King of The Murgos

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.
    "Must it be so, Master?" Polgara asked in a voice that clearly revealed her reluctance.
    "It must, my daughter," Aldur replied sadly.
    Polgara sighed. "Then so be it, Master." She extended her left hand, and the God enclosed it in his. The gathering-in of her will roared in Garion's mind like a tornado, and the force of it pushed against him with an awful power. Enclosed in blue light and linked by their touching hands, Polgara and Aldur stood side by side on the surface of the water, facing the hideous demon who still held the weakly struggling Chabat high in the air.
    "I abjure thee, creature of darkness," Polgara said in a great voice. "Return to the hell that spawned thee and never more corrupt this world by thy foul presence. Begone and take with thee the one who summoned thee." She raised her hand, and the force of her will, combined with the will of the God Aldur, blazed forth from her palm. There was a vast thunderclap as the demon suddenly exploded into a huge ball of fire with the waters of the harbor geysering up around it.
    Then he was gone, and with him disappeared the priestess.
    When Garion looked back, Aldur no longer stood at Polgara's side. She turned and slowly walked back across the waves toward the quay. As she approached, Garion clearly saw that her eyes were filled with anguish.

Part Three - THE ISLE OF VERKAT

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    The barren coast of the Urga peninsula slid by on their left the following morning as the Murgo scow beat steadily southward with a good following breeze. Cliffs rose sharply out of the crashing surf, and there was only the scantiest of vegetation to break the monotony of the desolation of rust-colored rock. The autumn sky was a deep, chill blue, but the sun stood far to the north, for winter came early to these extreme southern latitudes.
    Garion, as he always did when he was at sea, had risen at first light of day and gone up on deck. He stood at the rail amidships, half-bemused by the sparkle of the morning sun on the waves and by the steady creak and roll of the vessel under his feet.
    The slanting door that opened onto the short flight of steps