Treasured One Read online

  “Does being worshiped and adored really take that much time, Aracia?”

  “No, but running back and forth to the Isle of Akalla to negotiate with Trenicia does. She’s not really interested in gold, so I’ve had to find something else to get her interest.”

  “Who’s Trenicia?” I asked curiously.

  “She’s the queen of the warrior women of Akalla.”

  “Do women really make very good warriors?”

  “If they’re big enough, they do. Trenicia’s almost as big as Sorgan Hook-Beak, and she’s probably more skilled with a sword than he’ll ever be.”

  “Impressive,” I conceded, “but if she doesn’t want gold, how are you paying her?”

  “With diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires,” Aracia replied. “They’re warriors, but they’re still women, so they love adornment. For a good diamond necklace, a woman from Akalla will kill anybody—or anything—that gets in her way.”

  “If the women rule the Isle of Akalla, what are the men doing?”

  “They’re something on the order of house-pets, Dahlaine. If I understood what Trenicia told me correctly, the men of the Isle of Akalla have raised indolence to an art form. On Akalla, everything is women’s work.”

  “Even war?” That startled me.

  “Especially war. The men of Akalla are lazy and timid and generally useless—except as breeding stock.”

  I chose not to pursue that particular comment. “It just occurred to me that you and I might want to consider taking Queen Trenicia and the horse soldier Ekial with us to the war in Veltan’s Domain,” I said. “They’ll probably be fighting the servants of the Vlagh before much longer. It wouldn’t hurt for them to see what they’ll be coming up against.”

  “You might be right, Dahlaine,” Aracia agreed. “As I recall, the Maags and Trogites weren’t too happy when Zelana finally got around to telling them about some of the peculiarities of the enemy. Maybe you and I should try honesty rather than deception.”

  “What an unnatural thing to suggest, Aracia,” I joked. “I’m shocked at you. Shocked!”

  “Oh, quit!” she said.

  And then we both laughed.

  My thunderbolt took me across the lower edge of the Wasteland, and I peered down at the sand and rocks rather closely on the off-chance that I might see the servants of the Vlagh moving toward our young brother’s Domain, but as far as I could tell, the desert below was void of any kind of life.

  The twin volcanos at the head of the ravine above Lattash were still belching fire as I rode my thunderbolt into Zelana’s Domain, and I was quite certain the eruption would continue for years. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that perhaps I should have put some limitations on the capabilities of the Dreamers. They were children, after all, and children sometimes get carried away and overly enthusiastic. The only problem I saw with that notion was how. Despite their immaturity, the Dreamers had virtually unlimited power over the forces of nature, and I ruefully conceded that they could quite probably step over any barrier I might have tried to put in their way. My original idea had seemed to be a perfect solution to a serious problem, but perhaps I should have given it just a bit more thought.

  I cast out a searching thought and sensed Zelana’s presence about halfway down the north side of the bay, and I directed my thunderbolt to that spot.

  Zelana was talking with Red-Beard and Longbow in what appeared to be a village in the final stages of construction some distance down the bay from Lattash. The rounded hills behind that new village had gentler slopes than the steep peaks somewhat to the east of Lattash; there was a patch of woods just to the north of the new village, and a meadow that stretched for miles beyond those woods.

  “Do you have to do that, Dahlaine?” Zelana demanded peevishly when I suddenly joined them. “Isn’t there some way you can muffle that awful noise?”

  “I don’t think so, Zelana. Lightning is the fastest way to travel, but you have to put up with the noise. Ashad’s been dreaming, and it seems that our speculation came pretty close to the mark. Ashad’s dream confirmed the fact that the creatures of the Wasteland will attack Veltan’s Domain next.”

  “Did your boy’s dream give you any specifics about just where we’ll encounter the servants of the Vlagh?” the archer Longbow asked.

  “Somewhere in the vicinity of the Falls of Vash,” I replied. I looked curiously at Zelana. “I gather that you’ve changed your mind and decided to help the rest of us defend our Domains,” I suggested.

  “The Land of Dhrall is all one piece, brother mine. If the Vlagh wins any part of it, we’ll all be in danger.”

  I hesitated. “Are you feeling better now, dear sister?” I asked. “We were all very worried when you suddenly decided to go home to your grotto.”

  “No, Dahlaine,” she replied tartly, “I’m not feeling better, but Eleria bullied me into coming back out into the world of chaos.”

  “Bullied? She’s just a little girl, Zelana. How could she bully you?”

  “She told me that if I didn’t want to help Veltan, she’d take over and do it herself. Once she takes off that sweet mask she wears all the time, she can be very cruel. She didn’t leave me any choice at all. I think that pearl of hers might have something to do with that.”

  “It’s possible, I suppose,” I agreed. “Those jewels seem to be deeply involved in the children’s dreams. Ashad has one too, and I think it had something to do with that dream of his.”

  “What sort of jewel is it?” Zelana asked curiously.

  “A black agate. It’s really rather pretty, and Ashad seems quite attached to it.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black agate. Where did he find it?”

  “It was in the back of Mama Broken-Tooth’s cave.”

  “Who’s Mama Broken-Tooth?”

  “The she-bear who nursed him when he was a baby.”

  “Wasn’t it a little dangerous to hand your little boy over to a bear?”

  I shook my head. “Not really,” I replied. “She-bears give birth to their cubs while they’re hibernating, and when they wake up, the cubs are nursing or playing in the cave. They automatically love the cubs they nurse, so Ashad wasn’t in any danger. Mama Broken-Tooth had already given birth to her cub Long-Claw when I took Ashad to her cave, and Ashad and Long-Claw think of themselves as brothers.” I looked around. “Where’s Eleria right now?” I asked quietly.

  “She and Yaltar are out in that meadow just beyond the trees,” Red-Beard told me. “Planter’s looking after them.”

  “Who’s Planter?”

  “She’s the one who teaches the women of the tribe how to grow food,” Red-Beard explained, “and the one the women go to when they have problems. She can be a little blunt sometimes, but she knows what she’s doing.”

  “You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you, Dahlaine?” Zelana asked pointedly.

  “I was just getting to that, dear sister. Ashad’s dream was fairly specific about the invasion of Veltan’s Domain by the creatures of the Wasteland, but he mentioned a second invasion that won’t come from the Wasteland. It’s going to come from the sea.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Dahlaine,” Zelana scoffed. “Has the Vlagh allied itself with the queen of the fish now?”

  “I’m just passing on what Ashad told me, Zelana. Where’s Veltan? We’d better go tell him what’s afoot.”

  “He’s out in the bay on the Trogite ship of Commander Narasan,” Red-Beard replied. “Longbow can take you out there in his canoe, if you’d like. I’d do it myself, but I’m just a little busy right now.”

  “Is there trouble of some kind?”

  “Sort of. The fire-mountains destroyed Lattash, so the tribe’s busy setting up a new village out here. It might not be as pretty, but it’s safer.”

  I looked at the partially completed lodges near the beach. “Those don’t look at all like the ones back in Lattash,” I observed, “but they seem sort of familiar, for some reason.
”

  “They should,” Longbow told me. “They’re copies of the lodges up in the north of your Domain.”

  “It’s part of a fairly elaborate deception, big brother,” Zelana said with a faint smile. “The men of Chief Red-Beard’s tribe believe that growing food is ‘women’s work,’ and that it’s beneath them. The women needed help in preparing the ground for planting, and Longbow’s chief, Old-Bear, told these two that some tribes in your Domain live in a vast grassland where there aren’t any trees, and they build their lodges out of sod instead of tree branches. The men of Red-Beard’s tribe built the usual lodges out of tree limbs and then sat around loafing and telling each other war stories. But one windy night these two slipped around pulling down the new lodges. When the sun came up, they walked around with sombre faces telling the men of the tribe that tree limbs weren’t sturdy enough for lodges out here, and that they were going to need something more solid. They suggested sod, and the men of the tribe are out in that meadow cutting sod for all they’re worth. The women of the tribe are coming along behind them planting seeds. Red-Beard’s tribe will have nice sturdy lodges and plenty to eat when winter arrives, and nobody was offended.”

  “Clever,” I said admiringly. Then I frowned. “Has something happened to old Chief White-Braid?” I asked.

  “The destruction of Lattash was more than he could bear,” Red-Beard explained sadly. “He knew that the tribe was going to have to find a new place to live, but he didn’t feel up to doing it himself because his sorrow—or maybe even grief—had disabled him to the point that he couldn’t make decisions any more. He realized that, so he laid the chore on my shoulders. I didn’t really want any part of it, but he didn’t give me any choice.”

  “You’ll probably do quite well, Chief Red-Beard,” I told him. “I’ve noticed that men who don’t really want authority and responsibility make better leaders than men who yearn for the position. Let’s go talk with our baby brother, Zelana. There are things he needs to know, and I’m not sure how much time he has left.”

  Longbow led my sister and me down to the beach where his canoe was resting on the sand. There’s a quality about Zelana’s archer that I find more than a little awesome. He’s a bleak-faced man whose war with the creatures of the Wasteland had begun when he’d been hardly more than a child, and killing the servants of the Vlagh had been his only purpose in life. He was a grim man with very few friends and an almost inhuman level of self-control.

  It occurred to me that we might all want to keep this man around. If all went well, we’d turn back the servants of the Vlagh wherever and whenever they attempted to invade our individual Domains, but in all probability, the Vlagh would still be there. Longbow might very well be the answer to that problem. A single venom-tipped arrow would send the creatures of the Wasteland down the road to extinction, and that, of course, was our ultimate goal.

  Longbow pulled his canoe down to the water and held it in place while Zelana and I climbed into it, and then he pushed it clear and stepped into the stern all in one motion.

  “I think our baby brother’s on board Narasan’s ship, Longbow,” Zelana suggested.

  “Probably so,” Longbow agreed. He paddled us out across the bay to the oversized Trogite ship of Commander Narasan, where a young soldier called Keselo stood waiting for us at the rail. “Is something wrong?” he asked as Longbow smoothly pulled his canoe in alongside the ship.

  “Not really,” Zelana replied. “We just came by to tell our baby brother that it’s time to go to work.”

  “Has Eleria been dreaming again?”

  “No, young man,” I told him. “It was my little boy, Ashad, this time, and there were some very peculiar things involved. We’re hoping that Veltan might be able to explain them for us.” I paused for a moment. “Now that I think about it, though, you can probably explain them even better than Veltan. Why don’t you come along?”

  “Of course. Your brother’s back in Commander Narasan’s cabin at the stern.”

  “Is Narasan with him?” Zelana asked.

  “No, Lady Zelana. The commander’s over on the Seagull conferring with Captain Sorgan.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’m not sure that Narasan’s going to be very happy about some of the peculiarities that showed up in Ashad’s dream. Is your commander particularly religious?”

  “Not noticeably,” Keselo replied. “Is that likely to be very significant?”

  “We’ll get to that in just a few minutes. Let’s go talk with Veltan.”

  “All right,” the young man replied, turning and leading us back toward the ornate, almost houselike structure at the stern of the ship. He rapped politely on the door.

  “Come in.” Veltan’s voice came from inside.

  Keselo opened the door and stood aside to let us go on in ahead of him.

  The cabin was much more ornate than I’d really expected. In some ways it resembled a room in a house rather than part of a ship. The ceiling wasn’t very high, and, since the sailors used the cabin’s roof as a deck, there were substantial beams to keep the ceiling from tumbling down on those who slept there. There was also a large window across the back of the cabin to give the people inside the cabin something to look at. All in all, I thought the whole thing was just a bit silly, but I decided not to make an issue of that.

  Veltan was seated at a large table examining a map. “Is something amiss?”

  “Not really,” I told him. “At least not yet. My little boy Ashad had one of those dreams last night, and we were right about one thing, at least. The servants of the Vlagh will be coming your way soon.”

  “Did he tell you exactly when?”

  “‘When’ never comes up in these dreams, Veltan,” I told him. “You should know that by now. Now we come to the complicated part. Ashad told me that there was a second invasion in his dream, and those particular invaders had absolutely no connection with the servants of the Vlagh.”

  “Who were they, then?”

  “As closely as I was able to determine, they were Trogites, and they wanted to talk to your people about their god. How much were you able to discover about somebody called Amar?”

  “Not too much, big brother,” Veltan replied. “Narasan has nothing but contempt for the clergy of the Amarite faith.”

  “He’s not alone there, Veltan,” Keselo said. “Anyone in the Trogite Empire with the least bit of decency or intelligence despises the Amarite church. The clergy is corrupt, greedy beyond belief, and totally without honor. It’s common knowledge that the ‘church’ is nothing more than an invention of the priesthood designed to swindle the ordinary people of the empire out of just about everything they own.”

  “That has a familiar ring, doesn’t it?” Zelana observed. “Our dear sister has a priesthood that behaves in much the same way.”

  I shrugged. “It makes her happy, I suppose.” I looked at Veltan. “Where’s the rest of Narasan’s army?” I asked. “If I under-stood correctly, the men he brought to Lattash were just an advance force.”

  “The bulk of Narasan’s army’s still in the port of Castano on the north shore of the Empire. Why do you ask, big brother?”

  “The second invasion in Ashad’s dream almost had to involve Trogites, since this ‘Amar’ is a Trogite invention.”

  “That’s true, I suppose,” Veltan conceded. “Where are we going with this, Dahlaine?”

  I looked inquiringly at Keselo. “I gather that most of the men in Narasan’s army share your feelings about this so-called religion,” I suggested. “Is it at all possible that some of them feel differently, but they’re keeping it to themselves?”

  “Not after what happened in the southern part of the empire last year,” he replied. “We lost twelve cohorts as a direct result of a deception that we tracked back to a high-ranking clergyman in the Amarite church. That’s why Commander Narasan threw his sword away and went into business as a beggar. If any man in the army even suggested that the Amarite church had anything even remotely re
sembling decency, his comrades would kick the living daylights out of him.”

  “Let’s not dismiss the possibility entirely, Keselo,” Veltan said with a troubled look on his face. “From what I’ve heard, the word ‘gold’ sends the Amarite church into a feeding frenzy, and if I remember correctly, there was some extended discussion of gold in the army compound back in Kaldacin. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that some soldier in your army happened to visit a tavern in Castano, and the word ‘gold’ came up during a casual conversation, and somebody affiliated with the Amarite church happened to overhear the conversation. Wouldn’t that sort of explain the second invasion in Ashad’s dream?”

  “It doesn’t really fit,” Keselo disagreed. “The Amarite church might want to come here to the Land of Dhrall to harvest gold and slaves, but they’d need to know exactly how to get through all that floating ice, and Gunda and Padan have the only maps.”

  “That’s true, I suppose,” Veltan conceded, “but Narasan told me that he could field a hundred thousand soldiers. It’d only take one opportunist to blow away any chance of secrecy. I think that’s the answer to the origins of that second invasion in your little boy’s dream, Dahlaine.”

  “It would explain it, I guess,” I agreed. Then I looked at Keselo again. “Just exactly what are ‘slaves’?” I asked him. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word before.”

  “You’ve been very lucky, then. It was a fairly standard custom back in the early days of the Empire for the imperial armies to capture people of more primitive cultures and then sell them to the landowners of the Empire itself, almost as if they were cattle. Then the landowners would hire men with whips to drive the unfortunates to do the actual farming. The practice fell into disuse a hundred or so years ago, but a few decades back the Church realized the she’d been passing up a wonderful opportunity to make money, so the slavers are back in business again, and at least half of them are members of the clergy.”

  Veltan’s face went dead white. “If those monsters even come close to the shores of my Domain, I’ll destroy them!”