Castle of Wizardry

to be deteriorating rapidly," Bank observed dryly to Anheg.
    "I noticed that," Anheg agreed.
    "I am the Rivan Queen!" Ce'Nedra shouted at her father.
    "You're a silly girl!" he shot back.
    "That does it, father," she declared, leaping to her feet. "You will deliver command of your legions to me at once, and then you'll return to Tol Honeth where your servants can wrap you in shawls and feed you gruel, since you're obviously too senile to be of any further use to me."
    "Senile?" the Emperor roared, also jumping up. "Get out of my sightl Take your stinking Alorn army out of Tolnedra at once, or I'll order my legions to throw you out."
    Ce'Nedra, however, was already storming toward the door of the tent.
    "You come back here!" he raged at her. "I haven't finished talking to you yet."
    "Yes you have, father," she shouted back. "Now I'm going to talk. Barak, I need that sack you have tied to your saddle." She rushed from the tent and climbed onto her horse, spluttering with apparent fury.
    "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Barak asked her as he tied the sack of Angarak coins to her saddle.
    "Perfectly," she replied in a calm voice.
    Barak's eyes narrowed as he looked at her. "You seem to have regained your temper in a remarkably short time."
    "I never lost it, Barak."
    "You were acting in there?"
    "Obviously. Well, at least partially. It will take my father an hour or so to regain his composure, and by then it will be too late. Tell Rhodar and the others to prepare the army to march. The legions will be joining us.
    "What makes you think that?"
    "I'm going to go fetch them right now." She turned to Mandorallen, who had just emerged from the tent. "Where have you been?" she asked. "Come along. I need an escort."
    "Where are we going, pray?" the knight asked.
    "You'll see," she told him, and she turned her mount and rode at a trot up the hillside toward the massed legions. Mandorallen exchanged a helpless look with Barak and then clanged into his saddle to follow.
    Ce'Nedra, riding ahead, carefully put her fingertips to her amulet. "Lady Polgara," she whispered, "can you hear me?" She wasn't certain that the amulet would work that way, but she had to try. "Lady Polgara," she whispered again, a bit more urgently.
    "What are you doing, Ce'Nedra?" Polgara's voice sounded quite clearly in the little queen's ears.
    "I'm going to talk to the legions," Ce'Nedra answered. "Can you fix it so they'll hear me?"
    "Yes, but the legions won't be much interested in a speech about patriotism."
    "I've got a different one," Ce'Nedra assured her.
    "Your father's having a fit in here. He's actually foaming at the mouth."
    Ce'Nedra sighed regretfully. "I know," she said. "It happens fairly often. Lord Morin has the medicine with him. Please try to keep him from biting his tongue."
    "You goaded him into this deliberately, didn't you, Ce'Nedra?"
    "I needed time to talk to the legions," the princess replied. "The fit won't really hurt him very much. He's had fits all his life. He'll have a nosebleed and a terrible headache when it's over. Please take care of him, Lady Polgara. I do love him, you know."
    "I'll see what I can do, but you and I are going to have a long talk about this, young lady. There are some things you just don't do."
    "I didn't have any choice, Lady Polgara. This is for Garion. Please do what you have to do so that the legions can hear me. It's awfully important."
    "All right, Ce'Nedra, but don't do anything foolish." Then the voice was gone.
    Ce'Nedra quickly scanned the standards drawn up before her, selected the familiar emblem of the Eighty-Third Legion, and rode toward it. It was necessary that she place herself in front of men who would recognize her and confirm her identity to the rest of her father's army. The Eighty-Third was primarily a ceremonial unit, and by tradition its barracks were inside the Imperial compound at Tol Honeth. It was a select group, still limited to the traditional thousand men, and it served primarily as a palace guard. Ce'Nedra knew every man in the Eighty-Third by sight, and most of them by name. Confidently, she approached them.
    "Colonel Albor," she courteously greeted the commander of the Eighty-Third, a stout man with a florid face and a touch of gray at his temples.
    "Your Highness," the colonel replied with a respectful inclination of his head. "We've missed you at the palace."
    Ce'Nedra knew that to be a lie. The duty of guarding her person had been one of the common stakes in