The lone remaining fanatic stood in the doorway of the crude temple. He was much older than his companions, and his face had been tattooed into a grotesque mask. His only weapon was a skull-surmounted staff, and he was brandishing it at them even as he shrieked an incantation. His words broke off suddenly, however, as Velvet hurled one of her knives at him with a smooth underhand cast. The wizard gaped down in amazement at the hilt of her knife protruding from his chest. Then he slowly toppled over backward.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the groans of the two men Toth had crippled. And then a harsh scream came from the temple -a woman's scream.
Garion jumped from his saddle, stepped over the body in the doorway, and looked into the large, smoky room.
A half-naked woman lay on the crude altar against the far wall. She had been bound to it in a spread-eagle position and she was partially covered by a filthy blanket. Her features were distorted, and her belly grossly, impossibly distended. She screamed again and then spoke in gasps.
"Nahaz! Magrash Klat Grichak ! Nahaz!"
"I'll deal with this, Garion," Polgara said firmly from behind him. "Wait outside with the others."
"Were there any others in there?" Silk asked him as he came out.
"Just the woman. Aunt Pol's with her." Garion suddenly realized that he was shaking violently.
"What was that language she was speaking?" Sadi asked, carefully cleaning his poisoned dagger.
"The language of the demons," Belgarath replied."She was calling out to the father of her baby."
"Nahaz?" Garion asked, his voice startled.
"She thinks it was Nahaz," the old man said. "She could be wrong -or maybe not."
From inside the temple the woman screamed again.
"Is anybody hurt?" Durnik asked.
"They are," Silk replied, pointing at the fallen Karands. Then he squatted and repeatedly plunged his daggers into the dirt to cleanse the blood off them.
"Kheldar," Velvet said in a strangely weak voice," would you get my knife for me?"
Garion looked at her and saw that her face was pale and that her hands were trembling slightly. He realized then that this self-possessed young woman was perhaps not quite so ruthless as he had thought.
"Of course, Liselle," Silk replied in a neutral tone. The little man quite obviously also understood the cause of her distress. He rose, went to the doorway, and pulled the knife out of the wizard's chest. He wiped it carefully and returned it to her. "Why don't you go back and stay with Ce'Nedra?" he suggested. "We can clean up here."
"Thank you, Kheldar," she said, turned her horse, and rode out of the clearing.
"She's only a girl," Silk said to Garion in a defensive tone. "She is good, though," he added with a certain pride.
"Yes," Garion agreed. "Very good." He looked around at the twisted shapes lying in heaps in the clearing."Why don't we drag all these bodies over behind the temple?" he suggested. "This place is bad enough without all of this."
There was another scream from the temple.
Noon came and went unnoticed as Garion and the others endured the cries of the laboring woman. By midafternoon, the screams had grown much weaker, and as the sun was just going down, there came one dreadful last shriek that seemed to dwindle off into silence. No other sound came from inside, and after several minutes, Polgara came out. Her face was pale, and her hands and clothing were drenched with blood.
"Well, Pol?" Belgarath asked her.
"She died."
"And the demon?"
"Stillborn. Neither one of them survived the birth." She looked down at her clothing. "Durnik, please bring me a blanket and water to wash in."
"Of course, Pol." With her husband shielding her by holding up the blanket, Polgara deliberately removed all of her clothing, throwing each article through the temple doorway. Then she drew the blanket about her. "Now burn it," she said to them. "Burn it to the ground."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They crossed the border into Jenno about noon the following day, still following the trail of Zandramas.The experiences of the previous afternoon and evening had left them all subdued, and they rode on in silence.
A league or so past the rather indeterminate border, they pulled off to the side of the road to eat. The spring sunlight was very bright and the day pleasantly warm. Garion walked a little ways away from the others and reflectively watched a cloud of yellow-striped bees industriously working at a patch of wild flowers.
"Garion," Ce'Nedra said in a small voice, coming up behind him.
"Yes, Ce'Nedra?" He put his arm around her.
"What really happened back there?"
"You saw about as much of it as I did."
"That's not what I mean. What happened inside the temple? Did that poor woman and her baby really just die -or did Polgara kill them?"
"Ce'Nedra!"
"I have to know, Garion. She was so grim about it before she went inside that place. She was going to kill the baby. Then she came out and told us that the mother and baby had both died in the birth. Wasn't that very convenient?"
He drew in a deep breath. "Ce'Nedra, think back.You've known Aunt Pol for a long time now. Has she ever told you a lie -ever?"
"Well -sometimes she hasn't told me the whole truth. She's told me part of it and kept the rest a secret."
"That's not the same as lying, Ce'Nedra, and you know it."
"Well-"
"You're angry because she said we might have to kill that thing."
"Baby," she corrected firmly.
He took her by the shoulders and looked directly into her face. "No, Ce'Nedra. It was a thing -half human, half demon, and all monster."
"But it was so little -so helpless."
"How do you know that?"
"All babies are little when they're born."
"I don't think that one was. I saw the woman for just a minute before Aunt Pol told me to leave the temple. Do you remember how big you were just before Geran was born? Well, that woman's stomach was at least five times as big as yours was -and she wasn't a great deal taller than you are."
"You aren't serious!"
"Oh, yes, I am. There was no way that the demon could have been born without killing its mother. For all I know, it might just simply have clawed its way out."
"It's own mother?" she gasped.
"Did you think it would love its mother? Demons don't know how to love, Ce'Nedra. That's why they're demons. Fortunately the demon died. It's too bad that the woman had to die, too, but it was much too late to do anything for her by the time we got there."