‘We didn’t really say anything.’
‘I know. That’s what worries me. I think I’ll have my old friend Vasca watched. He’s managed to arouse my curiosity.’
During the next couple of hours Garion met two more gaudily dressed petty kings, a fair number of more soberly garbed bureaucrats, and a sprinkling of semi-important nobles and their ladies. Many of them, of course, wanted nothing more than to be seen talking to him so that later they could say in a casual, offhand fashion, ‘I was talking with Belgarion the other day, and he said—’ Others made some point of suggesting that a private conversation might be desirable at some later date. A few even tried to set up specific appointments.
It was rather late when Velvet finally came to his rescue. She approached the place where Garion was trapped by the royal family of Peldane, a stodgy little kinglet in a mustard yellow turban, his simpering, scrawny wife in a pink gown that clashed horribly with her orange hair, and three spoiled royal brats who spent their time whining and hitting each other. ‘Your Majesty,’ the blond girl said with a curtsy, ‘Your wife asks your permission to retire.’
‘Asks?’
‘She’s feeling slightly unwell.’
Garion gave her a grateful look. ‘I must go to her at once, then,’ he said quickly. He turned to the Peldane royalty. ‘I hope you’ll all excuse me,’ he said to them.
‘Of course, Belgarion,’ the kinglet replied graciously.
‘And please convey our regards to your lovely wife,’ the queenlet added.
The royal brood continued to howl and kick each other.
‘You looked a bit harried,’ Velvet murmured as she led Garion away.
‘I could kiss you.’
‘Now that’s an interesting suggestion.’
Garion glanced sourly back over his shoulder. ‘They should drown those three little monsters and raise a litter of puppies instead,’ he muttered.
‘Piglets,’ she corrected.
He looked at her.
‘At least they could sell the bacon,’ she explained. ‘That way the effort wouldn’t be a total loss.’
‘Is Ce’Nedra really ill?’
‘Of course not. She’s made as many conquests as she wants to this evening, that’s all. She wants to save a few for future occasions. Now it’s time for the grand withdrawal, leaving a horde of disappointed admirers, who were all panting to meet her, crushed with despair.’
‘That’s a peculiar way to look at it.’
She laughed affectionately, linking her arm in his. ‘Not if you’re a woman, it’s not.’
The following morning shortly after breakfast, Garion and Belgarath were summoned to meet with Zakath and Brador in the Emperor’s private study. The room was large and comfortable, lined with books and maps and with deeply upholstered chairs clustered about low tables. It was a warm day outside, and the windows stood open, allowing a blossom-scented spring breeze to ruffle the curtains.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ Zakath greeted them as they were escorted into the room. ‘I hope you slept well.’
‘Once I managed to get Ce’Nedra out of the tub.’ Garion laughed. ‘It’s just a bit too convenient, I think. Would you believe that she bathed three times yesterday?’
‘Mal Zeth is very hot and dusty in the summertime,’ Zakath said. ‘The baths make it bearable.’
‘How does the hot water get to them?’ Garion asked curiously. ‘I haven’t seen anyone carrying pails up and down the halls.’
‘It’s piped in under the floors,’ the Emperor replied. ‘The artisan who devised the system was rewarded with a baronetcy.’
‘I hope you don’t mind if we steal the idea. Durnik’s already making sketches.’
‘I think it’s unhealthy myself,’ Belgarath said. ‘Bathing should be done out of doors—in cold water. All this pampering softens people.’ He looked at Zakath. ‘I’m sure you didn’t ask us here to discuss the philosophical ramifications of bathing, though.’
‘Not unless you really want to, Belgarath,’ Zakath replied. He straightened in his chair. ‘Now that we’ve all had a chance to rest from our journey, I thought that maybe it was time for us to get to work. Brador’s people have made their reports to him, and he’s ready to give us his assessment of the current situation in Karanda. Go ahead, Brador.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’ The plump, bald Melcene rose from his chair and crossed to a very large map of the Mallorean continent hanging on the wall. The map was exquisitely colored with blue lakes and rivers, green prairies, darker green forests and brown, white-topped mountains. Instead of simply being dots on the map, the cities were represented by pictures of buildings and fortifications. The Mallorean highway system, Garion noted, was very nearly as extensive as the Tolnedran network in the west.
Brador cleared his throat, fought for a moment with one of Zakath’s ferocious kittens for the long pointer he wanted to use, and began. ‘As I reported to you in Rak Hagga,’ he said, ‘a man named Mengha came out of this immense forest to the north of Lake Karanda some six months ago.’ He tapped the representation of a large belt of trees stretching from the Karandese range to the Mountains of Zamad. ‘We know very, very little about his background.’
‘That’s not entirely true, Brador,’ Belgarath disagreed. ‘Cyradis told us that he’s a Grolim priest—or he used to be. That puts us in a position to deduce quite a bit.’
‘I’d be interested to hear whatever you can come up with,’ Zakath said.
Belgarath squinted around the room, and his eyes fixed on several full crystal decanters and some polished glasses sitting on a sideboard across the room. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked, pointing at the decanters. ‘I think better with a glass in my hand.’
‘Help yourself,’ Zakath replied.
The old man rose, crossed to the sideboard, and poured himself a glass of ruby-red wine. ‘Garion?’ he asked, holding out the decanter.
‘No, thanks all the same, Grandfather.’
Belgarath replaced the crystal stopper with a clink and began to pace up and down on the blue carpet. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We know that demon worship persists in the back country of Karanda, even though the Grolim priests tried to stamp out the practice when the Karands were converted to the worship of Torak in the second millennium. We also know that Mengha was a priest himself. Now, if the Grolims here in Mallorea reacted in the same way that the ones in Cthol Murgos did when they heard about the death of Torak, then we know that they were thoroughly demoralized. The fact that Urvon spent several years scrambling around trying to find prophecies that would hint at the possibility of a justification for keeping the Church intact is fairly good evidence that he was faced with almost universal despair in the ranks of the Grolims.’ He paused to sip at his wine. ‘Not bad,’ he said to Zakath approvingly. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now,’ the old man continued, ‘there are many possible reactions to religious despair. Some men go mad, some men try to lose themselves in various forms of dissipation, some men refuse to admit the truth and try to keep the old forms alive. A few men, however, go in search of some new kind of religion—usually something the exact opposite of what they believed before. Since the Grolim Church in Karanda had concentrated for eons on eradicating demon worship, it’s only logical that a few of the despairing priests would seek out demon-masters in the hope of learning their secrets. Remember, if you can actually control a demon, it gives you a great deal of power, and the hunger for power has always been at the core of the Grolim mentality.’
‘It does fit together, Ancient One,’ Brador admitted.
‘I thought so myself. All right, Torak is dead, and Mengha suddenly finds that his theological ground has been cut out from under him. He probably goes through a period of doing all the things that he wasn’t allowed to do as a priest—drinking, wenching, that sort of thing. But if you do things to excess, eventually they become empty and unsatisfying. Even debauchery can get boring after a while.
’
‘Aunt Pol will be amazed to hear that you said that,’ Garion said.
‘You just keep it to yourself,’ Belgarath told him. ‘Our arguments about my bad habits are the cornerstone of our relationship.’ He took another sip of his wine. ‘This is really excellent,’ he said, holding up the glass to admire the color of the wine in the sunlight. ‘Now then, here we have Mengha waking up some morning with a screaming headache, a mouth that tastes like a chicken coop, and a fire in his stomach that no amount of water will put out. He has no real reason to go on living. He might even take out his sacrificial gutting knife and set the point against his chest.’
‘Isn’t your speculation going a bit far afield?’ Zakath asked.
Belgarath laughed. ‘I used to be a professional storyteller,’ he apologized. ‘I can’t stand to let a good story slip by without a few artistic touches. All right, maybe he did or maybe he didn’t think about killing himself. The point is that he had reached the absolute rock bottom. That’s when the idea of demons came to him. Raising demons is almost as dangerous as being the first man up the scaling ladder during an assault on a fortified city, but Mengha has nothing to lose. So, he journeys into the forest up there, finds a Karandese magician, and somehow persuades him to teach him the art—if that’s what you want to call it. It takes him about a dozen years to learn all the secrets.’
‘How did you arrive at that number?’ Brador asked.
Belgarath shrugged. ‘It’s been fourteen years since the death of Torak—or thereabouts. No normal man can seriously mistreat himself for more than a couple of years before he starts to fall apart, so it was probably about twelve years ago that Mengha went in search of a magician to give him instruction. Then, once he’s learned all the secrets, he kills his teacher, and—’
‘Wait a minute,’ Zakath objected. ‘Why would he do that?’
‘His teacher knew too much about him, and he could also raise demons to send after our defrocked Grolim. Then there’s the fact that the arrangement between teacher and pupil in these affairs involves lifetime servitude enforced with a curse. Mengha could not leave his master until the old man was dead.’
‘How do you know so much about this, Belgarath?’ Zakath asked.
‘I went through it all among the Morindim a few thousand years ago. I wasn’t doing anything very important and I was curious about magic.’
‘Did you kill your master?’
‘No—well, not exactly. When I left him, he sent his familiar demon after me. I took control of it and sent it back to him.’
‘And it killed him?’
‘I assume so. They usually do. Anyway, getting back to Mengha. He arrives at the gates of Calida about six months ago and raises a whole army of demons. Nobody in his right mind raises more than one at a time because they’re too difficult to control.’ He frowned, pacing up and down staring at the floor. ‘The only thing I can think of is that somehow he’s managed to raise a Demon Lord and get it under control.’
‘Demon Lord?’ Garion asked.
‘They have rank, too—just as humans do. If Mengha has a grip on a Demon Lord, then it’s that creature that’s calling up the army of lesser demons.’ He refilled his glass, looking faintly satisfied with himself. ‘That’s probably fairly close to Mengha’s life story,’ he said, sitting down again.
‘A virtuoso performance, Belgarath,’ Zakath congratulated him.
‘Thank you,’ the old man replied. ‘I thought so myself.’ He looked at Brador. ‘Now that we know him, why don’t you tell us what he’s been up to?’
Brador once again took his place beside the map, fending off the same kitten with his pointer. ‘After Mengha took Calida, word of his exploits ran all through Karanda,’ he began. ‘It appears that the worship of Torak was never really very firmly ingrained in the Karands to begin with, and about the only thing that kept them in line was their fear of the sacrificial knives of the Grolims.’
‘Like the Thulls?’ Garion suggested.
‘Very much so, your Majesty. Once Torak was dead, however, and his Church in disarray, the Karands began to revert. The old shrines began to reappear, and the old rituals came back into practice.’ Brador shuddered. ‘Hideous rites,’ he said. ‘Obscene.’
‘Even worse than the Grolim rite of sacrifice?’ Garion asked mildly.
‘There was some justification for that, Garion,’ Zakath objected. ‘It was an honor to be chosen, and the victims went under the knife willingly.’
‘Not any of them that I ever saw,’ Garion disagreed.
‘We can discuss comparative theology some other time,’ Belgarath told them. ‘Go on, Brador.’
‘Once the Karands heard about Mengha,’ the Melcene official continued, ‘they began to flock to Calida to support him and to enlist themselves on the side of the demons. There’s always been a subterranean independence movement in the seven kingdoms of Karanda, and many hotheads there believe that the demons offer the best hope of throwing off the yoke of Angarak oppression.’ He looked at the Emperor. ‘No offense intended, your Majesty,’ he murmured.
‘None taken, Brador,’ Zakath assured him.
‘Naturally, the little kinglets in Karanda tried to keep their people from joining Mengha. The loss of subjects is always painful to a ruler. The army—our army—was also alarmed by the hordes of Karands flocking to Mengha’s banner, and they tried to block off borders and the like. But, since a large portion of the army was in Cthol Murgos with his Majesty here, the troops in Karanda just didn’t have the numbers. The Karands either slipped around them or simply overwhelmed them. Mengha’s army numbers almost a million by now—ill-equipped and poorly trained, perhaps, but a million is a significant number, even if they’re armed with sticks. Not only Jenno but also Ganesia are totally under Mengha’s domination, and he’s on the verge of overwhelming Katakor. Once he succeeds there, he’ll inevitably move on Pallia and Delchin. If he isn’t stopped, he’ll be knocking on the gates of Mal Zeth by Erastide.’
‘Is he unleashing his demons in these campaigns?’ Belgarath asked intently.
‘Not really,’ Brador replied. ‘After what happened at Calida, there’s no real need for that. The sight of them alone is usually enough to spring open the gates of any city he’s taken so far. He’s succeeded with remarkably little actual fighting.’
The old man nodded. ‘I sort of thought that might have been the case. A demon is very hard to get back under control once it’s tasted blood.’
‘It’s not really the demons that are causing the problems,’ Brador continued. ‘Mengha’s flooded all the rest of Karanda with his agents, and the stories that they’re circulating are whipping previously uncommitted people into a frenzy.’ He looked at the Emperor. ‘Would you believe that we actually caught one of his missionaries in the Karandese barracks right here in Mal Zeth?’ he said.
Zakath looked up sharply. ‘How did he get in?’ he demanded.
‘He disguised himself as a corporal returning from convalescent leave at home,’ Brador replied. ‘He’d even gone so far as to give himself a wound to make his story look authentic. It was very believable the way he cursed Murgos.’
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Unfortunately, he didn’t survive the questioning,’ Brador said, frowning. He bent to remove the kitten from around his ankle.
‘Unfortunately?’
‘I had some interesting plans for him. I take it rather personally when someone manages to circumvent my secret police. It’s a matter of professional pride.’
‘What do you advise, then?’ Zakath asked.
Brador began to pace. ‘I’m afraid that you’re going to have to bring the army back from Cthol Murgos, your Majesty,’ he said. ‘You can’t fight a war on two fronts.’
‘Absolutely out of the question.’ Zakath’s tone was adamant.
‘I don’t think we have much choice,’ Brador told him. ‘Almost half of the forces left here in Mallorea are of Karandese origin, and it’s m
y considered opinion that to rely upon them in any kind of confrontation with Mengha would be sheer folly.’
Zakath’s face grew bleak.
‘Put it this way, your Majesty,’ Brador said smoothly. ‘If you weaken your forces in Cthol Murgos, it’s quite possible that you’ll lose Rak Cthaka and maybe Rak Gorut, but if you don’t bring the army home, you’re going to lose Mal Zeth.’
Zakath glared at him.
‘There’s still time to consider the matter, Sire,’ Brador added in a reasonable tone of voice. ‘This is only my assessment of the situation. I’m sure you’ll want confirmation of what I’ve said from military intelligence, and you’ll need to consult with the High Command.’
‘No,’ Zakath said bluntly. ‘The decision is mine.’ He scowled at the floor. ‘All right, Brador, we’ll bring the army home. Go tell the High Command that I want to see them all at once.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
Garion had risen to his feet. ‘How long will it take to ship your troops back from Cthol Murgos?’ he asked with a sinking feeling.
‘About three months,’ Zakath replied.
‘I can’t wait that long, Zakath.’
‘I’m very sorry, Garion, but none of us has any choice. Neither you nor I will leave Mal Zeth until the army gets here.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
The following morning, Silk came early to the rooms Garion shared with Ce’Nedra. The little man once again wore his doublet and hose, though he had removed most of his jewelry. Over his arm he carried a pair of Mallorean robes, the lightweight, vari-colored garments worn by most of the citizens of Mal Zeth. ‘Would you like to go into the city?’ he asked Garion.
‘I don’t think they’ll let us out of the palace.’
‘I’ve already taken care of that. Brador gave his permission—provided that we don’t try to get away from the people who are going to be following us.’
‘That’s a depressing thought. I hate being followed.’
‘You get used to it.’
‘Have you got anything specific in mind, or is this just a sight-seeing tour?’
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