The Elder Gods (20 page)

Veltan liked him, and he’d come to rely on him for information.

The sun had not yet risen when Veltan went through Omago’s now bare-limbed orchard, where last summer’s leaves lay thick along the low stone wall to the south. Omago’s whitewashed cottage seemed almost to nestle drowsily under its overhanging thatched roof. Veltan smiled faintly. It seemed sometimes that almost everything in his Domain viewed winter as a good time to catch up on its sleep. Veltan went along the neatly made stone walk to the door of Omago’s cottage and rapped on the door. Ara, Omago’s slender and beautiful wife, opened the door. Ara had long, dark auburn hair, and she was by far the loveliest woman in the village. As was her custom, she wore no shoes, and she had very pretty feet.

Her kitchen was quite large and warm, and it was filled with the lovely fragrance of her cooking. Veltan had no need for food, of course, but he always enjoyed the smell of cooking.

“Good morning, Ara,” he greeted the lady of the house. “Is Omago awake yet? Yaltar tells me that he wants to have some words with me.”

“He’s stirring a bit, dear Veltan,” she replied. “You know Omago. He can sleep through almost anything—except the smell of breakfast. Come in. I’d offer you something to eat if I thought you’d accept.”

“The smell of your cooking is tempting, dear Ara, but no, thanks all the same.” He followed her into the warm golden light of her kitchen. “I’d like to thank you for looking after Yaltar while I was away, Ara,” he said, seating himself at the table. “Sometimes I forget that he needs food quite regularly—probably because I don’t.”

“You’re missing one of the better parts of life, dear Veltan.” She looked at him. “I’ve always wondered if light has any sort of flavor,” she said curiously.

“I don’t think ‘flavor’ is exactly the right term, Ara,” Veltan replied. “Different colored lights have a different sort of feel to them. I taste things with my eyes, not with my tongue. Could you see if Omago’s awake yet? I’m a little pressed for time right now.”

“I’ll fetch him for you, dear Veltan.” She took a generous slice of warm, fresh bread and went back to the place where her husband slept, her long blue dress swirling about her ankles as she moved.

A few moments later she returned, leading her nightshirt-garbed husband by the simple expedient of holding the fragrant piece of bread just out of his reach.

“Good morning, Omago,” Veltan greeted him. “I see that Ara’s managed to get your attention.”

“She does that every morning, Veltan. I swear that she could wake the dead with that wonderful smell.” Omago took the piece of bread from his wife and wolfed it down.

“Don’t eat so fast,” Ara cautioned. “You’ll choke.”

“Yaltar said that you wanted to tell me something,” Veltan said. “He seemed to think it might be important.”

“It could be, Veltan,” Omago replied. “I’ve been hearing about a fair number of strangers drifting around in your Domain here lately. They’re pretending to be traders from the Domain of your sister Aracia of the East, but they can barely speak our language, and all other traders from that part of Dhrall speak the same language we do. They don’t seem to have anything of value to trade, and all they’re really doing is asking questions.”

“What sort of questions?”

“They seem to be curious about how many people live up near the Falls of Vash. Why in the world would anyone want to live
there?
It’s all rock, and so steep that a man’d have to tie himself to a tree to harvest anything that might sprout. The thing they seem to be most curious about is how much contact there is between the people here and the tribes of your sister Zelana’s Domain and just how close you and Zelana are to each other. I’ve been catching some hints that they’d be much happier if you hated her.”

“That’s absurd!”

“I’m just passing on what I’ve heard, Veltan. I thought you should know about it.”

“I’ll look into it when I come back from my brother’s Domain, Omago. I need to talk with him about a little family matter. Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”

“I’ll see to it that Yaltar gets enough to eat,” Ara promised. “We wouldn’t want him to start wasting away, now, would we?”

“Isn’t she a treasure?” Omago said fondly.

“Indeed she is,” Veltan agreed.

“Come back soon, dear Veltan,” Ara said.

“That I will, treasured one,” Veltan promised with a broad smile.

“Does this look at all familiar to you?” Veltan asked his older brother later that morning in the cave under Mount Shrak. He handed the picture Yaltar had drawn on a sheet of parchment to Dahlaine. “I get the feeling that it’s somewhere in Zelana’s Domain.”

“Your boy’s quite gifted, Veltan,” Dahlaine observed. “He’s got a good eye for perspective.”

“Notice that he hasn’t included any sign of snow. I didn’t want to make too big an issue of it, so I didn’t press him too hard, but he told me that there wasn’t any snow on the ground in his dream—of course, that might not be all that significant. The war had already begun at the beginning of his dream, I think. He
did
mention the name Lattash. Isn’t that a village somewhere in Zelana’s Domain?”

“Yes, it is,” Dahlaine agreed, studying the drawing. “There,” he said, pointing at a twisted tree in the middle distance on Yaltar’s drawing. “My thunderbolt did that quite a long time ago, and Zelana scolded me about it for years. Notice the way it’s all twisted and bent over that ravine. I recognize that tree, and I know exactly where it is. This is that ravine that comes down out of the mountains above Lattash.”

“Of course!” Veltan said, snapping his fingers. “All right then, Yaltar’s dream put the battle in that ravine, and he overheard people talking about the Maags. Hasn’t Zelana been trying to persuade the Maags to help her fight off the creatures of the Wasteland?”

Dahlaine nodded. “They’re pirates, so I don’t know how dependable they are, but maybe your boy’s dream means that Zelana’s winning them over. This might just be very useful, Veltan.”

“Maybe,” Veltan replied, “but can we be sure that this will be the first attack? Dreams aren’t too specific, Dahlaine. Isn’t it possible that the attack on Zelana’s Domain will come some time
after
attacks on the other Domains? Yours? Mine? Aracia’s? For all we know, Yaltar’s dream could be taking place long after the war’s begun.”

“That wouldn’t make too much sense, Veltan. The Dreamers are here to help us, not to add to the confusion.” Dahlaine frowned. “There
could
be a problem there, though. We don’t really know all that much about the Dreamers, or if there’s any kind of logic or sequence to their dreams. If the dreams are just popping up at random with no connection to sequence, they could give us more trouble than help.”

“Oh, before I forget, when I told Yaltar that his dream was quite probably taking place in Zelana’s Domain, he asked me if that was the region where Balacenia lives.”

“He said
what?
”

“He called Eleria by her true name, brother.”

“That’s not possible!”

“He called her by name. Vash and Balacenia have always been very close, so evidently he’s aware of her presence, and he doesn’t think of her as Eleria. The young ones are at least as perceptive as we are, Dahlaine, and Yaltar—or Vash—has somehow managed to slip around the barrier you set up when you arranged their premature rebirth. I think we’d better start being very careful. Our cycle hasn’t run its full course yet, and if we break the pattern, everything could start falling apart.”

“Now I’ve got something
else
to worry about. Thanks a lot, Veltan.”

“Don’t mention it.” Veltan frowned. “Do you have any idea at all about what sort of creatures we’ll be facing when this all starts?”

“A few—and they’re not very pretty. The Vlagh tampers and experiments, and it has very little understanding of what we look upon as natural development. We’ve always permitted the creatures—and plants, for that matter—to develop and grow as their innate nature and their surroundings dictate. There’s a certain harmony in our Domains, but there’s no harmony in the Wasteland. The Vlagh seizes on certain characteristics and it crossbreeds to bring those to the fore. From what I’ve seen, it seems that it’s attracted to venomous reptiles and stinging insects for some reason.”

“There
is
a certain practicality there, Dahlaine,” Veltan pointed out. “Poisonous creatures wouldn’t need any weapons, would they? Their weapons are built right into them.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Dahlaine conceded.

“The only problem I can see with that is that insects and reptiles are dormant during the winter, aren’t they?”

“It seems that That-Called-the-Vlagh steps over that problem,” Dahlaine responded. “Its crossbreeds also involve warm-blooded creatures. Insects are enormously strong, snakes have deadly venom, and most warm-blooded creatures remain active in the winter. As closely as I’ve been able to determine, the dominant traits derive from certain insects—bees and ants, for the most part. Have you ever examined the colonizing activities of those kinds of bugs?”

Veltan shuddered. “Not so that you’d notice it, big brother. Bugs are hideous—or were you aware of that?”

“They’re very well designed, though. Their skeletons are on the outsides of their bodies to maintain their shape and also to serve as armor.”

“Perhaps, but they’re stupid beyond belief.”

“As individuals, perhaps, but there seems to be a sort of group awareness involved in the behavior of some varieties. The group is wiser by far than the single individual.”

Veltan squinted at his older brother. “What on earth ever persuaded you to take up the study of bugs, Dahlaine?” he asked.

Dahlaine shrugged. “I was bored, Veltan. Cycle after cycle sort of ambled along before any creature with anything remotely resembling intelligence came along. Bugs were all that there was, so I studied bugs.”

Veltan frowned. “I think there might be a hole in your theory, though. I’ve heard that there have been men—who look like men—who’ve been roaming around in my Domain, nosing around and asking questions. If they can communicate with my people, they almost have to be smarter than bugs, don’t they?”

“What sort of questions are they asking?”

“They’re curious about how many of my people live near the Falls of Vash, and if there’s very much contact between Zelana’s people and mine. From what I gather, they’d really be a lot happier if Zelana and I hated each other.”

Dahlaine frowned. “I hadn’t anticipated that,” he admitted. “The Vlagh may just be more clever than we’d thought. Evidently it’s not going to rely on sheer brute force if it’s sending spies into our Domains. This might just turn out to be a more interesting war than we’d expected. Have you managed to locate any warriors yet?”

“It took me a bit longer than I’d expected, Dahlaine. I went on down into the Trogite Empire thinking that all I’d have to do would be to wave gold in front of some high official, but it doesn’t quite work that way. Once I’d located the right man, though, it went more smoothly.” Veltan snapped his fingers. “I nearly forgot something. Are you likely to be in contact with Aracia any time in the near future?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Could you tell her that I’m going to cut a channel through her ice zone? I’m hiring a Trogite army, but it won’t do us any good unless I can get it here to the Land of Dhrall. Aracia created that ice zone to keep the Trogites away, but the circumstances have changed. We
want
the Trogites here now.”

“Why don’t
you
tell her?”

“She won’t listen to me, Dahlaine. You should know that by now. She’s older than I am in this cycle, and she seems to think that she outranks me.
You’re
the only one she’ll listen to this time, because you’re the only one who’s older than she is. I’m not really looking forward to the next cycle, when
she’ll
be the eldest. Maybe I’ll just go back to the moon and wait her out.”

“You can’t do that, Veltan. You know you can’t.”

“It was just a thought. Have you managed to find
your
army of outlanders yet?”

“I’m still working on them. Have you ever heard of Malavi?”

“Aren’t they the ones who ride cattle?”

“Malavi call them horses, and they don’t exactly think of them as cattle. There aren’t any horses here in Dhrall, so the creatures of the Wasteland are going to be in for a nasty surprise if they decide to come north.”

“Is Aracia working on anybody in particular?”

“She’s negotiating with some people off to the east. She wasn’t very specific about just who they are.”

“I’d better go see if I can find Zelana,” Veltan said. “Things seem to be coming to a head, and since there’s a strong possibility that the first confrontation’s likely to take place in her Domain, I think it’s time for her to come home. Do you think you might have time to go warn her people about the possibility that the creatures of the Wasteland might be coming to call before very long?”

“I’ll see to it, Veltan,” Dahlaine promised. “Go warn Zelana, and I’ll let her people know what’s afoot.”

3

I
need you again, baby,” Veltan silently summoned his pet thunderbolt as he left Dahlaine’s cave under Mount Shrak.

As always, she grumbled a bit, and the flickers of light and distant rumbles of her discontent came to him from far to the south. “Oh, quit,” Veltan chided her. “We’ve hit a busy season, that’s all. Things should go back to normal in a while, so don’t be so bad-tempered.”

There was a sudden flash of light and a crash that shook the very earth, and she was there.

“Good girl,” Veltan said fondly. “We need to find Zelana. Dahlaine says that she’s somewhere off to the west. We may have to jump about a bit to find her, but it’s very important. If you’re extra, extra good, maybe we can have a bit of fun a little later. There’s a band of ice mountains floating off the south coast of Dhrall, and I’m going to need an open channel through them before too much longer. I think we’ll be able to smash our way through, don’t you?”

The lightning bolt skittered around enthusiastically.