Chapter Twenty-Three
The earth was still the same. The trees had not changed, nor had the sky. It was still spring, for the seasons had not altered their stately march. But for Garion nothing would ever again be the way that it had been.
They rode down through the Wood of the Dryads to the banks of the River of the Woods which marked the southern boundary of Tolnedra, and from time to time as they rode he caught strange glances from his friends. The looks were speculative, thoughtful, and Durnik - good, solid Durnik - behaved as if he were almost afraid. Only Aunt Pol seemed unchanged, unconcerned. "Don't worry about it, Belgarion, " her voice murmured in his mind.
"Don't call me that," he replied with an irritated thought.
"It's your name, " the silent voice said. "You might as well get used to it.
"Leave me alone. "
And then the sense of her presence in his mind was gone.
It took them several days to reach the sea. The weather remained intermittently cloudy, though it did not rain. A stiff onshore breeze was blowing when they rode out onto the wide beach at the mouth of the river. The surf boomed against the sand, and whitecaps flecked the tops of the waves.
Out beyond the surf, a lean, black Cherek war-boat swung at anchor, the air above her alive with screeching gulls. Barak pulled his horse in and shaded his eyes. "She looks familiar," he rumbled, peering intently at the narrow ship.
Hettar shrugged. "They all look the same to me."
"There's all the difference in the world," Barak said, sounding a bit injured. "How would you feel if I said that all horses looked the same?"
"I'd think you were going blind."
Barak grinned at him. "It's exactly the same thing," he said.
"How do we let them know we're here?" Durnik asked.
"They know already," Barak said, "unless they're drunk. Sailors always watch an unfriendly shore very carefully."
"Unfriendly?" Durnik asked.
"Every shore is unfriendly when a Cherek war-boat comes in sight," Barak answered. "It's some kind of superstition, I think."
The ship came about and her anchor was raised. Her oars came out like long, spidery legs, and she seemed to walk through the froth-topped combers toward the mouth of the river. Barak led the way toward the riverbank, then rode along the broad flow until he found a spot deep enough so that the ship could be moored next to the shore.
The fur-clad sailors who threw Barak a mooring line looked familiar, and the first one who leaped across to the riverbank was Greldik, Barak's old friend.
"You're a long ways south," Barak said as if they had only just parted.
Greldik shrugged. "I heard you needed a ship. I wasn't doing anything, so I thought I'd come down and see what you were up to."
"Did you talk to my cousin?"
"Grinneg? No. We made a run down from Kotu to the harbor at Tol Horb for some Drasnian merchants. I ran into Elteg - you remember him - black beard, only one eye?"
Barak nodded.
"He told me that Grinneg was paying him to meet you here. I remembered that you and Elteg didn't get along very well, so I offered to come down instead."
"And he agreed?"
"No," Greldik replied, pulling at his beard. "As a matter of fact, he told me to mind my own business."
"I'm not surprised," Barak said. "Elteg always was greedy, and Grinneg probably offered him a lot of money."
"More than likely." Greldik grinned. "Elteg didn't say how much, though."
"How did you persuade him to change his mind?"
"He had some trouble with his ship," Greldik said with a straight face.
"What kind of trouble?"
"It seems that one night after he and his crew were all drunk, some scoundrel slipped aboard and chopped down his mast."
"What's the world coming to?" Barak asked, shaking his head.
"My thought exactly," Greldik agreed.
"How did he take it?"
"Not very well, I'm afraid," Greldik said sadly. "When we rowed out of the harbor, he sounded as if he was inventing profanities on the spot. You could hear him for quite some distance."
"He should learn to control his temper. That's the kind of behavior that gives Chereks a bad name in the ports of the world."
Greldik nodded soberly and turned to Aunt Pol. "My Lady," he said with a polite bow, "my ship is at your disposal."
"Captain," she asked, acknowledging his bow. "How long will it take you to get us to Sthiss Tor?"
"Depends on the weather," he answered, squinting at the sky. "Probably ten days at the most. We picked up fodder for your horses on the way here, but we'll have to stop for water from time to time."
"We'd better get started then," she said.
It took a bit of persuading to get the horses aboard the ship, but Hettar managed it without too much difficulty. Then they pushed away from the bank, crossed the bar at the mouth of the river and reached the open sea. The crew raised the sails, and they quartered the wind down along the gray-green coastline of Nyissa.
Garion went forward to his customary place in the bow of the ship and sat there, staring bleakly out at the tossing sea. The image of the burning man back in the forest filled his mind.
There was a firm step behind him and a faint, familiar fragrance.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Aunt Pol asked.