The Elder Gods (6 page)
“You’re probably right, Zelana,” Dahlaine agreed. “Let’s keep the dreams as pure as we possibly can.” He scratched at his chin speculatively. “We’ve got a problem now,” he said. “I’m almost positive that the Vlagh can sense these dreams—not the details, maybe, but the fact that the Dreamers are here and doing what they were sent here to do will certainly stir it to send the creatures of the Wasteland swarming across the mountains, and we don’t have enough people to meet them. I seriously doubt that there are even a half-million man-things in the whole of the Land of Dhrall, and the Vlagh probably has at least ten times that many servants. The servants of the Vlagh aren’t very bright, but the sheer numbers alone put us in an impossible situation. I think we’ll have to bring in the outlanders from other parts of the world.
“Absolutely out of the question!” Aracia exclaimed. “Our people are pure and innocent. The outsiders are barbaric monsters. They’re almost as bad as the creatures of the Wasteland.”
“Not quite, Aracia,” Dahlaine disagreed. “We can manipulate them if we need to. The only problem I can see is linguistic. The outsiders don’t speak the same language our people speak.”
“That’s not really a problem, Dahlaine,” Veltan told him. “I’ve looked in on several of the outsider cultures. Their babbling didn’t make any sense at first, but I found a way to get around that.”
“Oh?” Dahlaine said. “I’d like to hear about that.”
“All you really have to do is step around language and go right straight to thought.”
“He has a point, Dahlaine,” Zelana said. “It didn’t take me much more than a week to learn the language of my dolphins. If you listen with your mind instead of your ears, it comes very fast.”
“Interesting notion,” Dahlaine mused. “Unfortunately, I don’t think people could do that.”
Veltan shrugged. “I’ll do it for them, then.”
“Would you like to clarify that, Veltan?” Aracia asked.
“It’s a little complicated, dear sister,” he replied. “Are you really sure you want all the details?”
Aracia shuddered. “Spare me that, please. Just tell me what the results are likely to be.”
“The outlanders will babble in their own language, and our people will babble in ours. Neither group will hear babbles, though. They’ll
think
that they’re listening to their own language, so they’ll understand each other perfectly.”
“Would it work that way between different groups of outsiders as well?” Dahlaine asked. “We’ll probably be bringing in several different cultures.”
“No problem,” Veltan said. “We’ll have to decide how far out we want to take it, is about all. We might want to limit it to the Land of Dhrall, though. The outlanders all speak different languages, and maybe we should keep it that way. If they can communicate with each other, they might start forging alliances, and that could cause trouble on down the line.”
“You may have a point there,” Dahlaine conceded. “Let’s try it and see how it works.”
“I’m against the whole silly notion!” Aracia said adamantly. “We can’t bring those murdering barbarians here to the sacred land!”
“How sacred do you think it’ll be after the unholy monsters of the Wasteland sweep over the mountains?” Dahlaine asked her pointedly. “The outsiders are a little crude, I’ll admit that, but they
are
mostly warriors. Our people haven’t even discovered iron yet, so they’re still using stone tools. The people of the outside world have no idea of the significance of Dhrall, but they
do
know how to fight. They spend most of their time practicing on each other. I think maybe we’d all better visit those outlands and find those various warrior people. There are several tricks we can use to get them here to Dhrall, and once they’re here, we can wave gold in their faces to get their interest.”
“Gold isn’t really very useful, Dahlaine,” Veltan objected. “It’s sort of pretty, but it’s too soft for any practical uses. It’s much like lead, when you get right down to it.”
“The outlanders seem to like it, and if they hear about mountains of gold in the Wastelands of the interior, we won’t be able to drive them away with whips. I don’t think we’ve got much choice. Our people are too unskilled to face the armies of the Vlagh. We need large numbers of what Aracia calls howling barbarians, and we need them in a hurry. Let’s go to the outer world and find warriors. It’s the only way we have to save Dhrall from the forces of the Vlagh.”
Z
elana rode the wind westward from the coast of Dhrall for many, many leagues across Mother Sea. She knew that there was land far to the west—at least there had been before she’d gone to live in her grotto hideaway on the Isle of Thurn. Perhaps it had wandered off again.
Night was settling over Mother Sea when Zelana saw something rather peculiar far below. There seemed to be a small fire floating on the surface of the water. Fire and water do not mix well, and, overcome with curiosity, Zelana descended to investigate.
She drifted down through the twilight air, and as she came closer to the face of Mother Sea, she saw something very unusual. At first she thought it might be a floating house, but then she realized that it was probably an exceptionally large version of the canoes the people of her Domain used when they went out on the water to hunt fish. The fire she had seen appeared to be burning in a small glass box near the back of the oversized canoe.
She settled quietly onto the water and tiptoed closer. The floating object was obviously more advanced than anything the people of Dhrall could build, but it had probably been constructed for the same reason that the people of Dhrall made canoes. The outlanders were most likely fishermen.
The oversized canoe Zelana had found was very large—long and narrow—and the outlanders had even built low-roofed houses on it to shelter them when the weather went bad. For some reason, they’d seen fit to put a large tree trunk in the center. As Zelana approached it, she noticed that there was a distinctly unpleasant odor hanging over it.
Then a couple of man-creatures with hairy faces came out of a low, flat-roofed structure near the back of the alien canoe. They were both very tall and muscular, and their clothing was an odd mix of cloth and leather. They also had what appeared to be weapons of some sort belted to their waists, and that aroused Zelana’s immediate attention. If these man-things were merely fishermen, they wouldn’t really need to carry weapons all the time. That strongly suggested that these two weren’t out here on the face of Mother Sea looking for fish. Zelana stepped back out of the light and opened her mind to what she was hearing in order to make the speech of the outlanders understandable.
“Looks to be a fair night, Cap’n,” one of the creatures was saying.
“Aye,” the other rumbled in a harsh voice, “and it’s none too soon to suit me. I’ve had me a belly-full of foul weather here lately.”
Zelana was satisfied that she could understand these outlanders, and a bit surprised to discover that Veltan’s theory actually worked the way he’d said it would. Veltan’s experiments seldom turned out exactly the way he wanted them to.
“You’d better get a lookout aloft, Ox,” the one called Cap’n suggested. “Now that the weather’s settled down, other ships might be under way hereabouts. We’re not sailing the
Seagull
out here for entertainment, you know.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” the huge one called Ox replied. “The Trogite vessels usually hug the coast, but the storm might have swept a few of them out here to deeper water. If our luck’s running good, we might be able to harvest a fair amount of Trogite gold while they’re still floundering around out of sight of land.”
“You’re starting to think like a real Maag, Ox,” Cap’n said with an evil grin. “The notion of picking Trogite vessels like apples off a tree lights a warm little fire in my belly. Come morning, put the crew to work patching the sails and clearing away the wreckage that storm made out of most of the rigging. It well-nigh drove us under a few times.”
Zelana sat cross-legged on the surface of Mother Sea considering some interesting possibilities. The two outlanders, Ox and Cap’n, had referred to their canoe as a “ship,” and there were obviously other ships in the vicinity as well. It was fairly clear that these man-creatures who called themselves “Maags” were not out on the face of Mother Sea in search of fish. Evidently they searched for the ships of other outlanders in order to take gold from them. Dahlaine’s assessment of the outlanders had been correct. They
were
very interested in gold, though Zelana could not quite understand why. The
Seagull,
it seemed, might just be too good an opportunity to pass by. Now that Zelana could understand the speech of the outlanders, and if things went as the one called Cap’n seemed to hope they would, Zelana would be able to observe the outlanders who called themselves Maags in action. Should they prove to be suitable, their ship would make things very easy. A word or two with Mother Sea could produce a current which would sweep the
Seagull
to the west coast of the Land of Dhrall almost as fast as the wind could carry a mote of dust.
The more she thought about it, the more Zelana came to believe that these Maags might very well be exactly what she was seeking. She would need to watch and listen, though, and that suggested that she’d probably need to be somewhere inside the floating house called
Seagull.
That wouldn’t be a problem of any magnitude. There were ways she could make herself inconspicuous while she watched and listened. Then, if these Maags proved to be suitable . . .
T
hough he would deny it with his dying breath, if the truth were to be known, it was sheer coincidence that led to the discovery of the Land of Dhrall by Captain Sorgan Hook-Beak and the crew of his ship, the
Seagull.
As all the world knows, Sorgan Hook-Beak of the Land of Maag is the greatest sea captain of all time. No man yet born can match him in the prediction of wind, weather, tides, or the probable value of the cargo of any ship unlucky enough to encounter the
Seagull
on the high seas.
The men of the Land of Maag are bigger than the men of lands farther to the south, and they took to the sea early in their history. The mountains of Maag march down to the sea, and their slopes seem almost to point seaward, mutely saying, “Go there.” Mountains are fine for hunting, but not too good for farming, so the men of Maag farmed the sea instead, and her crops were bountiful. Fishhooks are much easier to hammer out of iron than plows are, and fishnets harvest bigger crops than scythes do. Then too, the men who harvest the sea aren’t obliged to spend all those tedious months waiting for their crops to grow. The crops of the sea are always there, and they can be harvested in any season.
The people of the Land of Maag developed a quaint custom early in their history. They frequently used descriptions rather than names. Thus there could be several “Big-Foots” or “Buck-Teeth” in a Maag village, along with assorted “Slim-Wits,” “Fats,” and “Pigeon-Toes.” More conventional names came along later, after the Maags had made contact with the more refined peoples to the south. Sorgan Hook-Beak was sort of proud of his name, since it suggested that others considered him to be an eagle, that noblest of all birds.
He went to sea early in his life, and his first captain was the legendary Dalto Big-Nose, a man whose very name struck terror into the heart of every Trogite sea captain who sailed the northern sea.
Now, the Trogites are an avaricious race, eager to snatch things that rightfully belong to others but which they haven’t gotten around to discovering yet. At some time in the remote past a Trogite explorer in search of deposits of tin or copper which might prove profitable had discovered a peculiar region far back in the western reaches of the Land of Shaan, which stands to the west of the Land of Maag. The Maags grudgingly conceded that the Trogite explorer was a courageous fellow, since the natives of the Land of Shaan felt a moral compulsion to eat everything—or everybody—they killed. Being killed is one thing, but being eaten is quite another.
The Trogite explorer purchased the friendship of the savages of Shaan with a few worthless trinkets, and they had led him to that region where the rivers had sandy bottoms. Many rivers have sandy bottoms, but the sand in the rivers of interior Shaan is comprised mostly of flecks of pure gold. Word about the gold in the rivers of Shaan soon got out, and adventurers from all over the known world rushed there to claim their rightful share. After a few seasons, though, the word got out that adventurers who went to the Land of Shaan never came back.
The enthusiasm dropped off noticeably.
The source of the Trogite gold was well known, but the perils involved in seeking it were even better known. Gold, however, isn’t really worth very much unless the owner can take it someplace where he can spend it. The Trogites came up with a quick solution to that problem. They started building ships to carry their wealth back to the Land of Trog. They were large ships, wide of beam and deep of hull, and they tended to wallow rather than sail. Maag vessels were narrow and swift. Moreover, the wealthy Trogites tended to be miserly, so they neglected to hire warriors to guard their treasure ships.
The Maags more or less abandoned fishing at that point. The Trogites winnowed gold from the rivers of Shaan, hauled it down to the coast, and put it aboard their wallowing treasure ships. Then the treasure ships sailed out to the northern sea, where the Maags waited for them.
Sorgan Hook-Beak had received an extensive education from Captain Big-Nose in the fine art of relieving Trogite treasure ships of all that excess weight. As a young man he’d squandered away his earnings in revelry, naturally. Young sailors are enthusiastic revelers, but after a few seasons, Sorgan realized that the captain’s share of the ship’s earnings was much, much larger than the share of an ordinary seaman, so he began to religiously set aside half of all his earnings, and he had soon saved enough to be able to buy his own ship, the
Seagull.
