Rivan Codex Series

by Eddings, David

  "I think we're going to need it."

  "All right." Issus turned and left the room.

  "An interesting man," Salmissra noted. She bent and caressingly touched her mottled coils with her blunt nose. "My life is much changed since you were last here, Polgara," she whispered in her dusty voice. "I am no longer driven by those hungers I had before, but pass my days instead in restless doze. I lull myself into slumber with the sweet sound of my own scales caressing each other. As I sleep, I dream. I dream of mossy caves in deep, cool forests, and I dream of the days when I was still a woman. But sometimes in my dreams, I am a bodiless spirit, seeking out the truths that others would hide. I know of the fear which lies in your heart, Polgara, and the desperate need that drives Zandramas. I even know of the terrible task which lies upon Cyradis."

  "But you still say that you are not involved in this matter?"

  "I have no interest in it. You and Zandramas can pursue each other across all the kingdoms of the world, but I am incurious as to the outcome."

  Aunt Pol's eyes narrowed as she looked at her.

  "I have no reason to lie to you, Polgara," Salmissra said, sensing the suspicion in that look. "What could Zandramas possibly offer me that would buy my aid? All of my needs are satisfied, and I no longer have desires." Her blunt head came up and her tongue flickered. "I rejoice, however, that your quest has brought you again into my presence so that I may gaze once more upon the perfection of your face."

  Polgara's chin lifted. "Look quickly then, Salmissra. I have little patience for the involuted amusements of a snake."

  "The centuries have made you waspish, Polgara. Let us be civil to one another. Would you like to have me tell you what I know of Zandramas? She is no longer what she once was."

  "She!" Garion exclaimed.

  "You did not even know that?" the serpent hissed maliciously. "Your sorcery is a sham, then, Polgara. Could you not sense your enemy is a woman? And did you perhaps not even realize that you have already met her?"

  "What are you talking about, Salmissra?"

  "Poor, dear Polgara. The long, long centuries have filled your wits with cobwebs. Did you really think that you and Belgarath are the only ones in the world who can change their shapes? The dragon who visited you in the mountains above Arendia appears quite different when she resumes her natural form."

  The door to the throne room opened and Issus came back in, holding a parchment sheet with a red wax seal on the bottom of it.

  "Bring it to me," Salmissra commanded.

  Issus looked at her, his single eye narrowing as he gauged the distance between the serpent's throne and his own unprotected skin. Then he went over to the prostrate eunuch who had presented Polgara's document to the queen. Without changing expression, he kicked the man solidly in the ribs. "Here," he said, thrusting out the parchment. "Take this to her Majesty."

  "Are you afraid of me, Issus?" Salmissra asked, sounding faintly amused.

  "I am unworthy to approach you too closely, my Queen."

  Salmissra bent her head to examine the parchment the trembling eunuch held out for her to read. "There appears to be some discrepancy," she hissed. "This document is the same as the one you showed me, Polgara, but it is not the document to which I ordered my seal affixed. How is this possible?"

  "May I speak, my Queen?" the eunuch who held the parchment asked in a quavering voice.

  "Of course, Adiss," she replied almost pleasantly, "so long as you realize that if your words displease me, the kiss I will give you in payment will bring you death." Her forked tongue flickered out toward him.

  The eunuch's face went a ghastly gray color, and his trembling became so violent that he very nearly collapsed.

  "Speak, Adiss," she whispered. "It is my command that you disclose your mind to me. We will determine then whether you live or die. Speak. Now."

  "My Queen," he quavered, "the Chief Eunuch is the only person in the palace permitted to touch your Majesty's royal seal. If the document in question is false, must we not look to him for an explanation?"

  The serpent considered that, her head swaying rhythmically back and forth and her forked tongue flickering. At last she stopped her reptilian dance and leaned slowly forward until her tongue brushed the cringing eunuch's cheek. "Live, Adiss," she murmured. "Your words have not displeased me, and so my kiss grants the gift of life." Then she reared her mottled form again and regarded Sariss with her dead eyes. "Do you have an explanation, Sariss? As our most excellent servant Adiss has pointed out, you are my Chief Eunuch. You affixed my seal. How did this discrepancy come to pass?"

  "My Queen—" His mouth gaped open, and his dead-white face froze in an expression of stark terror.

  The still-shaken Adiss half rose, his eyes filled with a sudden wild hope. He held up the parchment in his hand and turned to his crimson-robed companions kneeling to one side of the dais. "Behold," he cried in a triumphant voice. "Behold the proof of the Chief Eunuch's misconduct!"

  The other eunuchs looked first at Adiss and then at the groveling and terrified Chief Eunuch. Their eyes also furtively tried to read the enigmatic expression on Salmissra's face. "Ah," they said in unison at last.

  "I'm still waiting, Sariss," the Serpent Queen whispered.

  Sariss, however, quite suddenly scrambled to his feet and bolted toward the throne room door, squealing in mindless, animal panic. As fast as his sudden flight was, though, Issus was even faster. The shabby, one-eyed assassin bounded after the fleeing fat man, his horrid dagger leaping into his hand. With the other he caught the back of the Chief Eunuch's crimson robe and jerked him up short. He raised his knife and looked inquiringly at Salmissra.

  "Not yet, Issus," she decided. "Bring him to me."

  Issus grunted and dragged his struggling captive toward the throne. Sariss, squealing and gibbering in terror, scrambled his feet ineffectually on the polished floor.

  "I will have an answer from you, Sariss," Salmissra whispered.

  "Talk," Issus said in a flat voice, setting his dagger point against the eunuch's lower eyelid. He pushed slightly, and a sudden trickle of bright-red blood ran down the fat man's cheek.

  Sariss squealed and began to blubber. "Forgive me, your Majesty," he begged. "The Mallorean Nadaras compelled it of me."

  "How did you do it, Sariss?" the serpent demanded implacably.

  "I put your seal at the very bottom of the page, Divine Salmissra," he blurted. "Then when I was alone, I added the other orders."

  "And were there other orders as well?" Aunt Pol asked him. "Will we encounter hindrances and traps on the trail of Zandramas?"

  "No. Nothing. I gave no orders other than that Zandramas be escorted to the Murgo border and provided the maps she required. I pray you, your Majesty. Forgive me."

  "That is quite impossible, Sariss," she hissed. "It had been my intention to hold myself aloof in the dispute between Polgara and Zandramas, but now I am involved because you have abused my trust in you."

  "Shall I kill him?" Issus asked calmly.

  "No, Issus," she replied. "Sariss and I will share a kiss, as is the custom in this place." She looked oddly at him. "You are an interesting man, assassin," she said. "Would you like to enter my service? I am certain that a position can be found for one of your talents."

  Adiss the eunuch gasped, his face suddenly going pale. "But your Majesty," he protested, leaping to his feet, "your servants have always been eunuchs, and this man is—" He faltered, suddenly realizing the temerity of his rash outburst.

  Salmissra's dead eyes locked on his, and he sank white-faced to the floor again. "You disappoint me, Adiss," she said in that dusty whisper. She turned back to the one-eyed assassin. "Well, Issus?" she said. "A man of your talents could rise to great eminence, and the procedure, I'm told, is a minor one. You would soon recover and enter the service of your queen."

  "Ah—I'm honored, your Majesty," he replied carefully, "but I'd really prefer to remain more or less intact. There's a certain edge my profession req
uires, and I'd rather not endanger that by tampering with things."

  "I see." She swung her head briefly to look at the cowering Adiss and then back to the assassin. "You have made an enemy today, however, I think—and one that may someday grow quite powerful."

  Issus shrugged. "I've had many enemies," he replied. "A few of them are even still alive." He gave the cowering eunuch a flinty look. "If Adiss wants to pursue the matter, he and I can discuss it privately some day—or perhaps late some night when our discussions won't disturb anyone."

  "We must leave now," Polgara said. "You have been most helpful, Salmissra. Thank you."

  "I am indifferent to your gratitude," Salmissra replied. "I do not think that I will see you again, Polgara. I think that Zandramas is more powerful than you and that she will destroy you."

  "Only time can reveal that."

  "Indeed. Farewell, Polgara."

  "Good-bye, Salmissra." Polgara deliberately turned her back on the dais. "Come along, Garion—Issus," she said.

  "Sariss," Salmissra said in a peculiar, almost singing tone, "come to me." Garion glanced back over his shoulder and saw that she had reared her mottled body until it rose high above the dais and her velvet-covered throne. She swayed rhythmically back and forth. Her dead eyes had come alight with a kind of dreadful hunger and they burned irresistably beneath her scaly brows.

  Sariss, his mouth agape and with his piglike eyes frozen and devoid of all thought, lurched toward the dais with jerky, stiff-legged steps.

  "Come, Sariss," Salmissra crooned. "I long to embrace you and give you my kiss."

  Aunt Pol, Garion, and Issus reached the ornately carved door and went quietly into the corridor outside. They had gone no more than a few yards when there came from the throne room a sudden shrill scream of horror, dying hideously into a gurgling, strangled squeal.

  "I think that the position of Chief Eunuch just became vacant," Issus observed drily. Then, as they continued on down the dimly lighted hallway he turned to Polgara. "Now, my Lady," he said, ticking the items off on his fingers, "first of all there was the fee for getting you and the young man into the palace. Then there was the business of persuading Sariss to take us to the throne room, and then ..."

  PART TWO - RAK URGA

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was almost dawn when they crept quietly out of Droblek's house. A thick gray fog shrouded the narrow, twisting streets of Sthiss Tor as they followed Issus through the shabby quarter near the docks. The smell of the river and the reek of the surrounding swamps lay heavy in the foggy darkness, filling Garion's nostrils with the odors of decay and stagnant water.

  They emerged from a narrow alleyway, and Issus motioned them to a halt as he peered into the mist. Then he nodded. "Let's go," he whispered. "Try not to make any noise." They hurried across a glistening cobblestone street, ill-lit by torches, each surrounded by a nimbus of hazy red light, and entered the deeper shadows of another garbage-strewn alley. At the far end of that alley, Garion could see the slow-moving surface of the river sliding ponderously by, pale in the fog.

  The one-eyed assassin led them along another cobblestone street to the foot of a rickety wharf jutting out into the fog. He stopped in the shadows beside a dilapidated shack that stood partially out over the water and fumbled briefly at the door. He opened it slowly, muffling the protesting creak of a rusty hinge with a tattered piece of rag. "In here," he muttered, and they followed him into the dank-smelling shack. "There's a boat tied at the end of this wharf," he told them in a half whisper. "Wait here while I go get it." He went to the front of the shack, and Garion heard the creak of hinges as a trapdoor opened.

  They waited, listening nervously to the skittering and squeaking of the rats that infested this part of town. The moments seemed to creep by as Garion stood watch beside the door, peering out through a crack between two rotting boards at the foggy street running along the edge of the river.

  "All right," he heard Issus say from below after what seemed like hours. "Be careful on the ladder. The rungs are slippery."

  One by one, they climbed down the ladder into the boat the one-eyed man had pulled into place under the wharf. "We have to be quiet," he cautioned them after they had seated themselves. "There's another boat out there on the river somewhere."

  "A boat?" Sadi asked in alarm. "What are they doing?"

  Issus shrugged. "Probably something illegal." Then he pushed his craft out into the shadows at the side of the wharf, settled himself on the center seat, and began to row, dipping his oars carefully into the oily surface of the river so that they made almost no sound.

  The fog rose from the dark water in little tendrils, and the few lighted windows high in the towers of Sthiss Tor had a hazy unreality, like tiny golden candles seen in a dream. Issus rowed steadily, his oars making only the faintest of sounds.

  Then from somewhere not far upstream, there was a sudden muffled outcry, followed by a splash and the gurgling sound of bubbles rising to the surface.

  "What was that?" Sadi hissed nervously as Issus stopped rowing to listen.

  "Be still," the one-eyed man whispered.

  From somewhere in the fog, there came the thumping sound of someone moving around in a boat, followed by the splash of an awkwardly pulled oar. A man swore, his voice harsh and loud.

  "Keep quiet," another voice said.

  "What for?"

  "Let's not tel! everybody in Sthiss Tor that we're out here."

  "You worry too much. That rock I tied to his ankles will keep him down for a long time.'' The creaking oarlocks faded off into the fog.

  "Amateurs," Issus muttered derisively.

  "An assassination, perhaps?" Silk asked with a certain professional curiosity. "Or a private killing?"

  "What difference does it make?" Issus started to row again, his oars dipping slowly into the water. Behind them Sthiss Tor had disappeared in the fog. Without the reference point of its dim lights, it seemed to Garion that they were not moving at all, but sat motionless on the surface of the dark river. Then, at last, a shadowy shore appeared ahead in the clinging fog; after a few more minutes, he was able to make out the hazy shape of individual tree tops outlined by the pale mist.

  A low whistle came to them from the bank, and Issus angled their boat slightly, making for that signal. "Garion, is that you?" Durnik's whispered voice came out of the shadows.

  "Yes."

  Issus pulled their boat under the overhanging branches, and Durnik caught the bow. "The others are waiting on the far side of the road," he said quietly as he helped Polgara from the boat.

  "You've been most helpful, Issus," Sadi said to his hireling.

  The one-eyed man shrugged. "Isn't that what you paid me for?"

  Silk looked at him. "If you decide to consider my offer, talk to Droblek."

  "I'll think about it," Issus replied. He paused, then looked at Polgara. "Good luck on your journey, Lady," he said quietly. "I get the feeling that you're going to need it."

  "Thank you, Issus."

  Then he pushed his boat back out into the fog and disappeared.

  "What was that all about?" Sadi asked Silk.

  "Oh, nothing much. Drasnian Intelligence is always looking for a few good men, is all."

  Durnik was looking curiously at the shaven-headed eunuch.

  "We'll explain when we get back to the others, dear," Polgara assured him.

  "Yes, Pol," he agreed. "We go this way." He led them up the brushy bank to the broken stones of the road and then pushed his way into the tangled undergrowth on the far side, with the rest of them close behind him.

  Ce'Nedra, Eriond, Toth, and Velvet sat in a little hollow behind the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree. A single, well-shielded lantern gave forth a dim glow, illuminating the hollow with faint light. "Garion," Ce'Nedra exclaimed with relief, coming quickly to her feet. "What took you so long?"

  "We had to make a side trip," he replied, taking her into his arms. As he nestled his face into her hair, he found that
it still had that warm, sweet fragrance that had always touched his heart.

  "All right," Belgarath said, looking out into the tag end of the foggy night, "I want to get moving, so I'll keep this short." He sat down on the spongy moss beside the lantern. "This is Sadi." He pointed at the shaven-headed eunuch. "Most of you know him already. He'll be going with us."

  "Is that altogether wise, Belgarath?" Durnik asked dubiously.

  "Probably not," the old man replied, "but it wasn't my idea. He seems to feel that Zandramas has gone down into southern Cthol Murgos and plans to cross the continent to the Isle of Verkat off the southeast coast."

  "That's a very dangerous part of the world just now, Ancient One," Velvet murmured.

  "We'll have no trouble, dear lady," Sadi assured her in his contralto voice. "If we pose as slavers, no one will interfere with us."

  "So you say," Belgarath said somewhat sceptically. "That might have been true before the war started down there, but we still don't know for sure how the Malloreans view the slave trade."

  "There's one other thing you should all know," Polgara added quietly. "Garion and I went to the palace to find out if Salmissra was involved in this in any way. She told us that Zandramas is a woman."

  "A woman?" Ce'Nedra exclaimed.

  "That's what she said, and she had no reason to lie to us."

  Durnik scratched at his head. "That's a bit of a surprise, isn't it? Are you sure Salmissra knew what she was talking about?"

  She nodded. "She was very certain—and quite smug about the fact that she knew something that I didn't."

  "It does sort of fit," Velvet said thoughtfully. "Most of the things Zandramas has done were done the way a woman would do them."

  "I can't quite follow that," Durnik admitted.

  "A man does things one way, Goodman. A woman does them differently. The fact that Zandramas is a woman explains a great deal."