The Elder Gods Read online

  “Oh?”

  “She didn’t give Sorgan the gold she’d promised him, and he’s very unhappy about that. She can stay here in her grotto if she really thinks it’s necessary, but she’s going to have to come back to Lattash for a little while and pay the pirates what she owes them. The delay’s making Narasan very suspicious, and he won’t move until he knows that my sister kept her promise. If Sorgan doesn’t get paid, Narasan won’t come south to my Domain, and I think I’m going to need him there before too much longer.”

  “I’ll go back down to the grotto and tell the Beloved that you’re here, uncle Veltan. I might be able to persuade her to come out, but I’m not making any promises.” Then the little girl arched gracefully over and plunged on back down through the water.

  It seemed almost like forever as the three of them sat in Veltan’s gently bobbing sloop, but it was probably only about a quarter of an hour before Eleria and Zelana came to the surface no more than a few yards from the sloop.

  “What’s this all about, Veltan?” Zelana demanded, smoothly treading water.

  “You seem to have neglected something, dear sister,” Veltan suggested. “I know that you’ve got a lot on your mind right now, but you seem to have overlooked certain obligations.”

  “Get to the point, Veltan,” she said irritably.

  “You neglected to pay the Maags for their services during the recent unpleasantness,” Veltan reminded her.

  “I’ll get around to it one of these days.”

  “‘One of these days’ is just a little vague, wouldn’t you say, dear sister?”

  “Sorgan doesn’t need the gold right now. There’s no place here in the Land of Dhrall where he could spend it.”

  “He may not need it, Zelana, but he wants it.”

  “That’s just too bad.”

  “And it’s getting worse every day. Sorgan’s discontent’s starting to spread. Narasan’s starting to have some doubts about the honesty of our family. I hired him with promises, just like you hired Sorgan. If you don’t pay Sorgan, Narasan won’t believe that I’ll pay him. He’s sitting on board his ship in the bay of Lattash waiting for a demonstration of good faith. You gave Sorgan your word, sister of mine, and if you don’t make good on your word, the outlanders will probably steal everything they can lay their hands on and then set sail for home. Without Narasan’s assistance, there’s no way that I can defend my Domain, and if I lose, we’ll all lose, and the Vlagh will win dominion over the entire Land of Dhrall. Was there any part of that you didn’t understand?”

  “You’re hateful, Veltan.”

  “I do my best, dear sister. Are you going to keep your word or not?”

  “Oh, all right!” She almost spat her response at him. “I’ll go back to Lattash and pay that greedy pirate, but that’s as far as I’ll go. I will not get involved in any more of this savagery!”

  The face of the child Eleria hardened. “That’s all right, Beloved,” she said in a sugary sweet tone. “You can stay here and play with your pink dolphins, strum your harp, and compose bad poetry, if that’s what it takes to make you happy. I’ll go in your place. I may not be as skilled as you are, and I might make a lot of mistakes, but at least I’ll be there when my people need me.”

  Zelana’s eyes went very wide. “You can’t do that, Eleria,” she exclaimed. “I won’t permit it.”

  “Then I’ll just have to go without your permission, won’t I, Beloved? Either you go or I go, and that’s all there is to say. The choice is yours, Beloved. It’s either you or me. Make up your mind, Zelana. We don’t have all day, you know.”

  Red-Beard was stunned. The sweet child suddenly wasn’t sweet anymore. Red-Beard glanced at Longbow to see if his friend was as shocked as he was.

  Longbow’s expression, however, showed no signs of shock. He placidly returned Red-Beard’s gaze.

  And then he slyly winked.

  5

  They moved smoothly down the west coast of the Isle of Thurn, and Red-Beard carefully watched Zelana and Eleria, trying his best not to be too obvious about it.

  Now that she’d jerked Zelana back to normalcy, however, Eleria had reverted back to her previous sweetness, and Zelana seemed to be her old self again. She spoke at some length with Veltan back at the stern of the sloop, and then she joined Red-Beard and Longbow near the bow. “My brother tells me that Chief White-Braid’s having some problems,” she said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “The fire mountains at the head of the ravine seem to have blocked off the river,” Longbow replied, “and without that river, Lattash isn’t a good place for Chief White-Braid’s tribe to live anymore. The notion of leaving Lattash disturbs White-Braid so much that he can’t seem to make decisions anymore. Our shaman, One-Who-Heals, tells us that things like that aren’t uncommon in older men. Red-Beard here has been taking care of things, and he hasn’t made too many mistakes yet.”

  “Thanks, Longbow,” Red-Beard said in a flat, unfriendly tone.

  “Don’t mention it,” Longbow replied blandly. “Anyway,” he continued, “Red-Beard and I found a suitable place for the tribe to live on down the north side of the bay, and Sorgan’s fleet’s been moving the members of the tribe there.”

  “That was nice of him,” Zelana observed, “and ‘nice’ is something I wouldn’t really have expected from somebody like Sorgan.”

  “He’s not really all that bad, Zelana,” Red-Beard disagreed. “It seems that sometimes wars bring out the best in people. We helped him quite a bit up there in the ravine, so now he’s helping us. He’ll be going south with Narasan to help out during the war in your brother’s Domain, too.”

  “Isn’t that sweet, Beloved?” Eleria said.

  “Maybe I underestimated him,” Zelana confessed. “He hides it very well, but there might just be a certain amount of decency lurking behind that rough exterior. Are those fire mountains still belching smoke?”

  “They were when we left,” Red-Beard replied. “We were hoping that they’d just roll over and go back to sleep, but they’re still grumbling up there.”

  “It was probably a wise decision to move your tribe, Red-Beard,” she said gravely. “Once a mountain starts spitting fire, it can go on for years and years, and you don’t really want to be downhill from one of them while that’s happening.” She turned. “I think we’d better hurry, little brother. Let’s get all of our friends away from that ravine. That might be a very dangerous place for the next several years.”

  “I sort of thought so myself, dear sister,” Veltan agreed.

  Red-Beard braced himself. “There’s something you should probably know about, Zelana,” he said. “My uncle’s always been very attached to the village at the bottom of the ravine, but the fire mountains stopped our river, and if they don’t go back to sleep, there’s a good chance that Lattash will be buried in melted rock. Longbow and I found a place to set up a new village, but I didn’t want to just jam the notion down uncle White-Braid’s throat.”

  “Get to the point, Red-Beard,” Zelana told him.

  “This isn’t too easy,” he replied. “When Longbow and I went back to Lattash, my uncle seemed to have realized that he couldn’t really make decisions for the tribe anymore, so he told the elders that he wanted to step aside, and he suggested that I might be the best one to replace him. It wasn’t my idea, and I don’t really like it very much, but I guess I’m the chief of the tribe now.”

  “Your uncle’s very wise, Red-Beard,” Zelana assured him. “You were the proper choice. Sometimes old ones become confused when things start moving too fast for them.” She smiled faintly at Eleria. “That’s when younger ones have to step over them.”

  “Would I do something like that, Beloved?” Eleria asked with wide-eyed innocence.

  “Why don’t we talk about that some other time, little one?” Zelana replied. “Right now, I’ve got more important things to consider.”

  Red-Beard’s heart sank when Veltan’s sloop reached the inlet tha
t led back into the bay of Lattash. The fire mountains were spouting red-hot liquid miles up into the air again. He’d been hoping against hope that somehow his boyhood home might still be there to look at, but now that was obviously out of the question.

  “I’m sorry, friend Red-Beard,” Longbow said.

  “It wasn’t your fault, friend Longbow,” Red-Beard replied. “Nothing we hope for comes to us without a cost, I guess. We won this war, but the winning cost us our home. It used to be a nice place, but nothing lasts forever, I suppose.”

  Sorgan Hook-Beak appeared to be in a state of near-panic when Veltan pulled his sloop up alongside the Seagull a bit later. “Where have you been?” he demanded of Zelana in a shrill voice. “That molten rock’s coming down the ravine faster than any man could run. It’ll probably swallow up the village before the sun goes down, and we’ll never be able to save all the gold in that blasted cave.”

  “Calm yourself, Hook-Beak,” she told him. “Rabbit, why don’t you hop into that skiff of yours and go fetch Sorgan’s cousins—Skell, Torl, and the rest of them? If we try to load all the gold in the cave on the Seagull, we’ll sink her.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rabbit agreed, hurrying forward toward the bow of the Seagull.

  “We’ll go on ahead, Sorgan,” Zelana continued. “I’ll need to remove the barriers I set up earlier before your men can start carrying the gold out.”

  “Do you think maybe you could widen that tunnel where the gold is just a bit, Lady Zelana?” Hook-Beak asked her. “It’s awfully narrow, and things would go a lot faster if I could put more than two lines of men to work in there.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea, Sorgan,” she told him. “The walls of that tunnel support the roof, and if I push them out much farther, the ceiling could collapse. Just tell your men not to spend so much time fondling the gold bricks and move faster. Let’s clear out the cave before the lava hits the bay.”

  “It can slop down into the bay all it wants to,” Sorgan said. “I want to keep it out of the cave, is all.”

  “Once it hits the water, you and your men won’t be able to see what you’re doing, Sorgan. The clouds of steam will be thicker than any fog you’ve ever encountered.”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought of that, Lady Zelana,” he conceded.

  The Maags followed the procedure that had been so successful when they’d dismantled the top of the stairway at the head of the ravine during the recent war, passing the gold bricks from man to man along twin lines of sailors. The rocky passageway that led back to the gold from the large chamber near the mouth of the cave was narrow, so there wasn’t really enough room for more than two lines, but the sailors moved rapidly, so things seemed to be going quite well.

  Red-Beard drifted on back into the side chamber to take one last look at the imitation ravine he’d constructed before the war in the real ravine had started, and for some reason Eleria followed along behind him. “Oops,” she said. “We forgot something, didn’t we?”

  “I didn’t quite follow that,” Red-Beard admitted.

  “There are quite a few of those yellow blocks buried under the clay, remember?”

  Red-Beard suddenly burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten about that,” he admitted. “Maybe we should remind Sorgan that there’s gold here as well as in the back of the cave.” He squinted at the model of the ravine. “It might take a while to dig it out, though. The clay we piled on top of those blocks has had enough time to dry by now, so the Maags are going to have to dig if they want this gold, too.”

  “It’ll be good for them. I’ve noticed that sailors are sort of lazy when there’s nothing exciting going on.”

  Red-Beard left the cave to the sweating Maags and began to climb up the steep slope behind the village, but he met Longbow coming down. “How much time do we have left?” he asked his friend.

  “A few hours at least,” Longbow replied. “The flow isn’t moving quite as fast as it was before. That narrow place in the ravine where Skell built his fort seems to have slowed it somewhat. I think we’d still better get Sorgan’s people off the beach as quickly as possible, though. In a peculiar sort of way the lava flow’s behaving very much like Eleria’s flood did.”

  “Do you think the berm might hold it back?”

  “I doubt it. It kept the water from flooding the village, but water isn’t as heavy as molten rock, and it follows the course of least resistance. The berm was built to hold back water, not liquid rock.”

  Red-Beard sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he said. “If even a little bit of the village was still here, just the sight of it would keep bringing back memories—particularly in the minds of the old men of the tribe. I think it’ll be better if there’s no trace of Lattash left here. The tribe needs to move on, and memories of the past would only be a burden.”

  “You’re getting better, Chief Red-Beard,” Longbow noted. “You seem to be able to think past tomorrow now.”

  “I didn’t ask for this, Longbow,” Red-Beard complained.

  “I know, my friend,” Longbow said, “and that’s what’s going to make you a very good chief. Your tribe’s lucky, you know. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  “I’d still much prefer to spend my time fishing or hunting.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?”

  “If it hadn’t been for those cursed fire mountains, I’d have left that gold right where it was,” Sorgan told Commander Narasan the following morning in the cabin at the stern of the Seagull. “If I pay the other ship captains now, they’ll sail for home on the afternoon tide. I think we’re going to need them when we fight your war off to the south, but I don’t think they’ll be very interested after they’ve got their hands on all that gold.”

  “You’re probably right, Sorgan,” the Trogite commander agreed. He smiled faintly. “Sometimes gold can be an enormous inconvenience, can’t it?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Sorgan suggested. “The real problem’s going to be that there’s no possible way for me to keep the fact that the Seagull and the ships of several of my relatives are loaded with gold a secret. Ordinary sailors talk too much—particularly after they’ve had a gallon or so of beer to loosen their tongues. Sooner or later I’ll be looking another one of those ‘Kajak affairs’ right in the face.” He looked at Longbow. “How are your arrows holding out?” he asked wryly.

  “There aren’t quite that many, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied.

  “What it all boils down to is that I need a safe place to hide all this gold, but no matter where I try to hide it, sooner or later somebody on one of these ships will get drunk and start bragging.”

  “Why don’t you let me take care of it, Sorgan?” Zelana suggested.

  “Shouldn’t you give the various sea captains in your fleet a part of the gold you promised them, Captain Hook-Beak?” the young Trogite, Keselo, suggested. “If you don’t pay them anything at all, they’re likely to be very unhappy. If you give each one a quarter of what you promised him and tell him that the war isn’t over yet, he may not be wildly happy, but at least he won’t try to set fire to the Seagull.”

  “That’s something you might want to consider, Sorgan,” Narasan agreed with the young Trogite. “The war you hired the Maags to fight isn’t really over yet. Our campaign up in the ravine was really only the first battle in a war that’s still going on, wasn’t it? We won that battle, but I’m fairly certain that there’ll be three more. So far, they’ve only earned a quarter of what you promised to pay them. Give them quarter payment, and tell them that they still have to earn the rest.”

  “That might just work, Cap’n,” the small Maag, Rabbit, agreed. “Part pay’s better than no pay, and they’ll probably decide to stay here so they can earn the other three parts.”

  “It might work,” Sorgan conceded a bit dubiously. “Some of them might think that I tricked them, though, and they’ll just take their quarter pay and set sail for home.”

  “Let them,” Zelana su
ggested. “The ones who turn and run won’t be of much use anyway, will they? The good ones will probably stay, and those are the ones we want anyway.”

  “Where are you going to hide the rest of my gold, Lady Zelana?” Sorgan asked.

  “You don’t really need to know that right now, dear Sorgan,” Zelana replied sweetly. “I might consider telling you, but only if you give me a firm promise that you won’t touch a single drop of beer until this is all over.”

  “That’s not fair at all!” Sorgan objected.

  “You didn’t really expect life to be fair, did you, dear Sorgan?” she replied with a sly smile.

  Red-Beard carefully covered his mouth until he managed to get his broad grin under control. Zelana was still as sharp as any knife when she put her mind to it. He’d been very worried when she’d fled back to her hiding place on the Isle of Thurn, but now that she’d regained her senses, things were looking better and better.

  “How in the world did you come up with this idea?” Zelana asked Red-Beard when he showed her the sod lodges in the new village.

  “Longbow’s Chief, Old-Bear, told us that the tribes of the far north in your brother’s Domain build their lodges out of sod because there aren’t that many trees up there. It’s windy here, so sod lodges give the people more protection. That’s not really why we decided to do it this way, though.” Red-Beard quickly described the scheme he and Longbow had used to trick the men of the tribe into clearing the ground for planting.

  “You’re a very devious man, Red-Beard,” she observed with a faint smile.

  “I’m glad you approve,” he replied with a sly smirk. “It all worked out quite well. Everybody got what they needed, and nobody was offended. Old customs and ideas can get in the way sometimes, but if you’re quick on your feet, you can usually come up with a way to step around them.” He looked around at the blocky sod lodges. “It’s not as pretty as Lattash was,” he observed rather sadly, “but Lattash is gone now, so this village will have to do, I suppose.”