And then she reached forward and placed the cloth-wrapped bundle which she had been concealing beneath her robe on the black altar. She raised her face and looked directly at the crack through which Garion was staring in frozen disbelief. “Behold thy son, Belgarion,” she called up to him, “and hear his crying!” She turned back the cloth to reveal the infant Geran. The baby’s face was contorted with fear, and he began to wail, a hopeless, lost sound.
All thought vanished from Garion’s mind. The wailing was the sound he had been hearing over and over again since he had left Mal Zeth. It was not the wail of that doomed child in those plague-stricken streets that had haunted his dreams. It was the voice of his own son!
Powerless to resist that wailing call, he leaped to his feet. It was as if there were suddenly sheets of flame before his eyes, flames that erased everything from his mind but the desperate need to go to the child wailing on the altar below.
He realized dimly that he was running through the shadowy, leaf-strewn halls, roaring insanely even as he ripped Iron-grip’s sword from its sheath.
The moldering doors of long-empty rooms flashed by as he ran full tilt along the deserted corridor. Dimly behind him, he heard Silk’s startled cry. “Garion! No!” Heedless, his brain afire, he ran on with the great Sword of Riva blazing in his hand before him as he went.
Even years later, he did not remember the stairs. Vaguely, he remembered emerging in the lower hall, raging.
There were Temple Guardsmen and Karands there, flinching before him and trying feebly to face him, but he seized the hilt of his sword in both hands and moved through them like a man reaping grain. They fell in showers of blood as he sheared his way through their ranks.
The great door to the dead God’s throne room was closed and jolted, but Garion did not even resort to sorcery. He simply destroyed the door—and those who were trying desperately to hold it closed—with his burning sword.
The fire of madness filled his eyes as he burst into the throne room, and he roared at the terrified men there, who gaped at the dreadful form of the Godslayer, advancing on them, enclosed in a nimbus of blue light. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a snarl, and his terrible sword, all ablaze, flickered back and forth before him like the shears of fate.
A Grolim jumped in front of him with one arm upraised as Garion gathered his will with an inrushing sound he scarcely heard. Garion did not stop, and the other Grolims in the throne room recoiled in horror as the point of his flaming sword came sliding out from between the rash priest’s shoulder blades. The mortally wounded Grolim stared at the sizzling blade sunk into his chest. He tried with shaking hands to clutch at the blade, but Garion kicked him off the sword and continued his grim advance.
A Karand with a skull-surmounted staff stood in his path, desperately muttering an incantation. His words cut off abruptly, however, as Garion’s sword passed through his throat.
“Behold the Godslayer, Urvon!” Zandramas exulted. “Thy life is at an end, God of Angarak, for Belgarion hath come to spill it out, even as he spilled out the life of Torak!” Then she turned her back on the cringing madman. “All hail the Child of Light!” she announced in ringing tones. She smiled her cruel smile at him. “Hail, Belgarion,” she taunted him. “Slay once again the God of Angarak, for that hath ever been thy task. I shall await thy coming in the Place Which Is No More.” And then she took up the wailing babe in her arms, covered it with her cloak again, shimmered, and vanished.
Garion was suddenly filled with chagrin as he realized that he had been cruelly duped. Zandramas had not actually been here with his son, and all his overpowering rage had been directed at an empty projection. Worse than that, he had been manipulated by the haunting nightmare of the wailing child which he now realized she had put into his mind to force him to respond to her taunting commands. He faltered then, his blade lowering and its fire waning.
“Kill him!” Harakan shouted. “Kill the one who slew Torak!”
“Kill him!” Urvon echoed in his insane shriek. “Kill him and offer his heart up to me in sacrifice!”
A half-dozen Temple Guardsmen began a cautious, clearly reluctant, advance. Garion raised his sword again; its light flared anew, and the Guardsmen jumped back.
Harakan sneered as he looked at the armored men.
“Behold the reward for cowardice,” he snapped. He extended one hand, muttered a single word, and one of the Guardsmen shrieked and fell writhing to the floor as his mail coat and helmet turned instantly white-hot, roasting him alive.
“Now obey me!” Harakan roared. “Kill him!”
The terrified Guardsmen attacked more fervently then, forcing Garion back step by step. Then he heard the sound of running feet in the corridor outside. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw the others come bursting into the throne room.
“Have you lost your mind?” Belgarath demanded angrily.
“I’ll explain later,” Garion told him, still half-sick with frustration and disappointment. He returned his attention to the armored men before him and began swinging his great sword in wide sweeps, driving them back again.
Belgarath faced the Chandim on one side of the central aisle, concentrated for an instant, then gestured shortly. Suddenly a raging fire erupted from the stones of the floor all along the aisle.
Something seemed to pass between the old man and Polgara. She nodded, and quite suddenly the other side of the aisle was also walled off by flame.
Two of the Guardsmen had fallen beneath Garion’s sword, but others, accompanied by wild-eyed Karands, were rushing to the aid of their comrades, though they flinched visibly from the flames on either side of the aisle up which they were forced to attack.
“Combine your wills!” Harakan was shouting to the Chandim. “Smother the flames!”
Even as he closed with the Guardsmen and the Karands, beating down their upraised swords and hacking at them with Iron-grip’s blade, Garion felt the rush and surge of combined will. Despite the efforts of Belgarath and Polgara, the fires on either side of the aisle flickered and grew low.
One of the huge Hounds came loping through the ranks of the Guardsmen facing Garion. Its eyes were ablaze, and its tooth-studded muzzle agape. It leaped directly at his face, snapping and growling horribly, but fell twitching and biting at the floor as he split its head with his sword.
And then Harakan thrust his way through the Guardsmen and Karands to confront Garion. “And so we meet again, Belgarion,” he snarled in an almost doglike voice. “Drop your sword, or I will slay your friends—and your wife. I have a hundred Chandim with me, and not even you are a match for so many.” And he began to draw in his will.
Then, to Garion’s amazement, Velvet ran forward past him, her arms stretched toward the dread Grolim. “Please!” she wailed. “Please don’t kill me!” And she threw herself at Harakan’s feet, clutching at his black robe imploringly as she cringed and groveled before him.
Thrown off balance by this sudden and unexpected display of submissiveness, Harakan let his will dissipate and he backed away, trying to shake her hand from his robe and kicking at her to free himself. But she clung to him, weeping and begging for her life.
“Get her off me!” he snapped at his men, turning his head slightly. And that briefest instant of inattention proved fatal. Velvet’s hand moved so quickly that it seemed to blur in the air. She dipped swiftly into her bodice; when her hand emerged, she held a small, bright-green snake.
“A present for you, Harakan!” she shouted triumphantly. “A present for the leader of the Bear-cult from Hunter!” And she threw Zith full into his face.
He screamed once the first time Zith bit him, and his hands came up to claw her away from his face, but the scream ended with a horrid gurgle, and his hands convulsed helplessly in the air in front of him. Squealing and jerking, he reeled backward as the irritated little reptile struck again and again. He stiffened and arched back across the altar, his feet scuffing and scrabbling on the floor and his arms flopping uselessly. He banged his head on the black stone, his eyes bulging and his swollen tongue protruding from his mouth. Then a dark froth came from his lips, he jerked several more times, and his body slid limply off the altar.