guardtower. ‘Why don’t we go back a bit?’ he suggested. ‘Burnt-face has
changed a lot, but he’s still not equipped to deal with a secular
society. Back before the cracking of the world, he made all of the
decisions for the Angaraks. A good Angarak wouldn’t even scratch
his own backside without permission from Torak. Then, after he’d
cracked the world apart and the Master’s Orb had dissolved half
his face, Torak took all the old-style Angaraks to Cthol Mishrak and
left the generals at Mal Zeth and the Grolims at Mal Yaska to run the
rest of Angarak society. Over the centuries, the generals in particular
grew more and more secular. Then the Melcenes and their
bureaucrats joined the Angarak empire, and they buffed the raw edges off
the basic barbarism of the Angarak character. Mal Zeth became a
civilized city. It wasn’t Tol Honeth by any stretch of the imagination,
but it wasn’t Korim either.’
‘Was Korim really all that bad?’ I asked him.
,Probably worse, Pol,’ he replied. ‘Independent thought was
strictly prohibited. Torak did all the thinking, and the Grolims
gutted anybody who even suggested that the sun might come up
tomorrow morning. Anyway, Zedar had been with Torak at Ashaba
for all those centuries while old One-eye was busy having religious
experiences.’ Uncle paused. ‘I just had an interesting thought,’ he
mused. ‘When the spirit of prophecy hits someone, it seems to erase
his brain. Torak was probably on about the same mental level as
that idiot on the banks of the Mrin for all those years.’
,What’s that got to do with anything?’ father demanded.
Beldin shrugged and scratched at his stomach. ‘I just thought it
was interesting. Anyway, One-eye finally snapped out of his
brainless reverie and came out of Ashaba, darkening the sun in the
process, and he had no idea of what’d happened to his Angaraks. He’d
been isolated in his iron tower at Cthol Mishrak and even more
isolated at Ashaba. He’d been completely out of touch for forty-eight
centuries or so. He stopped by Mal Yaska on his way to the capital,
and that gave Urvon the opportunity to present him with a long
list of grievances. Right at the top of the list was the fact that the
generals at Mal Zeth were ignoring him, and Urvon can’t bear being
ignored. He advised his Master that the generals were all
unredeemed heretics. Since Urvon got to him first and talked very fast,
Torak left Mal Yaska absolutely convinced that Mal Zeth was a
hotbed of secular heresy, so he virtually depopulated the city when
he got there. Then he turned Urvon and his Grolims loose on the
rest of the continent, and the priesthood started settling old scores
with their gutting knives. The altars of Torak ran red for years.’
I shuddered.
‘It was probably Zedar who finally convinced Torak that
butchering your own army isn’t the best way to prepare for a foreign
war, so Burnt-face finally reined Urvon in. By then the Angaraks,
Melcenes, and Karands were all so terrified of the Grolims that
they’d march into fire if Urvon ordered them to. It was probably
the Most amazing regression in history. A whole civilization
collapsed back into the stone age in about ten years. Right now the
average Mallorean’s on a par with the Thulls. Urvon’s even gone
SO far as to make reading a crime – except for his Grolims, of course
but even the Grolim libraries have been purged of all secular
books. I’m waiting for him to outlaw the wheel.’
father’s expression grew horrified. ‘They’ve been burning books?’
he exclaimed.
‘Don’t tie your guts in a knot, Belgarath,’ uncle told him. ‘The
scholars at the university of Melcene carted off all their libraries and
hid them in places where the Grolims can’t find them, and if nothing
else, the Dals at Kell have probably got copies of every book that’s
ever been written, and the Grolims won’t go anywhere near Kell.
‘I’m not sure that I would either,’ father admitted. ‘The Dals are
a very unusual people.’
“‘Unusual” only begins to cover it,’ Beldin agreed. ‘Anyway, the
army that’s going to come out of Mallorea is going to have numbers
and not much else. Their brains have been erased.’
‘Those are the best kind of enemies,’ father almost gloated. ‘Give
me a stupid enemy every time.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’ Then uncle looked around. ‘Is there
anything to drink up here?’
‘Maybe you can have something with supper,’ I told him.
‘Why not before supper?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to spoil your appetite, uncle dear.’
Since the entire purpose of the impending Angarak invasion was
to regain the Orb, the Alorns were certain to bear the brunt of
that assault, and father and I had provided them with far more
information than we’d given the non-alorn rulers. When the Murgos
and Nadraks closed the caravan routes in the autumn of 4864,
however, the Tolnedrans in particular began to get wind of the fact that
something significant was afoot. To make matters even worse for
the merchant princes of Tol Honeth, Brand closed the port of Riva
that winter – ostensibly for renovations. At that point even a
simpleton would have realized that the alorns and Angaraks were clearing
things away in preparation for something fairly earth-shaking, and
Ran Borune IV was far from being a simpleton.
We all met again at Riva that winter to review our preparations,
and I suggested to father that courtesy, if nothing else, demanded
that we advise Ran Borune of the impending invasion. ‘If this is all
going to come to a climax in Arendia, father,’ I said, ‘we’re probably
going to need the Tolnedran legions, so let’s stay on the good side
of the emperor.’
Father grunted – he does that a lot – but he went on down to Tol
Honeth to speak with the youthful Ran Borune. While they were
talking, my sometimes bumbling father had a stroke of pure genius,
Rather than waste time and effort hammering at the unassailable
wall of Ran Borune’s scepticism about just how we were getting
this information, father blandly lied to him, handing all the credit”
to the Drasnian intelligence service. That’s been a very useful IUYO
over the centuries.
It was still too early for the Tolnedrans – or anybody else, for that
matter – to do anything definitive about the activities of the
Angaraks, but at least father’s warning ‘gave Ran Borune time to start
getting his legions into better physical condition. Once peace breaks
out, professional soldiers tend to become flabby in a very short
period of time. Regular exercise is time-consuming, and the soldiers
are preoccupied with more important things – such as drinking,
carousing, and chasing women who don’t really mind getting
caught.
Then in the early spring of the year 4865 – so early in fact that
the ice hadn’t yet broken up – the Malloreans began their westward
trek across that string of rocky islets between Mallorea and the
western continent. Some idiot who’d never actually seen those
islands had designated them as ‘the land bridge’. If I couldn’t build
a better bridge than that, I’d take up gardening instead.
I think we’ve all berated ourselves about our failure to reason out
what Torak would do when his army reached the barren land of
the Morindim lying to the north of Car og Nadrak. The Mrin assured
us that Torak had an appointment in Arendia, so we all assumed
that he’d march down the Nadrak coast to Mishrak ac Thull and
then turn west and cross Algaria to reach the lands of the Arends.
Torak himself was far too arrogant for subterfuge, so it was
probably Zedar who sent several regiments of red-tuniced Malloreans
to Thull Zelik with orders to wander about the streets to deceive
the ever-present Drasnian spies. The presence of those Malloreans
in Mishrak ac Thull reinforced our conviction that Torak would
march directly to the Eastern Escarpment to invade Algaria.
But he didn’t. He went through the forests of Car og Nadrak
instead and invaded Drasnia. To say that we were unprepared for
that would be the grossest of understatements. We’d assembled a
huge Alorn army on the eastern plains of Algaria to meet the
expected invasion, so we’d stripped Drasnia of most of its defenders.
we were badly out of position when Torak’s army of Malloreans,
Nadraks, Murgos, and Thulls swept out of the Nadrak forest onto
the mOors of eastern Drasnia. Torak immediately sent about half his
army to Drasnia’s southern frontier, effectively cutting off our efforts
to rush north to defend our Drasnian friends, and then the
DragonC-god’s forces began to methodically slaughter every Drasnian they
“could lay their hands on.
The carnage was dreadful. Such Drasnians as were not killed on
sight were turned over to the Grolims for the gruesome sacrificial
rites so dear to the heart of their insane God.