The Elder Gods (40 page)

“I want you gentlemen to think very hard about this,” Zelana said firmly. “You need to come up with some way to persuade your leaders to stay here and help us. If you can’t, I might just have to burn all their ships to keep them here, whether they like it or not.”

“We should get back,” Longbow told Keselo and Rabbit. “Hook-Beak might miss us, and I don’t think we want any Maags to come looking for us. They don’t really need to know anything about this discussion, do they?”

“Not if we’re going to keep talking about burning ships, they don’t,” Rabbit agreed.

Keselo was profoundly troubled as he lay wrapped in his blankets some distance from the fires in the encampment of the Maags. The thunderous eruption of the twin volcanos at the head of the ravine was subsiding, and there was much cheer in the ranks of Hook-Beak’s army. The Maags continued to marvel about “the greatest stroke of good luck in history” as if the eruption had been nothing more than sheer coincidence.

Keselo, however, knew better, and he profoundly wished that he didn’t. Zelana’s coldly brutal evaluation of the situation here in the Land of Dhrall chilled Keselo to the bone. Although she was beautiful beyond belief, there was a rock-hard practicality at her center, which only Eleria could soften, and Eleria, when the situation required it, was even worse.

The Dreamers could unleash natural disasters far worse than the ordering of armies into hopeless struggles and threatening to burn the ships that were the only hope of escape those armies had.

Worse yet, the soldiers, ignorant of what was truly happening, were cheering.

Keselo, however, had gradually come to perceive the true nature of That-Called-the-Vlagh. Driven by an uncontrollable need to possess the entirety of the Land of Dhrall and surrounded by countless nonhuman servants, the Vlagh would pursue its need despite defeat after defeat after defeat, giving no thought to the vast number of servants it would inevitably lose. Even worse, perhaps, was the fact that the Vlagh did not function solely on instinct. There was an evil cunning there, which in the end might very well overcome them all—human or divine.

And now the Maags and Trogites were effectively trapped here in the Land of Dhrall, doomed to fight a dreadful war that they could not possibly win, given the overwhelming numbers of their enemies.

THE PINK GROTTO

1

E
ternal Zelana was filled with unspeakable horror and an overwhelming sense of guilt at the chaos unleashed by the Dreamers. It had seemed at first that her elder brother’s solution to the current crisis had been the perfect answer. Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s volcanos were natural disasters, after all, and nobody was
really
to blame for them, were they?

It had seemed so to Zelana at first. Her Domain had been threatened by the creatures of the Wasteland, and now the threat was gone. None of the events in the ravine had been the result of anything she had
personally
done, so why was she now filled with this wrenching sense of guilt? No matter how many times she said to herself, “
I
didn’t do any of this,” the accusing finger at the back of her awareness continued to point directly at her.

Slowly, reluctantly, she was finally forced to face a dreadful reality. The disasters unleashed by the innocent Dreamers had been a response to
her
needs. It was becoming increasingly clear that the children could somehow sense what she wanted, and their dreams provided it. The dreams were gifts, in a certain sense, but they carried with them a dreadful burden of responsibility, and try though she might, Zelana could not shrug off that burden.

And so it was that finally, without so much as saying a word to her brothers or sister, Zelana of the West took her beloved Dreamer Eleria in her arms and fled.

“What are we doing, Beloved?” Eleria cried, clinging to Zelana in fright as they rose up and up through the smoky midnight air toward the pale moon.

“Hush,” Zelana told her as she searched with her mind and senses for an eastward-flowing wind.

Far below them Zelana could see Yaltar’s cursed volcano spewing molten lava high into the air, and the glowing river of liquid rock surging down the ravine toward the village of Lattash. “Idiocy!” Zelana fumed, still rising and searching.

“Please, Beloved!” Eleria cried. “I’m afraid!”

“Everything’s all right, dear,” Zelana told the child, trying her best to sound calm.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” Zelana replied. “I’ve had about enough of all this, haven’t you?”

“Do we have to go up so high?” Eleria cried, clinging desperately to Zelana.

“Hush, Eleria. I’m trying to concentrate.”

It was hardly more than a fitful breeze, but it was moving in the right direction, so Zelana seized it, and they moved haltingly through the spring night, away from the horror below them.

Once they had moved out beyond the west coast of the mainland, the breeze grew stronger, and it carried them across the straits to the coast of the Isle of Thurn. Zelana thanked the breeze, and she and Eleria drifted south through the moonlit air toward the stark cliffs on the southern margin of the Isle.

“The world looks different from up here, doesn’t it, Beloved?” Eleria said. She seemed a bit calmer now, and she relaxed her desperate grip somewhat. “This is quite a bit like swimming, isn’t it?”

“A little bit, yes,” Zelana agreed. “You do know why we absolutely
had
to come away, don’t you?”

“Well, not entirely, Beloved,” Eleria admitted. “Is something wrong?”

“Everything was wrong, Eleria. Things weren’t supposed to happen the way they did.”

“We won, didn’t we? Isn’t that all that really matters?”

“No, dear, dear Eleria,” Zelana replied, tightening her embrace about the child. “We lost much more than we won. The Vlagh stole our innocence. We did things we weren’t supposed to do, and nothing will ever be the same again.” She peered down at the south coast of Thurn. “There it is,” she said when her eyes found a familiar beach glowing in the moonlight. “Let’s go home.”

They settled quietly through the cool night air to the calm surface of Mother Sea, and then, as one, they dove deep into the dark water to the hidden mouth of their grotto.

The pink light of the grotto seemed pale and soft under the gentle touch of the moon, and Zelana clung to that light, pushing the horrid memories away.

“It’s nice to be home again, Beloved,” Eleria said. “I think I’ve had about enough excitement for a while, haven’t you?”

“More than enough, dear,” Zelana agreed. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really,” Eleria said. “I think I’d like to sleep now. I wasn’t sleeping very well back there, and it seems to be catching up with me now.”

“Go to bed, child,” Zelana told her fondly. “We’re back where we’re supposed to be, and the world can’t hurt us here.”

“Kiss-kiss,” Eleria said, holding her arms out.

Zelana took the child in her arms and kissed her. “Go to bed, Eleria. Nothing can bother you here, and I’ll watch over you.”

Eleria sighed contentedly and went to her bed, nestling down with her pink pearl in her hand. She drifted off to sleep, and Zelana of the West envied her, even though she could scarcely remember sleep. Idly she wondered what it might be like to sleep away a part of every day and then to rise and eat food rather than light. Because of their unique situation, the Dreamers were experiencing things Zelana and her family had never experienced, nor would they ever.

Zelana’s thoughts wandered and circled almost like hungry birds as she sat lost in contemplation in the glowing pink light of her grotto, but inevitably they returned once more to the horror of what had taken place in the ravine above the village of Lattash.

Why had Veltan’s Dreamer gone to such extremes? Yaltar had seemed to be a solid, sensible little boy, but at the first hint of a threat to Zelana’s Domain, he’d gone absolutely wild.

Except, she reminded herself, it wasn’t
her
Domain Yaltar had sought to defend. It was the Domain of his sister, Bala-cenia.

That thought jerked Zelana sharply around. Dahlaine had assured them all that the Dreamers would have no memories of their previous existence, but both Yaltar and Eleria had occasionally referred to each other by their real names. Could it be that Dahlaine’s assurances had been nothing more than bald-faced lies designed to gain their approval? Dahlaine was obviously capable of lying. Zelana had caught him lying to her innumerable times herself, and she was fairly certain that Veltan and Aracia had also seen their elder brother wandering away from the truth.

That thought raised a very disturbing possibility. If Yaltar knew that Eleria was really Balacenia, did he also know that he was Vash? Had all four of the Dreamers been quietly deceiving their elders? If Vash and Balacenia had been engaged in this deception, wasn’t it entirely possible that . . .

What
were
their names? Zelana should know the real names of Lillabeth and Ashad, but when she searched her memories of the countless eons that lay behind, she could not for the life of her bring the other two names to the surface. It was maddening! The names were right on the tip of her tongue, but they absolutely refused to come out.

She pushed that away. The names would probably surface as soon as she stopped worrying at the problem.

Longbow had definitely been the proper choice as the man to lead the Dhralls of her Domain. The outlanders had stood in awe of him, not only because of his unerring accuracy with his bow, but also because he seemed able to come up with answers to impossible problems. Had it not been for Longbow, Zelana was certain that the outlanders might very well have viewed the Dhralls as ignorant savages ripe for plundering, or even for enslavement.

That notion brought Zelana up short. Her encounters with the outlanders hadn’t been very extensive, but she’d occasionally caught hints that the more advanced cultures of the world beyond the shores of the Land of Dhrall routinely gathered up the people of more primitive societies and sold them as slaves. Zelana’s eyes narrowed.
Let
them try that here. There were all sorts of things—short of killing—Zelana could do to them to persuade them to give up that particular notion.

Not all of the outlanders were evil, however, she realized. Eleria herself had unerringly found two, at least, who could be trusted. The child had chosen the Maag known as Rabbit and the earnest young Trogite Keselo, and had somehow managed to persuade Dahlaine that those two were the ones who should be made aware of the
real
situation here in the Land of Dhrall. There were times when Eleria went far beyond what Dahlaine had assured them would be the limitations of the Dreamers. Child Eleria
pretended
to be simple and sweet, but the more Zelana thought about it, the more it seemed that the kissing and lap-sitting were means to an end far more serious than demonstrations of childish affection. Could it be that the volcanic eruption that had so effectively destroyed the servants of the Vlagh in the ravine above Lattash had
not
been the desperate response of Yaltar? Could the eruption possibly have been Eleria’s idea?

Zelana shuddered back from that unthinkable notion.

Hideous though it was, however, Zelana was forced to admit that pouring molten rock into the caves of the servants of the Vlagh had been far and away the most effective solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem. Earthquakes might have killed all the invaders, but the possibility that a few of the caves could have remained intact would have left doubts. Molten lava, however, left no doubts. The servants of the Vlagh were gone, and Zelana’s Domain was safe.

Zelana corrected that notion. It had not been
her
Domain Yaltar’s dream had saved; it was the Domain of Balacenia.

She was almost certain that the Maags and Trogites had taken ship, or would very soon, to sail down along the coast to Veltan’s Domain. There was no absolute certainty that the servants of the Vlagh would attack Veltan’s domain in the foreseeable future. It might well be that Yaltar’s volcano had so decimated the creatures of the Wasteland that it would take many generations for them to propagate replacements. Then again, perhaps not. That-Called-the-Vlagh could produce countless offspring in virtually no time at all, and Zelana’s brother Veltan knew that as well as anybody. The servants of the Vlagh would almost certainly attack each of the four Domains in their mindless quest for more land. The Vlagh wanted—or needed—the entire continent if it was to have any chance at all to expand its swarm.

What
were
their names? It was infuriating! The names were right there. Why couldn’t she remember them?

Zelana yearned for sleep. The endless eons of her cycle weighed down upon her, and she was glad that the cycle was almost over.

But Eleria wasn’t ready to take up the burden of Dominion yet. There were so many things she had to know, and there was so little time left to teach her. The changing of the cycles had posed no real problems in times past. The man-things had been little more than animals during Balacenia’s previous cycle, but they had come so far now, and it seemed that they were growing and developing faster and faster with each passing year. Zelana shuddered back from the thought of what they might be when Balacenia’s cycle had run its course and Zelana awakened once more to begin her next cycle.

She smiled faintly. Maybe Veltan had come up with the best solution after all, and the moon was still there.

Zelana pushed that thought away.

The lovely village of Lattash was doomed, of course. Yaltar’s idiocy had seen to that. Even now the lava from the twin peaks was flowing inexorably down the ravine, consuming all in its path. The people of White-Braid’s tribe would have to leave their homes and find some new place and build a new village. The loss of Lattash caused Zelana an almost physical pain.

“The gold!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I forgot all about the gold in that cave! I’ll have to go back and move it to a safer place. How could I possibly have forgotten that? I must be even older than I’d thought. First I forget my gold, and now I can’t remember names.” She looked at the sleeping child. “Please wake up, Balacenia,” she pleaded softly. “I just can’t carry all of this anymore. I’m so tired, so very, very tired.”