"If I may," King Fulrach said mildly. "In the interests of expediency, might we not assume that this spot is more or less neutral?" He turned to Brendig. "Colonel, would you be so good as to have a large tent erected here?"
"At once, your Majesty," the sober-faced Brendig replied.
King Rhodar grinned. "As you can see, the legendary practicality of the Sendars is not a myth."
The Emperor looked a bit sour, but finally seemed to remember his manners. "I haven't seen you in a long time, Fulrach," he said. "I hope Layla's well."
"She sends her regards," the King of Sendaria replied politely.
"You've got good sense, Fulrach," the Emperor burst out. "Why have you lent yourself to this insane adventure?"
"I think that might be one of the things we ought to discuss in private, don't you?" Polgara suggested smoothly.
"How's the squabble over the succession going?" Rhodar asked in the tone of a man making small talk.
"It's still up in the air," Ran Borune responded, also in a neutral manner. "The Honeths seem to be joining forces, though."
"That's unfortunate," Rhodar murmured. "The Honeths have a bad reputation."
Under Colonel Brendig's direction, a squad of Sendarian soldiers were quickly erecting a large, bright-colored pavilion on the green turf not far away.
"Did you deal with Duke Kador, father?" Ce'Nedra inquired.
"His Grace found his life burdensome," Ran Borune replied with a short laugh. "Someone rather carelessly left some poison lying about in his prison cell, and he sampled it extensively. We gave him a splendid funeral."
Ce'Nedra smiled. "I'm so sorry I missed it."
"The pavilion is ready now," King Fulrach told them. "Shall we go inside?"
They all entered and sat at the table the soldiers had placed inside. Lord Morin, the Emperor's chamberlain, held Ce'Nedra's chair for her. "How has he been?" Ce'Nedra whispered to the brown-mantled official.
"Not well, Princess," Morin replied. "Your absence grieved him more than he cared to admit."
"Is he eating well - and getting his rest?"
"We try, Highness." Morin shrugged. "But your father's not the easiest person in the world to get along with."
"Do you have his medicine?"
"Naturally, Highness. I never go anywhere without it."
"Suppose we get down to business," Rhodar was saying. "Taur Urgas has sealed his western border, and the southern Murgos have moved into position around Rak Goska. 'Zakath, the Mallorean Emperor, has set up a staging area on the plains outside Thull Zelik to receive his troops as he ferries them in. We're running out of time, Ran Borune."
"I'm negotiating with Taur Urgas," the Emperor replied, "and I'll dispatch a plenipotentiary to 'Zakath immediately. I'm certain this can be settled without a war."
"You can talk to Taur Urgas until your tongue falls out," Anheg snorted, "and 'Zakath probably doesn't even know or care who you are. As soon as they've gathered their forces, they'll march. The war can't be avoided, and I for one am just as happy about that. Let's exterminate the Angaraks once and for all."
"Isn't that just a bit uncivilized, Anheg?" Ran Borune asked him.
"Your Imperial Majesty," King Korodullin said formally, "the King of Cherek speaks hastily perhaps, but there is wisdom in his words. Must we live forever under the threat of invasion from the East? Might it not be best forever to quell them?"
"All of this is very interesting," Ce'Nedra interrupted them coolly, "but it's really beside the point. The actual point at issue here is that the Rivan King has returned, and Tolnedra is required by the provisions of the Accords of Vo Mimbre to submit to his leadership."
"Perhaps," her father replied. "But young Belgarion seems to be absent. Have you misplaced him somewhere? Or is it perhaps that he still had pots to scrub in the scullery at Riva so that you had to leave him behind?"
"That's beneath you, father," Ce'Nedra said scornfully. "The Overlord of the West requires your service. Are you going to shame the Borunes and Tolnedra by abrogating the Accords?"
"Oh, no, daughter," he said, holding up one hand. "Tolnedra always meticulously observes every clause of every treaty she's ever signed. The Accords require me to submit to Belgarion, and I'll do precisely that - just as soon as he comes here and tells me what he wants."
"I am acting in his stead," Ce'Nedra announced.
"I don't seem to recall anything that states that the authority is transferable."
"I am the Rivan Queen," Ce'Nedra retorted hotly, "and I've been invested with co-rulership by Belgarion himself."
"The wedding must have been very private. I'm a little hurt that I wasn't invited."
"The wedding will take place in due time, father. In the meantime, I speak for Belgarion and for Riva."
"Speak all you want, girl." He shrugged. "I'm not obliged to listen, however. At the moment, you're only the betrothed of the Rivan King. You are not his wife and therefore not his queen. If we want to be strictly legal about it, until such time as you do marry, you're still under my authority. Perhaps if you apologize and get out of that stupidlooking armor and put on proper clothing, I'll forgive you. Otherwise, I'll be forced to punish you."
"Punish? Punish!"
"Don't scream at me, Ce'Nedra," the Emperor said hotly.
"Things seem to be deteriorating rapidly," Bank observed dryly to Anheg.
"I noticed that," Anheg agreed.
"I am the Rivan Queen!" Ce'Nedra shouted at her father.
"You're a silly girl!" he shot back.
"That does it, father," she declared, leaping to her feet. "You will deliver command of your legions to me at once, and then you'll return to Tol Honeth where your servants can wrap you in shawls and feed you gruel, since you're obviously too senile to be of any further use to me."
"Senile?" the Emperor roared, also jumping up. "Get out of my sightl Take your stinking Alorn army out of Tolnedra at once, or I'll order my legions to throw you out."
Ce'Nedra, however, was already storming toward the door of the tent.
"You come back here!" he raged at her. "I haven't finished talking to you yet."
"Yes you have, father," she shouted back. "Now I'm going to talk. Barak, I need that sack you have tied to your saddle." She rushed from the tent and climbed onto her horse, spluttering with apparent fury.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Barak asked her as he tied the sack of Angarak coins to her saddle.
"Perfectly," she replied in a calm voice.
Barak's eyes narrowed as he looked at her. "You seem to have regained your temper in a remarkably short time."
"I never lost it, Barak."
"You were acting in there?"
"Obviously. Well, at least partially. It will take my father an hour or so to regain his composure, and by then it will be too late. Tell Rhodar and the others to prepare the army to march. The legions will be joining us.
"What makes you think that?"
"I'm going to go fetch them right now." She turned to Mandorallen, who had just emerged from the tent. "Where have you been?" she asked. "Come along. I need an escort."
"Where are we going, pray?" the knight asked.
"You'll see," she told him, and she turned her mount and rode at a trot up the hillside toward the massed legions. Mandorallen exchanged a helpless look with Barak and then clanged into his saddle to follow.
Ce'Nedra, riding ahead, carefully put her fingertips to her amulet. "Lady Polgara," she whispered, "can you hear me?" She wasn't certain that the amulet would work that way, but she had to try. "Lady Polgara," she whispered again, a bit more urgently.
"What are you doing, Ce'Nedra?" Polgara's voice sounded quite clearly in the little queen's ears.
"I'm going to talk to the legions," Ce'Nedra answered. "Can you fix it so they'll hear me?"
"Yes, but the legions won't be much interested in a speech about patriotism."
"I've got a different one," Ce'Nedra assured her.
"
Your father's having a fit in here. He's actually foaming at the mouth."
Ce'Nedra sighed regretfully. "I know," she said. "It happens fairly often. Lord Morin has the medicine with him. Please try to keep him from biting his tongue."
"You goaded him into this deliberately, didn't you, Ce'Nedra?"
"I needed time to talk to the legions," the princess replied. "The fit won't really hurt him very much. He's had fits all his life. He'll have a nosebleed and a terrible headache when it's over. Please take care of him, Lady Polgara. I do love him, you know."
"I'll see what I can do, but you and I are going to have a long talk about this, young lady. There are some things you just don't do."
"I didn't have any choice, Lady Polgara. This is for Garion. Please do what you have to do so that the legions can hear me. It's awfully important."
"All right, Ce'Nedra, but don't do anything foolish." Then the voice was gone.
Ce'Nedra quickly scanned the standards drawn up before her, selected the familiar emblem of the Eighty-Third Legion, and rode toward it. It was necessary that she place herself in front of men who would recognize her and confirm her identity to the rest of her father's army. The Eighty-Third was primarily a ceremonial unit, and by tradition its barracks were inside the Imperial compound at Tol Honeth. It was a select group, still limited to the traditional thousand men, and it served primarily as a palace guard. Ce'Nedra knew every man in the Eighty-Third by sight, and most of them by name. Confidently, she approached them.
"Colonel Albor," she courteously greeted the commander of the Eighty-Third, a stout man with a florid face and a touch of gray at his temples.
"Your Highness," the colonel replied with a respectful inclination of his head. "We've missed you at the palace."
Ce'Nedra knew that to be a lie. The duty of guarding her person had been one of the common stakes in barracks dice games, with the honor always going to the loser.
"I need a small favor, colonel," she said to him as winsomely as she could.
"If it's in my power, Highness," he answered, hedging a bit.
"I wish to address my father's legions," she explained, "and I want them to know who I am." She smiled at him-warmly, insincerely. Albor was a Horbite, and Ce'Nedra privately detested him. "Since the Eighty-Third practically raised me," she continued, "you of all people should recognize me and be able to identify me."
"That's true, your Highness," Albor admitted.
"Do you suppose you could send runners to the other legions to inform them just who I am?"
"At once, your Highness," Albor agreed. He obviously saw nothing dangerous in her request. For a moment Ce'Nedra almost felt sorry for him.
The runners - trotters actually, since members of the Eighty-Third were not very athletic - began to circulate through the massed legions. Ce'Nedra chatted the while with Colonel Albor and his officers, though she kept a watchful eye on the tent where her father was recuperating from his seizure and also on the gold-colored canopy beneath which the Tolnedran general staff was assembled. She definitely did not want some curious officer riding over to ask what she was doing.
Finally, when she judged that any further delay might be dangerous, she politely excused herself. She turned her horse and, with Mandorallen close behind her, she rode back out to a spot where she was certain she could be seen.
"Sound your horn, Mandorallen," she told her knight.
"We are some distance from our own forces, your Majesty," he reminded her. "I pray thee, be moderate in throe address. Even I might experience some difficulty in facing the massed legions of all Tolnedra."
She smiled at him. "You know you can trust me, Mandorallen."
"With my life, your Majesty," he replied and lifted his horn to his lips.
As his last ringing notes faded, Ce'Nedra, her stomach churning with the now-familiar nausea, rose in her stirrups to speak. "Legionnaires," she called to them. "I am Princess Ce'Nedra, the daughter of your Emperor." It wasn't perhaps the best beginning in the world, but she had to start somewhere, and this was going to be something in the nature of a performance, rather than an oration, so a bit of awkwardness in places wouldn't hurt anything.
"I have come to set your minds at rest," she continued. "The army massed before you comes in peace. This fair, green field, this sacred Tolnedran soil, shall not be a battleground this day. For today at least, no legionnaire will shed his blood in defense of the Empire."
A ripple of relief passed through the massed legions. No matter how professional soldiers might be, an avoided battle was always good news. Ce'Nedra drew in a deep, quivering breath. It needed just a little twist now, something to lead logically to what she really wanted to say. "Today you will not be called upon to die for your brass half-crown." The brass half crown was the legionnaire's standard daily pay. "I cannot, however, speak for tomorrow," she went on. "No one can say when the affairs of Empire will demand that you lay down your lives. It may be tomorrow that the interests of some powerful merchant may need legion blood for protection." She lifted her hands in a rueful little gesture. "But then, that's the way it's always been, hasn't it? The legions die for brass so that others might have gold."
A cynical laugh of agreement greeted that remark. Ce'Nedra had heard enough of the idle talk of her father's soldiers to know that this complaint was at the core of every legionnaire's view of the world. "Blood and gold-our blood and their gold," was very nearly a legion motto. They were almost with her now. The quivering in her stomach subsided a bit, and her voice became stronger.
She told them a story then - a story she'd heard in a half dozen versions since her childhood. It was the story of a good legionnaire who did his duty and saved his money. His wife had suffered through the hardships and separations that went with being married to a legionnaire. When he was mustered out of his legion, they had gone home and bought a little shop, and all the years of sacrifice seemed worthwhile.
"And then one day, his wife became very ill," Ce'Nedra continued her story, "and the physician's fee was very high." She had been carefully untying the sack fastened to her saddle while she spoke. "The physician demanded this much," she said, taking three blood-red Murgo coins from the sack and holding them up for all to see. "And the legionnaire went to a powerful merchant and borrowed the money to pay the physician. But the physician, like most of them, was a fraud, and the legionnaire's money might as well have been thrown away." Quite casually, Ce'Nedra tossed the gold coins into the high grass behind her. "The soldier's good and faithful wife died. And when the legionnaire was bowed down with grief, the powerful merchant came to him and said, `Where's the money I lent to you?' " She took out three more coins and held them up. " 'Where's that good red gold I gave you to pay the physician?' But the legionnaire had no gold. His hands were empty." Ce'Nedra spread her fingers, letting the gold coins fall to the ground. "And so the merchant took the legionnaire's shop to pay the debt. A rich man grew richer. And what happened to the legionnaire? Well, he still had his sword. He had been a good soldier, so he had kept it bright and sharp. And after his wife's funeral, he took his sword and went out into a field not far from the town and he fell upon it. And that's how the story ends."
She had them now. She could see it in their faces. The story she had told them had been around for a long time, but the gold coins she had so casually tossed away gave it an entirely new emphasis. She took out several of the Angarak coins and looked at them curiously as if seeing them for the first time. "Why do you suppose that all the gold we see these days is red?" she asked them. "I always thought gold was supposed to be yellow. Where does all this red gold come from?"
"From Cthol Murgos," several of them answered her.
"Really?" She looked at the coins with an apparent distaste. "What's Murgo gold doing in Tolnedra?" And she threw the coins away.
The iron discipline of the legions wavered, and they all took an involuntary step forward.
"Of course, I don't suppose an ordinary soldier sees much red gold. Why
should a Murgo try to bribe a common soldier when he can bribe the officers - or the powerful men who decide where and when the legions are to go to bleed and die?" She took out another coin and looked at it. "Do you know, I think that every single one of these is from Cthol Murgos," she said, negligently throwing the coin away. "Do you suppose that the Murgos are trying to buy up Tolnedra?"
There was an angry mutter at that.
"There must be a great deal of this red gold lying about in the Angarak kingdoms if that's what they have in mind, wouldn't you say? I've heard stories about that, though. Don't they say that the mines of Cthol Murgos are bottomless and that there are rivers in Gar og Nadrak that look like streams of blood because the gravel over which they flow is pure gold? Why, gold must be as cheap as dirt in the lands of the East." She took out another coin, glanced at it and then tossed it away.
The legions took another involuntary step forward. The officers barked the command to stand fast, but they also looked hungrily toward the tall grass where the princess had been so indifferently throwing the red gold coins.
"It may be that the army I'm leading will be able to find out just how much gold lies on the ground in the lands of the Angaraks," Ce'Nedra confided to them. "The Murgos and the Grolims have been practicing this same kind of deceit in Arendia and Sendaria and the Alorn kingdoms. We're on our way to chastise them for it." She stopped as if an idea had just occurred to her. "There's always room in any army for a few more good soldiers," she mused thoughtfully. "I know that most legionnaires serve out of loyalty to their legions and love for Tolnedra, but there may be a few among you who aren't satisfied with one brass half crown a day. I'm sure such men would be welcome in my army." She took another red coin out of her dwindling supply. "Would you believe that there's another Murgo gold piece?" she demanded and let the coin drop from her fingers.
A sound went through the massed legions that was almost a groan. The princess sighed then. "I forgot something," she said regretfully. "My army's leaving at once, and it takes weeks for a legionnaire to arrange for leave, doesn't it?"
"Who needs leave?" someone shouted.
"You wouldn't actually desert your legions, would you?" she asked them incredulously.
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