After that, the boys were watched rather closely. There was nothing really obvious about it; it was just that there always seemed to be someone around to call a halt before things got completely out of hand.
About a week later, when the rains had passed and the slush had mostly melted off the streets, Errand and Kheva were sitting on the floor of a carpeted room, building a fortress out of wooden blocks. At a table near the window Silk, splendidly dressed in rich black velvet, was carefully reading a dispatch he had received that morning from his partner, Yarblek, who had remained in Gar og Nadrak to tend the business. About midmorning, a servant came into the room and spoke briefly with the rat-faced little man. Silk nodded, rose, and came over to where the boys were playing. "What would you gentlemen say to a breath of fresh air?" he asked them.
"Of course," Errand replied, getting to his feet.
"And you, cousin?" Silk asked Kheva.
"Certainly, your Highness." Kheva said.
Silk laughed. "Must we be so formal, Kheva?"
"Mother says I should always use the proper forms of address," Kheva told him seriously. "I guess it's to help me keep in practice or something,"
"Your mother isn't here," Silk told him slyly, "so it's all right to cheat a little."
Kheva looked around nervously. "Do you really think we should?" he whispered.
"I'm sure of it," Silk replied. "Cheating is good for you. It helps you to keep your perspective."
"Do you cheat often?"
"Me?" Silk was still laughing. "All the time, cousin. All the time. Let's fetch cloaks and take a turn about the city. I have to go by the headquarters of the intelligence service; and since I've been appointed your keeper for the day, the two of you had better come along."
The air outside was cool and damp, and the wind was brisk enough to whip their cloaks about their legs as they passed along the cobbled streets of Boktor. The Drasnian capital was one of the major commercial centers of the world, and the streets teemed with men of all races. Richly mantled Tolnedrans spoke on street corners with sober-faced Senders in sensible brown. Flamboyantly garbed and richly jeweled Darwinians haggled with leather-garbed Nadraks, and there were even a few black-robed Murgos striding along the blustery streets, with their broad-backed Thullish porters trailing behind them, carrying heavy packs filled with merchandise. The porters, of course, were followed at a discreet distance by the ever present spies.
"Dear, sneaky old Boktor," Silk declaimed extravagantly, "where at least every other man you meet is a spy."
"Are those men spies?" Kheva asked, looking at them with a surprised expression.
"Of course they are, your Highness." Silk laughed again.
"Everybody in Drasnia is a spy -or wants to be. It's our national industry. Didn't you know that?"
"Well -I knew that there are quite a few spies in the palace, but I didn't think they'd be out in the streets."
"Why should there be spies in the palace?" Errand asked him curiously.
Kheva shrugged. "Everybody wants to know what everybody else is doing. The more important you are, the more spies you have watching you."
"Are any of them watching you?"
"Six that I know of. There are probably a few more besides -and of course, all the spies are being spied on by other spies."
"What a peculiar place," Errand murmured.
Kheva laughed. "Once, when I was about three or so, I found a hiding place under a stair and fell asleep. Eventually, all the spies in the palace joined in the search for me. You'd be amazed at how many there really are."
This time, Silk laughed uproariously. "That's really very bad form, cousin," he said. "Members of the royal family aren't supposed to hide from the spies. It upsets them terribly. That's the building over there." He pointed at a large stone warehouse standing on a quiet side street.
"I always thought that the headquarters was in the same building with the academy," Kheva said.
"Those are the official offices, cousin. This is the place where the work gets done."
They entered the warehouse and went through a cavernous room piled high with boxes and bales to a small, unobtrusive door with a bulky-looking man in a workman's smock lounging against it. The man gave Silk a quick look, bowed, and opened the door for them. Beyond that somewhat shabby-looking door lay a large, well-lighted room with a dozen or more parchment-littered tables standing along the walls. At each table sat four or five people, all poring over the documents before them.
"What are they doing?" Errand asked curiously.
"Sorting information," Silk replied. "There probably isn't much that happens in the world that doesn't reach this room eventually. If we really wanted to know, we could probably ask around and find out what the King of Arendia had for breakfast this morning. We want to go into that room over there." He pointed toward a solid-looking door on the far side of the room.
The chamber beyond the door was plain, even bare. It contained a table and four chairs -nothing more. The man seated at the table in one of the chairs wore black hose and a pearl-gray doublet. He was as thin as an old bone, and even here, in the very midst of his own people, there was about him the sense of a tightly coiled spring. "Silk," he said with a terse nod.
"Javelin," Silk replied. "You wanted to see me?"
The man at the table looked at the two boys. He inclined his head briefly to Kheva. "Your Highness," he said.
"Margrave Khendon," the prince responded with a polite bow.
The seated man looked at Silk, his idle-appearing fingers twitching slightly.
"Margrave," Kheva said almost apologetically, "my mother's been teaching me the secret language. I know what you're saying."
The man Silk called Javelin stopped moving his fingers with a rueful expression. "Caught by my own cleverness, I see," he said. He looked speculatively at Errand.
"This is Errand, the boy Polgara and Durnik are raising," Silk told him.
"Ah," Javelin said, "the bearer of the Orb."
"Kheva and I can wait outside if you want to speak privately." Errand offered.
Javelin thought about that. "That probably won't be necessary," he decided. "I think we can trust you both to be discreet. Sit down, gentlemen." He pointed at the other three chairs.
"I'm sort of retired, Javelin," Silk told him. "I've got enough other things to keep me busy just now."
"I wasn't really going to ask you to get personally involved," Javelin replied. " All I really want is for you to find room for a couple of new employees in one of your enterprises."
Silk gave him a curious look.
"You're shipping goods out of Gar og Nadrak along the Northern Caravan Route," Javelin continued. "There are several villages near the border where the citizens are highly suspicious of strangers with no valid reason for passing through."
"And you want to use my caravans to give your men an excuse for being in those villages," Silk concluded.
Javelin shrugged. "It's not an uncommon practice."
"What's going on in eastern Drasnia that you're so interested in?"
"The same thing that's always going on in the outlying districts."
"The Bear-cult?" Silk asked incredulously. "You're going to waste time on them?"
"They've been behaving peculiarly lately. I want to find out why."
Silk looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
"Just call it idle curiosity if you like."
The look Silk gave him then was very hard. "Oh, no. You're not going to catch me that easily, my friend."
"Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"No. As a matter of fact, I'm not. No amount of clever trickery is going to lure me into neglecting my own affairs to go off on another one of your fishing expeditions. I'm too busy, Javelin." His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Why don't you send Hunter?"
"Hunter's busy someplace else, Silk, and stop trying to find out who Hunter is."
"It was worth a try. Actually I'm not interested at all, not in the leas
t." He sat back in his chair with his arms adamantly crossed. His long pointed nose, however, was twitching. "What do you mean by 'behaving peculiarly?"' he asked after a moment.
"I thought you weren't interested."
"I'm not," Silk repeated hastily. "I most definitely am not." His nose, however, was twitching even more violently. Angrily he got to his feet. "Give me the names of the men you want me to hire," he said abruptly. "I'll see what I can do."
"Of course, Prince Kheldar," Javelin said blandly. "I appreciate your sense of loyalty to your old service."
Errand remembered something that Silk had said in the large outer room. "Silk says that information about almost everything is brought to this building," he said to Javelin.
"That might be an exaggeration, but we try."
"Then perhaps you might have heard something about Zandramas."
Javelin looked at him blankly.
"It's something that Belgarion and I heard about," Errand explained. "And Belgarath is curious about it, too. I thought you might have heard about it."
"I can't say that I have," Javelin admitted. "Of course we're a long way from Darshiva."
"What's Darshiva?" Errand asked.
"It's one of the principalities of the old Melcene Empire in eastern Mallorea. Zandramas is a Darshivan name. Didn't you know that?"
"No. We didn't."
There was a light tap on the door.
"Yes?" Javelin answered.
The door opened, and a young lady of perhaps nineteen or twenty came in. Her hair was the color of honey, her eyes were a warm, golden brown, and she wore a plain-looking gray dress. Her expression was serious, but there was just the hint of a dimple in each of her cheeks. "Uncle," she said, and her voice had a kind of vibrancy about it that made it almost irresistibly compelling.
Javelin's hard, angular face softened noticeably. "Yes, Liselle?" he said.
"Is this little Liselle?" Silk exclaimed.
"Not quite so little any more," Javelin said.
"The last time I saw her she was still in braids."
"She combed out the braids a few years ago," Javelin said drily, "and look what was hiding under them."
"I am looking," Silk said admiringly.
"The reports you wanted, uncle," the girl said, laying a sheaf of parchment on the table. Then she turned to Kheva and curtsied to him with incredible grace. "Your Highness," she greeted him.
"Margravine Liselle," the little prince replied with a polite bow.
"And Prince Kheldar," the girl said then.
"We weren't at all so formal when you were a child," Silk protested.
"But then, I'm not a child any more, your Highness."
Silk looked over at Javelin. "When she was a little girl, she used to pull my nose."
"But it's such a long, interesting nose," Liselle said. And then she smiled, and the dimples suddenly sprang to life.
"Liselle is helping out here," Javelin said. "She'll be entering the academy in a few months."
"You're going to be a spy?" Silk asked her incredulously.
"It's the family business, Prince Kheldar. My father and mother were both spies. My uncle here is a spy. All of my friends are spies. How could I possibly be anything else?"
Silk looked a trifle off-balance. "It just doesn't seem appropriate, for some reason."
"That probably means that I'll be quite successful, doesn't it? You look like a spy, Prince Kheldar. I don't, so I won't have nearly as many problems as you've had."
Though the girl's answers were clever, even pert, Errand could see something in her warm, brown eyes that Silk probably could not. Despite the fact that the Margravine Liselle was obviously a grown woman, Silk just as obviously still thought of her as a little girl -one who had pulled his nose.
The look she gave him, however, was not the look of a little girl, and Errand realized that she had been waiting for a number of years for the opportunity to meet Silk on adult terms. Errand covered his mouth with his hand to hide a smile. The wily Prince Kheldar had some very interesting times ahead of him.
The door opened again, and a nondescript man came in, quickly crossed to the table, and whispered something to Javelin. The man's face, Errand noticed, was pale, and his hands were trembling.
Javelin's face grew set, and he sighed. He gave no other outward sign of emotion, however. He rose to his feet and came around the table. "Your Majesty." he said formally to Prince Kheva, "I believe that you should return to the palace immediately."
Silk and Liselle both caught the changed form of address and looked sharply at the Chief of Drasnian Intelligence.
"I believe that we should all accompany the King back to the palace," Javelin said sadly. "We must offer our condolences to his mother and aid her in any way we can in her hour of grief."
The King of Drasnia looked at his intelligence chief, his eyes very wide and his lip trembling.
Errand gently took the little boy's hand in his. "We'd better go, Kheva," he said. "Your mother will need you very much right now."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Kings of Aloria gathered in Boktor for the funeral of King Rhodar and the subsequent coronation of his son, Kheva. Such a gathering, of course, was traditional. Though the nations of the north had diverged somewhat over the centuries, the Alorns nonetheless had never forgotten their origins in the single kingdom of King Cherek Bear-shoulders five thousand years in the dim past, and they came together at such times in sadness to bury a brother. Because King Rhodar had been beloved and respected by other nations as well, Anheg of Cherek, Cho-Hag of Algaria, and Belgarion of Riva were joined by Fulrach of Sendaria, Korodullin of Arendia, and even by the erratic Drosta lek Thun of Gar og Nadrak. In addition, General Varana was present as the representative of Emperor Ran Borune XXIII of Tolnedra, and Sadi, Chief Eunuch of the palace of Queen Salmissra of Nyissa, was also in attendance.
The burial of an Alorn King was a serious matter, and it involved certain ceremonies at which only the other Alorn monarchs were present. No gathering of so many kings and high-ranking functionaries, however, could ever be entirely ceremonial. Inevitably, politics were of major concern in the quiet discussions which took place in the somberly draped corridors of the palace.
Errand, soberly dressed and quiet, drifted from one small gathering to another in those days preceding the funeral.
The Kings all knew him, but they seemed for some reason to take little note of his presence, and so he heard many conversations which he might perhaps not have heard had they stopped to consider the fact that he was no longer the little boy they had known during the campaign in Mishrak ac Thull.
The Alorn Kings -Belgarion in his usual blue doublet and hose, and the brutish-looking Anheg in his rumpled blue robe and dented crown, and quiet-voiced Cho-Hag in silver and black -stood together in a sable-draped embrasure in one of the broad hallways of the palace.
"Porenn is going to have to serve as regent," Garion said. "Kheva is only six, and somebody's going to have to run things until he's old enough to take charge himself."
"A woman?" Anheg said, aghast.
"Anheg, are we going to have that argument again?" Cho-Hag asked mildly.
"I don't see any alternative, Anheg," Garion said in his most persuasive manner. "King Drosta is almost drooling at the prospect of a boy king on the throne of Drasnia. His troops will be biting off chunks of the borderlands before the rest of us get home unless we put someone in charge here."
"But Porenn is so tiny," Anheg objected irrationally, "and so pretty. How can she possibly run a kingdom?"
"Probably very well," Cho-Hag replied, shifting his weight carefully on his crippled legs. "Rhodar confided in her completely, and she was behind the scheme that eliminated Grodeg, after all."
"About the only other person in Drasnia competent enough to take charge here is the Margrave Khendon," Garion told the King of Cherek. "The one they call Javelin. Do you want the Chief of Drasnian Intelligence sitting behind the throne giving order
s?"
Anheg shuddered. "That's a ghastly thought. What about Prince Kheldar?"
Garion stared at him. "You're not serious, Anheg," he said incredulously. "Silk? As regent?"
"You might be right," Anheg conceded after a moment's thought. "He is just a little unreliable, isn't he?"
"A little?" Garion laughed.
"Are we agreed, then?" Cho-Hag asked. "It has to be Porenn, right?"
Anheg grumbled, but finally agreed.
The Algar King turned to Garion. "You'll probably have to issue a proclamation."
"Me? I don't have any authority in Drasnia."
"You're the Overlord of the West," Cho-Hag reminded him. "Just announce that you recognize Porenn's regency and declare that anyone who argues about it or violates her borders will have to answer to you."
"That should back Drosta off." Anheg chuckled grossly. "He's almost more frightened of you than he is of 'Zakath. He probably has nightmares about your flaming sword sliding between his ribs."
In another corridor, Errand came upon General Varana and Sadi the Eunuch. Sadi wore the mottled, iridescent silk robe of the Nyissans, and the general was draped in a silver Tolnedran mantle with broad bands of gold-colored trim across his shoulders.
"So, it's official, then?" Sadi said in his oddly contralto voice, eyeing the general's mantle.
"What's that?" Varana asked him. The general was a blocky-looking man with iron-gray hair and a slightly amused expression.
"We had heard rumors in Sthiss Tor that Ran Borune had adopted you as his son."
"Expediency." Varana shrugged. "The major families of the Empire were dismantling Tolnedra in their scramble for the throne. Ran Borune had to take steps to quiet things down."
"You will take the throne when he dies, though, won't you?"
"We'll see," Varana replied evasively. "Let's pray that his Majesty will live for many years yet."
"Of course," Sadi murmured. "The silver mantle of the crown prince does become you, however, my dear General." He rubbed one long-fingered hand over his shaved scalp.
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