“Garion,” Polgara said. She looked meaningfully at the column of smoke rising from the village behind them.
“Oh,” he replied. “I guess I forgot.” He raised his hand, trying to make it look impressive. “Enough,” he said, releasing his will. The smoke thinned at its base, and the column continued to rise as a cloud, cut off from its source.
“Don’t overdramatize, dear,” Polgara advised. “It’s ostentatious.”
“You do it all the time,” he accused.
“Yes, dear, but I know how.”
It was perhaps noon when they rode up a long hill, crested it in the bright sunshine, and found themselves suddenly surrounded by mailed, red‑tunicked Mallorean soldiers, who rose up out of ditches and shallow gullies with evil‑looking javelins in their hands.
“You! Halt!” the officer in charge of the detachment of soldiers commanded brusquely. He was a short man, shorter even than Silk, though he strutted about as if he were ten feet tall.
“Of course, Captain,” Yarblek replied, reining in his horse.
“What do we do?” Garion hissed to Silk.
“Let Yarblek handle it,” Silk murmured. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“Where are you bound?” the officer asked when the rangy Nadrak had dismounted.
“Mal Dariya,” Yarblek answered, “or Mal Camat -wherever I can hire ships to get my goods to Yar Marak.”
The captain grunted as if trying to find something wrong with that. “What’s more to the point is where you come from.” His eyes were narrowed.
“Maga Renn.” Yarblek shrugged.
“Not Mal Zeth?” The little captain’s eyes grew even harder and more suspicious.
“I don’t do business in Mal Zeth very often, Captain.
It costs too much ‑all those bribes and fees and permits, you know.”
“I assume that you can prove what you say?” The captain’s tone was belligerent.
“I suppose I could‑ if there’s a need for it.”
“There’s a need, Nadrak, because, unless you can prove that you haven’t come from Mal Zeth, I’m going to turn you back.” He sounded smug about that.
“Turn back? That’s impossible. I have to be in Boktor by midsummer.”
“That’s your problem, merchant.” The little soldier seemed rather pleased at having upset the larger man.
“There’s plague in Mal Zeth, and I’m here to make sure that it doesn’t spread.” He tapped himself importantly on the chest.
“Plague!” Yarblek’s eyes went wide, and his face actually paled. “Torak’s teeth! And I almost stopped there!” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “So that’s why all the villages hereabouts are barricaded.”
“Can you prove that you came from Maga Renn?” the captain insisted.
“Well‑“ Yarblek unbuckled a well‑worn saddlebag hanging under his right stirrup and began to rummage around in it. “I’ve got a permit here issued by the Bureau of Commerce,” he said rather dubiously. “It authorizes me to move my goods from Maga Renn to Mal Dariya.
If I can’t find ships there, I’ll have to get another permit to go on to Mal Camat, I guess. Would that satisfy you?”
“Let’s see it.” The captain held out his hand, snapping his fingers impatiently.
Yarblek handed it over.
“It’s a little smeared,” the captain accused suspiciously.
“I spilled some beer on it in a tavern in Penn Daka.” Yarblek shrugged. “Weak, watery stuff it was. Take my advice, Captain. Don’t ever plan to do any serious drinking in Penn Daka. It’s a waste of time and money.”
“Is drinking all you Nadraks ever think about?”
“It’s the climate. There’s nothing else to do in Gar og Nadrak in the wintertime.”
“Have you got anything else?”
Yarblek pawed through his saddlebag some more. “Here’s a bill of sale from a carpet merchant on Yorba Street in Maga Renn ‑pockmarked fellow with bad teeth. Do you by any chance know him?”
“Why would I know a carpet merchant in Maga Renn? I’m an officer in the imperial army. I don’t associate with riffraff. Is the date on this accurate?”
“How should I know? We use a different calendar in Gar og Nadrak. It was about two weeks ago, if that’s any help.”
The captain thought it over, obviously trying very hard to find some excuse to exert his authority. Finally his expression became faintly disappointed. “All right,” he said grudgingly, handing back the documents. “Be on your way. But don’t make any side trips, and make sure that none of your people leave your caravan.”
“They’d better not leave ‑not if they want to get paid.
“Thank you, Captain.” Yarblek swung back up into his saddle.
The officer grunted and waved them on.
“Little people should never be given any kind of authority,” the Nadrak said sourly when they were out of earshot. “It lies too heavily on their brains.”
“Yarblek!” Silk objected.
“Present company excepted, of course.”
“Oh. That’s different, then.”
“Ye lie like ye were born to it, good Master Yarblek,” Feldegast the juggler said admiringly.
“I’ve been associating with a certain Drasnian for too long.”
“How did you come by the permit and the bill of sale?” Silk asked him.
Yarblek winked and tapped his forehead slyly. “Official types are always overwhelmed by official‑looking documents ‑and the more petty the official, the more he’s impressed. I could have proved to that obnoxious little captain back there that we came from any place at all -Melcene, Aduma in the Mountains of Zamad, even Crol Tibu on the coast of Gandahar‑ except that all you can buy in Crol Tibu are elephants, and I don’t have any of those with me, so that might have made even him a little suspicious.”
Silk looked around with a broad grin. “Now you see why I went into partnership with him,” he said to them all.
“You seem well suited to each other,” Velvet agreed.
Belgarath was tugging at one ear. “I think we’ll leave you after dark tonight,” he said to Yarblek. “I don’t want some other officious soldier to stop us and count noses ‑or decide that we need a military escort.”
Yarblek nodded. “Are you going to need anything?”
“Just some food is all.” Belgarath glanced back at their laden packhorses plodding along beside the mules. “We’ve been on the road for quite some time now and we’ve managed to gather up what we really need and discard what we don’t.”
“I’ll see to it that you’ve got enough food,” Vella promised from where she was riding between Ce’Nedra and Velvet. “Yarblek sometimes forgets that full ale kegs are not the only things you need on a journey.”
“An’ will ye be ridin’ north, then?” Feldegast asked Belgarath. The little comic had changed out of his brightcolored clothes and was now dressed in plain brown.
“Unless they’ve moved it, that’s where Ashaba is,” Belgarath replied.
“If it be all the same to ye, I’ll ride along with ye fer a bit of a ways.”
“Oh?”
“There was a little difficulty with the authorities the last time I was in Mal Dariya, an’ I’d like to give ’em time t’ regain their composure befure I go back fer me triumphant return engagement. Authorities tend t’ be a stodgy an’ unfergivin’ lot, don’t y’ know ‑always tredgin’ up old pranks an’ bits of mischief perpetrated in the spirit of fun an’ throwin’ ’em in yer face.”
Belgarath gave him along, steady look, then shrugged. “Why not?” he said.
Garion looked sharply at the old man. His sudden acquiescence seemed wildly out of character, given his angry protests at the additions of Velvet and Sadi to their party. Garion then looked over at Polgara, but she showed no signs of concern either. A peculiar suspicion began to creep over him.
As evening settled over the plains of Mallorea, they drew off the road to set up their night’s encampment in a park-like grove of beech trees. Yarblek’s muleteers sat about one campfire, passing an earthenware jug around and becoming increasingly rowdy. At the upper end of the grove, Garion and his friends sat around another fire, eating supper and talking quietly with Yarblek and Vella.
“Be careful when you cross into Venna,” Yarblek cautioned his rat‑faced partner. “Some of the stories coming out of there are more ominous than the ones coming out of Karanda.”
“Oh?”
“It’s as if a kind of madness has seized them all. Of course, Grolims were never very sane to begin with.”
“Grolims?” Sadi looked up sharply.
“Venna’s a Church‑controlled state,” Silk explained. “All authority there derives from Urvon and his court at Mal Yaska.”
“It used to,” Yarblek corrected. “Nobody seems to know who’s got the authority now. The Grolims gather in groups to talk. The talk keeps getting louder until they’re screaming at each other, and then they all reach for their knives. I haven’t been able to get the straight of it. Even the Temple Guardsmen are taking sides.”
“The idea of Grolims cutting each other to pieces is one I can live with,” Silk said.
“Truly,” Yarblek agreed. “Just try not to get caught in the middle.”
Feldegast had been softly strumming his lute and he struck a note so sour that even Garion noticed it.