The Rivan Codex

by David Eddings

  The military victory in Karanda proved to be not only over the Karandese but in some measure over the Grolims as well. The army established puppet-governments in each of the seven kingdoms of Karanda and maintained only a token force in each capital. The Grolims, however, were compelled to be widely dispersed in their ecclesiastical duties in the Karandese kingdoms, and the power of the priesthood was greatly diminished.

  In the typical Angarak view, the subject kingdoms of Karanda and their inhabitants were never in a position of equality with Angaraks. Both theologically and politically, the Karandese were always considered second-class citizens, and this general conception of them prevailed until the final ascendancy of the Melcene bureaucracy near the end of the fourth millennium.

  The first encounters between the Angaraks and the Melcenes proved to be disastrous. Since the Angarak peoples prior to that time had domesticated only the dog, the sheep, the cow, and the common housecat, their first encounter with mounted forces sent them fleeing in terror. To make matters even more serious, the sophisticated Melcenes utilized the horse not merely as a mount for cavalry troops but also as a means of drawing their war chariots. A Melcene war-chariot, with sickle-like blades attached to its spinning wheels, could quite literally carve avenues through tightly packed foot troops. Moreover, the Melcenes had also succeeded in domesticating the elephant, and the appearance of these vast beasts on the battlefield added to the Angarak rout. Had the Melcenes chosen to exploit their advantage and to pursue the fleeing Angaraks up the broad valley of the Magan, it is entirely possible that the course of history on the Mallorean continent might have been radically different. Unaccountably, however, the Melcene forces stopped their pursuit at the border between Delchin and Rengel, allowing the Angarak army to escape.

  The presence of a superior force to the southeast caused general consternation in Mal Zeth. Baffled by the failure of the Melcene Empire to pursue its advantage and more than a little afraid of their eastern neighbors, the Angarak generals made overtures of peace and were astonished when the Melcenes quickly agreed to normalize relations. Trade agreements were drawn up, and the Angarak traders were urged by the generals to devote all possible effort to the procurement of horses. Once again to the amazement of the generals, the Melcenes were quite willing to trade horses, though the prices were extremely high. The officials of the Empire, however, adamantly refused to even discuss the sale of elephants.

  Thwarted in their expansion to the east, the authorities at Mal Zeth turned their attention to the south and to Dalasia. The Dalasians proved to be easy pickings for the more advanced Angaraks. They were simple farmers and herdsmen with little skill for organization and even less for war. The Angaraks simply moved into Dalasia, expanded the somewhat rudimentary cities of the region and established military protectorates. The entire business took less than ten years.

  While the military was stunningly successful in the Dalasian protectorates, the Grolim priesthood immediately ran into difficulties. Dalasian society was profoundly mystical, and the most important people in it were the witches (of both genders) and the seers and prophets. Dalasian thought moved in strange, alien directions which the Grolims found difficult to counter. The simple Dalasians rather meekly accepted the forms of Angarak worship—in much the same manner as they scrupulously paid their taxes—but there was, nonetheless, a subtle resistance in their conversion. The power of the witches, seers and prophets remained unbroken, and the Grolims worried continually that the sheep-like behavior of the simple Dalasian peasantry masked something subtly more ominous. It seemed almost as if the Dalasians were amused by the increasingly shrill exhortations of the Grolims and that there lurked somewhere beneath the placid exterior an infinitely more profound and sophisticated religion quite beyond the power of the Grolims to comprehend. Moreover, despite rigorous efforts on the part of the Grolims to locate and destroy them, it appeared that copies of the infamous Mallorean Gospels still circulated in secret among the Dalasians.

  Had events given them time, perhaps, the Grolims might ultimately have succeeded in stamping out all traces of the secret Dalasian religion in the protectorates, but it was at about this time that a disaster occurred at Cthol Mishrak which was to change forever the complexion of Angarak life.

  Despite the most rigorous security measures imaginable, the legendary Belgarath the Sorcerer, in the company of Cherek Bear-shoulders, King of Aloria, and of Cherek’s three sons, came unobserved to the Holy City of Angarak and stole the Orb of Aldur from the iron tower of Torak in the very center of the City of Night. Although a pursuit was immediately mounted to apprehend the thieves, they were able, through some as yet undiscovered sorcery to utilize the Orb itself to make good their escape.

  The anger of the Dragon God of Angarak knew no bounds when it became evident that Belgarath and his accomplices had escaped with the Orb. In an outburst of rage, Torak destroyed Cthol Mishrak and immediately began a series of fundamental changes in the basic structure of the Angarak society which had dwelt in the city and the surrounding countryside. It appears that Torak suffered a peculiar blindness about the nature of human culture. To him people were only people, and he gave no consideration to distinctions of rank. Thus it was that as he ruthlessly divided the citizens of Cthol Mishrak into the three tribes which were to be forcibly migrated to the western continent to establish an Angarak foothold there, he utilized the most obvious distinctions between them as a means of effecting that division.

  Unfortunately, the most immediately discernible difference between men is one of class. The cultures which were exported to the west, therefore, were profoundly unnatural cultures, since the division along class lines absolutely disrupted anything resembling normal human society. Even the most cursory familiarity with the dialect which had evolved in Cthol Mishrak reveals the fundamental differences between the three western tribes. In that dialect the word ‘Murgo’ meant nobleman; the word ‘Thull’ meant serf or peasant; and the word ‘Nadrak’ meant tradesman. These, of course, were the names Torak assigned the three tribes before he sent them into the west. To insure their continuing enthusiasm for the tasks he had set them, moreover, he dispatched the Disciple Ctuchik, along with every third Grolim in all of Mallorea to accompany them on their migration. The abrupt decimation of Grolim ranks profoundly disrupted the power of the Church in ancient Mallorea and in the subject kingdoms to the east and marked yet another step toward the secularization of Mallorean society.

  The great trek across the land bridge to the western continent cost the western tribes of Angarak nearly a million lives, and the lands which awaited them were profoundly inhospitable. The Murgos (in keeping with their position as the aristocracy) took the lead in the march, and thus it is that their lands are most far removed from the natural causeway formed by the land bridge. The Thulls, still subservient to their former masters, followed closely behind. The Nadraks, on the other hand, seemed quite content to remain as far from Murgo domination as possible. It was, quite naturally, the Nadraks who most quickly adjusted to the new conditions in which they found themselves. A fundamentally middle-class society has little need for serfs and even less for overlords. Thullish society could function, albeit marginally. For the Murgos, however, the new situation was very nearly a disaster. Since they were aristocrats (i.e. the warrior class), their society was organized along military lines with position stemming in large measure from military rank. Moreover, their decisions were frequently based upon military considerations. Thus, their first major stopping point in their migration to the south was at Rak Goska. Rak Goska is admirably situated from a military standpoint. As a location for a functioning city, however, it is a catastrophe. The surrounding territory consists of the bleak, unfarmable wastes of Murgos, and all food, therefore, must be imported. To make matters even worse, Murgos make very poor farmers. At first, the Thulls were more than willing to supply the needs of their former masters, but as time and distance blurred the former ties between the two nations, the Thullish contr
ibutions to Murgo well-being diminished to a trickle. The starving Murgos responded with a series of punitive expeditions into Mishrak ac Thull until a stern command from Torak (issued by Ctuchik) halted that practice. The situation of the Murgos was rapidly growing desperate. It was at this point that they first encountered the oily Nyissan slave-traders. Nyissans had long conducted slave-raids into the southern reaches of the continent, which was inhabited by a simple, quite docile race of people apparently somewhat distantly related to the Dalasians of southwest Mallorea. The first purchase of a slave by a Murgo aristocrat forever established the pattern of Murgo society. The information gleaned from the Nyissans made them aware of the lands and peoples lying to the south and they immediately began their conquest of that region as part of their search for an uninterrupted food supply.

  Once the Murgos passed the desolate wastes of Goska, they found themselves in a fertile land of lakes, rivers and forests. They also found a ready supply of slaves. The native populations, viewed by the Murgos as little more than animals, were brutally rounded up and herded into huge encampments from which they were parceled out to work the farmlands in the emerging Murgo military districts. In typical Murgo fashion, the regions in the south were organized along military lines, and each district was administered by a general.

  A peculiarity of the Murgos has long been a singular lack of any sense of personal possession—particularly when dealing with land. A Murgo simply cannot conceive of the notion of personally owning land. The conquered territories of the south belonged, therefore, to Murgodom in general. A Murgo’s primary loyalty is to his immediate superior, and he does not want to own land, since the responsibility of ownership might divide that loyalty. Thus, Cthol Murgos is divided into military districts administered by army corps. Each corps (and ultimately the corps commander) has a specific geographic region of responsibility. The land is further subdivided into division areas, regimental areas, battalion areas and so on. Individual Murgo soldiers act primarily as overseers and slave-drivers. Murgo population centers thus more closely resemble military encampments than they do cities. Housing is assigned to individual soldiers on the basis of rank. While such a society seems bleak and repugnant to Westerners and Malloreans alike, one must nonetheless admire the Murgo tenacity and sense of self-sacrifice which makes it function.

  Since one of the primary concerns of an aristocratic class is the protection of bloodlines, and since Murgos live in what is quite literally a sea of slaves, Murgo society rigidly enforces separation between slave and master. Murgo women in particular are totally isolated from any possible contact with non-Angaraks, and this obsession with racial purity has quite literally imprisoned them within the confines of special ‘women’s quarters’ which lie at the center of every Murgo house. Any Murgo woman even suspected of ‘consorting’ with a non-Murgo is immediately put to death. Moreover, any Murgo male, regardless of rank, who is caught in delicate circumstances with a foreign woman suffers the same fate. These laws, since they have existed since the end of the second millennium, have guaranteed a remarkably pure strain. The Murgo of today is probably the only uncontaminated Angarak on the face of the globe. In time this obsessive concern with racial purity became viewed by Murgos as a quasi-religious obligation, and no attempt was ever made in the western hemisphere to convert non-Angaraks as became the practice in Mallorea.

  It was perhaps the Disciple Ctuchik who was ultimately responsible for giving an elemental class prejudice the force of religious sanction. Ctuchik, mindful of the deterioration of Church authority in Mallorea as a result of the growing secularization and cosmopolitanism of Mallorean society, issued his pronouncements on the subject from his theological capital at Rak Cthol in the wasteland of Murgos. He reasoned (probably correctly) that a society faced with both a legal and religious obligation to avoid contact with foreigners would not encounter those new ideas which so seriously undermine the power of the Church. There is, moreover, some evidence which suggests that Ctuchik’s decrees were in some measure dictated by the increasing friction between him and his two fellow Disciples, the newly converted Zedar, and Urvon. Urvon in particular had embraced the idea of converting non-Angaraks with great enthusiasm, reasoning that this could only increase the authority of the Church. Zedar, of course, was an enigma, and was soundly detested by Ctuchik and Urvon both. It was to counter Urvon, however, that Ctuchik strove to maintain Murgo purity. It is entirely possible that Ctuchik reasoned that following Torak’s ultimate victory, the maimed God would welcome the delivery of an absolutely pure Angarak strain to function as the ultimate overlords of a captive world.

  Whatever may have been Ctuchik’s ultimate motivation, Murgos and western Grolims vigorously contend that Mallorean cosmopolitanism is a form of heresy, and they customarily refer to Malloreans as ‘mongrels’. It is this attitude, more than anything else, which has led to the ages-old hatred existing between Murgo and Mallorean.

  Following the upheaval which accompanied the destruction of Cthol Mishrak, Torak himself became almost totally inaccessible to his people, concentrating instead upon various schemes to disrupt the growing power of the kingdoms of the West. The God’s absence gave the military time to fully exploit its now virtual total control of Mallorea and the subject kingdoms. One of the oddities of this period was the lack of a supreme commander at Mal Zeth. Although powerful men had dominated the high command from time to time, the authority of the military was normally dispersed among the senior generals, and this condition prevailed until very nearly the end of the fourth millennium. Now that their authority in ancient Mallorea, Karanda and Dalasia was firmly established, the High Command once again turned its attention to the problem of the Melcene Empire.

  As trade between the Melcenes and the Angaraks increased, so did Angarak knowledge about their eastern neighbors. The Melcenes had originally inhabited the islands off the east coast of the Mallorean Continent, and had, until the catastrophe caused by the separation of the two continents, been quite content to ignore their mainland cousins. The vast tidal waves (estimated to have been a hundred feet high) which swept across the oceans of the world during the readjustment of the two great land-masses, however, swallowed up more than half of their islands, leaving the survivors huddled fearfully together in the uplands. Their capital at Melcene itself had been a city in the mountains where affairs of state could be managed without the debilitating effects of the climate in the tropical lowlands. Following the catastrophe itself, however, Melcene was a shattered city, destroyed by earthquake and lying no more than a league from the new coast. After an intense period of rebuilding, it became abundantly clear that their tremendously shrunken homeland would no longer support a burgeoning population. With typical Melcene thoroughness, they attacked the problem from every possible angle. One thing was absolutely certain; they had to have more land. The Melcene mind is a peculiarly compartmentalized one, their answer to any problem is to immediately form a committee. The ‘newlands’ committee which was drawn up to present possible solutions to the Emperor arrived at its final proposal only after considering every possible alternative. They concluded that, since they could not make new land, they would be forced to either buy or take lands from someone else. Since southeastern Mallorea lay closest at hand and was populated by people of their own race, it was to that region that the Melcenes turned their attention. There were five rather primitive kingdoms in southeastern and east central Mallorea occupied by peoples of the same racial stock as the Melcenes themselves; Gandahar, Darshiva, Peldane, Cellanta, and Rengel. These kingdoms were overrun one by one by the Melcenes and were absorbed into their growing empire.

  The dominating force in the Melcene Empire was the bureaucracy. Unlike other governments of the time, which frequently operated on royal whim or upon the accumulation of personal power, the Melcene government was rigidly departmentalized. While there are obvious drawbacks to a bureaucratic form of government, such an approach to administration provides the advantages of continuity and of a c
lear-eyed pragmatism which is more concerned with finding the most practical way to getting a job done than with the whim, prejudice and egocentricity which so frequently mars more personal forms of government. The Melcene Bureaucracy in particular was practical almost to a fault. The concept of an ‘aristocracy of talent’ dominated Melcene thinking, and if one bureau chose to ignore a talented individual—of whatever background—another was almost certain to snap him up.

  Thus it was that the various departments of the Melcene government rushed into the newly-conquered mainland provinces to winnow through the population in search of genius. The ‘conquered’ people of Gandahar, Darshiva, Peldane, Cellanta and Rengel were thus absorbed directly into the mainstream of the life of the Empire. Always pragmatic, the Melcenes left the royal houses of the five mainland provinces in place, preferring to operate through established lines of authority rather than to set up new ones, and, although the title ‘king’ suffered reduction to the title ‘prince’, it was widely considered more prestigious to be a ‘prince of the Empire’ than a ‘king’ of some minor east-coast kingdom. Thus, the six principalities of the Melcene Empire flourished in a kind of brotherhood based on hard-headed practicality. The possession of talent in Melcena is a universal passport, and is considered more valuable than wealth or power.

  For the next 1800 years the Melcene Empire prospered, far removed from the theological and political squabbles of the western part of the continent. Melcene culture was secular, civilized and highly educated. Slavery was unknown, and trade with the Angaraks and their subject peoples in Karanda and Dalasia was extremely profitable. The old Imperial capital at Melcene became a major center of learning. Unfortunately, some of the thrust of Melcene scholarship turned toward the arcane. Their practice of Magic (the summoning of evil spirits) went far beyond the primitive mumbojumbo of the Morindim or the Karandese and began to delve into darker and more serious areas. They made considerable progress in witchcraft and necromancy. Their major area of concentration, however, lay in the field of alchemy. It is surprising to note that some Melcene alchemists were actually successful in converting base metals into gold—although the effort and expenditure involved made the process monumentally unprofitable. It was, however, a Melcene alchemist, Senji the Clubfooted, who inadvertently stumbled over the secret of the Will and the Word during one of his experiments. Senji, a 15th century practitioner at the University in the Imperial city was notorious for his ineptitude. To be quite frank about it, Senji’s experiments more often turned gold into lead than the reverse. In a fit of colossal frustration at the failure of his most recent experiment, Senji inadvertently converted a half-ton of brass plumbing into solid gold. An immediate debate arose among the Bureau of Currency, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of Sanitation, the faculty of the College of Alchemy and the faculty of the College of Comparative Theology about which organization should have control of Senji’s discovery. After about three hundred years of argumentation, it suddenly occurred to the disputants that Senji was not merely talented, but also appeared to be immortal. In the name of scientific experimentation, the varying Bureaus, Departments and faculties agreed that an effort should be made to have him assassinated.