Magician's Gambit

along." She sighed again.
    Durnik smiled, a gentle, almost whimsical smile. "It's not all that bad, Princess," he told her. "You'll fight a great deal at first. You're almost as stubborn as he is, you know. You were born in different parts of the world, but you're not really all that different inside. You'll shout at each other and shake your fingers in each others' faces; but in time that will pass, and you won't even remember what you were shouting about. Some of the best marriages I know of started that way."
    "Marriage!"
    "That's what you've got in mind, isn't it?"
    She stared at him incredulously. Then she suddenly laughed. "Dear, dear Durnik," she said. "You don't understand at all, do you?"
    "I understand what I see," he replied. "And what I see is a young girl doing everything she possibly can to catch a young man."
    Ce'Nedra sighed. "That's completely out of the question, you know - even if I felt that way - which of course I don't."
    "Naturally not." He looked slightly amused.
    "Dear Durnik," she said again, "I can't even allow myself such thoughts. You forget who I am."
    "That isn't very likely," he told her. "You're usually very careful to keep the fact firmly in front of everybody."
    "Don't you know what it means?"
    He looked a bit perplexed. "I don't quite follow."
    "I'm an Imperial Princess, the jewel of the Empire, and I belong to the Empire. I'll have absolutely no voice in the decision about whom I'm going to marry. That decision will be made by my father and the Cauncil of Advisers. My husband will be rich and powerful - probably much older than I am - and my marriage to him will be to the advantage of the Empire and the House of Borune. I probably won't even be consulted in the matter."
    Durnik looked stunned. "That's outrageous!" he objected.
    "Not really," she told him. "My family has the right to protect its interests, and I'm an extremely valuable asset to the Borunes." She sighed again, a forlorn little sigh. "It might be nice, though - to be able to choose for myself, I mean. If I could, I might even look at Garion the way you seem to think I have been looking - even though he's absolutely impossible. The way things are, though, all he can ever be is a friend."
    "I didn't know," he apologized, his plain, practical face melancholy.
    "Don't take it so seriously, Durnik," she said lightly. "I've always known that this was the way things have to be."
    A large, glistening tear, however, welled into the corner of her eye, and Durnik awkwardly put his work-worn hand on her arm to comfort her. Without knowing why, she threw her arms around his neck, buried her face in his chest, and sobbed.
    "There, there," he said, clumsily patting her shaking shoulder. "There, there."

Chapter Three
    GARION DID NOT Sleep well that night. Although he was young and inexperienced, he was not stupid, and Princess Ce'Nedra had been fairly obvious. Over the months since she had joined them, he had seen her attitude toward him change until they had shared a rather specialized kind of friendship. He liked her; she liked him. Everything had been fine up to that point. Why couldn't she just leave it alone? Garion surmised that it probably had something to do with the inner workings of the female mind. As soon as a friendship passed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.
    He was almost certain that her transparent little game with Mandorallen had been aimed at him, and he wondered if it might not be a good idea to warn the knight to spare him more heartbreak in the future. Ce'Nedra's toying with the great man's affections was little more than the senseless cruelty of a spoiled child. Mandorallen must be warned. His Arendish thick-headedness might easily cause him to overlook the obvious.
    And yet, Mandorallen had killed the lion for her. Such stupendous bravery could quite easily have overwhelmed the flighty little princess. What if her admiration and gratitude had pushed her over the line into infatuation? That possibility, coming to Garion as it did in those darkest hours just before dawn, banished all possibility of further sleep. He arose the next morning sandy-eyed and surly and with a terrible worry gnawing at him.
    As they rode out through the blue-tinged shadows of early morning with the slanting rays of the newly risen sun gleaming on the treetops above them, Garion fell in beside his grandfather, seeking the