"Don't weaken!" Aunt Pol's voice told him. "Keep your will on him!" Garion stood over the blazing Grolim. The wet leaves on the ground smoked and smoldered where Chamdar thrashed and struggled with the fire that was consuming him. Flames were spurting from his chest, and his shrieks grew weaker. With an enormous effort, he struggled to his feet and held out his flaming hands imploringly to Garion. His face was gone, and greasy black smoke rolled off his body, drifting low to the ground. "Master," he croaked, "have mercy!"

Garion's heart wrenched with pity. All the years of that secret closeness between them pulled at him.

"No!" Aunt Pol's stern voice commanded. "He'll kill you if you release him!"

"I can't do it, " Garion said. "I'm going to stop it. " As once before, he began to gather his will, feeling it build in him like some vast tide of pity and compassion. He half reached toward Chamdar, focusing his thought on healing.

"Garion!" Aunt Pol's voice rang. "It was Chamdar who killed your parents!"

The thought forming in his mind froze.

"Chamdar killed Geran and Ildera. He burned them alive just as he's burning now. Avenge them, Garion! Keep the fire on him!"

All the rage and fury he had carried within him since Wolf had told him of the deaths of his parents flamed in his brain. The fire, which a moment before he had almost extinguished, was suddenly not enough. The hand he had begun to reach out in compassion stiffened. In terrible anger he raised it, palm out. A strange sensation tingled in that palm, and then his own hand burst into flames. There was no pain, not even a feeling of heat, as a bright blue fire burst from the mark on his hand and wreathed up through his fingers. The blue fire became brighter - so bright that he could not even look at it.

Even in the extremity of his mortal agony, Chamdar the Grolim recoiled from that blazing hand. With a hoarse, despairing cry he tried to cover his blackened face, staggered back a few steps, and then, like a burning house, he collapsed in upon himself and sank back to earth.

"It is done!" Aunt Pol's voice came again. "They are avenged!" And then her voice rang in the vaults of his mind with a soaring exultation. "Belgarion!" she sang. "My Belgarion!"

Ashen-faced Kador, trembling in every limb, backed in horror from the still-burning heap that had been Chamdar the Grolim. "Sorcery!" he gasped.

"Indeed," Aunt Pol said coolly. "I don't think you're ready for this kind of game yet, Kador."

The frightened legionnaires were also backing away, their eyes bulging at what they had just seen.

"I think the Emperor's going to take this whole affair rather seriously," Aunt Pol told them. "When he hears that you were going to kill his daughter, he'll probably take it personally."