The speech was different, and it was halfway around the world, but Captain Kresca was so much like Barak's friend Greldik that Garion felt suddenly very secure. He went below to join the others. "We’ve had a bit of luck," he told them. "Our captain is a Melcene. He's not overburdened with scruples, but he has got charts of the reef. He's probably the only man in these waters who does. He's offered to advise us when the time comes to decide on where we want to land."

"That was helpful of him," Silk said.

"Maybe, but I think his main concern is not ripping the bottom out of his ship."

"I can relate to that," Silk said. "As long as I'm on board, anyway."

"I'm going back up on deck," Garion said then. "Staying in a stuffy compartment on the first day of a voyage always makes me a little queasy for some reason."

"And you 're the ruler of an island? " Poledra said.

"It's just a question of getting adjusted, Grandmother."

"Of course."

The sea and sky were unsettled. The heavy cloud bank was still coming in from the west, sending long, ponderous combers rolling in from that direction, waves that had in all probability started somewhere off the east coast of Cthol Murgos. Although, as king of an island nation, Garion knew that the phenomenon was not unusual, he nonetheless felt a certain sense of superstitious apprehension when he saw that the surface winds were moving westward while those aloft, as proclaimed by the movement of the clouds, moved east. He had seen this happen many times before, but this time he could not be positive that the weather was responding to natural causes or to something else. Idly he wondered what those two eternal awarenesses might have done had he and his friends not found a ship. He had a momentary vision of the sea parting to provide a broad highway across its bottom, a highway littered with startled fish. He began to feel less and less in charge of his own destiny. Even as he had on the long trek to Cthol Mishrak, he became increasingly certain that the two prophecies were herding him toward Korim for a meeting that, though he himself might not have chosen it, was the ultimate Event toward which the entire universe had been yearning since the beginning of days. A plaintive "Why me?" hovered on his lips.

And then Ce'Nedra was there, burrowing under his arm as she had during those first few heady days when they had finally discovered that they did, in fact, love each other. "What are you thinking about, Garion?" she asked softly. She had changed out of the antique green satin gown she had worn at the palace and now wore a gray dress of utilitarian wool.

"I'm not, really. Probably worrying comes a lot closer."

"What's there to worry about? We're going to win, aren't we?"

“That hasn't been decided yet.”