were near the Ulgo frontier when the Algroths attacked.
Mandorin, the baron, was a Mimbrate to the core, and he and his vassals
were totally encased in armor, which protected them from the venomous
claws of the Algroths.
Mandorin shouted the alarm to his vassals, clapped down his visor, set
his lance, and charged.
Some traits breed very true.
Algroths’ courage is a reflection of the pack, not the individual, so
when Mandorin and his cohorts began killing Algroths, the courage of
the pack diminished. Finally they ran back into the forest.
Mandorin was grinning broadly when he raised his visor.
“A frolicsome encounter. Ancient Belgarath,” he said gaily.
“Their lack of spirit, however, hath deprived us of much
entertainment.”
Arends!
“You’d better pass along word of this incident, Mandorin,” I told
him.
“Let everybody in Arendia know that the monsters of Ulgoland are coming
down into this forest.”
“I shall advise all of Mimbre,” he promised.
“The safety of the Wacites and Asturians doth not concern me.”
“They’re your countrymen, Mandorin. That in itself should oblige you
to warn them.”
“They are mine enemies,” he said stubbornly.
“They’re still human. Decency alone should spur you to warn them, and
you are a decent man.”
That got his attention. His face was troubled for a moment or so, but
he finally came around.
“It shall be as you say, Ancient One,” he promised.
“It shall not truly be necessary, however.”
“Oh?”
“Once we have concluded our business with the Asturians, I shall
myself, with some few companions, mount an expedition into the
mountains of Ulgo. Methinks it will be no great chore to exterminate
these troublesome creatures.”
Mandorallen himself would not have said it any differently.
It was about fifteen hundred years after the cracking of the world when
Beldin came back from Mallorea to fill us in on Torak and his Angaraks.
Belmakor left his entertainments in Maragor to join us, but there was
still no sign of Belzedar. We gathered in the Master’s tower and took
our usual chairs. The fact that Belzedar’s chair was empty bothered us
all, I think.
“It was absolute chaos in Mallorea for a while,” Beldin reported.
“The Grolims from Mal Yaska were selecting their sacrificial victims
almost exclusively from the officer corps of the army, and the generals
were arresting and executing every Grolim they could lay their hands
on, charging them with all sorts of specious crimes. Finally Torak got
wind of it, and he put a stop to it.”
“Pity,” Belmakor murmured.
“What did he do?”
“He summoned the military high command and the Grolim hierarchy to
Cthol Mishrak and delivered an ultimatum. He told them that if they
didn’t stop their secret little war, they could all just jolly well
pick up and move to Cthol Mishrak where he could keep an eye on them.
That got their immediate attention. They could live in at least semi
autonomy in Mal Zeth and Mal Yaska, and the climate in those two cities
isn’t all that bad. Cthol Mishrak’s like a suburb of Hell. It’s on the
southern edge of an arctic swamp, and it’s so far north that the days
are only about two hours long in the wintertime–if you can call what
comes after dawn up there “day.” Torak’s put a perpetual cloud bank
over the place, so it never really gets light.
“Cthol Mishrak” means “the City of Endless Night,” and that comes
fairly close to describing it. The sun never touches the ground, so
the only thing that grows around there is fungus.”
Beltira shuddered.
“Why would he do that?” he asked, his expression baffled.
Beldin shrugged.
“Who knows why Torak does anything? He’s crazy.
Maybe he’s trying to hide his face. I think that what finally brought
the generals and the Grolims to heel, though, was the fact that the
disciple Ctuchik runs things in Cthol Mishrak. I’ve met Urvon, and he
can chill the blood of a snake just by looking at it. Ctuchik’s
reputed to be even worse.”
“Have you found out who the third disciple is yet?” I asked.
Beldin shook his head.
“Nobody’s willing to talk about him. I get the impression that he’s
not an Angarak.”
“That is very unlike my brother,” Aldur mused.
“Torak doth hold the other races of man in the profoundest of
contempt.”
“I could be wrong, Master,” Beldin admitted, “but the Angaraks
themselves seem to believe that he’s not one of them. Anyway, the
threat of being required to return to Cthol Mishrak brought out the
peaceful side of Urvon’s nature, and Urvon rules in Mal Yaska. He
started making peace overtures to the generals almost immediately.”
“Does Urvon really have that much autonomy?” Belkira asked.
“Up to a point, yes. Torak concentrates on the Orb and leaves the
administrative details to his disciples. Ctuchik’s absolute master in
Cthol Mishrak, and Urvon sits on a throne in Mal Yaska. He adores
being adored. The only other power center in Angarak Mallorea is Mal
Zeth.
Logic suggests that Torak’s third disciple is there–probably working
behind the scenes. Anyway, once Urvon and the generals declared peace
on each other, Torak told them to behave themselves and sent them
home.
They hammered out the details later. The Grolims have absolute sway in
Mal Yaska, and the generals in Mal Zeth. All the other towns and
districts are ruled jointly. Neither side likes it very much, but they
don’t have much choice.”
“Is that the way things stand right now?” Belkira asked.
“It’s moved on a bit from there. Once the generals got the Grolims out
of their hair, they were free to turn their attention to the
Karands.”
“Ugly brutes,” Belmakor observed.
“The first time I saw one, I couldn’t believe he was human.”
“They’ve been sort of humanized now,” Beldin told him.
“The Angaraks started having trouble with the Karands almost as soon as
they came up out of the Dalasian Mountains. The Karands have a sort of
loose confederation of seven kingdoms in the northeast quadrant of the
continent.
Torak’s new ocean did some radical things to the climate up there.
They’d been in the middle of an ice age in Karanda–lots of snow,
glaciers, and all that, but all the steam that came boiling out of the
crack in the world melted it off almost overnight. There used to be a
little stream called the Magan that meandered down out of the Karandese
Mountains in a generally southeasterly direction until it emptied out
into the ocean down in Gandahar. When the glaciers melted all at once,
it stopped being so gentle. It gouged a huge trench three-quarters of
the way across the continent. That sent the Karands off in search of
high ground. Unfortunately, the high ground they located just happened
to be in lands claimed by the Angaraks.”
“I wouldn’t call it all that unfortunate,” Belmakor said.
“If the Angaraks are busy with the Karands, they won’t come pestering
us.”
“The unfortunate part came later,” Beldin told him.
“As long as the generals were squabbling with the Grolims, they didn’t
have time to deal with the Karands. Once Torak settled that particular
problem, the generals moved their army up to the borders of the
Karandese Kingdom of Pallia, and then they invaded. The Karands were
no match for them, and they crushed Pallia in about a month. The
Grolims started sharpening their gutting knives, but the generals
wanted to leave Pallia intact-paying tribute, of course. They
suggested that the Karands in Pallia be converted to the worship of
Torak. That made the Grolims crazy. So far as they were concerned,
the other races of mankind were good only as slaves or sacrifices.
Anyway, to keep it short, Torak thought it over and eventually sided
with the military. Their solution gives him more worshipers, for one
thing, and it’ll give him a much bigger army just in case Belar ever
finds a way to lead his Alorns onto the Mallorean continent. Alorns
seem to make Torak nervous, for some reason.”
“You know,” Belmakor said, “they have the same effect on me.
Maybe it has something to do with their tendency to go berserk at the
slightest provocation.”
“Torak took the whole idea one step further,” Beldin went on.
“He wasn’t satisfied with just Pallia. He ordered the Grolims to go
out and convert all of Karanda.
“I will have them all,” he told the Grolims.
“Any man who live th in all of boundless Mallorea shall bow down to me,
and if any of ye shirk in this stern responsibility, ye shall feel my
displeasure most keenly.” That got the Grolims’ attention, and they
went out to convert the heathens.”
“This is troubling,” Aldur said.
“So long as my brother had only his Angaraks, we could easily match his
numbers. His decision to accept other races alters our
circumstances.”
“He’s not having all that much success. Master,” Beldin advised him.
“He succeeded in converting the Karands, largely because his army’s