Demon Lord Of Karanda (39 page)

‘Perhaps six months ago.’

‘Was anybody here?’ Ce’Nedra demanded.

‘I’m afraid not, me darlin’. ‘Twas as empty as a tomb.’

‘That was before Zandramas got here, Ce’Nedra,’ Polgara reminded her gently.

‘Why do ye ask, Belgarath?’ Feldegast said.

‘I haven’t been here since just after Vo Mimbre,’ Belgarath said as they continued down the littered hall. ‘The house was fairly sound then, but Angaraks aren’t really notorious for the permanence of their construction. How’s the mortar holding out?’

‘’Tis as crumbly as year-old bread.’

Belgarath nodded. ‘I thought it might be,’ he said. ‘Now, what we’re after here is information, not open warfare in the corridors.’

‘Unless the one who’s here happens to be Zandramas,’ Garion corrected. ‘If she’s still here with my son, I’ll start a war that’s going to make Vo Mimbre look like a country fair.’

‘And I’ll clean up anything he misses,’ Ce’Nedra added fiercely.

‘Can’t you control them?’ Belgarath asked his daughter.

‘Not under the circumstances, no,’ she replied. ‘I might even decide to join in myself.’

‘I thought that we’d more or less erased the Alorn side of your nature, Pol,’ he said to her.

‘That’s not the side that was just talking, father.’

‘My point,’ Belgarath said, ‘at least the point I was trying to make before everybody started flexing his—or her—muscles, is that it’s altogether possible that we’ll be able to hear and maybe even see what’s going on in the main part of the house from up here. If the mortar’s as rotten as Feldegast says it is, it shouldn’t be too hard to find—or make—some little crevices in the floor of one of these rooms and find out what we need to know. If Zandramas is here, that’s one thing, and we’ll deal with her in whatever way seems appropriate. But if the only people down there are some of Urvon’s Chandim and Guardsmen or a roving band of Mengha’s Karandese fanatics, we’ll pick up Zandramas’ trail and go on about our business without announcing our presence.’

‘That sounds reasonable,’ Durnik agreed. ‘It doesn’t make much sense to get involved in unnecessary fights.’

‘I’m glad that
someone
in this belligerent little group has some common sense,’ the old man said.

‘Of course, if it
is
Zandramas down there,’ the smith added, ‘I’ll have to take steps myself.’

‘You, too?’ Belgarath groaned.

‘Naturally. After all, Belgarath, right is right.’

They moved on along the leaf-strewn corridor where the cobwebs hung from the ceiling in tatters and where there were skittering sounds in the corners.

As they passed a large double door so thick that it was still intact, Belgarath seemed to remember something. ‘I want to look in here,’ he muttered. As he opened those doors, the sword strapped across Garion’s back gave a violent tug that very nearly jerked him off his feet. ‘Grandfather!’ he gasped. He reached back, instructing the Orb to restrain itself, and drew the great blade. The point dipped to the floor, and then he was very nearly dragged into the room. ‘She’s been here,’ he exulted.

‘What?’ Durnik asked.

‘Zandramas. She’s been in this room with Geran.’

Feldegast opened the front of his lantern wider to throw more light into the room. It was a library, large and vaulted, with shelves reaching from the floor to the ceiling and filled with dusty, moldering books and scrolls.

‘So
that
was what she was looking for,’ Belgarath said.

‘For what?’ Silk asked.

‘A book. A prophecy, most likely.’ His face grew grim. ‘She’s following the same trail that I am, and this would probably be just about the only place where she could find an uncorrupted copy of the Ashabine Oracles.’

‘Oh!’ Ce’Nedra’s little cry was stricken. She pointed a trembling hand at the dust-covered floor. There were footprints there. Some of them had obviously been made by a woman’s shoes, but there were others as well—quite tiny. ‘My baby’s been here,’ Ce’Nedra said in a voice near tears, and then she gave a little wail and began to weep. ‘H—he’s walking,’ she sobbed, ‘and I’ll never be able to see his first steps.’

Polgara moved to her and took her into a comforting embrace.

Garion’s eyes also filled with tears, and his grip on the hilt of his sword grew so tight that his knuckles turned white. He felt an almost overpowering need to smash things.

Belgarath was swearing under his breath.

‘What’s the matter?’ Silk asked him.

‘That was the main reason I had to come here,’ the old man grated. ‘I need a clean copy of the Ashabine Oracles, and Zandramas has beaten me to it.’

‘Maybe there’s another.’

‘Not a chance. She’s been running ahead of me burning books at every turn. If there was more than one copy here, she’d have made sure that I couldn’t get my hands on it. That’s why she stayed here so long—ransacking this place to make sure that she had the only copy.’ He started to swear again.

‘Is this in any way significant?’ Eriond said, going to a table that, unlike the others in the room, had been dusted and even polished. In the precise center of that table lay a book bound in black leather and flanked on each side by a candlestick. Eriond picked it up, and as he did so, a neatly folded sheet of parchment fell out from between its leaves. The young man bent, picked it up, and glanced at it.

‘What’s that?’ Belgarath demanded.

‘It’s a note,’ Eriond replied. ‘It’s for you.’ He handed the parchment and the book to the old man.

Belgarath read the note. His face went suddenly pale and then beet red. He ground his teeth together with the veins swelling in his face and neck. Garion felt the sudden building up of the old sorcerer’s will.

‘Father!’ Polgara snapped, ‘No! Remember that we aren’t alone here!’

He controlled himself with a tremendous effort, then crumpled the parchment into a ball and hurled it at the floor so hard that it bounced high into the air and rolled across the room. He swung back the hand holding the book as if he were about to send it after the ball of parchment, but then seemed to think better of it. He opened the book at random, turned a few pages, and then began to swear sulfurously. He shoved the book at Garion. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘hold on to this.’ Then he began to pace up and down, his face as black as a thundercloud, muttering curses and waving his hands in the air.

Garion opened the book, tilting it to catch the light. He saw at once the reason for Belgarath’s anger. Whole passages had been neatly excised—not merely blotted out, but cut entirely from the page with a razor or a very sharp knife. Garion also started to swear.

Silk curiously went over, picked up the parchment, and looked at it. He swallowed hard and looked apprehensively at the swearing Belgarath. ‘Oh, my,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Garion asked.

‘I think we’d all better stay out of your grandfather’s way for a while,’ the rat-faced man replied. ‘It might take him a little bit to get hold of himself.’

‘Just read it, Silk,’ Polgara said. ‘Don’t editorialize.’

Silk looked again at Belgarath who was now at the far end of the room pounding on the stone wall with his fist. ‘“Belgarath,”’ he read. ‘“I have beaten you, old man. Now I go to the Place Which Is No More for the final meeting. Follow me if you can. Perhaps this book will help you.”’

‘Is it signed?’ Velvet asked him.

‘Zandramas,’ he replied. ‘Who else?’

‘That is a truly offensive letter,’ Sadi murmured. He looked at Belgarath, who continued to pound his fist on the wall in impotent fury. ‘I’m surprised that he’s taking it so well—all things considered.’

‘It answers a lot of questions, though,’ Velvet said thoughtfully.

‘Such as what?’ Silk asked.

‘We were wondering if Zandramas was still here. Quite obviously, she’s not. Not even an idiot would leave that kind of message for Belgarath and then stay around where he could get his hands on her.’

‘That’s true,’ he agreed. ‘There’s no real point in our staying here, then, is there? The Orb has picked up the trail again, so why don’t we just slip out of the house again and go after Zandramas?’

‘Without findin’ out who’s here?’ Feldegast objected. ‘Me curiosity has been aroused, an’ I’d hate t’ go off with it unsatisfied.’ He glanced across the room at the fuming Belgarath. ‘Besides, it’s goin’ t’ be a little while before our ancient friend there regains his composure. I think I’ll go along t’ the far end of the hall an’ see if I kin find a place where I kin look down into the lower part of the house—just t’ answer some burnin’ questions which have been naggin’ at me.’ He went to the table and lighted one of the candles from his little lantern. ‘Would ye be wantin’ t’ come along with me, Prince Kheldar?’ he invited.

Silk shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ll go, too,’ Garion said. He handed the book to Polgara and then pointedly looked at the raging Belgarath. ‘Is he going to get over that eventually?’

‘I’ll talk with him, dear. Don’t be too long.’

He nodded, and then he, Silk, and the juggler quietly left the library.

There was a room at the far end of the hall. It was not particularly large, and there were shelves along the walls. Garion surmised that it had at one time been a storeroom or a linen closet. Feldegast squinted appraisingly at the leaf-strewn floor, then closed his lantern.

The leaves had piled deep in the corners and along the walls, but in the sudden darkness a faint glow shone up through them, and there came the murmur of voices from below.

‘Me vile-tempered old friend seems t’ have been right,’ Feldegast whispered. ‘’Twould appear that the mortar has quite crumbled away along that wall. ‘Twill be but a simple matter t’ brush the leaves out of the way an’ give ourselves some convenient spy holes. Let’s be havin’ a look an’ find out who’s taken up residence in the House of Torak.’

Garion suddenly had that strange sense of reexperiencing something that had happened a long time ago. It had been in King Anheg’s palace at Val Alorn, and he had followed the man in the green cloak through the deserted upper halls until they had come to a place where crumbling mortar had permitted the sound of voices to come up from below. Then he remembered something else. When they had been at Tol Honeth, hadn’t Belgarath said that most of the things that had happened while they were pursuing Zedar and the Orb were likely to happen again, since everything was leading up to another meeting between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark? He tried to shake off the feeling, but without much success.

They removed the leaves from the crack running along the far wall of the storeroom carefully, trying to avoid sifting any of them down into the room below. Then each of them selected a vantage point from which to watch and listen.

The room into which they peered was very large. Ragged drapes hung at the windows, and the corners were thick with cobwebs. Smoky torches hung in iron rings along the walls, and the floor was thick with dust and the litter of ages. The room was filled with black-robed Grolims, a sprinkling of roughly clad Karands, and a large number of gleaming Temple Guardsmen. Near the front, drawn up like a platoon of soldiers, a group of the huge black Hounds of Torak sat on their haunches expectantly. In front of the Hounds stood a black altar, showing signs of recent use, flanked on either side by a glowing brazier. Against the wall on a high dais was a golden throne, backed by thick, tattered black drapes and by a huge replica of the face of Torak.

‘’Twas Burnt-face’s throne room, don’t y’ know,’ Feldegast whispered.

‘Those are Chandim, aren’t they?’ Garion whispered back.

‘The very same—both human an’ beast—along with their mail-shirted bully boys. I’m a bit surprised that Urvon has chosen t’ occupy the place with his dogs—though the best use fer Ashaba has probably always been as a kennel.’

It was obvious that the men in the throne room were expecting something by the nervous way they kept looking at the throne.

Then a great gong sounded from below, shimmering in the smoky air.

‘On your knees!’ a huge voice commanded the throng in the large room. ‘Pay obeisance and homage to the new God of Angarak!’

‘
What
?’ Silk exclaimed in a choked whisper.

‘Watch an’ be still!’ Feldegast snapped.

From below there came a great roll of drums, followed by a brazen fanfare. The rotten drapes near the golden throne parted, and a double file of robed Grolims entered, chanting fervently, even as the assembled Chandim and Guardsmen fell to their knees and the Hounds and the Karands groveled and whined.

The booming of the drums continued, and then a figure garbed in cloth of gold and wearing a crown strode imperiously out from between the drapes. A glowing nimbus surrounded the figure, though Garion could clearly sense that the will that maintained the glow emanated from the goldclad man himself. Then the figure lifted its head in a move of overweening arrogance. The man’s face was splotched—some patches showing the color of healthy skin and others a hideous dead white. What chilled Garion’s blood the most, however, was the fact that the man’s eyes were totally mad.

‘Urvon!’ Feldegast said with a sudden intake of his breath. ‘You piebald son of a mangy dog!’ All trace of his lilting accent had disappeared.

Directly behind the patch-faced madman came a shadowy figure, cowled so deeply that its face was completely obscured. The black that covered it was not that of a simple Grolim robe, but seemed to grow out of the figure itself, and Garion felt a cold dread as a kind of absolute evil permeated the air about that black shape.

Urvon mounted the dais and seated himself on the throne, his insane eyes bulging and his face frozen in that expression of imperious pride. The shadow-covered figure took its place behind his left shoulder and bent forward toward his ear, whispering, whispering.

The Chandim, Guardsmen, and Karands in the throne room continued to grovel, fawning and whining, even as did the Hounds, while the last disciple of Torak preened himself in the glow of their adulation. A dozen or so of the black-robed Chandim crept forward on their knees, bearing gilded chests and reverently placing them on the altar before the dais. When they opened the chests, Garion saw that they were all filled to the brim with red Angarak gold and with jewels.