The more I thought about it, the more I appreciated mother’s suggestion. The g*y, light-hearted Asrana would have driven the humorless Grolim absolutely wild, and wild Grolims tend to make mistakes, mistakes so obvious that even a drugged Salmissra would see them immediately.

Then the Serpent Queen languidly entered her throne-room, and the assembled eunuchs all assumed their customary groveling posture. The queen, of course, might as well have been the same one father and I had spoken with prior to the Battle of Vo Mimbre. There’s nothing remarkable about that, since a close physical resemblance to the original Salmissra was the prime requirement for each of her successors. She undulated her way across the polished floor to her reclining throne, sat and began adoring herself in her mirror. I rather carefully probed at her mind, and what a chaos I found there! She was literally awash with several conflicting narcotics that combined to elevate her to a state of chemical ecstasy. When she was in that condition, she’d have probably believed that the sky was falling should anyone choose to tell her so. That most likely explained Chamdar’s lack of any originality. He didn’t have to come up with anything new or different. Zedar’s tired old fiction was good enough,

Then, almost before Salmissra had settled in, the door to the throne-room opened again and Chamdar himself was escorted in. He’d shaved off the shaggy beard he’d worn in Seline, and now I was able to see his scarred Murgo face.

The doorkeeper rapped the butt of his staff of office on the floor and announced, ‘The emissary of Ctuchik of Rak Cthol craves audience with her Divine Majesty!’ His tone was slightly bored.

‘The emissary approaches Divine Salmissra,’ the eunuchs intoned in unison, and they didn’t seem too excited either.

‘Ah,’ Salmissra almost drawled, ‘so good of you to drop by, Asharak.’

‘I am ever at your Divine Majesty’s service,’ he responded in his harshly accented voice. I gathered that the accent was a part of Chamdar’s disguise, because he certainly hadn’t spoken that way back at Seline.

I dropped off the back side of the statue and fluttered as quietly as I could to the floor behind the image of the Serpent-God. Then, carefully muffling the sound of what I was doing, I resumed my own form.

‘Have you come to remind me how much the Dragon-God adores me, Asharak?’ Salmissra asked in a decidedly kittenish manner.

Asharak responded even as I started to saunter around the massive statue. ‘The whole world is stunned by your exquisite beauty, your Majesty. My poor words cannot possibly convey the depth of my God’s longing for – ’ He broke off suddenly, staring at me in astonishment. ‘What are – ’ he half-choked.

‘Why, Chammy, dear,’ I said in a fair imitation of Asrana’s voice and manner, ‘fancy meeting you here! What a delightful surprise!’ Then I looked directly at the Serpent Queen. ‘Ah, there you are, Sally. Where the deuce have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you.’ The whole speech had been classic Asrana.

‘What are you doing here?’ Chamdar demanded.

‘I just stopped by to say hello to Sally here,’ I replied. ‘It’s not at all polite to pass through without paying one’s respects, you know. Where have you been keeping yourself, dear boy? My father’s been looking all over for you. Have you been hiding from him again? Naughty, naughty, Chammy. He’ll be terribly put out with you, you know. Father can be such an old stick in the mud sometimes.’

‘Who is she?’ Salmissra demanded, ‘and why is she calling you by that name?’

‘Have you been riding that tired old horse again, Chammy? What a bore. “Asharak the Murgo?” Really Chammy, I’m disappointed in you.’ I looked at the confused-looking Queen of Nyissa. ‘Has he been lying to you, Sally? You didn’t really believe him, did you? “Asharak the Murgo” indeed! He’s worn the spots off that one in most of the civilized world. Everybody knows that his name’s really Chamdar, and that he’s Ctuchik’s favorite boot-licker. Chammy here’s been living on a steady diet of boot-polish for over a thousand years now.’

‘Who are you?’ Salmissra demanded. ‘And how dare you call me by that absurd name?’

‘My name’s Polgara, Sally, and I’ll call you whatever I jolly-well choose to call you.’ I dropped the light-hearted tone and delivered that announcement with a definite hint of steel in it.

I could almost feel the narcotics draining out of her blood. ‘Polgara?’ she exclaimed.

‘She lies!’ Chamdar declared, his own voice slightly shrill and his eyes going wild.

‘Oh, Chammy, how on earth would you know? You’ve been searching for me for a thousand and more years, and you’ve never once even seen me. If you’re the best Ctuchik can come up with, my father’s been overstating the peril. I could delete you without even working up an appetite.’ I knew that it was melodramatic to the point of absurdity, but I leveled my forefinger slightly off to one side of him and disintegrated a polished flagstone with a sizzling thunderbolt. I’ve seldom done that, so perhaps I over-did it just a bit. The fragments, all jagged and red-hot, sprayed the groveling eunuchs, and they all immediately stopped being bored. They scrambled away, squealing like terrified mice.

‘Oops,’ I said apologetically. ‘A little excessive, maybe. Sorry about the floor tiles, Sally. Now, where was I? Oh yes, now I remember.’ And I exploded several more flagstones in the general vicinity of Chamdar’s feet.

He began hopping around wildly. ‘There you are, Sally,’ I drawled. ‘Murgos do know how to dance. All you have to do is give them a bit of encouragement.’

‘Have you come here to kill me?’ Salmissra quavered.

‘Kill you? Good heavens no, Sally dear. You and I both know that isn’t what I’m going to do to you.’ I made only the slightest move with just one finger as I released my Will. What I was doing was only an illusion, after all, so I didn’t have to wave both arms when I did it. ‘Look in your mirror, Sally. That’s what I’m going to do to whichever Salmissra is unlucky enough to make me cross with her.’

Telling Salmissra – any Salmissra – to look in her mirror is almost like telling water to run downhill. She took one look at the large mirror beside her throne and screamed in absolute horror. Staring back at her with unblinking eyes and a flickering tongue was a very large, mottled snake. ‘No!’ the Serpent Queen shrieked, desperately feeling her face, her hair, and her body with violently trembling hands to assure herself that the hideous reflection wasn’t really what she looked like. ‘Make it go away!’ she squealed.