"Can we bribe someone to put a stop to it?"
"We're already paying Vasca a fortune to leave us alone, but the consortium is throwing money around like water. It's possible that the baron won't stay bribed."
"Let me nose around inside the palace a bit," Silk said, "before you double Vasca's bribe or anything."
"Bribery's the standard procedure, Prince Kheldar."
"I know, but sometimes blackmail works even better." Silk looked over at Garion, then back at his factor. "What do you know about what's happening in Karanda?" he asked.
"Enough to know that it's disastrous for business. All sorts of perfectly respectable and otherwise sensible merchants are closing up their shops and flocking off to Calida to enlist in Mengha's army. Then they march around in circles singing 'Death to the Angaraks' while they wave rusty swords in the air."
"Any chance of selling them weapons?" Silk asked quickly.
"Probably not. There's not enough real money in northern Karanda make it worthwhile to try to deal with them, and the political unrest has closed down all the mines. The market in gem stones has just about dried up."
Silk nodded glumly. "What's really going on up there, Dolmar?" he asked. "The reports Brador passed on to us were sort of sketchy."
"Mengha arrived at the gates of Calida with demons." The factor shrugged. "The Karands went into hysterics and then fell down in the throes of religious ecstasy."
"Brador told us about certain atrocities," Garion said.
"I expect that the reports he received were a trifle exaggerated, your Majesty," Dolmar replied. "Even the most well trained observer is likely to multiply mutilated corpses lying in the streets by ten. In point of fact, the vast majority of the casualties were either Melcene or Angarak. Mengha's demons rather scrupulously avoided killing Karands ‑except by accident. The same has held true in every city that he's taken so far." He scratched at his head, his close‑set eyes narrowing. "It's really very shrewd, you know. The Karands see Mengha as a liberator and his demons as an invincible spearhead of their army. I can't swear to his real motives, but those barbarians up there believe that he's a savior come to sweep Karanda clean of Angaraks and the Melcene bureaucracy. Give him another six months or so, and he'll accomplish what no one has ever been able to do before."
"What's that?" Silk asked.
"Unify all of Karanda."
"Does he use his demons in the assault on every city he takes?" Garion asked, wanting to confirm what Brador had told them.
Dolmar shook his head. "Not anymore, your Majesty. After what happened at Calida and several other towns he took early in his campaign, he doesn't really have to. All he's been doing lately is marching up to the city. The demons are with him, of course, but they don't have to do anything but stand there looking awful. The Karands butcher all the Angaraks and Melcenes in town, throw open their gates, and welcome him with open arms. Then his demons vanish." He thought a moment. "He always has one particular one of them with him, though ‑a shadowy sort of creature that doesn't seem to be gigantic the way they're supposed to be. He stands directly behind Mengha's left shoulder at any public appearance."
A sudden thought occurred to Garion. "Are they desecrating Grolim temples?" he asked.
Dolmar blinked. "No," he replied with some surprise, "as a matter of fact, they're not ‑and there don't seem to be any Grolims among the dead, either. Of course it's possible that Urvon pulled all his Grolims out of Karanda when the trouble started."
"That's unlikely," Garion disagreed. "Mengha's arrival at Calida came without any kind of warning. The Grolims wouldn't have had time to escape. He stared up at the ceiling, thinking hard.
"What is it, Garion?" Silk asked.
"I just had a chilling sort of notion. We know that Mengha's a Grolim, right?"
"I didn't know that," Dolmar said with some surprise.
"We got a bit of inside information," Silk told him. "Go ahead, Garion."
"Urvon spends all of his time in Mal Yaska, doesn't he?"
Silk nodded. "So I've heard. He doesn't want Beldin to catch him out in the open."
"Wouldn't that make him a fairly ineffective leader? All right, then. Let's suppose that Mengha went through his period of despair after the death of Torak and then found a magician to teach him how to raise demons. When he comes back, he offers his former Grolim brethren an alternative to Urvon ‑along with access to a kind of power they'd never experienced before. A demon in the hands of an illiterate and fairly stupid Karandese magician is one thing, but a demon controlled by a Grolim sorcerer would be much worse, I think. If Mengha is gathering disaffected Grolims around him and training them in the use of magic, we have a big problem. I don't think I'd care to face a legion of Chabats, would you?"
Silk shuddered. "Not hardly," he replied fervently.
"He has to be uprooted then," Dolmar said, "and soon."
Garion made a sour face. "Zakath won't move until he gets his army back from Cthol Murgos ‑about three months from now."
"In three months, Mengha's going to be invincible," the f actor told him.
"Then we'll have to move now," Garion said, "with Zakath or without him."
"How do you plan to get out of the city?" Silk asked.
"We'll let Belgarath work that out." Garion looked at Silk's agent. "Can you tell us anything else?" he asked.
Dolmar tugged at his nose in a curious imitation of Silk's habitual gesture. "It's only a rumor," he said.
"Go ahead."
" I've been getting some hints out of Karanda that Mengha's familiar demon is named Nahaz."
"Is that significant?"
"I can't be altogether sure, your Majesty. When the Grolims went into Karanda in the second millennium, they destroyed all traces of Karandese mythology, and no one has ever tried to record what few bits and pieces remained. All that's left is a hazy oral tradition, but the rumors I've heard say that Nahaz was the tribal demon of the original Karands who migrated into the region before the Angaraks came to Mallorea. The Karands follow Mengha not only because he's a political leader, but also because he's resurrected the closest thing they've ever had to a God of their own."
"A Demon Lord?" Garion asked him.
"That's a very good way to describe him, your Majesty. If the rumors are true, the demon Nahaz has almost unlimited power."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
Later, when they were back out in the street, Garion looked curiously at Silk. "Why didn't you object when he burned those documents?" he asked.
"It's standard practice." the rat‑faced man shrugged. "We never keep anything in writing. Dolmar has everything committed to memory."
"Doesn't that make it fairly easy for him to steal from you?"
"Of course, but he keeps his thievery within reasonable limits. If the Bureau of Taxation got its hands on written records, though, it could be a disaster. Do you want to go back to the palace now?"
Garion took out his list. "No," he said. "We've got to take care of this first." He looked glumly at the sheet.
"I wonder how we're going to carry it all."
Silk glanced back over his shoulder at the two unobtrusive spies trailing along behind them.
"Help is only a few paces away." He laughed. "As I said before, there are many uses for policemen."
During the next several days, Garion discovered that the imperial palace of Mal Zeth was unlike any court in the West. Since all power rested in Zakath's hands, the bureaucrats and palace functionaries contested with each other for the Emperor's favor and strove with oftentimes wildly complicated plots to discredit their enemies. The introduction of Silk, Velvet, and Sadi into this murky environment added whole new dimensions to palace intrigue. The trio rather casually pointed out the friendship between Garion and Zakath and let it be generally known that they had the Rivan King's complete trust. Then they sat back to await developments.
The officials and courtiers in the imperial palace were quick to grasp th
e significance and the opportunities implicit in this new route to the Emperor's ear. Perhaps even without formally discussing it, the trio of westerners neatly divided up the possible spheres of activity. Silk concentrated his attention on commercial matters, Velvet dabbled in politics, and Sadi delicately dipped his long-fingered hands into the world of high‑level crime. Though all of them subtly let it be known that they were susceptible to bribery, they also expressed a willingness to pass along various requests in exchange for information. Thus, almost by accident, Garion found that he had a very efficient espionage apparatus at his disposal. Silk and Velvet manipulated the fears, ambitions, and open greed of those who contacted them with a musician-like skill, delicately playing the increasingly nervous officials like well‑tuned instruments. Sadi's methods, derived from his extensive experience in Salmissra's court, were in some instances even more subtle, but in others, painfully direct. The contents of his red leather case brought premium prices, and several high‑ranking criminals, men who literally owned whole platoons of bureaucrats and even generals, quite suddenly died under suspicious circumstances ‑one of them even toppling over with a blackened face and bulging eyes in the presence of the Emperor himself.
Zakath, who had watched the activities of the three with a certain veiled amusement, drew the line at that point. He spoke quite firmly with Garion about the matter during their customary evening meeting on the following day.
"I don't really mind what they're doing, Garion," he said, idly stroking the head of an orange kitten who lay purring in his lap. "They're confusing all the insects who scurry around in the dark corners of the palace, and a confused bug can't consolidate his position. I like to keep all these petty bootlickers frightened and off balance, since it makes it easier to control them. I really must object to poison, however. It's far too easy for an unskilled poisoner to make mistakes."
"Sadi could poison one specific person at a banquet with a hundred guests," Garion assured him.
"I have every confidence in his ability," Zakath agreed, "but the trouble is that he's not doing the actual poisoning himself. He's selling his concoctions to rank amateurs. There are some people here in the palace that I need. Their identities are general knowledge, and that keeps the daggers out of their entrails. A mistake with some poison, however, could wipe out whole branches of my government. Could you ask him not to sell any more of it here in the palace? I'd speak to him personally, but I don't want it to seem like an official reprimand."
"I'll have a talk with him," Garion promised.
"I'd appreciate it, Garion." The Emperor's eyes grew sly. "Just the poisons, though. I find the effects of some of his other compounds rather amusing. Just yesterday, I saw an eighty‑five‑year‑old general in hot pursuit of a young chambermaid. The old fool hasn't had that kind of thought for a quarter of a century. And the day before that, the Chief of the Bureau of Public Works ‑a pompous ass who makes me sick just to look at him‑ tried for a solid half hour in front of dozens of witnesses to walk up the side of a building. I haven't laughed so hard in years."
"Nyissan elixirs do strange things to people." Garion smiled. "I'll ask Sadi to confine his dealings to recreational drugs."
"Recreational drugs," Zakath laughed. "I like that description."
"I've always had a way with words," Garion replied modestly.
The orange kitten rose, yawned, and jumped down from the Emperor's lap. The mackerel‑tabby mother cat caught a black and white kitten by the scruff of the neck and deposited it exactly where the orange one had been lying. Then she looked at Zakath's face and meowed questioningly.
"Thank you," Zakath murmured to her.
Satisfied, the cat jumped down, caught the orange kitten, and began to bathe it, holding it down with one paw.
"Does she do that all the time?" Garion asked.
Zakath nodded. "She's busy being a mother, but she doesn't want me to get lonely."
"That's considerate of her."
Zakath looked at the black and white kitten in his lap, who had all four paws wrapped around his hand and was gnawing on one of his knuckles in mock ferocity. "I think I could learn to survive without it," he said, wincing.
CHAPTER NINE
The simplest way to avoid the omnipresent spies infesting the imperial palace was to conduct any significant conversations out in the open, and so Garion frequently found himself strolling around the palace grounds with one or more of his companions. On a beautiful spring morning a few days later he walked with Belgarath and Polgara through the dappled shade of a cherry orchard, listening to Velvet's latest report on the political intrigues which seethed through the corridors of Zakath's palace.
"The surprising thing is that Brador is probably aware of most of what's going on," the blond girl told them. "He doesn't look all that efficient, but his secret police are everywhere." Velvet was holding a spray of cherry blossoms in front of her face, rather ostentatiously inhaling their fragrance.
"At least they can't hear us out here," Garion said.
"No, but they can see us. If I were you, Belgarion, I still wouldn't talk too openly ‑even out of doors. I happened to come across one industrious fellow yesterday who was busily writing down every word of a conversation being conducted in whispers some fifty yards away."
"That's a neat trick," Belgarath said. "How did he manage it?"
"He's stone‑deaf," she replied. "Over the years, he's learned to understand what people are saying by reading the shape of the words from their lips."
"Clever," the old man murmured. "Is that why you're so busily sniffing cherry blossoms?"
She nodded with a dimpled smile. "That and the fact that they have such a lovely fragrance."
He scratched at his beard, his hand covering his mouth. "All right," he said. "What I need is some sort of disruption -to draw Brador's police off so that we can slip out of Mal Zeth without being followed. Zakath is rock hard on the point of not doing anything until his army gets back from Cthol Murgos, so it's obvious that we're going to have to move without him. Is there anything afoot that might distract all the spies around here?"
"Not really, Ancient One. The petty kinglet of Pallia and the Prince Regent of Delchin are scheming against each other, but that's been going on for years. The old King of Voresebo is trying to get imperial aid in wresting his throne back from his son, who deposed him a year or so ago. Baron Vasca, the Chief of the Bureau of Commerce, is trying to assimilate the Bureau of Military Procurement, but the generals have him stalemated. Those are the major things in the air right now. There are a number of minor plots going on as well, but nothing earthshaking enough to divert the spies who are watching us."
"Can you stir anything up?" Polgara asked, her lips scarcely moving.
"I can try, Lady Polgara," Velvet replied, "but Brador is right on top of everything that's happening here in the palace. I'll talk with Kheldar and Sadi. It's remotely possible that the three of us can engineer something unexpected enough to give us a chance to slip out of the city."
"It's getting fairly urgent, Liselle," Polgara said. "If Zandramas finds what she's looking for at Ashaba, she'll be off again, and we'll wind up trailing along behind her in the same way that we were back in Cthol Murgos."
"I'll see what we can come up with, my lady," Velvet promised.
"Are you going back inside?" Belgarath asked her.
She nodded.
"I'll go with you." He looked around distastefully, "All this fresh air and exercise is a little too wholesome for my taste.
"Walk a bit farther with me, Garion," Polgara said.
"All right."
As Velvet and Belgarath turned back toward the east wing of the palace, Garion and his aunt strolled on along the neatly trimmed green lawn lying beneath the blossom-covered trees. A wren, standing on the topmost twig of a gnarled, ancient tree, sang as if his heart would burst,
"What's he singing about?" Garion asked, suddenly remembering his aunt's unusual affinity for birds.
> "He's trying to attract the attention of a female," she replied, smiling gently. "It's that time of year again. He's being very eloquent and making all sorts of promises -most of which he'll break before the summer's over."
He smiled and affectionately put his arm about her shoulders.
She sighed happily. "This is pleasant," she said. "For some reason when we're apart, I still think of you as a little boy. It always sort of surprises me to find that you've grown so tall."
There wasn't too much that he could say to that.
"How's Durnik?" he asked. "I almost never see him these days."
"He and Toth and Eriond managed to find a well-stocked trout pond on the southern end of the imperial grounds," she replied with a slightly comical upward roll of her eyes. "They're catching large numbers of fish, but the kitchen staff is beginning to get a bit surly about the whole thing."
"Trust Durnik to find water." Garion laughed. "Is Eriond actually fishing too? That seems a little out of character for him."
"I don't think he's very serious about it. He goes along mostly for Durnik's company, I think ‑and because he likes to be outside." She paused and then looked directly at him. As so many times in the past, he was suddenly struck to the heart by her luminous beauty. "How has Ce'Nedra been lately?" she asked him.
" She's managed to locate a number of young ladies to keep her company," he replied. "No matter where we go, she's always able to surround herself with companions."
"Ladies like to have other ladies about them, dear," she said. "Men are nice enough, I suppose, but a woman needs other women to talk to. There are so many important things that men just don't understand." Her face grew serious. "There hasn't been any recurrence of what happened in Cthol Murgos, then?" she asked.
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