“Did you recognize anybody there?”
“Several, actually—some highly respected members of the noble houses of the Empire.”
Ce’Nedra, who rode directly behind them, sniffed disdainfully. “I cannot understand why any man would choose to frequent that sort of place.”
“The customers are not exclusively male, Ce’Nedra,” Silk told her.
“You can’t be serious.”
“A fair number of the highborn ladies of Tol Honeth have found all kinds of interesting ways to relieve their boredom. They wear masks, of course—although very little else. I recognized one countess, however—one of the pillars of the Horbite family.”
“If she was wearing a mask, how could you recognize her?”
“She has a distinctive birthmark—in a place where it’s seldom seen. Some years back, she and I were quite friendly, and she showed it to me.”
There was a long silence. “I don’t know that I really want to discuss this any more,” Ce’Nedra said primly and nudged her horse past them to join Polgara and Velvet.
“She did ask,” Silk protested innocently to Garion. “You heard her, didn’t you?”
They rode south for several days in clearing weather. Erastide had passed virtually unnoticed while they were on the road, and Garion felt a strange kind of regret about that. Since his earliest childhood, the midwinter holiday had been one of the high points of the year. To allow it to pass unobserved seemed somehow to violate something very sacred. He wished that there might have been time to buy something special for Ce’Nedra, but about the best he could manage in the way of a gift was a tender kiss.
Some leagues above Tol Borune, they met a richly dressed couple riding north toward the Imperial Capital, accompanied by a dozen or so liveried servants. “You there, fellow,” the velvet-clad nobleman called condescendingly to Silk, who happened to be riding in the lead, “what news from Tol Honeth?”
“The usual, your Lordship,” Silk replied obsequiously. “Assassinations, plots, and intrigues—the normal amusements of the highborn.”
“I don’t care much for your tone, fellow,” the nobleman said.
“And I don’t care much for being called ‘fellow,’ either.”
“We’ve heard such amazing stories,” the giddy-looking lady in a fur-lined red velvet cape said breathlessly. “Is it true that someone is actually trying to kill all the Honeths? We heard that whole families have been murdered in their beds.”
“Balera,” her husband said in disgust, “you’re just repeating wild rumors. What could a seedy-looking commoner like this know about what’s really happening in the capital? I’m sure that if there were any substance to those wild stories, Naradas would have told us.”
“Naradas?” Silk’s eyes suddenly filled with interest. “An Angarak merchant with colorless eyes?”
“You know him?” the nobleman asked with some surprise.
“I know him, your Lordship,” Silk replied carefully. “It’s not wise to go around announcing that you’re acquainted with that one. You did know that the Emperor has put a price on his head, didn’t you?”
“Naradas? Impossible!”
“I’m sorry, your Honor, but it’s common knowledge all over Tol Honeth. If you know where to put your hands on him, you can earn yourself a thousand gold crowns without much effort.”
“A thousand crowns!”
Silk looked around conspiratorially. “I wouldn’t really want this to go any further,” he said in a half whisper, “but it’s widely rumored in Tol Honeth that those gold coins he’s so free with are false.”
“False?” the noble exclaimed, his eyes suddenly bulging.
“Very clever imitations,” Silk continued. “Just enough gold is mixed with baser metals to make the coins look authentic, but they aren’t worth a tenth of their face value.”
The noble’s face turned pasty white, and he clutched involuntarily at the purse attached to his belt.
“It’s all part of a plot to destroy the Tolnedran economy by debasing the coinage,” Silk added. “The Honeths were involved in it in some way, and that’s why they’re all being murdered. Of course, anyone caught with any of those coins in his possession is immediately hanged.”
“What?”
‘ “Naturally.” Silk shrugged. “The Emperor intends to root out this monstrous business immediately. Stern measures are absolutely essential.”
“I’m ruined!” the nobleman groaned. “Quickly, Balera!” he said, wheeling his horse, “we must return to Tol Borune at once!” And he led his frightened wife back southward at a dead run.
“Don’t you want to hear about which kingdom was behind it all?” Silk called after them. Then he doubled over in his saddle, convulsed with laughter.
“Brilliant, Prince Kheldar,” Velvet murmured admiringly.
“This Naradas moves around quite a bit, doesn’t he?” Durnik said.
“I think I just put a bit of an anchor on him,” Silk smirked. “Once that rumor spreads, I expect that he’s going to have a little trouble spending his money—not to mention the interest that reward I mentioned is going to generate in certain quarters.”
“That was a dreadful thing you did to that poor nobleman, though,” Velvet said disapprovingly. “He’s on his way back to Tol Borune to empty out all his strongboxes and bury the money.”
Silk shrugged. “That’s what he gets for consorting with Angaraks. Shall we press on?”
They passed Tol Borune without stopping and rode on south toward the Wood of the Dryads. When the ancient forest came into view on the southern horizon, Polgara pulled her horse in beside the mount of the dozing Belgarath. “I think we should stop by and pay our respects to Xantha, father,” she said.
The old man roused himself and squinted in the direction of the Wood. “Maybe,” he grunted doubtfully.
“We owe her the courtesy, father, and it’s not really out of our way.”
“All right, Pol,” he said, “but just a brief stop. We’re months behind Zandramas already.”
They crossed the last band of open fields and rode in under the ancient, mossy oaks. The leaves had fallen to the chill winds of winter, and the bare limbs of the huge trees were starkly etched against the sky.
A peculiar change came over Ce’Nedra as they entered the Wood. Although it was still not really warm, she pushed back the hood of her cloak and shook out her coppery curls, causing her tiny, acorn-shaped gold earrings to tinkle musically. Her face became strangely calm, no longer mirroring the sorrow that had marked it since the abduction of her son. Her eyes became soft, almost unfocused. “I have returned,” she murmured into the quiet air beneath the spreading trees.
Garion felt, rather than heard, the soft, murmuring response. From all around him he seemed to hear a sibilant sighing, although there was no trace of a breeze. The. sighing was almost like a chorus, joining just below the level of hearing into a quiet, mournful song, a song filled with a gentle regret and at the same time an abiding hope.
“Why are they sad?” Eriond quietly asked Ce’Nedra.
“Because it’s winter,” she replied. “They mourn the falling of their leaves and regret the fact that the birds have all flown south.”
“But spring will come again,” he said.
“They know, but winter always saddens them.”
Velvet was looking curiously at the little queen.
“Ce’Nedra’s background makes her peculiarly sensitive to trees,” Polgara explained.
“I didn’t know that Tolnedrans were that interested in the out-of-doors.”
“She’s only half Tolnedran, Liselle. Her love of trees comes from the other side of her heritage.”
“I’m a Dryad,” Ce’Nedra said simply, her eyes still dreamy. –
“I didn’t know that.”
“We didn’t exactly make an issue of it,” Belgarath told her. “We were having trouble enough getting the Alorns to accept a Tolnedran as the Rivan Queen without complicating matters by telling them that she was a nonhuman as well.”
They made a simple camp not far from the place where they had been set upon by the hideous mud-men Queen Salmissra had dispatched to attack them so many years before. Because they could not hew limbs from live trees in this sacred wood, they were obliged to make shelters as best they could with what they found lying on the leaf-strewn forest floor, and their fire was of necessity very small. As twilight settled slowly over the silent Wood, Silk looked dubiously at the tiny, flickering flame and then out at the vast darkness moving almost visibly out from among the trees. “I think we’re in for a cold night,” he predicted.
Garion slept badly. Although he had piled fallen leaves deeply in the makeshift bed he shared with Ce’Nedra, their damp cold seemed to seep through to chill his very bones. He awoke from a fitful doze just as the first pale, misty light seeped in among the trees. He sat up stiffly and was about to throw off his blanket, but stopped, Eriond was sitting on a fallen log on the other side of their long-dead campfire, and sitting beside him was a tawny-haired Dryad.
“The trees say that you are a friend,” the Dryad was saying as she absently toyed with a sharp-tipped arrow.