brother to return the Orb, pointing out to him that his Angaraks verged
on extinction and that without his children, Torak was nothing. The
Dragon God wouldn’t listen, however.
The ruggedness of the terrain on the eastern slopes of the mountains of
Korim had forced the Marags and Nyissans to make their approach from
the south. Had it not been for that, the disaster that followed would
have been far worse.
It was the prospect of losing all of his children that ultimately drove
the Dragon God over the line into madness. Faced with the choice of
either surrendering the Orb or losing all of his worshipers, Torak, to
put it bluntly, went crazy. The madness of man is bad enough, but the
madness of a God? Horrible!
Driven to desperation, my Master’s brother took that ultimate step that
only his madness would have suggested to him. He knew what would
happen. There is no way that he could not have known. Nonetheless,
faced with the extermination of all of Angarak, he raised the Orb. His
control of my Master’s Orb was tenuous at best, but he raised it all
the same.
And with it, he cracked the world.
The sound was like no sound I had ever heard before–or have heard
since. It was the sound of tearing rock. To this very day I still
start up from a sound sleep, sweating and trembling, as the memory of
that dreadful sound echoes down to me through five millennia.
The Melcenes, who are quite competent geologists, described what really
happened to the world when Torak broke it apart. My own studies
confirm their theories. The core of the world is still molten, and
that primeval proto continent which we all thought so firm, actually
floated on that seething underground sea of liquid rock, not unlike a
raft.
Torak used the Orb to break the strings that held the raft together. In
his desperation to save his Angaraks, he split the crust of that huge
landmass apart so that the rest of mankind could not complete the
destruction of his children. The crack he made was miles wide, and the
molten rock from far below began to spurt up through that awful
chasm.
In itself, that would have been catastrophic enough–but then the sea
poured into the newly created fissure. Believe me, you don’t want to
spill cold water on boiling rock!
The whole thing exploded!
I would not even venture to guess how many people died when that
happened–half of mankind at the very least, and probably far more. Had
the geography of eastern Korim been more gentle, in all probability the
Marags and Nyissans would have drowned or wound up living in Mallorea.
At any rate, the world we had known ended in that instant.
Torak paid a very dear price for what he had done, however. The Orb
was not at all happy to be used in the way he used it. Belsambar had
been right: Torak had seen fire in his future, and the Orb gave him
fire. As it happened, he raised the Orb with his left hand, and after
he cracked the world, he didn’t have a left hand any more. The Orb
burned it down to cinders. Then, as if to emphasize its discontent, it
boiled out his left eye and melted down the left side of his face just
for good measure. I was ten miles away when it happened, and I could
hear his shrieks as clearly as if he’d been standing next to me.
The really dreadful part of the whole business lies in the fact that,
unlike humans, the Gods don’t heal. We expect a few cuts, bruises, and
abrasions as we go through life; they don’t. Healing is built into us.
The Gods aren’t supposed to need it.
After he cracked the world, Torak definitely needed healing. It’s
entirely probable that he felt that first searing touch of fire from
the moment he cracked the world until that awful night some five
thousand years later when, stricken, he cried out to his mother.
The earth shrieked and groaned as the power of the Orb and the will of
Torak burst the plain asunder, and, with a roar like ten thousand
thunders, the sea rushed in to explode and seethe in a broad, foaming
band between us and the Children of the Dragon God. The cracked land
sank beneath our feet, and the mocking sea pursued us, swallowing the
plain and the villages and the cities that lay upon it. Then it was
that Gara, the village of my birth, was lost forever, and that fair,
sparkling river I so loved was drowned beneath the endlessly rolling
sea.
A great cry went up from the hosts of mankind, for indeed the lands of
most of them were swallowed up by the sea that Torak had let in.
“How remarkable,” the young she-wolf at my side observed.
“You say that overmuch,” I told her sharply, stung by my own griefs.
Her casual dismissal of the catastrophe we’d just witnessed seemed a
little understated and more than a little cold-blooded.
“Do you not find it remarkable?” she asked me quite calmly. How are
you going to argue with a wolf?
“I do,” I replied, “but one should not say that too often, lest one be
thought simple.” It was a spiteful thing to say, I’ll grant you, but
her calm indifference to the death of over half my species offended me.
Over the years I’ve come to realize that my helpless irritation with
her quirks is one of the keystones of our relationship.
She sniffed. That’s a maddening trait of hers.
“I will say as I wish to say,” she told me with that infuriating
superiority of all females.
“You need not listen if it does not please you, and if you choose to
think me simple, that is your concern–and your mistake.”
And now we were confounded. The broad sea stood between us and the
Angaraks, and Torak stood on one shore and we upon the other.
“What do we do, Master?” I demanded of Aldur.
“We can do nothing,” he replied.
“It is finished. The war is over.”
“Never!” Belar cried.
“My people are Alorns. I shall teach them the ways of the sea. If we
cannot come upon the traitor Torak by land, my Alorns shall build a
great fleet, and we shall come upon him by sea. The war is not done,
my brother. Torak hath smote thee, and he hath stolen away that which
was thine, and now he hath drowned this fair land in the death-cold
sea. Our homes and our fields and forests are no more. This I tell
thee, my beloved brother, and my words are true. Between Alorn and
Angarak there shall be endless war until the traitor Torak be punished
for his iniquities–yea, even if it prevail so until the end of days!”
Oh, Belar could be eloquent when he set his mind to it. He loved his
beer tankard and his adoring Alorn girls, but he’d set all that aside
for the chance to make a speech.
“Torak is punished, Belar,” my Master said to his enthusiastic younger
brother.
“He burns even now–and will burn forever. He hath raised the Orb
against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that.
Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It came to us in peace and love.
Now it hath been raised in hate and war. Torak hath betrayed it and
turned its gentle soul to stone. Now its heart shall be as ice and
iron-hard, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the Orb, but
small pleasure shall he find in the having. He may no longer touch it,
neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.”
My Master, you’ll note, was at least as eloquent as Belar.
“Nonetheless,” Belar replied,
“I will make war upon him until the Orb be returned to thee. To this I
pledge all of Aloria.”
“As thou wouldst have it, my brother,” Aldur said.
“Now, however, we must raise some barrier against this encroaching sea,
lest it swallow up all the dry land that is left to us. Join,
therefore, thy will with mine, and let us put limits upon this new
sea.”
Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods
differed from us. As I watched, Aldur and Belar joined their hands and
looked out over the broad plain and the approaching sea.
“Stay,” Belar said to the sea, raising one hand. His voice wasn’t
loud, but the sea heard him and stopped. It built up, angry and
tossing, behind the barrier of that single word, and a great wind tore
at us.
“Rise up,” Aldur said just as softly to the earth. My mind was
staggered by the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly
wounded by Torak, groaned and heaved and swelled. And then, before my