But even as the two monsters glared at each other, there seemed to be a kind of writhing struggle going on inside them. Their skins rippled, and large moving lumps appeared in odd places on their chests and sides. Garion had the peculiar feeling that there was something else - something quite different and perhaps even worse - trapped inside each apparition. Growling, the two devils advanced upon each other, but despite their apparent eagerness to fight, they seemed almost driven, whipped toward the struggle. It was as if there was a dreadful reluctance in them, and their grotesque faces jerked this way and that, each snarling first at his opponent and then at the magician who controlled him. That reluctance, Garion perceived, stemmed from something deep inside the nature of each Devil. It was the enslavement, the compulsion to do the bidding of another, that they hated. The chains of spell and incantation in which Belgarath and the white-braided Morind had bound them were an intolerable agony, and there were whimpers of that agony mingled with their snarls.

Belgarath was sweating. Droplets of perspiration trickled down his dark-stained face. The incantations which held the Devil Agrinja locked within the apparition he had created to bind it rippled endlessly from his tongue. The slightest faltering of either the words or the image he had formed in his mind would break his power over the beast he had summoned, and it would turn upon him.

Writhing like things attempting to tear themselves apart from within, Agrinja and Horja closed on each other, grappling, clawing, tearing out chunks of scaly flesh with their awful jaws. The earth shuddered beneath them as they fought.

Too stunned to even be afraid, Garion watched the savage struggle. As he watched, he noted a peculiar difference between the two apparitions. Agrinja was bleeding from his wounds - a strange, dark blood, so deep red as to be almost black. Horja, however, did not bleed. Chunks ripped from his arms and shoulders were like bits of wood. The whitebraided magician saw that difference as well, and his eyes grew suddenly afraid. His voice became shrill as he desperately cast incantations at Horja, struggling to keep the Devil under his control. The moving lumps beneath Horja's skin became larger, more agitated. The vast Devil broke free from Agrinja and stood, his chest heaving and a dreadful hope burning in his eyes.

White-braids was screaming now. The incantations tumbled from his mouth, faltering, stumbling. And then one unpronounceable formula tangled his tongue. Desperately he tried it again, and once again it stuck in his teeth.