When they reached the foot of the stairs, scarcely any of Zandramas’ Grolims survived. With his usual prudence, Sadi darted around first one side of the stairway and then the other, cooly sinking his poisoned dagger into the bodies of those Grolims who had fallen to the amphitheater floor, the inert dead as well as the groaning injured.
Zandramas seemed somewhat taken aback by the sheer violence of her foes’ descent. She held her ground nonetheless, drawing herself up in scornful defiance. Standing behind her, his mouth agape with terror, stood a man in a cheap crown and somewhat shopworn regal robes. His features bore a faint resemblance to those of Zakath, so Garion assumed that he was the Archduke Otrath. And then at last, Garion beheld his own young son. He had avoided looking at the boy during the bloody descent, since he had been unsure of what his own reaction might have been at a time when his concentration was vital. As Beldin had said, Geran was no longer a baby. His blond curls gave his face a softness, but there was no softness in his eyes as he met his father’s gaze. Geran was quite obviously consumed with hatred for the woman who firmly held his arm in her grasp.
Gravely, Garion raised his sword to his visor in salute, and, just as gravely, Geran lifted his free hand in response.
Then the Rivan King began an implacable advance, pausing only long enough to kick an unattached Grolim head out of his way. The uncertainty he had felt back in Dal Perivor had vanished now. Zandramas stood no more than a few yards away, and the fact that she was a woman no longer mattered. He raised his flaming sword and continued his advance.
The flickering shadow along the periphery of his vision grew darker, and he hesitated as his sense of dread increased. Try though he might, he could not stifle it. He faltered.
The shadow, vague at first, began to coalesce into a hideous face that towered behind the black-robed sorceress. The eyes were soullessly blank, and the mouth gaped open in an expression of unspeakable loss as if the owner of the face had been plunged into a horror beyond imagining from a place of light and glory. That loss however, bespoke no compassion or gentleness, but rather expressed the implacable need of the hideous being to find others to share its misery.
‘Behold the King of Hell!’ Zandramas cried triumphantly. ‘Flee now and live a few moments longer ’ere he pulls you all down into eternal darkness, eternal flames, and eternal despair.’
Garion stopped. He could not advance on that ultimate horror.
And then a voice came to him out of his memories, and with the voice there came an image. He seemed to be standing in a damp clearing in a forest somewhere. A light, drizzling rain was falling from a heavy, nighttime sky, and the leaves underfoot were wet and soggy. Eriond, all unconcerned, was speaking to them. It had happened, Garion realized, just after their first encounter with Zandramas, who had assumed the shape of the dragon to attack them. ‘But the fire wasn’t real,’ the young man was explaining. ‘Didn’t you all know that?’ He looked slightly surprised at their failure to understand. ‘It was only an illusion. That’s all evil ever really is – an illusion. I’m sorry if any of you were worried, but I didn’t have time to explain.’
That was the key, Garion understood now. Hallucination was the product of derangement; illusion was not. He was not going mad. The face of the King of Hell was no more real than had been the illusion of Arell which Ce’Nedra had encountered in the forest below Kell. The only weapon the Child of Dark had to counter the Child of Light with was illusion, a subtle trickery directed at the mind. It was a powerful weapon, but very fragile. One ray of light could destroy it. He started forward again.
‘Garion!’ Silk cried.
‘Ignore the face,’ Garion told him. ‘It isn’t real. Zandramas is trying to frighten us into madness. The face isn’t there. It doesn’t even have as much substance as a shadow.’
Zandramas flinched, and the enormous face behind her wavered and vanished. Her eyes darted this way and that, lingering, Garion seemed to perceive, upon the portal leading into the cave. As surely as if he could see it, Garion knew that there was something in that cave – something which was Zandramas’ last line of defense. Then, seemingly all unconcerned by the obliteration of the weapon which had always served the Child of Dark so well, she made a quick gesture to her remaining Grolims.
‘No.’ It was the light, clear voice of the Seeress of Kell. ‘I cannot permit this. The issue must be decided by the Choice, not by senseless brawling. Put up thy sword, Belgarion of Riva, and withdraw thy minions, Zandramas of Darshiva.’
Garion found that the muscles of his legs had suddenly cramped, and that he could no longer move even one step. Painfully, he twisted around. He saw Cyradis descending the stairs, guided now by Eriond. Immediately behind her came Aunt Pol, Poledra, and the Rivan Queen.
‘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 Dalasion 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 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.