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could not be found. He had been tipped off, forewarned. (Was it Orlah who
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warned him? She never said, but I often wonder.) The Sartan searched for him.
To give them credit, they did not want any of their number to face the horror
of what they knew was coming. But he eluded them. He remained in the world and
witnessed the Sundering.
The sight drove him mad, and he would undoubtedly have perished, but he made
his way somehow to the Vortex and from there entered the Labyrinth. How he
managed this is not known, for Zifnab himself has no memory of it. The dragons
of Pryan the manifestation of the higher power in its form for good might have
had something to do with his rescue, but, if so, they refuse to discuss it.
The remaining Sartan removed those mensch deemed worthy to repopulate the new
worlds, took them to a safe place (the Vortex). The Sartan then shut
themselves up in the Seventh Gate and worked the magic. (I will not go into
that here. You will find a description of what I saw and experienced when I
was magically transported back to that time in Haplo's more extensive notes on
the subject, compiled under the title The Seventh Gate.)
THE END
OF THE BEGINNING
Once the Sundering was complete and the new worlds were created, the
Sartan those who had survived the horrific forces they had themselves
unleashed were sent out to begin new lives in new worlds. They took the mensch
with them, intending to shepherd them like flocks of sheep.
Samah and the Council members chose Chelestra as their base of operation. At
this point, Samah should have destroyed the Seventh Gate. (I believe that he
had actually been directed by the Council to do so and that, in leaving the
Gate intact, he directly disobeyed Council commands. I have no proof of this,
however. The Council members to whom I spoke were all very evasive on the
subject. They are still intent on honoring Samah's memory. Ah, well, he was
not an evil man, merely a frightened one.)
I think it likely that Samah intended to destroy the Seventh Gate, but that
circumstances combined to convince him that he should leave it open. He almost
immediately ran into trouble in his new world. Events strange and unforeseen
were happening events over which the Sartan had no control.
THE SERPENTS
The seawater of Chelestra turned out to have a devastating effect on Sartan
magic, rendering it useless, themselves powerless. The Sartan were baffled.
They had certainly not created such a magic-nullifying ocean. Who had? And how
and why?
But this was not the worst.
The tremendous magical eruption had upset the delicate balance of
creation what the dwarves on Cheles-tra would later come to refer to as "the
Wave." Think of the Wave as the sea on a calm day, the waves flowing in to
shore, one after the other, falling and rising, falling and rising. Now,
imagine a tidal wave a wave out of control, rising and rising and rising. The
wave would naturally seek to correct itself and, in this instance, it did so.
The evil that had always existed in the world prior to the Sundering had now
gained the power to take on physical shape and form. Evil was manifested in
the serpents or dragon-snakes.
The serpents followed Samah to Chelestra, hoping, undoubtedly, to learn more
about the new world in which they suddenly found themselves. They knew of the
existence of Death's Gate, but not how it worked. They could enter it only if
the Sartan opened it for them. Perhaps they were also searching for the
Seventh Gate, although that is conjecture. At any rate, their appearance was
another bitter shock for the Sartan, who couldn't imagine how such loathsome
creatures came into existence. Alas, it was the Sartan themselves who brought
them into being.
They told Samah, "You created us," and, in a sense, he did. We all did. We all
do, through fear and hatred and intolerance.
But I digress.
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THE GOOD DRAGONS OF PRYAN
Fortunately for the mensch and the Sartan although they couldn't know it at
the time the Wave continued to try to correct itself. The evil of the
dragon-snakes was balanced by good manifesting itself in the form of the
dragons of Pryan. If Death's Gate had remained open, as was intended, the evil
and the good would have balanced each other out the Wave would have succeeded
in correcting itself.
But, again, fear ruled Samah's life. Afraid of the dragon-snakes, and now
afraid of the mensch whose slight magical powers were not affected by the
seawater Samah sent out calls to other Sartan on other worlds, asking them to
come to his aid, to fight and subdue these new foes.
His calls were never answered, or at least that is what Samah told his people.
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