"Colorful," Sadi murmured, nervously passing his poisoned dagger from one hand to the other. He set his red leather case down and opened it. Then he took up the earthenware bottle, worked the stopper out, and laid it on its side. "There should be mice on this reef," he said, "or the eggs of seabirds. Zith and her babies will be all right.” Then he straightened, carefully putting a small bag he had taken from the case in the pocket of his tunic. "A little precaution," he whispered by way of explanation.

The fog now lay beneath them like a pearly gray ocean in the shadow of the pyramid. Garion heard a strange, melancholy cry and raised his eyes. The albatross hovered on motionless wings above the fog. Garion peered intently down into the obscuring mist, almost absently working the leather sleeve off me hilt of his sword. The Orb was glowing faintly, and its color was not blue, but an angry red, almost the color of the burning sky.

"That confirms it, Old Wolf," Poledra said to her husband. "The Sardion's in that cave."

Belgarath, silvery hair and beard glowing red in the light reflected from the clouds overhead, grunted.

The fog below began to swirl, its surface looking almost like an angry sea. It thinned even more. Garion could now see shadowy forms beneath them, hazy, indistinct, and uniformly dark. The fog was now no more man a faintly obscuring haze. "Holy Sorceress!" a Grolim voice exclaimed in alarm. "Look!"

A hooded figure in a shiny black satin robe spun about, and Garion looked full into the face of the Child of Dark. He had heard the lights beneath her skin described several times, but no description had prepared him for what he now saw. The lights in Zandramas' face were not stationary, but swirled restlessly beneath her skin. In the shadow of the ancient pyramid, her features were dark, nearly invisible, but the swirling lights made it appear, in the cryptic words of the Ashabine Oracles, as if "all the starry universe" were contained in her flesh. Behind him he heard the sharp hiss of Ce'Nedra's indrawn breath. He turned his head and saw his little queen, dagger in hand and eyes ablaze with hatred, starting toward the stairs leading down into the amphitheater. Polgara and Velvet, obviously aware of her desperate plan, quickly restrained and disarmed her.

Then Poledra stepped to the edge of the terrace. "And so it has come at last, Zandramas," she said in a clear voice.

"I was but waiting for thee to join thy friends, Poledra," the sorceress replied in a taunting tone. "I was concerned for thee, fearing that thou hadst lost thy way. Now it is complete, and we may proceed in orderly fashion."