“Garion!” Silk cried in alarm, “Stop her!”
But Garion had also seen the glowing circle Chabat had drawn on the wet stones and the burning five-pointed star she was inscribing in its center and he recognized the meaning of those symbols immediately. He took a half step toward Chabat, even as she stepped into the protection of the circle and began muttering words in some unknown language.
As fast as he was, however, Polgara was even faster. “Chabat!” she said sharply, “Stop! This is forbidden!”
“Nothing is forbidden to one who has the power,” the priestess replied, her scarred and beautiful face filled with an overwhelming pride, “and who here can prevent me?”
Polgara’s face grew grim, “I can,” she said calmly. She raised her hand in a curious lifting gesture, and Garion felt the surge of her will. The sullen swells washing against the stones of the quay slowly rose until they broke across the top to swirl about the ankles of those who stood there.
The burning symbols Chabat had marked on the stones vanished as the water washed over them.
The Grolim priestess drew in her breath sharply and stared at Aunt Pol, realization slowly dawning in her eyes. “Who are you?”
“One who would save your life, Chabat,” Polgara answered. “The punishment for raising demons has always been the same. You might succeed once or twice—or even a few more times—but in the end, the demon will turn on you and tear you to pieces. Not even Torak in all his twisted madness would have dared to step across this line.”
“But I do dare! Torak is dead, and Agachak is not here to prevent me. No one can stop me.”
“I can, Chabat,” Polgara said quietly. “I will not permit you to do this.”
“And how will you stop me? I have the power.”
“But mine is greater.” Polgara let her cloak fall to the stones at her feet, bent, and removed her shoes. “You may have been able to control your demon the first time you raised him,” she said, “but your control is only temporary. You are no more than the doorway through which he enters this world. As soon as he feels his full strength, he will destroy you and be loosed upon this world to raven as he chooses. I beg of you, my sister, do not do this. Your life— and your very soul—are in deadly peril.”
“I have no fear,” Chabat rasped. “Not of my demon and not of you.”
“Then you’re a fool—on both counts.”
“You challenge me?”
“If I must. Will you meet me on my own ground, Chabat?” Polgara’s blue eyes were suddenly like ice, and the white lock at her brow flamed incandescently as she gathered in her will. Once again she raised her hand and the lead-gray swells again raised obediently to the edge of the quay. With that same dreadful calm, she stepped out onto the surface of the water and stood there, as if what lay under her feet was firm earth. A sudden moan rose from the Grolims as she turned to look at the awe-stricken priestess. “Well, Chabat,” she said, “will you join me here? Can you join me?”
Chabat’s scarred face grew ashen, but her eyes clearly showed that she could not refuse Aunt Pol’s challenge. “I will,” she rasped through clenched teeth. Then she, too, stepped off the quay, but floundered awkwardly as she sank to the knees in the dirty waters of the harbor.
“Is it so very difficult for you, then?” Polgara asked her. “If this little thing take sail of your will, how do you imagine that you will have enough power to control a demon? Abandon this desperate plan, Chabat. There is still time to save your own life.”
“Never!” Chabat shrieked with flecks of froth coming to her lips. With an enormous effort, she lifted herself until she stood on the surface and laboriously strode out several yards. Then, with her face once again twisted into that overwhelming triumph, she drew the symbols on the face of the water, inscribing them with sooty orange flame. Her voice rose again in the evil incantation of the summoning, rising and falling in its hideous cadences. The red scars on her cheeks seemed to grow pale, then suddenly glowed with a burning white light as she continued to recite the spell.
“Kheldar, what’s happening?” Urgit’s voice was shrill as he stared at the impossibility that was occurring before his eyes.
“Something very unpleasant,” Silk told him.
Chabat’s voice had risen to a shriek, and the surface of the harbor suddenly erupted before her in a seething cauldron of steam and fire. Out of the midst of those flames there arose something so hideous that it was beyond comprehension. It was vast and clawed and fanged, but the worst of all were its red, glowing eyes.
“Kill her!” Chabat cried, pointing at Polgara with a trembling hand. “I command thee to kill this witch!”
The demon looked at the priestess standing safely within the flaming circle of her protective symbols and then, with the still-boiling water surging around his vast trunk, he turned and started toward Polgara. But, with her face still calm, she raised one hand. “Stop!” she commanded, and Garion felt the enormous jolting force of her will.
The demon suddenly howled, his fanged muzzle lifted toward the gray clouds in a sudden agony of frustration.
“I said kill her!” Chabat shrieked again.
The monster slowly sank into the water, extending his two huge arms just beneath the surface. He began to turn, rotating slowly in the seething water. Faster and faster he spun, with the water sizzling around him. A vortex began to appear around him as he whirled, a sudden maelstrom very nearly as dreadful as the Cherek Bore.
Chabat howled her triumph, dancing on the surface of the water in an obscene caper, unaware that the flames with which she had drawn her symbols had been suddenly whirled away by the surging vortex.
As the spinning waters reached the spot where Polgara stood, she began to be drawn toward the deadly whirlpool and the slavering demon still whirling in its center.
“Pol!” Durnik shouted. “Look out!”
But it was too late. Caught in that inexorable maelstrom, she was carried round and round, slowly at first but then foster and faster as she was pulled in long spirals toward the center. As she neared it, however, she once again raised her hand and very suddenly she disappeared beneath the surging surface.
“Pol!” Durnik shouted again, his face suddenly gone deathly white. Struggling to pull off his tunic, he ran toward the edge of the quay. Belgarath, however, his face grimly set, caught the smith’s arm. “Stay out of it, Durnik!” he snapped, his voice cracking like a whip.
Durnik struggled with him, trying to pull himself free. “Let me go!” he yelled.
“I said not to interfere!”
Beyond the edge of the demon-created vortex, a single rose bobbed to the surface. It was a curiously familiar flower, its petals white on the outside and a deep, blushing crimson in the center. Garion stared at it, a sudden wild hope springing up in him.
At the center of the swirling vortex, the monstrous demon suddenly stopped, his burning eyes filled with bafflement. Without any warning he rose, arched forward, and plunged headfirst into the seething water.
“Find her!” the flame-marked Chabat screamed after her enslaved fiend. “Find her and kill her!”
The leaden waters of the harbor boiled and steamed as the huge demon surged this way and that beneath the surface. Quite suddenly, the movement stopped, and the air and the water grew deadly calm.
Chabat, still standing on the water and with the glowing light still illuminating the cruel scars on her cheeks, lifted both arms above her head in a gesture of exaltation. “Die, witch!” she shouted. “Feel the fangs of my servant rend your flesh!”
Suddenly a monstrous, scaly claw came up out of the water directly in front of her. “No!” she shrieked, “you cannot!” Then she looked in horror at the water upon which she stood, realizing at last that her protective symbols had been swept away. She took a faltering step backward, but the huge hand closed on her, its needle-sharp claws biting deeply into her body. Her blood spurted, and she screamed in agony, writhing in that awful grasp.
Then, with a huge bellow, the demon rose from the depths with his great, fanged muzzle agape. He lifted the struggling priestess aloft with a howl of hellish triumph. The Grolims and the Murgo soldiers on the quay broke and fled in terror as the monster started toward them.
The single rose that had floated to the surface of the harbor, however, had begun to glow with a strange blue light. It seemed to grow larger as the glow intensified. Then, her face calm, Polgara appeared in the very center of that coruscating incandescence. A few feet to her left there also appeared a nimbus of flickering light. Before the stunned eyes of those on the quay, the nimbus suddenly coalesced, and there, standing beside Polgara, Garion saw the glowing form of the God Aldur.