may have originated with Torak, but the Grolims picked it up and ran with it. 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 liveth 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 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 a 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 work-table 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 proper 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,
