Crystal Gorge Read online

  “Does he always have to do that, Zelana?” Dahlaine asked his sister.

  “Do what, dear brother?”

  “Turn everything into a joke.”

  “It keeps him happy, Dahlaine, and happy people are nicer than gloomy ones. Haven’t you noticed that before?”

  He gave her a hard look, but she just smiled.

  “All right,” Dahlaine continued. “The nation on the east of my Domain is Atazakan, and as our friend who hasn’t yet learned how to shave just suggested, the ruler of that region is fairly insane—which isn’t really his fault, since the last five generations of his family have also been crazy. The current ruler of Atazakan has taken crazy out to the far end, though. He’s absolutely convinced that he’s god. He goes out to the public square in the city of Palandor every morning and gives the sun his permission to rise. Then, late in the afternoon, he goes back to the same place and permits her to set.”

  “She’ll do it without his permission, won’t she?” Rabbit asked skeptically.

  “Of course she will,” Dahlaine replied with a faint smile, “but that absurd business makes ‘Holy Azakan’ feel more goddish.”

  “I don’t think there’s such a word as ‘goddish,’ Dahlaine,” Zelana suggested.

  “You understood what I meant, didn’t you, dear sister?” Dahlaine asked her.

  “Well, sort of, I suppose.”

  “That means that it’s a word, doesn’t it?”

  “Not one that I’d ever use.”

  “You’re a poet, Zelana, so your language is nicer than mine. Anyway, crazy old Azakan desperately wants divinity. Whether he truly believes that he has it might be open to some question, but his subjects—or maybe worshipers—have learned to accept his announcement that he’s a god, because their very lives depend upon it.”

  “Is there anything at all resembling an army in that part of your Domain?” Sorgan asked.

  “Not really,” Dahlaine replied. “Azakan has a goodly number of guards that call themselves ‘the Guardians of Divinity.’ Their primary duty involves intimidating the populace of Palandor so that they’ll applaud and cheer each time the sun rises or sets at Azakan’s command. They carry poorly made spears and clubs, but they don’t really know how to use them. I’d say that their primary contribution to a war with the creatures of the Wasteland will involve staying out of the way.”

  3

  The Seagull and the rest of the Maag fleet sailed on past the narrow channel that opened out into the bay of Lattash without bothering to stop, and Red-Beard heaved a vast sigh of relief—touched with just a faint hint of shame. He was fully aware of the fact that he was evading certain responsibilities, but he knew that the tribe would survive without Red-Beard of Lattash serving as chief.

  As they moved on farther north it became more and more obvious that summer was coming to a close. There were aspen trees and birch scattered among the pine, fir, and spruce, and the leaves of those particular trees had begun to turn, spattering the evergreen forest with patches of red and gold. Autumn was the most beautiful season in the forest, but it also gave a warning. Winter was not far away, and only fools ignored that silent warning.

  It was about three days after they’d passed the bay of Lattash when Longbow advised Sorgan Hook-Beak that he was going to paddle his canoe ashore so that he could speak with Old-Bear, the chief of his tribe. “If anything unusual is happening up in the land of the Tonthakans, Old-Bear will have heard about it.”

  Sorgan seemed to be just a bit surprised. “Are your people really that familiar with the natives of Lord Dahlaine’s territory?” he asked.

  “I’ve gone up there a few times myself,” Longbow replied. “It’s always a good idea to get to know the neighbors. There are a few restrictions, of course, but we can usually step around them. As nearly as I can determine, we won’t need the archers of Zelana’s Domain up in her brother’s country—unless the creatures of the Wasteland attack in millions, but it’s probably a good idea for us to stay in touch with Chief Old-Bear. If an emergency comes along, he’ll be able to pass the word to the other tribes. Help will be there if we happen to need it.”

  “I’ll lend you a skiff, if you’d like.”

  “Thanks all the same, Sorgan, but I’m more comfortable in my canoe.”

  “Could you use some company?” Red-Beard asked his friend. “Boats are nice, I suppose, but I’d like to put my feet on solid ground for a little while.”

  “Ships,” Sorgan absently corrected.

  “You missed me there, Sorgan.”

  “We call them ‘ships,’ not ‘boats.’”

  “Well, excuse me.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Sorgan replied.

  Red-Beard followed his friend out onto the deck of the Seagull, and then the two of them carried Longbow’s canoe up out of the forward hold and lowered it over the side.

  It felt good to be in a canoe again, and Longbow’s canoe was one of the smoothest Red-Beard had ever sat in. He rather ruefully conceded that no matter what Longbow did, he was always the best. Some people might have found that irritating, but it didn’t particularly bother Red-Beard. Longbow was his friend, and he almost never tried to compete with him.

  It was a balmy autumn day, the waves were gentle, and Longbow’s canoe seemed almost to skim across the surface toward the pebbly beach.

  Red-Beard noticed that the men of the tribe seemed to avoid Longbow, which wasn’t really all that unusual. He’d noticed in the past that most people tried to avoid Longbow. “It’s probably that grim expression of his,” Red-Beard said to himself. “I’m sure he’d be more popular if he’d just learn how to smile now and then.”

  Chief Old-Bear’s lodge stood alone on a small hillock that looked down over the beach. Red-Beard thought that was very unusual. Most tribe-chiefs set up shop right in the center of the village, but Old-Bear seemed to want to be separate—and alone.

  He greeted Longbow rather formally, it seemed to Red-Beard, but different tribes have different customs.

  “How did things go in the Domain of Zelana’s brother, my son?” Old-Bear asked.

  Longbow shrugged. “It was a bit more complicated there than it was here, My Chief,” he said, “but things turned out quite well. It seems that we have a friend who can do things that Zelana’s family can’t, and she does them without the help of the Dreamers.”

  “The old myths are true, then,” the chief observed.

  “So it would seem, and she was using me as her spokesman. That got to be just a bit tiresome after a while, and it took me a while to catch up on my sleep.”

  Old-Bear looked a bit startled. “I must have misunderstood the myth. I’d always assumed that she’d use one of the Dreamer-children to pass her commands on to the outlanders. What did she want you to tell our friends?”

  “Her speech in my dreams was just a bit formal, My Chief, but it more or less boiled down to ‘get out of the way.’ She knew what she was doing, and she didn’t want us to interfere. We had two separate enemies, and they were very busy killing each other—right up until she destroyed them both.”

  “Fire or water?”

  “She used water this time—a lot of water. The creatures of the Wasteland won’t be going south anymore, because there’s a large inland sea between them and Veltan’s Domain.”

  Chief Old-Bear laughed. “I imagine that might have upset the Vlagh just a bit.”

  “More than a bit, My Chief,” Longbow replied. “We could hear her screaming from miles away.”

  “Is there something happening that I should know about?” Red-Beard asked curiously.

  “It’s a very old story that’s been handed down in our tribe for years and years,” Longbow explained. “It has to do with a crisis that lies off in the future and what we’ll have to do to meet that crisis. There are some references to strangers in the myth—probably Sorgan and Narasan—and to some elemental forces—fire, water, wind—that sort of thing. The story’s possibly been garbled just a b
it over the years, but down at the bottom, it seems to be very close to what we’ve encountered so far.”

  “Are there any hints about what we ought to be looking for up in the north or off to the east?”

  “Nothing very specific,” Longbow replied. “Visions of one kind or another tend to get just a bit disrupted as time goes by.”

  “Do you think the outlanders will need our help if the creatures of the Wasteland attack the Domain of Zelana’s older brother, my son?” Old-Bear asked.

  “Probably not, My Chief,” Longbow replied. “The Tonthakans are fairly good archers, and if the Maag smiths cast bronze arrowheads for them, they should be able to do what needs to be done. If things start getting out of hand, though, I’ll send word to you.” He paused. “How is One-Who-Heals getting along?” he asked.

  “Not too good, my son,” Old-Bear replied. “It would seem that age is one of the diseases that he can’t heal.”

  “That’s too bad,” Longbow said. “He is—or was—a very good teacher.” Then he looked at Red-Beard. “I’ll be back in just a little while and then we can paddle on back to the Seagull and join our friends.” Then he left Chief Old-Bear’s lodge.

  “Where’s he going?” Red-Beard asked Longbow’s chief.

  “To visit Misty-Water’s grave, probably,” Old Bear replied.

  “Oh,” Red-Beard said. “I don’t think he’s ever mentioned her to me—or anybody else—but some of the men in your tribe spoke of her on occasion. People who don’t know about her don’t understand Longbow, and he frightens them. Of course, sometimes he frightens even me.”

  “He was not always like he is now, Red-Beard,” Old-Bear said. “The time will come, I think, when he’ll draw his bow with the Vlagh for his target.”

  “I hope he doesn’t miss when that day comes.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Red-Beard,” Old-Bear replied. “Longbow never misses when he draws his bow.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “I’m sure you have. Everybody who’s ever met him notices that.”

  CASTANO

  1

  The meadowlands of the clan of Ekial of Malavi lay near the north coast, and that gave the clan a certain advantage over the clans that lay farther to the south. The cattle-buyers from the Trogite Empire did business in the coastal towns, which were surrounded by extensive cattle-pens and with loading piers jutting out into the sea. This made things very convenient for the northern clans, since there were no long cattle-drives involved when the time came to sell cows.

  The village of the clan was a pleasant place near the southern edge of the clan territory where a sparkling brook came tumbling down out of the hills which lay to the south. The meadows surrounding the village were lush and green, so the cattle had little reason to wander off.

  The pavilions in the village were made of leather, of course, and there was a certain advantage to that. The Trogite cattle-buyers in the coastal towns lived in houses made of wood, and once those houses had been built, they stayed where they were. Leather pavilions, however, can be moved without much difficulty if necessary.

  It was not uncommon among the Malavi for a proud father to announce that his son had been riding horses since before he learned how to walk. That was probably an exaggeration, but Ekial couldn’t remember a day when he hadn’t spent most of his time on horseback.

  There were several other boys of about the same age as Ekial in the village, and, quite naturally, the boys spent much of their time racing. The horses their fathers had given them when they were still quite small had been rather old and tired, so they didn’t run very fast, but the boys still enjoyed those races. Ekial had several friends among the boys of the clan, and those friends were about the same age as he was. Ariga was maybe a year younger than Ekial, and Baltha and Skarn were a bit older, but they all got along well with each other.

  Ekial wasn’t quite sure just why it was that the other three boys deferred to him as they played together. He wasn’t the biggest, certainly, and the horse his father had given him wasn’t the fastest, but for some reason, they seemed to expect him to make the important decisions—“Let’s race,” “Let’s give the horses time to catch their breath,” or, “Isn’t it just about lunchtime?”

  As the years moved on, the boys learned many things by listening to the conversations of their elders around the fire after the sun went down. The standard myth in the meadowland of Malavi was that in times long past, horses had been a gift from the god Mala. It was an entertaining story that was often repeated around the fire after supper, but Ekial and his friends were quite sure that there was little truth in the story. An untamed horse could hardly be called “a gift.”

  Ekial learned that the hard way when he was about twelve years old. Custom demanded that every man should tame his own mount before he could be recognized as a real Malavi. The wild horse his father gave him on his twelfth birthday was “spirited,” a common term among the Malavi that glossed over the true nature of wild horses. Ekial privately believed that “vicious,” “savage,” and “evil” might come closer to the truth.

  Of course, the fact that his gift horse broke his right arm the first time he tried to mount the beast might have played some part in his opinion. After his arm healed, Ekial approached his “gift” with a certain caution. He had a fair amount of success with twisting the horse’s ear—very hard—but then the problem of biting came up. Ekial learned never to turn his back on his horse, and he took to carrying a stout strap. After he’d slashed the horse across the nose with the strap a few times, the beast evidently decided that biting his owner wasn’t a very good idea.

  In time, Ekial and “Beast” grew to know each other better, and a wary sort of peace was established. Ekial still avoided turning his back on Beast, but otherwise things went rather well.

  Ekial even developed a certain pride when it became increasingly obvious that Beast could outrun any other horse in the clan. Races were quite common in the meadowland, and there was usually quite a bit of betting involved. Ekial was hardly more than a boy at that time, and Beast was obviously still about half wild. The men of the clan spoke rather disparagingly of “that little boy and his barely tamed horse,” and they feigned a certain reluctance to put any sizeable amount of money on them. They always insisted on what the Malavi called “odds.” Two for one was fairly common in Malavi horse-races, but the men of Ekial’s clan usually demanded four for one, and the men of other clans almost always agreed.

  The men of Ekial’s clan won a great deal of money that first summer, but the word that Ekial and Beast could probably outrun their own shadows spread rapidly, and the odds turned around significantly. The men of some tribes even went so far as to demand ten for one. But, since Ekial and Beast never lost, the men of the clan still won money.

  By the third summer, however, nobody in any other clan would accept any odds at all, and Ekial and Beast retired—undefeated.

  Despite the fact that the clans of the meadowland of Malavi found the racing of horses most entertaining, their primary business involved the raising and selling of cattle. It was generally known in that part of the world that the lush meadows of Malavi produced the finest beef to be found anywhere at all. There had been occasional attempts by the Trogites off to the east to incorporate Malavi into their growing empire, but that hadn’t turned out at all well for the men who called themselves “civilized.” Since the Trogites had no horses, they couldn’t move as fast as the clansmen of Malavi could, and their occasional incursions into the meadowland had turned into unmitigated disasters.

  The most recent incursion by the Trogites had occurred when Ekial and his friends were still boys, and the response of the clans had been brilliant. Rather than fight the invaders, the clans sent word to the Trogite cattle-buyers along the north coast that they would not sell so much as a single cow to anybody until all the soldiers had been removed from the meadowland.

  Since all Trogites worshiped gold, the cattle-buyers were able to pers
uade the Palvanum, the ruling body of the empire, to pull their armies out of the meadowland and keep them out.

  After that incident, the Malavi realized that they controlled the cattle-market, and that they did not have to accept the first price for their cows offered by the unscrupulous cattle-buyers. And so it was that the clan-chiefs of the meadowland gathered together each spring to decide what price they would demand when the Trogite cattle-buyers came to the land of the Malavi.

  The complacent, superior expressions on the faces of the cattle-buyers faded to be replaced by expressions of horror when the clans all rejected the buyers’ offers and came back with a much higher price. And the flat statement “That’s the price, take it or leave it” cut off all the haggling.

  Rumor had it that the price of beef in the empire went up significantly that year, and that there were many speeches denouncing the Malavi delivered in the hallowed halls of the Trogite Palvanum.

  A few Trogite adventurers saw what they thought to be a glorious opportunity to make huge amounts of money in what had come to be called “the beef crisis.” There were cows by the millions in Malavi, and it appeared that nobody was watching them. The cattle trade could be enormously profitable if they weren’t required to pay for the cows they sold. There were a couple of problems, however. The Trogite adventurers overlooked the fact that cows have horns, and that despite what appeared to be the fact, the Malavi—armed with sabres and long, sharp lances—always kept watch over their herds. There were several unpleasant incidents, and the notion of “free cows” was quickly abandoned.

  Ekial’s clan elevated one bad-tempered old bull who had gored five Trogite cattle thieves in rapid succession to the status of “defender of the herd,” and they’d fed him much more than was really good for him. He died not long after his elevation—either of old age or overeating.

  The clan gave him a very nice funeral, though.