The Treasured One

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 the 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 house-like structure at the aft end 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 gods. 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 understood 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 resembling 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!’

‘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 to 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 didn’t just 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 these 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 onto 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

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