The Elder Gods (22 page)

“Is Eleria with my sister?”

“They don’t never get too far apart. That’s one sweet little girl, ain’t she?”

“Indeed she is,” Veltan agreed. “It was Longbow, then, who shot arrows into the foreheads of the enemy sailors, wasn’t it?”

“Word about that seems to have gotten out. Where did you hear about it?”

“It was in a town up the coast a ways. I happened to overhear a conversation between a pair who’d really wanted Kajak to succeed. They were both terribly disappointed, and more than a little afraid. The one they work for doesn’t take bad news very well.”

“What a shame,” Rabbit said with a sly grin. Then he turned and looked over his shoulder. “That’s the
Seagull
just ahead. Once we get on board, you’ll be able to tell your sister what’s afoot back home.”

“She lied to me, Zelana. Can you
believe
that?” Veltan said to his sister in the snug cabin at the aft end of the ship while Rabbit went back to his skiff to return to the little village on the beach. “Mother Sea told me that I could have come back home after just a couple months, but the moon deceived me, and I stayed there for ten eons.”

“Oh, Veltan!” Zelana exclaimed. “Everybody knows that the moon isn’t to be trusted.”

“
I
didn’t. Actually, though, it wasn’t really all that bad. The moon can be a delightful companion when she wants to be. Let’s get down to business here. Where’s this Sorgan that everybody keeps talking about?”

“He’s off somewhere in the harbor talking with the other ship captains. He should be back before too much longer.”

“Let’s hope so. I’ve arranged to bring a Trogite army to Dhrall. If all goes well, they’ll be landing in my Domain in late winter or early spring.”

“How big an army are we talking about here?”

“About a hundred thousand men, dear sister.”

“That should carry quite a bit of weight.”

“We can hope, I guess. Now things start to get a little interesting. When I returned home, Yaltar was wearing a beautiful fire opal as a pendant, and he told me that he’d found it lying on our doorstep one morning. Then he told me that he’d been having a recurrent nightmare. It’s fairly obvious that his opal is having the same effect as Eleria’s pearl, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s entirely possible, I suppose, and if the pearl
is
the voice of Mother Sea, wouldn’t that suggest that the opal might very well be the voice of Father Earth?”

Veltan blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “It would seem that we have some powerful friends, wouldn’t it? Anyway, Yaltar’s nightmare involved a war, and Dahlaine and I were able to pinpoint its location. It’s going to take place in your Domain, dear sister, and most of the fighting’s going to be in a river gorge that leads down to a place called Lattash.”

“How very fortunate. As it happens, I’ve already got an advance force of Maags in the harbor of Lattash.”

“You knew this was coming, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, Veltan. I just didn’t know exactly where or when. Now that we’ve pinpointed where, all we need to know is when.”

“Spring, maybe. I questioned Yaltar, without being too obvious about it, and there wasn’t any snow in the ravine that leads down to Lattash during the battle he kept dreaming about. I wouldn’t lock ‘spring’ in stone, though. Yaltar’s dream started in the middle of the war, so we can’t be sure just
when
it started. The Vlagh’s keeping an eye on us, and it might just try an early strike to catch us off guard. There have been strangers wandering around in my Domain asking questions. They’re curious about how many people live in the vicinity of the Falls of Vash, and whether you and I are on speaking terms.”

“It should know that we’re close, Veltan. We
are
brother and sister, after all.”

“The Vlagh wouldn’t understand that, Zelana. It doesn’t have a family, so it knows nothing about love. You had a bit of excitement here recently, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes—very exciting. There was a Maag named Kajak who was
very
interested in the gold Sorgan was using for bait to attract other Maags to go to Dhrall and fight our war for us.”

“It went just a bit further than that, dear sister. The Vlagh has people—and things—here in Maag as well as in Dhrall, and they encouraged this Kajak to attack your Maag, Sorgan. I happened to overhear a couple of the Vlagh’s agents talking in an alley up in Weros, and they weren’t very happy about the way things turned out. The Vlagh’s agents were a very odd pair, let me tell you. One of them appeared to be an ordinary Maag, except that he was only about half as big, but the other one was a very large insect.”

“You’re not serious!”

“I’m afraid so. Dahlaine told me that the Vlagh’s been experimenting, and it’s tampering with the natural order of things by crossbreeding assorted species. The insect I saw in that alley in Weros was as tall as a man, and it could talk—and think. As I understand it, their scheme fell apart because of a Dhrall you brought with you.”

Zelana smiled. “Indeed it did, Veltan. His name is Longbow, and he never misses when he shoots an arrow at something.”

“I thought that little Maag who rowed me out to this ship was exaggerating, but he might have been actually telling me the truth.”

“That was probably Rabbit. He and Longbow are good friends. You’ve been very busy, haven’t you, Veltan?”

“I haven’t
quite
met myself coming around a corner yet, but that may happen in a week or so. How big an army have you managed to gather so far?”

“We’re approaching fifty thousand men. I wish I could get more, but the Maags spend most of their time at sea robbing Trogite treasure ships.”

“I’d heard about that. The Trogites dislike the Maags intensely. That could cause a few problems, but I think we’ll be able to work our way around them. When I go back to pick up my army, I think I’ll send you some help. Trogites are very good soldiers, so they might be useful.”

“What a nice person you are, Veltan,” Zelana said, smiling fondly at him.

“Family obligation, sister.” Veltan looked around. “Is Eleria anywhere nearby?” he asked quietly.

“No, she’s out on the deck playing in the rain.”

“She’s
what?
”

“She loves water. Longbow’s keeping an eye on her.”

“There’s something else you should know about, sister of mine,” Veltan said very quietly. “When Yaltar was telling me about his dream, I made a quick guess and suggested that the battle he’d dreamt about would take place in your Domain. Then he said, ‘That’s where Balacenia lives, isn’t it?’ I can’t for the life of me understand how, but it seems that he knows her real name.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Dahlaine said the same thing, but Yaltar definitely said ‘Balacenia’ when he spoke of her. Our big brother may
think
he’s put a wall between our Dreamers and their past, but I think that wall may have just a few holes in it.”

Eleria and the archer Longbow came in out of the rain a little while later. Eleria was dripping wet, but Longbow had evidently been watching her from a sheltered place on the deck. “Did you have a nice time, dear?” Zelana asked.

“It was sort of nice,” Eleria replied. “Not as nice as swimming, but Hook-Big’s people get all excited when I jump off the rail, and the water here’s awfully dirty.”

“Go dry yourself off and change clothes, dear,” Zelana told her. “You’re dripping all over the floor.”

“Yes, Beloved,” the little girl replied, going to the place where she slept and taking up a thick cloth.

Veltan was more than a little startled by Zelana’s Dreamer. She was by far the most beautiful child he’d ever seen, and he sensed a towering though not fully developed intelligence in her.

“Longbow,” Zelana said to the tall, silent Dhrall, “this is my brother, Veltan of the South, and he’s brought us some news about what’s been happening at home.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Veltan,” Longbow said. “Has Zelana’s Domain been attacked as yet?”

“Not as far as I know,” Veltan replied, “but I’m afraid it won’t be too much longer.”

“We’d better go home, then, Zelana,” Longbow suggested.

“I think you’re right,” she agreed. “Sorgan’s cousin should be in the harbor of Lattash by now, but if the creatures of the Wasteland come now, Skell could be badly outnumbered. We might have more time than I originally thought we would, but I’d rather not take any chances. As soon as Hook-Beak returns, I’ll talk with him.”

“It could just be that the advance fleet of Trogites I’ll be sending will reach Lattash before Sorgan’s fleet does,” Veltan suggested. “That could be very useful in the event of a sudden emergency.”

“That’s assuming that the Maags and Trogites don’t kill each other before the war even starts. They aren’t really very fond of each other.”

“We’re the ones in charge, Zelana, and we’re the ones who’ll pay them. I don’t think you fully understand the power of money, dear sister. They won’t have to
like
what we tell them to do; they just have to do it. If they decide that they’d rather not, we just tie the purse shut. That river that comes down the ravine to Lattash has two sides, though. If we deploy the Maags on one side and the Trogites on the other, we should be able to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.”

Eleria came back from changing clothes and climbed up into Longbow’s lap. Veltan gave his sister a questioning look.

“It’d take much too long to explain, Veltan,” she said with a sigh.

Captain Sorgan returned to the
Seagull
as the rainy afternoon was moving on toward evening, and the crewmen who’d been loading supplies for the long voyage to Dhrall made their final trip of the day at about the same time. Zelana sent word to the Maag ship captain that she needed to talk with him and with two other sailors as well: one she called Ox, and another known as Ham-Hand. Maags, Veltan noted, had peculiar and usually unflattering names. Veltan immediately saw that Sorgan, like most of the other Maags he’d encountered, was about half again the size of an ordinary man, and he and his friends seemed to be very grubby and dirty. Maags evidently didn’t bathe very often. If Zelana was anywhere close to being right, though, the Maags were very clever. Veltan smiled faintly. Zelana’s Maags and his Trogites probably weren’t going to get along very well.

“This is my brother Veltan,” Zelana introduced him to the oversized Maags, “and he’s brought us some interesting news about certain events in the Land of Dhrall.”

“It’s always good to know what’s going on,” Sorgan said. He looked at Veltan. “What’s afoot over there?” he asked.

“We had a stroke of luck here recently,” Veltan told him. “We managed to discover exactly where our enemy’s planning to make its initial attack, and as luck has it, it’s going to take place in the vicinity of a spot you’re familiar with, and better yet, a part of your fleet’s already bound for that region.”

“The enemy’s going to attack Lattash?” Sorgan demanded shrewdly. “So
that’s
what this has been about right from the start, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t think I quite follow you,” Veltan confessed.

“Lattash is the place where Lady Zelana keeps all her gold. Didn’t you know that? Now this war’s starting to make sense.”

“I think we’d better haul anchor and put on full sail, Cap’n,” the burly Ox said. “If we don’t get to that Lattash place afore the enemy does, we’ll come up empty when pay time rolls around.”

“He’s got a point, Cap’n,” the Maag named Ham-Hand chipped in. “Skell
might
get there in time to hold the enemy off, but
might
is pretty shaky ground to stand on right now. You’ve been hiring just about every Maag ship along this coast with promises about the gold in that cave, and if the cave’s empty when we get there, you ain’t going to be none too popular.”

“The enemy knows that you’re coming, Captain Sorgan,” Veltan told him, “and they’re doing everything they can to delay you. I was coming through the town of Weros a few days ago, and I happened to overhear a conversation between a couple who don’t care much for you. They were very unhappy about what had happened to a fellow named Kajak. They wanted you dead with all their hearts, but as I understand it, Longbow sank their scheme without so much as a ripple. Kajak wanted your gold, but those strangers wanted your life. Without you, Lattash lies helpless before the enemy.”

“Let’s haul anchor, Cap’n,” Ox repeated his suggestion.

“I’d really like to gather up more ships and men,” Sorgan said, “but I think you might be right, Ox.”

“Isn’t your kinsman Torl still here, Sorgan?” the archer Longbow asked. “Couldn’t he stay behind and gather more ships and men?”

“I suppose he could,” Sorgan conceded, “but he might have trouble persuading other ship captains to join us if he doesn’t have any gold to show them.”

Longbow shrugged. “Leave the gold with him, then.”

Sorgan blinked. “Well, I’ll have to think about that just a bit,” he said dubiously.

“Don’t you trust your cousin, Hook-Big?” Eleria, still nestled on Longbow’s lap, asked. “It’s not like the gold really
means
anything, does it? You saw how much of it there is in the Beloved’s cave, didn’t you?”

“It’s something to think about, Cap’n,” Ham-Hand said. “Torl’s going to need that gold a lot more than we are. He’s going to have to have
something
to show any new ship cap’n who might be interested. When you get right down to it, all that gold really is, is bait, and Torl’s the one who’ll be fishing after we leave.”

“It just seems
unnatural,
” Sorgan said. “Giving gold away really goes against my grain.”

“We’ll give you more, Hook-Big,” Eleria told him. “You worry too much.” Then she yawned. “I’m a little sleepy,” she said. “If it’s all right with everybody, I think I’ll take a little nap. And even if it’s not all right, I’ll do it anyway.” Then she snuggled down in Longbow’s arms and promptly fell asleep.

4

V
eltan’s thunderbolt enjoyed herself enormously as she enthusiastically blasted a channel through the mountainous mile-long ice floes lying to the south of the Land of Dhrall. She seemed to take particular delight in the steam that came boiling out and the huge fragments that went flying each time she shattered an ice mountain. Veltan felt that she was probably overdoing things, but she was having so much fun that he didn’t have the heart to rein her in, so he leaned back and let her play.