brother Gods regarding the wayward Torak. when they came down,
their faces were solemn, and the other Gods departed without
speaking with us.
‘There will be war,’ our Master told us. ‘My brothers have gone to
gather their people. Mara and Issa will come upon Torak from the
south; Nedra and Chaldan shall con-,e upon him from the west; Belar
and I will come upon him from the north. We will lay waste his
people, the Angaraks, until he returns the Orb. It must be so.’
‘Then so be it,’ I said, speaking for us all.
And so we prepared for war. We were but seven, and feared that
our Master might be held in low regard when our tiny number was
revealed to the hosts of the other Gods, but it was not so. We labored
to create the great engines of war and to cast illusions which
confounded the minds of the Angarak peoples of the traitor, Torak.
And after a few battles did we and the hosts of the other peoples
harry Torak and his people out onto that vast plain beyond Korim,
which is no more.*
*’The high places of Korim, which are no more’ are visited at the end of the Malloreon.
This is misdirection from Belgarath.
And then it was that Torak, knowing that the hosts of his brother
Gods could destroy all of Angarak, raised up the jewel which my
Master had wrought, and with it he let in the sea.
The sound was one such as I had never heard before. The earth
shrieked and groaned as the power of the Orb and the win of Torak
cracked open the fair plain; and, with a roar like ten thousand
thunders, the sea came in to seethe in a broad, foaming band between us
and the Angaraks. How many perished in that sudden drowning no
one will ever know. The cracked land sank beneath our feet, and the
mocking sea pursued us, swallowing the plain and the villages and
the cities which lay upon it. Then it was that the village of my birth
was lost forever, and that fair, sparkling river drowned beneath the
endlessly rolling sea.
A great cry went up from the hosts of the other Gods, for indeed
the lands of most of them were swallowed up by the sea which
Torak had let in.
‘How remarkable,’ the young wolf at my side observed.
‘You say that overmuch,’ I told her, somewhat sharply.
‘Do you not find it so?’
‘I do,’ I said, ‘but one should not say it so often lest one be thought
simple.’
PREFACE
o’.
‘I win say as I wish to say,’ she told me. ‘You need not listen if it
does not please you; and if you think me simple, that is your
concern.’
Who can argue with a wolf? – and a she-wolf at that?
And now were we confounded. The broad sea stood between us
and the Angaraks, and Torak stood upon one shore and we upon the
other.
‘And what now, Master?’ I asked Aldur.
‘It is finished,’ he said. ‘The war is done.’
‘Never!’ said the young God Belar. ‘My people are Alorns. The
ways of the sea are not strange to them. If it be not possible to come
upon the traitor Torak by land, then my Alorns shall build a great
fleet, and we shall come upon him by sea. The war is not done. He
hath smote thee, my dear brother, and he hath stolen that which was
thine, and now hath he drowned this fair land in the death-cold sea
also. Our homes and our fields and forests are no more. This I say,
and my words are true, between Alorn and Angarak shall there be
endless war until the traitor Torak be punished for his iniquities
yea, even if it prevail so until the end of days.’
‘Torak is punished,’ my Master said quietly. ‘He hath raised the
Orb against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that. The
pain of that requiting shall endure in our brother Torak all the days
of his life. Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It hath been used to
commit a great evil, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the
Orb, but small pleasure will he find in the having. He may not touch
it, neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.’
‘Nonetheless,’ said Belar, ‘I will make war upon him until the Orb
be returned to thee. To this I pledge all of Aloria.’
‘As you would have it, my brother,’ said Aldur. ‘Now, however,
must we 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 do that which must be done.’
Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods
differed from men. 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. His voice was not loud, but the sea
heard hhnhim and stopped. It built up, angry and tossing, behind the
barrier of that single word.
‘Rise up,’ Aldur said as softly to the earth. My mind reeled as I
perceived the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly
wounded by the evil which Torak had done, groaned and heaved
and swelled; and, before my eyes, it rose up. Higher and higher it
rose as the rocks beneath cracked and shattered. Out of the plain
there shouldered up mountains which had not been there before,
and they shuddered away the loose earth as a dog shakes off water
and stood as a stem and eternal barrier against the sea which Torak
had let in.
Sullenly, the sea retreated.
‘How remarkable,’ the wolf said.
‘Truly,’ I could not but agree.
And the other Gods and their people came and beheld that which
my Master and his brother Belar had done, and they marveled at it.
‘Now is the time of sundering,’ my Master said. ‘The land which
was once so fair is no more. That which remains here is harsh and
will not support us. Take thou therefore, my brothers, each his own
people and journey even unto the west. Beyond the western
mountains lies a fair plain – not so broad perhaps nor so beautiful as that
which Torak hath drowned this day – but it will sustain thee and thy
people.’
‘And what of thou, my brother?’ asked Mara.
‘I shall return to my labors,’ said Aldur. ‘This day hath evil been
unleashed in the world, and its power is great. Care for thy people,
MY brothers, and sustain them. The evil hath come into the world as
a result of that which I have forged. Upon me, therefore, falls the
task of preparation for the day when good and evil shall meet in that
final battle wherein shall be decided the fate of the world.’
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‘So be it, then,’ said Mara. ‘Hail and farewell, my brother,’ and he
turned and the other Gods with him, and they went away toward
the west.
But the young God Belar lingered. ‘My oath and my pledge bind
me still,’ he told my Master. ‘I will take my AlomsAlorns to the north, and
there we will seek a way by which we may come again upon the
traitor Torak and his foul Angarak peoples. Thine Orb shall be returned
unto thee. I shall not rest until it be so.’ And then he turned and put
his face to the north, and his tall warriors followed after him.
That day marked a great change in our lives in the Vale. Until then
our days had been spent in learning and in labors of our own
choosing. Now, however, our Master set tasks for us. Most of them were
beyond our understanding, and no work is so tedious as to labor at
something without knowing the reason for it. Our Master shut
himself away in his tower, and often years passed without our
seeing him.
It was a time of great trial to us, and our spirits often sank.
One day, as I labored, the she-wolf, who always watched, moved
slightly or made some sound, and I stopped and looked at her. I
could not remember how long it had been since I had noticed her.
‘It must be tedious for you to simply sit and watch this way,’ I
said.
‘It’s not unpleasant,’ she said. ‘Now and then
you do something
curious or remarkable. There is entertainment enough for me here. I
will go along with you yet for a while longer.’
I smiled, and then a strange thing occurred to me. ‘How long has
it been since you and I first met?’ I asked her.
‘What is time to a wolf?’ she asked indifferently.
I consulted several documents and made a few calculations. ‘As