My enemies at this point are undoubtedly gloating over the fate which my frankness here must inevitably bring down upon my head. To immediately rob them of even that minuscule enjoyment, let me state here that it is my intention, when this loathsome chore is completed, to enter the Monastery at Mar-Terin and to pass my final years in peace and quiet with nothing but the shrieks of the spirit of Mara and the wails of the Marag ghosts to disturb my slumbers. From that sanctuary, beyond the reach of Imperial punishment or reward, I shall have that last and best laugh at the discomfort my words here shall cause those who have so cruelly betrayed me.
It is certainly fitting that those remarkable events of ten years ago be recorded by a competent scholar, but this present mass of gibberish is certainly not that record. Once I am safely within the sanctuary at Mar-Terin I shall undertake that study. Let the mighty tremble at that prospect. It is my intention to present those events precisely as they occurred. I will not genuflect before some high-sounding but empty concept of Borune dignity, nor will I quiver in awe at the mention of the name of the Rivan King. I know that Ran Borune XXIII is a doddering old fool, a fitting crown to the third (and hopefully last) Borune Dynasty. I know that Ce’Nedra is a spoiled brat. I know that Garion (or Belgarion as he now prefers to be called) is nothing more than a scullery boy who sits by sheerest accident on the throne at Riva. I know that Belgarath is a charlatan or a madman or worse. And I know that Polgara, that impossible woman, is no better than she should be.
But now to the documents in hand. When this mass of disorganized material was delivered to me by the ape-like Barak, I laughed at what was so obviously a fraud. The rambling, self-congratulatory preface by Belgarath provides an immediate clue as to how seriously one should take this entire thing. If we are to believe this absurd testimony, Belgarath is somewhat over seven thousand years old, consorts freely with Gods, converses with beasts and performs miracles with the wave of a hand. I am amazed that even the feeble intelligence of my former pupil accepted so ludicrous a story; for, though she has the typical Borune pig-headedness, she at least had the benefit of my tutelage during her formative years.
The next collection in this welter of documents consists of a series of extracts from the sacred writings of the various peoples of the known world. The manuscripts (all stolen, I’m sure) are hardly subject to verification. The Proverbs of Nedra, for example, are from the list approved by the priests in the Great Temple at Tol Honeth. The Lament of Mara presented here differs only marginally from a copy in my own library. The Book of Alorn is in keeping with the spirit of that barbaric race. The Book of Torak, however, is a translation from old Angarak (a language with which I am unfamiliar) and is subject to all the woeful errors common in translations. And the so-called Book of Ulgo is a patent absurdity. I have always been of the opinion that Ulgos are nothing more than a race of fanatical heretics who should have been forcibly converted to a proper religion centuries ago.
The section dealing with the history of the twelve kingdoms of the West, by contrast, is a solid and respectable piece of work—as well it should be. The document was stolen from (and still bears the seal of) the Imperial Library at Tol Honeth. My only quarrel with the manuscript is the fact that it is the official version prepared with all that toadying flattery of the House of Borune of which our present Dynasty is so fond.
The final section, the Arendish fairy-tale account of the Battle of Vo Mimbre, is a fitting conclusion to this entire work, since it is filled from beginning to end with utter nonsense.
And now my task is complete. I wish Her Imperial Highness all the joy in it she so richly deserves.
I leave behind me one wish before I depart for Mar-Terin. With all my heart I pray to Great Nedra that the Borune Dynasty which has so blighted the Empire be succeeded by the Honethites—a family with a proper respect for tradition, and one which knows how to suitably reward those who have served them.
And now, farewell.
MASTER JEEBERS Fellow of the Imperial Society Tutor to the Imperial Household Done and sealed at Tol Honeth in the year 5378.
INTERMISSION
Are you still there? What an amazing thing! If you’ve read the Belgariad, I’m sure you can see now where most of it originated. (If you haven’t read the Belgariad, why are you reading this?) The studies you’ve just so bravely endured gave us the story. Our character-sketches gave us our people. The dialogue grew out of the actual writing. I’m sure you noticed a certain amount of bickering among the troops. Grand and noble companionship sounds sort of nice, but both my wife and I have been in the military, so we know how unreal that notion is. Part of our aim was to create an epic fantasy with a heavy overlay of realism. The immediacy—that sense of actually knowing these characters which many readers have noticed—derives from that realism in dialogue and details. We can blame my wife for a lot of that. I’d be trying for ‘grand sweep’, and she’d jerk me up short with such things as, ‘It’s all black and white. It needs color.’ or ‘They haven’t eaten for three days.’ or ‘Don’t you think it’s about time that they took a bath?’ Here I am trying to save the world, and ‘Polgara’ is nagging me about bathing!
Women! (Does that sound familiar?)
I’d also frequently run into that stone wall named, ‘A woman wouldn’t talk that way. That’s a male expression. Women don’t use it.’ I’d grumble a bit and then surrender and do it her way. My personal writing strategy is ‘Blast on through and get the story in place, and then go back and clean and polish it.’ She wants it done right in the first place, and I’ve learned not to argue with the lady who runs the kitchen—unless I want boiled dog-food for supper.
Now let’s answer all the critics who proudly announce that they find our work derivative. What else is new? Chaucer was derivative. So was Shakespeare. The literary value of any story is in its presentation. Any plot-line can be reduced to absurdity if one chooses to do so. There’s a story, probably apocryphal, which tells us of an early movie producer who simplified all movie plots down to ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Goldilocks’. He’d buy ‘Goldilocks’, but he wouldn’t buy ‘Cinderella’.
Back to work. We’d completed the Belgariad, and now we were ready to take on the Malloreon. Most of what we needed was already in place. We had our main characters, our magic thingamajig, and our cultures of the western kingdoms. Now we needed a new ‘Bad-Guy’ (or Girl), and a new quest. (I’d also had enough of adolescents by now, and I wanted to see if Garion and Ce’Nedra could function as adults.) Oh, by the way, if anyone out there ever calls those two ‘teenagers’, I’ll turn them into a toad. ‘Teenager’ is a linguistic abomination devised by the advertising agencies and the social worker industry to obscure an unpleasant reality. The proper term is ‘adolescent’, and the only good thing about it is that everybody gets over it—eventually. (Or most of them, anyway.)
We extended the geography in our new map, and then it was time to correct the injustice we’d done to the Angaraks. Just because Germany produced Hitler doesn’t alter the fact that Germany also produced Kant, Goethe, Beethoven, and Niebuhr. No race or nationality has a monopoly on either good or evil. Perfection in either direction simply doesn’t exist in the real world, and it doesn’t exist in our world either. On one occasion Belgarath simplified the whole thing by discarding theology entirely and identifying the contending parties as ‘them and us’. You can’t get much more to the point than that. We humanized the Angaraks by humanizing Zakath and by stressing the significance of Eriond. The Christ-like quality of Eriond was quite deliberate. Torak was a mistake. Eriond was the original ‘Intent of the Universe’. (Deep, huh?)
The tiresome History of the Angarak Kingdoms was handed off to the scholars at the University of Melcene, who are just as stuffy and wrong-headed as their counterparts at the University of Tol Honeth. It worked for us in the Belgariad, so it was probably going to work just as well in the Malloreon, (If it ain’t busted; don’t fix it), and it worked again. Then we substituted The Mallorean Gospe
ls for The Holy Books in the Belgariad Preliminaries. The intent was the same. Our overall thesis was that there are two worlds running side by side—the ordinary, mundane world, and the theological magic world. When they start to overlap, all hell breaks loose, and you’ve got story. You’re neck-deep in story. Did you want to summarize the twentieth century? Try that as a starting point.
To get ‘story’, we were obliged to become Manichees, maintaining that good and evil are evenly matched. If God is all-powerful, why are we so worried about the Devil? When the medieval Church declared Manicheism to be a heresy, she squirmed a lot, but never did answer that specific question. I won’t either.
We also added a note of Existentialism by forcing Cyradis, acting for all of mankind, to make the final choice between good and evil. It makes a good story, but it probably shouldn’t be accepted as the basis for a system of personal belief, since it might get you into a lot of trouble. If the Pope doesn’t get on your case, the Archbishop of Canterbury probably will.
The Malloreon Preliminaries conclude with King Anheg’s personal diary, which sort of followed our outline for Book One of the Malloreon. It gives us a condensed chronology, and that’s always useful.
As with the Preliminaries to the Belgariad, these Malloreon Prelims had quite a few dead-ends which we discarded during the actual writing. One of the dangers of epic fantasy lies in its proclivity to wander off into the bushes. We have what appears to be the gabbiest of all possible fiction forms, but it requires iron discipline. The writer absolutely must stick to the story-line and deviate only when an idea or character will improve the overall product. I can’t verify this, but I have heard that there was a medieval romance that was twenty-five thousand pages long!! That’s an entire library all by itself. I suspect that if you were to give a contemporary fantasist free rein, he might take a shot at that just to get his name in the Guinness Book of Records.
All right, push bravely on. We’ll talk again later.
IV
PRELIMINARY STUDIES FOR THE MALLOREON
A CURSORY HISTORY OF THE ANGARAK KINGDOMS
Prepared by the History Department of the University of Melcene
Tradition, though not always reliable, places the ancestral home of the Angaraks in the southern latitudes somewhere off the south coast of present-day Dalasia. In that prehistoric era, when Angarak and Alorn lived in peace, the favored races of mankind inhabited contiguous areas in a pleasant, fertile basin which was forever submerged by the cataclysmic event known as ‘The Cracking of the World’. It is not the purpose of this work to dwell upon the theological implications of that event, but rather to examine the course of the history of the Angaraks in the centuries which followed.
The so-called ‘Cracking of the World’ appears in fact to have been a splitting of the crust of the primeval proto-continent, and its effects were immediately disastrous. The plasmic magma upon which the great land-mass floated immediately began to extrude itself into that vast split and to force the now-separated continental plates apart. When the waters of the southern ocean rushed into the resulting gap and inundated the rising magma, a continuous violent explosion ripped from one end of the vast fault to the other, forcing the plates even farther apart and setting off a tremendous, rolling earthquake which soon encompassed the entire globe.73 Entire mountain ranges quite literally crumbled into rubble, and colossal tidal waves raced across the oceans of the world, forever altering coastlines a half a planet away. The Sea of the East grew daily wider as the elemental violence at its floor rudely shouldered the two continental plates farther and farther apart. The explosive separation of the continents appears to have continued for decades until it gradually subsided and the two great landmasses stabilized in more or less their present location. The world which emerged from this catastrophe was almost totally unlike the world which had previously existed.
During this vast upheaval, the Angaraks retreated north-easterly before the steadily encroaching sea, and they ultimately sought the safety of the higher ground of the Dalasian Mountains in West Central Mallorea. Once the movement of the continental plates had subsided, however, the Angaraks found that the unstable weather generated by the newly-formed Sea of the East made the Dalasian Mountains too inhospitable a place for permanent residence, and they migrated north into the reaches of what is now called Ancient Mallorea.
NOTE
When speaking of this era, some confusion is possible. Modern Mallorea encompasses the entire continent, whereas Ancient Mallorea was limited to the northwestern segment of the land mass and was bordered on the south by Dalasia and on the east by Karanda. It is in part the purpose of this study to trace the expansion of the Angaraks which ultimately led to their domination of all of Mallorea.
During the troubled times which accompanied the migration, the presence of Torak, Dragon God of Angarak, was scarcely felt. Although he had previously dominated every facet of Angarak life, the mutilation inflicted upon him by CTHRAG-YASKA (which men in the west call the Orb of Aldur) caused him such unbearable suffering that he was no longer able to function in his traditional capacity as ‘Kal’, King and God. The Grolim priesthood, demoralized by the sudden incapacity of Torak, was unable to fill the vacuum, and the leadership of Angarak fell by default into the hands of the military commanders. Thus it was that the emerging nation of the Angarak people was administered from the military head-quarters at Mal Zeth. By the time that the Grolims recovered, they discovered that the military had established de facto rule of all of Angarak. Shaking off their shock-induced paralysis, the Grolims set up an opposing center of power at Mal Yaska at the southern tip of the Karandese Mountains. Had matters remained so, inevitably there would have been a confrontation between the military and the priesthood, which in all probability would have destroyed Angarak in the convulsions of civil war.
It was at this point, however, that Torak roused himself sufficiently to reassert his authority. During the period of his illness (perhaps a century or so) the military had become dominant in Angarak society, and much to the chagrin of the Grolim priesthood, the awakening God made no effort to reestablish their ascendancy. Instead of establishing himself at either Mal Zeth or at the ecclesiastical capital at Mal Yaska, however, Torak marched northwest to establish the holy city
at Cthol Mishrak on the northern edge of the District of Camat. It should be pointed out here that the religious writings of the period do not reveal the entire story. The Book of Torak states that the Dragon God took his people to Cthol Mishrak and caused them to build the city following his maiming by Cthrag-Yaska. The scriptures blur over the hundred year interval during which the Angaraks spread out over the northwestern quadrant of Mallorea and implies that those who followed the maimed God comprised all of Angarak. Civil records of the period, however, reveal that scarcely more than a quarter of the Angarak people followed Torak to Cthol Mishrak. Pleading the necessity of administering and protecting the rest of the nation, the military remained in place at Mal Zeth; and similarly, the Grolim hierarchy, with the equally plausible excuse of the need for overseeing the spiritual requirements of a growing and widespread population, continued to occupy Mal Yaska, from which they jealously guarded church interests against military encroachment. Torak, almost totally absorbed in his effort to gain control of the Orb, seemed oblivious to the fact that the majority of the Angarak peoples were becoming secularized. Those who followed him to Cthol Mishrak were, by and large, the often hysterical fringe of religious fanatics which are to be found in any society. Since Torak’s attention was almost totally focused upon the Orb, the administration of day to day life in Cthol Mishrak fell to his three Disciples, Ctuchik, Urvon and later, Zedar. This trio, with the zeal which usually marks the Disciple, rigidly maintained the older forms and customs, in effect petrifying the society of Cthol Mishrak in that somewhat pastoral form which had obtained in the Angarak culture prior to the migration to Mallorea. As a result, the rest of Angarak changed in response to external pressures and their new e
nvironment, while the society at Cthol Mishrak and environs remained static. It was precisely this divergence which ultimately led to the friction which divides Cthol Murgos and modern Mallorea.
The Grolim hierarchy at Mal Yaska, chafing at what they felt was the usurpation of power by the military, began to take certain steps which once again brought Mallorea to the brink of civil war. While their campaign was scrupulously theological, it was nonetheless quite obviously directed at the military chain of command. The practice of human sacrifice had fallen into a certain disuse during the protracted illness of the Dragon God, but it was now reinstituted with unusual fervor. By carefully manipulating the drawing of lots which selected the sacrificial victims, the Grolims began to systematically exterminate the lower echelons of the officer corps.
The situation soon grew intolerable to the military commanders at Mal Zeth, and they retaliated by leveling fraudulent criminal charges at every Grolim unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Despite the howls of protest from Mal Yaska, where the hierarchy strenuously maintained that the priesthood was exempt from civil prosecution, these ‘criminals’ were all summarily executed.
Ultimately, word of this surreptitious war reached Torak, and the God of Angarak took immediate steps to halt the bloodshed. He summoned the Military High Command and the Grolim Hierarchy to Cthol Mishrak and delivered his commands to the warring factions in blistering terms. There were to be no further sacrifices of military officers and no further executions of Grolims. Exempting only the enclaves at Mal Yaska and Mal Zeth, all other towns and districts in ancient Mallorea were to be ruled jointly by the military and the priesthood, the military to be responsible for civil matters, and the priesthood for religious ones. He told them, moreover, that should there be any recurrence of their secret war, he would immediately order the abandonment of all of the rest of Mallorea and command all of Angarak to repair immediately to Cthol Mishrak and to live there under the direct supervision of his disciples.
The Rivan Codex: Ancient Texts of THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREON (The Belgariad / The Malloreon) Page 28