"The task you both share here," Cyradis continued in an echoing choral voice, "is not to destroy each other, for should it come to pass that one of you destroyeth the other, your tasks will remain uncompleted, and I also will be unable to complete mine. Thus, all that is, all that was, and all that is yet to be will forever perish. Put up thy sword, Belgarion, and send away thy Grolims, Zandramas. Let us go even into the Place Which Is No More and make our choices. The universe grows weary of our delay.”

Regretfully, Garion sheathed his sword, but the Sorceress of Darshiva's eyes narrowed. “Kill her,” she commanded her Grolims in a chillingly flat voice. "Kill the blind Dalasian witch in the name of the new God of Angarak.”

The remaining Grolims, their faces filled with religious exaltation, started toward the foot of the stairs. Eriond sighed and resolutely stepped forward to place his body in front of that of Cyradis.

"That will not be necessary, Bearer of the Orb," Cyradis told him. She bowed her head slightly, and the choral voice swelled to a crescendo. The Grolims faltered, and then began to grope around, staring with unseeing eyes at the daylight around them.

"It's the enchantment again," Zakath whispered, "the same one that surrounded Kell. They're blind."

This time, however, what the Grolims saw in their blindness was not the vision of the Face of God that the gentle old priest of Torak they had met in the sheep camp above Kell had seen, but something altogether different. The enchantment, it appeared, could cut two ways. The Grolims cried out first in alarm, then in fright. Then their cries became screams, and they turned, stumbling over each other and even crawling on hands and knees to escape that which they saw. They scrambled blindly down to the water's edge, obviously bent on following the hulking Grolim into whose face Sadi had thrown that strange powder of his. They floundered out into the now gently rolling waves, and one by one stepped off into deep water.

A few could swim, but not very many. Those who could swam desperately out to sea and inevitable death. Those who could not sank beneath the surface, their imploring hands reaching upward even after their heads had gone under. Columns of bubbles rose to the top of the dark water for a few moments, and then they stopped.

The albatross, its great wings motionless, drifted over them for a moment and then returned to hover over the amphitheater.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"And now art thou, as thou hast ever chosen to be, alone, Child of Dark," Cyradis said sternly.

"The ones who were here with me were of no moment, Cyradis," Zandramas replied indifferently. "They have served their purpose, and I no longer need them."