Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

"You'll need money to get in," he advised me.

  "Oh?"

  "It's a new custom. You have to pay the priest at the door to get inside--and pay another priest to get near the altar."

  "Peculiar notion."

  "This is Tol Honeth, friend. Nothing's free here, and the priests are just as greedy as everybody else."

  "I think I can come up with something they'd rather have than money."

  "I wouldn't make any large wagers on that. Good luck."

  "I think you dropped something there, friend," I told him, pointing at the large copper Tolnedran penny I'd just conjured up and dropped on the stones by his left knee. He had been helpful, after all.

  He quickly snatched up the penny--probably the equivalent of a day's wages--and looked around furtively.

  "Be happy in your work," I told him, and moved off down the street.

  The Temple of Nedra was like a palace, an imposing marble structure that exuded all the warmth of a mausoleum. The common people prayed outside in little niches along the wall. The inside was reserved for the people who could afford to pay the bribes.

  "I need to talk with the High Priest," I told the clergyman guarding the huge door.

  He looked me up and down disdainfully.

  "Absolutely out of the question. You should know better than even to ask."

  "I didn't ask. I told you. Now go fetch him--or get out of my way and I'll find him myself."

  "Get away from here."

  "We're not getting off to a good start here, friend. Let's try it again. My name's Belgarath, and I'm here to see the High Priest."

  "Belgarath?" He laughed sardonically.

  "There's no such person. Go away."

  I trans located him to a spot several hundred yards up the street and marched inside. I was definitely going to have words with the High Priest about this practice of charging admission to a place of worship; not even Nedra would have approved of that. The temple was crawling with priests, and each one seemed to have his hand out. I avoided confrontations by the simple expedient of creating a halo, which I cocked rather rakishly over one ear. I'm not certain if Tolnedran theology includes a calendar of saints, but I did get the attention of the priests--and their wholehearted cooperation. And I didn't even have to pay for it.

  The High Priest's name was Arthon, and he was a paunchy man in an elaborately jeweled robe. He took one look at my halo and greeted me with a certain apprehensive enthusiasm. I introduced myself, and he became very nervous. It wasn't really any of my business that he was violating the rules, but I saw no reason to let him know that.

  "We've heard about your adventures in Mallorea, Holy Belgarath," he gushed at me.

  "Did you really kill Torak?"

  "Somebody's been spinning moonbeams for you, Arthon," I replied.

  "I'm not the one who's supposed to do that. We just went there to recover something that'd been stolen."

  "Oh." He sounded disappointed.

  "To what do we owe the honor of your visit, Ancient One?"

  I shrugged.

  "Courtesy. I was passing through, and I thought I ought to look in on you. Has anyone heard from Nedra?"

  "Our God has departed, Belgarath," he reminded me.

  "All the Gods have departed, Arthon. They do have ways to keep in touch, though. Belar spoke to Riva in a dream, and Aldur came to me the same way no more than a couple of months ago. Pay attention to your dreams. They might be significant."

  "I did have a peculiar dream about six months ago," he recalled.

  "It seemed that Nedra spoke to me."

  "What did he say?"

  "I forget now. I think it had something to do with money."

  "Doesn't it always?" I thought about it for a moment.

  "It probably involved this new custom of yours. I don't think Nedra would approve of the practice of charging admission to the temple. He's the God of all Tolnedrans, not just the ones who can afford to buy their way into your church."

  A wave of consternation crossed his face.

  "But--" he started to protest.

  "I've seen some of the creatures who live in Hell, Arthon," I told him quite firmly.

  "You don't want to spend any time with them. It's up to you, though. What's happening here in Tolnedra?"

  "Oh, not too much, Belgarath." He said it just a bit evasively, and I could almost smell what he was trying to hide.

  I sighed.

  "Don't be coy, Arthon," I told him wearily.

  "The Church is not supposed to get involved in politics. You've been taking bribes, haven't you?"

  "How did you know that?" His voice was a little shrill.

  "I can read you like a book, Arthon. Give the money back and keep your nose out of politics."

  "You must pay a call on the Emperor," he said, skillfully sidestepping the issue.

  "I've met members of the Honeth family before. One's pretty much the same as the others."

  "His Majesty will be offended if you don't call on him."

  "Spare him the anguish then. Don't tell him that I've been here."

  He wouldn't hear of that, of course. He definitely didn't want me to start probing into the question of who was bribing him, nor of how large his share of the admission fees was, so he escorted me to the palace, which was teeming with members of the Honeth family. Patronage is the absolute soul of Tolnedran politics. Even the toll-takers at the most remote bridges in the empire change when a new dynasty comes into power.

  The current Emperor was Ran Honeth the Twenty-something or other, and he'd discarded imbecility in favor of the unexplored territory of idiocy. As is usually the case in such situations, an officious relative had assumed his defective kinsman's authority, scrupulously prefacing each of his personal decrees with

  "The Emperor has decided . . ." or some other absurdity, thus maintaining the dignity of the cretin on the throne.

  The relative, a nephew in this case, kept Arthon and me cooling our heels in an anteroom for two days while he escorted all manner of high-ranking Tolnedrans immediately into the imperial presence.

  Eventually I got tired of it.

  "Let's go, Arthon," I told Nedra's priest.

  "We both have better things to do."

  "We cannot!" Arthon gasped.

  "It would be considered a mortal insult!"

  "So? I've insulted Gods in my time, Arthon. I'm not going to worry about hurting the feelings of a half-wit."

  "Let me talk with the Lord High Chamberlain again." He jumped to his feet and hurried across the room to speak with the imperial nephew.

  The nephew was a typical Honeth. His first response was to look down his nose at me.

  "You will await his Imperial Majesty's pleasure," he told me in a lofty tone.

  Since he was feeling so lofty, I stood him on a vacant patch of empty air up near the rafters so that he could really look down on people. I'll grant you that it was petty, but then so was he.

  "Do you think that his Imperial Majesty's pleasure might have worked its way around to us yet, old boy?" I asked him in a pleasant tone. I left him up there for a little while to make sure that he got my point, and then I brought him down again.

  We got in to see the Emperor immediately.

  This particular Ran Honeth was sitting on the Imperial Throne sucking his thumb. The bloodline had deteriorated even further than I'd imagined. I nudged at the corner of his mind and didn't find anything in there. He haltingly recited a few imperial pleasantries--I shudder to think of how long it must have taken him to memorize them--and then he regally gave Arthon and me permission to withdraw. His entire performance was somewhat marred by the fact that forty some-odd years of sucking his thumb had grossly misaligned his front teeth. He looked like a rabbit, and he lisped outrageously.

  I assessed the mood of the imperial nephew as Arthon and I bowed our way out of the throne room, and I decided that it might be a good time for me to leave Tol Honeth. As soon as the fellow regained his composure, the trees in the n
eighborhood were almost certainly going to flower with more of those posters. This was getting to be a habit.

  I thought about that as I made my way toward Tol Borune. Ever since I'd abandoned my career as a common drunk, I'd been misusing my gift.

  The Will and the Word is a fairly serious thing, and I'd been turning it into a bad joke. Despite my grief, I was still my Master's disciple, not some itinerant trickster. I suppose I could excuse myself by pointing to my emotional state during those awful years, but I don't think I will. I'm supposed to know better.

  I bypassed Tol Borune, largely to avoid any more opportunities to turn offensive people into pigs or to stick them up in the air just for fun.

  That was probably a good idea; I'm sure the Borunes would have irritated me. I've got a fair amount of respect for the Borune family, but they can be awfully pig-headed sometimes.

  Sorry, Ce'Nedra. Nothing personal intended there.

  At any rate, I traveled through the lands of the Anadile family and finally reached the northern edge of the Wood of the Dryads. The passing centuries have altered the countryside down there to some degree, but now that I think back on it, I followed almost exactly the same route as I did three thousand years later when a group of friends and I were going south on the trail of the Orb. Garion and I have talked about "repetitions" any number of times, and this may have been another of those signals that the purpose of the universe had been disrupted. Then again, the fact that I followed the same route might have been due to the fact that it was the natural way south and also that I was familiar with it. Once you get a theory stuck in your head, you'll go to almost any lengths to twist things around to make them fit.

  Even in those days the Wood of the Dryads was an ancient oak forest with a strange kind of serene holiness about it. Humans have a tendency to compartmentalize their religion to keep it separate from everyday life.

  The Dryads live in the center of their religion, so they don't even have to think--or talk--about it. That's sort of refreshing.

  I'd been in their wood for more than a week before I even saw a Dryad. They're timid little creatures, and they don't really care to come into contact with outsiders--except at certain times of the year. Dryads are all females, of course, so they're obliged to have occasional contacts with the males--of various species--in order to reproduce.

  I'm sure you get the picture.

  I didn't really make an effort to find any Dryads. Technically, they're "monsters," though certainly not as dangerous as the Eldrakyn or Algroths, but I still didn't want any incidents.

  Evidently, though, it was "that time of year" for the first Dryad I encountered, because she'd laid aside her customary shyness and was aggressively trying to track me down. When I first saw her, she was standing in the middle of the forest path I was following. She had flaming red hair, and she was no bigger than a minute. She was, however, holding a fully drawn bow, and her arrow was pointed directly at my heart.

  "You'd better stop," she advised me.

  I did that--immediately.

  Once she was certain that I wasn't going to try to run, she became very friendly. She told me that her name was Xana, and that she had plans for me. She even apologized for the bow. She explained it by telling me that travelers were rare in the Wood, and that a Dryad with certain things on her mind had to take some precautions to prevent escapes.

  I tried to explain to her that what she was proposing was wildly inappropriate, but I couldn't seem to get through to her. She was a very determined little creature.

  I think I'll just let it go at that. What happened next isn't central to the story I'm telling, and there's no point in being deliberately offensive.

  Dryads customarily share things with their sisters, so Xana introduced me to other Dryads, as well. They all pampered me, but there was no getting around the fact that I was a captive--a slave, if we want to be blunt about it--and my situation was more than a little degrading. I didn't make an issue of it, though. I smiled a lot, did what was expected of me, and waited for an opportunity. As soon as I had a moment alone, I slipped into the form of the wolf and loped off into the wood. They searched for me, of course, but they didn't know what they were looking for, so I had no trouble evading them.

  I reached the north bank of the River of the Woods, swam across, and shook the water out of my fur. You might want to keep that in mind: if you take the form of a furred creature and you happen to get wet before you change back, always shake off the excess water first. Otherwise, your clothes will be dripping when you resume your real form.

  I was in Nyissa now, so I didn't have to worry about Dryads any more.

  I started keeping a sharp eye out for snakes instead. Normal humans make some effort to keep the snake population under control, but the snake is a part of the Nyissan religion, so they don't. Their jungles are literally alive with slithering reptiles--all venomous. I managed to get bitten three times during my first day in that stinking swamp, and that made me extremely cautious. It wasn't hard to counteract the venom, fortunately, but being bitten by a snake is never pleasant.

  The war with the Marags had seriously altered Nyissan society. Before the Marag invasion, the Nyissans had cleared away large plots of jungle and built cities and connecting highways. Highways provide invasion routes, however, and a city, by its very existence, proclaims the presence of large numbers of people and valuable property. You might as well invite attack. Salmissra realized that, and she ordered her subjects to disperse and to allow the jungle to reclaim all the towns and roads. This left only the capital at Sthiss Tor, and since I'd sort of drifted into the self-appointed task of making a survey of the Kingdoms of the West, I decided to pay a call on the Serpent Queen.

  The Marag invasion had occurred almost a hundred years earlier, but there were still abundant signs of the devastation it had caused. The abandoned cities, choked in vines and bushes, still showed evidence of fire and of the kind of destruction siege engines cause. Now the Nyissans themselves scrupulously avoided those uninviting ruins. When you get right down to it, Nyissa is a theocracy. Salmissra is not only queen, but also the High Priestess of the Serpent God. Thus, when she gives an order, her people automatically obey her, and she'd ordered them to go live out in the brush with the snakes.

  I was a little footsore when I reached Sthiss Tor, and very hungry.

  You have to be careful about what you eat in Nyissa. Virtually every plant and a fair number of the birds and animals are either narcotic or poisonous, or both.

  I located a ferry landing and crossed the River of the Serpent to the garish city of Sthiss Tor. The Nyissans are an inspired people. The rest of the world likes to believe that inspiration is a gift from the Gods, but the Nyissans have found a simpler way to achieve that peculiar ecstasy. Their jungles abound with various plants with strange properties, and the Snake People are daring experimenters. I knew a Nyissan once who was addicted to nine different narcotics. He was the happiest fellow I've ever known. It's probably not a good idea to have your house designed by an architect with a chemically augmented imagination, however. Assuming that it doesn't collapse on the workmen during construction, it's likely to have any number of peculiar features--stairways that don't go anyplace, rooms that there's no way to get into, doors that open out into nothing but air, and assorted other inconveniences. It's also likely to be painted a color that doesn't have a name and has never appeared in any rainbow.

  I knew where Salmissra's palace was, since Beldin and I had been in Sthiss Tor during the Marag invasion, so I wasn't obliged to ask directions of people who didn't even know where they were, much less where anything else was.

  The functionaries in the palace were all shaved-headed eunuchs.

  There's probably a certain logic there. From puberty onward, the assorted Salmissras are kept on a regimen of various compounds that slow the normal aging process. It's very important that Salmissra forever looks the same as the original handmaiden of Issa. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of
those compounds is a marked elevation of the Queen's appetite --and I'm not talking about food. Salmissra does have a kingdom to run, and if her servants were functional adult males, she'd probably never get anything done.

  Please, I'm trying to put this as delicately as possible.

  The queen knew that I was coming, of course. One of the qualifications for the throne of Nyissa is the ability to perceive things that others can't.

  It's not exactly like our peculiar gift, but it serves its purpose. The eunuchs greeted me with genuflections and various other fawning gestures of respect and immediately escorted me to the throne room. The current Salmissra, naturally, looked the same as all her predecessors, and she was reclining on a divan-like throne, admiring her reflection in a mirror and stroking the bluntly pointed head of a pet snake. Her gown was diaphanous, and it left very little to the imagination. The huge stone statue of Issa, the Serpent God, loomed behind the dais where his current handmaiden lay.

  "Hail, Eternal Salmissra," the eunuch who was escorting me intoned, prostrating himself on the polished floor.

  "The Chief Eunuch approaches the throne," the dozen red-robed functionaries intoned in unison.

  "What is it, Sthess?" Salmissra replied in an indifferent sort of voice.

  "Ancient Belgarath entreats audience with the Beloved of Issa."

  Salmissra turned her head slowly and gazed at me with those colorless eyes of hers.

  "The Handmaiden of Issa greets the Disciple of Aldur,"

  she proclaimed.

  "Fortunate the Disciple of Aldur, to be received by the Serpent Queen," the chorus intoned.

  "You're looking well, Salmissra," I responded, cutting across about a half hour of tedious formality.

  "Do you really think so, Belgarath?" She said it with a kind of girlish ingenuousness which suggested that she was quite young--probably no more than two or three years on the throne.

  "You always look well, dear," I replied. The little endearment was probably a violation of all sorts of rules, but I felt that, considering her age, I could get away with it.

  "The honored guest greets Eternal Salmissra," the chorus announced.

  "Do you suppose we could dispense with that?" I asked, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at the kneeling eunuchs.