The Emperor of Mallorea had changed since they had left Atesca's enclave on the banks of the Magan. He was leaner now, and the dead look was gone from his eyes. Like Garion and all the rest, he rode warily, his eyes and ears constantly alert. It was not so much his outward aspect that marked the change in him, however. Zakath had always been a pensive, even melancholy man, given often to periods of black depression, but filled at the same time with a cold ambition. Garion had often felt that the Mallorean's ambition and his apparent hunger for power were not so much a driving need in him as they had been a kind of continual testing of himself, and, at perhaps a deeper level, deriving from an urge toward self-destruction. It had seemed almost that Zakath had hurled himself and all the resources of his empire into impossible struggles in the secret hope that eventually he would encounter someone strong enough to kill him and thereby relieve him of the burden of a life that was barely tolerable to him.

Such was no longer the case. His meeting with Cyradis on the banks of the Magan had forever changed him. A world that had always been flat and stale now seemed to be all new to him. At times, Garion even thought he detected a faint touch of hope in his friend's face, and hope had never been a part of Zakath's makeup.

As they rounded a wide bend in the track, Garion saw the she-wolf he had found in the dead forest back in Darshiva. She sat patiently on her haunches waiting for them. Increasingly, the behavior of the wolf puzzled him. Now that her injured paw was healed, she made sporadic sweeps through the surrounding forests in search of her pack, but always returned, seemingly unconcerned about her failure to locate them. It was as if she were perfectly content to remain with them as a member of their most unusual pack. So long as they were in forests and uninhabited mountains, this peculiarity of hers caused no particular problems, but they would not always be in the wilderness, and the appearance of an untamed and probably nervous wolf on the busy street of a populous city would be likely to attract attention, to say the very least.

"How is it with you, little sister?" he asked her politely in the language of wolves.

"It is well," she replied.

"Did you find any traces of your pack?"

"There are many other wolves about, but they are not of my kindred. One will remain with you for yet a while longer. Where is the young one?"

Garion glanced back over his shoulder at the little two-wheeled carriage trundling along behind them. "He sits beside my mate in the thing with round feet."