At the heart of this chaos lurked the darkness that was forever banished by the light that was the Earth Mother Herself. That darkness, if untainted or banished by light, became pure.
Pure Evil.
‘If what you say is true,’ Pran said in a dry voice, ‘then all of us . . . our entire world . . . is doomed.’
The Thane nodded. ‘This matter has, over the years, brought to my mind the matter of Prince Cir, and for long I could not put a name to that which I fear where he was concerned. At first I thought him to simply be mad; but there has always been an aspect to his madness which has caused myself, and many others, a great and deep-seated unease.
‘That he was dead, and had been resurrected by the arts of certain unscrupulous Loremasters, sycophants who will bend to the will of the King, sacrificing scruple and all . . . that he was dead means that, for a time, he walked the paths of the Netherworld.
‘That they were able to bring him back at all; that is the matter which most concerns my thoughts. This silencing, this imprisonment of the Earth Mother, is but a recent thing. It is not the culmination of a process that the King’s Loremasters have been gradually working towards for many years now, else She would have been forewarned by their earlier, less apt efforts. This I know from speaking with certain Loremasters who keep me as informed as they dare.