"All right," Silk said. "Let"s go see this Count Dravor, then. We"ll get this cleared up right now, and there"s no need for waving your swords around. We"ll come along quietly. None of us is going to do anything to get you excited."
The three-fingered soldier"s face darkened in the torchlight. "I don"t like your tone, merchant."
"You"re not being paid to like my tone, friend," Silk said. "You"re being paid to escort us to Count Dravor. Now suppose we get moving. The quicker we get there, the quicker I can give him a full report about your behavior."
"Get their horses," the soldier growled.
Garion had edged over to Aunt Pol.
"Can"t you do anything?" he asked her quietly.
"No talking!" the soldier who had captured him barked.
Garion stood helplessly, staring at the sword leveled at his chest.
Chapter Fourteen.
THE HOUSE OF Count Dravor was a large white building set in the center of a broad lawn with clipped hedges and formal gardens on either side. The moon, fully overhead now, illuminated every detail as they rode slowly up a white-graveled, curving road that led to the house.
The soldiers ordered them to dismount in the courtyard between the house and the garden on the west side of the house, and they were hustled inside and down a long hallway to a heavy, polished door.
Count Dravor was a thin, vague-looking man with deep pouches under his eyes, and he sprawled in a chair in the center of a richly furnished room. He looked up with a pleasant, almost dreamy smile on his face as they entered. His mantle was a pale rose color with silver trim at the hem and around the sleeves to indicate his rank. It was badly wrinkled and none too clean. "And who are these guests?" he asked, his voice slurred and barely audible.
"The prisoners, my Lord," the three-fingered soldier explained. "The ones you ordered arrested."
"Did I order someone arrested?" the count asked, his voice still slurred. "What a remarkable thing for me to do. I hope I haven"t inconvenienced you, my friends."
"We were a bit surprised, that"s all," Silk said carefully.
"I wonder why I did that." The count pondered. "I must have had a reason - I never do anything without a reason. What have you done wrong?"
"We haven"t done anything wrong, my Lord," Silk a.s.sured him.
"Then why would I have you arrested? There must be some sort of mistake."
"That"s what we thought, my Lord," Silk said.
"Well, I"m glad that"s all cleared up," the count said happily. "May I offer you some dinner, perhaps?"
"We"ve already eaten, my Lord."
"Oh." The count"s face fell with disappointment. "I have so few visitors."
"Perhaps your steward Y"diss may remember the reason these people were detained, my Lord," the three-fingered soldier suggested.
"Of course," the count said. "Why didn"t I think of that? Y"diss remembers everything. Please send for him at once."
"Yes, my Lord." The soldier bowed and jerked his head curtly at one of his men.
Count Dravor dreamily began playing with one of the folds of his mantle, humming tunelessly as they waited.
After a few moments a door at the end of the room opened, and a man in an iridescent and intricately embroidered robe entered. His face was grossly sensual, and his head was shaved. "You sent for me, my Lord?" His rasping voice was almost a hiss.
"Ah, Y"diss," Count Dravor said happily, "how good of you to join us."
"It"s my pleasure to serve you, my Lord," the steward said with a sinuous bow.
"I was wondering why I asked these friends to stop by," the count said. "I seem to have forgotten. Do you by any chance recall?"
"It"s just a small matter, my Lord," Y"diss answered. "I can easily handle it for you. You need your rest. You mustn"t overtire yourself, you know."
The count pa.s.sed a hand across his face. "Now that you mention it, I do feel a bit fatigued, Y"diss. Perhaps you could entertain our guests while I rest a bit."
"Of course, my Lord," Y"diss said with another bow.
The count shifted around in his chair and almost immediately fell asleep.
"The count is in delicate health," Y"diss said with an oily smile. "He seldom leaves that chair these days. Let"s move away a bit so that we don"t disturb him."
"I"m only a Drasnian merchant, your Eminence," Silk said, "and these are my servants - except for my sister there. We"re baffled by all of this."
Y"diss laughed. "Why do you persist in this absurd fiction, Prince Kheldar? I know who you are. I know you all, and I know your mission."
"What"s your interest in us, Nyissan?" Mister Wolf asked bluntly.
"I serve my mistress, Eternal Salmissra," Y"diss said.
"Has the Snake Woman become the p.a.w.n of the Grolims, then?" Aunt Pol asked, "or does she bow to the will of Zedar?"
"My queen bows to no man, Polgara," Y"diss denied scornfully.
"Really?" She raised one eyebrow. "It"s curious to find her servant dancing to a Grolim tune."
"I have no dealings with the Grolims," Y"diss said. "They"re scouring all Tolnedra for you, but I"m the one who found you."
"Finding isn"t keeping, Y"diss," Mister Wolf stated quietly. "Suppose you tell us what this is all about."
"I"ll tell you only what I feel like telling you, Belgarath."
"I think that"s about enough, father," Aunt Pol said. "We really don"t have time for Nyissan riddle games, do we?"
"Don"t do it, Polgara," Y"diss warned. "I know all about your power. My soldiers will kill your friends if you so much as raise your hand." Garion felt himself roughly grabbed from behind, and a sword blade was pressed firmly against his throat.
Aunt Pol"s eyes blazed suddenly. "You"re walking on dangerous ground!"
"I don"t think we need to exchange threats," Mister Wolf said. "I gather, then, that you don"t intend to turn us over to the Grolims?"
"I"m not interested in the Grolims," Y"diss said. "My queen has instructed me to deliver you to her in Sthiss Tor."
"What"s Salmissra"s interest in this matter?" Wolf asked. "It doesn"t concern her."
"I"ll let her explain that to you when you get to Sthiss Tor. In the meantime, there are a few things I"ll require you to tell me."
"I think thou wilt have scant success in that," Mandorallen said stiffIy. "It is not our practice to discuss private matters with unwholesome strangers."
"And I think you"re wrong, my dear Baron," Y"diss replied with a cold smile. "The cellars of this house are deep, and what happens there can be most unpleasant. I have servants highly skilled in applying certain exquisitely persuasive torments."
"I do not fear thy torments, Nyissan," Mandorallen said contemptuously.
"No. I don"t imagine you do. Fear requires imagination, and you Arends aren"t bright enough to be imaginative. The torments, however, will wear down your will - and provide entertainment for my servants. Good torturers are hard to find, and they grow sullen if they aren"t allowed to practice - I"m sure you understand. Later, after you"ve all had the chance to visit with them a time or two, we"ll try something else. Nyissa abounds with roots and leaves and curious little berries with strange properties. Oddly enough, most men prefer the rack or the wheel to my little concoctions." Y"diss laughed then, a brutal sound with no mirth in it. "We"ll discuss all this further after I have the count settled in for the night. For right now, the guards will take you downstairs to the places I"ve prepared for you all."
Count Dravor roused himself and looked around dreamily. "Are our friends departing so soon?" he asked.
"Yes, my Lord," Y"diss told him.
"Well then," the count said with a vague smile, "farewell, dear people. I hope you"ll return someday so that we can continue our delightful conversation."
The cell to which Garion was taken was dank and clammy, and it smelled of sewage and rotting food. Worst of all was the darkness. He huddled beside the iron door with the blackness pressing in on him palpably. From one corner of the cell came little scratchings and skittering sounds. He thought of rats and tried to stay as near to the door as possible. Water trickled somewhere, and his throat began to burn with thirst.
It was dark, but it was not silent. Chains clinked in a nearby cell, and someone was moaning. Further off, there was insane laughter, a meaningless cackle repeated over and over again without pause, endlessly rattling in the dark. Someone screamed, a piercing, shocking sound, and then again. Garion cringed back against the slimy stones of the wall, his imagination immediately manufacturing tortures to account for the agony in those screams.
Time in such a place was nonexistent, and so there was no way to know how long he had huddled in his cell, alone and afraid, before he began to hear a faint metallic sc.r.a.ping and clinking that seemed to come from the door itself. He scrambled away, stumbling across the uneven floor of his cell to the far wall.
"Go away!" he cried.
"Keep your voice down!" Silk whispered from the far side of the door.
"Is that you, Silk?" Garion almost sobbed with relief.
"Who were you expecting?"
"How did you get loose?"
"Don"t talk so much," Silk said from between clenched teeth. "Accursed rust!" he swore. Then he grunted, and there was a grating click from the door. "There!" The cell door creaked open, and the dim light from torches somewhere filtered in. "Come along," Silk whispered. "We have to hurry."
Garion almost ran from the cell. Aunt Pol was waiting a few steps down the gloomy stone corridor. Without a word, Garion went to her. She looked at him gravely for a moment and then put her arms about him. They did not speak.
Silk was working on another door, his face gleaming with perspiration. The lock clicked, and the door creaked open. Hettar stepped out. "What took you so long?" he asked Silk.
"Rust!" Silk snapped in a low voice. "I"d like to flog all the jailers in this place for letting the locks get into this condition."
"Do you suppose we could hurry a bit?" Barak suggested over his shoulder from where he stood guard.
"Do you want to do this?" Silk demanded.
"Just move along as quickly as you can," Aunt Pol said. "We don"t have the time for bickerin just now." She removed her blue cloak over one arm.
Silk grunted sourly and moved on to the next door.
"Is all this oratory actually necessary?" Mister Wolf, the last to be released, asked crisply as he stepped out of his cell. "You"ve all been babbling like a flock of geese out here."
"Prince Kheldar felt need to make observations about the condition of the locks," Mandorallen said lightly.
Silk scowled at him and led the way toward the end of the corridor where the torches fumed greasy onto the blackened ceiling.
"Have a care," Mandorallen whispered urgently. "There"s a guard."
A bearded man in a dirty leather jerkin sat on the floor with his back against the wall of the corridor, snoring.
"Can we get past without waking him up?" Durnik breathed.
"He isn"t going to wake up for several hours," Barak said grimly. The large purple swelling on the side of the guard"s face immediately explained.
"Dost think there might be others?" Mandorallen asked, flexing his hands.
"There were a few," Barak said. "They"re sleeping too."
"Let"s get out of here, then," Wolf suggested.
"We"ll take Y"diss with us, won"t we?" Aunt Pol asked.
"What for?"
"I"d like to talk with him," she said. "At great length."
"It would be a waste of time," Wolf said. "Salmissra"s involved herself in this affair. That"s all we really need to know. Her motives don"t really interest me all that much. Let"s just get out of here as quietly as we can."
They crept past the snoring guard, turned a corner and moved softly down another corridor.
"Did he die?" a voice, shockingly loud, asked from behind a barred door that emitted a smoky red light.
"No," another voice said, "only fainted. You pulled too hard on the lever. You have to keep the pressure steady. Otherwise they faint, and you have to start over."
"This is a lot harder than I thought," the first voice complained.
"You"re doing fine," the second voice said. "The rack"s always tricky. Just remember to keep a steady pressure and not to jerk the lever. They usually die if you pull their arms out of the sockets."
Aunt Pol"s face went rigid, and her eyes blazed briefly. She made a small gesture and whispered something. A brief, hushed sound murmured in Garion"s mind.
"You know," the first voice said rather faintly, "suddenly I don"t feel so good."
"Now that you mention it, I don"t either," the second voice agreed. "Did that meat we had for supper taste all right to you?"