‘Clever,’ I said admiringly. Then I frowned. ‘Has something happened to old Chief White-Braid?’ I asked.
‘The destruction of Lattash was more than he could bear,’ Red-Beard explained sadly. ‘He knew that the tribe was going to have to find a new place to live, but he didn’t feel up to doing it himself because his sorrow – or maybe even grief – had disabled him to the point that he couldn’t make decisions any more. He realized that, so he laid the chore on my shoulders. I didn’t really want any part of it, but he didn’t give me any choice.’
‘You’ll probably do quite well, Chief Red-Beard,’ I told him. ‘I’ve noticed that men who don’t really want authority and responsibility make better leaders than men who yearn for the position. Let’s go talk with our baby brother, Zelana. There are things he needs to know, and I’m not sure how much time he has left.’
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.’
