Crystal Gorge

2

At first light the following morning, the farmers of Veltan’s Domain began carrying large amounts of food down to the beach to stock the ships of the two fleets. There was a steely quality about that early morning light that always made Red-Beard’s instincts seem more intense. ‘This might be a good day for hunting,’ he said to Longbow as they watched the farmers come down the hill.

‘I don’t think Veltan would like it much if you started shooting arrows at his farmers,’ Longbow replied.

‘Funny, Longbow, very funny,’ Red-Beard said. ‘There’s something about this first light before the sun comes up that always makes me feel that this might be one of those perfect days – you know, a day when nothing can go wrong.’

Longbow looked up at the still colorless sky. ‘You might be right, friend Red-Beard,’ he agreed, ‘and if you’re very lucky, things won’t start to fall apart until mid-morning.’ He looked out at the ships of the Trogites and Maags. ‘It’s likely to take them most of the morning to load all that food on their ships,’ he said. ‘Let’s go talk with Zelana and find out if there’s something she wants us to do before we leave Veltan’s territory.’

Zelana and her two brothers were watching the farmers from a hill-top some distance back from the beach when Red-Beard and Longbow joined them.

‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do, baby brother,’ Zelana told Veltan, ‘but I think you might want to consider a bit of “tampering” to get Gunda and Ekial down to Castano as quickly as possible. We won’t know for sure exactly where the creatures of the Wasteland will mount their next attack until one of the children starts dreaming. It’s only a short distance from here to Aracia’s Domain, so Narasan should arrive there in just a few days, and it’s just a short voyage from Aracia’s temple to the Isle of Akalla where Trenicia’s warriors live. It’s much farther from here to Dahlaine’s Domain. Sorgan’s ships are fast enough to reach that part of the Land of Dhrall in plenty of time, but you’ll be spending quite a few days in Castano hiring Trogite ships and more days sailing on down to the land of the Malavi. Then you’ll have the long voyage from there to Dahlaine’s country on those wallowing Trogite ships.’

‘I’m very good at tampering, dear sister,’ Veltan told her with a faint smile. ‘Mother Sea is lovely at this time of the year, and I’m sure that the Malavi will enjoy their voyage enormously, but sight-seeing isn’t really all that important right now, so we’ll hit a few high spots and hustle right along. It’s going to seem to Ekial’s Malavi that big brother’s Domain isn’t really all that far north when they get there, but that’s not particularly important.’ Then he turned to look at his older brother. ‘Will the local people in your Domain be at all useful if the Creatures of the Wasteland decide to go north?’

‘The natives of the Tonthakan region are fairly good archers,’ Dahlaine replied. ‘Their territory’s very much like sister Zelana’s Domain, so the Tonthakans are primarily hunters. The central region, Matakan, is open grassland and the game-animals there are bison. They’re quite a bit larger than the deer in the forest, and their fur’sa lot thicker. Arrows wouldn’t be too effective against animals like that, so the Matans use spears rather than bows and arrows.’

‘Wouldn’t that limit the effective range?’ Longbow asked.

‘Bison aren’t as timid as deer are,’ Dahlaine explained. ‘They don’t panic the way deer do. The Matans use what they call “spear-throwers” to increase the range.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a “spear-thrower”,’ Red-Beard admitted. ‘How does it work?’

‘Basically, it’s an extension of the hunter’s arm. It’s a stick with a cup on the end. The hunter sets the butt-end of the spear in that cup, and then he whips the stick forward. The added length increases the leverage, and it nearly doubles the range of the spear. The stone spearhead’s quite a bit heavier than your arrowheads are, so it cuts through the fur and the thick skin of the bison. It sounds just a bit crude and primitive, but it does keep the Matans eating regularly. You’ll probably have an opportunity to see how well it works when we get there.’

‘Isn’t there a third region up there as well?’ Veltan asked.

Dahlaine made a sour face. ‘I should have done something about Atazakan quite some time ago, but I’ve been just a bit busy here lately. The Atazaks have an elevated opinion of themselves – which probably derives from what’s referred to in that region as “the royal family”. I’ve never had occasion to study the notion of “hereditary insanity”, but the term seems to fit in the case of Atazakan. The current chief, leader, king – whatever – is totally crazy. He’s absolutely convinced that he’s a god, and that I’m just a usurper, and that I’m trying to steal what’s rightfully his.’

‘Oh?’ Zelana said. ‘What is this precious thing you’ve filched, Dahlaine?’

‘The world, of course – or possibly the entire universe.’

‘Why don’t the citizens just remove him – with knife or axe?’ Red-Beard asked.

‘Because he has thousands of guards,’ Dahlaine replied. ‘I’d say that every third man in Palandor is a member of what Holy Emperor Azakan calls “the Guardians of Divinity” – which gives those “guardians” an easy life. About all they have to do is stand around scowling threateningly at sunrise and sunset.’

‘What’s the weather like up there?’ Red-Beard asked.

‘Autumn isn’t too bad,’ Dahlaine replied. ‘There’s a warm stream of water out in Mother Sea that modifies the autumn weather, but it sort of veers off at the end of autumn, and things get very cold. Blizzards go on for weeks at a time, and the spring thaw comes much later there than in the rest of the Land of Dhrall. Summers are fairly nice, but every now and then we get spells of bad weather. Huge storms build up in the sea to the east of my Domain, and they come screaming in to hit the coast of Atazakan.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Holy – or crazy – Azakan always tries to order those storms to go away, but they never seem to listen for some reason.’

‘Storms don’t ever seem to listen, big brother,’ Zelana said. ‘When Mother Sea gets grouchy, it’s time to take cover.’

‘Fortunately we should be near the end of what the people of Matakan call “the whirlwind season”.’

‘My people call those storms “cyclones”,’ Veltan noted, ‘probably because of the way they spin around.’

‘We don’t see those very often in my part of the Land of Dhrall,’ Zelana said.

‘You’re lucky then,’ Dahlaine replied. ‘Those spinning windstorms tend to rip things all to pieces. They’re fairly common in Matakan, because that region doesn’t have very many mountainous ridges to disrupt them. The Matans usually take shelter underground.’

‘Caves?’ Longbow asked.

‘Not exactly. The Matans dig deep cellars with thick roofs, and when they see a whirlwind coming, they all go underground to sit it out.’

Rabbit came up from the beach at that point. ‘The Cap’n told me to tell you that the Seagull’s ready to go whenever you say it’s all right,’ the clever little iron-smith advised.

‘Tell him that we’ll be along in just a few minutes,’ Dahlaine said. Then he looked at his brother and sister. ‘We could probably go on ahead,’ he told them, ‘but it might be better if we stayed with the Maags. They’ll want directions, and we can give them information they’ll probably need before long while we’re sailing on up to my Domain. It’s going to take quite a while to get there – even on those fast Maag longships – so we might as well use that time to our advantage.’

‘Could you have a word with Narasan?’ Longbow asked Veltan as they walked on down to the beach. ‘I think we might want to have Keselo with us in the north country. He spent a great deal of his time studying when he was younger, and he carries a lot of information in his head that we might need in Dahlaine’s Domain.’ Longbow smiled slightly. ‘Rabbit and I came to realize that if we named something, Keselo had probably studied it.’

‘He is quite learned,’ Veltan agreed. ‘I’ll have a talk with Narasan before I join Gunda and Ekial in that little yawl. I’m fairly sure that Narasan will agree. I’m sure you noticed that Narasan’s going off to the east just to mollify sister Aracia’s sense of having been offended because everybody didn’t rush over to her Domain to defend her.’

‘I don’t think that’s entirely true, Veltan,’ Longbow disagreed. ‘Red-Beard and I were talking outside your map-room when Aracia and Dahlaine were arguing, and we sort of agreed that your older sister’s problem wasn’t so much offense as it was fear. If the descriptions we’ve heard of her part of the Land of Dhrall are anywhere close to being accurate, she doesn’t have anything that even remotely resembles an army. She has farmers, merchants, and priests, but no soldiers. If the creatures of the Wasteland attack her Domain, there’s nobody there to resist. That’s why she wanted both the Maags and the Trogites to go east. She’s more than a little self-centered, of course, but it was fear that was driving her.’

‘Now that’s something we hadn’t even considered,’ Veltan admitted. ‘It does sort of fit, though. We all get a bit strange and confused at the end of one of our cycles, and the rest of the family assumed that she was being driven by pride, and that being adored by all those priests had dislocated her mind. We never even considered the possibility of fear. You might want to pass this on to Dahlaine and Zelana and see what they think. It could explain Aracia’s odd behavior here lately.’

Things were a bit crowded on board the Seagull as they sailed south from the house of Veltan in the late summer. Sorgan obviously wasn’t too pleased when Zelana and Dahlaine appropriated his cabin, but it did make sense, since they had the children, Eleria, Ashad, and Yaltar with them. Maag sailors frequently spoke to each other in colorful terms, and it was probably best to keep the children in a place where they couldn’t hear certain words.

Also, for some reason that Red-Beard couldn’t really see, Dahlaine had insisted that Omago and his beautiful wife Ara should join their party. There was something about Ara that Red-Beard couldn’t quite understand. She was beautiful, of course, but very peculiar things seemed to happen quite frequently when she was around. It could just be coincidence, of course, but Red-Beard was more than a little dubious about that.

For right now, however, Red-Beard had something a bit more serious to worry about. Once the Seagull and the rest of the Maag fleet were past the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, they’d be sailing north along the coast of Zelana’s part of the Land of Dhrall, and there was a distinct possibility that they’d pull into the bay of Lattash for any one of a dozen or so reasons.

It took him a while to work up enough nerve to speak with Zelana about the matter.

‘Are you busy?’ he asked her one bright, sunny morning as the Seagull raced down along the east coast and Zelana was standing alone near the bow.

‘Are we having some sort of problem?’ she asked him.

‘Well, I hope not,’ he replied. ‘Do you think you could see your way clear to persuade Sorgan Hook-Beak to avoid the bay of Lattash?’

‘Is there something wrong with Lattash, Red-Beard?’

‘New Lattash,’ he corrected her. ‘Old Lattash was just fine, but it’s not there any more. It’s New Lattash that’s got me worried.’

‘And why’s that, dear boy?’

‘Boy?’ Red-Beard found the term to be a bit offensive.

‘It’s just a relative term,’ she said, smiling. ‘What’s troubling you so much, Red-Beard?’

‘I’d really be much happier if word that I’m here on the Seagull didn’t leak out anywhere in the vicinity of the new village.’

‘It’s your home, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it used to be. After my uncle White-Braid came apart when Old Lattash was buried by that lava flow, the villagers decided that I should be the chief.’

‘It seems that I’d heard about that. Did I ever congratulate you?’

‘No, and I think I’d like to keep it that way. To be honest about it, I didn’t want to be the chief, and I still don’t. If I’m lucky, these wars in the other parts of the Land of Dhrall will go on and on for years. I’ve never wanted to be the chief of the tribe, and I still don’t.’

Zelana laughed. ‘You and my sister make a very odd pair, Red-Beard. She wants all that authority and adoration, but you keep running away from it.’

‘How can she stand all that foolishness?’

‘It makes her feel important, Red-Beard, and being important takes some of the sting out of the fact that our older brother out-ranks her in this particular cycle.’ She paused, looking thoughtfully at Red-Beard. ‘You do know about our cycles, don’t you, Red-Beard?’ she asked.

‘Sort of. As I understand it, you and your family stay awake for a thousand years, and then you hand your task off to some younger relatives and take a long nap. Is that anywhere close to what happens?’

‘Fairly close – except that your number isn’t quite right. Our cycles are twenty-five times longer than one thousand.’

Red-Beard blinked. ‘You’ve been awake for that long?’ he asked her in a voice filled with wonder.

‘Not quite yet, but it’s getting closer to nap-time. When our current cycle began, people – your species – were at a very primitive level. They hadn’t even discovered fire yet, and their most sophisticated weapon was the club. In many ways, this is the most important period in the history of the world. The man-things – your species – spend most of their time changing things. That makes this particular cycle very significant – and very dangerous. There are some things that should not be changed – and that brings us to the Vlagh. Do you know anything about bees?’

Red-Beard shrugged. ‘They make honey, and they sting anybody who tries to steal it. Honey tastes good – but not so good that I’d want to get stung a thousand times just to gather it up.’

‘Wise decision, Red-Beard. Bees – and a number of other varieties of insects – have developed very complex societies that are designed to expand their territories and their food supply. That’s what these wars here in the Land of Dhrall are all about. Unfortunately, the Vlagh is an imitator. When one of the creatures of the Wasteland sees a characteristic that seems useful, the Vlagh starts experimenting, and its next hatch will have a variation of that characteristic.’

‘So we end up with bug-men who know how to talk.’

‘Not exactly bug-men, Red-Beard. Bug-women would come closer to what’s really happening. There aren’t really very many males among the creatures of the Wasteland. They’re almost all females, but the Vlagh herself is the only one that lays eggs – thousands and thousands of eggs at a time.’

‘I don’t think baby bug-people would be very dangerous,’ Red-Beard scoffed.

‘Maybe not, but they grow very fast.’

‘How fast?’

‘They’re adults within a week. Of course, they only live for about six weeks, but a new generation is already in the works. The outlanders we’ve hired to help us don’t fully understand this, but it’s not really necessary for them to understand. It’s probably better that they don’t. If they knew that the Vlagh can replace all the ones our friends kill in about two weeks, there isn’t enough gold in the whole world to have persuaded them to come here and help us.’ ‘Why are you telling me all this, Zelana?’ Red-Beard asked her.

She shrugged. ‘A few people need to know what’s really happening, Red-Beard, and you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’ll have a word with Sorgan about your problem, and if it’s really necessary for the Seagull to go on into the bay of Lattash, we’ll find someplace to hide you so that the people of your tribe won’t be able to find you.’

‘That definitely takes a load off my mind.’ Red-Beard hesitated. ‘You do understand why I don’t want any part of being the chief of the tribe, don’t you?’ he asked her.

‘It has something to do with freedom, doesn’t it?’

‘Exactly.’ He frowned slightly. ‘You went right straight to the point, Zelana. How did you pick it up so fast?’

‘I’ve already been there, Red-Beard. That’s why I went off to the Isle of Thurn a long time ago. If you think that being “chief” would be unbearably tedious, take a long, hard look at being “god”. Just like you, I didn’t want any part of that, so I ran away. I spent thousands of years in my pink grotto composing music, writing poetry, and playing with my pink dolphins. Then my big brother brought Eleria to me, and my whole world changed.’

‘You love her, though, don’t you?’

Zelana sighed. ‘More than anything in the whole world. That’s what Dahlaine had in mind when he foisted the Dreamers on us in the first place. In a certain sense, it was very cruel, but it was necessary.’

‘Well, I’m not really all that necessary where the tribe’s concerned. They can find somebody else to sit around being important.’ Then a thought came to Red-Beard, and he suddenly burst out laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I know who’d make the best chief the tribe’s ever had,’ he replied. ‘The tribe might not like it very much – at least the men wouldn’t – but Planter really should be the chief.’

Zelana smiled. ‘She already is, Red-Beard. She doesn’t need the title. The tribe does what she wants done, and that’s what really counts, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not out loud, I wouldn’t,’ Red-Beard replied.

The wind was coming out of the east when Sorgan Hook-Beak’s fleet of longships rounded the first peninsula jutting out from the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and when that wind caught the sails, they billowed out with a booming sound. It seemed to Red-Beard that the longships almost flew toward the west. He had a few suspicions about that. Zelana and her family frequently spoke of ‘tampering,’ and a wind coming from the east was very unusual. West winds and south winds were fairly common at this time of the year, but east and north? Not too likely.

The Seagull rounded the third and last peninsula on the south coast of Veltan’s Domain a few days later, and then the Maag fleet turned north. The weather seemed to have a faint smell of early autumn now, and Red-Beard began to feel that seasonal urge to go hunting. Autumn had always been the time to lay in a good supply of food to get the tribe through the coming winter.

He was standing near the slender bow of the Seagull with Zelana’s older brother about midmorning one day when Sorgan Hook-Beak came forward to join them. ‘I got to thinking last night that it might be a good idea for me and my men to know a bit about the people of your Domain, Lord Dahlaine,’ he said. ‘My cousin Skell discovered that it’s not a good idea to turn Maags loose on the natives of this part of the world when they haven’t got the faintest idea of what the local customs are.’

‘You could be right about that, Captain,’ Dahlaine agreed. ‘I suppose a little conference in your cabin might be in order along about now. There are few peculiarities in my Domain that you should all know about.’

Sorgan’s cabin at the stern of the Seagull wasn’t really very large, so things were just a bit crowded when they gathered there about a quarter of an hour later.

‘Captain Hook-Beak spoke with me a little while ago, and he wanted to know a few things about the people of my Domain,’ Zelana’s big brother told them. ‘It’s not a bad idea, really. I’ll give you a sort of general idea about my people and the general layout of the country up there, and then I’ll answer any questions you might have.’