Castle of Wizardry

behind her. King Anheg, the blood drained from his face, looked once through the door, then turned and ran.
    "Lady Polgara," Ce'Nedra remonstrated to the sorceress, trying not so much to reason with her as to minimize the destruction.
    Polgara shattered four priceless vases standing on the mantelpiece with four precisely separate explosions. Outside the window, the bright spring morning vanished as if the sun had suddenly been extinguished, and there was a sullen rumble of thunder that Ce'Nedra prayed devoutly was natural.
    "Whatever is the matter?" the princess asked, hoping to draw the enraged sorceress into explanation rather than more curses. It was the curses that had to be headed off. Polgara seemed to have a deep-seated need to emphasize her oaths with explosions.
    Polgara, however, did not reply. Instead she merely threw the parchment at Ce'Nedra, turned, and blew a marble statue into fine white gravel. Wild-eyed, she wheeled about, looking for something else to break, but there was very little left in the smoking room that she had not already reduced to rubble.
    "No!" Ce'Nedra cried out sharply as the raging woman's eyes fell on the exquisite crystal wren Garion had given her. The princess knew that Polgara valued the glass bird more than anything else she possessed, and she leaped forward to protect the delicate piece.
    "Get it," Polgara snarled at her from between clenched teeth. "Take it out of my sight." Her eyes burned with a terrible need to destroy something else. She spun and hurled the incandescent ball of fire she had wielded out through the shattered window. The explosion, when it burst in the suddenly murky air outside, was ghastly. With her fists clenched tightly at her sides, she raised her distorted face and began to curse again. From roiling black clouds that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, shattering bolts of lightning began to rain down on the island. No longer satisfied with localized destruction, Polgara expanded her rage to rake the Isle and the Sea of the Winds with sizzling fire and ear-splitting thunder. Then, with a dreadful intensity, she raised one fist and suddenly opened it. The downpour of rain she called was beyond belief. Her glittering eyes narrowed, and she raised her other fist. The rain instantly turned to hail-great, jagged chunks of ice that crashed and splintered against the rocks to fill the air with flying fragments and thick steam.
    Ce'Nedra caught up the wren, stooped to grab the rumpled piece of parchment from the floor, and then she fled.
    King Anheg poked his frightened face from around a corner. "Can't you stop her?" he demanded in a shaking voice.
    "Nothing can stop her, your Majesty."
    "Anheg! Get in here!" Polgara's voice rang above the thunder and the crashing deluge of hail that shook the Citadel.
    "Oh, Belar," King Anheg muttered devoutly, casting his eyes skyward even as he hurried toward Polgara's door.
    "Get word to Val Alorn immediately!" she commanded him. "My father, Silk, and Garion slipped out of the Citadel last night. Get your fleet out and bring them back! I don't care if you have to take the world apart stone by stone. Find them and bring them back!"
    "Polgara, I-" The King of Cherek faltered.
    "Don't stand there gaping like an idiot! Move!"
    Carefully, almost with a studied calm, the Princess Ce'Nedra handed the glass wren to her frightened maid. "Put this someplace safe," she said. Then she turned and went back to the center of the storm. "What was that you just said?" she asked Polgara in a level voice.
    "My idiot father, Garion, and that disgusting thief decided last night to go off on their own," Polgara replied in an icy voice made even more terrible by the superhuman control that held it in.
    "They did what?" Ce'Nedra asked flatly.
    "They left. They sneaked away during the night."
    "Then you must go after them."
    "I can't, Ce'Nedra." Polgara spoke as if explaining something to a child. "Someone has to stay here. There are too many things here that could go wrong. He knows that. He did it deliberately. He's trapped me here."
    "Garion?"
    "No, you silly girl! My father!" And Polgara began cursing again, each oath punctuated with a crash of thunder.
    Ce'Nedra, however, scarcely heard her. She looked around. There was really nothing left to break in here. "You'll excuse me, I hope," she said. Then she turned, went back to her own rooms, and began breaking everything she could lay her hands on, screeching all the while like a Camaar