King of the Murgos

[sawyl]

Onwards to David Eddings' King of the Murgos, the second of his Malloreon novels, which actually begins the quest to recover Garion and Ce'Nedra's kidnapped son and, in the process, finally decide forever between the forces of Light and Dark. The first novel closed with the party — Garion and Ce'Nedra, Polgara and Durnik, Belgarath the Sorcerer, Silk, Toth and Errand — about to leave for Ulgo on the way south to pursue a tip that the ship which left Riva with Prince Geran aboard was Nyissan, so it makes sense for the second to start with them on underground road to the Ulgo capital of Prolgu.

Stopping off in Prolgu they get convenient update on the history of the Dals, including seers who live at Kell in southern Mallorea, from the Holy Gorim, while Errand is renamed Eriond by UL, the father of the gods. With these tasks accomplished they resume the road and travel to the Great Arendish Fair, where they discover that a Mallorean grolim called Naradas is trying to put obstacles in their way. With the help of Delvor, a Drasnian merchant Garion first met during the Quest for the Orb, they send Naradas off on a false trail and continue south to the Tolnedran capital. In Tol Honeth they acquire a new travelling companion, the Margravine Liselle, the niece of the head of Drasnian intelligence, while Silk, dismayed by the murder of his friend Bethra at the hands of the Honeth family, goes on a killing spree that forces the party to leave the city in the middle of night.

This first section of the quest revisits a number of places familiar from the Quest for the Orb and reintroduces many of the same characters — which is impressive when you think that a decade and more has passed since the first quest. This recapitulation allows Eddings to introduce his idea that because the meetings between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark are formalised by the two prophecies, it is inevitable that events should repeat themselves in a similar fashion, thereby hanging a lantern on the complaint that he is just rehashing old material. But there are some new elements, like Bethra's murder and Silk's homicidal response, while Belgarath's extreme grumpiness at the news that someone new is to join the group sets the tone for rest of the series.

Travelling through Nyissa, Garion, Polgara, Belgarath and Silk receive mysterious invitation to visit the Drasnian Embassy in the capital of Sthiss Tor. Here they meet Sadi, former Chief Eunuch but now in hiding following a disagreement with Queen Salmissra, who tells them that Zandramas has gone south through Cthol Murgos and offers his help in exchange for being allowed to join their party. Disguised as Nyissan slavers, the party cross the border only to run into a group of Dagashi assassins who order them to travel south to the city of Rak Urga where they are to pick up an extra party member and smuggle him into Rak Hagga from where Emperor Zakath is currently commanding his campaign to conquer Cthol Murgos. Unable to refuse the group find themselves delivered to the Temple of Torak in Rak Urga, where they fall foul of an ambitious priestess called Chabat, only to be rescued by a chance visit from King Urgit. Desperate to get to the Island of Verkat off the tip of the continent and with Urgit struggling to keep control of the remaining part of his country, the party persuade Urgit to use ships to move his troops south. Just as they are about to leave, Chabat appears on the dock and denounces the Alorns, with Silk in turn revealing that the supposed Dagashi assassin is actually a Mallorean grolim called Harakan. With her plans in ruins, Chabat summons up a demon, forcing Polgara into a dramatic feat of sorcery.

Glossing over the sections in Nyissa, this is the first time Eddings shows the people of Cthol Murgos as something other than a faceless horde to be killed with impunity. Agachak, the Hierarch of Rak Urga, is a delightfully scheming sardonic character — who, on a re-read, puts me in mind of Christopher Lee's Saruman — while Urgit is a nice mix of nerves and uncertainty. The dramatic final encounter with Chabat is enjoyably showy — Belgarath and Polgara rarely get to really employ their sorcerous abilities because they're usually too concerned about stealth to really let rip, so it's always doubly fun when they do — although Urgit's claim that the party is still important doesn't really make sense because surely their only value is their ability to smuggle the Dagashi assassin into Rak Hagga?

The voyage south doesn't go to plan and the party find themselves stranded on a lonely beach. Urgit, frantic to save his kingdom dashes off to join his army, while the rest of the group travel south through the Great Southern Forest. The forest mist-bound and haunted by raveners, ghoul-like carrion eaters who are currently so inflamed by the war that they've stopped worrying about whether the people they're eating are alive or dead, forcing the four sorcerers have to work night and day to maintain a shield around the party. Arriving exhausted on the coast, they find a ship waiting for them to take them to the Island of Verkat. After a brief rest in a Dalsian village, during which a Belgarath receives a copy of the Book of Ages, part of the Mallorean Gospels of the Seers of Kell, they are forced to leave by an approaching Mallorean patrol.

The voyage south is positively pedagogical, with Urgit getting a lesson in how to become a better king by delegating more and with the ship's captain getting a rather patronising lesson in seamanship from Garion. (While I understand Garion's incredulity when he discovers that the Murgos haven't discovered that you can sail close-hauled, the ability to do this is almost entirely dependent on the rigging, so it's extremely unlikely that the captain would be able to do so even if he knew how. Which, taken in combination with Garion's assertion that they can't sail to windward and the various descriptions of Cherek war boats, suggests that someone — either Eddings or Garion — might be a little vague on the precise details of sail setting).

The journey through the forest of the raveners injects an element of horror, much as the journey through Morindland does in Enchanter's End Game, but this time I wasn't entirely convinced by Garion's exhaustion which lessened the effect somewhat. For the horror and tension to really work, the reader needs to feel as though Garion and the other sorcerers are being to and beyond the point of collapse by the weight of the shield, all the time knowing that any slip up is likely to be fatal. I suspect that Eddings may have realised this because he emphasises these elements the encasement spell and the delivery of the swords in Diamond Throne.