The Rivan Codex Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  PREFACE: THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF BELGARATH THE SORCERER

  INTRODUCTION

  I - THE HOLY BOOKS

  THE BOOK OF ALORN - Of the Beginnings

  THE BOOK OF TORAK

  TESTAMENT OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE

  HYMN TO CHALDAN

  THE LAMENT OF MARA

  THE PROVERBS OF NEDRA

  THE SERMON OF ALDUR - Unto his Disciples

  THE BOOK OF ULGO

  II - THE HISTORIES

  At Tol Honeth 5368

  GENERAL BACKGROUND AND GEOGRAPHY

  THE EMPIRE OF TOLNEDRA

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE PEOPLE

  PRE-DYNASTIC HISTORY

  THE FIRST VORDUVIAN DYNASTY 1373–1692 (319 years, 16 Emperors)

  THE SECOND HONETHITE DYNASTY 1692–2112 (420 years, 19 Emperors)

  THE SECOND VORDUVIAN DYNASTY 2112–2537 (425 years, 20 Emperors)

  THE FIRST BORUNE DYNASTY 2537–3155 (618 years, 24 Emperors)

  THE THIRD HONETHITE DYNASTY 3155–3497 (342 years, 17 Emperors)

  THE SECOND BORUNE DYNASTY 3497–3761 (264 years, 12 Emperors)

  THE FIRST HORBITE DYNASTY 3761–3911 (150 years, 6 Emperors)

  THE FIRST RANITE DYNASTY 3911–4001 (90 years, 7 Emperors)

  THE THIRD VORDUVIAN DYNASTY 4001–4133 (132 years, 3 Emperors)

  THE SECOND HORBITE DYNASTY 4133–4483 (350 years, 16 Emperors)

  THE SECOND RANITE DYNASTY 4483–4742 (259 years, 17 Emperors)

  THE THIRD BORUNE DYNASTY 4742 to date (626 years, 23 Emperors)

  UNIVERSAL WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

  Tolnedra

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  POPULATIONS

  MAJOR HOLIDAYS

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  Appendix on Maragor

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE PEOPLE

  HISTORY

  COINAGE

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  THE CANNIBALISM

  MANNERS

  THE ALORN KINGDOMS

  The Isle of the Winds

  Riva

  Cherek

  Cherek

  Drasnia

  Drasnia

  Algaria

  Appendix on the Vale of Aldur

  Algaria

  HOLIDAYS

  SENDARIA

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE PEOPLE

  THE HISTORY OF SENDARIA

  Sendaria

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANK

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  POPULATION

  ARENDIA

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE PEOPLE

  THE HISTORY OF ARENDIA

  Arendia

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  COMMERCE

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  ULGOLAND

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE ULGOS

  THE HISTORY OF THE ULGOS

  Ulgoland

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  COMMERCE

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANK

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS

  POPULATION

  NYISSA

  GEOGRAPHY

  THE PEOPLE

  THE HISTORY OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE

  Nyissa

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  COMMERCE

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANK

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  POPULATION

  THE ANGARAK KINGDOMS

  GEOGRAPHY

  Gar Og Nadrak

  Mishrak Ac Thull

  Cthol Murgos

  THE PEOPLE

  THE HISTORY OF THE ANGARAKS

  Gar Og Nadrak

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANK

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS

  POPULATION

  Mishrak Ac Thull

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANK

  MODE OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  HOLIDAYS AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  POPULATION

  Cthol Murgos

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  RANKS

  MODES OF ADDRESS

  HOLIDAYS AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  POPULATION

  Mallorea

  COINAGE

  COSTUME

  SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

  NOBILITY

  MODE OF ADDRESS

  MANNERS

  COMMERCE

  HOLIDAYS AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  POPULATION

  The Grolims

  WEALTH

  COSTUME

  ORGANIZATION

  RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES

  THE SACRIFICE

  RANK

  PHYSICAL

  POPULATION

  III - THE BATTLE OF VO MIMBRE

  Excerpted from the prose epic ...

  BOOK SEVEN THE BATTLE BEFORE VO MIMBRE

  AND BEHOLD:

  AFTERWORD

  INTERMISSION

  IV - PRELIMINARY STUDIES FOR THE MALLOREON

  A CURSORY HISTORY OF THE ANGARAK KINGDOMS - Prepared by the History Department of the University of Melcene

  V - THE MALLOREAN GOSPELS

  THE BOOK OF AGES

  THE BOOK OF FATES

  THE BOOK OF TASKS

  THE BOOK OF GENERATIONS

  THE BOOK OF VISIONS

  VI - A SUMMARY OF CURRENT EVENTS

  From the Personal Journal of King Anheg of Cherek

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  Anheg

  AFTERWARD

  Visit www.delreybooks.com— the portal to all the information and resources available from Del Rey Online.

  By David Eddings

  Copyright Page

  For Malcolm, Jane, Joy, Geoff, and the rest of the bunch.

  It’s always a genuine pleasure to work with you.

  With all our thanks.

  DAVID & LEIGH

  More Praise for The Rivan Codex

  “[The Rivan Codex] presents a variety of well-crafted pseudobiblia, such as Belgarath’s autobiography and many of the Holy Books. It goes on to the historical, economic, and ethnographic background of the major nations of the sagas. There are many other pieces that reflect well on the Eddingses’ world-building skills—as if the novels themselves had not already demonstrated their craft. . . . It is also of some scholarly interest in revealing the roots of one of the founding megasagas in modern English-language fantasy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Spellbinding—all of it: the various characters’ own summaries of their worlds and problems, the maps, the other illustrations . . . and the Eddingses’ frequent quips and comments. . . . Delightful reading for any fantasy fan.”

  —Booklist

  FIRST MAP OF A PLACE THAT NEVER WAS

  PREFACE: THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF BELGARATH THE SORCERER1

&nbs
p; In the light of all that has happened, this is most certainly a mistake. It would be far better to leave things as they are, with event and cause alike half-buried in the dust of forgotten years. If it were up to me, I would so leave them. I have, however, been so importuned by an undutiful daughter, so implored by a great (and many times over) grandson, and so cajoled by that tiny and willful creature who is his wife—a burden he will have to endure for all his days—that I must, if only to have some peace, set down the origins of the titanic events which have so rocked the world.

  Few will understand this, and fewer still will acknowledge its truth. I am accustomed to that. But, since I alone know the beginning, the middle, and the end of these events, it is upon me to commit to perishable parchment and to ink that begins to fade before it even dries some ephemeral account of what happened and why.

  Thus, let me begin this story as all stories are begun, at the beginning.

  I was born in a village so small that it had no name.2 It lay, if I remember it correctly, on a pleasant green bank beside a small river that sparkled in the summer sun as if its surface were covered with jewels—and I would trade all the jewels I have ever owned or seen to sit beside that river again.

  Our village was not rich, but in those days none were. The world was at peace, and our Gods walked among us and smiled upon us. We had enough to eat and huts to shelter us from the weather. I do not recall who our God was, nor his attributes, nor his totem. It was, after all, a very, very long time ago.

  Like the other children, I played in the warm, dusty streets and ran through the long grass in the meadows and paddled in that sparkling river which was drowned by the eastern sea so many years ago that they are beyond counting.

  My mother died when I was quite young. I remember that I cried about it for a very long time, though I must honestly admit that I can no longer even remember her face. I remember the gentleness of her hands and the warm smell of fresh-baked bread that came from her garments, but I can not remember her face—but then, there have been so many faces.

  The people of my village cared for me and saw to it that I was fed and clothed and sheltered in one house or another, but I grew up wild. I never knew my father, and my mother was dead, and I was not content with the simple, drowsy life of a small, unnamed village beside a sparkling river in a time when the world was very young. I began to wander out into the hills above my village, at first with only a stick and a sling, but later with more manly weapons—though I was still but a child.

  And then came a day in early spring when the air was cool and the clouds raced overhead in the fresh, young wind, and I had climbed to the top of the highest hill to the west of our river. And I looked down at the tiny patch of dun-colored huts beside a small river that did not sparkle beneath the scudding clouds of spring. And then I turned and looked to the west at a vast grassland and white-topped mountains beyond and clouds roiling titanic in the grey sky. And I looked one last time at the village where I was born and where, had I not climbed that hill on just such a morning, I might well have died; and I turned my face to the west and I went from that place forever.

  The summer was easy. The plain yielded food in plenty to a young adventurer with the legs to chase it and the appetite to eat it—no matter how tough or poorly cooked. And in the fall I came upon a vast encampment of people whitened as if by the touch of frost. They took me in and wept over me, and many came to touch me and to look at me, and they wept also. But one thing I found most strange. In the entire encampment there were no children, and to my young eyes the people seemed most terribly old. They spoke a language I did not understand, but they fed me and seemed to argue endlessly among themselves over who might have the privilege of keeping me in his tent or pavilion.

  I passed the winter among these strange people, and, as is so frequently the case with the young, I learned nothing in that season. I can not remember even one word of the language they spoke.3

  When the snow melted and the frost seeped up out of the ground and the wind of spring began to blow again, I knew it was time to leave. I took no joy in the pampering of a multitude of grandparents and had no desire to become the pet of a host of crotchety old people who could not even speak a civilized language.

  And so, early one spring morning, before the darkness had even slid off the sky, I sneaked from the camp and went south into a low range of hills where their creaky old limbs could not follow me. I moved very fast, for I was young and well-fed and quite strong, but it was not fast enough. As the sun rose I could hear the wails of unspeakable grief coming from the encampment behind me. I remember that sound very well.

  I loitered that summer in the hills and in the upper reaches of the Vale to the south beyond them. It was in my mind that I might—if pursued by necessity—winter again in the camp of the old people. But, as it happened, an early storm caught me unprepared to the south of the hills, and the snow piled so deep that I could not make my way back across to my refuge. And my food was gone, and my shoes, mere bags of untanned hide, wore out, and I lost my knife, and it grew very cold.

  In the end I huddled behind a pile of rock that seemed to reach up into the very heart of the snowstorm that swirled around me and tried to prepare myself for death. I thought of my village and of the grassy fields around it and of our small, sparkling river, and of my mother, and, because I was still really very young, I cried.

  ‘Why weepest thou, boy?’ The voice was very gentle. The snow was so thick that I could not see who spoke, but the tone made me angry.

  ‘Because I’m cold and I’m hungry,’ I said, ‘and because I’m dying and I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why art thou dying? Art thou injured?’

  ‘I’m lost,’ I said, ‘and it’s snowing, and I have no place to go.’

  ‘Is this reason enough to die amongst thy kind?’

  ‘Isn’t it enough?’ I said, still angry.

  ‘And how long dost thou expect this dying of thine will persist?’ The voice seemed mildly curious.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never done it before.’

  The wind howled and the snow swirled more thickly around me.

  ‘Boy,’ the voice said finally, ‘come here to me.’

  ‘Where are you?’ I said. ‘I can’t see you.’

  ‘Walk around the tower to thy left. Knowest thou thy left hand from thy right?’

  I stumbled to my half-frozen feet angrier than I ever remember having been.

  ‘Well, boy?’

  I moved around what I had thought was a pile of rock, my hands on the stones.

  ‘Thou shalt come to a smooth grey rock,’ the voice said, ‘somewhat taller than thy head and broad as thine arms may reach.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, my lips thick with the cold. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Tell it to open.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Speak unto the rock,’ the voice said patiently, ignoring the fact that I was congealing in the gale. ‘Command it to open.’

  ‘Command? Me?’

  ‘Thou art a man. It is but a rock.’

  ‘What do I say?’

  ‘Tell it to open.’

  ‘Open,’ I commanded halfheartedly.

  ‘Surely thou canst do better than that.’

  ‘Open! ’ I thundered.

  And the rock slid aside.

  ‘Come in, boy,’ the voice said. ‘Stand not in the weather like some befuddled calf.’

  The inside of the tower—for such indeed it was—was dimly lighted by stones that glowed with a pale, cold fire. I thought that was a fine thing, though I would have preferred it had they been warmer. Stone steps worn with countless centuries of footfalls ascended in a spiral into the gloom above my head. Other than that the chamber was empty.

  ‘Close the door, boy,’ the voice said, not unkindly.

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘How didst thou open it?’

  I turned to the gaping rock and quite proud of myself, I commanded, ‘Close!’


  And, at my voice, the rock slid shut with a grinding sound that chilled my blood even more than the fierce storm outside.

  ‘Come up, boy,’ the voice commanded.

  And so I mounted the stairs, only a little bit afraid. The tower was very high, and the climbing took me a long time.

  At the top was a chamber filled with wonders. I looked at things such as I had never seen even before I looked at him who had commanded me and had saved my life. I was very young, and I was not at the time above thoughts of theft. Larceny even before gratitude seethed in my grubby little soul.

  Near a fire which burned, as I observed, without fuel sat a man (I thought) who seemed most incredibly ancient. His beard was long and full and white as the snow which had so nearly killed me—but his eyes—his eyes were eternally young.

  ‘Well, boy,’ he said, ‘hast thou decided not to die?’

  ‘Not if it isn’t necessary,’ I said bravely, still cataloguing the wonders of the chamber.

  ‘Dost thou require anything?’ he asked. ‘I am unfamiliar with thy kind.’

  ‘A little food,’ I told him. ‘I have not eaten in three days. And a warm place to sleep. I shall not be much trouble, Master, and I can make myself useful in payment.’ I had learned a long time ago how to make myself agreeable to those who were in a position to do me favors.

  ‘Master?’ he said and laughed, a sound so cheerful that it made me almost want to dance. ‘I am not thy master, boy.’ He laughed again, and my heart sang with the splendor of his mirth. ‘Let us see to this thing of food. What dost thou require?’

  ‘A little bread perhaps,’ I said, ‘—not too stale.’

  ‘Bread?’ he said. ‘Only bread? Surely, boy, thy stomach is fit for more than bread. If thou wouldst make thyself useful— as thou hast promised—we must nourish thee properly. Consider, boy. Think of all the things thou hast eaten in thy life. What in all this world would most surely satisfy that vast hunger of thine?’

  I could not even say it. Before my eyes swam the visions of plump, smoking roasts, of fat geese swimming in their own gravy, of heaps of fresh-baked bread and rich, golden butter, of pastries in thick cream, of cheese, and dark brown ale, of fruits and nuts and salt to savor it all.

  And he who sat by the glowing fire that burned, it seemed, air alone laughed again, and again my heart sang. ‘Turn, boy,’ he said, ‘and eat thy fill.’

  And I turned, and there on a table which I had not even seen before lay everything which I had imagined.

  A hungry young boy does not ask where food comes from—he eats. And so I ate. I ate until my stomach groaned. And through the sound of my eating I could hear the laughter of the aged one beside his fire, and my heart leapt within me at each laugh.