘It might have been considered impolite.’
‘One believes that you have been too long with one’s eldest daughter. She is, one has noticed, much caught up in propriety. One assumes you will continue to keep your discovery to yourself?’
‘If you wish.’
‘It might be wiser.’ She looked at the palace gate. ‘What is this place?’
‘It is the palace of the king.’
‘What are kings to wolves?’
‘It is the custom among the man-things to pay respect to them, Grandmother. The respect is more to the custom than to the man-thing who wears the crown.’
‘How very curious,’ she sniffed.
At last, with a great deal of creaking and the clanking of chain, the drawbridge boomed down, and Baron Astellig and his knights led them into the palace courtyard.
As was the one in Vo Mimbre, the throne room here in Dal Perivor was a great, vaulted hall with sculptured buttresses soaring upward along the walls. Tall, narrow windows rose between the buttresses, and the light streaming through their stained glass panels was jeweled. The floor was polished marble, and on the red-carpeted stone platform at the far end stood the throne of Perivor, backed by heavy purple drapes. Flanking the draped wall hung the massive antique weapons of two thousand years of the royal house. Lances, maces, and huge swords, taller than any man, hung among the tattered war-banners of forgotten kings.
Almost bemused by the similarities, Garion half-expected to see Mandorallen in his gleaming armor come striding across the marble floor to greet them, flanked by red-bearded Barak and horse-maned Hettar. Once again, that strange sense of recurrence struck him. With a start he realized that in recounting past experiences to Zakath, he had in fact been reliving them. In some obscure way this seemed a kind of cleansing in preparation for the now almost inevitable meeting in the Place Which Is No More.
‘And it please ye, Sir Knights,’ Baron Astellig said to Garion and Zakath, ‘let us approach the throne of King Oldorin that I may present ye to his Majesty. I will advise him of the diverse restrictions your quest hath lain upon ye.’
‘Thy courtesy and consideration become thee, my Lord of Astellig,’ Garion said. ‘Gladly will we greet thy king.’
The three of them proceeded along the marble floor toward the carpeted platform. King Oldorin, Garion noticed, was a more robust-looking man than Korodullin of Arendia, but his eyes revealed a fearful lack of anything resembling thought.
A tall, powerfully built knight stepped in front of Astellig. ‘This is unseemly, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Instruct thy companions to raise their visors that the king may behold those who approach him.’
‘I will explain to his Majesty the reason for this necessary concealment, my Lord,’ Astellig replied a bit stiffly. ‘I assure thee that these knights, whom I dare to call friends, intend no disrespect to our Lord King.’
‘I’m sorry, Baron Astellig,’ the knight said, ‘but I cannot permit this.’
The baron’s hand went to his sword hilt.
‘Steady,’ Garion warned, placing one gauntleted hand on Astellig’s arm. ‘As all the world knows, it is forbidden to draw arms in the king’s presence.’
‘Thou art well-versed in propriety, Sir Knight,’ the man barring their way said, sounding a bit less sure of himself now.
‘I’ve been in the presence of kings before, my Lord, and I am conversant with the customary usages. I do assure thee that we mean no disrespect to his Majesty by our visored approach to the throne. We are compelled to it, however, by a stern duty which hath been lain upon us.’
The knight looked even more unsure of himself. ‘Thou art well-spoken, Sir Knight,’ he admitted grudgingly.
‘An it please you then, Sir Knight,’ Garion continued, ‘wilt thou accompany Baron Astellig, my companion, and myself to the throne? A man of thine obvious prowess can easily prevent mischief.’ A little flattery never hurt anything in difficult situations.
‘It shall be as thou sayest, Sir Knight,’ the knight decided.
The four of them approached the throne and bowed somewhat stiffly. ‘My Lord King,’ Astellig said.
‘Baron,’ Oldorin replied with an absent-seeming nod.
‘I have the honor to present two stranger knights who have traveled here from afar in pursuit of a noble quest.’