The Elder Gods (15 page)

“I noticed that myself,” Longbow agreed. “I don’t think this would be a good day for hunting.”

“The fishing might be good, though.” Red-Beard looked around and leaned closer. “Zelana wants to have a word with you,” he said very quietly. “Something happened during the night that’s bothering her.”

“I’ll go right away,” Longbow replied in a similarly quiet voice. Then he spoke a bit louder. “Do you suppose you can watch the fog without any help, Red-Beard?” he asked. “I should probably go find out if Zelana has anything she wants me to do today.”

“I think I’ll be able to manage here by myself,” Red-Beard replied. “I’ll have somebody fetch you if it gets to be more than I can handle.”

“Very funny,” Longbow muttered.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Red-Beard said with a broad grin.

Longbow went aft toward the stern of the
Seagull.
Red-Beard was from a different tribe, but Longbow liked him anyway. The present crisis was altering many of Longbow’s preconceptions in ways that would probably have been impossible no more than a year ago.

He tapped lightly on the door to the aft cabin.

“Come in, Longbow,” Zelana’s voice responded.

He went on into the low-beamed cabin that smelled of tar and quietly closed the door behind him. Zelana was sitting in a chair behind the nailed-down table, and she had a slightly worried look on her face. Eleria was standing just behind her, and
this
time she didn’t come running to Longbow with her arms held out.

Red-Beard said that you wanted to speak with me,” Longbow said. “Is there trouble of some kind?”

“I think there may very well be,” she replied. Then she looked him full in the face. “I believe that the time’s come for us to clear something away. Have you ever heard of the Dreamers?”

Longbow shrugged. “It’s a very old story. It tells us that the coming of the Dreamers will be a sign that the elder gods will soon go to sleep.”

“It goes quite a bit further than that, Longbow. Time tends to distort things, and old stories don’t always come out the same as they did originally. The story of the Dreamers deals with the current situation, and it’s ultimately the Dreamers who’ll confront the Vlagh.”

“And defeat it?” Longbow asked.

“Well, we can hope, I guess.” She looked at him in a peculiar kind of way. “You already see where I’m going with this, don’t you, Longbow? Yes, as a matter of fact, Eleria
is
one of the Dreamers, and she’s already stolen you away from me.”

“I did
not!”
Eleria protested.

“Don’t try to deceive me, Eleria,” Zelana accused the child. “You’ve been just a little obvious.”

“I like him, Beloved, that’s all. I wouldn’t steal anything from you.”

“That’s a lie, and you know it,” Zelana said angrily. “You stole my dolphins, and now you’re trying to steal my most trusted servant.”

“Maybe if you were nicer to them, they wouldn’t be so eager to come to me,” Eleria declared. “You’ve turned mean and hateful lately, Beloved. What’s the matter with you?”

Longbow gave them a cold look. “I’ll come back some other time,” he told them in a flat, unemotional voice. “Let me know when you’ve settled your differences.” He started toward the door.

“You come back here!” Zelana screeched.

“I don’t think so. If you two want to scream at each other, I’ll just be in your way.” Then he left the cabin, softly closing the door behind him.

The silence coming from the cabin was louder than thunder.

Longbow went over to the rail and stood looking out at the fog while he waited.

Eleria came out of the cabin even sooner than he’d expected. “Everything’s all right again, Longbow,” she said. “The screaming’s all over now.”

“That was quick,” he observed.

“You frightened us. The Beloved isn’t used to people who walk away from her the way you just did. We stopped arguing right after you left. We cried for a while and hugged each other, and everything’s all right now. It’s safe for you to come back.”

“Good. Did you want me to carry you?”

“Maybe we’d better not,” she said regretfully. “Let’s not get her started again.”

They went back inside the cabin, and Zelana appeared to have regained her composure. “We were talking about the Dreamers, Longbow,” she said as if nothing had happened. “They have some unusual abilities when they dream. They can look back into the past, and occasionally they dream about the future. That’s what happened last night. Eleria had a dream about the future, and we’ll need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t come true.”

“Can we do that?” Longbow asked her. “I’ve heard all the old stories about the Dreamers, and they all say that those dreams lock the future in stone.”

“The old stories are wrong. Eleria’s dream last night told us what
might
happen, not what will
definitely
happen. It was more in the nature of a warning. Tell him about your dream, Eleria, and about your pearl.”

“If you want me to, Beloved,” Eleria replied obediently. The little storm of screaming seemed to have passed. Eleria looked at Longbow. “Have you ever heard of the Isle of Thurn?” she asked.

“It lies off the west coast of Dhrall, I’ve been told,” Longbow replied, “and we’re forbidden to go there.”

“That’s probably the Beloved’s idea. She lives there, and she doesn’t really care much for the idea of having neighbors. Anyway, there are pink dolphins in the water around the Isle, and the Beloved talks with them, and she’s very fond of them. When I was a very small child, the younger dolphins were my playmates.”

“And you also speak their language, then, don’t you?”

“It’s the language I spoke first. It was only a little while ago when the Beloved taught me how to speak
her
language.”

“That’s odd. Most mothers teach their children to speak their own language.”

Eleria laughed a sparkling little laugh. “What in the world ever gave you the absurd idea that the Beloved is my mother?” she asked. “I think we’re related in some way, but she’s not my mother, certainly.”

“We can talk about that some other time,” Zelana said quite firmly. “Tell him about the pearl, Eleria.”

“I was just getting to that, Beloved. It was last year when I was out playing with the younger dolphins off the coast, Longbow, and an old cow whale came to where we were playing, and she told me that she wanted to show me something. I followed her and we went down to the bottom of Mother Sea. There was a huge oyster down there, and the cow whale touched the oyster with one of her fins, and the oyster opened its shell.” Eleria went to the narrow bed where she slept, and rummaged around under the blankets. Then she drew out something that was about the size of an apple. “This is what the oyster was hiding inside its shell,” she said, holding it up for Longbow to see. “It’s called a pearl, and the cow whale told me that I was supposed to have it.”

Longbow was startled by the size of the pink pearl. He had seen pearls before, but never one so large.

“The pearl controls Eleria’s dreams, Longbow,” Zelana said, “and I think the dream she had last night was a warning. Tell him about it, Eleria.”

“Of course, Beloved,” Eleria agreed. “I guess that other people have dreams too, Longbow,” she said, “and most of the time my dreams are probably like theirs, but the one I had last night wasn’t at all like the dreams I usually have. I seemed to be floating up in the air above the
Seagull.
She was anchored in the harbor of some little Maag town, and it was nighttime. There were five other ships sitting around her to protect her, but some of the little boats the Maags call skiffs came paddling up to them, and then all the ships around the
Seagull
caught on fire. The Maags got very excited, and they were running around trying to put the fires out, and that’s when five
other
ships came out of the dark and tied themselves to the
Seagull.
There was a big fight, and everybody on the
Seagull
was killed. Then the strangers went down into the place where Hook-Big keeps those gold blocks he likes so much. After they’d taken them all, they set fire to the
Seagull
and rowed away. It was then that I saw someone with a hood up over his head watching from the beach, and he was laughing. Then I woke up and told the Beloved what I’d just dreamed, and that’s when she sent Red-Beard to find you and ask you to come here.”

“How big was the one on the beach who was laughing?” Longbow demanded intently.

“Not nearly as big as the other Maags,” Eleria replied. “It was only about as big as Bunny.”

“Could you see what color its hood was?”

“Sort of grey, I think. Is it important?”

“I think it might be. The servants of the Vlagh aren’t very large, and they all wear grey hoods. There seems to have been more in your dream than you might have realized. It would seem that a few of the creatures of the Wasteland have found some way to follow us here, and now they’re trying to find ways to keep us from bringing an army of Maags to the Land of Dhrall.” He looked at Zelana. “Is there some way we can prevent this from happening?” he asked her.

“I think we’ve already begun to change things, Longbow,” she replied. “Just knowing about it is the first step.”

Longbow had grown tired of the endless procession of Maag sea captains coming to the
Seagull
to look at Sorgan’s gold blocks. It seemed that they couldn’t accept the word of others, so they just
had
to see for themselves. Eleria’s dream, however, changed Longbow’s attitude immediately. If the dream meant what it
seemed
to mean, five of the ship captains had—or would have—little interest in the Land of Dhrall.

Longbow was a hunter, and hunters learn early to watch and to listen—and to be as unobtrusive as possible when they do so. Most of the visitors to the
Seagull
were genuinely enthusiastic about the opportunity Sorgan was offering. Others made some show of a similar enthusiasm, but there was something about what they did that didn’t ring quite true.

Longbow continued to watch and listen, but he said nothing.

It was in the harbor of a coastal village called Kweta that Sorgan’s lean and sour cousin Skell joined them, and after some discussion, Sorgan and Skell agreed that it was time to send a portion of what they called “the fleet” eastward to the land of Dhrall, with Red-Beard to guide them.

“My cousin Skell’s a dependable man, Lady Zelana,” Sorgan declared as the advance fleet prepared to depart. “He’ll have about a hundred and twenty ships and almost ten thousand men to deal with any surprise attacks by your enemy, and if there’s a major invasion of the coastal region of your Domain, he’ll be able to hold the enemy off until we get there.”

“How much longer do you think it’s going to be until the rest of us sail to Dhrall?” Zelana asked him.

“Not too much longer, really. The word’s out now, and just about every ship captain in Maag’s eager to join us. The only real problem is that they all want to
see
the gold in the
Seagull
’s hold for themselves before they make any final decisions.” Sorgan made a rueful face. “I hate to admit it, but maybe we brought
too much
gold back to Maag. When you get right down to it, a dozen blocks would probably have been enough. Most people here in Maag would take my word if I’d said ‘a dozen.’ When I tell them that I’ve got a hundred in the hold, they want to see them to make sure I’m not lying to them. I think I might have overbaited my fishhook.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Hook-Big,” Eleria said.

“Hook-
Beak,
” Sorgan absently corrected her.

“Whatever,” she said with mock indifference.

6

I
’ve already shown you the gold, Kajak,” Sorgan said to a bone-thin Maag the next morning when a group of visitors came on board the
Seagull.
“Didn’t you believe what you saw?”

“I’m helping you, Sorgan,” the lean Kajak replied. “I sent out word to a whole lot of my kinfolks and promised to introduce them to you when you hauled into the harbors of their home ports. If things work out the way I think they will, I should be able to bring a couple dozen more ships to join your fleet.”

“Splendid, Kajak,” Sorgan said. “It looks like you can see past the end of your own nose. I keep coming across men who can’t quite see why we need more ships and men once they’ve joined us. They seem to be afraid that more ships means smaller shares for everybody who’s already joined the fleet. They can’t quite understand how much gold we’re talking about.”

“There’s some out there that have trouble with big numbers, Sorgan. Would it be all right if I take my cousins here down into the
Seagull
’s hold and show them your gold?”

“Be my guest, Kajak,” Sorgan replied.

Longbow had been sitting off to one side in Sorgan’s cabin while Sorgan and Kajak had been talking, and he noticed that Kajak’s four cousins had seemed just a bit edgy as they stood behind Kajak in the aft cabin. Eleria, as always, was sitting in Longbow’s lap. “Those might be the ones I saw in my dream,” she whispered in his ear.

“The number’s right,” Longbow agreed, “but number alone isn’t quite enough to be certain that these are the ones we have to watch out for. Climb down, child. I think I’ll drift along behind when they go down to look at Sorgan’s gold.”

Longbow followed Kajak and his four kinsmen at some distance. They seemed to be a bit nervous, but there were several of Sorgan’s heavily armed crewmen close by, and that would explain their apparent apprehension.

When they came back up out of the hold, they all had that look of awe that had become quite common. They hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary yet, but Longbow wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibility that these were the five ship captains in Eleria’s dream.

“It’s a family that hasn’t got the best reputation here in Maag, Longbow,” Rabbit said later that day when Longbow privately asked him about Kajak and his cousins. “There’ve been times when other Maag ships sailed along with a few of them to go hunting Trogite treasure ships, and those other Maags never came back. If they’ve got any ideas along those lines this time, though, they aren’t likely to try anything just yet. Skell and the other captains in the advance fleet are still provisioning their ships for the voyage to Dhrall, so there are a lot of Maag ships nearby.”