The sobbing young man grabbed up a pink robe and an ornately carved jewel box. He stumbled down from the dais. "You did this," he accused Garion. "It's all your fault." Suddenly, out of the folds of the robe draped over his arm, he pulled a small dagger. "I'll fix you," he screamed, raising the dagger to strike.
There was no thought this time, no gathering of will. The surge of force came without warning, pushing Essia away, driving him back. He slashed futilely at the air with his little knife. Then the surge was gone.
Essia lunged forward again, his eyes insane and his dagger raised. The surge came again, stronger this time. The young man was spun away. He fell, and his dagger clattered across the floor.
Salmissra, her eyes ablaze, pointed at the prostrate Essia and snapped her fingers twice. So fast that it seemed almost like an arrow loosed from a bow, a small green snake shot from beneath the divan, its mouth agape and its hiss a kind of snarl. It struck once, hitting Essia high on the leg, then slithered quickly to one side and watched with dead eyes.
Essia gasped and turned white with horror. He tried to rise, but his legs and arms suddenly sprawled out from under him on the polished stones. He gave one strangled cry and then the convulsions began. His heels pattered rapidly on the floor, and his arms flailed wildly. His eyes turned vacant and staring, and a green froth shot like a fountain from his mouth. His body arched back, every muscle writhing beneath his skin, and his head began to pound on the floor. He gave one thrashing, convulsive leap, his entire body bounding up from the floor. When he came down, he was dead.
Salmissra watched him die, her pale eyes expressionless, incurious, with no hint of anger or regret.
"Justice is done," the eunuch announced.
"Swift is the justice of the Queen of the Serpent People," the others replied.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
There were other things they made him drink - some bitter, some sickeningly sweet - and his mind seemed to sink deeper with each cup he raised to his lips. His eyes began to play strange tricks on him. It seemed somehow that the world had suddenly been drowned and that all of this was taking place under water. The walls wavered and the figures of the kneeling eunuchs seemed to sway and undulate like seaweed in the endless wash and eddy of tide and current. The lamps sparkled like jewels, casting out brilliant colors in slow-falling showers. Garion slumped, all bemused, on the dais near Salmissra's divan, his eyes filled with light and his head washed clean of all thought. There was no sense of time, no desire, no will. He briefly and rather vaguely remembered his friends, but the knowledge that he would never see them again brought only a brief, passing regret, a temporary melancholy that was rather pleasant. He even shed one crystal tear over his loss, but the tear landed on his wrist and sparkled with such an unearthly beauty that he lost himself utterly in contemplating it.
"How did he do it?" the queen's voice said somewhere behind him. Her voice was so beautifully musical that the sound of it pierced Garion's very soul.
"It has power," Maas replied, his serpent voice thrilling Garion's nerves, vibrating them like the strings of a lute. "Its power is untried, undirected, but it is very strong. Beware of this one, beloved Salmissra. It can destroy quite by accident."
"I will control him," she said.
"Perhaps," the snake replied.
"Sorcery requires will," Salmissra pointed out. "I will take his will away from him. Your blood is cold, Maas, and you've never felt the fire that fills the veins with the taste of oret or athal or kaldiss. Your passions are also cold, and you can't know how much the body can be used to enslave the will. I'll put his mind to sleep and then smother his will with love."
"Love, Salmissra?" the snake asked, sounding faintly amused.
"The term serves as well as any other," she replied. "Call it appetite, if you wish."
"That I can understand," Maas agreed. "But don't underestimate this one - or overestimate your own power. It does not have an ordinary mind. There's something strange about it that I can't quite penetrate."
"We'll see," she said. "Sadi," she called the eunuch.
"Yes, my Queen?"
"Take the boy. Have him bathed and perfumed. He smells of boats and tar and salt water. I don't like such Alorn smells."
"At once, Eternal Salmissra."
Garion was led away to a place where there was warm water. His clothes were taken from him, and he was immersed and soaped and immersed again. Fragrant oils were rubbed into his skin, and a brief loincloth was tied about his waist. Then he was taken quite firmly by the chin and rouge was applied to his cheeks. It was during this process that he realized that the person painting his face was a woman. Slowly, almost incuriously, he let his eyes move around the bath chamber. He realized then that except for Sadi, everyone there was female. It seemed that something about that should bother him - something having to do with appearing naked in the presence of women - but he could not exactly remember what it was.
When the woman had finished painting his face, Sadi the eunuch took his arm and led him again through the dim, endless corridors back to the room where Salmissra half lay on her divan beneath the statue, admiring herself in the pedestaled mirror beside her.
"Much better," she said, looking Garion up and down with a certain appreciation. "He's much more muscular than I thought. Bring him here."
Sadi led Garion to the side of the queen's divan and gently pressed him down onto the cushions where Essia had lounged.
Salmissra reached out with a lingeringly slow hand and brushed her cold fingertips across his face and chest. Her pale eyes seemed to burn, and her lips parted slightly. Garion's eyes fixed themselves on her pale arm. There was no trace of hair on that white skin.
"Smooth," he said vaguely, struggling to focus on that peculiarity.
"Of course, my Belgarion," she murmured. "Serpents are hairless, and I am the queen of the serpents."
Slowly, puzzled, he raised his eyes to the lustrous black tresses tumbling down across one of her white shoulders.
"Only this," she said, touching the curls with a sensuous kind of vanity.
"How?" he asked.
"It's a secret." She laughed. "Someday perhaps I'll show you. Would you like that?"
"I suppose so."
"Tell me, Belgarion," she said, "do you think I'm beautiful?"
"I think so."
"How old would you say I am?" She spread her arms so that he could see her body through the filmy gauze of her gown.
"I don't know," Garion said. "Older than I am, but not too old." A brief flicker of annoyance crossed her face. "Guess," she ordered somewhat harshly.
"Thirty perhaps," he decided, confused.
"Thirty?" Her voice was stricken. Swiftly she turned to her mirror and examined her face minutely. "You're blind, you idiot!" she snapped, still staring at herself in the glass. "That's not the face of a woman of thirty. Twentythree - twenty-five at the most."
"Whatever you say," he agreed.
"Twentythree," she stated firmly. "Not a single day over twentythree."
"Of course," he said mildly.
"Would you believe that I'm nearly sixty?" she demanded, her eyes suddenly flint-hard.
"No," Garion denied. "I couldn't believe that - not sixty."
"What a charming boy you are, Belgarion," she breathed at him, her glance melting. Her fingers returned to his face, touching, stroking, caressing. Slowly, beneath the pale skin of her naked shoulder and throat, curious patches of color began to appear, a faint mottling of green and purple that seemed to shift and pulsate, growing first quite visible and then fading. Her lips parted again, and her breathing grew faster. The mottling spread down her torso beneath her transparent gown, the colors seeming to writhe beneath her skin.
Maas crept nearer, his dead eyes suddenly coming awake with a strange adoration. The vivid pattern of his own scaly skin so nearly matched the colors that began to emerge upon the body of the Serpent Queen that when he draped a caressing coil across one of her shoulders it became impossible to say exactly where lay the boundary between the snake and the woman.
Had Garion not been in a half stupor, he would have recoiled from the queen. Her colorless eyes and mottled skin seemed reptilian, and her openly lustful expression spoke of some dreadful hunger. Yet there was a curious attraction about her. Helplessly he felt drawn by her blatant sensuality.
"Come closer, my Belgarion," she ordered softly. "I'm not going to hurt you." Her eyes gloated over her possession of him.