saying to his companion. ‘Can’t she even read?’ He spoke in a rich
contralto voice.
‘I’m sure she can, Salas,’ Rissus replied, ‘but she’s got her mind
– or what’s left of it – on other things.’
‘You’d think her teachers would have warned her that the
Angaraks have tried this before. How can she possibly be so gullible as
to believe that a God would want to marry her?’
‘She’s been brought up to believe that Issa wants to marry her,
Salas. If one God yearns for her company, why not another?’
‘Everybody knows what happened the last time one of our queens
fell into that Angarak trap,’ Salas fretted. ‘This Asharak fellow’s
leading her down that very same path, and the very same thing will
happen. We’ll have Alorns swinging through the rafters like apes
if this goes any further.’
‘Did you want to volunteer to tell her that?’
‘Not me, Rissus. Her pet snake’s molting right now, and he’s very
short tempered. That’s not the way I want to die.’
Rissus shrugged. ‘The answer’s all around us, Salas. Asharak’s
going to have to eat or drink sometime – eventually.’ He shook his
head. ‘That’s what’s got me so baffled. I’ve laced every meal and
every flagon of wine that’s presented to him with enough sarka to
kill a legion, but he absolutely refuses to eat or drink.’
‘What about odek?’ Salas suggested. ‘He’d absorb that right
through his skin.’
‘He never takes his gloves off! How can I kill somebody if he
won’t cooperate?’
‘Why not just run a knife into him?’
‘He’s a Murgo, Salas. I’m not going to get into a knife-fight with
a Murgo. I think we’re going to have to hire a professional assassin.’
‘They’re awfully expensive, Rissus.’
‘Look upon it as a patriotic duty, old boy. I can juggle the numbers
in my account books enough so that we can get our money back.
Let’s go to the throne-room. Asharak usually visits the queen at
midnight – between her other social engagements.’
Then the two of them went on inside the palace.
Even though I’d been hanging upside down, I’d found the
conversation to be absolutely fascinating. I gathered that the current
Salmissra wasn’t held in very high regard by her servants. She evidently
had very limited intellectual gifts, and even those had been clouded
by whichever of the dozens of narcotics available to her was her
favorite. I was really disappointed in Chamdar, though. Couldn’t
the Angaraks come up with something a bit more original than
Zedar’s tired old ploy? The remark Rissus had made as the two of
them were entering the palace seemed to present an opportunity
)jUst too good to pass up, though. If Chamdar was still posing as
Asharak the Murgo, and if he had a more or less standing
appointment with Salmissra at midnight, I could confront the both of them
at the same time and take care of everything all at once. Thrift
is another virtue like neatness. It does count, but not for very
much.
I remembered that when father and I’d visited Sthiss Tor before
the Battle of Vo Mimbre, Salmissra’s palace wasn’t very well lighted,
and so I kept my disguise and flew in through that wide doorway.
The ceilings were high and buried in deep shadows, and I wasn’t
the only bat up there among the rafters. I flitted along the vaulted
corridor leading to the throne-room, and when Salas and his friend
entered, I was able to dart through high above them before they
closed the door. Then I circled upward and came to roost – which
is awkward for a bat – on the shoulder of the gigantic statue of the
Serpent-God, Issa, which rose behind the dais upon which
Salmissra’s throne stood.
The Serpent Queen wasn’t there, and the eunuchs lounged around
on the polished floor talking idly. Several of them, I noticed, were
semi-comatose, and I wondered which was really worse, beer or the
assorted narcotics the Nyissans found so entertaining. I suspect that
my major objection to beer, wine, and more potent beverages springs
from the noise – and the smell. A drunken man tends to bellow like
a bull, and he smells terrible. A drugged man just goes to sleep,
and he doesn’t usually stink. I think it may be a question of aesthetics
more than anything else. I pondered the question of exactly how I
was going to approach Chamdar. The notion of assuming the form
of an eagle the size of a barn briefly crossed my mind. I could seize
him in my talons and soar up with him to a height of four or five
miles and drop him.
‘No, Pol,’ mother’s voice said quite firmly. ‘We’re going to need him
later.’
‘Spoilsport!’ I accused in my high-pitched bat-voice. ‘Can’t you
knock or something, mother? I never know for sure whether you’re there
or not.’
‘Just assume that I’m always here, Pol. You’ll be fairly close. Do you
remember Countess Asrana?’
‘How could I ever-forget her?’
‘You might want to think over just how she might deal with Chamdar.
I did that for a moment, and then I quite nearly burst out laughing.
‘Oh, mother!’ I said gaily. ‘That’s a terrible thing to suggest.’
‘Good, though,’ she added.
The more I thought about it, the more I appreciated mother’s
suggestion. The gay, light-hearted Asrana would have driven the
humorless Grolim absolutely wild, and wild Grolims tend to make
mistakes, mistakes so obvious that even a drugged Salmissra would
see them immediately.
Then the Serpent Queen languidly entered her throne-room, and
the assembled eunuchs all assumed their customary groveling
posture. The queen, of course, might as well have been the same one
father and I had spoken with prior to the Battle of Vo Mimbre.
There’s nothing remarkable about that, since a close physical
resemblance to the original Salmissra was the prime requirement for each
of her successors. She undulated her way across the polished floor
to her reclining throne, sat and began adoring herself in her mirror.
I rather carefully probed at her mind, and what a chaos I found
there! She was literally awash with several conflicting narcotics that
combined to elevate her to a state of chemical ecstasy. When she
was in that condition, she’d have probably believed that the sky
was falling should anyone choose to tell her so. That most likely
explained Chamdar’s lack of any originality. He didn’t have to come
up with anything new or different. Zedar’s tired old fiction was
good enough,
Then, almost before Salmissra had settled in, the door to the
throne-room opened again and Chamdar himself was escorted in.
He’d shaved off the shaggy beard he’d worn in Seline, and now I
was able to see his scarred Murgo face.
The doorkeeper rapped the butt of his staff of office on the floor
and announced, ‘The emissary of Ctuchik of Rak Cthol craves
audience with her Divine Majesty!’ His tone was slightly bored.
‘The emissary approaches Divine Salmissra,’ the eunuchs intoned
in unison, and they didn’t seem too excited either.
‘Ah,’ Salmissra almost drawled, ‘so good of you to drop by,
Asharak.’
‘I am ever at your Divine Majesty’s service,’ he responded in his
harshly accented voice. I gathered that the accent was a part of
Chamdar’s disguise, because he certainly hadn’t spoken that way
back at Seline.
I dropped off the back side of the statue and fluttered as quietly
as I could to the floor behind the image of the Serpent-God. Then,
carefully muffling the sound of what I was doing, I resumed my
own form.
‘Have you come to remind me how much the Dragon-God adores
me, Asharak?’ Salmissra asked in a decidedly kittenish manner.
Asharak responded even as I started to saunter around the
massive statue. ‘The whole world is stunned by your exquisite beauty,
your Majesty. My poor words cannot possibly convey the depth of
my God’s longing for -‘ He broke off suddenly, staring at me in
astonishment. ‘What are -‘ he half-choked.
‘Why, Chammy, dear,’ I said in a fair imitation of Asrana’s voice
and manner, ‘fancy meeting you here! What a delightful surprise!’
Then I looked directly at the Serpent Queen. ‘Ah, there you are,
Sally. Where the deuce have you been? I’ve been looking all over
for you.’ The whole speech had been classic Asrana.
‘What are you doing here?’ Chamdar demanded.
‘I just stopped by to say hello to Sally here,’ I replied. ‘It’s not at
all polite to pass through without paying one’s respects, you know.
Where have you been keeping yourself, dear boy? MY father’s been
looking all over for you. Have you been hiding from him again?
Naughty, naughty, Chammy. He’ll be terribly put out with you, you
know. Father can be such an old stick in the mud sometimes.’
‘Who is she?’ Salmissra demanded, ‘and why is she calling you
by that name?’
‘Have you been riding that tired old horse again, Chammy? What