‘When Otha was a boy, he encountered the Elder God Azash,’ she explained. ‘The Elder Gods of Styricum have great powers and are not controlled by any form of morality. One of the gifts they can bestow upon their followers is the gift of a greatly expanded lifetime. That is why some men are willing to follow them.’

‘Immortality?’ he asked her sceptically.

‘No,’ she corrected, ‘not that. No God can bestow that.’

‘The Elene God can,’ Dolmant said, ‘in a spiritual sense, anyway’

‘That’s an interesting theological point, your Grace.’ She smiled. ‘Someday we’ll have to discuss it. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when Otha agreed to worship Azash, the God granted him enormous power, and Otha eventually became Emperor of Zemoch. The Styrics and the Elenes in Zemoch have intermarried, and so a Zemoch is not truly a member of either race.’

‘An abomination in the eyes of God,’ Dolmant added.

‘The Styric Gods feel much the same way,’ Sephrenia agreed. She looked at Talen again. ‘To understand Otha and Zemoch –one needs to understand Azash. He is the most totally evil force on earth. The rites of the worship of him are obscene. He delights in perversion and in blood and in the agonies of sacrificial victims. In their worship of him, the Zemochs have become much less than human, and their incursion into Lamorkand was accompanied by unspeakable horrors. Had the invading armies been only Zemochs, however, they might have been met and turned back by conventional forces. But Azash had reinforced them with creatures from the underworld.’

‘Goblins?’ Talen asked disbelievingly

‘Not exactly, but the word will serve, I suppose. It would take most of the morning for me to describe the twenty or so varieties of inhuman creatures Azash has at his command, and you wouldn’t like the descriptions.’

‘This story is getting less believable by the minute,’ Talen noted. ‘I like the battles and all, but when you start telling me about goblins and fairies, I begin to lose interest. I’m not a child any more, after all.’

‘In time you may come to understand – and to believe,’ she said. ‘Go on with the story, Berit.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘When the Church realized the nature of the forces that were invading Lamorkand, they summoned the Church Knights back from Rendor. They reinforced the ranks of the four orders with other knights and with common soldiers until the forces of the west were nearly as numerous as those of the Zemoch horde of Otha.’

‘Was there a battle then?’ Talen asked eagerly.