‘And I was the Child of Light. How much art thou willing to gamble on the possibility that I can still call forth the strength and power? Wilt thou gamble all, Zandramas? All?’

Zandramas’ eyes narrowed, and Garion could clearly feel the clenching of her will. Then, with a blasting surge of energy and a vast roar, she released it. An aura of darkness suddenly surrounded her, and she seized Garion’s son and lifted him. ‘Thus will I conquer, Poledra!’ she hissed. She closed her hand about the struggling boy’s wrist and pushed his Orb-marked hand out in front of her. ‘In the instant the hand of Belgarion’s son touches the Sardion, I will triumph.’ Implacably, step by step, she started forward.

Garion raised his sword and leveled its point at her. ‘Push her back,’ he commanded the Orb. A bolt of intense blue light shot from the sword-point, but it divided as it struck that dark aura, encasing the shadow but in no way interfering with Zandramas’ advance. ‘Do something!’ Garion shouted silently.

‘I can’t interfere,’ the voice told him.

‘Is that really the best thou canst do, Zandramas?’ Poledra asked calmly. Garion had often heard that same note in Aunt Pol’s voice, but never with quite such indominable determination. Poledra raised her hand almost indifferently and released her will. The surge and the sound nearly buckled Garion’s knees. The aura of dark surrounding Zandramas and Geran vanished. The Sorceress of Darshiva, however, did not falter, but continued her slow advance. ‘Wilt thou kill thy son, Belgarion of Riva?’ she asked, ‘For thou canst not strike at me without destroying him.’

‘I can’t do it!’ Garion cried out, his eyes suddenly full of tears. ‘I can’t!’

‘You must. You’ve been warned that this might happen. If she succeeds and puts your son’s hand on the Sardion, he will be worse than dead. Do what must be done, Garion.’

Weeping uncontrollably, Garion raised his sword. Geran looked him steadily in the face, his eyes unafraid.

‘NO!’ It was Ce’Nedra. She dashed across the floor of the grotto and threw herself directly in front of Zandramas. Her face was deathly pale. ‘If you intend to kill my baby, you’ll have to kill me, too, Garion,’ she said in a broken voice. She turned her back on Garion and bowed her head.

‘So much the better,’ Zandramas gloated. ‘Wilt thou kill thy son and thy wife both, Belgarion of Riva? Wilt thou carry that with thee to thy grave?’

Garion’s face twisted in agony as he gripped the hilt of his sword more firmly. With one stroke, he would destroy his very life.

Zandramas, still holding Geran, stared at him incredulously. ‘Thou wilt not!’ she excaimed. ‘Thou canst not!’

Garion clenched his teeth and raised his sword even higher.

Zandramas’ incredulity suddenly turned to fright. Her advance stopped, and she began to shrink back from that awful stroke.

‘Now, Ce’Nedra!’ Polgara’s voice cracked like a whip.

The Rivan Queen, who had been coiled like a spring beneath her apparent mute submission to her fate, exploded. With a single leap, she snatched Geran from the arms of Zandramas and fled with him back to Polgara’s side.

Zandramas howled and tried to follow, her face filled with rage.

‘No, Zandramas,’ Poledra said. ‘If thou turnest away, I will kill thee – or Belgarion will. Thou hast inadvertently revealed thy decision. Thy choice hath been made, and thou art no longer the Child of Dark, but are only an ordinary Grolim priestess. There is no longer any need for thee here. Thou art free now to depart – or to die.’

Zandramas froze.

‘Thus all thy subterfuge and evasion have come to naught, Zandramas. Thou hast no longer any choice. Wilt thou now submit to the decision of the Seeress of Kell?’

Zandramas stared at her, the expression on her star-touched face a mixture of fear and towering hatred.

‘Well, Zandramas,’ Poledra said, ‘what is it to be? Wilt thou die this close to thy promised exaltation?’ Poledra’s golden eyes were penetrating as she looked into the face of the Grolim priestess. ‘Ah, no,’ she said quite calmly, ‘I perceive that thou wilt not. Thou canst not. But I would hear the words from thine own mouth, Zandramas. Wilt thou now accept the decision of Cyradis?’

Zandramas clenched her teeth. ‘I will,’ she grated.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE THUNDER STILL cracked and rumbled outside, and the wind accompanying the storm that had been brewing since the earth had been made moaned in the passageway leading into the grotto from the amphitheater outside. In an abstract sort of way as he resheathed his sword, Garion recognized precisely what his mind was doing. It had happened so often in the past that he wondered why he had not expected it. The circumstances required that he make a decision. The fact that he no longer even considered the decision, but concentrated instead on a meticulous examination of his surroundings, indicated that he had already made his choice somewhere so deep in his mind that it did not even register on the surface. There was, he conceded, a very good reason for what he was doing. Dwelling upon an impending crisis or confrontation would only rattle him, lead him into that distracting series of ‘what if’s’ and make him begin to have those second thoughts which could quite easily lock him into an agonized indecision. Right or wrong, the choice had been made now, and to continue to worry at it would serve no purpose. The choice, he knew, was based not only upon careful reasoning but also on deep feelings. He had that serene inner peace which flowed from the knowledge that the choice, whatever it was, was right. Calmly, he turned his attention to the grotto itself.

The stones of the walls appeared, though it was hard to be sure in the pervading red light of the Sardion, to be a kind of basalt which had fractured into a myriad of flat surfaces and sharp edges. The floor was peculiarly smooth, either as a result of eons of patiently eroding water or of a single thought of Torak during His sojourn in this cave while He had contended with and ultimately rejected UL, His father. The trickle of water into the pool on the far side of the grotto was something of a mystery. This was the highest peak of the reef. Water should run down from here, not up to the hidden spring in the wall. Beldin could probably explain it – or Durnik. Garion knew that he needed to be alert in this strange place, and he did not want to break his concentration by pondering the ins and outs of hydraulics.

And then, since it was the only source of light in this dim grotto, Garion’s almost indifferent eyes were drawn inevitably to the Sardion. It was not a pretty stone. It was streaked with pale orange and milky white in alternating stripes banded closely together, and it was now stained with the wavering blue light emanating from the Orb. It was as smooth and polished as the Orb. The Orb had been polished by the hand of Aldur, but who had polished the Sardion? Some God unknown? Some shaggy clan of the brutish precursors of man squatting in dull-eyed patience over the stone, devoting generation after generation to the single incomprehensible task of rubbing the orange and white surface smooth with calloused and broken-nailed hands that were more like paws than human appendages? Even such unthinking creatures would have felt the power of the stone, and, feeling it to be a God – or at the very least, some object descended from a God – might not their mindless polishing have been some obscure act of worship?