The burning red clouds overhead erupted with lightning as the hideously twinned beast came at them. "Spread out!" Garion shouted. "Silk! Tell them what to do!" He drew a deep breath as great bolts of lightning streaked down from the roiling red sky above to crash against the sides of the terraced pyramid with earth-shattering claps of thunder. "Let's go!" Garion cried to Zakath as he once more drew Iron-grip's sword. But then he paused, dumbfounded. Poledra, as calmly as she would if crossing a meadow, approached the awful monstrosity. "Thy Master is the Lord of Deception, Mordja," she said to the suddenly immobilized creature before her, "but it is time for deceit to end. Thou wilt speak only truth. What is thy purpose here? What is the purpose of all of thy kind in this place?"

The Demon Lord, frozen within the form of the dragon, snarled its hatred as it twisted and writhed, attempting to break free.

"Speak, Mordja," Poledra commanded. Did anyone have that kind of power?

"I will not." Mordja spat out the words.

“Thou wilt,” Garion's grandmother said in a dreadfully quiet voice.

Mordja shrieked then, a shriek of total agony.

"What is thy purpose?" Poledra insisted.

"I serve the King of Hell!” the demon cried.

"And what is the purpose of the King of Hell here?"

"He would possess the stones of power," Mordja howled.

"And why?"

"That he may break his chains, the chains in which accursed UL bound him long ere any of this was made."

"Wherefore hast thou then aided the Child of Dark, and wherefore didst thy foe Nahaz aid the Disciple of Torak? Didst not thy Master know that each of them sought to raise a God? A God which would even more securely bind him?"

"What they sought was of no moment," Mordja snarled. "Nahaz and I contended with each other, in truth, but our contention was not on behalf of mad Urvon or sluttish Zandramas. In the instant that either of them gained the Sardion would the King of Hell reach forth with my hands or with the hands of Nahaz and seize the stone. Then, using its power, would the one of us or the other wrest Cthrag Yaska from the Godslayer and deliver both stones to our Master. In the instant that he took up the two stones would he become the new God. His chains would break and he would contend with UL as an equal nay, an even mightier God, and all that is, was, or will be would be his and his alone."

"And what then was to be the fate of the Child of Dark or the Disciple of Torak?"

“They were to be our rewards. Even now doth Nahaz feed eternally upon mad Urvon in the darkest pit of Hell, even as I shall feed upon Zandramas. The ultimate reward of the King of Hell is eternal torment."