“Probably not,” Narasan conceded, “but the thought of vast amounts of gold just lying on the ground waiting for them to come along and pick it up might have unhinged their minds just a bit.”
“All of their minds? Wouldn’t at least a few of them want more proof?”
“I think I see what you’re getting at, Longbow,” Narasan said. “Those Church soldiers aren’t behaving normally, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they’re charging at my rear, and I can’t hold them back and fight off the bug-people at the same time. What set you off on this?”
“Somebody—or something—has been talking to me while I’m asleep. The language is quite formal, but what it all boils down to is ‘get out of the way.’ This whoever—or whatever—seems to believe that those Church armies and the servants of the Vlagh will destroy each other if we’ll just get out from between them and stop dropping boulders on that ramp the Church armies are building.”
“When did you suddenly become one of the Dreamers, Longbow?” Dahlaine asked skeptically.
“It’s not really the same sort of dream,” Longbow replied. “The children make things happen with their dreams. I think that all I’m supposed to do is persuade you to step aside.”
“Whose voice is it that you’re hearing?” Rabbit asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Longbow admitted. “I know that I’ve heard it before, but I can’t quite put my finger on just exactly who it is.”
“I think we’re going to need something more in the way of proof before we abandon our defenses,” Gunda said with a note of skepticism. “There are just a few too many ‘maybes’ involved in your dream, Longbow.”
“I think that pretty much sums it up, Longbow,” Dahlaine said. “If somebody—or something—has been tampering with the minds of the Church soldiers, I’d say that it’s more probably the Vlagh than some unknown friend. If we pull out and the Church armies join forces with the servants of the Vlagh, we could very well lose the entirety of Veltan’s Domain before summer’s over. We’ll keep our eyes open, but if we don’t get something a bit more solid to work with, I don’t think we’ll dare to just pack up and leave.”
“They’re sort of thick-headed, aren’t they?” Torl said quietly to Longbow as the two of them stood atop the central tower of Gunda’s wall. “It might just be that they weren’t down south to watch the grand plan of the Trogs go all to pieces when those farmers started reciting the fairy tale.” Then the young Maag looked down at the Wasteland. “That might have something to do with it, you know. Your theory might have carried more weight if that sand down there was yellow instead of red.”
“I’m not sure if even that would have convinced them,” Longbow disagreed. “They’re a very stubborn people, Torl, and their ideas sometimes get locked in stone.”
“It looks like we might have weather coming,” Torl said, pointing at the ridge line off to the west.
Longbow frowned slightly as he peered at the boiling cloud swirling higher and higher over the ridge. “I don’t think it’s weather, Torl,” he disagreed. “It looks more like a sandstorm to me.”
“I hate those,” Torl declared. “Sand seems to creep under my clothes and slide down my throat when those silly things come boiling in like that.”
Longbow frowned slightly. “It shouldn’t be coming from that direction,” he said. “The west side of that ridge is covered with trees and bushes. I don’t think there’s enough sand over there to form a cloud that big.”
“It’s yellow, Longbow, and you don’t come across very many yellow trees around here.”
The yellow cloud came rolling ponderously down the slope and then streamed on out over the barren Wasteland.
“Good baby!” Torl shouted up at the cloud. “Go pester the bug-men and stay away from here!”
Then the yellow cloud seemed almost to coalesce, sinking rapidly down to cover the Wasteland with a dense shroud of dull yellow. Then it seemed almost to sink into the sand itself.
And then it was gone—almost as if it had been sucked into the very sand.
The sun came out into the open again, and Longbow stared in utter disbelief at what now lay spread out as far as the northern horizon.
“Good God!” Torl gasped. “That’s gold out there! I thought it was just iron ore, but it’s gold!”
Longbow suddenly laughed. “Not exactly, friend Torl,” he said. “It might look like gold, but it’s still iron. I’d say that our unknown friend has just baited her trap and she’ll probably catch about a half-million Trogites with it. I think life just got a lot brighter, don’t you?”
4
Narasan’s soldiers were all standing along the top of Gunda’s wall staring out at the glittering Wasteland in awed silence.
“I think that maybe you should wake your men up, Narasan,” Longbow suggested. “The creatures of the Wasteland are still coming up that slope, and if your men don’t hold them back, we’ll have company right up here.”
Narasan pulled his eyes away from the vast ocean of glittering yellow sand and looked around. “Get back to your posts!” he barked at his men. “You’re not getting paid to look at the scenery!” Then his expression became just a bit sheepish. “I’m not sure that’s going to work, Longbow. My own head’s starting to come unraveled at the sight of all that glittering sand out there.”
“I think that’s the idea, friend Narasan. It might help if you keep reminding yourself that what you see out there is imitation gold, not the real thing. A lot of things are starting to come together now. First the farmers recited the story about the fellow who came up here and saw what we’re seeing right now. Then the Church soldiers believed the story without any tangible proof and came rushing up here to gather up something that didn’t exist until about a half-hour ago. Somebody out there’s tampering, and in spite of everything Zelana’s told me, I’m almost positive that it’s not the Vlagh.”
“I certainly hope not,” Narasan agreed. “If the Vlagh can create the kind of illusion that just came popping out of nowhere out in that desert I’m likely to lose my whole army.”
“Commander Narasan!” a soldier called from one of the other towers atop Gunda’s wall, “we’ve got pirates coming up from behind us!”
Narasan and Longbow turned quickly to look off to the south. Narasan chuckled suddenly. “I think some help just arrived. That looks to me to be Sorgan Hook-Beak. Am I right or not?”
Longbow nodded. “He made good time getting back here. I’m just guessing, but I think Zelana’s been tampering again.”
“There seems to be quite a lot of tampering going on around here, wouldn’t you say?” Narasan suggested with a slight smile.
“Not out loud, I wouldn’t,” Longbow replied.
Sorgan Hook-Beak froze in his tracks when he reached the top of Gunda’s wall and caught his first glimpse of the vast “sea of gold” lying off to the north. “Dear gods!” he exclaimed, staring out over the glittering Wasteland.
“It’s not real,” Longbow told him. “It’s just more of that imitation gold Grock found when we were coming up through Nanton’s pass. Somebody out there’s playing games.”
“I’m going to have to see some proof of that, Longbow,” Sorgan declared. “It certainly looks like gold to me.”
“Longbow’s certain that it’s just a hoax, Hook-Beak,” Narasan explained, “but I think I’ll side with you this time. I want to see some proof that it’s not gold before I just shrug it off.”
“Rabbit!” Longbow called, “We need you!”
The little Maag came up the stairs to the central tower.
“Can you tell from here if that glittery sand out there is real gold or just more of that fake gold?” Sorgan demanded.
Rabbit squinted out at the Wasteland. “Not for certain sure, Cap’n,” he replied. “I’d need to get my hands on some to be able to tell one way or the other.”
“That might just be a little difficult right now,” Narasan said. “We seem to have a very large numbe
r of unfriendly creatures standing in the way.”
Rabbit squinted out at the Wasteland lying below. “I might just be able to drop a basket tied to the end of a rope down there from up on top of that west ridge, but I’m not sure just how much I’d be able to scoop up if I did that. What I’d really need is—” He stopped suddenly and smacked his forehead with his hand. “I must be about half-asleep,” he said. “I’ve got something in my purse that’ll prove one way or another just exactly what that sand out there really is.”
“Oh?” Sorgan asked. “What’s that?”
“I bought it from another smith once when we’d hauled into port at Kormo. He called it a ‘lodestone.’ I’d heard about them, and I thought it might be sort of interesting, but I’ve never used it for anything serious. Anytime it gets close to something made out of iron, it reaches out and grabs it.”
“Have you ever seen that actually happen?” Sorgan asked skeptically.
Rabbit grinned at his leader. “I surely have, Cap’n,” he said. “When we’re in port, and I’m running low on money, I can almost always win a few tankards of good strong ale if I can find somebody who’s willing to bet that I don’t have a rock that knows how to jump.” He untied his purse from his belt and fished around in it with his fingers. “Here she is,” he said rather proudly, holding up a black lump of rock about the size of a man’s thumb. Then he took his knife from its sheath and held it a few inches above the stone. The black lump leaped up and stuck to Rabbit’s knife with a kind of clinking sound.
Sorgan blinked. “Now that’s something I’ve never seen before. I can see how you managed to win a lot of bets, Rabbit.”
“I’ve heard about them,” Narasan said, “but I’ve never actually seen one.”
Rabbit ran his fingers over his lodestone. “I think I’d better put her in a cloth pouch,” he mused. “She’s all sort of smooth and round, and just tying a rope around her might not work too well, and I definitely don’t want to lose her. I’ll make a sort of pouch out of cloth and put her in that. Then I’ll tie the rope to the pouch.”
“Won’t the pouch sort of block off whatever makes her jump at iron?” Sorgan asked.
Rabbit shook his head. “She always jumps at iron, Cap’n—or iron jumps at her. She’ll even reach out through leather to grab iron. She just loves iron, for some reason. I’ll put her in a cloth pouch, lower her down to that shining yellow sand, and drag her back and forth a couple times. If that sand out there is really iron, the outside of the pouch will be covered with it when I haul her back in. If nothing sticks to the pouch, the sand isn’t iron. It might not be gold, but it definitely won’t be iron.”
“I think I’ve seen a good place for us to try that,” Longbow told his little friend. “It’s over on the other side of that west ridge. The rock face that goes down to the Wasteland isn’t very high there, so we won’t have to carry so much rope.”
“Let’s go, then,” Rabbit said. “I think that if we come up with the right answer, we’ve just won another war.”
“Whoever’s doing this for us is very clever,” Torl said when he joined Rabbit and Longbow as they climbed up the ridge to the west of the basin. “I’d say that this desert of imitation gold was what he had in mind right from the very start.”
“She,” Longbow corrected. “It was a woman’s voice that kept ordering me to get out of the way.”
“Do you suppose it might have been Lady Zelana’s sister?” Rabbit asked, shifting the coil of rope he was carrying over his shoulder.
Longbow shook his head. “I’m sure I’d have recognized her voice,” he said. “The voice I heard wasn’t Aracia’s. It was a familiar voice, but I can’t seem to remember where I’ve heard it before.”
“Well, whoever it is seems to have even more power than the people who hired us do,” Torl declared. “She’s probably the greatest swindler in the whole world.”
“Swindler?” Rabbit protested.
“Waving fake gold at people isn’t exactly honest, Rabbit,” Torl said with a sudden grin, “but it doesn’t bother me one little bit. She just hired five armies to fight our war for us, and she paid them with imitation gold.”
“We will have to hold back the creatures of the Wasteland until our new friends finish building that ramp,” Longbow reminded him.
“That’s true, I suppose, but cousin Sorgan’s men are coming up that shepherd’s pass to lend us a hand. We don’t really have to kill off all of the bug-people now. All we have to do is hold them back until our new friends get here. Then we can step aside and cheer while the churchies and the bugs destroy each other.” He looked around at the rocky ridge. “How much farther is this place we’re looking for, Longbow?”
“Just on the other side of that large tree,” Longbow replied, pointing on ahead.
“Are you sure we’ve got enough rope?” Rabbit asked. “The Cap’n won’t be too happy if we can’t get an answer for him until sometime tomorrow.”
“It’s only about fifty feet high there, little friend,” Longbow replied.
“If it’s that shallow, why aren’t the bug-men coming up there instead of out on that slope?” Torl asked.
“It’s too narrow,” Longbow explained. “The Vlagh needs places that are fairly wide when it starts moving its servants.”
They passed the towering tree and went down into a narrow streambed that had cut its way down through the surrounding rocks.
Torl looked out across the Wasteland. “It looks to me like your ‘sea of gold’ ran dry a ways out there, Longbow,” he said. “It goes back to being red near the far side of this ridge, and after a mile or so the red fades out and everything goes back to being plain old brown sand.”
“It’s just bait, Torl,” Longbow explained. “Our unknown friend’s trying to lure the fish we want to catch here, not all over the Wasteland out there.”
Torl looked a bit sheepish. “I guess I didn’t think of that,” he admitted. “All that imitation gold out there seems to be turning my head off for some reason.”
“Your mind should clear up as soon as we get the proof that the yellow sand cluttering the Wasteland is nothing but a fraud,” Longbow suggested.
“You wouldn’t think that water—which isn’t really very hard—could cut through solid rock like this, would you?” Rabbit asked. “Particularly since it only runs down through these gullies for a few weeks out of every year.”
“That sort of depends on how much time the water has to get the job done,” Longbow explained.
“Just how long would you say it took the water to cut out this little gulch?”
“Not too long—fifty thousand years, maybe.”
“That’s your idea of a short time, Longbow?”
Longbow smiled. “Water’s very patient, my little friend,” he replied. “All it really wants to do is go downhill.”
They moved cautiously down the now-dry streambed and stopped a few feet back from the abrupt break.
“There’s a lot of the new sand right at the bottom of this cliff, Rabbit,” Torl said, carefully leaning out over the edge.
“How far down would you say it is?”
“Fifty—maybe sixty—feet is about all.”
“That had me just a bit worried,” Rabbit admitted. “We’d have all looked a little foolish if this rope was about three feet too short.” He sat down and took a piece of loosely woven cloth out from under his belt and gathered it up around his lodestone. Then he passed his knife over the makeshift bag.
The pouch jumped up and attached itself to the knife.
“It looks like we’re in business,” Rabbit said, carefully tying the cloth into a tight sack. Then he tied the end of the rope coil he’d brought along to the sack and carefully began to lower the bag to the sand below. When it reached the sand, he raised it and then lowered it several times to make certain that it would capture even more grains of the glittering sand. Then he carefully pulled the rope back up, took hold of the cloth sack, and held it up for Longbow an
d Torl to see. The little pouch was almost completely covered with glittering yellow flakes.
“It looks to me like she’s very hungry, Rabbit,” Torl said. “You really ought to feed her more often, you know.”
Rabbit grinned broadly. “She earned her keep today,” he said. “When Narasan and Cap’n Sorgan see this, they’ll know for certain that all that shiny yellow sand out there’s nothing but imitation gold. I think Longbow’s friend just won this war for us.”
It was about midafternoon when Longbow and his two friends came back down the steep west ridge into the grassy basin, and Zelana and Veltan were waiting for them near the geyser.
“Well?” Zelana asked.
Grinning broadly, Rabbit held up the pouch covered with flakes of imitation gold. “Does this answer that question?” he asked. “It’s pretty enough, but it’s sure not gold.”
“I think we’d better reconsider a few things, sister mine,” Veltan said. “I don’t see any advantage to the Vlagh in this hoax. If we stop pestering those Church soldiers and let them finish their ramp, they’ll go crazy when they see what appears to be gold stretching out as far as the eye can reach. They’ll rush on down the slope and trample the servants of the Vlagh into the ground just to get to something that isn’t really worth anything at all.”
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