The Elder Gods Read online

  “That’s absurd!”

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

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

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

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

  “Indeed she is,” Veltan agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “He said what?”

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

  “That’s not possible!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What sort of questions are they asking?”

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

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

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

  “Probably. Why?”

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

  “Why don’t you tell her?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is Aracia working on anybody in particular?”

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

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

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

  3

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

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

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

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

  The lightning bolt skittered around enthusiastically.

  “I thought you might like the idea. For right now, though, let’s go find Zelana. Don’t make too much noise when we cross Mother Sea, though. We don’t want to irritate her, now, do we?”

  The thunderbolt rattled her agreement, Veltan mounted, and they were off.

  It was the dead of winter, and the face of Mother Sea was clouded and stormy. Veltan shuddered. Mother Sea’s face was as dreary as it had been on that awful day when she’d banished him to the moon. He’d probably be there still if the friendly moon hadn’t interceded for him.

  His thunderbolt reached the coast of a land far to the west of the Land of Dhrall much earlier in the day than it had been back in Dhrall. That was one of the advantages of going westward. If a traveler moved right along, he could pick up hours of extra time.

  “Set me down here, baby,” Veltan told his pet when they were a mile or so out from the coast. “I’ll walk on in from this point. Let’s not disturb the aliens if we don’t have to.”

  She muttered something.

  “I won’t be long, dear. Stop all your grumbling.” He smiled then. “As soon as we find Zelana and tell her what’s going on, you and I can go home and amuse ourselves by smashing that floating ice. Won’t that be fun?”

  She crackled enthusiastically. Lightning was a simple natural force, and it wasn’t too hard to entertain her.

  She set Veltan down on the stormy face of Mother Sea, and he walked the rest of the way to shore. He was just a little surprised when Mother Sea calmed her surface to make the going easier for him. Either she’d recovered from her bout of bad temper, or she realized just how serious the present situation really was. He stepped right along and reached rocky shore in short order. “Thank you, Mother,” he said politely to the source of all life.

  “Don’t mention it,” she replied silently within his mind. “Zelana and Eleria are farther south,” she added helpfully.

  “Ah. Could you give me some sort of landmark?”

  “The coast along here’s fairly level, Veltan, so there isn’t anything that really stands out. Just go on south until you come to a place where there are quite a few floating trees gathered near the shore. The man-things call them ‘ships,’ and they ride on them when they visit me.”

  “I’ve seen a few of those, yes.” Veltan squinted at the alien land he’d just reached. “I think I’ll nose around a bit, Mother. The people here won’t know that Zelana’s my sister, so they might tell me things they wouldn’t mention to her. If we can come here, it’s possible that the creatures of the Wasteland can as well, and if they do happen to be here, I think we should know about it.” He hesitated. “There’s something you should probably be aware of, Mother,” he added. “Before very long, I’m going to have to open a channel through Aracia’s ice zone that lies off the south coast of Dhrall. I’m sure that Aracia received your approval before she put it there, but now I’ll need to push it aside so I’ll be able to move the army I just hired to our homeland. Is that going to offend you?”

  “Not particularly, no. Aracia didn’t bother to ask me before she put it in place, so it only seems fair for you to brush it aside without her permission as well. Actually I could do it for you, you know. All you had to do was ask.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you, Mother. I learned quite some time ago that it’s not a good idea to offend you.”

  “I’d forgotten all that silly ‘stripes’ business a long time ago, Veltan. I thought you’d realized that by now.” She paused. “Why did you remain on the moon for so long?” she asked.

  “The moon told me that you were still angry with me.”

  “And you actually believed her? Oh, Veltan, you should know me better than that by now. You could have come home after a month or so. You didn’t really have to remain on the moon for ten thousand years.”

  A dark suspicion intruded on Veltan’s awareness. “Evidently the moon was feeling just a bit lonely,” he muttered. “She kept telling me that you hated me.”

  “She lied. Everybody knows that you can’t trust the moon.”

  “I didn’t. She seemed so sincere.”

  “Oh, Veltan, what am I going to have to do with you to make you grow up? You’re so gullible sometimes. The moon enjoyed your company, so she lied to you to keep you there. Your responsibilities are here, not out there.”

  “When all this business with the Vlagh and the creatures of the Wasteland is over, I think I’ll go have a nice long chat with the moon,” he said darkly.

  “Whatever entertains you, Veltan. She won’t listen, of course, but if scolding her will make you feel better, I suppose it’s all right. Don’t hurt her, though, and don’t offend her too much. My tides depend on her, so step around her rather carefully. If you think that silly business about stripes made me angry, you’ll come face to face with real anger if something disrupts my tides.”

  “I’ll be careful, Mother,” Veltan promised.

  Veltan modified his clothing and quickly pushed out his scanty facial hair to make himself look much like an ordinary Maag, and then he went on into a coastal town the Maags called Weros. He drifted unobtrusively around the narrow, muddy streets near the waterfront, listening but saying very little. Since he was listening to thought rather than speech, he could hear whispered conversations from a long way away.

  He soon discovered that the Maags were a noisy, rowdy kind of people who spent much of their time in taverns, soaking up beer and grog by the gallons. Fights seemed to break out very often in the area near the waterfront, and it
was not uncommon to see a Maag peacefully sleeping in the gutter in that part of Weros.

  Veltan strolled along, occasionally looking into taverns as if he might just be looking for some friend or acquaintance. Such conversations as he happened to overhear were usually garbled, since most of the Maags in this part of town were far gone in drink.

  He wasn’t really accomplishing very much, but then he heard someone off to his left speaking in a voice that seemed uncontaminated by strong drink.

  “It was a good enough plan, I guess,” the speaker was saying to someone else, “but it went all to pieces when Kajak and his men tried to set fire to the ships Hook-Beak had anchored around the Seagull.”

  “Exactly what went wrong?” The voice that asked the question chilled Veltan all the way to his core. It was a rasping sort of voice that could not have come from a human mouth.

  “I wasn’t there to see it personally,” the first speaker replied. “My hive-mate had been controlling Kajak from the very beginning, but I guess just the thought of all that killing excited it more than it should have, so it was down on the beach—far too close, as it turned out. One of the man-creatures killed it from a great distance away. By the time I got there, most of the survivors had scattered to the winds. I nosed around in Kweta and managed to pick up the gist of the story from various Maags who’d spoken with the survivors before they fled back into the surrounding countryside. It’s fairly obvious that Sorgan—or someone in his crew—knew about Kajak’s entire scheme. As soon as the men in those little rowboats threw torches onto the decks of the ships that were guarding the Seagull, a rainstorm came out of nowhere and doused the fires before they could spread. Then long arrows began to come out of the dark with unbelievable accuracy. I managed to get my hands on the arrow that killed my hive-mate, and the arrowhead was made of stone—like the ones we’ve encountered back in the Land of Dhrall—and it’d been dipped in venom in the same way. That sort of says that the Dhrall who’s been killing my hive-mates for all these years is here, and he’s still killing us. The arrows he used to kill the Maags had iron arrowheads, though. As we’ve come to expect, he’s extremely clever. He disabled Kajak’s ships by killing the steersmen, and he terrorized everybody on the ships by driving his arrows through the head of anyone who went near the tiller. Kajak’s men panicked and went over the sides of their ships. Kajak was screaming at them to come back when he took an arrow right between the eyes, and the whole thing ended right then and there.”