Then Barak’s sailors cast off all lines and rowed out into the harbor. The sails were raised, and Seabird turned her prow toward home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE WEATHER HELD clear and sunny, and a steady breeze filled Seabird’s sails to drive her northwesterly in the wake of Greldik’s patched and weatherbeaten warboat. At Unrak’s insistance, the two vessels were making a side-trip to Mishrak ac Thull to deposit Nathel in his own kingdom.
The days were long and filled with sunshine and the sharp smell of brine. Garion and all his friends spent most of those days in the sunny main cabin. The story of the quest to Korim was long and involved, but those who had not been with Garion and the others wanted as much in the way of detail as they could possibly get. Their frequent interruptions and questions led to extended digressions, and the story jumped back and forth in time, but it proceeded, albeit at a frequently limping pace. There was much in the story that an average listener might have found incredible. Barak and the others, however, accepted it. They had spent enough time with Belgarath, Polgara, and Garion to know that almost nothing was impossible. The only exception to this rule was Emperor Varana, who remained adamantly sceptical – more on philosophical grounds, Garion suspected, than from any real disbelief.
Unrak gave Nathel some very extended advice before the King of the Thulls was deposited in a seaport town in his own kingdom. The advice had to do with the need for Nathel to assert himself and to break free of the domination of his mother. Unrak didn’t look all that optimistic after the young Thull departed.
The Seabird turned her course southward then, still following Greldik’s wake as they ran along the baren, rocky coast of Goska in northeastern Cthol Murgos. ‘That’s disgraceful, you know that?’ Barak said to Garion one day, pointing at Greldik’s vessel. ‘It looks like a floating shipwreck.’
‘Greldik uses his ship rather hard,’ Garion agreed. ‘I’ve sailed with him a few times.’
‘The man has no respect for the sea,’ Barak grumbled, ‘and he drinks too much.’
Garion blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.
‘Oh, I’ll be the first to admit that I take a tankard of ale now and then, but Greldik drinks at sea. That’s revolting, Garion. I think it might even be irreligious.’
‘You know more about the sea than I do,’ Garion admitted.
Greldik’s ship and Seabird sailed through the narrow strait between the Isle of Verkat and the southern coasts of Hagga and Gorut. Since it was summer in the southern latitudes, the weather continued fair and they made good time. After they had passed through the dangerous cluster of rocky islets strung down from the tip of the Urga peninsula, Silk came up on deck. ‘You two have taken to living up here,’ he observed to Garion and Barak.
‘I like to be on deck when we’re in sight of land,’ Garion said. ‘When you can see the shoreline slipping by, it gives you the sense that you’re getting somewhere. What’s Aunt Pol doing?’
‘Knitting,’ Silk shrugged. ‘She’s teaching Ce’Nedra and Liselle how it’s done. They’re creating whole heaps of little garments.’
‘I wonder why,’ Garion said with a perfectly straight face.
‘I’ve got a favor to ask, Barak,’ Silk said.
‘What do you need?’
‘I’d like to stop at Rak Urga. I want to give Urgit a copy of those accords, and Zakath made a couple of proposals at Dal Perivor that my brother really ought to know about.’
‘Will you help chain Hettar to the mast while we’re in port?’ Barak asked him.
Silk frowned slightly, then he seemed to suddenly understand. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I’d sort of forgotten that. It wouldn’t be a very good idea to take Hettar into a city full of Murgos, would it?’
‘A bad idea, Silk. Disastrous might come even closer.’
‘Let me talk with him,’ Garion suggested. ‘Possibly I can calm him down a bit.’
‘If you can manage that, I’ll have you come up on deck and talk to the next gale we run into,’ Barak said. ‘Hettar’s almost as reasonable as the weather where Murgos are concerned.’
The tall Algar, however, did not, in fact go stony-faced and reach for his saber at the mention of the word ‘Murgo.’ They had told him about Urgit’s real background during the voyage, and his hawklike face became alive with curiosity when Garion rather hesitantly told him of the plan to stop at Rak Urga. ‘I’ll control my instincts, Garion,’ he promised. ‘I think I’d really like to meet this Drasnian who’s managed to become the King of the Murgos.’
Because of the hereditary and by now almost instinctive animosity between Murgos and Alorns, Belgarath advised caution in Rak Urga. ‘Things are quiet now,’ he said. ‘Let’s not stir them up. Barak, run up a flag of truce, and when we get to within hailing distance of the wharves, I’ll send for Oskatat, Urgit’s Seneschal.’
‘Can he be trusted?’ Barak asked dubiously.
‘I think so, yes. We won’t all trek up to the Drojim, though. Have Seabird and Greldik’s ship pull back out into the harbor after we go ashore. Not even the most rabid Murgo sea-captain would attack a pair of Cherek warboats in open water. I’ll keep in touch with Pol, and we’ll send for help if the occasion arises.’
It took some fairly extensive shouting between ship and shore to persuade a Murgo colonel to send to the Drojim Palace for Oskatat. The colonel’s decision may have been tipped in that direction when Barak ordered his catapults loaded. Rak Urga was not a very attractive town, but the colonel quite obviously didn’t want it burned to the ground.
‘Are you back already?’ Oskatat bellowed across the intervening water when at last he arrived on the wharf.
‘We were in the vicinity and we thought we’d pay a call,’ Silk said lightly. ‘We’d like to speak with his Majesty if possible. We’ll control these Alorns if you can keep your Murgos leashed.’
Oskatat gave a number of very abrupt commands that were accompanied by some fairly grisly threats, and Garion, Belgarath, and Silk took to Seabird’s long-boat. They were accompanied by Barak, who had left Unrak in charge, and by Hettar and Mandorallen.
‘How did it go?’ Oskatat asked Silk as the party, accompanied by a contingent of King Urgit’s black-robed household guard, rode up from the harbor to the Drojim.