"Garion!" Aunt Pol shouted, trying to disentangle herself from the sobbing princess. "What are you doing?"

"I've got to help Durnik," he said.

"You stay where you are."

"No!" he shouted. "Durnik's my friend." He dashed back toward the fight, brandishing his sword.

"Garion! Come back here!"

He ignored her and ran through the dark woods.

The fray was raging about a hundred yards from the tents. Barak, Hettar and Mandorallen were systematically chopping the slime-covered mud-men into chunks, and Silk darted in and out of the melee, his short sword leaving great gaping holes in the thick, moss-covered monsters. Garion plunged into the fight, his ears ringing and a kind of desperate exultation surging through him.

And then Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol were there with Ce'Nedra hovering ashen-faced and trembling behind them. Wolf's eyes blazed, and he seemed to tower over them all as he gathered his will. He thrust one hand forward, palm up. "Fire!" he commanded, and a sizzling bolt of lightning shot upward from his hand into the whirling clouds overhead. The earth trembled with the violence of the shattering thunderclap. Garion reeled at the force of the roaring in his mind.

Aunt Pol raised her hand. "Water!" she said in a powerful voice. The clouds burst open, and rain fell so heavily that it seemed that the air itself had turned to water.

The mud-men, still mindlessly stumbling forward, began to ooze and dissolve in the thundering downpour. With a kind of sick fascination, Garion watched them disintegrate into sodden lumps of slime and rotten vegetation, surging and heaving as the pounding rain destroyed them.

Barak reached forward with his dripping sword and tentatively poked at the shapeless lump of clay that had been the head of one of their attackers. The lump broke apart, and a coiled snake unwound from its center. It raised itself as if to strike, and Barak chopped it in two.

Other snakes began to appear as the mud which had encased them dissolved in the roaring deluge.

"That one," Aunt Pol said, pointing at a dull green reptile struggling to free itself from the clay. "Fetch it for me, Garion."

"Me?" Garion gasped, his flesh crawling.

"I'll do it," Silk said. He picked up a forked stick and pinned the snake's head down with it. Then he carefully took hold of the wet skin at the back of the serpent's neck and lifted the twisting reptile.

"Bring it here," Aunt Pol ordered, wiping the water from her face. Silk carried the snake to her and held it out. The forked tongue flickered nervously, and the dead eyes fixed on her.

"What does this mean?" she demanded of the snake.

The serpent hissed at her. Then in a voice that was a sibilant whisper it replied, "That, Polgara, is the affair of my mistress."

Silk's face blanched as the dripping snake spoke, and he tightened his grip.

"I see," Aunt Pol said.

"Abandon this search," the snake hissed. "My mistress will allow you to go no further."

Aunt Pol laughed scornfully. "Allow?" she said. "Your mistress hasn't the power to allow me anything."

"My mistress is the queen of Nyissa," the snake said in its whispering hiss. "Her power there is absolute. The ways of the serpent are not the ways of men, and my mistress is queen of the serpents. You will enter Nyissa at your own peril. We are patient and not afraid. We will await you where you least expect us. Our sting is a small injury, scarce noted, but it is death."

"What's Salmissra's interest in this matter?" Aunt Pol asked.

The serpent's flickering tongue darted at her. "She has not chosen to reveal that to me, and it is not in my nature to be curious. I have delivered my message and already received my reward. Now do with me as you wish."

"Very well," Aunt Pol said. She looked coldly at the snake, her face streaming in the heavy rain.

"Shall I kill it?" Silk asked, his face set and his fingers white-knuckled from the strain of holding the thick-coiling reptile.

"No," she said quietly. "There's no point in destroying so excellent a messenger." She fixed the snake with a flinty look. "Return with these others to Salmissra," she said. "Tell her that if she interferes again, I'll come after her, and the deepest slime-pit in all Nyissa won't hide her from my fury."

"And my reward?" the snake asked.

"You have your life as a reward," she said.

"That's true," the serpent hissed. "I will deliver your message, Polgara."

"Put it down," Aunt Pol told Silk.

The small man bent and lowered his arm to the ground. The snake uncoiled from about his arm, and Silk released it and jumped back. The snake glanced once at him, then slithered away.

"I think that's enough rain, Pol," Wolf said, mopping at his face. Aunt Pol waved her hand almost negligently, and the rain stopped as if a bucket had emptied itself.

"We have to find Durnik," Barak reminded them.

"He was behind us." Garion pointed back up the now-overflowing stream. His chest felt constricted with a cold fear at what they might find, but he steeled himself and led the way back into the trees.

"The smith is a good companion," Mandorallen said. "I should not care to lose him." There was a strange, subdued quality in the knight's voice, and his face seemed abnormally pale in the dim light. The hand holding his great broadsword, however, was rock-steady. Only his eyes betrayed a kind of doubt Garion had never seen there before.

Water dripped around them as they walked through the sodden woods. "It was about here," Garion said, looking around. "I don't see any sign of him."

"I'm up here." Durnik's voice came from above them. He was a goodly distance up a large oak tree and was peering down. "Are they gone?" He carefully began climbing down the slippery tree trunk. "The rain came just in time," he said, jumping down the last few feet. "I was starting to have a little trouble keeping them out of the tree."

Quickly, without a word, Aunt Pol embraced the good man, and then, as if embarrassed by that sudden gesture, she began to scold him. Durnik endured her words patiently, and there was a strange expression on his face.

Chapter Twenty-one

GARION'S SLEEP THAT NIGHT WAS TROUBLED. He awoke frequently, shuddering at the remembered touch of the mud-men. But in time the night, as all nights must, came to an end, and the morning dawned clear and bright. He drowsed for a while, rolled in his blankets, until Ce'Nedra came to get him up."Garion," she said softly, touching his shoulder, "are you awake?" He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "Good morning."