Chapter Twenty-Four
There was no air. It seemed as if the world had suddenly been turned into a vast, reeking pool of stagnant water. The River of the Serpent had a hundred mouths, each creeping sluggishly through the jellied muck of the delta as if reluctant to join the boisterous waves of the sea. The reeds which grew in that vast swamp reached a height of twenty feet and were as thick as woven fabric. There was a tantalizing sound of a breeze brushing the tops of the reeds, but down among them, all thought or memory of breeze was lost. There was no air. The delta steamed and stank beneath a sun that did not burn so much as boil. Each breath seemed to be half water. Insects rose in clouds from the reeds and settled in mindless gluttony on every inch of exposed skin, biting, feeding on blood.
They were a day and a half among the reeds before they reached the first trees, low, scarcely more than bushes. The main river channel began to take shape as they moved slowly on into the Nyissan heartland. The sailors sweated and swore at their oars, and the ship moved slowly against the current, almost as if she struggled against a tide of thick oil that clung to her like some loathsome glue.
The trees grew taller, then immense. Great, gnarled roots twisted up out of the ooze along the banks like grotesquely misshapen legs, and trunks vast as castles reached up into the steaming sky. Ropey vines undulated down from the limbs overhead, moving, seeming to writhe with a kind of vegetable will of their own in the breathless air. Shaggy tatters of grayish moss descended in hundred-foot-long streamers from the trees, and the river wound spitefully in great coils that made their journey ten times as long as it needed to be.
"Unpleasant sort of place," Hettar grumbled, dispiritedly looking out over the bow at the weedy surface of the river ahead. He had removed his horsehide jacket and linen undertunic, and his lean torso gleamed with sweat. Like most of them, he was covered with the angry welts of insect bites.
"My very thought," Mandorallen agreed.
One of the sailors shouted and jumped up, kicking at his oar-handle. Something long, slimy, and boneless had crawled unseen up his oar, seeking his flesh with an eyeless voracity.
"Leech," Durnik said with a shudder as the hideous thing dropped with a wet plop back into the stinking river. "I've never seen one so big. It must be a foot long or more."
"Probably not a good place for swimming," Hettar observed.
"I wasn't considering it," Durnik said.
"Good." Aunt Pol, wearing a light linen dress, came out of the cabin beneath the high stern where Greldik and Barak were taking turns at the tiller. She had been caring for Ce'Nedra, who had drooped and wilted like a flower in the brutal climate of the river.
"Can't you do something?" Garion demanded of her silently.
"About what?"
"All of this."He looked around helplessly.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Drive of the bugs, if nothing else."
"Why don't you do it yourself, Belgarion?"
He set his jaw. "No!" It was almost a silent shout.
"It isn't really very hard."
"No."
She shrugged and turned away, leaving him seething with frustration. It took them three more days to reach Sthiss Tor. The city was embraced in a wide coil of the river and was built of black stone. The houses and buildings were low and for the most part were windowless. In the center of the city a vast pile of a building rose with strangely shaped spires and domes and terraces, oddly alien-looking. Wharves and jetties poked out into the turbid river, and Greldik guided his ship toward one which was much larger than the rest. "We have to stop at customs," he explained.
"Inevitably," Durnik said.
The exchange at customs was brief. Captain Greldik announced that he was delivering the goods of Radek of Boktor to the Drasnian trade enclave. Then he handed a jingling purse to the shaven-headed customs official, and the ship was allowed to proceed without inspection.
"You owe me for that, Barak," Greldik said. "The trip here was out of friendship, but the money's something else again."
"Write it down someplace," Barak told him. "I'll take care of it when I get back to Val Alorn."
"If you ever get back to Val Alorn," Greldik said sourly.
"I'm sure you'll remember me in your prayers, then," Barak said. "I know you pray for me all the time anyway, but now you've got a bit more incentive."
"Is every official in the whole world corrupt?" Durnik demanded irritably. "Doesn't anyone do his job the way it's supposed to be done without taking bribes?"
"The world would come to an end if one of them did," Hettar replied. "You and I are too simple and honest for these affairs, Durnik. We're better off leaving this kind of thing to others."
"It's disgusting, that's all."
"That may be true," Hettar agreed, "but I'm just as happy that the customs man didn't look below decks. We might have had some trouble explaining the horses."
The sailors had backed the ship into the river again and rowed toward a series of substantial wharves. They pulled up beside the outer wharf, shipped their oars and looped the hawsers around the tar-blackened pilings of a mooring spot.
"You can't moor here," a sweaty guard told them from the wharf. "This is for Drasnian ships."
"I'll moor anyplace it suits me," Greldik said shortly.
"I'll call out the soldiers," the guard threatened. He took hold of one of their hawsers and pulled out a long knife.
"If you cut that rope, friend, I'll come down there and tear off your ears," Greldik warned.
"Go ahead and tell him," Barak suggested. "It's too hot for fighting."
"My ship's carrying Drasnian goods," Greldik told the guard on the wharf, "belonging to a man named Radek-from Boktor, I think."
"Oh," the guard said, putting away his knife, "why didn't you say so in the first place?"
"Because I didn't like your attitude," Greldik replied bluntly. "Where do I find the man in charge?"
"Droblek? His house is just up that street past the shops. It's the one with the Drasnian emblem on the door."
"I've got to talk with him," Greldik said. "Do I need a pass to go off the wharf? I've heard some strange things about Sthiss Tor."
"You can move around inside the enclave," the guard informed him. "You only need a pass if you want to go into the city."
Greldik grunted and went below. A moment later he came back with several packets of folded parchment. "Do you want to talk to this official?" he asked Aunt Pol. "Or do you want me to take care of it?"