They were walking down a long, musty-smelling corridor.

"I absolutely hate this," Garion heard Silk murmur from behind him.

“It's going to be all right, Kheldar,” Velvet told the little man comfortingly. "I won't let anything happen to you."

Then the corridor opened out into a submerged grotto. The walls were rough, irregular, for this was not a construction but a natural cavern. Water oozed down a far wall to trickle endlessly with silvery note into a dark pool. The grotto had a faintly reptilian smell overlaid by the odor of long-dead meat, and the floor was littered with gnawed white bones. By some ironic twist, the lair of the Dragon God had become the lair of the dragon herself. No better guard had been necessary to protect this place.

On the near wall stood a massive throne carved from a single rock, and before the throne there was one of the now all-too-familiar altars. Lying on the center of that altar was an- oblong stone somewhat larger than a man's head. The stone glowed red, and its ugly light illuminated the grotto. Just to one side of the altar lay a human skeleton, its bony arm extended in a gesture of longing. Garion frowned. Some sacrifice to Torak, perhaps? Some victim of the dragon? Then he knew. It was the Melcene scholar who had stolen the Sardion from the university and fled with it to this place to lie here in unthinking adoration of the stone that had killed him.

Just over his shoulder, Garion heard a sudden animallike snarl coming from the Orb, and a similar sound came from the red stone, the Sardion, which lay on the altar. There was a confused babble of sound in a multitude of languages, some drawn, for all Garion knew, from the farthest reaches of the universe. Flickering streaks of blue shot up through the milky-red Sardion, and similarly, angry red bathed the Orb in undulant waves as all the conflicts of all the ages came together in this small, confined space.

"Control it, Garion!" Belgarath said sharply. "If you don't they'll destroy each other and the universe, as well!"

Garion reached back over his shoulder and placed his marked palm over the Orb, speaking silently to the vengeful stone. “Not yet," he said. "All in good time." He could not have explained why he had chosen those precise words. Grumbling almost like a petulant child, the Orb fell silent, and the Sardion also grudgingly broke off its snarl. The lights, however, continued to stain the surfaces of both stones.

“You were quite good back there,” the voice in Garion's mind congratulated him. “Our enemy is a bit off balance now. Don't get overconfident, though. We 're at a slight disadvantage here because the Spirit of the Child of Dark is very strong in this grotto. "

“Why didn't you tell me that before ?”