Queen of Sorcery

you!"
    Garion looked quickly over his shoulder. The first mud-man was reaching for him. He felt a cold grip about his ankle. The arm he had just severed had inched its way across the ground and grasped him.
    "Garion!" Barak's voice roared from a short distance off.
    "Over here!" Garion shouted. "Hurry!"
    There was a crashing in the bushes, and the great, red-bearded Cherek appeared, sword in hand, with Hettar and Mandorallen close behind. With a mighty swing, Barak cut off the head of the first mudman. It sailed through the air and landed with a sickening thump several yards away. The headless creature turned and groped blindly, trying to put its hands on its attacker. Barak paled visibly and then chopped away both outstretched arms. Still the thing shambled forward.
    "The legs," Garion said quickly. He bent and hacked at the clay hand about his ankle.
    Barak lopped off the mud-man's legs, and the thing fell. The dismembered pieces crawled toward him.
    Other mud-men had appeared, and Hettar and Mandorailen were laying about them with their swords, filling the air with chunks and pieces of living clay.
    Barak bent and ripped away the remaining arm which held Ce'Nedra.
    Then he jerked the girl to her feet and thrust her at Garion. "Get her back to the tents!" he ordered. "Where's Durnik?"
    "He stayed behind to hold them off," Garion said.
    "We'll go help him," Barak said. "Run!"
    Ce'Nedra was hysterical, and Garion had to drag her to the tents.
    "What is it?" Aunt Pol demanded.
    "Monsters out there in the woods," Garion said, pushing Ce'Nedra at her. "They're made out of mud, and you can't kill them. They've got Durnik." He dove into one of the tents and emerged a second later with his sword in his hand and fire in his brain.
    "Garion!" Aunt Pol shouted, trying to disentangle herself from the sobbing princess. "What are you doing?"
    "I've got to help Durnik," he said.
    "You stay where you are."
    "No!" he shouted. "Durnik's my friend." He dashed back toward the fight, brandishing his sword.
    "Garion! Come back here!"
    He ignored her and ran through the dark woods.
    The fray was raging about a hundred yards from the tents. Barak, Hettar and Mandorallen were systematically chopping the slime-covered mud-men into chunks, and Silk darted in and out of the melee, his short sword leaving great gaping holes in the thick, moss-covered monsters. Garion plunged into the fight, his ears ringing and a kind of desperate exultation surging through him.
    And then Mister Wolf and Aunt Pol were there with Ce'Nedra hovering ashen-faced and trembling behind them. Wolf's eyes blazed, and he seemed to tower over them all as he gathered his will. He thrust one hand forward, palm up. "Fire!" he commanded, and a sizzling bolt of lightning shot upward from his hand into the whirling clouds overhead. The earth trembled with the violence of the shattering thunderclap. Garion reeled at the force of the roaring in his mind.
    Aunt Pol raised her hand. "Water!" she said in a powerful voice. The clouds burst open, and rain fell so heavily that it seemed that the air itself had turned to water.
    The mud-men, still mindlessly stumbling forward, began to ooze and dissolve in the thundering downpour. With a kind of sick fascination, Garion watched them disintegrate into sodden lumps of slime and rotten vegetation, surging and heaving as the pounding rain destroyed them.
    Barak reached forward with his dripping sword and tentatively poked at the shapeless lump of clay that had been the head of one of their attackers. The lump broke apart, and a coiled snake unwound from its center. It raised itself as if to strike, and Barak chopped it in two.
    Other snakes began to appear as the mud which had encased them dissolved in the roaring deluge.
    "That one," Aunt Pol said, pointing at a dull green reptile struggling to free itself from the clay. "Fetch it for me, Garion."
    "Me?" Garion gasped, his flesh crawling.
    "I'll do it," Silk said. He picked up a forked stick and pinned the snake's head down with it. Then he carefully took hold of the wet skin at the back of the serpent's neck and lifted the twisting reptile.
    "Bring it here," Aunt Pol ordered, wiping the water from her face. Silk carried the snake to her and held it out. The forked tongue flickered nervously, and the dead eyes fixed on her.
    "What does this mean?" she demanded of the snake.
    The serpent hissed at her. Then in a voice that was a sibilant whisper it replied, "That, Polgara, is the affair of