The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  “Up in the hill country. My nephew’s watching over them while I’m gone.”

  “You won’t be going back up into the mountains with your sheep very soon, will you?”

  “Not until the snow melts off and I’ve got them sheared. My flock produced a lot of wool this past winter.”

  “Good. You usually graze your flock up near the Falls of Vash, don’t you?”

  “Almost always. There’s good grass up there and plenty of water.”

  “Keep an eye out for these strangers, will you? And if they come back again, I’d really appreciate it if you’d send your nephew down here to tell me about it. This is something that Veltan should really know about.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Omago.” Nanton hitched up his belt. “I’d better get on back to my flock,” he said. “There’s a young shepherdess near where my flock’s grazing, and my nephew’s breaking out in that sort of rash, so he’s not paying much attention to the flock.”

  “That’s been going around quite a bit here lately,” Omago said with no hint of a smile.

  “I think spring has a lot to do with it, and spring isn’t really all that far away.” Nanton shrugged. “It helps to increase the flock, I guess.”

  “Are we talking about people or sheep?”

  “Both flocks, probably. As long as there’s good grazing, it doesn’t really hurt anything, I guess. Babies are almost as pretty as lambs, and once they grow up, we can put them to work. Have a nice day, Omago.” And then he turned and walked away.

  “I think you’d better tell Veltan about them, Omago,” the little flax farmer Selga suggested a week or so later. “They don’t really belong around here, and they talk sort of strange.”

  “Oh?” Omago said. “Just exactly what do you mean by ‘strange,’ Selga?”

  “It sort of sounded to me like their teeth were getting in the way of their tongues. I think people call it lisping. Anyway, they’re awfully short. I’m not very tall myself, but their heads didn’t even come up as high as my shoulder, and those grey, hooded smocks they wore weren’t made of linen or wool. It was something else entirely. They were asking all kinds of odd questions, but I saw right off that it wasn’t any of their business, so I didn’t give them any straight answers. You might want to tell Veltan about that. If these dinky little strangers are planning to give us trouble, they didn’t get much help from me.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that, Selga. Were you able to find out which direction they came from?”

  “As close as I could tell, they came down from out of the mountains near the Falls of Vash. If I happen to come across any more of them, I’ll ask them about that. Tell Veltan that I’m keeping my eyes open, and I’ll find out as much as I can about them.”

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that, Selga.”

  Omago was certain that Veltan should be aware of these strangers, so before supper that evening he went up through the twilight to Veltan’s house to have a word with Yaltar. He went on in, climbed the stone stairway, and rapped on the little boy’s door. “It’s only me, Yaltar,” he called.

  Yaltar opened the door. “Come inside, Omago,” he said.

  “Do you have any idea of when he’s coming home?” Omago asked, looking with a certain disapproval at the boy’s cluttered room and unmade bed.

  “He didn’t say for sure, Omago,” the boy replied. “I guess there are some things going on that need his attention.”

  “As soon as he comes home, tell him that I need to talk with him, Yaltar,” Omago told the little boy. “Some peculiar things have been happening here lately, and I think he should know about them.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him, Omago,” the boy replied, fingering the peculiar-looking stone he had hanging on a leather thong around his neck like a pendant.

  “How did you manage to come by that opal, Yaltar?” Omago asked.

  “I found it just outside the front door,” Yaltar replied. “Isn’t it pretty?”

  “Beautiful,” Omago agreed. “It’s a bit peculiar that you found it, though. As far as I know, there aren’t any opals around here.”

  “Maybe it was wandering around and got lost—or maybe it started feeling lonesome.”

  “Rocks almost never get lonesome, Yaltar. Ara’s cooking supper right now. Come along, and we’ll go eat.”

  “That sounds like a great idea, Omago.”

  Veltan came home a week or so later, and he stopped by Omago’s house quite early one morning. “Yaltar said that you wanted to tell me something,” he said. “He seemed to think it might be important.”

  “It could be,” Omago replied, and he repeated what Nanton and Selga had told him about the strangers and their questions.

  “I have to go talk with my brother,” Veltan said. “Keep your ears open, and let me know about any more visits when I come back.”

  “I’ll do that,” Omago promised.

  The spring thaw that year produced a near disaster. The snow pack in the mountains had been much deeper than usual, and the spring wind that melted off the snow that year wasn’t just warm; it seemed even hot. All the streams coming down out of the mountains ran bank-full overnight, and then the floods began. To make things even worse, Veltan and Yaltar were away, so Veltan wasn’t there to control the floods, and the farmers couldn’t do anything except wring their hands as they watched the waters engulf their fields.

  The shepherds who customarily grazed their flocks in the region to the west of the Falls of Vash began to bring word of some serious trouble in the Domain of Veltan’s sister Zelana, but the messages were sorely lacking in details.

  As the flood began to subside, a few more shepherds stopped by, but their stories about events in Zelana’s Domain were so lurid that Omago viewed them with profound skepticism.

  And then one night after the apple trees had begun to bloom, a clap of thunder woke Omago out of a sound sleep.

  “Veltan’s back, love,” Ara told him. “I think we’d better go on up to his house. He’ll be able to tell us what’s really going on in his sister’s Domain.”

  “You’re probably right, Ara,” Omago agreed. “The wild stories we’ve been hearing are starting to make me a little cross.”

  “I’ll go with you, dear heart,” Ara said briskly. “I’m just as curious as you are.” That struck Omago as a bit strange, but he let it pass.

  They rose from their bed, dressed themselves, and went on up the hill in the warm spring darkness. When they reached the house, Veltan was standing in the doorway. “I was hoping that you’d stop by,” he said. “Please come in. I have a great deal to tell you, and I don’t have much time.”

  “I’m glad you came home, Veltan,” Omago said as he and Ara followed Veltan up the stairs to the room where Yaltar spent most of his time. “The shepherds up near the border of your sister’s Domain have been telling me all sorts of wild stories, and I’d like to know what’s really going on up there.”

  “You might want to know, Omago,” Veltan said bleakly, “but I don’t think you’re going to like it very much.”

  They went into the cluttered room, and Ara looked around. “Where’s Yaltar?” she asked.

  “He’s currently in the care of my sister,” Veltan replied. “I don’t think he’s quite ready to ride my pet just yet.”

  “Good thinking,” Ara replied.

  “All right, then,” Veltan said, “as it turns out, Yaltar is indeed one of the Dreamers, and his dream gave us a glimpse of the future. The creatures of the Wasteland have invaded Zelana’s Domain, but Yaltar’s dream gave us time to make some preparations. Zelana went off to the west and hired an army of Maag pirates to fight the war in her Domain, and I went south and hired some professional soldiers to help us defend this part of the Land of Dhrall. I took an advance party of Trogite soldiers up to Zelana’s Domain to lend her a hand.”

  “Some of the shepherds told me about that,” Omago said. “I thought they were just making it up.”

  “No, Om
ago, it’s really true. The outlanders are more advanced than we are, and their weapons are made of iron—or bronze in some cases. All of the tools and weapons here in the Land of Dhrall are made of stone or animal bones, but metal weapons are much better.” Veltan took a knife out from under his belt and handed it to Omago. “That’s an iron knife, and I’m sure you can see how much stronger it is than flint or bone could ever be.”

  Omago took the peculiar-looking knife and carefully rubbed his thumb across the edge. “Extremely sharp, isn’t it?” he observed.

  “Indeed it is,” Veltan agreed. “Did the flood do much damage down here?”

  “It could have been worse, I suppose,” Omago reported. “A fair number of people lost their houses, and I’ve heard that quite a few on to the south of here were drowned. It’s subsiding now, so I should be able to get some more accurate numbers before too much longer.”

  “The flood was a bit extreme, perhaps, but it was necessary. The buglike creatures that serve the Vlagh were invading my sister’s Domain, and Zelana’s Dreamer conjured up that flood to stop them until our hired armies were ready to meet them. The flood drowned thousands of them, and the Vlagh had to send new forces out of the Wasteland. The enemy force was using a ravine as their invasion route, and our forces have managed to block it off. We can’t really be sure how long the enemy forces will keep trying to break through. They aren’t really very bright, but sooner or later, I think they’ll give up and change direction. If they come south, we’ll have to be ready to meet them—probably up near the Falls of Vash.”

  “Do you think your hired army will have enough time to get here before we’re overrun?” Omago asked.

  “I’m sure they will. They have large ships, so they’ll come by sea rather than marching overland. I’m going to try to persuade my sister to send some help as well. Her people are hunters, and they’re excellent archers. The commander of the army I hired is a brilliant strategist, and once he gets his people in place, it’s not very likely that our enemy’s going to be able to get past him.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be of much help, Veltan,” Omago said dubiously. “We should be able to provide food for your outlanders, but we don’t even have anything resembling weapons. The shepherds use slings to protect their flocks from wolves, but other than that—” Omago left it up in the air.

  “We’ll see, Omago. Talk with the other farmers and see how they feel about this. I think the most important thing right now is to start gathering up supplies. The Trogite army I hired has about a hundred thousand men, so we’ll need a lot of food.”

  “I’ll pass the word along, Veltan, and we’ll get started.”

  “I knew I could count on you,” Veltan replied. “I think I’d better get on back. I wanted to warn you about what’s probably coming, but for right now, the war’s going on in Zelana’s Domain, so I want to be there in case she needs me.”

  Omago had a growing sense of apprehension. Nothing in his background had anything to do with war, so he didn’t have the faintest idea of what to expect.

  “Don’t worry so much, dear heart,” Ara told him as they went on back down the hill. “Just do the best you can and let Veltan do the worrying.”

  “For the moment, helping him worry is about the only thing I can manage, Ara,” Omago replied glumly.

  3

  The metal knife Veltan had given him opened some enormous possibilities for Omago. He immediately saw dozens of ways to improve common tools, but that would probably come later. For the moment, he felt obliged to concentrate on weapons. As nearly as he was able to determine, a weapon should serve two functions—hurt your enemy, and prevent your enemy from hurting you.

  The metal knife could probably damage any enemy who came too close, but if the enemy had weapons of his own, things might start to get a little sticky.

  “I wish this thing had a longer handle,” he muttered. Then he suddenly felt just a little foolish. Many of his own tools—particularly in his orchard—consisted of long poles with a cross-piece firmly attached so that he could pull the branches of his fruit trees down and pick the fruit without climbing up the tree. The longer handle he needed was right there in his toolshed.

  As a sort of experiment, Omago removed the cross-piece from one of his harvest poles and firmly lashed the knife to the tip. The pole stopped being a tool at that point and became what might be called a weapon. Omago tried a few practice jabs with his modified pole, and it seemed that it definitely had some potential. If his enemy came running at him, a jab in the belly or the face with that sharp knife would most likely hurt the enemy, and it might even kill him. Not only that, the length of the pole would keep his enemy from getting anywhere at all close to him.

  “Well, now,” he murmured. “Isn’t that interesting?”

  The notion of deliberately hurting people was completely alien to the farmers of Veltan’s Domain, but if the stories Omago had been hearing lately came anywhere near to the truth, the approaching enemies were not people. A few of them might look like people, but that was probably just a hoax. The term that had sort of drifted down from Zelana’s Domain had been “bug-men,” and that might be very useful. If Omago stressed the word “bug” when describing their enemies, the local farmers wouldn’t feel at all guilty about exterminating them. On occasion, swarms of locusts had attacked the fields, and the local farmers had found that grass fires were a fairly effective way to deal with them. It occurred to Omago that the word “bug” might be even more useful than metal weapons. Farmers start feeling belligerent every time they hear that word.

  All sorts of possibilities were coming to the surface, and Omago went home to supper filled with enthusiasm.

  “What are you grinning about, Omago?” Ara asked as he sat down at the table.

  “I don’t think we farmers are going to be quite as helpless as Veltan seems to believe. Turning tools into weapons isn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it might be, and I think I’ve stumbled across the solution to a much bigger problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “Farmers will go to any lengths to protect their fields from bugs, and if I understood what Veltan was telling us about these invaders correctly, they’re at least part bug. All I’ll have to do is stand on a hill and shout ‘Bug!’ As soon as they hear that word, every farmer in Veltan’s Domain will come running to help me stamp them out.”

  “That’s very interesting, dear heart,” she said. “Now eat your supper before it gets cold.”

  Omago sent word to several of his friends, and that evening they came across the fields to his house. He took them out to his toolshed and showed them his improvised weapon. They all seemed quite interested.

  “Do you think Veltan could get any more of these knives for us, Veltan?” the bulky wheat farmer Benkar asked. “If we all had metal knives like that one of yours, we could tie them to poles like you did, and then we could lend the outlanders a hand when those bug-men come down out of the mountains.”

  “I’m not all that sure, Benkar,” Omago said a bit dubiously. “The outlanders might not want us getting in their way when the fights start, and I don’t really have any idea of just how valuable this knife really is.”

  “It’s something to think about, Omago,” the bearded shepherd Nanton said. “If all of you farmers had sharp poles like that one you’ve got, you could slow the bug-men down, and then I and my shepherds could rain rocks on them with our slings. Not very many of them would come out of a meeting like that alive. Some of the stories that came down from Zelana’s Domain suggested that the outlanders sort of looked down their noses at her people—right up until her bow-and-arrow men started killing bug-people by the hundreds.”

  “If somebody tries to look down his nose at me, I’ll knock his teeth out!” the small farmer Selga flared.

  “We’d have to practice for a while,” the farmer Eknor said.

  “How can we practice if Omago’s got the only iron knife in the whole of Veltan’s Domain?” Benkar demanded.<
br />
  “It’s the pole that does most of the work, Benkar,” Eknor said. “We can practice jabbing with just the poles. Then when the outlanders get here, they can give us knives to tie to the end of the poles and we’ll be ready to go to work. It won’t really be too much different from what we do when we harvest wheat. All we have to do is walk side by side in a straight line—harvesting bug-men instead of wheat.”

  Omago managed to conceal his grin. This was turning out even better than he’d hoped it would. The word “bug” had brought all the local farmers to his side almost immediately, and they were obviously feeling very belligerent. It was entirely possible that they weren’t nearly as helpless as Veltan seemed to believe they were. Nanton and Eknor had responded to the threat exactly as Omago had hoped they would. Things were definitely looking up.

  As the days passed, Omago’s “bug-men” warning brought more and more farmers and shepherds in from the surrounding territory to join the impromptu army. Eknor instructed the farmers in the business of holding their still-harmless poles steadily out to the front and keeping their lines straight while Nanton gave the shepherds extensive training in the art of hitting targets with their sling-thrown rocks at increasingly longer distances.