The Diamond Throne

expanded lifetime. That is why some men are willing to follow them.’
    ‘Immortality?’ he asked her sceptically.
    ‘No,’ she corrected, ‘not that. No God can bestow that.’
    ‘The Elene God can,’ Dolmant said, ‘in a spiritual sense, anyway’
    ‘That’s an interesting theological point, your Grace.’ She smiled. ‘Someday we’ll have to discuss it. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when Otha agreed to worship Azash, the God granted him enormous power, and Otha eventually became Emperor of Zemoch. The Styrics and the Elenes in Zemoch have intermarried, and so a Zemoch is not truly a member of either race.’
    ‘An abomination in the eyes of God,’ Dolmant added.
    ‘The Styric Gods feel much the same way,’ Sephrenia agreed. She looked at Talen again. ‘To understand Otha and Zemoch –one needs to understand Azash. He is the most totally evil force on earth. The rites of the worship of him are obscene. He delights in perversion and in blood and in the agonies of sacrificial victims. In their worship of him, the Zemochs have become much less than human, and their incursion into Lamorkand was accompanied by unspeakable horrors. Had the invading armies been only Zemochs, however, they might have been met and turned back by conventional forces. But Azash had reinforced them with creatures from the underworld.’
    ‘Goblins?’ Talen asked disbelievingly
    ‘Not exactly, but the word will serve, I suppose. It would take most of the morning for me to describe the twenty or so varieties of inhuman creatures Azash has at his command, and you wouldn’t like the descriptions.’
    ‘This story is getting less believable by the minute,’Talen noted. ‘I like the battles and all, but when you start telling me about goblins and fairies, I begin to lose interest. I’m not a child any more, after all.’
    ‘In time you may come to understand – and to believe,’ she said. ‘Go on with the story, Berit.’
    ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘When the Church realized the nature of the forces that were invading Lamorkand, they summoned the Church Knights back from Rendor. They reinforced the ranks of the four orders with other knights and with common soldiers until the forces of the west were nearly as numerous as those of the Zemoch horde of Otha.’
    ‘Was there a battle then?’ Talen asked eagerly.
    ‘The greatest battle in the history of mankind,’ Berit replied. ‘The two armies met on the plains of Lamorkand near Lake Randera. The physical battle was gigantic, but the supernatural battle on that plain was even more stupendous. Waves of darkness and sheets of flame swept the field. Fire and lightning rained from the sky. Whole battalions were swallowed up by the earth or burned to ashes in sudden flame. The crash of thunder rolled perpetually from horizon to horizon, and the ground itself was torn by earthquakes and the eruption of searing liquid rock. The magic of the Zemoch priests was countered each time by the concerted magic of the Knights of the Church. For three days, the armies were locked in battle before the Zemochs were pushed back. Their retreat became more rapid, eventually turning into a rout. Otha’s horde finally broke and ran towards the safety of the border’
    ‘Terrific!’ Talen exclaimed excitedly. ‘And then did our army invade Zemoch?’
    ‘They were too exhausted,’ Berit told him. ‘They had won the battle, but not without great cost. Fully half of the Church Knights lay slain upon the battlefield, and thearmies of the Elene Kings numbered their dead by the scores of thousands.’
    ‘They could have done something, couldn’t they?’
    Berit nodded sadly. ‘They cared for their wounded and buried their dead. Then they went home.’
    ‘That’s all?’ Talen asked incredulously ‘This isn’t much of a story if that’s all they did, Berit.’
    ‘They had no choice. They’d stripped the western kingdoms of every able-bodied man to fight the war and had left the crops untended. Winter was coming, and there was no food. They managed to eke their way through that winter, but so many men had been killed or maimed in the battle that when spring came, there weren’t enough people – in the west or in Zemoch – to plant new crops. The result was famine. For a century, the only concern in all of Eosia was food. The swords and lances were put aside, and the war horses were hitched to ploughs.’
    ‘They never talk about that sort of thing in other stories I’ve