‘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 (#ulink_c73e9cd0-b82d-5268-950a-1bdf3d6e9f60)
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.
