“How exquisite,” she exclaimed.
Lammer nodded. “I don’t know much about music,” he said, “but the boy seems to play well. It’s a shame he’s not right in the head.”
Ce’Nedra looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“He comes from a village in the southern part of the forest of Arendia. I’m told it’s a very poor village and that the lord of the region is very harsh with his serfs. The boy’s an orphan, and he was put to watching the cows when he was young. One time one of the cows strayed, and the boy was beaten half to death. He can’t talk any more.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Nobody seems to know it,” Detton replied. “We take turns looking out for him—making sure he’s fed and has a place to sleep. There’s not much else you can do for him.”
A small sound came from Lelldorin, and Ce’Nedra was startled to see tears streaming openly down the earnest young man’s face.
The boy continued his playing, his melody heartbreakingly true, and his eyes sought out Ce’Nedra’s and met them with a kind of grave recognition.
They did not stay much longer. The princess knew that her rank and position made the two serfs uncomfortable. She had made sure that they were all right and that her promise to them was being kept, and that was all that really mattered.
As Ce’Nedra, Lelldorin, and Torasin walked toward the camp of the Sendars, they suddenly heard the sound of squabbling on the other side of a large tent.
“I’ll pile it any place I want to,” one man was saying belligerently.
“You’re blocking the street,” another man replied.
“Street?” the first snorted. “What are you talking about? This isn’t a town. There aren’t any streets.”
“Friend,” the second man explained with exaggerated patience, “we have to bring the wagons through here to get to the main supply dump. Now please move your equipment so I can get through. I still have a lot to do today.”
“I’m not going to take orders from a Sendarian teamster who’s found an easy way to avoid fighting. I’m a soldier.”
“Really?” the Sendar replied dryly. “How much fighting have you seen?”
“I’ll fight when the time comes.”
“It may come quicker than you’d expected if you don’t get your gear out of my way. If I have to get down off this wagon to move it myself, it’s likely to make me irritable.”
“I’m all weak with fright,” the soldier retorted sarcastically.
“Are you going to move it?”
“No.”
“I tried to warn you, friend,” the teamster said in a resigned tone.
“If you touch my gear, I’ll break your head.”
“No. You’ll try to break my head.”
There was a sudden sound of scuffling and several heavy blows. “Now get up and move your gear like I told you to,” the teamster said. “I don’t have all day to stand around and argue with you.”
“You hit me when I wasn’t looking,” the soldier complained.
“Do you want to watch the next one coming?”
“All right, don’t get excited. I’m moving it.”
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
“Does that sort of thing happen very often?” Ce’Nedra asked quietly.
Torasin, grinning broadly, nodded. “Some of your troops feel the need to bluster, your Majesty,” he replied, “and the Sendarian wagoneers usually don’t have the time to listen. Fistfights and streetbrawling are second nature to those fellows, so their squabbles with the soldiers almost always end up the same way. It’s very educational, really.”
“Men!” Ce’Nedra said.
In the camp of the Sendars they met Durnik. With him there was an oddly matched pair of young men.
“A couple of old friends,” Durnik said as he introduced them. “Just arrived on the supply barges. I think you’ve met Rundorig, Princess. He was at Faldor’s farm when we visited there last winter.”
Ce’Nedra did in fact remember Rundorig. The tall, hulking young man, she recalled, was the one who was going to marry Garion’s childhood sweetheart, Zubrette. She greeted him warmly and gently reminded him that they had met before. Rundorig’s Arendish background made his mind move rather slowly. His companion, however, was anything but slow. Durnik introduced him as Doroon, another of Garion’s boyhood friends. Doroon was a small, wiry young man with a protruding Adam’s apple and slightly bulging eyes. After a few moments of shyness, his tongue began to run away with him. It was a bit hard to follow Doroon. His mind flitted from idea to idea, and his mouth raced along breathlessly, trying to keep up.
“It was sort of rough going up in the mountains, your Ladyship,” he replied in answer to her question about their trip from Sendaria, “what with how steep the road was and all. You’d think that as long as the Tolnedrans were building a highway, they’d have picked leveler ground—but they seem to be fascinated by straight lines—only that’s not always the easiest way. I wonder why they’re like that.” The fact that Ce’Nedra herself was Tolnedran seemed not to have registered on Doroon.
“You came along the Great North Road?” she asked him.
“Yes—until we got to a place called Aldurford. That’s a funny kind of name, isn’t it? Although it makes sense if you stop and think about it. But that was after we got out of the mountains where the Murgos attacked us. You’ve never seen such a fight.”
“Murgos?” Ce’Nedra asked him sharply, trying to pin down his skittering thoughts.
He nodded eagerly. “The man who was in charge of the wagons—he’s a great big fellow from Muros, I think he said—wasn’t it Muros he said he came from, Rundorig? Or maybe it was Camaar—for some reason I always get the two mixed up. What was I talking about?”
“The Murgos,” Durnik supplied helpfully.
“Oh, yes. Anyway, the man in charge of the wagons said that there had been a lot of Murgos in Sendaria before the war. They pretended that they were merchants, but they weren’t—they were spies. When the war started, they all went up into the mountains, and now they come out of the woods and try to ambush our supply wagons—but we were ready for them, weren’t we Rundorig? Rundorig hit one of the Murgos with a big stick when the Murgo rode past our wagon—knocked him clear off his horse. Whack! Just like that! Knocked him clear off his horse. I’ll bet he was surprised.” Doroon laughed a short little laugh, and then his tongue raced off again, describing in jerky, helter-skelter detail the trip from Sendaria.
Princess Ce’Nedra was strangely touched by her meeting with Garion’s two old friends. She felt, moreover, a tremendous burden of responsibility as she realized that she had reached into almost every life in the west with her campaign. She had separated husbands from their wives and fathers from their children; and she had carried simple men, who had never been further than the next village, a thousand leagues and more to fight in a war they probably did not even begin to understand.
The next morning the leaders of the army rode the few remaining leagues to the installations at the base of the escarpment. As they topped a rise, Ce’Nedra reined Noble in sharply and gaped in openmouthed astonishment as she saw the eastern escarpment for the first time. It was impossible! Nothing could be so vast! The great black cliff reared itself above them like an enormous wave of rock, frozen and forever marking the boundary between east and west, and seemingly blocking any possibility of ever passing in either direction. It immediately stood as a kind of stark symbol of the division between the two parts of the world—a division that could no more be resolved than that enormous cliff could be leveled.
As they rode closer, Ce’Nedra noted a great deal of bustling activity both at the foot of the escarpment and along its upper rim. Great hawsers stretched down from overhead, and Ce’Nedra saw elaborately intertwined pulleys along the foot of the huge cliffs.