The Elder Gods

by David Eddings

  “Did you eat today?” Zelana asked.

  “I had plenty earlier today, Beloved. My friends and I found a school of herring and ate our fill.”

  “Did the whale have a name, by any chance?”

  “The dolphins just called her ‘mother.’ She isn’t really their mother, of course. I think it’s more like a way to let her know that they love her.”

  “She speaks the same language as the dolphins?”

  “Sort of. Her voice isn’t as squeaky, though.” Eleria crossed to her bed of moss. “I’m very tired, Beloved,” she said, sinking down onto her bed. “It was a long swim out to the islet, and mother whale swims faster than I do, so even though she slowed down, I had trouble keeping up with her.”

  “Why don’t you go to sleep, then, Eleria? I’m sure you’ll feel much better in the morning.”

  “That sounds like a terribly good idea, Beloved,” Eleria said. “I’m really having trouble keeping my eyes open.” She lay back on her bed of moss with the glowing pink pearl cradled to her heart.

  Zelana was puzzled, and just a trifle concerned. It wasn’t really natural for whales and dolphins to associate with each other in the way Eleria had just described, and Zelana was almost positive that they wouldn’t be able to speak to each other and be understood. Something very peculiar had happened today.

  Eleria appeared to be sound asleep now, and her limbs had relaxed. Then, to Zelana’s astonishment, the glowing pink pearl rose up into the air above the sleeping child. Its pink glow grew steadily stronger, and the glow seemed to enclose Eleria.

  “Don’t interfere, Zelana,” a very familiar voice echoed in Zelana’s mind. “This is necessary, and I don’t need any help from you.”

  Eleria awoke somewhat later than usual the following morning, and she had a somewhat puzzled look on her face as she sat cross-legged on her bed of moss with her pearl in her hand. “Why do we sleep, Beloved?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” Zelana replied, “and I’m not sure exactly why other creatures seem to need to sleep every so often.”

  “I thought you and I were of the same kind,” Eleria said. “We look very much alike—except that your hair is dark and glossy and mine is sort of yellow.”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself. Maybe I’ve just outgrown the need for sleep. I am quite a bit older than you are, after all.” It was a simplified answer, but Zelana was quite certain that Eleria wasn’t quite ready for the real one just yet.

  “Since you don’t sleep, you wouldn’t know about the strange things I seem to see happening while I’m asleep, would you?”

  “They’re called ‘dreams,’ Eleria,” Zelana told her, “and I don’t think any other creature has the same kind of dreams you do. My brother Dahlaine told me that your dreams would be very special, and much more important than the dreams of the ordinaries. Did you have a dream last night that frightened you?”

  “It didn’t particularly frighten me, Beloved. It just seemed very strange, for some reason.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Zelana suggested.

  “Well, I seemed to be floating—except that I wasn’t floating in Mother Sea the way I do sometimes when I want to rest and catch my breath. I was floating way up in the air instead, and all sorts of strange things were happening far below. Father Earth seemed to be all on fire, and his mountains were rising and falling, the way Mother Sea’s waves do. Rocks were melting and running down the sides of some of Father Earth’s mountains into Mother Sea, and some of his other mountains were spouting liquid fire way up into the sky. Could something like that really happen?”

  “Yes, child,” Zelana said in a troubled voice, “and it happened in exactly the way you just described it. I was there watching while it happened. It was at the very beginning of the world. What happened next?”

  “Well, the fires kept burning for a long, long time, and then the land below me started to break apart, and the pieces floated off in different directions. Then trees began to sprout on the face of Father Earth, and Mother Sea started having children. It was along about then that I seemed to know that I wasn’t alone. Others were having the same dream—only maybe for them it wasn’t really a dream.”

  Zelana smiled. “No, dear, it wasn’t. I was one of those others, and I certainly wasn’t dreaming, and neither were my brothers or my sister.”

  “Then it was your family that was sort of hiding around the edges of my dream?” Eleria asked. “I thought you only had two brothers and one sister. There seemed to be two more brothers and a sister watching with me.”

  “They’re another branch of the family, Eleria,” Zelana told her. “We don’t get together very often. We can talk about them some other time. Why don’t you tell me what happened next in your dream? Dreams fade, I understand, and I’d like to hear your whole dream before you forget.”

  “Well, most of Mother Sea’s children were fish, but some of them weren’t. Those were the ones who crawled up onto the face of Father Earth. They sort of looked like snakes at first, but then they sprouted legs and they grew up to be very big. Some of them ate trees, but some of the others ate the ones who were eating trees. Then a great big rock that was on fire fell down out of the sky, and when it hit Father Earth it made an awful splash, except that it was rock that splashed instead of water, and everything got dark for a long time. It finally started to get light again, but the snakes with legs weren’t there anymore.”

  “Did my relatives go away, too?”

  “Some of them went to sleep, but they woke up after a while, and the ones who’d stayed awake went to sleep. There was one that never slept, though. That one’s very ugly, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is, child,” Zelana replied with a shudder. “It’s an outcast, and we don’t even like to think about it. What happened next?”

  “There were a lot of things with fur wandering around, and there were birds and bugs too, but then some things who walked on their hind legs came along. They didn’t look at all the way we do, though. Their skin was scaley, like the skin of large fish—or maybe snakes—and their eyes were huge and stuck way out in front of their faces. That went on for quite a long time, and then everything was all covered with white, and it got very cold. Mother Sea seemed to shrink, and she ran away from her shore. Then the white went away, and Mother Sea came back. That’s when the man-things who look like me arrived. They didn’t look exactly like me, though. They wrapped themselves up in animal skins for some reason, and you and I don’t do that, do we?”

  “It isn’t necessary for us, Eleria. The skins help the man-things stay warm, and they’re ashamed of their bodies.”

  “How peculiar,” Eleria said, frowning slightly. “That was about all there was, Beloved, except that the awful-looking watcher was still way off at the edge of my dream, and I don’t think it likes me very much. I get the feeling that it’s afraid of me for some reason.”

  “If it has anything like good sense, it is,” Zelana said. “Do you think you’ll be able to manage here by yourself for a few days? There are some things I need to attend to. I won’t really be gone for long.”

  “Can’t I go with you?”

  “I’m afraid not, Eleria. I have to go by myself this time. Maybe you can come along next time. We’ll see.”

  3

  Zelana swam out of her hidden grotto and onto a nearby gravel beach, where the waves rolled in and then receded with a mournful sound that seemed filled with regret. Then she raised her face to the sky to search for one of those winds that rushed far overhead in perpetuity, streaming eternally above the clouds and weather. She encountered several, but they were not moving in the proper direction, so she continued her search. Then at last she felt a wind that streamed northward toward the Domain of her elder brother, and she rose up and up through the buffeting of those winds which had not suited her until she reached that wind which rushed northward along the outer edge of the sky, and she bestrode that wind, and it obediently carried her toward the bleak D
omain of her brother Dahlaine.

  Now, Dahlaine dwelt in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the crags and eternal snow of Mount Shrak, which the people of the North believe is the tallest peak in all the world, and Zelana descended from the dark outer edge of the sky to the forbidding mountain that seemed almost to scowl down at her brother’s Domain with a bleak expression of superiority. The mouth of Dahlaine’s cave was a deep indentation in the north side of the mount, and Zelana entered there and followed the twisting passage that led down and down through glittering black rock to the vast chamber far beneath the mountain that was Dahlaine’s home.

  Zelana paused at the mouth of the passage. Her burly, grey-bearded brother, stripped to the waist, was standing over a ruddy fire, beating on something that glowed and made a sort of ringing sound. A small, glowing orb hovered just over him, bathing him with light.

  “What in the world are you doing, Dahlaine?” Zelana asked.

  Dahlaine turned sharply to look at his sister. “Why, Zelana!” he exclaimed. “You startled me. Is something wrong?”

  “Perhaps—or perhaps not. Are you taking up music now? If you are, you’re a little off-key.”

  “Just experimenting, dear sister,” he replied. “Some of the people beyond Mother Sea have discovered something they call ‘metal.’ I wanted to see if I could duplicate it. Is something afoot?”

  Zelana looked cautiously around Dahlaine’s cave. “Where’s your Dreamer?” she asked.

  “Ashad? He’s out playing with the bears.”

  “Bears? Surely you don’t allow him to play with bears! They’ll eat him, won’t they?”

  “Of course they won’t, Zelana. They’re his friends—in the same way the pink dolphins are Eleria’s friends. Is something unusual happening?”

  “Perhaps. Eleria had a dream last night, and I think it may have been significant. I thought you should know about it. There’s something else that may be even more significant than the dream itself.”

  “Oh?”

  “It appears that Mother Sea’s taking a hand in this herself.”

  Dahlaine stared at her.

  “Eleria was out playing with the young pink dolphins yesterday, and they introduced her to an old cow whale.”

  “I didn’t know that whales and dolphins spoke the same language,” Dahlaine said.

  “They don’t. That’s what leads me to believe that it wasn’t really a whale. Anyway, the old cow led Eleria to a small islet off the south coast of Thurn and showed her an oyster shell that was about fifty times bigger than any oyster I’ve ever seen. Then the whale touched the shell with one of her fins, and the oyster opened as if someone had just knocked on its door. There was a pearl inside—pink, and a bit larger than an apple.”

  “That’s impossible!” Dahlaine exclaimed.

  “You’ll have to take that up with the oyster, Dahlaine. Then the whale told Eleria that the oyster wanted her to have the pearl, so Eleria took it, and the whale gave her a ride back to Thurn.”

  “Now, that’s something I’d like to see,” Dahlaine said, laughing. “It might be a bit difficult to saddle a whale.”

  “Did you want to hear the rest of this, or did you want to make funny remarks?” Zelana said tartly.

  “Sorry, dear sister. Please go on.”

  “Eleria’d had a busy day, so she was very tired. She went to sleep almost immediately, and then some very strange things started to happen. That pink pearl rose up into the air above Eleria, and it started to glow—almost like a small pink moon—and its light shone down on Eleria. Then it spoke to me and told me to mind my own business. I recognized the voice immediately, since I’ve been listening to it since the beginning of time.”

  “You’re not serious!” Dahlaine exclaimed.

  “Very serious, brother dear. It was the voice of Mother Sea, and that seems to suggest that the whale might have been something other than an ordinary whale as well, wouldn’t you say?”

  “She’s never done that before,” Dahlaine said in a very troubled voice.

  “You’re being obvious again, Dahlaine,” Zelana said. “I think we’d better step around her very carefully until we get a better idea of what she’s doing and why. Mother Sea’s the central force of the whole world, so let’s stay on the good side of her.”

  “What happened next?” Dahlaine asked.

  “Eleria had a dream, naturally. Evidently, that was the whole idea. In some peculiar way, that pearl’s the essence of Mother Sea’s awareness. Her tides still rise and fall, and her waves wash the shores of Father Earth, but she’s awake now. I’m almost positive that the pearl, which is really Mother Sea incarnate, dictated Eleria’s dream, image by image.”

  “Did Eleria tell you about her dream?”

  “Of course she did. Why do you think I’m here?”

  “What did the dream involve?”

  “The world,” Zelana replied. “Eleria saw it when it was still on fire, before the continents separated and before life began. Then she saw the continents move away from each other and watched living things crawl up out of Mother Sea. She saw the big lizards roam the world, and the falling star that killed them all. She was aware of us and of the others—the ones who are asleep now—and somehow she knew about the Vlagh. She saw the age of ice and then the more recent man-things. As closely as I can determine, she dreamt all the way from the beginning up until the day before yesterday.”

  “She managed to dream all of that in one night?” Dahlaine said incredulously.

  “She had help, Dahlaine. I’m sure that the pearl was guiding her step by step. I think we’d better advise our alternates what’s afoot here. Our cycle’s very nearly reached its conclusion, and our alternates will be waking soon. We’d better warn them that the crisis we’ve been expecting since the beginning’s very likely to boil to the top during their cycle.”

  “That’s assuming that it doesn’t come before our cycle’s finished,” Dahlaine said. “I think that we’d all better get together and thrash this out. Why don’t you go fetch Aracia, and I’ll see if I can run Veltan down. We need to make some decisions, and we might not have much time.”

  “It shall be as thou hast commanded, my dear, dear brother,” Zelana replied with exaggerated formality.

  “Do you have to do that, Zelana?” he said with a pained sort of expression.

  “When you’re being obvious, yes. Go get Veltan, Dahlaine, and I’ll see if I can pry holy Aracia out of that silly temple of hers. Do we want to meet here?”

  “I think we’d better. It’s more secluded than the other places—except for yours, of course. We could meet there, I suppose, but Veltan doesn’t like to swim. And let’s keep the Dreamers away from our meeting. We don’t want to contaminate their visions.”

  Zelana went up out of Dahlaine’s cave and probed the northern sky until she found a wind that suited her purpose, and then she rose up through the chill northern air to join with the obliging wind, to ride it on down in a southeasterly direction toward Aracia’s Domain.

  The arrival of the later variety of people had elevated Aracia’s opinion of herself quite noticeably. Until their appearance, Aracia had seemed sensible enough—a little vain, perhaps, but not unbearably so. The later people, unlike the more brutish early ones, had religious yearnings, and they longed for gods.

  Aracia had thought that was very nice of them, and she’d been more than happy to oblige. She’d suggested that a fancy dwelling where she could stay while she was looking after them might be appropriate, so her people built one for her—several, actually. The first one had been a bit crude, since it had been constructed primarily of logs. It had been all right for a while, but the wind blew through the cracks, and the dirt floor grew muddy during the spring rains.

  Aracia had then suggested stone blocks instead of logs, and the people who served her labored long and hard to build a dwelling for her that was almost as comfortable as Zelana’s grotto or Dahlaine’s cave. And now Aracia of the East dwelt
in her splendid though drafty palace-temple with servants by the score to tell her how wonderful she was and how beautiful and how they could not possibly get along without her—and if it wasn’t too much trouble, could she turn that fellow who’d been so insulting the other day into a toad and maybe make it rain because the oats really needed some water along about now, but not too much rain, since that made everything all muddy.

  Zelana descended through the crisp autumn air to the marble dome of her sister’s temple and adjusted her eyes to look through the polished marble at Aracia’s regal throne room. It was sheathed in palest marble, of course, and there were tall columns around its outer edge, and red drapes behind Aracia’s golden throne.

  Aracia was garbed in a regal gown, and she wore a regal crown of gold and a regal sort of expression on her face.

  A fat man garbed in black linen vestments and a tediously ornate miter was standing before Aracia’s throne, delivering a tiresome oration of praise.

  Aracia, Zelana noticed, seemed to hang on the fat man’s every word.

  Although she knew that it would be terribly impolite, Zelana simply couldn’t resist a sudden impulse.

  The fat orator broke off suddenly when Zelana, clad only in filmy gauze, abruptly appeared out of nowhere before the throne of her elder sister. Several plump, overfed servants fainted dead away, and a few of the more theologically inclined began to contemplate revisions of several articles of the faith.

  Aracia gasped. “Cover yourself, Zelana!” she said sharply.

  “What for, dear sister?” Zelana said. “I’m immune to the weather, and I don’t have any defects that I want to hide. If you want to wrap yourself in that silly-looking cocoon, that’s your business, but I don’t think it’ll turn you into a butterfly.”

  “Have you no modesty?”

  “Of course not. I’m perfect. Didn’t you know that? Dahlaine needs to see us—now. Leave your Dreamer here, though. He’ll explain why when we join him.”