The Belgariad, Vol. 2 (14 page)

"You can't, Islena," Merel had told her flatly, removing the quill from the queen's hand, even as she had been in the act of signing the hastily drawn-up proclamation. "They're attached to their beards like little
boys attached to a favorite toy. You can't make them cut off their whiskers."

"I'm the Queen."

"Only as long as they permit you to be. They accept you out of respect for Anheg, and that's as far as it goes. If you tamper with their pride, they'll take you off the throne." And that dreadful threat had ended the matter then and there.

Islena found herself relying more and more on Barak's wife, and it was not long before the two of them, one in green and the other in royal crimson, were seldom apart. Even when Islena faltered, Merel's icy stare quelled the hints of disrespect which cropped up from time to time - usually when the ale had been distributed a bit too freely. It was Merel, ultimately, who made the day-to-day decisions which ran the kingdom. When IsIena sat upon the throne, Merel, her blond braids coiled about her head to form her own crown, stood to one side in plain view of the hesitant queen. Cherek was ruled by the expressions on her face. A faint smile meant yes; a frown, no; a scarcely perceptible shrug, maybe. It worked out fairly well.

But there was one person who was not intimidated by Merel's cool gaze. Grodeg, the towering, white-bearded High Priest of Belar, inevitably requested private audience with the queen, and once Merel left the council room, Islena was lost.

Despite Anheg's call for a general mobilization, the members of the Bear-cult had not yet left to join the campaign. Their promises to join the fleet later all sounded sincere, but their excuses and delays grew more and more obvious as time went on. Islena knew that Grodeg was behind it all. Nearly every able-bodied man in the kingdom was off with the fleet, which was even now rowing up the broad expanse of the Aldur River to join Anheg in central Algaria. The household guard in the palace at Val Alorn had been reduced to grizzled old men and downy-cheeked boys. Only the Bear-cult remained, and Grodeg pushed his advantage to the limit.

He was polite enough, bowing to the queen when the occasion demanded, and never mentioning her past links with the cult, but his offers to help became more and more insistent; and when Islena faltered at his suggestions concerning this matter or that, he smoothly acted to implement them as if her hesitancy had been acceptance. Little by little, Islena was losing control, and Grodeg, with the armed might of the cult behind him, was taking charge. More and more the cult members infested the palace, giving orders, lounging about the throne room and openly grinning as they watched Islena's attempts to rule.

"You're going to have to do something, Islena," Merel said firmly one evening when the two were alone in the queen's private apartment. She was striding about the carpeted room, her hair gleaming like soft gold in the candlelight, but there was nothing soft in her expression.

"What can I do?" Islena pleaded, wringing her hands. "He's never openly disrespectful, and his decisions always seem to be in the best interests of Cherek."

"You need help, Islena," Merel told her.

"Whom can I turn to?" The Queen of Cherek was almost in tears. The Lady Merel smoothed the front of her green velvet gown.

"I think it's time that you wrote to Porenn," she declared.

"What do I say?" Islena begged of her.

Merel pointed at the small table in the corner where parchment and ink lay waiting. "Sit down," she instructed, "and write what I tell you to write."

Count Brador, the Tolnedran ambassador, was definitely growing tiresome, Queen Layla decided. The plump little queen marched purposefully toward the chamber where she customarily gave audiences and
where the ambassador awaited her with his satchel full of documents.

The courtiers in the halls bowed as she passed, her crown slightly askew and her heels clicking on the polished oak floors, but Queen Layla uncharacteristically ignored them. This was not the time for polite exchanges or idle chitchat. The Tolnedran had to be dealt with, and she had delayed too long already.

The ambassador was an olive-skinned man with receding hair and a hooked nose. He wore a brown mantle with the old trim that indicated his relationship to the Borunes. He lounged rather indolently in a large cushioned chair near the window of the sunny room where he and Queen Layla were to meet. He rose as she entered and bowed with exquisite grace. "Your Highness," he murmured politely.

"My dear Count Brador," Queen Layla gushed at him, putting on her most helpless and scatterbrained expression, "please do sit down. I'm sure we know each other well enough by now to skip all these tedious formalities." She sank into a chair, fanning herself with one hand. "It's turned warm, hasn't it?"

"Summers are lovely here in Sendaria, your Highness," the count replied, settling back in his chair. "I wonder - have you had the chance to think over the proposals I gave you at our last meeting?"

Queen Layla stared at him blankly. "Which proposals were those, Count Brador?" She gave a helpless little giggle. "Please forgive me, but my mind seems to be absolutely gone these days. There are so many details.

I wonder how my husband keeps them all straight."

"We were discussing the administration of the port at Camaar, your Highness," the count reminded her gently.

"We were?" The queen gave him a blank look of total incomprehension, secretly delighted at the flicker of annoyance that crossed his face. It was her best ploy. By pretending to have forgotten all previous conversations, she forced him to begin at the beginning every time they met. The count's strategy, she knew, depended upon a gradual build-up to his final proposal, and her pretended forgetfulness neatly defeated that. "Whatever led us into such a tedious subject as that?" she added.

"Surely your Highness recalls," the count protested with just the slightest hint of annoyance. "The Tolnedran merchant vessel, Star of Tol Horb, was kept standing at anchor for a week and a half in the harbor before moorage could be found for her. Every day's delay in unloading her was costing a fortune."

"Things are so hectic these days," the queen of Sendaria sighed. "It's the manpower shortage, you understand. Everybody who hasn't gone off to war is busy freighting supplies to the army. I'll send a very stern note to the port authorities about it, though. Was there anything else, Count Brador?"

Brador coughed uncomfortably. "Uh - your Highness has already forwarded just such a note," he reminded her.

"I have?" Queen Layla feigned astonishment. "Wonderful. That takes care of everything then, doesn't it?

And you've dropped by to thank me." She smiled girlishly. "How exquisitely courteous of you." She leaned forward to put one hand impulsively on his wrist, quite deliberately knocking the rolled parchment he was holding out of his hand. "How clumsy of me," she exclaimed, bending quickly to pick up the parchment before he could retrieve it. Then she sat back in her chair, tapping the rolled document absently against her cheek as if lost in thought.

"Uh - actually, your Highness, our discussions had moved somewhat beyond your note to the port authorities," Brador told her, nervously eyeing the parchment she had so deftly taken from him. "You may recall that I offered Tolnedran assistance in administering the port. I believe we agreed that such assistance might help to alleviate the manpower shortage your Highness just mentioned."

"What an absolutely marvelous idea," Layla exclaimed. She brought her plump little fist down on the arm of her chair as if in an outburst of enthusiasm. At that prearranged signal, two of her younger children burst
into the room, arguing loudly.

"Mother!" Princess Gelda wailed in outrage, "Fernie stole my red ribbon!"

"I did not!" Princess Ferna denied the charge indignantly. "She gave it to me for my blue beads."

"Did not!" Gelda snapped.

"Did so!" Ferna replied.

"Children, children," Layla chided them. "Can't you see that Mother's busy? What will the dear count think of us?"

"But she stole it, Mother!" Gelda protested. "She stole my red ribbon."

"Did not!" Ferna said, spitefully sticking her tongue out at her sister.

Trailing behind them with a look of wide-eyed interest came little Prince Meldig, Queen Layla's youngest child. In one hand the prince held a jam pot, and his face was liberally smeared with the contents.

"Oh, that's just impossible," Layla exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "You girls are supposed to be watching him." She bustled over to the jam-decorated prince, crumpled the parchment she was holding and began wiping his face with it. Abruptly she stopped. "Oh dear," she said as if suddenly realizing what she was doing. "Was this important, Count Brador?" she asked the Tolnedran, holding out the rumpled, sticky document.

Brador's shoulders, however, had slumped in defeat. "No, your Highness," he replied in a voice filled with resignation, "not really. The royal house of Sendaria has me quite outnumbered, it appears." He rose to his feet. "Perhaps another time," he murmured, bowing. "With your Highness's permission," he said, preparing to leave.

"You mustn't forget this, Count Brador," Layla said, pressing the parchment into his cringing hands.

The count's face had a faintly martyred expression as he withdrew. Queen Layla turned back to her children, who were grinning impishly at her. She began to scold them in a loud voice until she was certain the count was well out of earshot, then she knelt, embraced them all and began to laugh.

"Did we do it right, Mother?" Princess Gelda asked.

"You were absolutely perfect," Queen Layla replied, still laughing.

Sadi the eunuch had grown careless, lulled somewhat by the air of polite civility that had pervaded the palace at Sthiss Tor for the past year, and one of his associates, seizing upon his unwariness, had taken the opportunity to poison him. Sadi definitely did not appreciate being poisoned. The antidotes all tasted vile, and the aftereffects left him weak and light-headed. Thus it was that he viewed the appearance of the mail-skirted emissary of King Taur Urgas with thinly veiled irritation.

"Taur Urgas, King of the Murgos, greets Sadi, chief servant of Immortal Salmissra," the Murgo declaimed with a deep bow as he entered the cool, dimly lighted study from which Sadi conducted most of the nation's affairs.

"The servant of the Serpent Queen returns the greetings of the right arm of the Dragon-God of Angarak."

Sadi mouthed the formula phrases almost indifferently. "Do you suppose we could get to the point? I'm feeling a bit indisposed at the moment."

"I was very pleased at your recovery," the ambassador lied, his scarred face carefully expressionless. "Has the poisoner been apprehended yet?" He drew up a chair and sat down at the polished table Sadi used for a
desk.

"Naturally," Sadi replied,absently rubbing his hand over his shaved scalp.

"And executed?"

"Why would we want to do that? The man's a professional poisoner. He was only doing his job."

The Murgo looked a bit startled.

"We look upon a good poisoner as a national asset," Sadi told him. "If we start killing them every time they poison somebody, very soon there won't be any of them left, and you never know when I might want somebody poisoned."

The Murgo ambassador shook his head incredulously. "You people have an amazing amount of tolerance, Sadi," he said in his harshly accented voice. "What about his employer?"

"That's another matter," Sadi replied. "His employer is currently entertaining the leeches at the bottom of the river. Is your visit official, or did you merely stop by to inquire after my health?"

"A bit of each, Excellency."

"You Murgos are an economical race," Sadi observed dryly. "What does Taur Urgas want this time?"

"The Alorns are preparing to invade Mishrak ac Thull, your Excellency."

"So I've heard. What's that got to do with Nyissa?"

"Nyissans have no reason to be fond of Alorns."

"Nor any to be fond of Murgos, either," Sadi pointed out.

"It was Aloria that invaded Nyissa following the death of the Rivan King," the Murgo reminded him, "and it was Cthol Murgos that provided the market for Nyissa's primary export."

"My dear fellow, please get to the point," Sadi said, rubbing his scalp wearily. "I'm not going to operate on the basis of long-past insults or long-forgotten favors. The slave trade is no longer significant, and the scars left by the Alorn invasion disappeared centuries ago. What does Taur Urgas want?"

"My king wishes to avoid bloodshed," the Murgo stated. "The Tolnedran legions form a significant part of the armies massing in Algaria. If a threat just a threat, mind you - of unfriendly activity suddenly appeared on his unprotected southern frontier, Ran Borune would recall those legions. Their loss would persuade the Alorns to abandon this adventure."

"You want me to invade Tolnedra?" Sadi demanded incredulously.

"Naturally not, Lord Sadi. His Majesty merely wishes your permission to move certain forces through your territory to pose the threat on Tolnedra's southern border. No blood need be shed at all."

"Except Nyissan blood, once the Murgo army withdraws. The legions would swarm down across the River of the Woods like angry hornets."

"Taur Urgas would be more than willing to leave garrisons behind to guarantee the integrity of Nyissan territory."

"I'm sure he would," Sadi observed dryly. "Advise your king that his proposal is quite unacceptable at this particular time."
"The King of Cthol Murgos is a powerful man," the Murgo said firmly, "and he remembers those who thwart him even more keenly than he remembers his friends."

"Taur Urgas is a madman," Sadi told him bluntly. "He wants to avoid trouble with the Alorns so that he can concentrate on 'Zakath. Despite his insanity, however, he's not so foolish as to send an army into Nyissa uninvited. An army must eat, and Nyissa's a bad place to forage for food - as history has demonstrated. The most tempting fruit has bitter juice."

"A Murgo army carries its own food," the ambassador replied stiffly.