The Elder Gods Page 15

  “Could you draw us a map?” Narasan asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I think it’ll be too risky, Narasan,” Jalkan warned. “No Trogite vessel I’ve ever heard of has made it through those floating ice mountains in one piece.”

  “The Maags don’t seem to have much trouble, Jalkan,” the soldier named Padan said. “They’ve been raiding our north coast for years now.”

  “Their ships aren’t as big as ours, and they’re faster,” Jalkan pointed out. “They can get out of the way if an ice mountain’s bearing down on them. Our ships are bigger and slower. We’ll lose at least half of our army if we try to go through that zone of floating ice.”

  “We’re going to have to work out a few details, I think,” Narasan told Veltan, “and it’s likely to take us a while. For right now, why don’t we talk about payment? How much are you prepared to give us for our help?”

  “How much do you want?”

  “Why don’t you make me an offer?”

  “Why don’t you tell me how much you expect?”

  “How does one gold crown per man strike you?” Narasan asked tentatively.

  “It fills me with confusion,” Veltan replied. “We don’t have what you Trogites call money in the land of Dhrall. I picked up a few brass and copper coins when I first came here, but that’s about the extent of my familiarity with your money. Just what exactly is a gold crown?”

  “It’s one ounce of pure gold,” the young soldier Keselo supplied.

  “And what exactly is an ounce?”

  “Somebody show him a crown,” Narasan said.

  The soldiers all sorted through the leather purses each of them carried at his belt, and eventually the one called Jalkan managed to find a gold coin. “I’ll want this back,” he told Veltan as he handed the coin over.

  “Of course,” Veltan replied. He bounced the coin thoughtfully on the palm of his hand. “All right,” he said, handing the coin back to Jalkan. “We have gold in Dhrall, but we usually store it in the form of bricks. As closely as I can determine, each brick would weigh as much as five hundred or so of those coins. How many men do you have in your army, Narasan?”

  “I can field a hundred thousand.”

  Veltan made a quick computation. “That would be two hundred bricks,” he said. “That seems to be a reasonable number.”

  “You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this, Veltan,” Narasan complained. “Don’t you want to argue with me just a little?”

  “What’s there to argue about?”

  “Nobody ever pays the first price we ask. You’re supposed to tell me that I’m asking too much. Then we bicker back and forth until we come to the real price.”

  “What a waste of time,” Veltan murmured. “I need to speak with my elder brother anyway, so I’ll bring some of the bricks with me when I come back.” Veltan squinted at the map. “Which one of those coastal towns will you sail from?”

  “What do you think, Gunda?” Narasan asked.

  “Castano,” Gunda replied immediately. “It’s the biggest town on the coast, and it’s got the most protected harbor.”

  “Very well,” Veltan said. “I’ll meet you gentlemen in Castano in three, maybe four weeks. I think we’d better move your army to Dhrall by spring—sooner if we can manage it. We’ve all got work to do, so I’ll get out from underfoot so that you can do yours. My work might take a bit longer, but please be ready to sail from Castano when I come back. Hopefully, I’ll have a better idea of when the war’s likely to start when I return.” Then he turned and walked briskly from the war room.

  2

  The night sky was clear and the stars were very bright when Veltan left the city of Kaldacin. The pale moon had not yet risen, but Veltan knew her very well, so he was certain that she’d soon put in an appearance. He walked on out across the brown-stubbled, sleeping winter farmland beyond the walls of Kaldacin before he summoned his pet thunderbolt. She always seemed a little bad-tempered when he was obliged to awaken her after the sun went down, and she made more noise at night than she did in the daytime. It was highly unlikely that the Vlagh had agents here in the Trogite Empire, but Veltan didn’t really think that announcing his presence with a shattering crash of thunder just outside the walls of Kaldacin would be very prudent.

  He was several miles from the city when he stopped and looked up at the night sky. “I’m sorry to have to wake you, dear,” he apologized, “but I really need to go home.”

  The thunder grumbled off in the distance.

  “Oh, don’t do that,” he chided her. “It’s not really all that far, and you can go back to sleep as soon as we get home.”

  She grumbled some more, but he could hear her stirring, and there were flickers of light along the eastern horizon.

  Then there was a sudden crash, and she was at his side.

  “Good girl,” he said, patting her fondly. Then he mounted. “Let’s go home, baby,” he said.

  She obediently arched up toward the north, leaving the Trogite Empire behind in the blink of an eye and flashing across the northern sea in a few heartbeats. They flew over the wide strip of ice floes that separated the Trogite Empire from the southern coast of the Land of Dhrall, and Veltan considered that barrier as his thunderbolt carried him over it. The ice belt had been his sister Aracia’s idea, and she’d put it in place while Veltan had been living in exile on the moon. The notion had come to Aracia when she’d realized that the various outlanders had begun to build ships that were much more advanced than the simple rafts that had been prevalent at the beginning of the current cycle. Aracia had reasoned that it might be well to put some sort of barrier in place to keep the outlanders’ ships away from the coast of Dhrall. The barrier had made good sense in the past, but it was likely to cause problems in the current situation. “I think I’ll have to work on that a bit,” he muttered.

  His thunderbolt crackled inquiringly.

  “Nothing, dear,” he replied. “I was just thinking out loud.”

  She muttered something as they reached the coast of Dhrall.

  “I didn’t quite catch that, dear,” Veltan said as the thunderbolt put him down on the doorstep of his own house, somewhat farther up the coast.

  She repeated what she’d just said, shaking the very ground under his feet.

  “That wasn’t nice at all,” he scolded. “Where in the world did you pick up that kind of language?”

  She said a few things that were even more colorful, and then she streaked off into the darkness to sulk.

  Veltan smiled faintly. It was a little game he and his pet had been playing since the beginning of time. She would shower him with assorted profanities, and he’d pretend to be shocked. They both enjoyed the game, so they played it all the time.

  He opened the massive front door of his house and went on inside. Unlike his sister Aracia, Veltan had made his own house, and he suddenly realized that he probably shouldn’t bring Narasan’s Trogites here. The various buildings in Kaldacin had been constructed of squared-off stone blocks, much as Aracia’s temple had been. When Veltan had made his house, he’d made it with a single thought, willing a huge rock into existence in the shape he wanted. It definitely kept the weather out, but it might be just a bit difficult to explain to Narasan’s people. The conversion of thought into reality in a single act of will was obviously something the Trogites wouldn’t be able to comprehend, and that might cause some problems.

  All in all, though, it was good to be home again. Traveling about the world was nice enough, but home was much more comfortable. Veltan reached the end of the central corridor and then started up the stairs to the tower where he and Yaltar spent most of their time. “I’m back,” he called up the stairs.

  The door to the tower room opened, and Yaltar stood waiting for him. Yaltar was a slender little boy dressed in an ordinary peasant smock. He had dark, dark hair and huge eyes. “Did you have any luck, uncle?” he asked.

  “Things turned out rather well,” Veltan
replied. “It took me quite a while to find the man I really needed to talk with, but once I found him, we came to an agreement in almost no time at all. Has anything been happening here?”

  “Nothing that I’ve heard about. Omago’s wife, Ara, was nice enough to feed me while you were gone.”

  “She’s a treasure,” Veltan agreed. Then he noticed something. “What’s that you have around your neck, Yaltar?” he asked.

  “Omago tells me that it’s an opal, uncle. I found it just lying on the ground outside our front door a few days after you left.” The boy untied the leather thong that held the opal as a pendant about his neck, and raised the milky stone up for Veltan to see. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said proudly.

  “It is indeed, Yaltar,” Veltan agreed, trying his best to sound casual. He could feel the enormous power of the fiery jewel from halfway down the stairs. It was obviously time to step very, very carefully. Veltan knew for a fact that there weren’t any deposits of opals in his Domain, and if Yaltar had found it just outside the front door, it had obviously been put there specifically for the boy to find. The jewel was quite large, somewhat bigger than a plum. It was oval-shaped, with multicolored fire flickering deep within it. Worse yet, Veltan could feel its awareness even as he looked at it. It was a peculiar sort of awareness, but still very familiar.

  “Oh, before I forget,” Yaltar said, tying his pendant back around his neck, “Omago asked me to tell you that he’d like to talk with you when you come home.”

  “I’ll go see him tomorrow,” Veltan said as he reached the top of the stairs.

  They went on into the tower room. Although Veltan’s house was very large, he and his young charge had spent most of their time in this room since Yaltar had been an infant. It was large enough to serve their purposes, and it had the feel of home to them. There was a fire on the hearth, as usual, and the clay pots nearby suggested that Yaltar had been trying his hand at cooking. The room was none too tidy, but Yaltar had been alone for several weeks, and “cleaning up” was an alien concept for the little boy.

  “I’ve missed you, uncle,” Yaltar said gravely. “I get lonesome when you aren’t here, and I’ve been having a bad dream. It’s always the same, and it seems to come back every night.” Yaltar was a very serious little boy who seldom smiled.

  “Oh? What does it involve?”

  “People are killing each other,” Yaltar replied with a shudder. “I don’t really want to watch, but the dream forces me to see everything.”

  “Did the surroundings look at all familiar?”

  “It’s not anywhere around here, uncle. There are mountains that’re very close to Mother Sea. The sun comes up from behind the mountains, and it goes down somewhere beyond Mother Sea herself.”

  “That would put it somewhere in Zelana’s Domain,” Veltan mused.

  “Isn’t that where Balacenia lives?”

  Veltan almost choked at that point. “Where did you hear the name Balacenia, Yaltar?” he asked.

  Yaltar frowned. “I’m not really sure, uncle. It just seems to me that I know someone named Balacenia, and she lives in the western Domain. Maybe it’s just part of that dream that keeps coming back over and over again.”

  “That’s altogether possible, I suppose.” Veltan glossed over Yaltar’s use of a name he could not possibly have heard about. “Did anybody in your dream put a name to any mountains or rivers that might possibly have given you some landmarks?”

  “I heard some people talking about ‘Maags’ once, and others said some nasty things about somebody called ‘the Vlagh,’ but I don’t think those words had anything to do with rivers or mountains.” Yaltar frowned. “Now that I think about it, though, sometimes the people in my dream said things about ‘Lattash.’ I think that one might be a place because of the way they talked about it. If somebody says, ‘I just came here from Lattash,’ he almost has to be talking about a place, doesn’t he?”

  “It sounds reasonable to me, Yaltar. Did your dream give you any kind of idea about what time of year it was?”

  “Well, sort of, maybe. There wasn’t any snow on the ground, so that sort of rules out winter, doesn’t it? It wouldn’t mean too much around here, because we don’t get much snow in the winter, but the snow really builds up in the mountains during that time of year, I’ve heard.”

  “That it does, Yaltar. Were you ever able to get any idea of why the people in your dream were killing each other?”

  “Nothing very clear, uncle. Some of them were coming west across the mountains, and others seemed to be trying to stop them. Does that make any sense at all?”

  Veltan forced a gentle smile. “Dreams aren’t supposed to make sense, dear boy. If they made sense, they wouldn’t be fun, would they?”

  “I’m not really having very much fun with this one that keeps coming back, uncle. It’s awful!”

  “Try not to think about it, Yaltar. If you ignore it, maybe it’ll go away. I need to go talk with my big brother. I hate to have to keep leaving you alone like this, but there’s a sort of family emergency right now. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put it behind us before long, and things should return to normal.”

  “Could you see Omago before you leave, uncle? He seems to think it’s fairly important, and he even said that he wouldn’t mind if you woke him up to hear what he has to say.”

  “Now that’s very unusual. Once Omago goes to sleep, not even a thunderstorm can wake him. Is there anything else you think I should know before I leave?”

  Yaltar snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot something, uncle. After the last time I had that awful dream I was telling you about, I drew a picture of the ravine where it seemed to be happening. If you’re at all interested, I could show it to you.”

  “That would be nice,” Veltan replied blandly, resisting a sudden impulse to jump up and dance on the table.

  Omago was a sturdy farmer with fertile fields and an extensive orchard. The other farmers of Veltan’s Domain frequently sought his advice, and during their discussions with him they almost always passed on gossip, observations, and other tidbits of information. It was widely believed in Veltan’s Domain that if a stray dog trotted down a village street anywhere in the region, Omago would know about it before the sun went down. Omago was a very good listener, and many times people would tell him of things they might have been wiser to keep to themselves.

  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 on
e 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.”