The Seeress of Kell

time of the Choice. And if the Choice be not made, then shall this world vanish, and the Beloved Guest of whom the seeress spoke will never come. For it is this which she meant when she said to us: "Behold, He may not choose ye unless ye choose Him." And the Choice that we must make is the choice between good and evil, and the division between good and evil, and the reality that will exist after we have made the choice will be a reality of good or a reality of evil, and it will prevail so until the end of days.
    Behold also this truth: the rocks of this world and of all other worlds murmur continually of the two stones that lie at the center of the division. Once these stones were one, and they stood at the very center of all of creation, but, like all else, they were divided, and in the instant of division they were rent apart with a force that destroyed whole suns. And where these stones come into the presence of each other again, there surely will be the fast confrontation between the two spirits. Now the day will come when all will be made one again, except that the division between the two stones is so great that they can never be rejoined. And in the day when the division ends shall one of the stones cease forever to exist, and in that day also shall one of the spirits forever vanish.
    These then were the truths that we had gathered, and it was our discovery of these truths that marked the end of the First Age.
    Now the Second Age of man began with thunder and earthquake, for lo, the earth herself split apart, and the sea rushed in to divide the lands of men even as creation itself is divided. And the mountains of Korim shuddered and groaned and heaved as the sea swallowed them. And we knew that this would come to pass, for our seers had warned us that it would be so. We went our way, therefore, and found safety before the world was cracked and the sea first rushed away and then rushed back and never departed more.
    And in the days that followed the rushing in of the sea, the children of the Dragon God fled from the waters, and they abode to the north of us beyond the mountains. Now our seers told us that the children of the Dragon God would one day come among us as conquerors. And we took counsel with each other and considered how we might least offend the children of the Dragon God when they should come so that they would not interrupt our studies. In the end we concluded that our warlike neighbors would be least apprehensive about simple tillers of the soil living in rude communities on the land, and we so ordered our lives. We pulled down our cities and carried away the stones and we betook ourselves back to the land so that we might not alarm our neighbors nor arouse their envy.
    And the years passed and became centuries, and the centuries passed and became eons. And as we had known they would, the children of Angarak came down amongst us and established their overlordship. And they called the lands in which we dwelt Dalasia, and we did what they wished us to do and continued our studies.
    Now at about this time it came to pass in the far north that a disciple of the God Aldur came with certain others to reclaim a thing that the Dragon God had stolen from Aldur. And that act was so important that when it was done, the Second Age ended, and the Third Age began.
    Now it was in the Third Age that the priests of Angarak, which men call Grolims, came to speak to us of the Dragon God and of His hunger for our love, and we considered what they said even as we considered all things men told us. And we consulted the book of the heavens and confirmed that Torak was the incarnate God-aspect of one of the spirits which contend at the center of tune. But where was the other? How might men choose when but one of the spirits came to them? Then it was that we perceived our dreadful responsibility. The spirits would come to us, each in its own time, and each would proclaim that it was good and the other was evil. It was man, however, who would choose. And we took counsel among ourselves, and we concluded that we might accept the forms of the worship that the Grolims so urgently pressed upon us. This would give us the opportunity to examine the nature of the Dragon God and make us better prepared to choose when the other God appeared.
    In time the events of the world intruded upon us. The Angaraks allied themselves by marriage with the great city-builders of the east, who called themselves Melcene, and between them they