Demon Lord of Karanda

Garion ducked quickly out from behind it and ran several yards up the ravine with Eriond on his heels.
    Then he turned and held up the sword.
    "Not yet," Eriond warned. "It hasn't seen us."
    There was an overpoweringly foul odor in the ravine, and then, as Garion's eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, he saw the demon outlined against the clouds rolling overhead. It was enormous, its shoulders blotting out half the sky. It had long, pointed ears like those of a vast cat, and its dreadful eyes burned with a green fire that cast a fitful glow across the floor of the ravine.
    It bellowed and reached toward Garion and Eriond with a great, scaly claw.
    "Now, Belgarion," Eriond said quite calmly.
    Garion lifted his arms, holding his sword directly in front of him with its point aimed at the sky, and then he released the curbs he had placed on the Orb.
    He was not in the least prepared for what happened. A huge noise shook the earth and echoed off nearby mountains, causing giant trees miles away to tremble.
    Not only did the great blade take fire, but the entire sky suddenly shimmered an intense sapphire blue as if it had been ignited. Blue flame shot from horizon to horizon, and the vast sound continued to shake the earth.
    The demon froze, its vast, tooth-studded muzzle turned upward to the blazing blue sky in terror. Grimly, Garion advanced on the thing, still holding his burning sword before him. The beast flinched back from him, trying to shield its face from the intense blue light. It screamed as if suddenly gripped by an intolerable agony. It stumbled back, falling and scrambling to its feet again. Then it took one more look at the blazing sky, turned, and fled howling back down the ravine with a peculiar loping motion as all four of its claws tore at the earth.
    "That is your idea of quiet?" Belgarath thundered from the cave mouth. "And what's all that?" He pointed a trembling finger at the still-illuminated sky.
    "It's really all right, Belgarath," Eriond told the infuriated old man. "You didn't want the sound to lead the Grolims to us, so we just made it general through the whole region. Nobody could have pinpointed its source."
    Belgarath blinked. Then he frowned for a moment.
    "What about all the light?" he asked in a more mollified tone of voice.
    "It's more or less the same with that," Eriond explained calmly. "If you've got a single blue fire in the mountains on a dark night, everybody can see it. If the whole sky catches on fire, though, nobody can really tell where it's coming from."
    "It does sort of make sense, Grandfather," Garion said.
    "Are they all right, father?" Polgara asked from behind the old man.
    "What could possibly have hurt them? Garion can level mountains with that sword of his. He very nearly did, as a matter of fact. The whole Karandese range rang like a bell." He looked up at the still-flickering sky. "Can you turn that off!" he asked.
    "Oh," Garion said. He reversed his sword and re-sheathed it in the scabbard strapped across his back. The fire in the sky died.
    "We really had to do it that way, Belgarath," Eriond continued. "We needed the light and the sound to frighten off the demon and we had to do it in such a way the Grolims couldn't follow it, so-" He spread both hands and shrugged.
    "Did you know about this?" Belgarath asked Garion.
    "Of course, Grandfather," Garion lied.
    Belgarath grunted. " All right. Come back inside," he said.
    Garion bent slightly toward Eriond's ear. "Why didn't you tell me what we were going to do?" he whispered.
    "There wasn't really time, Belgarion."
    "The next time we do something like that, take time. I almost dropped the sword when the ground started shaking under me."
    "That wouldn't have been a good idea at all."
    "I know."
    A fair number of rocks had been shaken from the ceiling of the cave and lay on the sandy floor. Dust hung thickly in the air.
    "What happened out there?" Silk demanded in a shaky voice.
    "Oh, not much," Garion replied in a deliberately casual voice. "We just chased it away, that's all."
    "There wasn't really any help for it, I guess," Belgarath said, "but just about everybody in Katakor knows that something's moving around in these mountains, so we're going to have to start being very careful."
    "How much farther is it to Ashaba?" Sadi asked him.
    "About a day's ride."
    "Will we make it in time?"
    "Only just. Let's all get some sleep."
    Garion had the same dream again that night. He was not really sure that it was a dream,