“I have not yet finished with you, Ussa of Sthiss Tor. What is it that this Kabach is to do in Rak Hagga?”
“Jaharb did not think I needed to know that.”
“I think you’re lying to me, Ussa,” she said, her fingernails rapping a nervous staccato on the table top.
“I have no reason to lie to you, Holy Chabat,” he protested.
“Agachak would have told me of this matter. He conceals nothing from me—nothing.”
“Perhaps he overlooked it. It may not be anything of much importance.”
She looked at each of the others in turn then, her eyes hooded beneath her dark brows. She turned a cold gaze on the still-trembling Grolim. “Tell me,” she said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper, “how is it that the one over there was permitted to come into my presence bearing a sword?” She pointed at Garion.
The Priest’s face grew stricken. “Forgive me, Chabat,” he stammered, “I—I failed to notice the sword.”
“Failed? How can one fail to see so large a weapon? Can you possibly explain that to me?” The Grolim began to tremble even more violently. “Is the sword perhaps invisible? Or is it, perhaps, that my safety is of no concern to you?” Her scarred face grew even more cruel. “Or might it be that you bear me some malice and hoped that this foreigner might decide to slay me?”
The Grolim’s face grew ashen.
“I think perhaps that I should bring this matter to the attention of Agachak upon his return. He will doubtless wish to speak with you about this invisible sword—at some length.”
The door to the chamber opened and an emaciated Grolim, black-robed, but with his green-lined hood pushed back, entered the chamber. His black hair was greasy and hung in lank tangles about his shoulders. He had the bulging eyes of a fanatic and there was the acrid odor of a long-unwashed body about him. “It’s nearly time, Chabat,” he announced in a strident voice.
Chabat’s smoldering eyes softened as she looked at him. “Thank you, Sorchak,” she replied, lowering her eyelashes in an oddly coquettish fashion. She rose, opened a drawer in the table, and took out a black leather case. She opened the case and lovingly lifted out a long, gleaming knife. Then she looked coldly at the Grolim priest she had just chastised. “I go now to the Sanctum to perform the rite of sacrifice,” she told him, absently testing the edge of her heavy-bladed knife. “If one single word of anything that has happened here escapes your lips, you yourself will die at the next sounding of the bell. Now take these slavers to suitable quarters where they can await the return of the Hierarch.” She turned back to the greasy-haired Sorchak, her eyes alight with a sudden, dreadful eagerness. “Will you escort me to the Sanctum so that you can witness my performance of the rite?”
“I would be honored, Chabat,” he replied with a jerky bow; but as the priestess turned from him, his lip curled into a sneer of contempt.
“I will leave you in the care of this bungler,” she told Sadi as she passed him. “You and I have not yet finished our discussion, but I must go prepare myself for the sacrifice.” With Sorchak at her side, she left the room.
When the door closed, the pock-marked underpriest spat on the floor where she had just stood.
“I had not known that a priestess could rise to the Purple in one of the Temples of Torak,” Sadi said to him.
“She is the favorite of Agachak,” the Grolim muttered darkly. “Her ability at sorcery is very limited, so her elevation came at his insistence. The Hierarch has a peculiar preference for ugly things. It is only his power that keeps her from getting her throat cut.”
“Politics.” Sadi sighed. “It’s the same the world over. She seems most zealous about the performance of her religious duties, however.”
“Her eagerness to perform the rite of sacrifice has little to do with religion. She delights in blood. I myself have seen her drink it as it gushes from the chest of the sacrifice and bathe her face and arms in it.” The priest glanced around quickly as if afraid of being overheard. “One day, however, Agachak will discover that she practices witchcraft in the House of Torak and that she and Sorchak celebrate their black sabbaths with obscene rites when all the others in the Temple have gone to their beds. When our Hierarch discovers their corruption, she herself will go screaming under the knife, and every Grolim in the Temple will volunteer to slit her open as she lies on the altar.” He straightened. “Come with me,” he ordered them.
The rooms to which he led them were little more than a series of narrow, dim cells. In each cell stood a low cot, and, hanging on a peg protruding from the wall in each, was a black Grolim robe. The priest nodded briefly, then silently left. Silk looked around the somewhat larger central room with its single lamp and the rough table and benches in its center. “Hardly what I’d call luxurious,” he sniffed.
“We can lodge a complaint, if you’d like,” Velvet suggested.
“What happened to her face?” Ce’Nedra asked in a horrified voice. “She’s hideous.”
“It was a custom in certain Grolim temples in parts of Hagga,” Polgara replied. “Priestesses with some ability at sorcery carved their faces in that fashion to seal themselves to Torak forever. The practice has largely been abandoned.”
“But she could have been so beautiful. Why did she disfigure herself that way?”
“People sometimes do strange things in the grip of religious hysteria.”
“How did that Grolim miss seeing Garion’s sword?” Silk asked Belgarath.
“The Orb is taking steps to make itself inconspicuous.”
“Did you tell it to do that?”
“No. Sometimes it gets certain ideas on its own.”
“Well, things seem to be going rather well, don’t you think?” Sadi said, rubbing his hands together in a self-congratulatory manner. “I told you I could be very useful down here.”
“Very useful, Sadi,” Silk replied sardonically. “So far you’ve led us into the middle of a battle, directly into the headquarters of the Dagashi, and now to the very center of Grolim power in Cthol Murgos. What did you have planned for us next—assuming that the lady with the interesting face doesn’t gut you before morning?”
“We are going to get the ship, Kheldar,” Sadi assured him. “Not even Chabat would dare to counter the wishes of Agachak—no matter how injured her pride may be. And the ship will save us months.”
“There’s something else Garion and I need to attend to,” Belgarath said. “Durnik, take a look out in that hallway and see if they posted any guards to watch us.”
“Where are you going?” Silk asked him. “I need to find the library. I want to see if Jaharb was right about that book being here.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tonight—after everybody’s gone to bed?”
The old man shook his head. “It might take us a while to find what we need. Agachak’s going to be at the palace until midnight, so this is probably the best time to paw through his library.” He gave the little Drasnian a brief smile. “Be- sides,” he added, “although it might upset your notion of order, sometimes you can move around in the daytime more easily than you can by sneaking around corners after midnight.”
“That’s a terribly unnatural thing to suggest, Belgarath.”
“The hallway looks clear,” Durnik reported from the doorway.
“Good.” Belgarath stepped back into the cells and emerged with a couple of the Grolim robes. “Here,” he said, extending one of them to Garion, “put this on.” As the two of them pulled off their green robes and replaced them with the black ones, Durnik kept watch at the door. “It’s still clear, Belgarath,” he said, “but you’d better hurry. I can hear people moving around down at the far end.”
The old man nodded, pulling up the hood of his robe. “Let’s go,” he said to Garion.
The corridors were dim, lighted only by smoky torches set in iron rings protruding from the stone walls. They encountered but few of the black-robed Grolim priests in the hallways. The Grolims walked with an odd, swaying gait, their arms folded in their sleeves, their heads down, and the cowls of their robes covering their faces. Garion guessed that there was some obscure significance to that stiff-legged walk and tried to emulate it as he followed his grandfather along the half-lit halls.
Belgarath moved with feigned confidence, as if he knew precisely where they were going. They reached a broader corridor, and the old man glanced once toward its far end where a pair of heavy doors stood open. Beyond those doors lay a room filled with the flickering light of seething flames. “Not that way,” he whispered to Garion.