The agonized shriek was dreadful—all the more so because it was strangely human. The shaggy beast toppled backward, clutching at its maimed leg. Garion reversed his great sword, grasping the crosspiece of the hilt, bestrode the writhing body and raised the weapon, intending to drive the point full into the shaggy chest.

"Please!" it cried, its brutish face twisted in agony and terror. "Please don't kill me!"

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

It was a Grolim. The huge beast lying in the bloodstained snow blurred and changed even as Garion's friends moved m with their weapons ready to deliver the last fatal strokes.

"Wait!" Durnik said sharply. "It's a man!"

They stopped, staring at the dreadfully wounded priest lying in the snow.

Garion bleakly set the point of his sword under the Grolim's chin. He was terribly angry. "All right," he said in a cold voice, talk—and I think you'd better be very convincing. Who out you up to this?"

"It was Naradas," the Grolirn groaned, "archpriest of the temple at Hemil."

"The henchman of Zandramas?" Garion demanded. "The one with white eyes?"

"Yes. I was only doing what he commanded. Please don't kill me."

"Why did he tell you to attack us?"

"I was supposed to kill one of you."

"Which one?"

"He didn't care. He just said to make sure that one of you died."

"They're still playing that tired old game," Silk noted, sheathing his daggers.

"Grolims are so unimaginative."

Sadi looked inquiringly at Garion, holding up his slim little knife suggestively.

"No!" Eriond said sharply.

Garion hesitated. "He's right, Sadi," he said finally. "We can't just kill him in cold blood."

"Alorns." Sadi sighed, rolling his eyes up toward the clearing sky. "You do know, of course, that if we leave him here in this condition, he'll die anyway. And if we try to take him along, he'll delay us—not to mention the fact that he's hardly the sort to be trusted."

"Eriond," Garion said, "why don't you go get Aunt Pol? We'd better get those wounds of his tended before he bleeds to death." He looked at Belgarath, who had changed form again. "Any objections?" he asked.

"I didn't say anything."

"I appreciate that."

"You should have killed him before he changed form on you,'' a familiar harsh voice came from the thicket behind them. Beldin was sitting on a log, gnawing at something that was uncooked and still had a few feathers clinging to it.

"I suppose it didn't occur to you to give us a hand?" Belgarath asked acidly.

"You were doing all right." The dwarf shrugged. He belched and tossed the remains of his breakfast to the she-wolf.

"One is grateful," she said politely as her jaws crunched into the half-eaten carcass. Garion could not be sure that Beldin understood, though he guessed that the gnarled little man probably did.

"What's an Eldrak doing here in Mallorea?" Belgarath asked.