"But I must change you," Aunt Pol said. "The poison you've drunk to keep you young and beautiful is slowly killing you. Even now its traces are beginning to show on your face."
The queen's hands flew to her cheeks, and she turned quickly to look into her mirror.
"You're decaying, Salmissra," Aunt Pol said. "Soon you'll be ugly and old. The lust which fills you will burn itself out, and you'll die. Your blood's too warm; that's the whole problem."
"But how-" Salmissra faltered.
"A little change," Aunt Pol assured her. "Just a small one, and you'll live forever." Garion could feel the force of her will gathering itself. "I will make you eternal, Salmissra." She raised her hand and spoke a single word. The terrible force of that word shook Garion like a leaf in the wind.
At first nothing seemed to happen. Salmissra stood fixed with her pale nakedness gleaming through her gown. Then the strange mottling grew more pronounced, and her thighs pressed tightly together. Her face began to shift, to grow more pointed. Her lips disappeared as her mouth spread, and its corners slid up into a fixed reptilian grin.
Garion watched in horror, unable to take his eyes off the queen. Her gown slid away as her shoulders disappeared and her arms adhered to her sides. Her body began to elongate, and her legs, grown completely together now, began to loop into coils. Her lustrous hair disappeared, and the last vestiges of humanity faded from her face. Her golden crown, however, remained firmly upon her head. Her tongue flickered as she sank down into the mass of her loops and coils. The hood upon her neck spread as she looked with flat, dead eyes at Aunt Pol, who had somehow during the queen's transformation resumed her normal size.
"Ascend your throne, Salmissra," Aunt Pol said.
The queen's head remained immobile, but her coils looped and mounted the cushioned divan, and the sound of coil against coil was a dry, dusty rasp.
Aunt Pol turned to Sadi the eunuch. "Behold the Handmaiden of Issa, the queen of the snake-people, whose dominion shall endure until the end of days, for she is immortal now and will reign in Nyissa forever."
Sadi's face was ghastly pale, and his eyes bulged wildly. He swallowed hard and nodded.
"I'll leave you with your queen, then," she told him. "I'd prefer to go peacefully, but one way or another, the boy and I are leaving."
"I'll send word ahead," Sadi agreed quickly. "No one will try to bar your way."
"Wise decision," Barak said dryly.
"All hail the Serpent Queen of Nyissa," one of the crimson-robed eunuchs pronounced in a shaking voice, sinking to his knees before the dais.
"Praise her," the others responded ritualistically, also kneeling. "Her glory is revealed to us."
"Worship her."
Garion glanced back once as he followed Aunt Pol toward the shattered door. Salmissra lay upon her throne with her mottled coils redundantly piled and her hooded head turned toward the mirror. The golden crown sat atop her head, and her flat, serpent eyes regarded her reflection in the glass. There was no expression on her reptile face, so it was impossible to know what she was thinking.
Chapter Thirty
The corridors and vaulted halls of the palace were empty as Aunt Pol led them from the throne room where the eunuchs knelt, chanting their praises to the Serpent Queen. Sword in hand, Barak stalked grimly through the awful carnage that marked the trail he had left when he had entered. The big man's face was pale, and he frequently averted his eyes from some of the more savagely mutilated corpses that littered their way.
When they emerged, they found the streets of Sthiss Tor darker than night and filled with hysterical crowds wailing in terror. Barak, with a torch he had taken from the palace wall in one hand and his huge sword in the other, led them into the street. Even in their panic the Nyissans made way for him.
"What is this, Polgara?" he growled over his shoulder, waving the torch slightly as if to brush the darkness away. "Is it some kind of sorcery?"
"No," she answered. "It's not sorcery."
Tiny flecks of gray were falling through the torchlight. "Snow?" Barak asked incredulously.
"No," she said. "Ashes."
"What's burning?"
"A mountain," she replied. "Let's get back to the ship as quickly as we can. There's more danger from this crowd than from any of this." She threw her light cloak about Garion's shoulders and pointed down a street where a few torches bobbed here and there. "Let's go that way."
The ash began to fall more heavily. It was almost like dirty gray flour sifting down through the sodden air, and there was a dreadful, sulfurous stink to it.
By the time they reached the wharves, the absolute darkness had begun to pale. The ash continued to drift down, seeping into the cracks between the cobblestones and gathering in little windrows along the edges of the buildings. Though it was growing lighter, the falling ash, like fog, blotted out everything more than ten feet away.
The wharves were total chaos. Crowds of Nyissans, shrieking and wailing, were trying to climb into boats to flee from the choking ash that sifted with deadly silence down through the damp air. Mad with terror, many even leaped into the deadly waters of the river.
"We're not going to be able to get through that mob, Polgara," Barak said. "Stay here a moment." He sheathed his sword, jumped up and caught the edge of a low roof. He pulled himself up and stood outlined dimly above them. "Ho, Greldik!" he roared in a huge voice that carried even over the noise of the crowd.
"Barak!" Greldik's voice came back. "Where are you?"
"At the foot of the pier," Barak shouted. "We can't get through the crowd."
"Stay there," Greldik yelled back. "We'll come and get you."
After a few moments there was the tramp of heavy feet on the wharf and the occasional sound of blows. A few cries of pain mingled with the sounds of panic from the crowd. Then Greldik, Mandorallen and a half dozen burly sailors armed with clubs strode out of the ashfall, clearing a path with brutal efficiency.
"Did you get lost?" Greldik yelled up to Barak.
Barak jumped down from the roof. "We had to stop by the palace," he answered shortly.
"We were growing concerned for thy safety, my Lady," Mandorallen told Aunt Pol, pushing a gibbering Nyissan out of his way. "Good Durnik returned some hours ago."
"We were delayed," she said. "Captain, can you get us on board your ship?"
Greldik gave her an evil grin.
"Let's go then," she urged. "As soon as we get on board, it might be a good idea to anchor out in the river a little way. This ash will settle after a while, but these people are going to be hysterical until it does. Has there been any word from Silk or my father yet?"
"Nothing, my Lady," Greldik said.
"What is he doing?" she demanded irritably of no one in particular. Mandorallen drew his broadsword and marched directly into the face of the crowd, neither slowing nor altering his course. The Nyissans melted out of his path.
The crowd pressing at the edge of the wharf beside Greldik's ship was even thicker, and Durnik, Hettar and the rest of the sailors lined the rail with long boat-hooks, pushing the terror-stricken people away.
"Run out the plank," Greldik shouted as they reached the edge of the wharf.
"Noble captain," a bald Nyissan blubbered, clinging to Greldik's fur vest. "I'll give you a hundred gold pieces if you'll let me aboard your ship."
Disgusted, Greldik pushed him away.
"A thousand gold pieces," the Nyissan promised, clutching Greldik's arm and waving a purse.
"Get this baboon off me," Greldik ordered.
One of the sailors rather casually clubbed the Nyissan into insensibility, then bent and yanked the purse from his grip. He opened the purse and poured the coins out into one hand. "Three pieces of silver," he said with disgust. "All the rest is copper." He turned back and kicked the unconscious man in the stomach.
They crossed to the ship one by one while Barak and Mandorallen held the crowd back with the threat of massive violence.
"Cut the hawsers," Greldik shouted when they were all aboard. The sailors chopped the thick hawsers loose to a great cry of dismay from the Nyissans crowding the edge of the wharf. The sluggish current pulled the ship slowly away, and wails and despairing moans followed them as they drifted.
"Garion," Aunt Pol said, "why don't you go below and put on some decent clothes? And wash that disgusting rouge off your face. Then come back up here. I want to talk to you."
Garion had forgotten how scantily he was dressed and he flushed slightly and went quickly below deck.
It had grown noticeably lighter when he came back up, dressed again in tunic and hose, but the gray ash still sifted down through the motionless air, making the world around them hazy and coating everything with a heavy layer of fine grit. They had drifted some distance out into the river, and Greldik's sailors had dropped the anchor. The ship swung slowly in the sluggish current.
"Over here, Garion," Aunt Pol called. She was standing near the prow, looking out into the dusty haze. Garion went to her a little hesitantly, the memory of what had happened at the palace still strong in his mind.
"Sit down, dear," she suggested. "There's something I have to talk with you about."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, sitting on the bench there.
"Garion." She turned to look at him. "Did anything happen while you were in Salmissra's palace?"