The Younger Gods
David and Leigh Eddings

Book Four of The Dreamers

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Maps

PREFACE

MOUNT SHRAK

1

2

3

THE JOURNEY

1

2

THE TEMPLE OF ARACIA

1

2

UP FROM THE BEACH

1

2

ALARMING NEWS

1

2

3

THE HORSE-SOLDIERS

1

2

3

THE VIOLATION OF THE TEMPLE

1

2

THE GIFTED STUDENT

1

2

3

THE DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH

1

2

3

THE COMMANDER

1

2

CONFUSION

1

2

THE TRIBE OF OLD-BEAR

1

2

A REPORT FROM THE NORTH

1

THE PLEA OF ALCEVAN

1

THE DREAM OF OMAGO

1

2

3

THE VISITOR

It was bitterly cold at

BE NO MORE

1

2

THE DECLINE OF THE TEMPLE

1

2

3

THE BLIZZARD

1

2

THE ALTERNATE

1

2

3

THE VISIT OF SORGAN BOOK-BEAK

1

THE NEST

1

THE LAST GENERATION

1

2

3

EPILOGUE IN THE LAND OF DREADS

1

2

3

By David Eddings

Copyright

About the Publisher

Maps

PREFACE

Those of us who devote our lives to the care of mother were greatly concerned by her rage after the disaster of ‘blue fire’ which had consumed so many of her warrior children. It is the duty of the warrior children to die if it is necessary to achieve that which mother wants, but deaths beyond counting reduce our numbers and weaken the overmind which guides us all. And, truly, the weakening of the overmind lessens all of us who live but to serve our beloved mother.

We are told by those who came before us that mother had been content in the nest which shelters us all until – in times long past – the weather changed and in each season there was less to eat than there had been in previous seasons. It had been then that mother had sent forth those servants we call ‘the seekers of knowledge,’ and in time they returned and told mother that beyond the high hills that surround our homeland there was much to eat. And this warmed mother’s heart. It came to her that should those who search for things to eat go beyond the high hills and bring back much to eat, she could spawn yet more children – and then even more – and soon our numbers would be so great that no other mothers would dare to send their children out to fight with us for things-to-eat, since we would destroy their children and soon they would be alone in their nests screaming in despair.

And so it was that mother began to alter the children which would go forth from the nest to search for things-to-eat in the lands beyond the high hills. And many were her alterations, for the man-things that dwelt in the lands beyond the high hills were very clever and they used weapons that were not parts of their bodies.

And this gave mother great concern, for it is most unnatural for any creature to take up things that are not parts of their bodies to use as weapons. Then it came to mother that if the man-things could do this, could not her children do so as well? She sent forth more of the seekers of knowledge to find creatures who had unusual parts of their bodies that gave them advantages in the search for things-to-eat.

And the seekers of knowledge returned in time with much that mother might find useful. There were creatures without legs that had long, sharp teeth that could instantly kill anything the creature without legs saw as something-to-eat. There were other creatures who had eight legs rather than six who could turn the insides of things-to-eat into liquid that the eight-legged creature could conveniently drink. There were creatures with hard shells that covered and protected their bodies, and there were still other creatures with hard, sharp mouth-parts that could cut pieces off the thing that was being eaten.

The more dear mother considered it, the more she thought that the teeth of the creature that had no legs might be the most effective.

Then, in seasons beyond counting, mother put generation after generation to work on the high hills that stood between our nest and the land of the sunset. There were burrows that would safely take mother’s children beyond the peaks of the high hills, and there were many flat stones piled on the slope of the high hill that appeared to have once been nests of the man-things, and it seemed that the empty nests might be useful to deceive the man-things.

In time, all was complete, and mother waited as the elder divinities grew older and less responsive. Then, in the springtime of this present year, all was ready, and mother commanded the children to attack the man-things clustered near the top of that particular high hill.

And great was the consternation of the man-things when the servants of our mother crossed the empty ground to attack the pile of rocks the man-things had gathered at the top of that high hill. But the man-things knew not that most of the servants of dear mother were creeping through burrows that went beneath that high hill to come out in various rock-piles lying on the sunset side of the high hills.

And mother rejoiced, for victory was now in her grasp.

But it was not to be, for disaster came down on the servants in the burrows. Two of the high hills did most suddenly burst into flame, hurling liquid fire high into the spring sky. It was not the liquid fire in the sky that brought grief to mother, however. It was the liquid fire that ran down through the burrows that made the servants of dear mother vanish as if they had never been.

And when word of this reached mother, she shrieked in agony, and all who lived but to serve her shrieked as well, for our overmind was made less by this disaster.

Now the seekers of knowledge had spent much time over generations in the lands of the man-things, and they had come to learn the way by which the man-things used noises to communicate with each other. And many of the seekers of knowledge had learned how to make the noises the man-things called ‘speech.’ And so it was that when our beloved mother decided that we should go down into the land of longer summers where there was much to eat, the seekers went up the slope of the high hills to gather information about the man-things of that region.

And while the seekers worked on this task, beloved mother brought forth many new forms for the warrior children. The new forms were well-designed to overcome the many advantages the man-things appeared to have had in the land of the sunset.

And when the seekers returned, they were sorely discontented, for the man-things had told them many things that were not true. In truth it would appear that the man-things said more things that were not true than were truly true. The seekers had discovered one thing that they felt to be most important, however. Although that which ruled the land of longer summers was called Veltan, there was another man-thing called Omago, who had far, far more power than did the one called Veltan. The Omago thing was not yet fully aware of this power, and it had never used it. There was yet another man-thing called Ara, however, who shared this knowledge with the Omago thing, but it never spoke with the Omago thing about that power.

As the new hatch of the warrior servants matured, beloved mother sent them toward the land of longer summers, and we all believed that our warrior servants would most easily overcome the man-things, and the land of longer summers would be ours before the seasons changed.

But it was not so, for many man-things had come to the land of longer summers, and they had piled up endless stacks of flat stones to impede our progress toward what was rightfully ours. And once again, the cursed man-things used things that were not parts of their bodies as weapons. We had encountered the flying sticks before, though none of us had been able to understand just how the man-things could make the sticks fly. Some of us were quite sure that the sticks were live things that were controlled by various man-things. When the man-thing said ‘fly,’ the stick obeyed. Then, when the stick was in mid-flight, the man-thing spoke again and said ‘kill.’ And the stick did that.

We searched and searched for sticks that would obey commands, but we found them not.

The man-things had used other weapons as well. The long stick did not fly, but it was nearly as cruel as were the flying sticks. The long sticks had wide points that were alien, having no relation to the stick itself. The points were very sharp, and they easily penetrated the bodies of the warrior servants.

It came to us that many of the man-things we had encountered were not related to the man-things that occupied the land of the sunset and now the land of longer summers.

The struggle on the slope was long and difficult, and our beloved mother sent many new-form servants into the struggle, but they could not overcome the man-things who hid themselves behind their protective rock-piles, rising to their feet only to kill those of us who were attacking.

Much disturbed were those of us who are the true servants of beloved mother when she insisted that we should take her from the nest to the region where the conflict was taking place. Her safety must always be our first obligation, but mother saw no reason to be concerned. She is immortal, of course, but the conflict was raging in the land of longer summers. The nest was safe, but the region of conflict was not.

She was mother, however, so we had no choice but to obey her.

Then yet another group of man-things came rushing up from far down in the land of longer summers, and that particular group appeared to have some other goal than the defeat of mother’s warrior servants. There were many reports from the seekers that the man-things which had been fighting mother’s warrior servants were stepping aside to let the new group pass through without restraint.

And the new group of man-things rushed to the top of the slope that led down to mother’s region and then they ran on down that slope – almost as if they could not even see mother’s warrior servants. We have learned – much to our sorrow – that most of the man-things are extremely clever, but the new group of man-things seemed to have little or no thought as they blindly rushed down the slope toward something which only they could see.

And mother’s warrior servants of several altered forms killed the mindless man-things by the thousands, but the other mindless man-things paid no heed to the fate of their companions, but continued their rush down the slope toward that which only they could see.

And then it was that enormous amounts of water burst forth from the upper face of the high hill above us, and mother’s warrior servants and the mindless man-things alike were engulfed in water and carried down the slope to certain destruction.

And mother screamed in anguish even as those of us who live but to serve her carried her back toward the safety of the nest, for it was now clear that water could be as deadly as fire, and that the land of longer summers was now and forever beyond our reach.

Great was the grief of our beloved mother, but in time the seekers of knowledge persuaded her that there were still two regions beyond the high hills that were not now and forever blocked off from us. There was the land of the sunrise and the land of shorter summers. Many were the arguments between those warrior servants who favored the land of shorter summers and those who favored the land of the sunrise, and those arguments became more heated until those who preferred shorter summers and those who favored sunrise began to kill each other.

And finally, to prevent more of the killing, beloved mother chose shorter summers, and once she had chosen, the killing stopped.

The seekers were much interested in a low-tree that flickered and put out light and dark clouds which lay close to the ground or rose high up into the sky, for they saw that low-tree as a way to kill the man-things from a long way off, and that would put none of the servants of our beloved mother in peril.

And the seekers were much pleased when they discovered that the low-tree was most generous, and freely it shared its flickers and clouds with other low trees of its own kind.

Now other seekers had gone into the high hills that blocked off the land of shorter summers, and they soon found a narrow pathway that went through the high hills and emerged in a well-concealed manner in the land of shorter summers.

Cautious was our beloved mother, however, and she sent forth servants that could make the noises of the man-things to deceive the man-things and to set them at war one with the other, for it had come to the overmind that the man-things on occasion hated each other even more than they hated us, and gladly would they kill each other, and that would make things easier for mother’s warrior servants.

We proceeded across the flat place where there are no things-to-eat and came at last to the narrow pathway that led from mother’s region to the land of shorter summers. Much were we discontented when we arrived there, however, for the man-things had once more piled flat rocks on top of other flat rocks to block our path.

We now had a means to drive them away, however. The seekers entered several nesting places in the high hills below the flat rock-pile of the man-things, there to make piles of the low-trees that flicker inside the nesting places, and dense black clouds passed over their rock-pile, and then the man-things turned and fled, leaving the pathway open to the warrior servants.

Beloved mother rejoiced and told the warrior servants to move rapidly along the narrow pathway toward the land of shorter summers, for now the low-trees – which almost certainly loved mother almost as much as do we who serve and protect her – continued to drive the man-things away.

And so it was that the warrior servants swarmed up the narrow pathway with victory almost certainly within their reach.

But then a man-thing that was not a breeder as most of the man-things are, unleashed something that no one has ever seen before. We, the servants of beloved mother, have encountered the fires of the man-things before, but the man-thing who was not a breeder sent a huge wave of fire that was not yellow down the pathway. The fire was blue instead, and it consumed warrior servants uncounted as it rushed on down the narrow path and even beyond.

That in itself was horrid beyond anything we had yet encountered, but then the man-thing which was not a breeder called forth yet another blue fire at the foot of our narrow path. And that blue fire rose higher than the pile of flat rocks the man-things had built, and it showed no indication that it would ever stop burning.

And yet once again, our beloved mother screamed in agony, and we who serve her also screamed.

So great was mother’s fury that she listened to a suggestion of one of the seekers – a suggestion she would not even have considered had she been more calm. The seeker declared that since there was only one part of this land that was not blocked, the man-things would certainly know that mother’s warrior servants would attack them from that direction, and their numbers would be enormous. ‘You will need many, many warrior servants to overcome the man-things, beloved Vlagh,’ she said. ‘Can you possibly spawn out more this time than you did when we attacked the other directions?’

‘Many, many more,’ dear mother replied. ‘I will bury the man-things in freshly hatched spawn. I will have the land of the sunrise, and my children will feed on the remains of all the man-things that contaminate this entire land that is – and always will be – mine.’

We did not wish to remind beloved mother that a spawn of that size would severely reduce any future spawns to the point that there would hardly be enough new care-givers to see to her needs, and seasons uncountable would pass before she could spawn more. We tried as best we could to bring this to her attention, but she paid little heed and commanded us to carry her straight-way to the spawning chamber. And, since it is required, we did as she commanded.

Should disaster come again, however, the children of future spawns will be so limited that as the seasons plod on by, the nest of our beloved mother will have few – if any – care-givers to see to her needs, and in time, it may be that she will dwell here alone.

MOUNT SHRAK

1

It was well past midnight, and Zelana was standing alone on the balcony of what big brother Dahlaine called his ‘War Chamber.’ It seemed to Zelana that those fancy names had always been one of Dahlaine’s failings. For some reason he seemed to feel a need to give almost everything some kind of stupendous title. If he’d spend as much time solving a problem as he usually spent coming up with a name for it, things might go a bit smoother for him.

Right now, however, Zelana was trying to swallow some very peculiar events. It seemed that they had a mysterious helper who could pull miracles out of her hat – or sleeve – without any kind of warning at all.

Down in baby brother Veltan’s Domain, Longbow had been plagued with a series of very peculiar dreams which were being rammed into his mind by an entity he always called ‘our unknown friend,’ despite the fact that he’d told Zelana and the others that he recognized the voice – but he couldn’t quite attach a name to the speaker. Zelana knew that Longbow’s mind was too sharp to start getting fuzzy about something that important, so it was quite obvious that ‘unknown friend’ had been tampering with him in ways Zelana could not even begin to comprehend.

There was one thing that was abundantly clear, however. Not only could ‘unknown friend’ erase memories, she could also break – or just ignore – some very important rules. Zelana and her family were not permitted to kill things. ‘Unknown friend,’ however, had manipulated the members of the Trogite Church with her ‘sea of gold’ and lured them into a confrontation with the Creatures of the Wasteland. Then, when the two enemy forces were locked in what would almost certainly have turned out to be a war of mutual extinction, ‘unknown friend’ had obliterated them all with an enormous wall of water that she’d pulled up from about six miles down below the face of the earth.

It seemed that their friend had powers that Zelana could not even imagine, although she was almost positive that their friend was using the Dreamers to assist her.

The more Zelana thought about it, the more certain she became that Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s twin volcanos had also originated in the mind and imagination of ‘unknown friend.’

The involvement of the Dreamers had been confirmed when the children’s shared vision had mentioned ‘a fire unlike any fire we have ever seen,’ which had produced the blue inferno that had obliterated what had almost certainly been an entire hatch of the Vlagh.

That, of course, brought Aracia’s idiotic attempt to conceal Lillabeth’s Dream right out into the open. Aracia had always been obsessed with her own divinity, but now – probably because of the overdone adoration of those assorted indolents who had identified themselves as her clergy – Aracia’s mind had begun to slip, and she seemed to be convinced that she was now the most important creature in the entire universe. Her absurd attempt to conceal Lillabeth’s Dream had been a clear indication that sister Aracia’s mind was starting to come apart.

The more that Zelana thought about it, though, the more she remembered that Aracia had always been more than a little unwilling to go to sleep and relinquish her Domain to Enalla. It seemed that deep down, Zelana’s sister hated Enalla. The length of their sleep-cycle made change inevitable. Zelana ruefully recalled the time in the distant past when she’d awakened to find her Domain covered with ice that must have been at least two miles deep. It had taken Dahlaine weeks to explain that to Zelana’s satisfaction. He’d assured her that the inevitable thaw had already begun, but it had been almost five centuries before the ice was gone, and Zelana’s Domain didn’t look at all the way it had when she’d drifted off to sleep. Perhaps even more disturbing had been the fact that the creatures she’d come to know in her previous cycle were all gone, and strange new animals had arrived to replace them. Dahlaine had used the term ‘extinction,’ and that had chilled Zelana all the way down to her bones. She’d had almost no contact with Aracia during that particular cycle, but she was almost positive that her sister had somehow twisted things around in her mind so that she could blame Enalla for those eons of ice and the disappearance of almost all of the creatures that had been present in her Domain when she’d gone to sleep.

Something like that was the sort of thing Aracia would do.

Zelana was growing more and more weary now, and she’d be more than willing to hand the responsibilities of the Domain of the West to Balacenia – the adult version of Eleria – but she was almost positive that Aracia wouldn’t see things that way at all, and her priesthood was probably in a state of near-panic by now. Whether they liked it or not, Aracia would go to sleep very soon, and Enalla would replace her. Zelana had caught a few hints from Eleria that Enalla – the real version of Lillabeth – had some plans that Aracia’s priests wouldn’t like very much at all.

‘It might almost be worth staying awake long enough to watch,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Almost,’ she added, ‘but not quite.’ As closely as she could determine, ‘sleep-time’ was no more than a few months away. She’d long since decided that the pink grotto on the Isle of Thurn would be the place where she’d sleep this time. The pink dolphins would sing her to sleep, and she might even have dreams of her own this time – dreams of a Land of Dhrall without a Vlagh, and a land where her friends did not grow old and pass away, and where she could sing and write poetry, and where it was always spring and the flowers never wilted. Now that might be the best of dreams.

‘I thought I could feel your presence here, dear sister,’ Dahlaine said as he joined Zelana on the balcony over the ‘lumpy map’ of his Domain. ‘You seem to be troubled. What’s bothering you so much?’

‘Aracia, of course,’ Zelana replied. ‘I think her mind is slipping even more than it was when she tried to conceal Lillabeth’s Dream. I wish that there was some way that we could put her to sleep a few months early this time. Then we could all concentrate on the Vlagh and stop worrying about our sister.’

‘It probably would make things a lot easier.’

‘What is it about Aracia that makes her start to go to pieces at the end of every cycle?’ Zelana demanded. ‘I was thinking back, and as closely as I can remember, Aracia’s never once gone off to sleep without fighting it every step of the way. Why does she do that?’

Dahlaine shrugged. ‘Inferiority, most likely. When you include our alternates, there are eight of us altogether, and as closely as I’ve been able to determine, our alternates trade off authority in the same way that we do. That suggests that Aracia’s the dominant one for only twenty-five thousand years. Then she has to wait for a hundred and seventy-five eons for dominance to return. For some reason, she just can’t stand that. She yearns to be at the center of the entire universe. If I remember correctly – and I usually do – the last time she was dominant, she literally wallowed in her position. Of course there weren’t any developed humans around back then, so she was the only one around who could adore her, but as I remember, her self-adoration was more than a little extreme.’

Zelana smiled. ‘Maybe you and I should join Veltan when our next waking cycle rolls around. I’m sure he was just trying to make a joke of it – we all know how much Veltan enjoys jokes – but he told me on one occasion that he might just go back and camp out on the moon when Aracia’s next cycle of dominance comes along, and I think he was about half-serious when he said it.’

‘That’s our baby brother for you. Any time responsibility comes along, Veltan runs away.’ Dahlaine scratched his cheek. ‘It probably wouldn’t have made much difference in eons past, but there are humans in our various Domains now. I don’t know about you, dear sister, but I will not permit Aracia to run roughshod over the people of my Domain.’

‘You almost sound like you’re thinking about declaring war on our sister.’

‘I’d hardly call it a war, Zelana. Aracia’s people are supposed to spend every waking moment adoring her, so they wouldn’t pose much of a threat.’

‘You’re putting our sister in the same category as holy – but crazy – Azakan of the Atazak Nation of your own Domain, big brother,’ Zelana said. Then she frowned. ‘There are quite a few similarities, though, aren’t there?’

‘Except that Aracia actually has the power to make things happen. Poor Azakan spent most of his time ordering the earth and sky to obey him, but I don’t think they paid very much attention. Aracia, however, has a certain amount of power, so she can make things happen if she feels the need.’

‘Maybe so, but none of us are permitted to use that power if killing things is going to be involved. If Aracia steps over that line, she’ll probably vanish right then and there,’ Zelana suggested. ‘And if Aracia vanishes, will we still be here? There’s a linkage between the four of us, Dahlaine, and if one of us ceases to exist, isn’t it quite possible that we’ll all just vanish?’

‘You’re starting to give me a headache, Zelana.’

‘At least it’s still there to ache, mighty brother.’

‘I think we’ve had one stroke of good luck, Zelana. Your pirate chief has persuaded Commander Narasan not to just pack up and go home. We’re going to need forts in Long-Pass, and when someone says “forts,” he’s usually talking about Trogites. Did you have anything to do with Sorgan’s little scheme?’

‘No, big brother. As closely as I can determine, Hook-Beak came up with that all by himself. Of course, the likelihood that he’ll be able to swindle a lot of gold out of Aracia probably played a large part in his decision, but right up beside his greed is his friendship for Narasan. He’ll keep Aracia so flustered that she probably won’t even remember that Narasan exists. He’ll go on down to Aracia’s absurdly overdone temple and persuade our none too bright sister that he’ll be more than happy to defend her – if she’ll give him enough gold.’

‘What’s he going to defend her against?’ Dahlaine asked. ‘The servants of the Vlagh will be coming down Long-Pass, so they won’t be anywhere near Aracia’s temple.’

Zelana smiled. ‘If I know Sorgan – and I do – he’ll come up with ways to keep Aracia – and her clergy – so terrified that they won’t even think about sending anybody up Long-Pass to pester Narasan while he’s building forts.’

It wasn’t much later when the door to Dahlaine’s map room opened slightly, and Eleria looked in. ‘Ah, there you are, Beloved,’ she said to Zelana. ‘We should have guessed that you’d be in here conferring with dear old Grey-Beard.’

‘Mind your manners, Eleria,’ Zelana chided her Dreamer.

‘I’m sorry, Old Grey-Beard,’ Eleria said with one of her mischievous grins. ‘We’ve been looking for you and the Beloved for hours now.’

‘We?’ Dahlaine asked curiously.

‘Big-Me and I. Mother wants us to talk with you.’

‘Mother?’ Zelana asked, feeling suddenly baffled.

‘We all have a mother, you know, Beloved. Big-Me can explain it much better than I can, I’m sure.’ Then Eleria came on inside the large room, and immediately behind her was an extremely beautiful lady.

Dahlaine gasped. ‘What are you doing, Balacenia?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not supposed to be awake yet.’

‘Grow up, Dahlaine,’ the lady replied. ‘Your little game almost tore the world apart. We’ve had a lot of trouble smoothing things over, and we’re not even supposed to be awake yet.’

Zelana was staring at the lady. ‘Are you really—’ she almost choked at that point.

‘Yes, Beloved, I am your alternate. Our Domain is still under your control, however. I promise that I won’t tamper – unless Mother tells me – us – to.’ She put her hand on Eleria’s shoulder.

‘This can be terribly confusing sometimes. This is Little-Me. You know her as Eleria, which is sort of all right, I suppose. She makes me laugh quite often, and laughter’s good for the soul – or so I’ve been told. There is something I’ve been curious about, though. Where in the world did she come up with her hugs and kisses ploy? She has poor Vash so confused that he doesn’t know exactly what to do.’

Zelana suddenly smiled. ‘The idea came to Eleria back in the pink grotto when she was very, very young. She can kiss a pink dolphin into submission in no time at all.’ Then she looked rather closely at Balacenia, her alternate. ‘The resemblances are definitely there, Balacenia. You are, in fact, a grown-up version of Eleria the Dreamer. How is it that the two of you can both be in the same place at the same time?’

‘It’s just a little complex, Beloved. Actually, we’re not here at the same time. Actually, I’m not even really here. I’m still sound asleep, and what we’re all seeing right now is my Dream.’

‘That’s not possible!’ Dahlaine protested.

‘Why – and how – am I here, then?’ Balacenia demanded. ‘Your little game was very clever, Dahlaine, but it got away from you almost right at the beginning. You thought that you could step around us with your “infant” hoax, but it started to come apart when Eleria had her first Dream. That was the one when she saw the very beginning of this world. Then, a little later in the Land of Maag she had a variety of Dream that you didn’t even anticipate. She had what we call a “warning dream,” and it was that Dream that saved Longbow and his friends from the intentions of the Maag called Kajak. You might not have been aware of what that Dream suggested to us. Dreams can be warnings as well as predictions.’

‘That did startle me just a bit,’ Dahlaine admitted. ‘I’d sort of believed that I might have some control over the Dreams, but the children keep slipping around me.’

‘Actually, it’s Mother who’s guiding the Dreamers. She picked up your little game, and she’s doing things with it that you couldn’t even imagine.’

‘Mother?’ Dahlaine sounded startled. ‘We don’t have a mother.’

‘Where did we come from, then?’ Balacenia demanded.

‘You’ll really like her, Dahlaine,’ Eleria said. ‘She can do all kinds of fun things. She was the one who took me down under the sea so that I could pick up my pink pearl. That’s what started all this, remember?’

‘She’s the mother of the whole universe, Dahlaine,’ Balacenia added, ‘and she’s more than a little peeved with you right now. The outlanders are all right, I suppose, but Mother was – and still is – dealing with it in her own way.’

‘That will do, Balacenia,’ a melodious voice came through the open doorway. ‘Why don’t you let me deal with this?’ Then a misty sort of form that seemed to be pure light came through the open doorway. ‘What were you thinking of when you hired all those outlanders to come here and fight this war for you, Dahlaine?’

‘You do know that we have limitations, don’t you?’ Dahlaine demanded. ‘Now that I think about it, if you’re who Balacenia says you are, you’re probably the one who came up with them. You may have forgotten, but we aren’t permitted to kill things – even when they’re attacking us. We needed armies, so we went out into the world to hire outlanders to do the killing for us.’

‘That particular limitation might just be a little outdated,’ the glowing presence conceded. ‘Right at first, there were very few living things here, and we didn’t want to lose any of them – at least not until the populations had grown to the point that extinction was no longer a distinct possibility. When the incursions by the Creatures of the Wasteland began, I was going to take care of it myself, but before I could even start, the whole Land of Dhrall was crawling with outlanders. You’ve got to learn to trust me, Dahlaine.’

‘Longbow suggested something you might want to consider, though,’ Zelana stepped in. ‘The assorted outlanders are helping us to hold back the Creatures of the Wasteland, but Longbow seems to think that it’s much more important that the more greedy outlanders come to realize that the people of the Land of Dhrall are quite capable of making life very unpleasant for any invaders. The outlanders are helping, but they’re also learning. The greed of the Amarite Church down in the Trogite Empire was almost legendary, but you dealt with that in a way that advised all outlanders that an attempted invasion of our part of the world could be a ghastly mistake.’

‘And your blue fire in Crystal Gorge made it more obvious,’ Dahlaine added. ‘Nobody in his right mind walks into fire. Some of the more greedy outlanders might want to come back, but I don’t think they will.’ He hesitated. ‘You seem to be very attached to us, for some reason,’ he said rather carefully.

‘You are my children,’ the glowing form replied, ‘and I will protect you. You’ve come a long, long way, but you might want to go back a bit and have a look at where – and when – this began.’

Zelana’s mind suddenly reeled as memories came rushing back from so far in the distant past that there was no word for that many years. The suggestion of the hazy figure of glowing light had seemed to set off bells inside Zelana’s mind.

Dahlaine’s eyes suddenly went very wide as – evidently – the same memories came flooding over him.

‘All in all, you did quite well, my son,’ Misty Lady continued. ‘Your notion of the Dreamers was brilliant, and it’s worked almost perfectly – except that you’ll have to come up with a way to persuade the Dreamers to reunite with their previous identities. Things are just a little touchy this time, however, so I want all of you children to back away and let me deal with the situation in Aracia’s Domain. It’s almost reached the point that she’d rather die than hand her Domain over to Enalla. We’ve got to get her under control, because she’s getting very close to total insanity. If she crosses that line, we’ll lose her, and that will lead to a disaster – not immediately maybe – but if she’s a raving lunatic when she wakes up from her sleep-cycle, the entire Land of Dhrall will be at risk – and that risk will make the invasion of the Creatures of the Wasteland look like some child’s game by comparison.’

2

Z elana was certain that it was just after sunrise when the commanders of the outlander forces, led by the bleak-faced Longbow, came through the door and out onto the balcony that encircled Dahlaine’s map room.

‘The map seems to have changed a bit,’ Longbow said, looking down at the map Dahlaine had put in place after Balacenia and the strange, mist-covered figure of ‘Mother’ had left.

Dahlaine shrugged. ‘We’ve finished here in my part of the Land of Dhrall,’ he explained, ‘so I laid out a “lumpy map” of sister Aracia’s Domain. Ordinarily, we’d have relied on Aracia for a map, but her view of her Domain is just a bit vague, since she almost never leaves her temple.’

‘Being worshiped would probably take quite a bit of time,’ Sorgan Hook-Beak said, peering down at the well-illuminated map. ‘Just exactly where is this “temple-town” that’s got everybody so worked up?’

Dahlaine reached out with his hand, and a bright beam of light came from his forefinger and illuminated a spot on the representation of the east coast.

‘That’s a useful idea there, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said, ‘particularly when we’re all standing ten feet or so above the map.’

‘It does seem to work fairly well,’ Dahlaine replied modestly.

‘And where’s this “Long-Pass” that everybody keeps on talking about?’

Dahlaine’s glowing little spot of light moved along the eastern edge of the map to a sizeable replica of a bay with a fairly wide river running down to it.

‘Then the river’s not in any way connected to your sister’s temple-town?’ Sorgan asked.

Dahlaine shook his head. ‘The east coast of the Land of Dhrall gets some savage floods almost every year,’ he explained. ‘Aracia didn’t want her temple destroyed that often, so she had her servants build it farther south where there aren’t any major rivers coming down out of the mountains. The ground’s sort of marshy, but Aracia’s workers laid in a substantial base before they started construction.’

‘How long ago was it when they built the temple?’ Keselo asked.

‘Eight – maybe ten – centuries ago, wouldn’t you say, Zelana?’ Dahlaine asked.

‘You couldn’t prove that by me, brother mine,’ Zelana replied. ‘I was living in my grotto on the Isle of Thurn then.’

‘Do all those priests who worship your sister plant crops of any kind near the temple?’ Sorgan asked.

Dahlaine shook his head. ‘The farmers of Aracia’s Domain deliver large amounts of food to keep most of our sister’s priests quite fat, at least.’

‘Fat seems to show up quite often in the world of priests,’ Longbow observed.

‘Professional hazard, wouldn’t you say, big brother?’ Zelana suggested. ‘Priests spend much of their time stuffing food into their mouths.’

‘And that makes them so fat that their hearts wear out and they fall over dead,’ Dahlaine added.

‘Now there’s an idea,’ Rabbit said. ‘If we just happened to pile twenty or thirty tons of food on the steps of sister Aracia’s temple, her priests would eat themselves to death inside a week.’

‘I like that notion, brother,’ Zelana said. ‘We wouldn’t violate our limitations by providing food for dear Aracia’s priests, would we? And if they ate too much and fell over dead, it wouldn’t be our fault, would it?’

Dahlaine squinted at the ceiling. ‘You might want to take that up with Mother, Zelana. If we feed Aracia’s priests too much and they die as a result, wouldn’t that almost be the same as poisoning them?’

‘Spoilsport,’ Zelana grumbled. ‘Can you imagine how much screaming would come from Aracia’s temple if she woke up one morning to discover that all of her priests had died during the night?’

‘We’ll keep the idea in reserve, dear sister,’ Dahlaine said. ‘Let’s push on, though.’ He looked at Narasan. ‘Who would you say is the head of sister Aracia’s priesthood?’

‘They call him Takal Bersla,’ Narasan replied, ‘and he’s almost as fat as Adnari Estarg of the Amarite Church was – before that overgrown spider had him for lunch. Bersla has made a career out of oration. He spends hours every day telling your sister how holy she is, and Aracia’s almost paralyzed by Bersla’s overdone speeches. Padan kept track one day not long after we’d arrived at Aracia’s temple, and Bersla talked to your sister for six straight hours. Then he ate lunch – a lunch that would have overstuffed four or five normal people – and then he stood up and orated for another five or six hours. The man’s a talking machine, but your sister can’t seem to get enough of all that tedious adoration.’

‘It sounds to me like she’s getting even worse, Dahlaine,’ Zelana observed. ‘She drinks in adoration in almost the same way that a drunkard pours beer into his mouth.’

‘It’s not a good sign, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said. ‘If her mind has slipped that far, getting her attention might be a little difficult.’

‘Not necessarily, cousin,’ Torl disagreed. ‘If this Bersla priest is the main adorer in Lady Aracia’s temple, and he wound up dead some morning, you could probably get her immediate attention.’

‘Maybe so, Torl,’ Sorgan agreed, ‘but how do we know that he’ll die at any time in the near future?’

Torl slid his hand down into the top of his boot and pulled out a long, slender dagger. ‘I can almost guarantee that, cousin,’ he said, flourishing his dagger.

‘It has got some possibilities, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said. ‘If your sister’s sitting on her throne some morning and several of her priests drag the body of her favorite underling into her throne room to show her that somebody – or some thing – slipped into her temple and butchered her head priest, she’d go to pieces. Then, if I tell her that the stab-wounds in Bersla’s body were almost certainly caused by the teeth of one of the bug-people, she’d start paying very close attention to anything I said. I could feed her all kinds of wild stories about bug-people creeping around through the halls of her temple killing off her priests by the dozens.’

‘Wouldn’t she demand to see the bodies?’

Sorgan shrugged. ‘If she wants to look at bodies, we’ll show her bodies. Torl might have to sharpen his dagger six or eight times a day, but that’s all right.’

‘Thanks, cousin,’ Torl said sourly.

‘Don’t mention it, Torl,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

‘I’d say that the separation of Long-Pass from Aracia’s temple will work out very well for you,’ Longbow suggested to Sorgan and Narasan a bit later. ‘You can sail on down to that river-mouth, and those of you who’ll be going on up Long-Pass can go ashore while Sorgan goes on down to pacify Aracia. She and her servants won’t even know that you’re anywhere in that pass, so she won’t be issuing commands for you to rush on down south to defend her’.

‘That’s a very good idea, Longbow,’ Narasan agreed. ‘I’m sure that the only thing that interests Bersla will be the defense of the temple. He doesn’t care at all about what happens to the ordinary people of Aracia’s Domain. He wouldn’t so much as turn a hair if all the rest of Aracia’s Domain was overrun by the bug-people.’

‘There’s a thought, Captain Hook-Beak,’ Keselo said. ‘If you send out some scouts and they report back that the bug-men are eating all of the peasants, the priests will be afraid to come out of the temple and take a look for themselves. They’ll hole up inside the temple itself – almost as if they were prisoners.’

‘It would keep them out from underfoot,’ Sorgan agreed. Then he looked at his friend Narasan. ‘You’ve been there, but I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Did you see anything at all like building material near the temple? Rocks or logs or anything like that? If we’re going to go through the motions of looking like we’re building a defensive wall of some kind, we’ll need to put up something that looks like a fort.’

‘You’re not going to find anything like rocks – or even logs – in marshy country, Sorgan,’ Narasan replied.

‘Ah, well,’ Sorgan said, ‘the temple’s there anyway. It shouldn’t be too hard to knock it down so that we can build a fort.’

‘Our sister will come apart at the seams if you do that, Sorgan,’ Zelana told him.

‘And you’ll be able to hear her priests screaming from ten miles away,’ Dahlaine added.

‘Not after my scouts come back and report that the bug-people are eating the farmers alive, I won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘When the fat ones hear that, they might even offer to help. Just how big would you say that temple is, Narasan?’

‘About a mile or so square,’ Narasan replied.

‘You’re not serious!’

‘The priesthood’s been building Aracia’s temple for centuries, Sorgan,’ Dahlaine said.

‘You should be able to build quite a wall with that much stone, Sorgan,’ the warrior queen Trenicia said.

‘The screaming’s likely to go on for a long time, though,’ Veltan added.

‘Not if the stories my scouts bring back from the countryside are awful enough, it won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘If the priests hear about a bug that’s twelve feet tall and rips out a man’s liver when it gets hungry, they’ll run for cover and tell us to do whatever’s necessary to hold back the monsters – and they’ll be hiding so far back in the temple that they won’t see daylight for at least a month.’

‘I like it!’ Narasan said enthusiastically.

‘That’s the way we’ll do ’er then, old friend,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

Zelana smiled. The unlikely-seeming friendship between Sorgan and Narasan seemed to be growing stronger and stronger, and now it appeared that they’d do almost anything to help each other.

While their men were preparing for the long march to the east coast of Dahlaine’s part of the Land of Dhrall, Sorgan, Narasan and several others spent most of their time carefully studying the map.

‘I’m going to need those ships as soon as you unload your men down in Aracia’s temple-town, Sorgan,’ Narasan reminded his friend. ‘I’ll still have more than half of my army sitting on that beach on the east coast.’

‘No problem,’ Sorgan replied. ‘The ships would only clutter up the harbor of temple-town anyway. Then too, if Aracia’s priests look at your ships too long, they might decide that they want a navy so that they can go out to sea to preach to the fish.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Do the people down there actually call their city “temple-town”? Most places have fancier names.’

‘The priests – and Aracia herself – never refer to the place as a town, Sorgan,’ Narasan explained. ‘The people who live out beyond the walls might have a different name, I suppose, but the people you’ll be dealing with just speak of “the temple.” It’s entirely possible, I guess, that most of the priests aren’t even aware of the buildings and houses outside the temple walls. For them, the temple is the whole world.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Sorgan said.

‘I think that’s the word most people use when they’re talking about any priesthood, Sorgan,’ Narasan said with a faint smile.

Longbow had been studying the map, and he gestured to Sorgan.

The Maag captain joined him. ‘Do you see anything that might go wrong?’ he asked.

‘Not so far, friend Sorgan. It just came to me, though, that most of your fleet is still sitting in the bay over there.’

‘They’d better be,’ Sorgan replied. ‘I sent Skell over there to keep a tight grip on them.’

‘I’m sure that more archers will be very useful once we’re in Long-Pass, and it’s only a few days south of where your ships are anchored to the village of Old-Bear, where hundreds of archers are sitting around telling stories to each other. If Skell picked them up and carried them on up to that fishing village on the coast, they’d only be a few days behind us, and they’ll probably reach the upper mouth of Long-Pass before the bug-people come storming out of the Wasteland.’

‘That’s not a bad idea at all, Longbow,’ Sorgan approved. ‘It’ll keep the sailors busy, and it’ll give Narasan some help when he’s likely to need it.’

‘I definitely approve,’ Narasan said, ‘and I’ll take all the help I can get.’

Longbow continued to stare at Dahlaine’s replication of Eastern Dhrall. ‘There’s this range of low, rounded hills running down along the east side of the Land of Dhrall. I think that when we reach that range, I’ll lead the archers of Tonthakan on down that way, and Old-Bear’s archers won’t be too far behind us. We’ll most likely be at the upper end of Long-Pass even before Narasan’s fort-builders get there. We can make sure that there won’t be any surprises for the Trogites when they go up there to build forts.’

‘I’ll get word to Skell,’ Sorgan said. Then he looked over at his friend. ‘How many forts were you planning to build?’ he asked Narasan.

‘As many as the Vlagh gives me time to build,’ Narasan replied. ‘I’d go for one fort every mile or so down that pass if I’ve got enough time. The bug-people don’t like forts, so I’ll make things as unpleasant for them as I possibly can.’

‘How are you going to keep the bugs from smoking you out again like they did down in Crystal Gorge?’ Rabbit asked.

‘Veltan and I can take care of that if it’s necessary,’ Dahlaine said, ‘but I don’t think the bugs will try that again. The prevailing wind down there comes in out of the east, and if they tried greasy smoke again, that wind would blow it right back in their faces.’

‘The Vlagh almost has to be desperate this time, big brother,’ Veltan said. ‘The other three regions have been blocked off, so this is the only way left. If she doesn’t win this time, she’ll spend the rest of eternity trapped out there in the Wasteland. She’ll do almost anything to get her servants past you.’

‘We’ll have to make sure that she doesn’t succeed then, little brother,’ Dahlaine said quite firmly.

It was somewhat later, and all of the outlanders had gone to their beds. Zelana and her brothers lingered in the map room, however. All three of them were quite certain that they’d soon be getting more instructions. Longbow had also remained behind, but he didn’t say exactly why.

It was perhaps midnight when the door opened and Balacenia and her glowing, mist-covered companion joined them on the balcony. ‘One of you will have to go to sister Aracia’s temple with Sorgan,’ the misty lady told them.

‘I’ll take care of that,’ Veltan volunteered. ‘Aracia thinks of me as an immature creature without much of a brain, so she won’t pay any attention to me.’

‘That’s not a bad idea, Veltan,’ the lady said. ‘Keep a very close eye on Aracia. She’s right on the verge of going to pieces, and if her brain flies apart, you’ll need to tell Zelana and Dahlaine about it. The three of you might need to step on her to keep her from breaking the rules. We don’t want to lose her.’

Longbow was standing off to one side, and he had a peculiarly startled expression on his face.

Then, after Balacenia and her glowing companion had left the large room, the usually grim-faced archer suddenly began to laugh.

‘What’s so funny, Longbow?’ Zelana asked.

‘Nothing all that important,’ he replied. But then he laughed again.

Zelana found that to be very irritating, but she wasn’t sure just exactly why.

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