LITMIR.BIZ

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could be eloquent when he set his mind to it. He loved his beer tankard and his adoring Alorn girls, but he’d set all that aside for the chance to make a speech.

      ‘Torak is punished, Belar,’ my Master said to his enthusiastic younger brother. ‘He burns even now – and will burn forever. He hath raised the Orb against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that. Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It came to us in peace and love. Now it hath been raised in hate and war. Torak hath betrayed it and turned its gentle soul to stone. Now its heart shall be as ice and iron-hard, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the Orb, but small pleasure shall he find in the having. He may no longer touch it, neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.’

      My Master, you’ll note, was at least as eloquent as Belar.

      ‘Nonetheless,’ Belar replied, ‘I will make war upon him until the Orb be returned to thee. To this I pledge all of Aloria.’

      ‘As thou wouldst have it, my brother,’ Aldur said. ‘Now, however, we must 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 put limits upon this new sea.’

      Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods differed from us. 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, raising one hand. His voice wasn’t loud, but the sea heard him and stopped. It built up, angry and tossing, behind the barrier of that single word, and a great wind tore at us.

      ‘Rise up,’ Aldur said just as softly to the earth. My mind was staggered by the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly wounded by Torak, groaned and heaved and swelled. And then, before my very 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 hadn’t been there before, and they shuddered away the loose earth the way a dog shakes off water, to stand as an eternal barrier to the sea which Torak had let in.

      Have you ever stood about a half-mile from the center of that sort of thing? Don’t, if you can possibly avoid it. We were all hurled to the ground by the most violent earthquake I’ve ever been through. I lay clutching at the ground while the tremors actually rattled my teeth. The freshly broken earth groaned and even seemed to howl. And she wasn’t alone. My companion crouched at my side, raised her face to the sky and also howled. I put my arms about her and held her tightly against me – which probably wasn’t a very good idea, considering how frightened she was. Oddly, she didn’t try to bite me – or even growl at me. She licked my face instead, as if she were trying to comfort me. Isn’t that peculiar?

      When the shaking subsided, we all regained our composure somewhat and stared first at that new range of mountains and then toward the east, where Torak’s new sea was sullenly retreating.

      ‘How remarkable,’ the wolf said as calmly as if nothing had happened.

      ‘Truly,’ I could not but agree.

      And then the other Gods and their peoples came to the place where we were and marveled at what Belar and my Master had done to hold back the sea.

      ‘Now is the time of sundering,’ my Master told them sadly. ‘This land which was once so fair and sustained our children in their infancy is no more. That which remains here on this shore is bleak and harsh and will no longer support your people. This then is mine advice to ye, my brothers. Let each take his own people and journey into the west. Beyond the mountains wherein lies Prolgu ye shall find another fair plain – not so broad perhaps nor so beautiful as that which Torak hath drowned this day – but it will sustain the races of man.’

      ‘And what of thee, my brother?’ Mara asked him.

      ‘I shall take my disciples and return even to the Vale,’ Aldur replied. ‘This day hath evil been unloosed in the world, and its power is great. The Orb revealed itself to me, and through its power hath the evil been unloosed. 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.’

      ‘So be it then,’ Mara said. ‘Hail and farewell, my brother.’ And he turned and with Issa and Chaldan and Nedra and all their people, they went away toward the west.

      But Belar lingered. ‘Mine oath and my pledge bind me still,’ he declared. ‘I will not go to the west with the others, but will take my Alorns to the unpeopled lands of the northwest instead. There we will seek a way by which we may come again on Torak and his children. Thine Orb shall be returned unto thee, my brother. 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.

      My master watched them go with a great sadness on his face, and then he turned westward and my brothers and I followed after him as, sorrowing, we began our journey back to the Vale.

PART TWO

       The Apostate

Chapter 7

      My brothers and I were badly shaken by the outcome of our war with the Angaraks. We certainly hadn’t anticipated Torak’s desperate response to our campaign, and I think we all felt a gnawing personal guilt for the death of half of mankind. We were a somber group when we reached the Vale. We had ongoing tasks, of course, but we took to gathering in our Master’s tower in the evenings, seeking comfort and reassurance in his presence and the familiar surroundings of the tower.

      Each of us had his own chair, and we normally sat around a long table, discussing the events of the day and then moving on to more wide-ranging topics. I don’t know that we solved any of the world’s problems with those eclectic conversations, but that’s not really why we held them. We needed to be together during that troubled time, and we needed the calm that always pervaded that familiar room at the top of the tower. For one thing, the light there was somehow different from the light in our own towers. The fact that our Master didn’t bother with firewood might have had something to do with that. The fire on his hearth burned because he wanted it to burn, and it continued to burn whether he fed it or not. Our chairs were large and comfortable and made of dark, polished wood, and the room was neat and uncluttered. Aldur stored his things in some unimaginable place, and they came to him when he called them rather than laying about collecting dust.

      Our evening gatherings continued for six months or so, and they helped us to gather our wits and to ward off the nightmares which haunted our sleep.

      Sooner or later, one of us was bound to ask the question, and as it turned out, it was Beltira. ‘What started it all, Master?’ he asked reflectively. ‘This goes back much further than what’s been happening recently, doesn’t it?’

      You’ll notice that Durnik wasn’t the first to be curious about beginnings.

      Aldur looked gravely at the gentle Alorn shepherd. ‘It doth indeed, Beltira – further back than thou canst possibly imagine. Once, when the universe was all new and long before my brothers and I came into being, an event occurred which had not been designed to occur, and it was that event which divided the purpose of all things.’

      ‘An accident then, Master?’ Beldin surmised.

      ‘A most apt term, my son,’ Aldur complimented him. ‘Like all things, the stars are born; they exist for a certain time; and then they die. The “accident” of which we speak came about when a star died in a

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