Doc was stumped. ‘Are you telling my that the Lore itself has never been used? I thought that when someone was referring to the Elf Lore, they were talking about it collectively.’
‘An unfortunate misunderstanding,’ the Thane said. ‘Using a small part of the Lore is not the same thing as invoking the Lore itself.’
‘What will happen if someone does invoke the Lore?’ Doc asked quietly, somehow suspecting the answer.
Answering him indirectly, the Thane replied, ‘The King seeks immortality, for himself only. He believes that by invoking the Lore, in its totality, he will accomplish this end. But the Book of Runes contains literally tens of thousands of spells, rites, invocations and other magicks which have nothing at all to do with the manner in which he would put them to use, collectively or otherwise.’ The Thane’s words, though simple enough in their content, carried with them undercurrents of death and killing, as though the words themselves were written in dried blood.
‘All that power . . .’ Doc muttered, and trailed off. Doing some cursory mental arithmetic, he quickly realized that he could grasp only a tiny part of the proportions of such a conflagration. Utter annihilation. That’s what this was about. Even as he made this realization, he somehow found himself considering the individual who planned such a thing, and shook his head. ‘Even if your King is right . . . even if he were to gain immortality, while the rest of us were destroyed . . . the arrogant presumption . . . the utter selfishness of such an act . . . and yet-’