King of The Murgos

He gave the cowering eunuch a flinty look. "If Adiss wants to pursue the matter, he and I can discuss it privately some day—or perhaps late some night when our discussions won't disturb anyone."
    "We must leave now," Polgara said. "You have been most helpful, Salmissra. Thank you."
    "I am indifferent to your gratitude," Salmissra replied. "I do not think that I will see you again, Polgara. I think that Zandramas is more powerful than you and that she will destroy you."
    "Only time can reveal that."
    "Indeed. Farewell, Polgara."
    "Good-bye, Salmissra." Polgara deliberately turned her back on the dais. "Come along, Canon—Issus," she said.
    "Sariss," Salmissra said in a peculiar, almost singing tone, "come to me." Garion glanced back over his shoulder and saw that she had reared her mottled body until it rose high above the dais and her velvet-covered throne. She swayed rhythmically back and forth. Her dead eyes had come alight with a kind of dreadful hunger and they burned irresistibly beneath her scaly brows.
    Sariss, his mouth agape and with his pig like eyes frozen and devoid of all thought, lurched toward the dais with jerky, stiff-legged steps.
    "Come, Sariss," Salmissra crooned. "I long to embrace you and give you my kiss."
    Aunt Pol, Garion, and Issus reached the ornately carved door and went quietly into the corridor outside. They had gone no more than a few yards when there came from the throne room a sudden shrill scream of horror, dying hideously into a gurgling, strangled squeal.
    "I think that the position of Chief Eunuch just became vacant," Issus observed drily. Then, as they continued on down the dimly lighted hallway he turned to Polgara. "Now, my Lady," he said, ticking the items off on his fingers, "first of all there was the fee for getting you and the young man into the palace. Then there was the business of persuading Sariss to take us to the throne room, and then ..."

Part Two - RAK URGA



CHAPTER NINE
    It was almost dawn when they crept quietly out of Droblek's house. A thick gray fog shrouded the narrow, twisting streets of Sthiss Tor as they followed Issus through the shabby quarter near the docks. The smell of the river and the reek of the surrounding swamps lay heavy in the foggy darkness, filling Garion's nostrils with the odors of decay and stagnant water.
    They emerged from a narrow alleyway, and Issus motioned them to a halt as he peered into the mist. Then he nodded. "Let's go," he whispered. "Try not to make any noise." They hurried across a glistening cobblestone street, ill-lit by torches, each surrounded by a nimbus of hazy red light, and entered the deeper shadows of another garbage-strewn alley. At the far end of that alley, Garion could see the slow-moving surface of the river sliding ponderously by, pale in the fog.
    The one-eyed assassin led them along another cobblestone street to the foot of a rickety wharf jutting out into the fog. He stopped in the shadows beside a dilapidated shack that stood partially out over the water and rumbled briefly at the door. He opened it slowly, muffling the protesting creak of a rusty hinge with a tattered piece of rag. "In here," he muttered, and they followed him into the dank-smelling shack. "There's a boat tied at the end of this wharf," he told them in a half whisper. "Wait here while I go get it." He went to the front of the shack, and Garion heard the creak of hinges as a trapdoor opened.
    They waited, listening nervously to the skittering and squeaking of the rats that infested this part of town. The moments seemed to creep by as Garion stood watch beside the door, peering out through a crack between two rotting boards at the foggy street running along the edge of the river.
    "All right," he heard Issus say from below after what seemed like hours. "Be careful on the ladder. The rungs are slippery."
    One by one, they climbed down the ladder into the boat the one-eyed man had pulled into place under the wharf. "We have to be quiet," he cautioned them after they had seated themselves. "There's another boat out there on the river somewhere."
    "A boat?" Sadi asked in alarm. "What are they doing?"
    Issus shrugged. "Probably something illegal." Then he pushed his craft out into the shadows at the side of the wharf, settled himself on the center seat, and began to row, dipping his oars carefully into the oily surface of the river so that they made almost no sound.
    The fog rose from the dark water in little tendrils, and the few lighted