The Elder Gods

by David Eddings

  “If Dahlaine wants to explain something to me, he can come here and do it,” Aracia said. “I will not bow down to him in that grubby hole in the ground where he lives.”

  “Splendid, dear sister of mine,” Zelana said sweetly. “I’m sure all your fat servants will be delighted to see you bow down right here in your own temple—assuming, of course, that it’s still standing after he arrives on that silly thunderbolt he always rides. It’s a nice enough thunderbolt, I suppose, but the noise it makes when it passes shakes down buildings sometimes. Putting your temple back together should give your fat servants something to do while they’re pondering the fact that the supreme goddess of the universe just bowed down to somebody who looks for all the world like some shaggy bear.”

  “You never bow down to him, Zelana,” Aracia accused.

  “Of course I don’t,” Zelana replied. “I don’t have to, because I don’t demand—or expect—anybody to bow down to me. That’s the way it works, Aracia. Had you forgotten about that? It’s time to shed your cocoon, my butterfly sister. The dreams have begun, and the Vlagh could be on our doorstep before the week’s out. Let’s go talk with Dahlaine while there’s still time.”

  Zelana took her sister’s hand, and they rode the wind toward the northwest. It was early autumn now, and the land far below was ablaze with color. The rivers sparkled in the autumn sun, and the mountains to the north of Aracia’s Domain gleamed white beneath their eternal snow.

  Just to be on the safe side, they skirted the northeastern corner of the Wasteland. Many of the servants of the Vlagh had extremely sharp senses, and the sisters were certain that this wouldn’t be a good time to alert their enemy. It might not have been really necessary, but there was no point in taking chances.

  Actually, the sisters were rather looking forward to the meeting. There hadn’t been a general family get-together for almost a dozen eons. There’d been occasional squabbles among them, of course. No family lives in absolute harmony forever, but in times of crisis the family was able to set their differences aside and work together to reach a solution.

  “Isn’t that Dahlaine’s mountain?” Aracia asked, pointing at the land of the North lying far below.

  Zelana glanced down. “No,” she replied. “Mount Shrak’s quite a bit taller.”

  “I’ve never looked at Father Earth from this high up before,” Aracia said. “He looks different from up here, doesn’t he?”

  “Try looking at him from the edge of the sky some time, dear sister,” Zelana suggested.

  “Edge of the sky?” Aracia sounded puzzled.

  “Up where it isn’t blue anymore. After Eleria told me her dream, I needed to tell Dahlaine what she’d seen, but when I went looking for a wind that was blowing in his direction, the only one I could find was up at the outer edge of the air. You can even see the curve of the world from that high.”

  “Does it really curve?” Aracia asked. “Veltan told me that if you look at Father Earth from the moon, he looks like a round blue ball.” She frowned. “I never did understand just why it was that Mother Sea exiled Veltan to the moon for all those eons. Did he do something to offend her?”

  Zelana laughed. “Indeed he did, Aracia. He told her that she bored him.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “Oh, yes he did. You know how juvenile Veltan can be sometimes. He thought he was being terribly funny, but he just can’t seem to get it through his mind that Mother Sea has absolutely no sense of humor. He kept clowning around with various absurdities—different shades of blue, and even the notion of ‘stripes.’ He was having all kinds of fun pestering her—probably hoping that he could make her laugh, but it didn’t work out very well for him. She finally lost her temper and told him to go away. That’s why our baby brother—who’ll probably never really grow up—spent ten thousand years on the moon.”

  “And he passed the time cataloging shades of blue,” Aracia added. “That seems to be his major preoccupation.”

  “How many shades of blue has he found so far?”

  “Something in excess of thirteen million the last time I spoke with him. That was about an eon or so ago, though, so he’s probably found more by now.”

  “There’s Mount Shrak,” Zelana told her sister, pointing toward the earth far below. “Let’s go down and see if Dahlaine’s managed to track Veltan down yet.”

  They descended through the lambent air toward the craggy peak of Mount Shrak, startling a flock of geese as they went. Zelana rather liked geese. They were silly birds most of the time, but their migrations marked the change of the seasons very precisely, and that added a certain stability to an unpredictable world.

  The sisters came to earth near the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave, and Zelana led Aracia down the long, winding passage toward their brother’s underground home.

  “Hideous,” Aracia observed, looking around. “Did he put all those icicles on the ceiling himself?”

  “They aren’t ice, dear sister,” Zelana replied. “They’re stone. They sort of grow the same way, though, but they take quite a bit longer.”

  “He’ll starve to death if he lives here in the dark for too long,” Aracia observed.

  “He has a little sun that follows him here in his cave,” Zelana said. “It’s a lot like a puppy, and it gives him all the light he needs.”

  “He’s manufacturing suns now?” Aracia seemed a bit startled. “I tried that once, but the silly thing flew apart as soon as I started to make it spin.”

  “You probably didn’t make it quite heavy enough. The balance of a sun has to be very precise—too light and it flies apart; too heavy and it collapses in on itself.”

  Aracia looked around cautiously. “Where’s Dahlaine’s Dreamer?” she whispered.

  “Ashad? Dahlaine told me that he was out playing with the bears. We all seem to have our favorite animals, don’t we? I love my pink dolphins, Dahlaine loves bears, Veltan’s fond of sheep, and you’re attached to the seals who nest along your coast.”

  Aracia shrugged. “They gave us something to play with while we were waiting for the man-creatures to grow up,” she said. She peered back into the dim cave. “It seems that Dahlaine hasn’t found Veltan yet,” she noted. “I don’t see them anywhere. How far back does this cave go?”

  “Miles and miles, I think,” Zelana replied. “Let’s wait. I’m sure they’ll be along soon. Has your Dreamer told you any interesting stories yet?”

  “No,” Aracia replied. “I don’t think she’s quite ready. From what you’ve told me, I’d say that your Dreamer might be the first. The story of the world sort of sets things up for the other Dreamers. Did she really see it right from the beginning in her dream?”

  “It came very close to what really happened,” Zelana replied. “Eleria has some problems with words once in a while. Her playmates were young dolphins when she was a baby, and she speaks dolphin much better than she speaks our language. It’s probably my fault. I was too busy with poetry and music to train her.” She shrugged. “We all make mistakes, I guess. Anyway, I’m fairly sure that Eleria still thinks in dolphin, and dolphin baby talk isn’t too precise. She did her best, though. What’s your child’s name?”

  “Lillabeth,” Aracia replied fondly, “and she’s the most beautiful creature in all the world.”

  “They seem to do that to us, don’t they?” Zelana said.

  “Do what?”

  “Distort our perceptions, dear sister,” Zelana replied. “I’d imagine that Dahlaine and Veltan feel the same way about their Dreamers. I know that I have exactly the same feelings about Eleria. It’s probably very simple. We love them because they are ours.”

  “Could you be a bit more specific about this dream your Eleria had?” Aracia asked.

  “Let’s wait for Dahlaine and Veltan. There were some very complex things happening when Eleria began to dream, and I think Dahlaine’s the best qualified to interpret them.”

  “That’s assuming that he ever gets here,” Aracia added.
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  It was probably late afternoon outside when a pair of shattering thunderclaps shook the air for miles around. “That is so childish,” Aracia noted. “Do they really have to do that?”

  “They’re still little boys, dear,” Zelana replied, “and showing off is part of their nature. Riding a lightning bolt is a sure way to get everybody’s immediate attention.”

  “But they look so silly after they do that—glowing and with their hair standing on end the way it does.”

  “I think lightning does that,” Zelana said. “It is a very fast way to travel, but I think I’ll stick to riding the wind. It’s almost as fast, and it doesn’t make nearly so much noise.”

  A few moments later their brothers emerged from the twisting passageway that led down from the surface.

  “What kept you?” Zelana asked mildly.

  “I had a little trouble locating our baby brother,” Dahlaine replied sourly.

  “He can be such a grouch sometimes,” the tall, fair-haired Veltan noted.

  “I wouldn’t be nearly so bad-tempered if you’d stop trying to hide from me,” Dahlaine said. “Did you tell our sister about Eleria’s dream, Zelana?”

  “Not in any great detail, no,” Zelana replied. “A number of her servants were there, and I didn’t think they needed to know the full extent of what was happening just yet.”

  “Tell us all, then, my fishy sister,” Veltan said, grinning at her outrageously.

  “Of course, moon-boy,” Zelana replied tartly. “A few days ago, Eleria was out playing with her dolphin friends, and they introduced her to a very old cow whale. The whale told Eleria that there was something nearby that she might want to see. Eleria went with her to a nearby island, and the whale showed her a huge oyster. The oyster obediently opened its shell, and Eleria saw a very large pink pearl. The whale told Eleria that she was supposed to take the pearl. Eleria did that and then brought the pearl home. She was very tired, and she fell asleep almost immediately. The pearl rose up into the air just above her, and it started to glow. Then it told me to keep my nose out of what was happening. It hung in the air over Eleria all night long, and when Eleria woke up, she told me about the dream she’d had. It was a nice little dream that more or less covered everything that’s happened since the world was first formed right up to the present.”

  “You’re just making this up, Zelana,” Veltan scoffed.

  “No, baby brother, I’m not. The pearl—and quite probably that whale as well—aren’t what they seem to be.”

  “Our sister believes that Mother Sea’s starting to tamper with things,” Dahlaine said then, “and I think she might be right.”

  “Now we come to the interesting part, big brother,” Zelana said brightly. “Just exactly who and what are these children you so generously gave us a few years ago?”

  “The Dreamers, of course, Zelana,” Dahlaine replied just a bit too quickly.

  “And?” she pressed.

  “And what?”

  “What else are they, Dahlaine? You’re so obvious most of the time that the rest of us can see right through you.”

  “You didn’t!” Veltan exclaimed, his eyes almost popping out as he stared at Dahlaine.

  “I don’t quite . . .” Aracia began. Then her eyes bulged out as well. “Dahlaine!” she gasped.

  “Well,” he floundered, “it was kind of an emergency, wasn’t it?” he asked plaintively.

  “Are you insane?” Veltan demanded. “They can’t be present during our cycle. As soon as they realize who they are, they’ll usurp our Domains!”

  “I was careful to blot out their previous memories before I woke them,” Dahlaine replied. “And I modified them slightly to make them more closely resemble newborn man-creatures. They sleep and breathe and eat food instead of light. Their minds are still very infantile, and they have no idea of who—or what—they really are, so their presence during our cycle won’t tear the Land of Dhrall apart. They’re really nothing more than children, and our cycle will come to a close before they’re fully mature and realize just who they really are.”

  “You’ve put the whole world at risk with this idiocy!” Aracia flared.

  “Calm yourself, Aracia,” Zelana said. “Now that I’ve had time to push my horror away, I think I’m beginning to see what Dahlaine had in mind. If the hideous thing in the Wasteland is on the verge of moving against us, we’ll need all the help we can get, and the others have as much to lose as we do. Besides, we’ve never really gotten to know them, have we? They’re really very sweet. I didn’t really care for the idea of being supplanted before, but now that I’ve gotten to know Eleria, I love her. That was sort of what you had in mind when you came up with this scheme, wasn’t it, Dahlaine? If we know them and love them, we can trust them. Isn’t that the short and the long of this grand plan of yours?”

  “Sometimes you’re so clever you make me sick, Zelana,” he said sourly.

  “He’s brighter than I thought he was,” Veltan told his sisters. “If we awaken the others before the end of our cycle, we can raise them as if they were our children and prepare them for anything that might happen after we’ve gone to our rest.”

  “And then we can return the favor at the end of their cycle,” Zelana added. “I get to mother Eleria this time, and then she mothers me next time.”

  “It sounds fair to me,” Veltan said. Then he paused. “We’ve been strangers to the others for far too long, I think. We all have the same responsibilities, so a bit of cooperation might be in order. I’m still not too happy that you didn’t tell the rest of us what you had in mind, Dahlaine, but we can set that aside for now. What’s next?”

  “First off,” Zelana said, “I don’t think we want to get too specific about what’s happening when we’re speaking with our Dreamers. They’re still children, and children are impressionable, no matter what their species. We don’t want to contaminate their dreams by explaining what these dreams really mean. As long as they believe that their dreams are just flights of fancy, they won’t become too upset by any horrors that crop up. Then, too, if they realize what they can actually do with their dreams, they might try to tamper with them at the deepest level of their awareness, and that raises the possibility of total disasters. At that point, Mother Sea might decide to exile all eight of us to the moon—not just Veltan.”

  “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 y
ou 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.”