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PREFACE
o'.
'I win say as I wish to say,' she told me. 'You need not listen if it
does not please you; and if you think me simple, that is your
concern.'
Who can argue with a wolf? - and a she-wolf at that?
And now were we confounded. The broad sea stood between us
and the Angaraks, and Torak stood upon one shore and we upon the
other.
'And what now, Master?' I asked Aldur.
'It is finished,' he said. 'The war is done.'
'Never!' said the young God Belar. 'My people are Alorns. The
ways of the sea are not strange to them. If it be not possible to come
upon the traitor Torak by land, then my Alorns shall build a great
fleet, and we shall come upon him by sea. The war is not done. He
hath smote thee, my dear brother, and he hath stolen that which was
thine, and now hath he drowned this fair land in the death-cold sea
also. Our homes and our fields and forests are no more. This I say,
and my words are true, between Alorn and Angarak shall there be
endless war until the traitor Torak be punished for his iniquities
yea, even if it prevail so until the end of days.'
'Torak is punished,' my Master said quietly. 'He hath raised the
Orb against the earth, and the Orb hath requited him for that. The
pain of that requiting shall endure in our brother Torak all the days
of his life. Moreover, now is the Orb awakened. It hath been used to
commit a great evil, and it will not be used so again. Torak hath the
Orb, but small pleasure will he find in the having. He may not touch
it, neither may he look upon it, lest it slay him.'
'Nonetheless,' said Belar, 'I will make war upon him until the Orb
be returned to thee. To this I pledge all of Aloria.'
'As you would have it, my brother,' said Aldur. 'Now, however,
must we 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 do that which must be done.'
Until that day I had not fully realized to what degree the Gods
differed from men. 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. His voice was not loud, but the sea
heard hhnhim and stopped. It built up, angry and tossing, behind the
barrier of that single word.
'Rise up,' Aldur said as softly to the earth. My mind reeled as I
perceived the immensity of that command. The earth, so newly
wounded by the evil which Torak had done, groaned and heaved
and swelled; and, before my 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 had not been there before,
and they shuddered away the loose earth as a dog shakes off water
and stood as a stem and eternal barrier against the sea which Torak
had let in.
Sullenly, the sea retreated.