Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  I've got a couple of agents close to Olgon, and we're fairly sure Tolnedran intelligence does, as well. This so-called Nyissan was the one who enlisted Olgon to aid in the search for you and Lady Polgara."

  I stood up.

  "I think maybe I'd better go to this tavern and have a look at Olgon for myself. Exactly where is the place?"

  "On the southern end of the island," Cerran told me, "but would that be wise? You are fairly well known, and I'm sure that Asharak's Dagashi would recognize you."

  "I can disguise myself, Cerran," I assured him.

  "Nobody's going to recognize me." I looked him straight in the face.

  "You don't really want to know how I do that, do you?"

  He looked uncomfortable.

  "No, I guess not, Belgarath," he said.

  "I didn't think so. Kheral, why don't you have one of your people show me where this tavern is? I'll take it from there. You two wait here.

  I'll be back in a little bit."

  When you enter the city of Tol Honeth, you get the impression that it's all stately houses and marble-sheathed public buildings, but, like every other city in the world, it has its share of slums. The tavern to which Kheral's spy took me was decidedly shabby, and it was identified by a crude sign that supposedly represented a cluster of grapes. I think that every tavern in the West has the same sign out front. The sun was just going down when the Drasnian spy pointed out the tavern and then went off down the street. I stepped back into a reeking alleyway, formed the image of a tall, lean fellow dressed in rags in my mind, and then fitted myself into that image. Then I half staggered out of the alley, crossed the street, and went into the dimly lighted, stale-smelling tavern. I plopped myself down on a bench at one of the wobbly tables and loudly announced, "I'll have beer!"

  "I'll see your money first," the tavern keeper replied in a bored tone of voice.

  I fumbled around in the pocket of my shabby smock and produced a Tolnedran halfpenny. The tavern keeper took my coin and brought me a tankard of definitely inferior beer.

  Then I looked around. Olgon wasn't too hard to pick out. He was far and away the best-dressed man in the tavern, and his face was locked in that arrogant expression that all Honeths are born with. He was holding court at a large table near the back wall, and he was surrounded by thieves and cutthroats. His face had that pouchy look that comes only after years of serious dissipation.

  "All you have to do is say that you saw her in the street, Strag," he was patiently explaining to an evil-looking fellow with a purple scar on the side of his face.

  "What good will that do?" Strag retorted.

  "If he doesn't get some kind of information that she's still in Tol Honeth, he might take his money to Tol Borune--or even up into Arendia. We could lose him altogether."

  "I don't know about you, Olgon," Strag replied, "but I value my own skin. I'm not going to lie to a Dagashi and then take his money for it."

  "You're a coward, Strag," Olgon accused.

  "Maybe so, but I'm a live one. I've seen what the Dagashi do to people who cross them. Get somebody else to do your lying for you--or do it yourself."

  Olgon sneered.

  "All right," he said to the other scoundrels at the table, "who wants to earn a silver half-mark?"

  He didn't find any takers. Evidently the reputation of the Dagashi was well known in this shabby society.

  Olgon glowered around at his hirelings, and then he let the matter drop. That little snatch of conversation revealed worlds about his character.

  I couldn't for the life of me understand how a Dagashi could possibly put any faith in anything Olgon told him.

  It was about ten minutes later, and I'd been nursing that tankard of lukewarm, watered-down beer for about as long as I cared to, when the tavern door opened and a shaved-headed man wearing a Nyissan silk robe came in. He went directly to Olgon's table.

  "Have you anything for me?" he asked abruptly.

  "I've got everybody out looking," Olgon replied a bit evasively.

  "This is costing me a great deal of money, Saress. Can you see your way clear to give me a little bit of an advance?"

  "Asharak doesn't pay in advance, Olgon," the man in the silk robe said with a sneer.

  "He pays only on delivery."

  Olgon muttered something, and the other man leaned over the table.

  "What was that?" he asked ominously. Since he was bent over, I could clearly see the outline of the triangular object he had nestled against the small of his back under that robe.

  "I said that this Asharak of yours is a cheapskate," Olgon retorted.

  "I'll pass that on to him," Saress replied.

  "I'm sure he'll be charmed."

  "I'm not asking for the whole sum, Saress," Olgon said plaintively.

  "Just enough to cover my expenses."

  "Look upon those expenses as an investment, Olgon. If you can produce the woman Asharak's looking for, he'll make you rich. If you can't, you'll just have to stay poor." Then he turned on his heel and left the tavern.

  Something wasn't right here. They were all just a little too obvious. I knew that my disguise was impenetrable, but it was entirely possible that Olgon and the fellow in the Nyissan robe had recognized one of the Drasnian or Tolnedran agents here and that what I'd just seen had been carefully staged to deceive them. I started to get very suspicious about this whole business at that point. I waited for another few minutes, and then I stood up and dumped my tankard out on the floor.

  "That's enough of this swill," I announced loudly.

  "If I want a drink of river water, I can go down to one of the wharves and drink my fill without paying for it." Then I stormed out. I kept my disguise in place until I was certain that I wasn't being followed. Then I stepped into another alleyway, resumed my own form, and went back to the Drasnian embassy as evening settled over Tol Honeth.

  "Have any of your people actually seen Asharak?" I asked Kheral.

  "Not yet, Ancient One," the ambassador replied.

  "We've tried to track that Dagashi back to his employer, but he always manages to evade us."

  "I'm not surprised. That's no run-of-the-mill Dagashi. He's carrying an adder-sting. He bent over a table in that tavern, and I saw the outline of the thing under his silk robe."

  Kheral whistled.

  "What's an adder-sting?" Cerran asked.

  "It's a triangular throwing knife," Kheral replied.

  "It's about six inches across and razor sharp. The tips are usually dipped in poison. Only the most elite among the Dagashi use them."

  "It doesn't make sense," I fumed.

  "Those elite Dagashi are very expensive. Why would Asharak pay that much for an errand boy? I'm starting to get a strong odor of rotten fish here. Somebody's paying a lot of money to get us to believe that Asharak's here in Tol Honeth, but until somebody actually sees him, I won't be convinced."

  "Why would Asharak go to all the trouble and expense to do something like this?" Cerran seemed baffled.

  "Probably because he wants me to believe that he's here when he's actually someplace else," I replied. I didn't say so, but I was fairly certain that I knew where Chamdar really was.

  "Well," I said then.

  "Two can play that game. I'm looking for Chamdar, and he's looking for somebody else.

  I think I can come up with a way to make him come back to Tol Honeth at a dead run."

  "What are you going to do, Ancient One?" Kheral asked me.

  "Chamdar's got people out looking for Polgara. I'm going to make sure that they find her--several times a day, actually, and right here in Tol Honeth. Let's go to the palace. I need to talk with Ran Borune."

  The three of us went to the Imperial Compound and were admitted into the emperor's private quarters almost immediately.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," Ran Borune said, laying aside the lute he had been strumming.

  "I gather that something's come up."

  "I need a favor, your Majesty," I
told him.

  "Of course."

  "This Chamdar you've been hearing about is a Grolim priest who does a lot of Ctuchik's dirty work for him."

  Ran Borune's eyes narrowed.

  "He's more significant than we thought, then. What's he doing in Tolnedra? I'd have thought that what happened at Vo Mimbre would have completely demoralized the Grolims."

  "It probably did, your Majesty, but Chamdar's no ordinary Grolim.

  Ctuchik gave him an assignment a long time ago, and Chamdar's a dogged sort of fellow. My daughter's protecting something that's important, and Chamdar's been trying to find her for years now. He's so obsessed with locating her that I don't think he even noticed Vo Mimbre."

  "Why's he looking here, then? Your daughter's not in Tolnedra, is she?"

  "Not at the moment, no, but I don't think Chamdar is, either. This whole business with that renegade Honethite's a trick to lure me into thinking that he is. He definitely wants my attention locked on Tol Honeth. Now I'm going to turn the tables on him and see to it that he comes running back here where Kheral can keep an eye on him for me."

  "How do you plan to manage that?"

  "Kherel's going to have his people start letting some false information filter through to this Olgon fellow. I'd appreciate your having your agents do the same. Tell them to be very careful about it, though.

  Chamdar's people aren't Murgos now. He's using the Dagashi instead.

  Murgos aren't bright, and they're easy to pick out of a crowd. The Dagashi are very clever, though, and they're almost impossible to recognize."

  "Who are these Dagashi?"

  "They're members of a semi-religious order based in the Araga Military District in southwestern Cthol Murgos, your Majesty. They're primarily assassins, but they're also very good spies. They can cause us a lot of problems, because they don't look like Murgos."

  "How did they manage that?"

  "Interbreeding. The Nyissans sell them slave women from all over the world, and the male children those slave women produce are trained and then admitted to the order. They're fanatically loyal to their elders, and they're very dangerous, since to all intents and purposes, they're practically invisible. Now we get to that favor I was talking about."

  "What can I do for you, old friend?"

  "I'd like to see a new ladies' hairstyle become fashionable."

  He blinked.

  "Have we suddenly changed the subject?"

  "Not really. You've met my daughter. Would you be willing to concede that she has a striking appearance?"

  "You won't get any argument from me there."

  "What's the first thing you notice about her?"

  "That white streak in her hair, of course."

  "Exactly."

  He suddenly grinned at me.

  "Oh, you are a sly old fox, Belgarath," he said admiringly.

  "You want me to blanket Tol Honeth with imitation Polgaras, don't you?"

  "For a start, yes. I want to jerk Chamdar back to Tol Honeth. I'll let him run around here for a while, and then I'll start expanding the ruse. I think I'll be able to arrange for him to get word of Polgara sightings about a dozen times a day--starting here in Tol Honeth."

  "If Polgara really wants to stay out of sight, why doesn't she just dye her hair?"

  "She's tried that, and it doesn't work. The dye won't adhere to that white lock. It washes right out, and Polgara washes her hair at least once a day. Since I can't make her look like every other woman, I'll do it the other way around and make every dark-haired woman in the West look like her. Tol Honeth's the fashion center of the Western World, so if the ladies here start painting a white stripe in their hair, the ladies in the other kingdoms will follow suit in six months or so. I'll pull Chamdar back to Tol Honeth for a start, and then I'll circulate around in the other kingdoms and encourage all the ladies I come across to follow the new fashion. I'll keep Chamdar running from the fringes of Morindland to the southern border of Nyissa for the next ten years with this little trick. To make things even worse, the Dagashi expect payment for each and every service. Chamdar's going to pay very dearly for all those false reports. If nothing else, I'll bankrupt him."

  I stayed in Tol Honeth for about a month while the new fashion caught on. I made no effort to conceal the fact that I was there, either. If Chamdar's agents reported that I was there, the Polgara sightings would be far more credible. I sort of hate to admit that it was Olgon's conversation with the evil-looking Strag that gave me the idea in the first place. I embellished it, though. I always embellish other people's ideas. It's called "artistry"--or sometimes "plagiarism."

  It was at that point in my long and speckled career that I assumed a guise that's worked out rather well for the past five hundred years. I became an itinerant storyteller. Storytellers are welcome everywhere in a preliterate society, and literacy wasn't very widespread in those days.

  People who've known me over the past five centuries always have assumed that my somewhat shabby appearance is the result of a careless indifference on my part, but nothing could be further from the truth. I spent a great deal of time designing that costume, and I had it made for me by one of the finest tailors in Tol Honeth. Those clothes look as if they're right on the verge of falling off my back, but they're so well made that they're virtually indestructible. The patches on the knees of my hose are purely cosmetic, since there aren't any holes under them. The sleeves of my woolen tunic are frayed at the cuffs, but not from wear. The fraying was woven into the cloth of the tunic before I ever put it on. The rope belt is a touch of artistry, I've always thought, and the yoked hood gives me a distinctive and readily identifiable appearance. I added a stout grey Rivan cloak and a sack for my assorted belongings. Then I spent a full day arguing with a cobbler about the shoes. He absolutely could not understand why I didn't want them to match. They're very well-made shoes, actually, but they look as if I'd found them in a ditch somewhere. The entire costume made me look like a vagabond, and it hasn't changed substantially for five centuries.

  I left Tol Honeth on foot. A vagabond storyteller probably couldn't afford a horse in the first place, and a horse is largely an encumbrance anyway, since I have other means of transportation available to me.

  I wouldn't have made such an issue of all that except to correct a widely held misconception. Regardless of what people may think, I'm not really all that slovenly. My clothes look the way they do because I want them to.

  Does it surprise you to discover that I'm not really a tramp? Life's just filled with these little disappointments, isn't it?

  I stopped by Vo Mimbre on my way north, and I was quite surprised when Queen Mayaserana immediately fell in with my scheme. Sometimes we misjudge Arends. It's easy to dismiss them as simply stupid, but that's not entirely true. Their problem isn't so much stupidity as it is enthusiasm.

  They're an emotional people, and that clouds their judgment. The fiery Mayaserana saw the meaning of my ploy almost as quickly as Ran Borune had, and she'd added that white lock to her hair before the sun went down. It was very becoming, and the following day I was pleased to note that all the dark-haired ladies at court had rushed to follow suit. The blonde ladies did a lot of sulking, as I recall.

  I discovered something about the female nature as I made my way north. No matter where I stopped, in whatever village or small town or isolated farmstead, sooner or later some woman was going to ask me "What's the current fashion at court? How long are the gowns? How are the ladies wearing their hair?"

  Nothing could have suited my purposes better. I left a wake of white locks behind me like the wake of a Cherek war boat with a good following wind.

  I rather carefully avoided the families I'd been nurturing over the centuries. It occurred to me that Chamdar might just be shrewd enough to realize that he could seriously disrupt the course of what the Mrin had laid out for us if he managed to kill a few key ancestors. My primary concern, however, was still the safety of Gelane, so I avoided Seline as if it were inf
ected with the pox.

  As it turned out, though, the danger to Gelane wasn't physical; it was spiritual instead.

  I'd drifted into Medalia in central Sendaria, and I was telling stories for farthings in the town square and advising the ladies on the latest fashions. I was sleeping in a stable on the outskirts of town, and after I'd been in Medalia for about a week, Pol's distressed voice woke me up in the middle of the night.

  "Father, I need you."

  "What's the matter?"

  "We've got a problem. You'd better get here as soon as you can."

  "What is it?"

  "I'll tell you when you get here. Somebody might be eavesdropping. Wear a different face." Then her voice was gone.

  Now there's a cryptic message for you. Unless she loses her temper, Polgara's probably the most un excitable person in the world. Almost nothing upsets her, but she definitely sounded upset this time. I stood up, shook the straw out of my cloak, and left Medalia immediately.

  I was on the outskirts of Seline before the sun came up, and I mentally leafed through my catalog of disguises and assumed the form of a bald-headed fat man. Then I went to the shop where Gelane spent his time building barrels.

  Polgara was out front vigorously sweeping off the doorstep, despite the fact that it was still very early.

  "Where have you been?" she demanded when I approached her. Somehow she always sees through my disguises.

  "Calm down, Pol. What's got you so worked up?"

  "Come inside." She led me into the shop.

  "Gelane's still asleep," she whispered.

  "I want to show you something." She led me to what appeared to be a broom closet at the back of the shop. She opened the door and took out a shaggy fur tunic. My heart dropped into my shoes.

  The tunic was made of bearskin.

  "How long's this been going on?" I whispered to my daughter.

  "I can't be entirely sure, father. Gelane's been sort of distant and evasive for about the last six months. He goes out almost every night and doesn't come back until quite late. At first I thought he might be cheating on Enalla."