Treasured One Page 4

  “No, Veltan,” I told him quite firmly, “you won’t. Killing anything is absolutely forbidden, and you know it. If you tried something like that, you’d be banished forever, and it wouldn’t be on the moon this time. You’d spend the rest of eternity in a place of absolute darkness where the only sounds you’d hear would be your own screams of endless despair. I’m sure we’ll be able to find some suitable alternatives, but if you even try to kill anything, I’ll tie you up in a knot so tight that it’ll take you about four cycles just to unlace your fingers from your toes.”

  “So that’s why you people had to rush around hiring armies!” Keselo exclaimed. “I’ve never really understood why you just didn’t obliterate the enemies with a wave of your hand. It was because you’re not permitted to kill anything, isn’t it?”

  “I want you to forget what you just heard, young man,” I told him firmly. “Do you understand me?”

  “Why, yes, I believe I do.”

  “Good.” I looked over at my brother, “You’d better tell Narasan to start moving his fleet, Veltan,” I suggested. “We’ve finished everything here in Zelana’s Domain, so it’s time to move on. Ashad’s dream wasn’t too specific about time. That seems to be one of the characteristics of those dreams. Our Dreamers can give us all kinds of details about what’s going to happen, but ‘when’ always seems a little vague.”

  “Did Ashad happen to mention where the main battle’s likely to take place?” Veltan asked.

  “He said that it would be in the general vicinity of the Falls of Vash, little brother. He wasn’t too specific, and I didn’t want to push him.”

  Veltan winced. “That’s very rugged country up there, big brother. I don’t think the Trogites will like the idea of fighting on ground like that.”

  “It can’t be much worse than the ravine above Lattash was, can it?” Zelana asked.

  “It makes that ravine look like a gentle meadow, sister mine,” Veltan replied glumly. “It wasn’t even there at the end of my last cycle. When I woke up, the man-things of my Domain seemed to be very excited about it. I’m not sure exactly why Vash created the falls, but they are spectacular to look at. Looking is one thing, but walking around up there’s something entirely different. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Yaltar’s twin volcanos are an outgrowth of what he’d done when his name was Vash. The river that tumbles over the falls originates in a geyser that spouts up about a hundred feet into the air, and that’s got a fairly strong odor of earthquakes and eruptions. There’s a fault line just south of that geyser, and it left a sheer face about two hundred feet high a mile or so downstream from the geyser. With all that water tumbling over the edge, it’s impossible to climb up that cliff, so anybody who wants to get up there has to take a different route.” Veltan stopped and suddenly snapped his fingers. “I should have known that this was coming!” he exclaimed. “Last spring Omago told me that some strangers had been asking questions about the Falls of Vash. I had my mind on other things at the time, so I didn’t pursue it. Evidently, the Vlagh’s been sending scouts out into our Domains for quite a while now.”

  “Who’s Omago?” Zelana asked.

  “He’s a very solid, dependable fellow with an extensive orchard near my house. He knows more about farming than anybody else in my Domain does and he’s a very good listener. Other farmers come to him for advice, and they tell him about any unusual things that are happening. Then he passes them on to me.”

  “He’s the chief, then?” Longbow asked.

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far, Longbow. He gives advice, not orders.”

  “It sort of amounts to the same thing, wouldn’t you say? A good chief does things that way. Only bad chieftains order their men around. Fortunately, they don’t usually last very long.”

  “He’s got a point there, Veltan,” I agreed. “You might want to consider getting word to this Omago fellow. Let him know what’s in the wind, and have him pass the word along. Your people should know that the creatures of the Wasteland are coming, and they need to start getting ready for war.”

  “That’s absurd, Dahlaine,” Veltan scoffed. “My people don’t even know what the word ‘war’ means. That’s why I had to hire Narasan’s army. Omago can probably make certain that the hired soldiers get plenty to eat, but that’s likely to be his only contribution during the war.” He smiled faintly. “Of course, if we can persuade Ara to do the cooking, we might have some trouble persuading the outlanders to go home after the war’s over.”

  “Who’s Ara?” Zelana asked.

  “Omago’s wife. She’s a beautiful lady and quite probably the best cook in the world. The smells that come from her kitchen even tempt me sometimes.”

  “Oh, incidentally, Veltan,” I cut in, “Aracia and I’d like to bring the commanders of the armies we’ve been hiring down to your Domain to observe. I’m sure they’ll be coming up against the servants of the Vlagh sometime soon, and it might not be a bad idea for them to see what they’ll encounter.”

  “No problem, big brother,” Veltan said with an impudent sort of grin. “I’ll go tell Narasan and Sorgan that it’s time to go South, and then I’ll have my pet take me home so that I can have a talk with Omago. For right now, that’s about as far as we can go. Everything’s sort of up in the air at this point, so we might have to make things up as we go along.”

  “What else is new and different?” I said sourly. “Looking back, I’d say that we’ve been doing that since the very beginning.”

  “Of this war, you mean?” Zelana suggested.

  “I wouldn’t limit it to that, my sister. We’ve been making things up as we went along since the beginning of time, haven’t we?”

  “It makes life much more interesting, big brother,” she said with an impish sort of grin. “Things always seem to get so boring if you know exactly what’s going to happen, don’t they?”

  I chose not to answer that particular question.

  THE SOUTHLAND

  1

  Omago’s father owned the fields and orchards lying just to the north of Veltan’s huge house, and that proximity had made Omago look upon Veltan more as a neighbor than a ruler—or a god. Veltan didn’t make a big issue of his divinity, so Omago had always felt comfortable in his presence.

  As a child, Omago had much preferred working in his father’s orchard rather than in the open fields, mostly because it was shady in the orchard, but in the springtime when the fruit trees bloomed, the beauty of the blossoms almost took his breath away.

  He soon discovered that he was not alone in that appreciation. When the fruit trees were in bloom Veltan almost lived in the orchard, and as the two of them came to know each other better, they spent many hours talking. Their discussions were wide-ranging, and almost without realizing it, the boy Omago was receiving an education that went far beyond the tedious business of digging, planting, and harvesting.

  Veltan’s Domain here in the south of the Land of Dhrall, for example, was only a part of the entire continent. There were three others that were owned by Veltan’s brother and his two sisters. Veltan’s descriptions of his kin were so amusing that Omago frequently burst out laughing. He found Veltan’s description of the people of the West and North somewhat tantalizing, though. He simply could not imagine a life spent hunting. Sometimes he’d tried his hand at fishing, but he wasn’t really very good at it, and it seemed that hunting and fishing might be a very chancy sort of thing to depend on if somebody wanted to keep eating regularly. Veltan’s descriptions of the deep primeval forests, noble deer crowned with antlers, and buckskin-clad hunters stirred some longings in young Omago, though. There wasn’t really much in the way of adventure here in the farmland of the South where the primary desire of the inhabitants was stability. Stability was good for farming, but it wasn’t really very exciting.

  Veltan didn’t go into too many details about his own peculiarities during those extended springtime conversations, but Omago had already heard about most of them. At first, the stor
ies other farmers passed on had seemed wildly exaggerated to young Omago, but as he came to know Veltan better, he’d been reluctantly forced to accept them. He’d never seen Veltan so much as taste any food, and not once had he even seen him close his eyes.

  It was shortly after Omago’s ninth birthday when the question of alternate gods came up. The two of them were sitting in the orchard, and a strong breeze was showering them with a near blizzard of apple-blossom petals.

  “You don’t have to answer this if you’d rather not, Veltan,” Omago said a bit hesitantly, “but old man Enkar told me that you haven’t always been the god of this part of the Land of Dhrall. He said that somebody else used to take care of things around here. Is that really true, or was he just making it up to fool me?”

  Veltan shrugged. “It’s fairly close to what really happens, Omago,” he replied. “It might seem that we never sleep, but that’s not entirely true. We have cycles of sleep and wakefulness, and after we’ve been awake for a long time, we start to get a little fuzzy in our minds. We can’t remember things, and we start behaving just a bit strangely. That’s a clear sign that it’s time for us to get some sleep—and it’s just about at that time that the other branch of the family wakes up. Then they take care of things while we sleep.”

  “I guess that makes sense—sort of,” Omago admitted. “How well do you know these cousins of yours?”

  “Cousins?”

  “Cousins are the children of your parents’ brothers and sisters,” Omago explained. “Wasn’t that what you meant when you said ‘branch of the family’?”

  “It does sort of fit, now that you mention it. I’ll have to remember that.”

  “Do you ever have a chance to talk with them?”

  “I don’t talk in my sleep, Omago. Actually, about the only thing I know about my cousin is his name—and that’s probably only because there’s a waterfall up in the mountains that’s named after him. You have heard of ‘the Falls of Vash,’ haven’t you?”

  “I’ve heard about them, but I’ve never seen them. Did your cousin make them, maybe?”

  “I couldn’t really say, boy. When I woke up this last time, the people around here didn’t speak any too well, so about all I could get from them was the name.” Veltan paused and looked speculatively into Omago’s young face. “I think maybe that’s about as much as I should tell you right now. After you’ve had some time to get used to what I’ve told you today, you can come by and ask more questions if you really want to.”

  “It might take a little while,” Omago admitted. “Maybe I should be a little more careful with these questions of mine. The answers are kind of scary.”

  “You’ll get used to them in time, boy. Curiosity’s a good thing, really, but you have to be a little careful when you turn it loose.”

  “I noticed that.” Omago agreed.

  “I thought I noticed you noticing,” Veltan said with no hint of a smile.

  As Omago matured, the local farmers became aware of his familiarity with Veltan, and they thought that it might just be sort of convenient. It was much easier for them to look Omago up and tell him about things than it would be to go up to Veltan’s house on the hill and tell him in person. Veltan didn’t wave his divinity around, but still . . .

  In time, it became almost like a tradition. Almost every day, two or three local farmers would approach Omago and tell him things they thought Veltan should know about, and as evening approached, Omago would trudge up the hill to Veltan’s peculiar house and pass those things on to the local god.

  Omago didn’t really think of Veltan as a god. It seemed that he was more a friend than some distant divinity. In time, he even came to enjoy those daily conversations. It was a rather nice way to conclude each day, and he’d stop by Veltan’s house every evening, even when he had nothing to report.

  The seasons turned in their stately march, and it seemed to Omago that the farmland near Veltan’s grand house moved in rhythm with those seasons. He’d heard that there were towns and villages farther to the south, but it had always seemed to him that cramming people together all in one place was just a bit ridiculous. His father’s farm covered many acres of land spread out over the gently rolling hills, and every crop had its proper place—wheat to the west and south, vegetables to the north, and the orchard close in just to the east of the well-shaded house. Some of the neighboring farmers seemed to think that shade trees were just a waste of time and space—up until about midsummer, when it turned hot and the sun beat down on them.

  The houses stood far apart in this region, each of the thatch-roofed homes standing in the approximate center of each farmer’s land. That seemed most practical to Omago. Daylight was a time for work, not for walking.

  By the time he’d reached his twenty-first birthday, Omago had come to know all the local farmers very well, and he passed his assessments on to Veltan along with whatever those farmers had told him.

  “I wouldn’t really take anything Selga comes up with too seriously, Veltan,” he said one evening.

  “Oh?”

  “Selga’s got a sort of a problem. He isn’t very tall, and people tend to overlook him. He really wants to be noticed, so he comes by almost every day to tell me about something—anything—that he wants me to pass on to you. All I have to do to make him feel good is to pretend that I think what he just said was terribly important and that I’ll pass it on to you the first chance I get, and assure him that I’ll tell you that he was the one who brought it to my attention.”

  “That’s sad,” Veltan sighed.

  Omago shrugged. “Everybody’s got problems of some kind, Veltan. It’s nothing to get all weepy about. People come, and then they go. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You can be a very cruel person sometimes, Omago.”

  “I don’t make the rules, Veltan. All I do is follow them.”

  “How’s your father been lately?”

  That startled Omago. No matter how hard he tried to conceal things from Veltan, his friend always saw right through him. “He’s not getting any better, I’m afraid,” he replied sadly. “Sometimes he can’t even remember his own name. He keeps asking for mother, though. I don’t think he remembers that she died last year.”

  “I’m sorry, Omago,” Veltan said with great sincerity. “I wish there was something I could do to help him.”

  “I don’t really think you should, Veltan. I think father’s getting very tired, and if we keep him here, it’ll just make him more sad. Why don’t we just let him go? I think that might be the kindest thing we can do for him.”

  The following spring when Omago was working in his orchard, a vibrant woman’s voice came from just behind him. “Why are you doing that?”

  Omago, startled, spun around quickly.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman apologized. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Why are you picking all those little green apples?” She was quite tall, she had long, dark auburn hair, soft green eyes, and she wore a blue linen dress.

  Omago smiled. “Apple trees always seem to get carried away in the spring,” he explained. “They want to have lots and lots of puppies. If I don’t thin out the baby apples in the spring, there won’t be any of them much bigger than acorns when they ripen. I’ve tried to explain that to my trees, but they just won’t listen. It’s awfully hard to get a tree’s attention, particularly in the springtime.”

  “You’re Omago, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what they call me.”

  “You’re quite a bit younger than I thought you’d be. You are the same Omago people come to when they want to let Veltan know what’s happening, aren’t you?”

  Omago nodded. “Was there something you wanted me to tell him?”

  “Not right now, no. I just wanted to be sure that I’d recognize you in case something came up that I needed to let him know about.”

  “You could always go on up to his house and tell him yourself, you know.”

  “Maybe, but people tell me that h
e’d rather hear you tell him these things. How did you get to know him so well?”

  “He used to come here to this orchard when the trees were blooming. An orchard in bloom is prettier than any flower garden. This was my father’s orchard back then, and I was only a little boy. Veltan and I used to talk for hours and hours, so I probably know him better than anybody else around here. That’s most likely why the local farmers decided to use me as their messenger boy. You don’t live around here, do you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I live quite a ways away. I was very sorry to hear that your father died recently.”

  Omago shrugged. “It didn’t really come as a surprise. His health hadn’t been too good for the past several years.”

  “You’re busy,” she said, “and I’m just underfoot. It was nice meeting you.” She turned to walk away.

  “What’s your name?” he called after her.

  “Ara,” she replied back over her shoulder.

  For some reason, Omago couldn’t get the strange girl out of his mind. He realized that he didn’t know very much about her. She hadn’t even volunteered to tell him her name until he’d come right out and asked her.

  She was obviously several years younger than he was, but her manner of speaking was hardly adolescent. She’d managed to get a great deal of information from him, but she hadn’t given him very much in return.

  He tried to just shrug her off, but the memory of their brief conversation kept coming back, and it wasn’t only the conversation. She was far and away the prettiest girl he’d ever met. Her lush auburn hair reminded him of autumn, and the memory of her vibrant voice sang in his ears. He felt an almost desperate need to find out more about her.

  It was spring, and there were all kinds of things he should be doing right now, but he just couldn’t keep his mind on his work.