The trees grew taller, then immense. Great, gnarled roots twisted up out of the ooze along the banks like grotesquely misshapen legs, and trunks vast as castles reached up into the steaming sky. Ropey vines undulated down from the limbs overhead, moving, seeming to writhe with a kind of vegetable will of their own in the breathless air. Shaggy tatters of grayish moss descended in hundred-foot-long streamers from the trees, and the river wound spitefully in great coils that made their journey ten times as long as it needed to be.

"Unpleasant sort of place," Hettar grumbled, dispiritedly looking out over the bow at the weedy surface of the river ahead. He had removed his horsehide jacket and linen undertunic, and his lean torso gleamed with sweat. Like most of them, he was covered with the angry welts of insect bites.

"My very thought," Mandorallen agreed.

One of the sailors shouted and jumped up, kicking at his oar-handle. Something long, slimy, and boneless had crawled unseen up his oar, seeking his flesh with an eyeless voracity.

"Leech," Durnik said with a shudder as the hideous thing dropped with a wet plop back into the stinking river. "I've never seen one so big. It must be a foot long or more."

"Probably not a good place for swimming," Hettar observed.

"I wasn't considering it," Durnik said.

"Good." Aunt Pol, wearing a light linen dress, came out of the cabin beneath the high stern where Greldik and Barak were taking turns at the tiller. She had been caring for Ce'Nedra, who had drooped and wilted like a flower in the brutal climate of the river.

"Can't you do something?" Garion demanded of her silently.

"About what?"

"All of this."He looked around helplessly.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Drive of the bugs, if nothing else."

"Why don't you do it yourself, Belgarion?"

He set his jaw. "No!" It was almost a silent shout.

"It isn't really very hard."

"No."

She shrugged and turned away, leaving him seething with frustration. It took them three more days to reach Sthiss Tor. The city was embraced in a wide coil of the river and was built of black stone. The houses and buildings were low and for the most part were windowless. In the center of the city a vast pile of a building rose with strangely shaped spires and domes and terraces, oddly alien-looking. Wharves and jetties poked out into the turbid river, and Greldik guided his ship toward one which was much larger than the rest. "We have to stop at customs," he explained.

"Inevitably," Durnik said.

The exchange at customs was brief. Captain Greldik announced that he was delivering the goods of Radek of Boktor to the Drasnian trade enclave. Then he handed a jingling purse to the shaven-headed customs official, and the ship was allowed to proceed without inspection.