Sorceress of Darshiva

looked a bit startled. "Lady Polgara," he protested. "Miseth is an excellent painkiller, but—" He looked at the suffering Velvet. "There are those side effects, you know."
    "We can control her if necessary."
    "What side effects?" Silk demanded, hovering protectively over the blond girl.
    "It tends to rouse a certain—ah, shall we say—ardor," Sadi replied delicately. "In Nyissa it's widely used for that purpose."
    "Oh," Silk said, flushing slightly.
    "One drop," Polgara said. "No. Make that two."
    "Two?" Sadi exclaimed.
    "I want it to last until the pain subsides."
    "Two drops will do that, all right," Sadi said, "but you'll have to confine her until it wears off."
    "I'll keep her asleep if I need to."
    Dubiously, Sadi opened his red case and removed a vial of deep purple liquid. "This is against my better judgment, Lady Polgara," he said.
    "Trust me."
    "It always makes me nervous when somebody says that," Belgarath said to Beldin.
    "A lot of things make you nervous. We can't go anywhere until the girl's better. Pol knows what she's doing."
    "Maybe," Belgarath replied.
    Sadi carefully measured two drops of the purple medication into a cup of water and stirred the mixture with his finger. Then he rather carefully dried his hand on a piece of cloth. He handed the cup to Velvet. "Drink it slowly," he instructed.
    "You'll begin to feel very strange almost immediately."
    "Strange?" she asked suspiciously.
    "We can talk about it later. All you need to know now is that it's going to make the pain go away."
    Velvet sipped at the cup. "It doesn't taste bad," she observed.
    "Of course not," the eunuch replied, "and you'll find that it tastes better and better as you get toward the bottom the cup."
    Velvet continued to take small sips of the liquid. Her face flushed. "My," she said, "isn't it warm in here all of sudden?"
    Silk sat down on the bench beside her. "Is it helping at all" he asked. "
    "Hmm?"
    "How's the shoulder?"
    "Did you see my bruise, Kheldar?" She pulled her dress open to show it to him. She showed him—and everyone else in the room—other things as well. "Oops," she said absently, not bothering to cover herself.
    "I think you'd better take those steps you mentioned, Lady Polgara," Sadi said. "The situation is likely to get out of hand any minute now."
    Polgara nodded and put one hand briefly on Velvet's brow. Garion felt a light surge.
    "Suddenly I feel so very drowsy," Velvet said. "Is the medicine doing that?"
    "In a manner of speaking," Polgara replied. Velvet's head drooped forward, and she laid it on Silk's shoulder.
    "Bring her along, Silk," Polgara told the little man. 'Let's find a bed for her."
    Silk picked the sleeping girl up and carried her from the room with Polgara close beside him.
    "Does that stuff always have that effect?" Ce'Nedra asked.
    "Miseth? Oh yes. It could arouse a stick."
    "And does it work on men, too?"
    "Gender makes no difference, your Majesty."
    "How very interesting." She gave Garion a sly, sidelong glance. "Don't lose that little bottle, Sadi," she said.
    "Never mind," Garion told her.
    It took them perhaps a quarter of an hour to tidy up the room.. Polgara was smiling when she and Silk returned. "She’ll asleep now," she said. "I looked into the other rooms, too. The woman of the house appears to have been a very neat sort of person," she said. "This is the only room that was seriously disturbed when the family left."
    She set her candle down and smoothed the front of her gray dress with a satisfied expression. "The house will do very nicely, uncle," she told Beldin.
    "I'm glad you approve," he replied. He was sprawled on a high-backed bench by the window and was carefully re-tying the thong that held his ragged left sleeve in place.
    "How far are we from the river?" Belgarath asked him.
    "It's still a ways—a good day's hard riding at least. I can't be much more exact than that. When the wind came up, it almost blew off my feathers."
    "Is the country on up ahead still empty?"
    "It's hard to be sure. I was up fairly high, and if there are any people out there, they'd all have taken cover from this storm."
    "We'll have to have a look in the morning." Belgarath leaned back in his chair and stretched his feet out toward the hearth. "That fire was a good idea," he said.
    "There's a definite chill in the air.''
    "That happens sometimes when you pile three or four inches of ice on the ground," Beldin told him. The ugly little man squinted thoughtfully. "If this sort of storm