The Chaoswar Saga: A Kingdom Besieged, A Crown Imperilled, Magician’s End. Raymond E. Feist

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СКАЧАТЬ to lord Dahun. It was Maarg whom Dahun went to destroy when last our lord left us.’

      ‘I think our lord left because of that,’ Child said pointing to the east.

      Belog didn’t need to be told what ‘that’ was, for he knew she meant the dark wave of destruction that oozed and flowed out of the Centre, devouring all it touched.

      ‘The Darkness,’ he said quietly. ‘But if so, why the show of arms and might? Why march against Maarg? Why not—’ he made a gesture with his flattened hand, ‘—just slip away?’

      Child cocked her head to one side. He had come to recognize this meant she was grappling with a problem. ‘I do not know,’ she said at the last. ‘I should think, though, that for a king of Dahun’s majesty, it would be difficult to slip anywhere, unnoticed.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps he needed a diversion?’

      He marvelled again at the complexity of her mind. Had the horror from the Centre not come upon them, this one would have been culled early and evaluated. Either she would have been placed in an area of critical need and educated or she would have been killed as potentially dangerous. She was a remarkable child. He wondered if she had been someone remarkable before her last death, and if this new order imposed by Dahun, with matings and child-rearing encouraged rather than simply letting offspring spawn in the crèches and fend for themselves, might have done something to her mind.

      For among the People, as soon as life returned after death, the faster one fed and the quicker one grew, the more of one’s previous life-memories endured. Belog was old for his race; he was more than a century past his prime, which was unheard of before the coming of Dahun. He knew he had been very young when the Demon King had taken power, but his memories were fading into the dim mists of the past.

      ‘Perhaps, but that is for another time and place to ponder. If you want to learn magic, we must make a plan.’

      Her smile broadened to a grin. ‘I love to plan. I am very pleased I didn’t eat you, Belog.’

      ‘As am I, Child.’

      They were now close to the road east, forced to hug its verge by the exigencies of the landscape and marauding bands of demons. A large band of very small demons scurried along the verge on the other side of the broad road, while Child and Belog watched from behind a rock on a rise. ‘So many,’ she observed, and Belog couldn’t tell if she spoke out of hunger or simply idle curiosity. She was easily the most inquisitive mind he had ever encountered.

      ‘Tell me about armies,’ Child said suddenly.

      Belog was surprised. ‘In what respect?’

      ‘Why do they exist?’ Her voice betrayed a note of frustration he had become familiar with, as if she expected him to know her moods and desires without asking.

      ‘No matter how powerful a lord or king, there are others out there of equal or greater power. Armies are expressions of a …’ He stopped, as if groping for the proper words. ‘A need for respite in the struggle, I think would be the best way to put it.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ Child said, slightly petulantly. ‘What is this “respite”?’

      ‘We are by nature a race that struggles,’ he began as they walked across the broken land that signalled the edge of the Kingdom of Dahun and the beginning of what had once been the Kingdom of Maarg. ‘Ever since the Time Before Time, we have been born, have killed and eaten, or been killed and eaten, and we have been reborn. If we are fortunate, life experiences give us purpose and direction and we endure for a time.

      ‘Some rise to great power, and many serve willingly in exchange for protection and privilege. Dahun had many generals, many counsellors, many who were given the duty to administer his realm.’

      ‘Armies, Belog, tell me of armies.’

      ‘Other kings, rivals, also have their demesnes and as individuals struggle and contest with one another. Armies are a threat; if you attack me, I will defend myself, or if you annoy me, I will attack you. Maarg controlled a great kingdom, but he was afraid of Dahun and worried about the other kings in the Savage Realms. Other kings of the Second Kingdoms contended with Dahun, and with one another – alliances shifted constantly – and sometimes armies were unleashed, and wars were fought. But for long periods of time, armies were held in check. Large armies at the ready deter others from attacking.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Child, as if she understood. ‘The larger the army, the longer the respite.’

      ‘To a point. Armies require a great deal of support: food, weapons, a place for them to sleep.’

      ‘Explain?’ demanded Child.

      They walked down a widening gully until they came to three branching gullies, directing them uphill again. Belog knew that once this must have been a large pond or small lake with three feeding rivers. He spoke quickly of logistics and keeping an army fit and ready to fight. Of the need for support so that soldiers did not fall to killing one another in the old, Savage way.

      When she tired of the detail, she would interrupt with another question. ‘Tell me about war and victory and defeat,’ she instructed.

      He turned his narrative skills to best effect and launched into a long discourse on the nature of organized struggle while they climbed up the long slope towards the mountains beyond. Although there was much about this relationship he found tedious, his constant lecturing was honing the skills of his trade. He was required by Child’s endless questions to reach into his memory for facts and thoughts untouched in years.

      As an archivist he had been given the responsibility to help with the cataloguing and organization of whatever knowledge came to King Dahun: books, scrolls, devices, anything and everything that might prove useful to their demon lord. The archivists had become the closest thing to a brotherhood seen in the demon realm, for every night when they sat in their shared quarters, they would tell one another of those things they had encountered during the day.

      Belog had been among the first in his guild and possessed more knowledge than all but a few among them. He had a particular bent for associations, so he saw how knowledge discovered and shared by one might relate to knowledge discovered by another, in a way that was not immediately apparent to others. If any demon in the guild had been considered ‘senior’ or of highest rank, it was probably Belog, though those in his calling had never made much of an issue of this. By nature they were as close to being gentle as a demon could be.

      Cresting the ridge, Child said, ‘Where do we go now, Teacher?’

      He was secretly pleased to be called this, but answered, ‘It depends on where you wish to go.’

      She fixed him with a look that told him she was unhappy with that reply, but he was growing in certainty that it would take a situation of crisis proportions for her to kill him. If there was such a thing as affection in their race, these two had chanced upon it.

      ‘I was not mocking you, Child,’ he said, taking a moment’s rest upon a rock. The long trek was taking its toll. He knew his intelligence was beginning to decline. It would take weeks, perhaps as much as a month of not eating, but eventually he would devolve to a near-animal state and attack Child, even though it would be death for him to do so.

      He gazed up into her face and was again astonished at how she was evolving, becoming finer-featured and even more alluring. She must have been a succubus in her previous incarnation, he was almost СКАЧАТЬ