"David Eddings - Malloreon 3 Demon Lord of Karanda" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

which both sides avoided committing their full forces. The two
nations eventually established the practice of each sending
children of the leaders to be raised by leaders of the other
side. This led to a fuller understanding by both, as well as
to the growth of a body of cosmopolitan youths that eventually
became the norm for the ruling class of the Mallorean Empire.
One such youth was Kallath, the son of a high-ranking
Angarak general. Brought up in Melcene, he returned to Mal
Zeth to become the youngest man ever to be elevated to the
General Staff Returning to Melcene, he married the daughter of
the Melcene Emperor and managed to have himself declared
Emperor following the old man's death in 3830. Then, using the
Melcene army as a threat, he managed to get himself declared
hereditary Commander in Chief of the Angaraks.
The integration of Melcene and Angarak was turbulent. But
in time, the Melcene patience won out over Angarak brutality.
Unlike other peoples, the Melcenes were ruled by a
bureaucracy. And in the end, that bureaucracy proved far more
efficient than the Angarak military administration, By 4400,
the ascendancy of the bureaucracy was complete. By that time,
also, the title of Commander in Chief had been forgotten and
the ruler of both peoples was simply the Emperor of Mallorea.
To the sophisticated Melcenes, the worship of Torak
remained largely superficial. They accepted the forms out of
expediency, but the Grolims were never able to command the
abject submission to the Dragon God that had characterized the
Angaraks.
Then in 4850, Torak suddenly emerged from his eons of
seclusion to appear before the gates of Mal Zeth.
Wearing a steel mask to conceal his maimed face, he set
aside the Emperor and declared himself Kal Torak, King and
God. He immediately began mustering an enormous force to crush
the Kingdoms of the West and bring all the world under his
domination.
The mobilization that followed virtually stripped Mallorea
of able-bodied males. The Angaraks and Karands were marched
north to the land bridge, crossing to northernmost Gar og
Nadrak, and the Dalasians and Melcenes moved to where fleets
had been constructed to ferry them across the Sea of the East
to southern Cthol Murgos. The northern Malloreans joined with
the Nadraks, Thulls, and northern Murgos to strike toward the
Kingdoms of Drasnia and Algaria. The
second group of Malloreans joined with the southern Murgos and
were to march northwesterly. Torak meant to crush the West
between the two huge armies.
The southern forces, however, were caught in a freak storm
that swept off the Western Sea in the spring of 4875 and that
buried them alive in the worst blizzard of recorded history.
When it finally abated, the column was mired in fourteen-foot
snowdrifts that persisted until early summer. No theory has