The Elder Gods Read online

  The one with the chilling voice began to swear.

  “I feel the same way,” the first speaker agreed. “I think you’d better go advise the Vlagh that your scheme didn’t work. The Maag fleet’s on the way to Dhrall, and there’s nothing we can do now to stop it. Our war in the west won’t be as easy as we thought, I’m afraid.”

  “I am not foolish enough to be the one who takes that message to the Vlagh,” the one with the rasping voice replied. “Bad news angers the Vlagh, and those who tell it things it does not wish to hear seldom live long enough to watch the sun go down.”

  “I’ve noticed that. I’d say that you’ve got a bit of a problem. Your scheme was clever enough, but Kajak was a poor choice to carry it off.”

  Veltan sauntered past the muddy little alleyway where the two had been speaking, and they both tried to shrink back into the shadows to stay out of sight, but Veltan had already seen enough. The one who’d brought the news looked much like any other Maag on the streets of Weros—fur-clad, hooded, bearded, and dirty—but he was much smaller than an ordinary Maag. The other one was also wrapped in a hooded cloak, and Veltan caught a single glimpse of a face with huge, bulging eyes, a mouth surrounded by mandibles, and two long antennae sprouting from the top of an oval head.

  Veltan strolled on past the alley as if he hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, but he was quickly revising a few preconceptions. Given the general tone of what he’d just heard, it was fairly obvious that the insect outranked the human in the social structure of the Wasteland. They were both far more intelligent than Veltan had expected, however. The term “hive-mate” hinted at an insectlike mentality, and that raised the possibility that That-Called-the-Vlagh might just be “the queen bee of the Wasteland.”

  The intelligence of the two in the alley sort of confirmed a notion that Veltan had reached during his sojourn on the moon. It had seemed to him that intelligence might just be a characteristic driven by necessity. If your enemy was large, size would be very important, so each generation would be larger than the preceding one. That had suggested to Veltan that a clever enemy would virtually demand the expansion of one’s mind in response. The alternative would be extinction.

  “Enough,” he muttered, walking purposefully through the rest of Weros to the edge of the town. He crossed the stump-dotted field to the west of Weros, and once he was in the woods, he called out to his thunderbolt. “Let’s get out of here, dear one. I’ve heard and seen enough. It’s time for me to have a talk with my sister.”

  It didn’t take Veltan very long to find Sorgan’s fleet. There were a few ships in the harbor of each village he and his pet passed as they flew south along the coast of Maag, but Mother Sea had implied that there would be many ships at the place where Zelana was. The difference between “few” and “many” wasn’t too precise, but Veltan was fairly certain that two or three didn’t exactly qualify as many, so he kept going south.

  Then his pet carried him to a shabby village far to the south of Weros, where dozens of Maag ships were anchored. “I think this is the place, dear,” he told his pet. “Put me down a little ways out, and I’ll walk on in. You’re lovely beyond words, but we don’t want to attract attention. You’ll be able to crash and boom to your heart’s content when we go back to Dhrall and start smashing ice.”

  She flickered affectionately at his cheek and then set him down at the edge of a large grove of trees a little way to the west of the village.

  Since Zelana had come to Maag to recruit an army, Veltan was fairly certain that the one the aliens had called Sorgan was the one he should try to find, and that his sister would probably be on board the ship called the Seagull.

  The weather was unpleasant as Veltan walked down across the open field toward the shabby village. A gusty wind swept in from the east, and a steady drizzle of rain swirled in from the harbor, wreathing like fog and half obscuring the shabby buildings.

  When he reached the village, he found it teeming with sailors despite the chill drizzle. It didn’t take him long to locate a small group of men who served on board the Seagull, since every seagoing man he spoke with pointed them out to him. They were down near the waterfront, loading barrels and big, bulky sacks into several small boats. A large fellow with a neck like a bull seemed to be in charge.

  “Excuse me,” Veltan said politely to the big man, “I’m looking for a lady named Zelana. Do you happen to know where I might find her?”

  “She’s on board the Seagull,” the sailor replied. “Is it important?”

  “I believe it is. She’s my sister, and I’ve got some information for her that’s probably quite significant. Things are heating up in the Land of Dhrall, so it’s time for her to come home.”

  “Rabbit!” the big man barked. “This is Lady Zelana’s brother, and he needs to talk with her. Row him out to the Seagull.”

  “But it’s raining,” the small sailor whined.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Couldn’t we wait a bit? It could clear up before long.”

  “Almost any day now, but you’re not going to wait, Rabbit. You’re going right now.” The big man’s voice was hard, and the look he gave the smaller man was threatening.

  “All right, all right. Don’t get excited. I’m going.” The little man grumbled as he led Veltan out onto a rickety dock, and he continued to mutter as the two of them climbed down into one of the small boats.

  “How’s my sister been lately?” Veltan asked as the little man rowed them out into the rain-swept harbor.

  “She was sort of worried up until a few days ago,” the little fellow replied. “Things brightened up for her after me and Longbow killed a whole bunch of people who were planning to cause trouble.”

  “The one you call Longbow’s the archer, isn’t he?”

  “That he is, and he’s the best there is in the whole wide world. Me and him are real close friends.” The little man stopped rowing and wiped the accumulated water off his nose with his sleeve.

  “Is Eleria with my sister?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “About a hundred thousand men, dear sister.”

  “That should carry quite a bit of weight.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You’re not serious!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “She’s what?”

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

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

  “That’s impossible!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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