"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 superior to those howling barbarians, but when the generals got to the borders of the Melcene Empire, they ran head-on into elephant cavalry.
It was very messy, I'm told. The generals pulled back and swept down into Dalasia instead." He looked at Belmakor.
"I thought you said that the Dals had cities down there."
"They used to--at least they did the last time I was there."
"Well, there aren't any there now--except for Kell, of course. When the Angaraks moved in, there wasn't anything there but farming villages with mud-and-wattle huts."
"Why would they do that?" Belmakor asked in bafflement.
"They had beautiful cities. Tol Honeth looks like a slum by comparison."
"They had reasons," Aldur assured him.
"The destruction of their cities was likely a subterfuge to keep the Angaraks from realizing how sophisticated they really are."
"They didn't look all that sophisticated to me," Beldin said.
"They still plow their fields with sticks, and they've got almost as much spirit as sheep."
"Also a subterfuge, my son."
"The Angaraks didn't have any trouble converting them, Master. The idea of having a God after all these eons--even a God like Torak-brought them in by the thousands. Was that a pretense, too?"
Aldur nodded.
"The Dals will go to any lengths to conceal their real tasks from the unlearned."
"Did the generals ever try to go back into the Melcene Empire?"
Belmakor asked.
"Not after that first time, no," Beldin replied.
"Once you've seen a few battalions trampled by elephants, you start to get the picture. There's a bit of trade between the Angaraks and Melcenes, but that's about as far as their contacts go."
"You said you'd met Urvon," Belkira said.
"Was that in Cthol Mishrak or Mal Yaska?"
"Mal Yaska. I stay clear of Cthol Mishrak because of the Chandim."
"Who are the Chandim?" I asked him.
"They used to be Grolims. Now they're dogs--as big as horses. Some people call them "the Hounds of Torak." They patrol the area around Cthol Mishrak, sniffing out intruders. They'd have probably picked me out rather quickly. I was on the outskirts of Mal Yaska, and I happened to see a Grolim coming in from the east. I cut his throat, stole his robe, and slipped into the city. I was snooping around in the temple when Urvon surprised me. He knew right off that I wasn't a Grolim--recognizin' me unspeakable talent almost immediately, don't y' know." For some unaccountable reason he lapsed into a brogue that was common among Wacite serfs in northern Arendia. Maybe he did it because he knew it would irritate me, and Beldin never misses an opportunity to tweak my nose.
Never mind. It'd take far too long to explain.
"I was a bit startled by the man's appearance," my dwarfed brother continued.
"He's one of those splotchy people you see now and then.
Angaraks are an olive-skinned race--sort of like Tolnedrans are--but Urvon's got big patches of dead-white skin all over him. He looks like a piebald horse. He blustered at me a bit, threatening to call the guards, but I could almost smell the fear on him. Our training is much more extensive than the training Torak gave his disciples, and Urvon knew that I outweighed him--metaphorically speaking, of course. I didn't like him very much, so I overwhelmed him with my charm--and with the fact that I picked him up bodily and slammed him against the wall a few times. Then, while he was trying to get his breath, I told him that if he made a sound or even so much as moved, I'd yank out his guts with a white-hot hook. Then, to make my point, I showed him the hook."
"Where did you get the hook?" Beltira asked.
"Right here." Beldin held out his gnarled hand, snapped his fingers, and a glowing hook appeared in his fist.
"Isn't it lovely?" He shook his fingers and the hook disappeared.
"Urvon evidently believed me--although it's a bit hard to say for sure, since he fainted right there on the spot. I gave some thought to hanging him from the rafters on my hook, but I decided that I was there to observe, not to desecrate temples, so I left him sprawled on the floor and went back out into the countryside where the air was cleaner. Grolim temples have a peculiar stink about them." He paused and scratched vigorously at one armpit.
"I think I'd better stay out of Mallorea for a while. Urvon's got my description posted on every tree. The size of the reward he's offering is flattering, but I guess I'll let things cool down a bit before I go back."
"Good thinking," Belmakor murmured, and then he collapsed in helpless laughter.
My life changed rather profoundly a few weeks later. I was bent over my worktable when my companion swooped in through the window she'd finally convinced me to leave open for her, perched sedately on her favorite chair, and shimmered back into her prope
r wolf-shape.
"I think I will go away for a while," she announced.
"Oh?" I said cautiously.
She stared at me, her golden eyes unblinking.
"I think I would like to look at the world again."
"I see."
"The world has changed much, I think."
"It is possible."
"I might come back some day."
"I would hope so."
"Good-bye, then," she said, blurred into the form of an owl again, and with a single thrust of her great wings she was gone.
Her presence during those long years had been a trial to me sometimes, but I found that I missed her very much. I often turned to show her something, only to realize that she was no longer with me. I always felt strangely empty and sad when that happened. She'd been a part of my life for so long that it had seemed that she'd always be there.
Then, about a dozen years later, my Master summoned me and instructed me to go to the Far North to look in on the Morindim. Their practice of raising demons had always concerned him, and he very definitely didn't want them to get too proficient at it.
The Morindim were--still are, I guess--far more primitive than their cousins, the Karands. They both worship demons, but the Karands have evolved to the point where they're able to live in at least a semblance of a normal life. The Morindim can't--or won't. The clans and tribes of Karanda smooth over their differences for the common good, largely because the chieftains have more power than the magicians. The reverse is true among the Morindim, and each magician is a sublime egomaniac who views the very existence of other magicians as a personal insult. The Morindim live in nomadic, primitive tribalism, and the magicians keep their lives circumscribed by rituals and mystic visions. To put it bluntly, a Morind lives in more or less perpetual terror.
I journeyed through Aloria to the north range of mountains in what is now Gar og Nadrak. Belsambar had filled us all in on the customs of those savages after his long-ago survey of the area, so I knew more or less how to make myself look like a Morind. Since I wanted to discover what I could about their practice of raising demons, I decided that the most efficient way to do it was to apprentice myself to one of the magicians.
I paused long enough at the verge of their vast, marshy plain to disguise myself, darkening my skin and decorating it with imitation tattoos.
Then, after I'd garbed myself in furs and ornamented myself with feathers, I went looking for a magician.
I'd been careful to include quest-markings--the white fur headband and the red-painted spear with feathers dangling from it--as a part of my disguise, since the Morindim usually consider it unlucky to interfere with a quester. On one or two occasions, though, I had to fall back on my own particular form of magic to persuade the curious--or the belligerent--to leave me alone.
I happened across a likely teacher after about a week in those barren wastes. A quester is usually an aspiring magician anyway, and a burly fellow wearing a skull-surmounted headdress accosted me while I was crossing one of the innumerable streams that wander through that arctic waste.
"You wear the marks of a quester," he said in a challenging sort of way as the two of us stood hip deep in the middle of an icy stream.
"Yes," I replied in a resigned sort of way.
"I didn't ask for it. It just sort of came over me." Humility and reluctance are becoming traits in the young, I suppose.
"Tell me of your vision."
I rather quickly evaluated this big-shouldered, hairy, and somewhat odorous magician. There wasn't really all that much to evaluate.
"All in a dream," I said.
"I saw the king of Hell squatting on the coals of infernity, and he spoke to me and told me to go forth across the length and breadth of Morindicum and to seek out that which has always been hidden. This is my quest." It was pure gibberish, of course, but I think the word "infernity"--which I made up on the spur of the moment--got his attention.
I've always had this way with words.
"Should you survive this quest of yours, I will accept you as my apprentice--and my slave."
I've had better offers, but I decided not to negotiate. I was here to learn, not to correct bad manners.
"You seem reluctant," he observed.
"I'm not the wisest of men, Master," I confessed, "and I have little skill with magic. I would be more happy if this burden had been placed on another."
"It is yours to bear, however," he roared at me.
"Behold the gift that is mine to give." He quickly sizzled out a design on the top of the water with a burning forefinger, evidently not observing that the swift current of the stream carried it off before he'd even finished his drawing.
He raised a Demon Lord, one of the Disciples of the king of Hell.
Now that I think back on it, I believe it was Mordja. I met Mordja many years later, and he did look a bit familiar to me.
"What is this thou hast done?" Mordja demanded in that awful voice of his.
"I have summoned thee to obey me," my prospective tutor declared, ignoring the fact that his protective design was a half-mile downstream by now.
Mordja--if it was Mordja--laughed.
"Behold the face of the water, fool," he said.
"There is no longer protection for thee. And therefore--" He reached out one huge, scaly hand, picked up my prospective
"Master,"
and bit off his head.
"A bit thin," he observed, crushing the skull and brains with those awful teeth. He negligently tossed away the still-quivering carcass and turned those baleful eyes on me.
I left rather hurriedly at that point.
I eventually found a less demonstrative magician who was willing to take me on. He was very old, which was an advantage, since the apprentice to a magician is required to become his
"Master's" slave for life. He lived alone in a dome-shaped tent made of musk-ox hides on a gravel bar beside one of those streams. His tent was surrounded by a kitchen mid-den, since he had the habit of throwing his garbage out of the front door of his tent rather than burying it. The bar was backed by a thicket of stunted bushes that were enveloped by clouds of mosquitoes in the summertime.
He mumbled a lot and didn't make much sense, but I gathered that his clan had been exterminated in one of those wars that are always breaking out among the Morindim.
My contempt for "magic" as opposed to what we do dates from that period in my life. Magic involves a lot of meaningless mumbo-jumbo, cheap carnival tricks, and symbols drawn on the ground. None of that is really necessary, of course, but the Morindim believe that it is, and their belief makes it so.
My smelly old
"Master" started me out on imps--nasty little things about knee high. When I'd gotten that down pat, I moved up to fiends and then up again to afreets. After a half-dozen years or so, he finally decided that I was ready to try my hand on a full-grown demon. In a rather chillingly offhand manner, he advised me that I probably wouldn't survive my first attempt. After what had happened to my first
"Master," I had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about.
I went through all that nonsensical ritual and raised a demon. He wasn't a very big demon, but he was as much as I wanted to try to cope with. The whole secret to raising demons is to confine them in a shape of your imagining rather than their natural form. As long as you keep them locked into your conception of them, they have to obey you. If they manage to break loose and return to their real form, you're in trouble.
I rather strongly advise you not to try it.
Anyway, I managed to keep my medium-size demon under control so that he couldn't turn on me. I made him perform a few simple tricks--turning water into blood, setting fire to a rock, withering an acre or so of grass-you know the sort of tricks I'm talking about--and then, because I was getting very tired of hunting food, I sent him out with instructions to bring back a couple of musk-oxen. He scampered off, howling and growling, and came back a half-hour or so later with eno
ugh meat to feed my "Master" and me for a month. Then I sent him back to Hell.
I did thank him, though, which I think confused him more than just a little.
The old magician was very impressed, but he fell ill not long afterward.
I nursed him through his last illness as best I could and gave him a decent burial after he died. I decided at that point that I'd found out as much as we needed to know about the Morindim, and so I discarded my disguise and went back home again.
On my way back to the Vale I came across a fair-sized, neatly thatched cottage in a grove of giant trees near a small river. It was just on the northern edge of the Vale, and I'd passed that way many times over the years. I'll take an oath that the house had never been there before.
Moreover, to my own certain knowledge, there was not another human habitation within five hundred leagues, except for our towers in the Vale itself. I wondered who might have built a cottage in such a lonely place, so I went to the door to investigate these hardy pioneers.
There was only one occupant, though, a woman who seemed young, and yet perhaps not quite so young. Her hair was tawny and her eyes a curious golden color. Oddly, she didn't wear any shoes, and I noticed that she had pretty feet.
She stood in the doorway as I approached--almost as if she'd been expecting me. I introduced myself, advising her that we were neighbors-which didn't seem to impress her very much. I shrugged, thinking that she was probably one of those people who preferred to be alone. I was on the verge of bidding her good-bye when she invited me in for supper. It's the oddest thing. I hadn't been particularly hungry when I'd approached the cottage, but no sooner did she mention food than I found myself suddenly ravenous.
The inside of her cottage was neat and cheery, with all those little touches that immediately identify a house in which a woman lives as opposed to the cluttered shacks where men reside. It was quite a bit larger than the word "cottage" implies, and even though it was none of my business, I wondered why she needed so much room.
She had curtains at her windows--naturally--and earthenware jars filled with wildflowers on her windowsills and on the center of her glowing oak table. A fire burned merrily on her hearth, and a large kettle bubbled and hiccuped over it. Wondrous smells came from that kettle and from the loaves of freshly baked bread on the hearth.
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