‘I’ll take care of him,’ she said again. ‘There are several women nearby who are nursing. I’m sure I can persuade them to feed your little boy.’
‘Nursing?’ Veltan asked curiously. ‘What’s nursing?’
‘Oh, dear,’ Ara said, rolling her eyes upward. ‘Just go back home, Veltan. I’ll see to everything.’
‘Are they always this small?’ Veltan asked. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one at this stage before.’
‘Just go home, dear Veltan. Everything will be just fine.’
‘I feel like such an idiot,’ Veltan confessed. ‘My brother knocked on my door, told me that this little boy would be one of the Dreamers, and then he left without saying very much more. I’ve never really paid much attention to infants, so I don’t know the first thing about them. He will grow some teeth before very much longer, won’t he?’
‘He’ll be just fine, Veltan. Go home – now.’ Ara imperiously pointed at the door.
Omago didn’t get too much sleep for the next month or so. Babies tend to be very noisy, he discovered, and Veltan seemed to be underfoot every time Omago turned around. It occurred to him that it was probably time to add a room to his cottage – or maybe two or three. He began mixing clay and straw to make the sundried bricks that were customary here in Veltan’s Domain. He realized that he was going to have to extend the roof, but that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. He had fairly extensive wheat fields to the west and south of his orchard, so he’d have plenty of straw for thatching after harvest-time.
Veltan conferred with Ara, and between them they decided that Yaltar might be an appropriate name for the young Dreamer. Omago wasn’t really sure just exactly where the term ‘Dreamer’ had originated, but he had too many other things on his mind just then to sit around brooding about it.
Yaltar began toddling about Omago’s cottage when he was not even a year old, but he didn’t talk yet. It took Ara quite some time to explain this to Veltan. ‘Learning how to speak is probably the most important thing a baby does during his first few years,’ she told him.
‘I thought it was just there,’ Veltan protested. ‘Are you saying that every baby in the world has to learn how to talk?’
‘I’ve never heard of one who was born talking,’ Ara replied.
‘Birds seem to know how to peep and chirp without much help.’
‘The language of people is a little more complicated, dear Veltan,’ Ara reminded him. ‘I don’t think people could explain very much with peeps and chirps, do you?’
‘Well—’ Veltan seemed to be having a lot of problems with his little boy. ‘I don’t know why Dahlaine had to hand Yaltar to me before the boy could even function.’
‘Look upon it as a learning experience, Veltan. You’ll understand people much better after you’ve raised Yaltar from early childhood.’ Ara smiled slyly. ‘Won’t that be fun?’ she asked him.
‘I’m not having all that much fun right now.’
‘That’ll probably come later, dear Veltan. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.’
When Yaltar was about three years old, Veltan began to take him up the hill to his stone house for several hours each day, but he still depended upon Ara to keep him clean and prepare the little boy’s meals.
‘Is it really necessary for him to eat so often?’ Veltan asked Omago’s wife one evening.
‘You eat light, don’t you?’ Ara asked him.
‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly say “eat”, Ara,’ Veltan replied.
‘All right, let’s say “absorb”, then. The sun’s up there in the sky for a good part of every day, so you’re soaking up light for much, much longer than Yaltar spends eating, aren’t you?’
‘I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way,’ Veltan admitted.
‘You might want to consider cutting down on that, dear Veltan. If you keep absorbing light for so much of every day, you’ll start to get fat, and I don’t think the people of your Domain would like that very much. Nobody would take a fat god very seriously, you know.’
Veltan frowned slightly, and he absently ran his hand across his abdomen.
‘I’m just teasing, dear Veltan,’ Ara told him with a fond sort of smile. ‘If you start getting a bit portly, just stay out of direct sunlight for a little while.’ She glanced at Yaltar, who was vigorously concentrating on his supper. ‘Has he had any dreams yet?’ she asked very quietly.
‘Not that he’s mentioned,’ Veltan said. Then he gave Ara a startled look. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘The old stories are still out there, dear Veltan, and old men are very fond of telling old stories. The old men of my village could go on and on about the Dreamers for hours on end. If their stories came anywhere close to what’s really happening, Yaltar should start dreaming before much longer, and that’ll be a sure sign that there’s trouble in the wind. You might want to have a talk with your big brother about that. When Yaltar does start having those significant dreams, I don’t think you should make a big fuss about it. Don’t alarm the boy. If you frighten him, he might have trouble sleeping, and if he doesn’t sleep, he won’t dream. You don’t want that to happen, do you?’
‘Not even a little bit,’ Veltan agreed. ‘You’re very, very good at this sort of thing, aren’t you?’
‘It’s a gift,’ she replied. And then she laughed for no reason that Omago could see.
As the seasons progressed, Yaltar spent more and more of his time with Veltan in the house on the hill, and Ara took to carrying the little boy’s meals up the hill to Veltan’s house.
‘You miss him, don’t you, Ara?’ Omago asked her.
‘Sort of. He’s doing what he’s supposed to be doing, though, so I won’t interfere. What would you like for supper this evening, Omago?’
‘Anything you want to cook, dear,’ Omago replied. ‘Surprise me.’ He grinned at her.
‘Very funny, Omago,’ she said tartly.
It was not long after Yaltar’s sixth birthday when Veltan stopped by one morning to tell Omago and Ara that he’d be gone for several weeks on a matter of some importance.
‘Go ahead, Veltan,’ Omago said. ‘We’ll take care of Yaltar while you’re gone.’
‘I knew that I could depend on you two,’ Veltan said. And then he left rather hurriedly.
Ara frowned, but she didn’t say anything.
Nanton was a tall, bearded shepherd who had a large flock that grazed in the meadow above the Falls of Vash. Nanton seldom came down to the farmlands, since the voracious appetite of his sheep made the local farmers very nervous.
‘They’re asking a lot of questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with what they’re supposed to be interested in, Omago,’ Nanton reported in his quiet voice. ‘They claim to be traders from Aracia’s Domain, but as far as I could see, they didn’t have anything with them for trades.’
‘Why would traders be wandering around up in the hills?’ Omago asked with a puzzled frown.
‘Exactly. The only people up there are shepherds like me, and we certainly don’t need any of those trinkets the traders from the East keep trying to foist off on silly farmers and their wives. There’s something else, too.’
‘Oh?’
‘They don’t really look like real people. They’re very short, and they all wear grey clothes – with hoods that cover most of their faces – and they mumble.’
‘Mumble?’
‘They don’t speak clearly, and they all seem to have some kind of lisp.’
‘Peculiar. You said that they were asking questions. What sort of questions?’
‘They wanted to know how many people live in the vicinity of the Falls of Vash. I didn’t really think that was any of their business, so I lied to them.’
