‘I want to stop by our offices here and have a talk with our factor.’
Garion gave him a puzzled look.
‘The agent who handles things for us here in Mal Zeth.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t heard the word before.’
‘That’s because you aren’t in business. Our man here is named Dolmar. He’s a Melcene—very efficient, and he doesn’t steal too much.’
‘I’m not sure that I’d enjoy listening to you talk business,’ Garion said.
Silk looked around furtively. ‘You might learn all kinds of things, Garion,’ he said, but his fingers were already moving rapidly.—Dolmar can give us a report on what’s really happening in Karanda—he gestured.—I think you’d better come along—
‘Well,’ Garion said with slightly exaggerated acquiescence, ‘maybe you’re right. Besides, the walls here are beginning to close in on me.’
‘Here,’ Silk said, holding out one of the robes, ‘wear this.’
‘It’s not really cold, Silk.’
‘The robe isn’t to keep you warm. People in western clothing attract a lot of attention on the streets of Mal Zeth, and I don’t like being stared at.’ Silk grinned quickly. ‘It’s very hard to pick pockets when everybody in the street is watching you. Shall we go?’
The robe Garion put on was open at the front and hung straight from his shoulders to his heels. It was a serviceable outer garment with deep pockets at the sides. The material of which it was made was quite thin, and it flowed out behind him as he moved around. He went to the door of the adjoining room. Ce’Nedra was combing her hair, still damp from her morning bath.
‘I’m going into the city with Silk,’ he told her. ‘Do you need anything?’
She thought about that. ‘See if you can find me a comb,’ she said, holding up the one she had been using. ‘Mine’s starting to look a little toothless.’
‘All right.’ He turned to leave.
‘As long as you’re going anyway,’ she added, ‘why don’t you pick me up a bolt of silk cloth—teal green, if you can find it. I’m told that there’s a dressmaker here in the palace with a great deal of skill.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He turned again.
‘And perhaps a few yards of lace—not too ornate, mind. Tasteful.’
‘Anything else?’
She smiled at him. ‘Buy me a surprise of some kind. I love surprises.’
‘A comb, a bolt of teal green silk, a few yards of tasteful lace, and a surprise.’ He ticked them off on his fingers.
‘Get me one of those robes like you’re wearing, too.’
He waited.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘That’s all I can think of, Garion, but you and Silk might ask Liselle and Lady Polgara if they need anything.’
He sighed.
‘It’s only polite, Garion.’
‘Yes, dear. Maybe I’d better make out a list.’
Silk’s face was blandly expressionless as Garion came back out.
‘Well?’ Garion asked him.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Good.’
They started out the door.
‘Garion,’ Ce’Nedra called after him.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘See if you can find some sweetmeats, too.’
Garion went out into the hall behind Silk and firmly closed the door behind him.
‘You handle that sort of thing very well,’ Silk said.
‘Practice.’
Velvet added several items to Garion’s growing list, and Polgara several more. Silk looked at the list as they walked down the long, echoing hallway toward the main part of the palace. ‘I wonder if Brador would lend us a pack mule,’ he murmured.
‘Quit trying to be funny.’
‘Would I do that?’
‘Why were we talking with our fingers back there?’
‘Spies.’
‘In our private quarters?’ Garion was shocked, remembering Ce’Nedra’s sometimes aggressive indifference to the way she was dressed—or not dressed—when they were alone.
‘Private places are where the most interesting secrets are to be found. No spy ever passes up the opportunity to peek into a bedroom.’
‘That’s disgusting!’ Garion exclaimed, his cheeks burning.
‘Of course it is. Fairly common practice, though.’
They passed through the vaulted rotunda just inside the gold-plated main door of the palace and walked out into a bright spring morning touched with a fragrant breeze.
‘You know,’ Silk said, ‘I like Mal Zeth. It always smells so good. Our office here is upstairs over a bakery, and some mornings the smells from downstairs almost make me swoon.’
There was only the briefest of pauses at the gates of the imperial complex. A curt gesture from one of the pair of unobtrusive men who were following them advised the gate guards that Silk and Garion were to be allowed to pass into the city.
‘Policemen do have their uses sometimes,’ Silk said as they started down a broad boulevard leading away from the palace.
The streets of Mal Zeth teemed with people from all over the empire and not a few from the West as well. Garion was a bit surprised to see a sprinkling of Tolnedran mantles among the varicolored robes of the local populace, and here and there were Sendars, Drasnians, and a fair number of Nadraks. There were, however, no Murgos. ‘Busy place,’ he noted to Silk.
‘Oh, yes. Mal Zeth makes Tol Honeth look like a country fair and Camaar like a village market.’
‘It’s the biggest commercial center in the world, then?’
‘No. That’s Melcene—of course Melcene concentrates on money instead of goods. You can’t even buy a tin pot in Melcene. All you can buy there is money.’
‘Silk, how can you make any kind of profit buying money with money?’
‘It’s a little complicated.’ Silk’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know something?’ he said. ‘If you could put your hands on the royal treasury of Riva, I could show you how to double it in six months on Basa Street in Melcene—with a nice commission for the both of us thrown in for good measure.’
‘You want me to speculate with the royal treasury? I’d have an open insurrection on my hands if anybody ever found out about it.’
‘That’s the secret, Garion. You don’t let anybody find out.’
‘Have you ever had an honest thought in your entire life?’
The little man thought about it. ‘Not that I recall, no,’ he replied candidly. ‘But then, I’ve got a well-trained mind.’
The offices of the commercial empire of Silk and Yarblek here in Mal Zeth were, as the little man had indicated, rather modest and were situated above a busy bakeshop. Access to that second floor was by way of an outside stairway rising out of a narrow side street. As Silk started up those stairs, a certain tension that Garion had not even been aware of seemed to flow out of his friend. ‘I hate not being able to talk freely,’ he said. ‘There are so many spies in Mal Zeth that every word you say here is delivered to Brador in triplicate before you get your mouth shut.’
‘There are bound to be spies around your office, too.’
‘Of course, but they can’t hear anything. Yarblek and I had a solid foot of cork built into the floors, ceilings, and walls.’
‘Cork?’
‘It muffles all sounds.’
‘Didn’t that cost a great deal?’
Silk nodded. ‘But we made it all back during the first week we were here by managing to keep certain negotiations secret.’ He reached into an inside pocket and took out a large brass key. ‘Let’s see if I can catch Dolmar with his hands in the cash box,’ he half whispered.
‘Why? You already know that he’s stealing from you.’
‘Certainly I do, but if I can catch him, I can reduce his year-end bonus.’
‘Why not just pick his pocket?’
Silk tapped the brass key against his cheek as he thought about it. ‘No,’ he decided finally. ‘That’s not
really good business. A relationship like this is founded on trust.’
Garion began to laugh.
‘You have to draw the line somewhere, Garion.’ Silk quietly slipped his brass key into the lock and slowly turned it. Then he abruptly shoved the door open and jumped into the room.
‘Good morning, Prince Kheldar,’ the man seated behind a plain table said quite calmly. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
Silk looked a bit crestfallen.
The man sitting at the table was a thin Melcene with crafty, close-set eyes, thin lips, and scraggly, mud-brown hair. He had the kind of face that one instantly distrusts.
Silk straightened. ‘Good morning, Dolmar,’ he said. ‘This is Belgarion of Riva.’
‘Your Majesty.’ Dolmar rose and bowed.
‘Dolmar.’
Silk closed the door and pulled a pair of chairs out from the brown, cork-sheathed wall. Although the floor was of ordinary boards, the way that all sounds of walking or moving pieces of furniture were muted testified to the thickness of the cork lying beneath.
‘How’s business?’ Silk asked, seating himself and pushing the other chair to Garion with his foot.
‘We’re paying the rent,’ Dolmar replied cautiously.
‘I’m sure that the baker downstairs is overjoyed. Specifics, Dolmar. I’ve been away from Mal Zeth for quite a while. Stun me with how well my investments here are doing.’
‘We’re up fifteen percent from last year.’
‘That’s all?’ Silk sounded disappointed.
‘We’ve just made quite a large investment in inventory. If you take the current value of that into account, the number would be much closer to forty percent.’
‘That’s more like it. Why are we accumulating inventory?’
‘Yarblek’s instructions. He’s at Mal Camat right now arranging for ships to take the goods to the west. I expect that he’ll be here in a week or so—he and that foulmouthed wench of his.’ Dolmar stood up, carefully gathered the documents from the table, and crossed to an iron stove sitting in the corner. He bent, opened the stove door, and calmly laid the parchment sheets on the small fire inside.
To Garion’s amazement, Silk made no objection to his factor’s blatant incendiarism. ‘We’ve been looking into the wool market,’ the Melcene reported as he returned to his now-empty table. ‘With the growing mobilization, the Bureau of Military Procurement is certain to need wool for uniforms, cloaks, and blankets. If we can buy up options from all the major sheep producers, we’ll control the market and perhaps break the stranglehold that the Melcene consortium has on military purchases. If we can just get our foot in the door of the Bureau, I’m sure that we can get a chance to bid on all sorts of contracts.’
Silk was pulling at his long, pointed nose, his eyes narrowed in thought, ‘Beans,’ he said shortly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Look into the possibility of tying up this year’s bean crop. A soldier can live in a worn-out uniform, but he has to eat. If we control the bean crop—and maybe coarse flour as well—the Bureau of Military Procurement won’t have any choice. They’ll have to come to us.’
‘Very shrewd, Prince Kheldar.’
‘I’ve been around for a while,’ Silk replied.
‘The consortium is meeting this week in Melcene,’ the factor reported. ‘They’ll be setting the prices of common items. We really want to get our hands on that price list if we can.’
‘I’m in the palace,’ Silk said. ‘Maybe I can pry it out of somebody.’
‘There’s something else you should know, Prince Kheldar. Word has leaked out that the consortium is also going to propose certain regulations to Baron Vasca of the Bureau of Commerce. They’ll present them under the guise of protecting the economy, but the fact of the matter is that they’re aimed at you and Yarblek. They want to restrict western merchants who gross more than ten million a year to two or three enclaves on the west coast. That wouldn’t inconvenience smaller merchants, but it would probably put us out of business.’
‘Can we bribe someone to put a stop to it?’
‘We’re already paying Vasca a fortune to leave us alone, but the consortium is throwing money around like water. It’s possible that the baron won’t stay bribed.’
‘Let me nose around inside the palace a bit,’ Silk said, ‘before you double Vasca’s bribe or anything.’
‘Bribery’s the standard procedure, Prince Kheldar.’
‘I know, but sometimes blackmail works even better.’ Silk looked over at Garion, then back at his factor. ‘What do you know about what’s happening in Karanda?’ he asked.
‘Enough to know that it’s disastrous for business. All sorts of perfectly respectable and otherwise sensible merchants are closing up their shops and flocking off to Calida to enlist in Mengha’s army. Then they march around in circles singing “Death to the Angaraks” while they wave rusty swords in the air.’
‘Any chance of selling them weapons?’ Silk asked quickly.
‘Probably not. There’s not enough real money in northern Karanda to make it worthwhile to try to deal with them, and the political unrest has closed down all the mines. The market in gem stones has just about dried up.’
Silk nodded glumly. ‘What’s really going on up there, Dolmar?’ he asked. ‘The reports Brador passed on to us were sort of sketchy.’
‘Mengha arrived at the gates of Calida with demons.’ The factor shrugged. ‘The Karands went into hysterics and then fell down in the throes of religious ecstasy.’
‘Brador told us about certain atrocities,’ Garion said.
‘I expect that the reports he received were a trifle exaggerated, your Majesty,’ Dolmar replied. ‘Even the most well trained observer is likely to multiply mutilated corpses lying in the streets by ten. In point of fact, the vast majority of the casualties were either Melcene or Angarak. Mengha’s demons rather scrupulously avoided killing Karands—except by accident. The same has held true in every city that he’s taken so far.’ He scratched at his head, his close-set eyes narrowing. ‘It’s really very shrewd, you know. The Karands see Mengha as a liberator and his demons as an invincible spearhead of their army. I can’t swear to his real motives, but those barbarians up there believe that he’s a savior come to sweep Karanda clean of Angaraks and the Melcene bureaucracy. Give him another six months or so, and he’ll accomplish what no one has ever been able to do before.’
‘What’s that?’ Silk asked.
‘Unify all of Karanda.’
‘Does he use his demons in the assault on every city he takes?’ Garion asked, wanting to confirm what Brador had told them.
Dolmar shook his head. ‘Not any more, your Majesty. After what happened at Calida and several other towns he took early in his campaign, he doesn’t really have to. All he’s been doing lately is march up to the city. The demons are with him, of course, but they don’t have to do anything but stand there looking awful. The Karands butcher all the Angaraks and Melcenes in town, throw open their gates, and welcome him with open arms. Then his demons vanish.’ He thought a moment. ‘He always has one particular one of them with him, though—a shadowy sort of creature that doesn’t seem to be gigantic the way they’re supposed to be. He stands directly behind Mengha’s left shoulder at any public appearance.’
A sudden thought occurred to Garion. ‘Are they desecrating Grolim temples?’ he asked.
Dolmar blinked. ‘No,’ he replied with some surprise, ‘as a matter of fact, they’re not—and there don’t seem to be any Grolims among the dead, either. Of course it’s possible that Urvon pulled all his Grolims out of Karanda when the trouble started.’
‘That’s unlikely,’ Garion disagreed. ‘Mengha’s arrival at Calida came without any kind of warning. The Grolims wouldn’t have had time to escape.’ He stared up at the ceiling, thinking hard.
‘What is it, Garion?’ Silk asked.
‘I just had a chilling sort of notion. We know that Mengha’s a Grolim, right?’
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‘I didn’t know that,’ Dolmar said with some surprise.
‘We got a bit of inside information,’ Silk told him. ‘Go ahead, Garion.’
‘Urvon spends all of his time in Mal Yaska, doesn’t he?’
Silk nodded. ‘So I’ve heard. He doesn’t want Beldin to catch him out in the open.’
‘Wouldn’t that make him a fairly ineffective leader? All right, then. Let’s suppose that Mengha went through his period of despair after the death of Torak and then found a magician to teach him how to raise demons. When he comes back, he offers his former Grolim brethren an alternative to Urvon—along with access to a kind of power they’d never experienced before. A demon in the hands of an illiterate and fairly stupid Karandese magician is one thing, but a demon controlled by a Grolim sorcerer would be much worse, I think. If Mengha’s gathering disaffected Grolims around him and training them in the use of magic, we have a big problem. I don’t think I’d care to face a legion of Chabats, would you?’
Silk shuddered. ‘Not hardly,’ he replied fervently.
‘He has to be uprooted then,’ Dolmar said, ‘and soon.’
Garion made a sour face. ‘Zakath won’t move until he gets his army back from Cthol Murgos—about three months from now.’
‘In three months, Mengha’s going to be invincible,’ the factor told him.
‘Then we’ll have to move now,’ Garion said, ‘with Zakath or without him.’
‘How do you plan to get out of the city?’ Silk asked.
‘We’ll let Belgarath work that out.’ Garion looked at Silk’s agent. ‘Can you tell us anything else?’ he asked.
Dolmar tugged at his nose in a curious imitation of Silk’s habitual gesture. ‘It’s only a rumor,’ he said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘I’ve been getting some hints out of Karanda that Mengha’s familiar demon is named Nahaz.’
‘Is that significant?’
‘I can’t be altogether sure, your Majesty. When the Grolims went into Karanda in the second millennium, they destroyed all traces of Karandese mythology, and no one has ever tried to record what few bits and pieces remained. All that’s left is a hazy oral tradition, but the rumors I’ve heard say that Nahaz was the tribal demon of the original Karands who migrated into the region before the Angaraks came to Mallorea. The Karands follow Mengha not only because he’s a political leader, but also because he’s resurrected the closest thing they’ve ever had to a God of their own.’