Treasured One

by David Eddings

  “And I was the one who was stupid enough to step into it,” Narasan added glumly.

  “Don’t beat yourself over the head with it, old friend,” Gunda advised bleakly. “There’s probably a big celebration going on down there, but I don’t think their celebration’s going to last very much longer.”

  “We aren’t in any position to put a stop to it, Gunda. They tricked us, and then they killed a very large number of our men.”

  “You might not approve of this, Narasan, but Padan and I recently had a little talk with some fellows you might have heard about. They’re the ones who specialize in the business of providing the guests of honor at funerals. It won’t be long before three armies won’t have commanders anymore and two ducal thrones will be empty.”

  “That’s hardly honorable, Gunda.”

  “Well that’s just too bad, Narasan. Their scheme went way past ‘honorable,’ and if that’s the way they want to play, we’ll take the game one step farther.” Then Gunda gave his commander a tight-lipped grin. “We could send flowers to the funerals, if you’d like, though. There’s a weed that grows along the coast near Castano that stinks to high heaven. That might just let everybody down there know exactly what we think of them.”

  “You’re a very nasty fellow, Gunda.”

  “I know. It’s a failing of mine.”

  Narasan’s satisfaction with the clever scheme of his friends didn’t really last very long. Revenge didn’t alter the cold hard facts about the disastrous war in the south. To some degree Narasan had accepted the duke of Bergalta’s offer because it had given him a chance to put his nephew at the head of the army during the march through that mountain pass. On the surface, that had been a way to give Astal a greater degree of self-confidence, but the more Narasan thought about it, the more he came to realize that the foolish decision had grown out of his own egotism. He’d placed Astal in mortal danger as an act of stupid pride. His grief returned, and it was overlaid with a tremendous amount of shame. It had been his foolish decision that had killed Astal and twelve cohorts of his army, and no amount of squirming around could alter that painful truth. He was quite obviously no longer fit for command.

  And so it was that on a bleak day in early winter he broke his sword across his knee like a stick of dry kindling, dressed himself in his most scruffy clothes, and set up shop as a beggar on the far side of imperial Kaldacin.

  Begging was a fairly simple occupation, and it gave Narasan a great deal of time for thought. His foolish decisions in the recent war were symptoms of the general deterioration of Trogite society. Pride and greed had come to the fore, and honor had vanished. Narasan saw that as an obvious sign that the world itself was faltering and would soon pass out of existence.

  Narasan took a certain comfort in that thought. If he was indeed living at the end of days, his grief and shame wouldn’t last too much longer, and then he could gladly go to his final rest.

  3

  The young foreigner was a very handsome man, and he passed Narasan’s place of business several times. His look of growing frustration intrigued Narasan a bit. Finally on a blustery winter day Narasan asked the young fellow what was troubling him.

  “I’ve been trying to find somebody here who’ll rent me an army, but I can’t find anybody who’s willing to even discuss it.”

  “Did you speak with the soldiers themselves?”

  “I didn’t think that was permitted.”

  Narasan laughed. The young man appeared to be a hopeless innocent, but very sincere. Narasan explained a few realities and then asked him why he needed to hire an army.

  “There’s trouble in the wind at home, and it looks like we’re going to need professional soldiers to help us deal with it.”

  Narasan found the notion of a war somewhere beyond the borders of the Empire rather intriguing. Recent events had made wars here at home seem extremely unpleasant.

  Then Keselo came around the corner with yet another ploy to try to persuade Narasan to return to the army. Narasan refused, of course, and sent the young officer back home.

  “He’s a good boy,” Narasan told the stranger, “and if he lives, he might go far.” It occurred to Narasan that he’d quite often said much the same thing about his nephew, and his sorrow returned to tear at him again.

  The youthful foreigner named Veltan appeared to be quite perceptive, and he immediately saw that something was tearing at Narasan’s heart. Without knowing exactly why, Narasan briefly explained why he’d chosen to abandon his military career. “Time’s running out anyway,” he gloomily concluded, “so in a little while it won’t make any difference what I do. The world’s coming to an end, you know.”

  “I think you’ve seen what very few others have,” Veltan told him, “but you didn’t go quite far enough. The world’s approaching the end of a cycle, not the end of time itself. Don’t despair, Narasan. Time has no end—or beginning either, if the truth were known.”

  A sense of awe came over Narasan. This pleasant-faced young foreigner was not at all what seemed to be, and the depth of his understanding staggered the imagination. Veltan rather deprecatingly shrugged off a number of his own peculiarities and got right down to the point. “I need your army, Commander Narasan,” he said, “and I’ll pay gold for its services. If things go well, we’ll win, and winning’s all that really matters, whether it’s war or dice.”

  “That’s a practical sort of approach,” Narasan replied, his sense of overwhelming grief and shame fading. He stood up. “It looks like my holiday’s over,” he said. “It was sort of nice to sit around doing nothing, but it’ll be good to get back into harness again.”

  The notion of undertaking a war somewhere beyond the boundaries of the Empire disturbed several of Narasan’s officers quite noticeably, but Narasan himself welcomed the idea. The Empire contained too many painful memories, and he was more than ready to go abroad.

  Since the army would be going north, the port of Castano was the logical point of departure, and after Veltan had left, Narasan decided that his best course of action would be to send Gunda, whose family had originated there, to that port to hire the fleet of ships the army would need to carry them to Veltan’s homeland.

  A few days after Narasan’s force reached Castano, Veltan came sailing into the harbor in a rickety little fishing sloop and stunned Narasan by presenting him with ten blocks of pure gold. Narasan had never seen gold in that form before, but he was forced to admit that it was very pretty.

  Veltan seemed to be very impatient, and he finally decided that the two of them should sail north toward the Land of Dhrall in his sloop so that Narasan and a Maag pirate by the name of Sorgan Hook-Beak could work out the strategy for their combined campaign in the Domain of Veltan’s sister. Narasan had some doubts about the wisdom of that notion. He’d heard about the pirates of the Land of Maag, but he’d never actually met one. The term “howling barbarians” had come up quite frequently in the descriptions of them he’d heard, and the terms “barbarians” and “strategy” seemed to Narasan to clash just a bit.

  There was a large fleet of narrow ships in the harbor of Lattash, and Narasan immediately saw the advantage the Maags would have in any encounter with the broad-beamed Trogite vessels. Maag ships were obviously built for speed, not for capacity.

  After Veltan beached his sloop, he led Narasan toward a dome-shaped hill to the south of the village. They went on through a crudely constructed shed past a fair number of burly Maags who were pounding on pieces of red-hot iron and then joined some leather-clad natives at the mouth of what appeared to be the entrance to a cave.

  They entered a long passageway that finally opened out into a large chamber where a small fire was burning in a pit near the center, most probably to provide light. Then Veltan introduced him to his sister Zelana, who was certainly the most beautiful woman Narasan had ever seen, and then to a pretty little girl Narasan presumed to be Lady Zelana’s daughter.

  There were other people in the cave, but Na
rasan was primarily interested in meeting the Maag called Hook-Beak.

  “He should be here soon, Commander Narasan,” Lady Zelana assured him.

  Then a very small Maag called Rabbit came out of the passageway leading a hulking fellow with a bent nose. Narasan immediately saw how the man had come by the name “Hook-Beak.”

  Veltan introduced them and, somewhat to Narasan’s surprise, Hook-Beak candidly admitted that he’d previously made his living as a pirate. That open admission elevated the Maag in Narasan’s estimation. Strange though it seemed, evidently this fellow had a sense of honor. It was quite possible that they’d get along well together.

  “What an unnatural sort of thing,” Narasan murmured to himself.

  Narasan and Sorgan spent a great deal of time with Veltan’s sketchy map of the ravine leading down to the village of Lattash, but when they’d shown it to the comical native Red-Beard, he’d dismissed it as worthless because of its lack of detail. Then the small Maag called Rabbit suggested a sculptured map rather than a flat drawing. Narasan was stunned by the sheer genius of that notion, and he rather painfully realized that if he’d been in possession of such a map during the disastrous campaign in the southern Empire, his nephew Astal might still be alive.

  Sorgan’s lean and sour-faced cousin Skell had brought an advance force to Lattash from the Land of Maag, and he’d put his men to work building a fort some distance up the ravine. A sudden snowstorm had evidently compelled the Maags to suspend the construction, however, and that had Sorgan more than a little concerned. He asked Red-Beard’s Chief White-Braid about when they could expect the snow to melt off so that Skell’s men could go back to work.

  As they came to know each other better, Narasan and Hook-Beak frequently wandered away from the supposed purpose of their daily meetings in Lady Zelana’s cave to share reminiscences of past wars. Narasan had observed over his years in the army that “war stories” tended to bring men closer togther, and given the current situation, these relaxed exchanges could be even more important than discussions of strategy. Although it seemed most unnatural, he found that he was growing to like this uncivilized pirate.

  The weather cleared a few days later, and about midafternoon the fleet of ships that was carrying Narasan’s advance force sailed into the harbor.

  There was a certain wariness on both sides when Narasan introduced his officers to the Maags, and Sorgan rather wisely suggested that it might be better if their forces were separated by the river when they began their march up the ravine after the annual flood had subsided.

  Then on a calm and cloudy day Lady Zelana summoned them to her cave to give them certain information about the enemies they’d be facing during the upcoming war. Longbow introduced them to an elderly native called One-Who-Heals, who immediately descended into the world of absurdity and superstition, describing their enemies as creatures who were an impossible mixture of insects, reptiles, and humans. Narasan managed to keep his composure enough to suppress an urge to laugh out loud, but he was more than a little startled when Veltan confirmed the old native’s ridiculous assertions.

  Then the archer Longbow described a process whereby he’d been able to extract venom from dead enemies and then use it against their living counterparts. Sorgan found that to be amusing for some reason Narasan couldn’t quite understand. Sorgan appeared to have a rather warped sense of humor.

  Then, even as the natives had predicted, a very warm wind swept in from the west, and not long thereafter, a solid wall of water burst out of the mouth of the ravine. Narasan hadn’t really expected a flood of such magnitude, and he was stunned by the sheer volume of water rushing down to the bay.

  The Trogites and Maags remained on board their ships waiting for the flood to subside, but Narasan did go ashore once to take a closer look at one of the drowned enemies. As it chanced to happen, the old shaman One-Who-Heals was on the berm that stood between the river and the village, and he pointed out the peculiarities of a drowned enemy. It wasn’t much bigger than a half-grown child, and it was garbed in something resembling a hooded cloak woven from some sort of grey fabric. Then the old native pried the creature’s mouth open with a stick to show Narasan its fangs. It was obvious that the long fangs were not the teeth of a human. The spines along the outside of the creature’s forearms were also very unusual.

  Narasan’s doubts began to fade. “If I’d known about this, I’d have held out for more gold,” he muttered to himself.

  4

  The weather had turned warm as the flood subsided, and Narasan found it to be almost pleasant as he and his men began their march up the south bench of the ravine, despite the fact that things were very muddy.

  As they neared the gap at the head of the ravine, the trees became less intimidating and the undergrowth diminished. The upper end of the ravine seemed almost to have a parklike quality with snow-covered mountains off in the distance and a tiny brook trickling over stones through a grassy little meadow surrounded by evergreen trees.

  The archer Longbow was waiting for them, and he led Narasan, Gunda, Padan, and Jalkan up to the narrow gap to give them a chance to see the barren Wasteland lying far below. Then he drew their attention to a rocky ridge line a mile or so out in the desert. “There they are,” he said.

  Narasan stared in awe at the enemy force crowded along that ridge line. So far as he could tell, they stretched from horizon to horizon.

  Sorgan and his men arrived not long thereafter, and Sorgan seemed to be also a bit disturbed by the enormity of the approaching enemy force.

  When the clever young Keselo discovered that the sandy slope was in actuality a stairway constructed of stone blocks, however, the situation changed radically. The stairway was a convenient source of building material, and the fortress Narasan’s men could build with those blocks would be virtually impregnable.

  Not long after daybreak the following morning, a hollow roar that could not possibly come from a human throat came echoing out of the desert, and enemies by the thousands came charging across the desert and up the now useless stairway. Longbow’s archers lined the battlements along the front wall of the fort, and when the enemy soldiers came into range, Longbow lifted his horn and sounded the death-knell for almost half of the attacking force. The cloud of arrows rising from the front wall of the fort quite nearly blotted out the sunrise, and it immediately set off an avalanche of dead enemies rolling back on down the stairway to confound the rear ranks. The mindless charge continued, however, until the last few enemy soldiers were killed before they ever reached the front wall of the fort.

  Narasan smiled briefly. Things seemed to be going rather well this morning.

  Veltan came by early that afternoon to speak with Longbow about the total lack of any encounters with the enemy during the trek up the ravine. Longbow gave him an explanation that chilled Narasan all the way down to the bone. It was fairly obvious now that they were trapped here at the head of the ravine with no possible means of escape.

  Longbow, however, had already solved that problem—or so it appeared. As it turned out, however, their enemies were about two steps ahead of them. There were hidden burrows near the bench on the south side of the ravine, and their enemies swarmed out of those burrows and killed at least a quarter of the party of Maags who were coming down the ravine.

  Narasan was certain that the time had come for a conference with his friend Sorgan, but Sorgan, it appeared, was way ahead of him. The burly Maag came down to the bottom of the ravine and joined Narasan there. They agreed that the hidden burrows had quite obviously made their original plan obsolete, and they now faced an entirely different situation.

  They had just begun to come up with alternatives when a deep rumble preceded an earthquake so violent that they could barely stand up.

  Then there was an almost deafening crash of thunder and a blinding flash of light as Veltan appeared out of nowhere. “Run!” he shouted. “Run for your lives! Get your people away from this cursed ravine!”

  Th
en Red-Beard, who’d been staring at the upper end of the ravine, suddenly shouted, “Fire Mountain!” and he turned and ran.

  Red-Beard’s somewhat distorted sense of humor deserted him at that point, Commander Narsan noted. Of course, with the twin volcanos at the head of the ravine spouting liquid lava-rock miles into the air, nobody in Narasan’s army was laughing very much as they fled down the south rim of the ravine toward what they all fervently hoped was the safety of the bay of Lattash where their ships waited.

  When they reached the vicinity of Skell’s fort, Narasan paused. The fort had been built out of massive boulders, and the very narrow gap at the center that had been intended to let the river pass through wouldn’t really allow very much lava to rush on down. The fort had been constructed to hold back an enemy, and it seemed that it might even do its job when the enemy happened to be liquid lava.

  When the first trickles of lava hit the large pond on the upstream side of the fort, a vast cloud of steam came boiling up to block Narasan’s view. Muttering a few choice curses, he moved on down to a point on the rim where he could see the downhill side of the fort. There was steam boiling out, but he didn’t see any lava streaming through. The lava was quite obviously turning back into solid rock when it hit the water, and that rock was reinforcing what had started out as a fort, but was now a dam. Narasan had more than a few suspicions at that point. Given the heat of the liquid lava, the pond to the east of Skell’s dam should have vanished in a cloud of steam, but it didn’t. Evidently, somebody—or something—was replenishing the water as fast as or faster than the lava could boil it away. Narasan was greatly relieved. Skell’s dam, aided by that steady supply of water, would hold the lava back for long enough to give his men time to row on out to the fleet lying in the harbor. It appeared that he and his men would survive—even in the face of the natural disaster which had come boiling up out of the bowels of the earth.