It grew darker. The tropical night was heavy, and the smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant water rolled in out of the trackless swamps. A vicious little insect crawled down inside his tunic and began to bite him somewhere between his shoulders where he could not reach.

There was absolutely no warning - no sound or lurch of the ship or any hint of danger. His arms were seized from behind and a wet cloth was pressed firmly over his mouth and nose. He tried to struggle, but the hands holding him were very strong. He tried to twist his head to get his face clear enough to shout for help. The cloth smelled strange - cloying, sickeningly sweet, thick somehow. He began to feel dizzy, and his struggles grew weaker. He made one last effort before the dizziness overcame him and he sank down into unconsciousness.

Chapter Twenty-seven

THEY WERE IN A LONG HALLWAY of some sort. Garion could see the flagstone floor quite clearly. Three men were carrying him face down, and his head bobbed and swung on his neck uncomfortably. His mouth was dry, and the thick, sweet smell that had impregnated the cloth they had crushed to his face lingered. He raised his head, trying to look around.

"He's awake," the man holding one of his arms said.

"Finally," one of the others muttered. "You held the cloth to his face too long, Issus."

"I know what I'm doing," the first one said.

"Put him down."

"Can you stand?" Issus asked Garion. His shaved head was stubbled, and he had a long scar running from his forehead to his chin directly through the puckered vacancy of an empty eye-socket. His belted robe was stained and spotted.

"Get up," Issus ordered in a hissing kind of voice. He nudged Garion with his foot. Garion struggled to rise. His knees were shaky, and he put his hand on the wall to steady himself. The stones were damp and covered with a kind of mold.

"Bring him," Issus told the others. They took Garion's arms and halfdragged, half-carried him down the damp passageway behind the oneeyed man. When they came out of the corridor, they were in a vaulted area that seemed not so much like a room but rather a large roofed place. Huge pillars, covered with carvings, supported the soaring ceiling, and small oil lamps hung on long chains from above or sat on little stone shelves on the pillars. There was a confused sense of movement as groups of men in varicolored robes drifted from place to place in a kind of langorous stupor.

"You," Issus snapped at a plump young man with dreamy eyes, "tell Sadi, the chief eunuch, that we have the boy."

"Tell him yourself," the young man said in a piping voice. "I don't take orders from your kind, Issus."

Issus slapped the plump young man sharply across the face.