King of The Murgos

leave Nyissa for a while."
    "Why Cthol Murgos? Why didn't you go to Tol Honeth instead? It's much more civilized and much, much more comfortable." He sighed again. "I'd give anything to be able to live in Tol Honeth."
    "I've made some powerful enemies in Tolnedra, your Majesty," Sadi replied. "I know my way around Cthol Murgos, so I hired these Alorn mercenaries to protect me and came here posing as a slaver."
    "And then Jaharb picked you up," Urgit guessed. "Poor old Sadi, no matter where you go, you always seem to get mixed up in politics—even when you don't want to."
    "It's a curse," Sadi told him mournfully. "It's been following me for all my life."
    They rounded a corner and approached a vast, sprawling building surrounded by a high wall. Its domes and towers rose in barbaric, torchlit profusion, and, unlike the rest of Rak Urga, it was garishly painted in a half-dozen conflicting colors. "Behold the Drojim Palace," King Urgit said extravagantly to Sadi, "the hereditary home of the House of Urga."
    "A most unusual structure, your Majesty," Sadi murmured.
    "That's a diplomatic way to put it." Urgit looked critically at his palace. "It's gaudy, ugly, and in terribly bad taste. It does, however, suit my personality almost perfectly." He turned to one of his guards. "Be a good fellow and ride on ahead," he instructed. "Tell the gatekeepers that the High King approaches and that if I have to wait while they open the gate for me, I'll have their ears cut off."
    "At once, your Majesty."
    Urgit grinned at Sadi. "One of my few amusements," he explained. "The only people I'm allowed to bully are servants and common soldiers, and all Murgos have a deep-seated need to bully somebody."
    They rode on through the hastily opened gate and dismounted in a ruddily torchlit courtyard. Urgit looked around at the garishly painted walls of the house. "Ghastly, isn't it?" He shuddered. "Let's go inside."
    There was a large door at the top of a flight of stone stairs, and Urgit led them inside and down a long, vaulted corridor. He stopped before a pair of polished double doors guarded by two scar-faced soldiers. "Well?" he said to them.
    "Yes, your Majesty?" one replied.
    "Do you suppose that I could prevail upon you to open the door?" Urgit asked him. "Or would you prefer an immediate transfer to the war zone?"
    "At once, your Majesty," the soldier replied, quickly yanking the door open.
    "Excellently done, my dear fellow. Just try not to jerk it off its hinges next time." The king strolled through the door and into the room beyond. "My throne room," he said grandiosely. "The product of whole generations of diseased imaginations."
    The room was larger than the Hall of the Rivan King in Garion's Citadel. The ceiling was a maze of intersecting vaults, all covered with sheets of the beaten red gold from the mines of Cthol Murgos. The walls and columns were ablaze with inset jewels, and the chairs lined up at the sides of the room were inlaid with more Angarak gold. At the far end of the room stood a bejeweled throne, backed by blood-red drapes. Seated in a simple chair beside that throne was a silver-haired lady, calmly embroidering.
    "Hideous, isn't it?" Urgit said. "The Urgas have been pillaging the treasury at Rak Goska for centuries to decorate the Drojim Palace, but would you believe that the roof still leaks ?" He sauntered to the far end of the room and stopped before the black-gowned lady, who was still busy at her needlework, "Mother," he greeted her with a slightly mocking bow, "you're up late, aren't you?"
    "I don't need as much sleep as I did when I was younger, Urgit." She set her sewing aside. "Besides," she added, "we usually talk over the day's events before you retire for the night."
    "It's the high point of my day, mother," he replied with a faint smile tugging at his lips.
    She returned his smile with good-humored affection. She was, Garion saw as that smile lighted her face, a remarkably attractive woman. Despite the silvery hair and the few lines at the corners of her eyes, her face still bore the signs of what had once been an extraordinary beauty. A faint movement caught his eye, and he saw Silk shrinking behind Toth's broad back and drawing up the hood of his green robe to conceal his face.
    "Who are your friends, Urgit?" the silver-haired lady asked her son.
    "Ah, forgive me, mother. My manners must be slipping. Allow me to present Sadi, Chief Eunuch to Queen Salmissra of the land of the