The Younger Gods

‘I thought I could feel your presence here, dear sister,’ Dahlaine said as he joined Zelana on the balcony over the ‘lumpy map’ of his Domain. ‘You seem to be troubled. What’s bothering you so much?’

‘Aracia, of course,’ Zelana replied. ‘I think her mind is slipping even more than it was when she tried to conceal Lillabeth’s Dream. I wish that there was some way that we could put her to sleep a few months early this time. Then we could all concentrate on the Vlagh and stop worrying about our sister.’

‘It probably would make things a lot easier.’

‘What is it about Aracia that makes her start to go to pieces at the end of every cycle?’ Zelana demanded. ‘I was thinking back, and as closely as I can remember, Aracia’s never once gone off to sleep without fighting it every step of the way. Why does she do that?’

Dahlaine shrugged. ‘Inferiority, most likely. When you include our alternates, there are eight of us altogether, and as closely as I’ve been able to determine, our alternates trade off authority in the same way that we do. That suggests that Aracia’s the dominant one for only twenty-five thousand years. Then she has to wait for a hundred and seventy-five eons for dominance to return. For some reason, she just can’t stand that. She yearns to be at the center of the entire universe. If I remember correctly – and I usually do – the last time she was dominant, she literally wallowed in her position. Of course there weren’t any developed humans around back then, so she was the only one around who could adore her, but as I remember, her self-adoration was more than a little extreme.’

Zelana smiled. ‘Maybe you and I should join Veltan when our next waking cycle rolls around. I’m sure he was just trying to make a joke of it – we all know how much Veltan enjoys jokes – but he told me on one occasion that he might just go back and camp out on the moon when Aracia’s next cycle of dominance comes along, and I think he was about half-serious when he said it.’

‘That’s our baby brother for you. Any time responsibility comes along, Veltan runs away.’ Dahlaine scratched his cheek. ‘It probably wouldn’t have made much difference in eons past, but there are humans in our various Domains now. I don’t know about you, dear sister, but I will not permit Aracia to run roughshod over the people of my Domain.’

‘You almost sound like you’re thinking about declaring war on our sister.’

‘I’d hardly call it a war, Zelana. Aracia’s people are supposed to spend every waking moment adoring her, so they wouldn’t pose much of a threat.’

‘You’re putting our sister in the same category as holy – but crazy – Azakan of the Atazak Nation of your own Domain, big brother,’ Zelana said. Then she frowned. ‘There are quite a few similarities, though, aren’t there?’

‘Except that Aracia actually has the power to make things happen. Poor Azakan spent most of his time ordering the earth and sky to obey him, but I don’t think they paid very much attention. Aracia, however, has a certain amount of power, so she can make things happen if she feels the need.’

‘Maybe so, but none of us are permitted to use that power if killing things is going to be involved. If Aracia steps over that line, she’ll probably vanish right then and there,’ Zelana suggested. ‘And if Aracia vanishes, will we still be here? There’s a linkage between the four of us, Dahlaine, and if one of us ceases to exist, isn’t it quite possible that we’ll all just vanish?’

‘You’re starting to give me a headache, Zelana.’

‘At least it’s still there to ache, mighty brother.’

‘I think we’ve had one stroke of good luck, Zelana. Your pirate chief has persuaded Commander Narasan not to just pack up and go home. We’re going to need forts in Long-Pass, and when someone says “forts,” he’s usually talking about Trogites. Did you have anything to do with Sorgan’s little scheme?’

‘No, big brother. As closely as I can determine, Hook-Beak came up with that all by himself. Of course, the likelihood that he’ll be able to swindle a lot of gold out of Aracia probably played a large part in his decision, but right up beside his greed is his friendship for Narasan. He’ll keep Aracia so flustered that she probably won’t even remember that Narasan exists. He’ll go on down to Aracia’s absurdly overdone temple and persuade our none too bright sister that he’ll be more than happy to defend her – if she’ll give him enough gold.’

‘What’s he going to defend her against?’ Dahlaine asked. ‘The servants of the Vlagh will be coming down Long-Pass, so they won’t be anywhere near Aracia’s temple.’

Zelana smiled. ‘If I know Sorgan – and I do – he’ll come up with ways to keep Aracia – and her clergy – so terrified that they won’t even think about sending anybody up Long-Pass to pester Narasan while he’s building forts.’

It wasn’t much later when the door to Dahlaine’s map room opened slightly, and Eleria looked in. ‘Ah, there you are, Beloved,’ she said to Zelana. ‘We should have guessed that you’d be in here conferring with dear old Grey-Beard.’

‘Mind your manners, Eleria,’ Zelana chided her Dreamer.

‘I’m sorry, Old Grey-Beard,’ Eleria said with one of her mischievous grins. ‘We’ve been looking for you and the Beloved for hours now.’

‘We?’ Dahlaine asked curiously.

‘Big-Me and I. Mother wants us to talk with you.’

‘Mother?’ Zelana asked, feeling suddenly baffled.

‘We all have a mother, you know, Beloved. Big-Me can explain it much better than I can, I’m sure.’ Then Eleria came on inside the large room, and immediately behind her was an extremely beautiful lady.

Dahlaine gasped. ‘What are you doing, Balacenia?’ he demanded. ‘You’re not supposed to be awake yet.’

‘Grow up, Dahlaine,’ the lady replied. ‘Your little game almost tore the world apart. We’ve had a lot of trouble smoothing things over, and we’re not even supposed to be awake yet.’

Zelana was staring at the lady. ‘Are you really—’ she almost choked at that point.

‘Yes, Beloved, I am your alternate. Our Domain is still under your control, however. I promise that I won’t tamper – unless Mother tells me – us – to.’ She put her hand on Eleria’s shoulder.

‘This can be terribly confusing sometimes. This is Little-Me. You know her as Eleria, which is sort of all right, I suppose. She makes me laugh quite often, and laughter’s good for the soul – or so I’ve been told. There is something I’ve been curious about, though. Where in the world did she come up with her hugs and kisses ploy? She has poor Vash so confused that he doesn’t know exactly what to do.’

Zelana suddenly smiled. ‘The idea came to Eleria back in the pink grotto when she was very, very young. She can kiss a pink dolphin into submission in no time at all.’ Then she looked rather closely at Balacenia, her alternate. ‘The resemblances are definitely there, Balacenia. You are, in fact, a grown-up version of Eleria the Dreamer. How is it that the two of you can both be in the same place at the same time?’

‘It’s just a little complex, Beloved. Actually, we’re not here at the same time. Actually, I’m not even really here. I’m still sound asleep, and what we’re all seeing right now is my Dream.’

‘That’s not possible!’ Dahlaine protested.

‘Why – and how – am I here, then?’ Balacenia demanded. ‘Your little game was very clever, Dahlaine, but it got away from you almost right at the beginning. You thought that you could step around us with your “infant” hoax, but it started to come apart when Eleria had her first Dream. That was the one when she saw the very beginning of this world. Then, a little later in the Land of Maag she had a variety of Dream that you didn’t even anticipate. She had what we call a “warning dream,” and it was that Dream that saved Longbow and his friends from the intentions of the Maag called Kajak. You might not have been aware of what that Dream suggested to us. Dreams can be warnings as well as predictions.’

‘That did startle me just a bit,’ Dahlaine admitted. ‘I’d sort of believed that I might have some control over the Dreams, but the children keep slipping around me.’

‘Actually, it’s Mother who’s guiding the Dreamers. She picked up your little game, and she’s doing things with it that you couldn’t even imagine.’

‘Mother?’ Dahlaine sounded startled. ‘We don’t have a mother.’

‘Where did we come from, then?’ Balacenia demanded.

‘You’ll really like her, Dahlaine,’ Eleria said. ‘She can do all kinds of fun things. She was the one who took me down under the sea so that I could pick up my pink pearl. That’s what started all this, remember?’

‘She’s the mother of the whole universe, Dahlaine,’ Balacenia added, ‘and she’s more than a little peeved with you right now. The outlanders are all right, I suppose, but Mother was – and still is – dealing with it in her own way.’

‘That will do, Balacenia,’ a melodious voice came through the open doorway. ‘Why don’t you let me deal with this?’ Then a misty sort of form that seemed to be pure light came through the open doorway. ‘What were you thinking of when you hired all those outlanders to come here and fight this war for you, Dahlaine?’

‘You do know that we have limitations, don’t you?’ Dahlaine demanded. ‘Now that I think about it, if you’re who Balacenia says you are, you’re probably the one who came up with them. You may have forgotten, but we aren’t permitted to kill things – even when they’re attacking us. We needed armies, so we went out into the world to hire outlanders to do the killing for us.’

‘That particular limitation might just be a little outdated,’ the glowing presence conceded. ‘Right at first, there were very few living things here, and we didn’t want to lose any of them – at least not until the populations had grown to the point that extinction was no longer a distinct possibility. When the incursions by the Creatures of the Wasteland began, I was going to take care of it myself, but before I could even start, the whole Land of Dhrall was crawling with outlanders. You’ve got to learn to trust me, Dahlaine.’

‘Longbow suggested something you might want to consider, though,’ Zelana stepped in. ‘The assorted outlanders are helping us to hold back the Creatures of the Wasteland, but Longbow seems to think that it’s much more important that the more greedy outlanders come to realize that the people of the Land of Dhrall are quite capable of making life very unpleasant for any invaders. The outlanders are helping, but they’re also learning. The greed of the Amarite Church down in the Trogite Empire was almost legendary, but you dealt with that in a way that advised all outlanders that an attempted invasion of our part of the world could be a ghastly mistake.’

‘And your blue fire in Crystal Gorge made it more obvious,’ Dahlaine added. ‘Nobody in his right mind walks into fire. Some of the more greedy outlanders might want to come back, but I don’t think they will.’ He hesitated. ‘You seem to be very attached to us, for some reason,’ he said rather carefully.

‘You are my children,’ the glowing form replied, ‘and I will protect you. You’ve come a long, long way, but you might want to go back a bit and have a look at where – and when – this began.’

Zelana’s mind suddenly reeled as memories came rushing back from so far in the distant past that there was no word for that many years. The suggestion of the hazy figure of glowing light had seemed to set off bells inside Zelana’s mind.

Dahlaine’s eyes suddenly went very wide as – evidently – the same memories came flooding over him.

‘All in all, you did quite well, my son,’ Misty Lady continued. ‘Your notion of the Dreamers was brilliant, and it’s worked almost perfectly – except that you’ll have to come up with a way to persuade the Dreamers to reunite with their previous identities. Things are just a little touchy this time, however, so I want all of you children to back away and let me deal with the situation in Aracia’s Domain. It’s almost reached the point that she’d rather die than hand her Domain over to Enalla. We’ve got to get her under control, because she’s getting very close to total insanity. If she crosses that line, we’ll lose her, and that will lead to a disaster – not immediately maybe – but if she’s a raving lunatic when she wakes up from her sleep-cycle, the entire Land of Dhrall will be at risk – and that risk will make the invasion of the Creatures of the Wasteland look like some child’s game by comparison.’

2

Z elana was certain that it was just after sunrise when the commanders of the outlander forces, led by the bleak-faced Longbow, came through the door and out onto the balcony that encircled Dahlaine’s map room.

‘The map seems to have changed a bit,’ Longbow said, looking down at the map Dahlaine had put in place after Balacenia and the strange, mist-covered figure of ‘Mother’ had left.

Dahlaine shrugged. ‘We’ve finished here in my part of the Land of Dhrall,’ he explained, ‘so I laid out a “lumpy map” of sister Aracia’s Domain. Ordinarily, we’d have relied on Aracia for a map, but her view of her Domain is just a bit vague, since she almost never leaves her temple.’

‘Being worshiped would probably take quite a bit of time,’ Sorgan Hook-Beak said, peering down at the well-illuminated map. ‘Just exactly where is this “temple-town” that’s got everybody so worked up?’

Dahlaine reached out with his hand, and a bright beam of light came from his forefinger and illuminated a spot on the representation of the east coast.

‘That’s a useful idea there, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said, ‘particularly when we’re all standing ten feet or so above the map.’

‘It does seem to work fairly well,’ Dahlaine replied modestly.

‘And where’s this “Long-Pass” that everybody keeps on talking about?’

Dahlaine’s glowing little spot of light moved along the eastern edge of the map to a sizeable replica of a bay with a fairly wide river running down to it.

‘Then the river’s not in any way connected to your sister’s temple-town?’ Sorgan asked.

Dahlaine shook his head. ‘The east coast of the Land of Dhrall gets some savage floods almost every year,’ he explained. ‘Aracia didn’t want her temple destroyed that often, so she had her servants build it farther south where there aren’t any major rivers coming down out of the mountains. The ground’s sort of marshy, but Aracia’s workers laid in a substantial base before they started construction.’

‘How long ago was it when they built the temple?’ Keselo asked.

‘Eight – maybe ten – centuries ago, wouldn’t you say, Zelana?’ Dahlaine asked.

‘You couldn’t prove that by me, brother mine,’ Zelana replied. ‘I was living in my grotto on the Isle of Thurn then.’

‘Do all those priests who worship your sister plant crops of any kind near the temple?’ Sorgan asked.

Dahlaine shook his head. ‘The farmers of Aracia’s Domain deliver large amounts of food to keep most of our sister’s priests quite fat, at least.’

‘Fat seems to show up quite often in the world of priests,’ Longbow observed.

‘Professional hazard, wouldn’t you say, big brother?’ Zelana suggested. ‘Priests spend much of their time stuffing food into their mouths.’

‘And that makes them so fat that their hearts wear out and they fall over dead,’ Dahlaine added.

‘Now there’s an idea,’ Rabbit said. ‘If we just happened to pile twenty or thirty tons of food on the steps of sister Aracia’s temple, her priests would eat themselves to death inside a week.’

‘I like that notion, brother,’ Zelana said. ‘We wouldn’t violate our limitations by providing food for dear Aracia’s priests, would we? And if they ate too much and fell over dead, it wouldn’t be our fault, would it?’

Dahlaine squinted at the ceiling. ‘You might want to take that up with Mother, Zelana. If we feed Aracia’s priests too much and they die as a result, wouldn’t that almost be the same as poisoning them?’

‘Spoilsport,’ Zelana grumbled. ‘Can you imagine how much screaming would come from Aracia’s temple if she woke up one morning to discover that all of her priests had died during the night?’

‘We’ll keep the idea in reserve, dear sister,’ Dahlaine said. ‘Let’s push on, though.’ He looked at Narasan. ‘Who would you say is the head of sister Aracia’s priesthood?’

‘They call him Takal Bersla,’ Narasan replied, ‘and he’s almost as fat as Adnari Estarg of the Amarite Church was – before that overgrown spider had him for lunch. Bersla has made a career out of oration. He spends hours every day telling your sister how holy she is, and Aracia’s almost paralyzed by Bersla’s overdone speeches. Padan kept track one day not long after we’d arrived at Aracia’s temple, and Bersla talked to your sister for six straight hours. Then he ate lunch – a lunch that would have overstuffed four or five normal people – and then he stood up and orated for another five or six hours. The man’s a talking machine, but your sister can’t seem to get enough of all that tedious adoration.’

‘It sounds to me like she’s getting even worse, Dahlaine,’ Zelana observed. ‘She drinks in adoration in almost the same way that a drunkard pours beer into his mouth.’

‘It’s not a good sign, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said. ‘If her mind has slipped that far, getting her attention might be a little difficult.’

‘Not necessarily, cousin,’ Torl disagreed. ‘If this Bersla priest is the main adorer in Lady Aracia’s temple, and he wound up dead some morning, you could probably get her immediate attention.’

‘Maybe so, Torl,’ Sorgan agreed, ‘but how do we know that he’ll die at any time in the near future?’

Torl slid his hand down into the top of his boot and pulled out a long, slender dagger. ‘I can almost guarantee that, cousin,’ he said, flourishing his dagger.

‘It has got some possibilities, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said. ‘If your sister’s sitting on her throne some morning and several of her priests drag the body of her favorite underling into her throne room to show her that somebody – or some thing – slipped into her temple and butchered her head priest, she’d go to pieces. Then, if I tell her that the stab-wounds in Bersla’s body were almost certainly caused by the teeth of one of the bug-people, she’d start paying very close attention to anything I said. I could feed her all kinds of wild stories about bug-people creeping around through the halls of her temple killing off her priests by the dozens.’

‘Wouldn’t she demand to see the bodies?’

Sorgan shrugged. ‘If she wants to look at bodies, we’ll show her bodies. Torl might have to sharpen his dagger six or eight times a day, but that’s all right.’

‘Thanks, cousin,’ Torl said sourly.

‘Don’t mention it, Torl,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

‘I’d say that the separation of Long-Pass from Aracia’s temple will work out very well for you,’ Longbow suggested to Sorgan and Narasan a bit later. ‘You can sail on down to that river-mouth, and those of you who’ll be going on up Long-Pass can go ashore while Sorgan goes on down to pacify Aracia. She and her servants won’t even know that you’re anywhere in that pass, so she won’t be issuing commands for you to rush on down south to defend her’.

‘That’s a very good idea, Longbow,’ Narasan agreed. ‘I’m sure that the only thing that interests Bersla will be the defense of the temple. He doesn’t care at all about what happens to the ordinary people of Aracia’s Domain. He wouldn’t so much as turn a hair if all the rest of Aracia’s Domain was overrun by the bug-people.’

‘There’s a thought, Captain Hook-Beak,’ Keselo said. ‘If you send out some scouts and they report back that the bug-men are eating all of the peasants, the priests will be afraid to come out of the temple and take a look for themselves. They’ll hole up inside the temple itself – almost as if they were prisoners.’

‘It would keep them out from underfoot,’ Sorgan agreed. Then he looked at his friend Narasan. ‘You’ve been there, but I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Did you see anything at all like building material near the temple? Rocks or logs or anything like that? If we’re going to go through the motions of looking like we’re building a defensive wall of some kind, we’ll need to put up something that looks like a fort.’

‘You’re not going to find anything like rocks – or even logs – in marshy country, Sorgan,’ Narasan replied.

‘Ah, well,’ Sorgan said, ‘the temple’s there anyway. It shouldn’t be too hard to knock it down so that we can build a fort.’

‘Our sister will come apart at the seams if you do that, Sorgan,’ Zelana told him.

‘And you’ll be able to hear her priests screaming from ten miles away,’ Dahlaine added.

‘Not after my scouts come back and report that the bug-people are eating the farmers alive, I won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘When the fat ones hear that, they might even offer to help. Just how big would you say that temple is, Narasan?’

‘About a mile or so square,’ Narasan replied.

‘You’re not serious!’

‘The priesthood’s been building Aracia’s temple for centuries, Sorgan,’ Dahlaine said.

‘You should be able to build quite a wall with that much stone, Sorgan,’ the warrior queen Trenicia said.

‘The screaming’s likely to go on for a long time, though,’ Veltan added.

‘Not if the stories my scouts bring back from the countryside are awful enough, it won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘If the priests hear about a bug that’s twelve feet tall and rips out a man’s liver when it gets hungry, they’ll run for cover and tell us to do whatever’s necessary to hold back the monsters – and they’ll be hiding so far back in the temple that they won’t see daylight for at least a month.’

‘I like it!’ Narasan said enthusiastically.

‘That’s the way we’ll do ’er then, old friend,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

Zelana smiled. The unlikely-seeming friendship between Sorgan and Narasan seemed to be growing stronger and stronger, and now it appeared that they’d do almost anything to help each other.

While their men were preparing for the long march to the east coast of Dahlaine’s part of the Land of Dhrall, Sorgan, Narasan and several others spent most of their time carefully studying the map.

‘I’m going to need those ships as soon as you unload your men down in Aracia’s temple-town, Sorgan,’ Narasan reminded his friend. ‘I’ll still have more than half of my army sitting on that beach on the east coast.’

‘No problem,’ Sorgan replied. ‘The ships would only clutter up the harbor of temple-town anyway. Then too, if Aracia’s priests look at your ships too long, they might decide that they want a navy so that they can go out to sea to preach to the fish.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Do the people down there actually call their city “temple-town”? Most places have fancier names.’

‘The priests – and Aracia herself – never refer to the place as a town, Sorgan,’ Narasan explained. ‘The people who live out beyond the walls might have a different name, I suppose, but the people you’ll be dealing with just speak of “the temple.” It’s entirely possible, I guess, that most of the priests aren’t even aware of the buildings and houses outside the temple walls. For them, the temple is the whole world.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Sorgan said.

‘I think that’s the word most people use when they’re talking about any priesthood, Sorgan,’ Narasan said with a faint smile.

Longbow had been studying the map, and he gestured to Sorgan.

The Maag captain joined him. ‘Do you see anything that might go wrong?’ he asked.