David Eddings - Malloreon 5 The Seeress of Kell

VIP免费

2024-12-03 0 0 555.55KB 343 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

PROLOGUE

Excerpts from The Book of Ages, Book One of THE MALLO-REAN GOSPELS:

Now These are the Ages of Man:

In the First Age was man created, and he awoke in puzzlement and

wonder as he beheid the world about him. And those that had made him

considered him and selected from his number those that pleased them,

and the rest were cast out and driven away. And some went in search

of die Spirit known as UL, and they left us and passed into the west,

and we saw them no more. And some denied the Gods, and they went into

the far north to wrestle with demons. And some turned to worldly

matters, and they went away into the east and built mighty cities

there.

But we despaired, and we sat us down upon the earth in the shadow of

the mountains of Korim, and in bitterness we bewailed our fate that

we had been made and then cast out.

2 SEERESS OP KELL

And it came to pass that in the midst of our grief a woman of our

people was seized by a rapture, and it was as if she had been shaken

by a mighty hand. And she arose from the earth upon which she sat,

and she bound her eyes with a cloth, signifying that she had seen

that which no mortal had seen before, for lo, she was the first

seeress in all the world. And with the touch of her vision still upon

her, she spake unto us, saying:

"Behold! A feast hath been set before Those who made us, and this

feast shall ye call the Feast of Life. And Those who made us have

chosen that which pleased Them, and that which pleased Them not was

not chosen.

"Now we are the Feast of Life, and ye sorrow that no Guest at the

feast hath chosen ye. Despair not, however, for one Guest hath not

yet arrived at the feast. The other Guests have taken their fill, but

this great Feast of Life awaiteth still the Beloved Guest who cometh

late, and I say unto all the people that it is He who will choose us.

Abide therefore against His coming, for it is certain. Put aside thy

grief and turn thy face to the sky and to the earth that thou mayest

read the signs written there, for this I say unto all the people. It

is upon ye that His coming rests. For behold, He may not choose ye

unless ye choose Him. And this is the Fate for which we were made.

Rise up, therefore, and sit no more upon the earth in vain and

foolish lamentation. Take up the task which lies before ye and

prepare the way for Him who will surely come."

Much we marveled at these words, and we considered them most

carefully. We questioned the seeress, but her answers were dark and

obscure. And so it was that we turned our faces to the sky and bent

our ears to the whispers which came from the earth that we might see

and hear and learn. And as we learned to read the book of the skies

and to hear the whispers within the rocks, we found myriad warnings

that two spirits would come to us and that the one was good and the

other evil. Long we labored, but still were sorely troubled, for we

could not determine which spirit was the true one and which the

false. For truly, evil is disguised as good in the book of the

heavens and in the speech of the earth, and no man is wise enough to

choose between them.

Pondering this, we went out from beneath the shadow of the mountains

of Korim and into the lands beyond, where we abode. And we put aside

the concerns of man and bent all our efforts to the task that lay

before us. Our witches and our seers sought the aid of the spirit

world, our necromancers took counsel with

PROLOGUE 3

the dead, and our diviners sought advice from the earth. But lo, none

of these knew more than we.

Then gathered we at last upon a fertile plain to bring together all

that we had learned. And these are the truths that we have learned

from the stars, from the rocks, from the hearts of men and from the

minds of the spirits:

Know ye that all adown the endless avenues of time hath division

marred all that is—for there is division at the very heart of

creation. And some have said that this is natural and will persist

until the end of days, but it is not so. Were the division destined

to be eternal, then the purpose of creation would be to contain it.

But the stars and the spirits and the voices within the rocks speak

of the day when the division will end and all will be made one again,

for creation itself knows that the day will come.

Know ye further that two spirits contend with each other at the very

center of time, and these spirits are the two sides of that which

hath divided creation. And in a certain time shall those spirits meet

upon this world, and then will come the 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 untU the

end of

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 Atones cease forever to exist, and in

that day also shall one of Ij&C spirits forever vanish. --"fliese

then were the truths that we had gathered, and it was

4 SEERESS OF KELL

our discovery of these truths that marked the end of the First Age.

Now the Second Age of man began hi 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 Tbrak 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

PROLOGUE 5

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 An-garaks

allied themselves by marriage with the great city-builders of the

east, who called themselves Melcene, and between them they built an

empire that bestrode the continent. Now the An-garaks were doers of

deeds, but the Melcenes were performers of tasks. A deed once done is

done forever, but a task returns every day, and the Melcenes came

among us to seek out those who might aid them in their endless tasks.

Now as it chanced to happen, one of our kinsmen who aided the

Melcenes had occasion to journey to the north in performance of one

of those tasks. And he came to a place called Ashaba and sought

shelter there from a storm that had overtaken him. And the Master of

me house at Ashaba was neither Grolim nor Angarak nor any other man.

Our kinsman had come unaware upon the house of Torak. Now, Torak was

curious about our people, and He sent for the traveler, and our

kinsman went in to behold the Dragon God. And in the instant that he

looked upon die face of Torak, the Third Age ended, and the Fourth

Age began. For lo, the Dragon God of Angarak was not one of the Gods

for whom we waited. The signs that were upon Him did not lead beyond

Him, and our kinsman saw in an instant that Torak was doomed, and

that which He was would die with Him.

And men we perceived our error, and we marveled at what we had not

seen—that even a God might be but the tool of destiny. For behold,

Torak was of one of the two fates, but he was not the entire fate.

Now it happened that on the far side of the world a king was slain,

and all his family with him—save one. And this king had been die

keeper of one of th& two stones of power, and when wonl of mis was

brought to Torak, He exulted, for He believed that an ancient foe was

no more. Then it was that He began His preparations to do war upon

the kingdoms of the west. But the signs in the heavens and the

whispers in the rocks told us that it was not as Torak believed. The

stone was still guarded, and the

6 SEERESS OF KELL

line of the guardian remained unbroken. Torak's war would bring Him

to grief.

The preparations of the Dragon God were long, and the tasks He laid

upon his people were the tasks of generations. And even as we, Torak

watched the heavens to read there the signs that would tell Him when

to move against the west. But Torak watched only for the signs He

wished to see and He did not read the entire message written in the

sky. Reading thus but a small part of the signs, He set His forces in

motion on the worst possible day.

And, as we had known it must, disaster befell the armies of Tbrak on

a broad plain lying before the city of Vb Mimbre in the far west. And

the Dragon God was bound in sleep to await the coming of His enemy.

And then it was that a whisper began to reach us with yet another

name. The whisper of that name became clearer to us, and upon the day

of his birth the whisper of his name became a great shout. Belgarion

the Godslayer had come at last.

And now the pace of events quickened, and the rush toward the awful

meeting became so swift that the pages of the book of the heavens

became as a blur. And then upon the day that men celebrate as the day

the world was made, the stone of power was delivered up to Belgarion;

and in the instant that his hand closed upon it, the book of the

heavens filled with a great light, and the sound of Belgarion's name

rang from the farthest star.

And then we felt Belgarion moving toward Maliorea bearing the stone

of power, and we could feel Torak stirring as his sleep grew fitful.

And finally there came that dreadful night. As we watched helplessly,

the vast pages of the book of the heavens moved so rapidly that we

could not read them. And then the book stopped, and we read one

terrible line, "Tbrak is slain," and the book shuddered, and all the

light in all of creation went out. And in that awful instant of

darkness and silence, the Fourth Age ended, and the Fifth Age began.

And as the Fifth Age began, we found a mystery in the book of the

heavens. Before, all had moved toward the meeting between Belgarion

and Torak, but now events moved toward a different meeting. There

were signs among the stars which told us that the rates had selected

yet other aspects for their final encounter, and we could feel the

movements of those presences, but we knew not who or what they might

be, for the pages of the great book were dark and obscure. Yet we

felt a presence shrouded and veiled in darkness, and it moved through

the af-

PROLOGUE 7

fairs of men, and the moon spoke most clearly, advising us that this

dark presence was a woman.

One thing we saw in all the vast confusion that now clouded the book

of the heavens. The Ages of man grew shorter as each one passed, and

the Events that were the meetings between the two fates were growing

closer and closer together. The time for leisurely contemplation had

passed, and now we must hasten lest the last Event come upon us all

unaware.

We decided that we must goad or deceive the participants in that

final Event so that they should both come to the appointed place at

the destined time.

And we sent the similitude of She Who Must Make the Choice to the

veiled and hooded presence of dark and to Belgarion the Godslayer,

and she set them upon the path that would lead them at last to the

place of our choosing.

And then we all turned to our preparations, for much remained to be

done, and we knew that this Event would be the last. The division of

creation had endured for too long; and in rtis meeting between the

two fates the division would end and all would be made one again.

Part One

KELL

CHAPTER ONE

The air was thin and cool and richly scented with the odor of trees

that shed no leaves but stood dark green and resinous from one end of

their lives to the other. The sunlight on the snowfields above them

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

PROLOGUEExcerptsfromTheBookofAges,BookOneofTHEMALLO-REANGOSPELS:NowThesearetheAgesofMan:IntheFirstAgewasmancreated,andheawokeinpuzzlementandwonderashebeheidtheworldabouthim.Andthosethathadmadehimconsideredhimandselectedfromhisnumberthosethatpleasedthem,andtherestwerecastoutanddrivenaway.Andsomewenti...

展开>> 收起<<

David Eddings - Malloreon 5 The Seeress of Kell.PDF

共343页,预览5页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

David Eddings - Malloreon 5 The Seeress of Kell

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: