“He’ll expel you and your friends from the Church, won’t he?” Jalkan suggested.
“He can try,” Adnari Estarg replied slyly, “but we’ll ignore his proclamations and kill every Regulator he sends to our part of the world to enforce those commands. He’ll get the point—eventually. How many armies do you think we’ll need, Jalkan?”
“I gave it quite a bit of thought on my way home, Your Grace,” Jalkan said. “I think we should start out with five, at least. A half million men should be able to occupy the southern portion of Veltan’s Domain. That’ll give us a good foothold. Veltan’s concentrating on an invasion from the north, so it’s highly unlikely that he’ll divert many troops to meet us.”
“We’ll start out with five, then,” the Adnari agreed. “If it happens to turn out that we need more, we’ll hire more.”
“I thought that Naos Udar had the church treasury heavily guarded.”
“Indeed he does, Jalkan,” Adnari Estarg said with a faint smile, “but there wasn’t really very much money in that treasury when Udar usurped the holy throne. I’d pretty well cleaned it out when I first saw those twelve armies of his marching up from the south. I’ve got it stored in a well-concealed place, and I’m the only one who knows the location.” He paused for a moment. “We didn’t really treat you very well during your trial, did we, Jalkan?” he asked rather apologetically.
“I don’t see that you really had much choice, Your Grace. The new Naos was trying his best to purge the Church of all clergymen who didn’t come from his part of the Empire. If any of you had tried to come to my defense, you’d have ended up chained to the whipping post right beside me.”
“We will reward you for your discovery, Jalkan.”
“Yes, Your Grace, you definitely will,” Jalkan replied very firmly. “Since I’m the only one who knows how to reach the Land of Dhrall, I’m very valuable, wouldn’t you say?”
The chubby Adnari looked at Jalkan sharply.
“Did you actually think I was just going to roll over and play dead, Your Grace?” Jalkan asked. “How does twenty percent sound to you?”
“Twenty percent of what?”
“Of everything, Your Grace—the gold, the slaves, the land, everything.”
“That’s outrageous!” Estarg exploded.
“That’s my price, Your Grace,” Jalkan said bluntly. “Take it or leave it. If you don’t want to play the game my way, my memory of the route back to the Land of Dhrall might start to fade. I’m not a churchman anymore, Your Grace, so I don’t automatically obey those who outrank me now. That means that I’ll be the one who makes up the rules this time around.” Jalkan felt a warm sort of glow when a look of consternation came over Estarg’s face.
Jalkan was riding north to the port of Castano seated in an ornate sedan chair carried by eight slaves, and he was considering matters of personal safety along the way. He was fairly sure that the high-ranking churchmen Adnari Estarg had recruited would look upon him as redundant once their forces reached southern Dhrall, so it was an absolute necessity for him to remain a vital part of the operation.
The answer was really quite simple. He was the only one in this expedition who’d seen Veltan’s map of the region around the Falls of Vash, and since it was obvious that the gold mines of southern Dhrall were located there, his familiarity with that map virtually guaranteed his safety. He was going to have to make an issue of that once they reached the coast of Dhrall.
The guarantees would probably start to slip once their forces located the mines, though. Jalkan cudgeled his brain trying to come up with a solution. The answer was quite obvious, but it didn’t sit too well with him. He’d have to hire—and pay—a large number of professional soldiers to serve as bodyguards, and the wages of those bodyguards would be exorbitant. Worse yet, if he tried to swindle them, they’d almost certainly either walk away and leave him unprotected—or even turn on him and kill him themselves. Protecting himself—and his money—was likely to be very expensive.
Jalkan sighed mournfully. Wealth appeared to be terribly inconvenient.
“Ah, well,” he murmured with a note of resignation. “The price of fame and fortune is evidently very high.” He shrugged. “It’s a lot better than being poor and despised, I guess.”
INTERLUDE IN THE LAND OF DREAMS
1
Eleria’s sleep was troubled that night. The Beloved seemed almost to be her old self, but there were a few hints that the disorder which had driven her to flight after Yaltar’s twin volcanos had erupted at the head of the ravine was still there. The Beloved’s cycle was nearing its conclusion anyway, and her need for sleep was obviously clouding her mind.
Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem of any significance, but things in the Land of Dhrall were anything but normal right now, so it was time to take certain steps. Eleria regretfully decided that playtime was over, and the time for “serious” had arrived.
The barriers Dahlaine had set in place when he’d roused the younger gods from their sleep and pushed them back to infancy were not really very substantial, so Balacenia pushed them aside quite easily, and reality came flooding in. The sense of duality—of being two separate and distinct individuals—was a bit disturbing at first, but Balacenia, who had never had a childhood, found joy and delight in Eleria’s memories, and Eleria’s love and adoration for Zelana brought tears to Balacenia’s eyes. For a time she lingered there, but she finally set her reverie aside and reached out to her siblings.
Vash, of course, was the first to answer, since he and Balacenia had been very close since the world had been born. “Were you calling me, Eleria?” he responded in a sleep-dulled voice.
“Don’t play Dahlaine’s silly game, Vash,” Balacenia told him. “If you step around his makeshift barriers, your own memories will return, and you’ll know your true identity. We need to talk about something that’s very important, but we can only do that while we’re dreaming. I don’t think we want our elders listening in.”
She heard Vash gasp as reality crashed in on him.
“That was quick,” she observed.
“This is unreal!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t let go of Yaltar, dear Vash,” Balacenia suggested. “His memories are yours now, and they’re all you have in the way of a childhood. Go to that imaginary place where we used to meet and wait there. I’ll bring Dakas and Enalla as soon as I’ve opened their eyes.”
“I’ll be there, dear sister,” he promised.
Balacenia reached out to Dakas, and she was a bit surprised to discover that he’d already summoned reality on his own. Of course, Dakas was closer to Dahlaine than any of the rest of them were, so he’d already realized how deceptive the eldest of their alternates could be. “Just exactly where’s this place where we’ll meet?” he asked.
“It isn’t a real place, Dakas. It’s a product of the imagination. Vash and I built it so that we could visit each other. It’s quite a bit prettier than the real world. Reach out to Vash, and he’ll guide you there.”
“I’ll be there, big sister.”
Enalla was a bit more difficult. She clung to the childhood memories of Lillabeth with a kind of desperation. Of course, Aracia had spoiled Lillabeth outrageously, and Enalla obviously hated the idea of growing up and accepting her real identity. It took a little while, but Balacenia’s upcoming status as the eldest of the gods gave her all the leverage she needed. Enalla was a bit sulky when they joined their brothers, however.
The place where Balacenia and Vash had frequently met during their previous cycle existed only in their joined imaginations, and it was far more beautiful than any place in mundane reality. The Aurora seethed through the starry sky above a dark forest and the Dreamers floated there absorbing that beauty in sheer delight.
“How did you two do this?” Dakas asked in a voice filled with wonder.
“Combined imagination, dear brother,” Balacenia explained. “It took us quite a while to get it right, but I guess
it turned out to be worth the trouble.” She looked around and then sighed. “I think we’d better get on with this,” she said with regret. “I’m sure that we all agree that Dahlaine’s clever scheme was extremely dangerous, but there’s not much we can do about it now.”
“You’re probably right, dear sister,” Vash agreed, his face illuminated by the flickering Aurora. “Since you’ll be the eldest during our next cycle, I think we’d be wiser to let you decide how we should deal with this.” He looked at Dakas and Enalla. “Would either of you object?” he asked.
“I’ll be more than happy to lay that burden on our divine sister’s shoulders,” Dakas replied. “It almost broke my back during our last cycle.”
“I won’t argue either,” Enalla agreed almost absently as she gazed up at the swirling light in the night sky. “That’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen,” she declared.
“Wait till you see it at sunrise, Enalla,” Vash said proudly.
“All right, then,” Balacenia said. “We’ll have to be very careful not to upset the balance of the world while both we and our elders are awake at the same time. Evidently, we can tamper with natural forces while we’re dreaming without splitting the world right down the middle, but I don’t think we’ll dare try anything like that while we’re awake.”
“I still think Dahlaine was taking an awful chance,” Enalla said. “The extra weight could have made the world fall into the sun, you know.”
“The alternative wasn’t very attractive, sister mine,” Dakas reminded her. “The Vlagh—or whatever it is that’s guiding the creatures of the Wasteland—has been violating the natural order of things for a long, long time, so we might have to take a few chances.”
“We’re wandering here,” Balacenia noted, “and we probably don’t have too much time left before one of us wakes up. I’m getting a strong suspicion that if we start to overtly tamper with the natural order of things, the results might be disastrous. We can do almost anything while we’re asleep and dreaming, but once we wake up, that stops. No matter what happens while we’re awake, we’ll have to endure it until one of us goes back to sleep.”
“That’s easy, big sister,” Vash said with a broad grin. “One of us has to be asleep during every hour of the day. The outlanders call that ‘sleeping while you’re on guard duty,’ and they seem to think it’s a mortal sin. We’ll just do it in reverse, that’s all. If each one of us sleeps for six hours, we’ll have somebody guarding the rest of us all the time.”
“It makes sense, Balacenia,” Enalla said. “Dear Vash can be terribly clever—once in a great while.” She gave Vash a sly, sidelong smirk.
“Be nice, Enalla,” Balacenia chided.
“I’m always nice, dear sister—even though it’s terribly boring. ‘Nice’ isn’t really very much fun.”
“I wouldn’t wave that in Aracia’s face, Enalla,” Dakas warned. “She’s got all those fat, tedious churchmen around watching her every move. If you get her interested in ‘not nice,’ the Church of Aracia could start to crumble.”
“It’s going to do more than crumble as soon as Aracia goes to sleep, Dakas,” Enalla replied. “Those fat, lazy priests make me sick, so the very first thing I’ll do when I wake up will be to smash those stupid temples. Then I’ll tell them that I don’t ever want to see them again. I’m sure they’ll have to go out and find honest work at that point.”
“I think Vash found the answer to most of our problems,” Balacenia told them. “If one of us is asleep, that one can be ready to respond to the moves of the Vlagh almost instantly. It’s quite obvious that the Vlagh deliberately waited to make its move until our elders had lapsed into their dotage. I occasionally had to push Zelana very hard to get her to respond, and I didn’t like that one little bit. Have any of you noticed any signs of similar behavior in your elders?”
“Dahlaine has been sort of vague lately,” Dakas replied. “Sometimes he forgets that Long-Claw and I are sort of like brothers, and he has trouble keeping track of the chiefs in some of the villages.”
“Veltan seems to be all right,” Vash said a bit dubiously. “He’s always been just a little silly, though. I get so tired of listening when he goes on and on about the time he spent on the moon, but Ara always tells me to mind my manners when he does that.”
“You’re very fond of Ara, aren’t you, Vash?” Enalla asked him.
“Everybody loves Ara. Omago’s probably the luckiest man in the world, since she’s his wife.”
“She’s a wonderful cook, that much is certain,” Dakas agreed. “Our elders don’t know a thing about food.”
“Neither did we until recently,” Enalla reminded him. “I think we’ve been missing one of the better parts of life.”
“Has Aracia been herself lately?” Balacenia asked her sister.
Enalla shrugged. “She’s been irritable, and her priests have been exaggerating those tiresome ceremonies to stay on the good side of her.”
“It seems that they’re all beginning to slip just a bit,” Balacenia said. “Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be much of a problem, but we’re in the middle of a war right now, so we might have to step in—subtly, of course—and cover for them. There have been a few occasions when I’ve had to go directly to Longbow to get things done.”
“Persuading Longbow to do something might be even more difficult than bringing Zelana around,” Vash said.
“He did take a bit of getting used to,” Balacenia agreed. She frowned slightly. “I think we’re going to have to stay in much closer contact with each other than we usually do,” she told them. “The Vlagh seems to specialize in surprises, and we’ll have to be ready to respond immediately. “Did Dahlaine get everything right when he told all of us about your dream, Dakas?” Balacenia asked.
“Pretty close,” Dakas replied. “Of course, it didn’t make too much sense to me when I woke up. I can’t for the life of me make any sense out of that second invasion.” He looked at Vash. “I thought that the Trogites were working for Veltan.”
“They are—at least Narasan’s army is,” Vash replied. “Veltan didn’t get into too many details when he told me about how he’d managed to hire an army in the land of the Trogs, so I don’t really understand how things work down there.”
Balacenia glanced off to the east and saw a faint light along the horizon. “It’s almost morning,” she told the others, “so most of us will be waking up soon. I’ll stay here until noon at the earliest. I need to think my way through this. I don’t think we’ll encounter any emergencies this early, but I’ll be here if any of you happen to need me.”
“And when you get sleepy, call me,” Dakas suggested. “I can go to sleep almost any time of day. I think that might be the result of growing up with bears.”
“And when you wake up, you can call me,” Enalla said. “I’ll sleep awhile, and then call in Vash. Then it’ll be Balacenia’s turn again.”
“One more thing before you leave,” Balacenia said. “Be very careful when you’re speaking with the elders. Both Vash and I blundered and referred to each other by our real names. If that happens too often, the elders will start getting very suspicious. Let’s keep them happy—and drowsy. We don’t want them to know that we’re awake, do we?”
The others all agreed, and then they faded from the imaginary world.
Balacenia wandered alone through the glowing Aurora as the eastern horizon grew lighter and lighter. Then the sun rose in stately magnificence, touching the sky with rose-tinted crimson. Balacenia’s heart was filled with sadness. The Beloved was deeply troubled, and her pain weighed heavily on Eleria’s side of Balacenia’s awareness.
And then something quite impossible occurred. The figure of a woman came walking out of the sunrise into the place that existed only in the combined imaginations of Balacenia and Vash.
“That was very nicely done, dear one,” the woman said to Balacenia in a rich, vibrant voice.
Balacenia immediately recognized the voice and for som
e reason she was not the least bit surprised that Ara had appeared here out of nowhere. It seemed very right somehow. She nodded politely to Omago’s beautiful wife. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Ara,” she said, “and maybe this is the proper time and place. I’ve had this nagging feeling that I’ve met you before. That actually did happen, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Ara replied with a fond smile, “but it was a very, very long time ago—even for you.” She held out her arms, and Balacenia automatically went to her.
“You’re doing just fine, Balacenia,” Ara said, warmly embracing her. “I wasn’t at all sure that Dahlaine’s scheme would actually work, but you just managed the transition so smoothly that there wasn’t even a hint of what was actually happening when you realized who you really are.”
“It just seemed to me that Dahlaine’s little scheme didn’t go quite far enough, Ara. That was sort of nagging at Eleria. When you get right down to it, this was all the idea of the Eleria part of me. She knew that she and the other Dreamers were going to need help, so she called me.” Balacenia smiled. “I’ve never had anybody wake me before, and her childhood memories brought tears to my eyes.”
“You have to be a little careful when Eleria unleashes her charm on you. In many ways, she’s you, but she has her own little idiosyncracies. Playing with the dolphins might have had something to do with that. You’ll get used to her, but it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, look after Zelana. She’s not herself right now.”
Treasured One Page 12