"He's a very undependable man, you know."

"Aunt Pol said exactly the same thing. He's still the finest sailor in the world. I'll make arrangements to have horses put on board his ship.”

"No," she said shortly. "We're in a hurry, Garion. Horses would only slow us down."

"You want to run all the way from the coast of Sendaria to the Vale?" he asked her, a little startled.

"It's not really all that far, Garion." She smiled.

"What about supplies?"

She gave him an amused look, and he suddenly felt very foolish.

Garion's good-byes to his family were emotional, though brief. "Be sure to dress warmly," Ce'Nedra instructed. "It's winter, you know."

He decided not to tell her exactly how he and his grandmother intended to travel.

"Oh," she said, handing him a parchment sheet, "give this to Aunt Pol."

Garion looked at the sheet. It was a rather fair artist's sketch, in color, of his wife and daughter.

"It's quite good, isn't it?" Ce'Nedra said.

"Very good," he agreed.

"You'd better run along now," she said. "If you stay much longer, I won't let you go at all."

"Keep warm, Ce'Nedra," he said, "and look after the children."

"Naturally. I love you, your Majesty."

"I love you, too, your Majesty." He kissed her and his son and daughter and quietly left the room.

The weather at sea was blustery, but the militantly impetuous Greldik paid almost no attention to weather, no matter how foul. His patched and decidedly scruffy-looking ship ran before the wind across a stormy sea under far more sail than even a marginally prudent sea captain would have crowded onto his masts, and two days later, they reached the coast of Sendaria.

"Any empty beach will do, Greldik," Garion told him. "We're in sort of a hurry, and if we stop at Sendar, Fulrach and Layla will tie us up with congratulations and banquets."

"How do you propose to get off a beach without horses?" Greldik asked bluntly.

"There are ways," Garion told him.

"More of that sort of thing?" Greldik said with a certain distaste.

Garion nodded.

"That's unnatural, you know."

"I come from an unnatural sort of family.”

Greldik grunted disapprovingly and ran his ship in close to a windswept beach bordered on its upper edge with the rank grass of a salt flat. "Does this one suit you?" he asked.

"It's just fine," Garion said.

Garion and his grandmother waited on the windy beach with their cloaks whipping around them until Greldik was well out to sea. "I suppose we can get started now," Garion said, shifting his sword into a more comfortable position.

"I don't know why you brought that," Poledra said.

"The Orb wants to see Aunt Pol's baby." He shrugged.

"That may just be the most irrational thing I’ve ever heard anyone say, Garion. Shall we go?"

They shimmered and blurred, and then two wolves loped up the beach to the bordering grass and ran smoothly inland.