Sorceress of Darshiva

discretion?"
    "Of course."
    "Her Grace takes some wine from time to time, your Highness, and this appears to be one of those times. I'm afraid she's had a bit more than is really good for her."
    "This early in the morning?"
    "Her Grace does not keep what one might call regular hours. If you'll come with me, please."
    As they followed the servant down a long corridor, Silk murmured back over his shoulder to the rest of them. "Follow my lead on this," he said. "Just smile and try not to look too startled at what I say."
    "Don't you just love it when he gets devious?" Velvet said admiringly to Ce'Nedra.
    The archduchess was a lady in her mid-thirties. She had luxurious dark hair and very large eyes. She had a pouting lower lip and an ever-so-slightly overgenerous figure which filled her burgundy gown to the point of overflowing. She was also as drunk as a lord. She had discarded her goblet and now drank directly from a decanter. "Prince Kheldar," She hiccuped, trying to curtsy. Sadi moved sinuously to catch her arm to prevent a disaster.
    " 'Scuse me," she slurred to him. "So nice of you."
    ‘‘My pleasure, your Grace," the eunuch said politely.
    She blinked at him several times. "Are you really bald? Is that an affectation?"
    "It's a cultural thing, your Grace," he explained, bowing.
    "How disappointing," she sighed, rubbing her hand over his head and taking another drink from the decanter. "Could I offer you all something to drink?" she asked brightly.
    Most of them declined with faint headshakes. Beldin, however, stumped forward with his hand extended. "Why not?" the grotesque little man said. "Let's try a rip of that, me girl." For some reason he had lapsed into Feldegast's brogue.
    Belgarath rolled his eyes ceiling ward.
    The archduchess laughed uproariously and passed over the decanter.
    Beldin drained it without stopping for breath. "Very tasty," he belched, tossing the decanter negligently into a corner, "but ale's me preference, y'r Ladyship. Wine's hard on the stomach so early of a morning."
    "Ale it shall be, then," she crowed happily. "We'll all sit around and swill ourselves into insensibility." She fell back on a couch, exposing a great deal of herself in the process. "Bring ale," she commanded the embarrassed servant, "lots and lots of ale."
    "As your Grace commands," the tall man replied stiffly, withdrawing.
    "Nice enough fellow," the archduchess slurred, "but he's so terribly stuffy sometimes. He absolutely refuses to take a drink with me." Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "Nobody wants to drink with me," she complained. She held out her arms imploringly to Beldin, and he enfolded her in an embrace. ''You understand, don't you, my friend?" she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder.
    "Of course I do," he said, patting her shoulder. ‘ 'There, there, me little darlin'," he said, "'twill all be right again soon."
    The noblewoman regained her composure, sniffed loudly, and fished for a handkerchief. "It's not that I want to be like this, your Highness," she apologized, trying to focus her eyes on Silk. "It's just that I'm so absolutely bored out here. Otrath has all the social grace of an oyster, so he's imprisoned me out here in the hinterlands with nothing but the booming of the surf and the screeching of gulls for company. I so miss the balls and the dinner parties and the conversation in Melcena. What am I to do with myself out here?"
    " Tis crue! hard, me darlin'," Beldin agreed. He took the small cask of ale the servant cringingly brought, placed it between his knees, and bashed in the top with his gnarled fist. "Would ye care fer a sup, sweeting?" he asked the duchess politely, holding out the cask.
    "I'd drown if I tried to drink out of that," she protested with a silly little laugh.
    "Right y' are," he agreed. "You there," he said to Belgarath. "Get the poor girl a cup or somethin'."
    Belgarath scowled at his gnarled brother, then wordlessly fetched a silver tankard from a sideboard.
    Beldin dipped deeply into the cask with the tankard, swiped off the bottom with his sleeve, and offered it to their hostess. "To yer good health, me darlin'," he said, drinking from the cask.
    "You're so kind," she hiccuped. Then she drained off about half the tankard with foamy ale spilling out of the comers of her mouth and down the front of her gown.
    "We were very sorry to have missed his Grace," Silk said, obviously a little nonplussed by Beldin's rough-and-ready approach to a highborn, though tipsy,