David and Leigh Eddings – Belgarath the Sorcerer

ago,” Belzedar told him.

“If anything, the walls around their cities were higher–and

thicker.”

Beltira shrugged.

“What one man can build, another man can tear down.”

“Not when it’s raining spears and boulders and boiling oil, he

can’t,”

Beldin disagreed.

“I think we can count on the Angaraks to pull back behind those walls

when we go after them. They breed like rabbits, but they’re still

going to be outnumbered, so they won’t want to meet us in open country.

They’ll go into their cities, close the gates, and make us come to

them. That’s an excellent way for us to get a lot of people killed.

We’ve got to come up with some way to tear those walls down without

throwing half of mankind at them.”

“We could do it ourselves,” Belkira suggested.

“As I recall, you trans located a half acre or so of rocks when you

helped Belgarath build his tower.”

“Those were loose rocks, brother,” Beldin told him sourly, “and it was

all I could do to walk the next day. Belsambar says that the Angaraks

stick their walls together with mortar. We’d have to take them apart

stone by stone.”

“And they’d be rebuilding them as fast as we tore them down,”

Belmakor added. He looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling of

Belsambar’s tower where we’d gathered. Then, naturally, considering

the fact that it was Belmakor, he reverted to logic.

“First off, Beldin’s right. We can’t just swarm their cities under.

The casualties would be unacceptable.” He looked around at the rest of

us.

“Do we agree on that?”

We all nodded.

“Splendid,” he said dryly.

“Second, if we try to take down their walls with the Will and the Word,

we’ll exhaust ourselves and we won’t really accomplish all that

much.”

“What does that leave us?” Belzedar asked him crossly. I’d picked up

a few hints from the others that Belzedar and Belmakor had argued

extensively when they had reached the lands of the Tolnedrans.

Belzedar, as second disciple, had assumed that he was in charge.

Belmakor, borrowing my authority, had contested that, and Beldin had

backed him.

Belzedar was mightily offended, I guess, and he seemed to be looking

for some way to get back at Belmakor for what he felt to be his

humiliation.

“We can’t strike at Torak directly, you realize,” he went on.

“The only way we can hurt him enough to force him to give back the Orb

is to hurt his people, and we won’t be able to hurt them if they’re

hiding behind those walls.”

“The situation would seem to call for something mechanical then,

wouldn’t you say, old chap?” Belmakor responded in his most urbanely

offhand tone.

“Mechanical?” Belzedar looked baffled.

“Something that doesn’t bleed, old boy. Something that can reach out

from beyond the range of the Angarak spears and knock down those

walls.”

“There isn’t any such thing,” Belzedar scoffed.

“Not yet, old chap, not yet, but I rather think Beldin and I can come

up with something that’ll turn the trick.”

I’d like to set the record straight at this point. All manner of

people have tried to take credit for the invention of siege engines.

The Alorns claim it; the Arends claim it; and the Malloreans certainly

claim it; but let’s give credit where credit’s due. It was my

brothers, Belmakor and Beldin, who built the first ones.

This is not to say that all of their machines worked the way they were

supposed to. Their first catapult flew all to pieces the first time

they tried to shoot it, and their mobile battering ram was an absolute

disaster, since they couldn’t come up with a way to steer it. It

tended to wander away from its intended target and mindlessly bang on

unoffending trees–but I digress.

It was at that point in the discussion that our mystical brother,

Belsambar, suggested something so horrible that we were all taken

aback.

“Belmakor,” he said in that self-effacing tone of his, “do you think

you can really devise something that would throw things long

distances?”

“Of course, old boy,” Belmakor replied confidently.

“Why should we throw things at the walls, then? We have no quarrel

with the walls. Our quarrel’s with Torak. I’m an Angarak, and I know

the mind of Torak better than any of the rest of you. He encourages

his Grolims to sacrifice people because it’s a sign that they love him

more than they love their fellow man. The more the victim on the altar

suffers, the greater he views it as a demonstration of love for him.

It’s the specific, individualized pain of the sacrificial victim that

satisfies him. We can hurt him best if we make the pain general.”

“Exactly what did you have in mind, brother?” Belmakor asked him with

a puzzled look.

“Fire,” Belsambar told him with dreadful simplicity.

“Pitch burns, and so does naphtha. Why should we waste our time and

the lives of our soldiers attacking walls? Use your excellent engines

to loft liquid fire over the walls and into the cities. Trapped by

their own walls, the Angaraks will be burned alive, and there won’t be

any need for us even to enter their cities, will there?”

“Belsambar!” Beltira gasped.

“That’s horrible!”

“Yes,” Belsambar admitted, “but as I said, I know the mind of Torak.

He fears fire. The Gods can see the future, and Torak sees fire in

his.

Nothing we could do would cause him more pain. And isn’t that our

purpose?”

In the light of what happened later, Belsambar was totally correct,

though how he knew is beyond explanation. Torak did fear fire–and

with very good reason.

Although Belsambar’s suggestion was eminently practical, we all tried

to avoid it. Belmakor and Beldin went into an absolute frenzy of

creativity, and the twins no less so. They experimented with weather.

They spun hurricanes and tornadoes out of clear blue skies, hoping

thereby to blow down the Angarak cities and towns. I concentrated my

efforts on assorted illusions. I’d fill the streets of the walled

cities of Angarak with unimaginable horrors. I’d drive them out from

behind their walls before their mystical kinsman could roast them

alive.

Belzedar worked at least as hard as the rest of us. He seemed obsessed

with the Orb, and his labor on means to reclaim it was filled with a

kind of desperate frenzy. Through it all, Belsambar sat, patiently

waiting.

He seemed to know that once the fighting started, we’d return to his

hideous solution.

In addition to our own labors, we frequently traveled to the lands of

our allies to see what progress they were making. Always before, the

various cultures had been rather loose-knit, with no single individual

ruling any of the five proto-nations. The war with Torak changed all

that. Military organization is of necessity pyramidal, and the concept

of one leader commanding an entire race carried over into the various

societies after the war was over. In a way, I suppose you could give

Torak credit-or blame–for the idea of kings.

I guess that I’m the one who was ultimately responsible for the royal

house of the Alorns. By general consensus, my brothers and I had

continued to serve as liaisons between the various races, and we more

or less automatically assumed responsibility for the people of

whichever God we had personally invited to that conference in the Vale

after Torak stole the Orb. I think that my entire life has been shaped

by the fact that I had the misfortune to be saddled with the Alorns.

Our preparations for war took several years. The assorted histories of

the period tend to gloss over that fact. There were border clashes

with the Angaraks, of course, but no really significant battles.

Finally the Gods decided that their people were ready–if anybody in

those days actually could be called ready for war. The war against the

Angaraks was like no other war in human history in that our deployment

involved a general migration of the various races. The Gods were so

intimately involved with their people in those days that the notion of

leaving the women and children and old people behind while the men went

off to fight simply didn’t occur to them.

Mara and Issa took their Marags and Nyissans and started their trek

southeasterly into the lands of the Dals, even as the Tolnedrans and

Arends began their swing toward the west. The Alorns, however, didn’t

move. It was perhaps the only time I ever saw my Master truly vexed

about anything. He instructed me with uncharacteristic bluntness to go

north and find out what was holding them up.

So I went north again, and, as always by now, I didn’t go alone. I

don’t know that we’d ever actually discussed it, but the young she-wolf

had sort of expropriated me. Since she was along, I once again chose

the shape of a wolf for the journey. She approved of that, I suppose.