The Oak and the Ram - 04 Read Online Free PDF Page B

RULE
     
     
    "Aye," said Jhary-a-Conel as he slapped gloved hands together over a fire which seemed reluctant to burn. "The Fhoi Myore are fitting cousins to the Lords of Entropy, for they seem to seek the same ends. For all I know the Fhoi Myore are what those lords have become. There are so many fluctuations these days. Caused partially, I should say, by Baron Kalan's foolish manipulation of time, partially as a result of the Million Spheres beginning to slide out of conjunction—though that will take a little while before it is fully accomplished. In the meantime we live in times which are uncertain in more ways than one. The fate of sentient life itself sometimes seems to me to be at stake. Yet do I fear? No, I think not. I place no special value upon sentience. I'd as cheerfully become a tree!"
    "Who's to say they are not sentient?" Corum smiled as he set a pan upon the fire and began to lay strips of meat in the slowly boiling water.
    "Well, then, a block of marble."
    "Again, we do not know ..." Corum began, but Jhary cut him short with a snort of impatience.
    "I'll not play such children's games!"
    "You misunderstand me. You have touched on a subject I have been considering only lately, you see. I, too, am beginning to realize that there is no special value to being, as it were, able to think. Indeed, one can see many disadvantages. The whole miserable condition of mortals is created by their ability to analyze the universe and their inability to understand it."
    "Some do not care," said Jhary. "I, for one, am content to drift—to let whatever happens happen without bothering to ask why it happens."
    ‘ Indeed, I agree that that is an admirable feeling. But we are not all endowed with such feelings by nature. Some must cultivate those feelings. Others may never cultivate them and they lead unhappy lives as a result. Yet does it matter if our lives are happy or unhappy? Should we place more value on joy than on sorrow? Is it not possible to see both as possessing the same value?"
    '' All I know,'' said Jhary practically,' 'is that most of us consider it better to be happy ..."
    ' 'Yet we all achieve that happiness in a variety of ways. Some by cultivating carelessness, some by caring. Some by service to themselves and some by service to others. Currently I find pleasure in serving others. The whole question of morality ..."
    ". . . is as nothing when one's stomach rumbles," said Jhary, peering into the pot. "Is that meat done, do you think, Corum?"
    Corum laughed. "I think I am becoming a bore," he said.
    "It 's nothing." Jhary fished pieces of meat from the pot and dropped them into his bowl. He set one piece aside to cool for the cat which purred as it sat on his shoulder and rubbed its head against Jhary 's. "You have found a religion, that is all. What else can you expect in a Mabden dream?"
    They rode beside a frozen river, along a track now completely hidden by the snow, climbing higher and higher into the hills. They rode past a house whose stone walls had been cracked open as if by the blow of a gigantic hammer and it was only when they were close did they see the white skulls peering from the windows and the white hands gesturing in attitudes of terror. The bones shimmered in the pale sunshine.
    ' 'Frozen,'' said Jhary.' 'And cold it was which doubtless cracked the stones."
    "Balahr's work," said Corum. "He of the single, deadly eye. I know him. I have fought him."
    And they went past the house and over the hill, finding a town where the frozen corpses lay strewn about; these still had flesh on them and had plainly died before the cold had frozen them. And each male had been horribly desecrated.
    ' 'The work of Goim,'' said Corum.' 'The only female of the Fhoi Myore still surviving. She has a taste for certain morsels of mortal flesh."
    "We are at the borders of the lands where the Fhoi Myore hold full sway,'' said Jhary-a-Conel pointing ahead to where gray Clouds boiled. "Shall we suffer so? Shall Balahr or