‘All right,’ Garion said bleakly. He reasoned that attempting to edge into position inch by inch would not deceive the Sorceress of Darshiva as to his intent. Instead, quite calmly and deliberately, he simply stepped in front of the altar, drew his sword, and set its point on the floor of the grotto in front of him with his crossed hands resting on the pommel.

‘What art thou about?’ Zandramas demanded in a harsh, suspicious tone of voice.

‘You know exactly what I’m doing, Zandramas,’ Garion replied. ‘The two spirits have agreed to let Cyradis decide between them. I haven’t heard you agree yet. Do you still think you can avoid the Choice?’

Her light-speckled face twisted with hatred. ‘Thou will pay for this, Belgarion,’ she answered. ‘All that thou art and all that thou lovest will perish here.’

‘That’s for Cyradis to decide, not you. In the meantime, nobody’s going to touch the Sardion until after Cyradis makes her Choice.’

Zandramas ground her teeth in sudden, impotent fury.

And then Poledra came closer, her tawny hair stained by the light of the Sardion. ‘Very well done, young wolf,’ she said to Garion.

‘Thou no longer hast the power, Poledra,’ the strangely abstracted words came from Zandamas’ unmoving mouth.

‘Point,’ the familiar dry voice spoke through Poledra’s lips.

‘I perceive no point.’

‘That’s because you’ve always discarded your instruments when you were finished with them. Poledra was the Child of Light at Vo Mimbre. She was even able to defeat Torak there – if only temporarily. Once that power is bestowed, it can never be wholly taken away. Did not her control over the Demon Lord prove that to you?’

Garion was almost staggered by that. Poledra? The Child of Light during that dreadful battle five hundred years ago?

The voice went on. ‘Do you acknowledge the point?’ it asked its opposite.

‘What difference can it make? The game will be played out soon.’

‘I claim point. Our rules require that you acknowledge it.’

‘Very well. I acknowledge the point. You’ve really become quite childish about this, you know.’

‘A rule is a rule, and the game isn’t finished yet.’

Garion went back to watching Zandramas very closely so that he might meet any sudden move she made toward the Sardion.

‘When is the time, Cyradis?’ Belgarath quietly asked the Seeress of Kell.

‘Soon,’ she replied. ‘Very soon.’

‘We’re all here,’ Silk said, nervously looking up at the ceiling. ‘Why don’t we get on with it?’

‘This is the day, Kheldar,’ she said, ‘but it is not the instant. In the instant of the Choice, a great light shall appear, a light which even I will see.’

It was the strange detached calm which came over him that alerted Garion to the fact that the ultimate Event was about to take place. It was the same calm which had enveloped him in the ruins of Cthol Mishrak when he had met Torak.

Then, as if the thought of his name had aroused, if only briefly, the spirit of the One-Eyed God from its eternal slumber, Garion seemed to hear Torak’s dreadful voice intoning that prophetic passage from the last page of the Ashabine Oracles:

‘Know that we are brothers, Belgarion, though our hate for each other may one day sunder the heavens. We are brothers in that we share a dreadful task. That thou art reading my words means that thou hast been my destroyer. Thus must I charge thee with the task. What is foretold in these pages is an abomination. Do not let it come to pass. Destroy the world. Destroy the universe if need be, but do not permit this to come to pass. In thy hand is now the fate of all that was, all that is, and all that is yet to be. Hail, my hated brother, and farewell. We will meet – or have met – in the City of Endless Night, and there will our dispute be concluded. The task, however, still lieth before us in the Place Which Is No More. One of us must go there to face the ultimate horror. Should it be thou, fail us not. Failing all else, thou must reave the life from thine only son, even as thou hast reft mine from me.’

This time, however, the words of Torak did not fill Garion with weeping. They simply intensified his resolve as he finally began to understand. What Torak had seen in the vision which had come to Him at Ashaba had been so terrifying that in the moment of His awakening from His prophetic dream the maimed God had felt impelled to lay the possibility of the dreadful task upon his most hated foe. That momentary horror had surpassed even Torak’s towering pride. It had only been later, after the pride had reasserted itself, that Torak had mutilated the pages of his prophecy. In that one bleak moment of sanity, the maimed God had spoken truly for perhaps the one time in his life. Garion could only imagine the agony of self-abasement that single moment of truth had cost Torak. In the silence of his mind Garion pledged his fidelity to the task his most ancient foe had lain upon him. ‘I will do all that is in my power to keep this abomination from coming to pass, my brother,’ he threw out his thought to the spirit of Torak. ‘Return to thy rest, for here I take up the burden.’

The dusky red glow of the Sardion had muted the swirling lights in the flesh of Zandramas, and Garion could now see her features quite clearly. Her expression was troubled. She had quite obviously been unprepared for the sudden acquiescence of the spirit which dominated her. Her drive to win at any cost had been frustrated by the withdrawal of the support of that spirit. Her own mind – or what was left of it – still strove to evade facing the Choice. The two prophecies had agreed at the beginning of time to place the entire matter in the hands of the Seeress of Kell. The evasions, the trickery and the multitudinous atrocities that had marked the passage of the Child of Dark through the world had all come from the twisted Grolim perceptions of the Sorceress of Darshiva herself. At this moment, Zandramas was more dangerous that she had ever been.

‘Well, Zandramas,’ Poledra said, ‘and is this the time thou hast chosen for our meeting? Shall we destroy each other now when we have come so close to the ultimate instant? If thou but await the Choice of Cyradis, thou wilt stand an even chance of obtaining that which thou hast so desperately sought. If thou shouldst confront me however, thou wilt cast the entire matter into the lap of pure chance. Wilt thou throw away thy half-chance of success in exchange for an absolute uncertainty?’

‘I am stronger than thou art, Poledra,’ Zandramas declared defiantly. ‘I am the Child of Dark.’