"What's the point of that?" Silk asked him.

"You've heard of Urvon, haven't you?"

"The Disciple?"

"That's the one. He's been sitting for centuries in Mal Yaska, but what's been going on in this part of the world has finally lured him out. It's because of Zandramas, you see. She's a direct challenge to him. Anyway, he marched across Karanda gathering up an enormous army. The Karands even believe he has demons aiding him. That's nonsense, of course, but Karands will believe anything. That's why Zandramas—or her people—have to get control of the imperial throne. She needs to bring the Mallorean army back from Cthol Murgos to match Urvon's forces. Otherwise, he'll destroy everything she's worked for." The suddenly talkative bureaucrat sighed deeply, and his head began to nod.

"I think he'll sleep now," Sadi murmured to Belgarath.

"That's all right," the old man replied. "I've got what I need."

"Not quite yet," Polgara said crisply from her cook-fire. "There are some things that I need as well." She carefully stepped across the littered floor of the half-ruined house and lightly touched one hand to the dozing bureaucrat's face. His eyes opened, and he looked at her a bit blankly. "How much do you know about Zandramas?" she asked him. "I think I'd like to hear the full story—if you know it.

How did she gain so much power?"

"That's a long story, Lady."

"We have time."

The thin Melcene rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn. "Let me see," he said, half to himself, "where did it all start?" He sighed. "I came here to Peldane about twenty years ago. I was young and very enthusiastic. It was my first post, and I wanted very much to make good. Peldane's not such a bad place, really. We had Grolims here, naturally, but they were a long way from Urvon and Mal Yaska, and they didn't take their religion very seriously. Torak had been dormant for five hundred years, and Urvon wasn't interested in what was going on out here in the hinterlands.

"Over in Darshiva, though, things were different. There had been some kind of a schism in the Temple in Hemil, the capital, and it ended up in a bloodbath." He smiled faintly. "One of the few times Grolims have ever put their knives to good use, I suppose. The upshot of the affair was that a new archpriest gained control of the Temple—a man named Naradas."

"Yes," Polgara said. "We've heard of him."

"I've never actually seen him, but I'm told he has very strange eyes. Anyway, among his followers there was a young Grolim priestess named Zandramas. She must have been about sixteen then, and very beautiful, I've heard. Naradas reintroduced the old forms of worship, and the altar in the Temple at Hemil ran with blood." He shuddered. "It seems that the young priestess was the most enthusiastic participant in the Grolim rite of sacrifice—either out of an excess of fanaticism, or innate cruelty, or because she knew that this was the best way to attract the eye of the new archpriest. There are rumors that she attracted his eye in other ways as well. She'd unearthed a very obscure passage in the Book of Torak that seemed to say that the rite of sacrifice should be performed unclad. They say that Zandramas has a striking figure, and I guess the combination of blood and her nakedness completely inflamed Naradas. I've heard that things used to happen in the sanctum of the Temple during the rite that cannot be described in the presence of ladies."

"I think we can skip over that part, Nabros," Polgara told him primly, glancing at Eriond.

"Anyhow," Nabros continued, "all Grolims claim to be sorcerers, but from what I gather, the ones in Darshiva weren't very skilled. Naradas could manage a few things, but most of his followers resorted to charlatanism—sleight of hand and other forms of trickery, you understand.

"At any rate, not long after Naradas had consolidated his position, word reached us here that Torak had been killed. Naradas and his underlings went into absolute despair, but something rather profound seems to have happened to Zandramas. She walked out of the Temple at Hemil in a kind of a daze. My friend from the Bureau of Commerce was there at the time and he saw her. He said that her eyes were wide that she had an expression of inhuman ecstasy her face. When she reached the edge of the city, she took off her clothes and ran naked into the forest. We all assumed that she'd gone completely mad and that we'd seen the last of her.

"Once in a while, though, travelers would report having seen her in that wilderness near the border of Likandia. Sometimes, she'd run away from them, and other times, she'd stop them and speak to them in a language no one could understand. They listened, though—perhaps because she still hadn't managed to find any clothes.

"Then one day after a few years, she showed up at the gates of Hemil. She was wearing a black Grolim robe made of satin, and she seemed to be totally in control of herself. She went to the Temple and sought out Naradas. The arch-priest had given himself wholly over to the grossest kind of debauchery in his despair, but after he and Zandramas spoke together privately, he seems to have had a reconversion of some kind. Since that time, he's been the follower. He'll do anything Zandramas tells him to do.

"Zandramas spent a short time in the Temple, then she began to move about in Darshiva. At first she spoke only with Grolims, but in time she went out and talked with ordinary people as well. She always told them the same thing—that a new God of Angarak was coming. After a time, word of what she was doing got back to Mal Yaska, and Urvon sent some very powerful Grolims to Darshiva to stop her. I'm not sure what happened to her out there in that wilderness, but whatever it was seems to have filled her with enormous power. When Urvon's Grolims tried to stop her from preaching, she simply obliterated them."

"Obliterated?" Belgarath exclaimed in astonishment.

"That's about the only word I can use. Some of them she consumed with fire. Others were blasted to bits by bolts of lightning that shot down out of a cloudless sky. Once, she opened the earth, dropped five of them into a pit, and then closed the earth on them again. Urvon began to take her very seriously at that point, I guess. He sent more and more Grolims to Darshiva, but she destroyed them all. The Darshivan Grolims who chose to follow her were given real powers, so they didn't have to resort to trickery any more."

"And the ones who didn't?" Polgara asked.

"None of them survived. I understand that a few of them tried deception—pretending to accept her message—but I guess she could see right through them and took appropriate steps. It probably wasn't really necessary, though. She spoke as if inspired, and no one could resist her message. Before long, all of Darshiva—Grolims and secular people alike-groveled at her feet.