The Younger Gods

by David Eddings

  “Excellent, Aldas,” the little priestess said. “I knew that I could depend on you.”

  “I’ll go back immediately, Holy Alcevan,” the young man promised. “I’ll watch for days and days until I can get the little girl alone, and then—” His voice abruptly stopped, and Torl heard a gurgling sound.

  Torl blinked. “She didn’t!” he exclaimed under his breath. The stream of red blood coming through the doorway, however, said that she had. Alcevan quite obviously was not prepared to accept failure.

  “I stayed back out of sight until she left the room, Veltan,” Torl said somewhat later after Lillabeth had gone to sleep. “I’m not sure just exactly how she did it with a stone knife, but the poor boy’s throat had been cut from ear to ear. First she told him that everything was all right, and then she killed him right there on the spot.”

  Veltan’s face hardened. “She’s even worse than I thought,” he said. “She’s after something here, and it’s obvious that she’ll go to any length to get it. I’m quite sure that she’s not what she appears to be.”

  Torl suddenly grinned. “I don’t really think fat old Bersla will be around very much longer, do you?”

  “Interesting notion, Torl. Be very careful, but try to keep an eye on her. We might just be looking at extreme ambition here. If that’s the case, she’ll do almost anything to replace Bersla as the high priest—or Takal, as the local term has it—but it might go even further.”

  “Are you saying that she wants to replace your sister?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out, Torl. Alcevan wants something, but I don’t think we know for sure just what it is. How familiar are you with all these silly corridors here in the temple?”

  “I think I’ve got a nodding acquaintance with most of them, Veltan,” Torl replied. “Of course I come across a new one every so often, but those are the ones that don’t really go anywhere. I can find my way around without much trouble.”

  “Good. Stay out of sight as much as possible, but do what you can to find out just exactly what Alcevan’s goal really is.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Veltan,” Torl promised, “but I think you should stay close to Lillabeth. She needs protection right now.”

  “I’ll get right on it, Torl,” Veltan replied in an obvious imitation of something Torl had said earlier.

  “Ha,” Torl replied in the same flat tone Gunda always used. “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  Veltan burst out laughing at that point.

  Torl had found an unused corridor that went past the back side of Aracia’s throne room. Like most of the rest of the temple, it was not well-made, and Torl had been able to hear what was going on in the throne room. He crept through the shoddy corridor until he could hear voices. Then he put his ear to the wall.

  “We don’t know this Enalla person who’ll replace you when you lie down to rest, Holy Aracia,” Alcevan was saying, “but isn’t it possible that she’ll decide to usurp your temple and tell us that she is the true god of your Domain and order us to bow down and worship her instead of you? Of course, after a few generations, nobody will even remember that you were ever here.”

  “Is there no way, Divine Aracia, that you can delay the arrival of this Enalla?” Bersla asked. “We have the invasion by the Creatures of the Wasteland in progress right now. Could you not remain here with us until they are driven back? You are wise beyond our understanding, but this Enalla person will have only recently awakened from her long sleep, so she will be as helpless as a child. Should the Creatures of the Wasteland o’erwhelm your people, is it not possible that the Vlagh itself will assume your holy throne?”

  Then Aracia’s voice, colder than ice, replied. “These matters are none of your concern—neither of your concerns. I will, before this season ends, go to my rest. Enalla is my alternate, and my Domain will be hers while I sleep. You will obey her in all things.” She paused and then spoke again in an icy tone. “Why is it that you two are not at the south wall of my temple as I have commanded?”

  Bersla floundered a bit. “Most of the priesthood labors there as you commanded, Most Holy. Some few of us, however, have remained here to see to your needs.”

  “I have no needs, Bersla. You should know that by now.” Then Aracia paused, and her voice became even more cold. “You were fully aware of that, were you not, Takal Bersla? This ‘see to my needs’ pose of yours is but a way to avoid strenuous labor, is it not?”

  “We cannot leave you unprotected, Divine One,” Alcevan declared.

  “Brave are you indeed, small, inconsequential person,” Aracia replied in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “First you defy me, and then you will attempt to hold back the servants of the Vlagh, which will most certainly kill you and then eat you. Hear me now, both of you. Proceed at once to the south wall of my temple and give aid to those who have already obeyed my commands. Should that not suit you, go from this holy temple and do not ever return. Know, moreover, that when you depart from here, I will mark you, and neither one of you will ever be permitted to come back to within my walls. Choose, Bersla and Alcevan, and know that which course you choose will not in any way concern me.”

  Torl heard the sound of hurried footsteps, and the throne room door opened—and then closed.

  Torl pressed one hand over his mouth to muffle the sound of his laughter. Then he went west again through the dusty corridor to tell cousin Sorgan and Veltan about this sudden change in Veltan’s sister.

  After a little while, Torl realized that he was whistling as he went.

  3

  “She really came down hard on those two,” Torl reported when he rejoined Sorgan and Veltan at the west wall. “They were trying their best to persuade her to stay awake and keep Enalla from taking over, but she told them to either go to the south wall and do what she’d told them to do, or leave the temple and never come back.”

  “Well,” Veltan said with a smile. “It seems that my sister has finally come to her senses.” Then he looked curiously at Torl. “How did you manage to get into the throne room without being seen?”

  “I wasn’t inside,” Torl said. “I was in one of those cobwebby corridors that just happened to have a crack in the wall. I could hear everything that was going on in there, and they didn’t know that I was listening. There seem to be quite a few of those old corridors in the vicinity of the throne room.”

  “They were probably put there by certain previous high priests to give them someplace where they could hear what was going on without being seen,” Veltan replied. “They’ve always wanted that advantage to make sure that no other priest was getting ahead of them.”

  “Are the politics here always so complicated, Veltan?” Sorgan asked.

  “That sort of depends on whose territory we’re talking about,” Veltan replied. “Things in Dahlaine’s Domain are a bit more formal than they are in Zelana’s Domain and mine, but Aracia’s church takes politics out to the far end—or it did until just recently. Now that Aracia’s come to her senses, she might even go so far as to abolish her church.” Then he smiled again. “And if Aracia doesn’t, Enalla almost certainly will. The priests of her church will probably have to go out and find honest work before spring arrives.”

  “Poor babies,” Sorgan said in mock sympathy.

  THE

  COMMANDER

  1

  Trenicia, the warrior queen of the Isle of Akalla, was seriously discontented with winter. The Matans had generously provided her with a double-layered bison-hide cloak, but she still spent most of her time shivering and complaining.

  Her language was very colorful, Commander Narasan noted with a faint smile as his army marched up through Long-Pass. Trenicia had, in effect, joined Narasan’s army when they’d both walked off and left Veltan’s older sister screaming about their desertion. Aracia’s arrogance knew no bounds, and the thought that they would all just walk away and leave her totally undefended sent her right up through the ceiling. “I wonder how Sorgan’s doing,” he muttered as he and Tre
nicia walked through a gloomy afternoon.

  “I didn’t quite catch that, dear Narasan,” Trenicia said in a milder tone of voice.

  “Just thinking out loud, Your Majesty,” Narasan replied.

  “I thought that we’d discarded the ‘Your Majesty’ foolishness,” she said a bit tartly.

  “Sorry,” Narasan apologized. “Habit, probably. Down in the Empire, people are very interested in rank, so we grow accustomed to spouting terms of respectfulness. They don’t really mean anything, but we wave them around anyhow. I’m just a bit concerned about Sorgan’s scheme, is all. He’s one of the few friends I have, and I don’t want to lose him.”

  “You have me as your friend, Narasan,” Trenicia said. “That’s all you really need. Someday we might want to talk about friendship. In time, friendship grows into something more interesting, and I’d say that we’ve almost reached that point.”

  Narasan actually blushed, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why.

  “Is your face turning red for some reason other than the beastly chill in this region?” Trenicia asked. “If you’re having a problem, feel free to tell me all about it.”

  “I’m sure it’s only the weather, dear friend Trenicia.”

  “Spoilsport,” she replied accusingly.

  “I’m not entirely sure that Sorgan’s sophisticated enough to float his scheme past Aracia—or her priests. He can tell them that his scouts have actually seen the bug-people invading, but I don’t know if they’d accept that.”

  “He has Veltan to help him, dear Narasan. That’s all the help he’ll probably need.” Then she paused. “How in the world did you get so attached to a Maag pirate?” she asked. “I thought that Maags and Trogites were supposed to be natural-born enemies.”

  Narasan shrugged. “We’ve been allied with each other in three wars so far, and we’ve learned to trust each other. If he keeps things simple, he shouldn’t have many problems, but sometimes Sorgan goes to extremes. All we really need is for him to keep Aracia and her priests out of my hair here in Long-Pass.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard,” Trenicia said. “We’re not talking about intelligent people here. Relax, dear Narasan. I’m sure that everything down in the temple’s going exactly the way we want it to.”

  It was about noon when the main army reached the back side of a fairly standard Trogite fort. Trenicia wasn’t at all impressed. “Is that the best your men can do?” she demanded.

  “This is the back side, Trenicia dear,” Narasan explained. “It’s the front side that holds back the enemy. The back side is designed to make it easy for our soldiers to get inside the fort.”

  “What if your enemy sneaks around behind you?”

  “Would the word ‘how’ offend you? The fort blocks off the entire pass in this spot. Believe me, dear, we Trogites have been building forts for centuries, we’ve come up with answers to just about all the ‘what ifs’ anybody can come up with. About the only one that concerns us is what’s called ‘burrowing.’ That’s when your enemy digs a deep hole in the ground some distance back from your fort and then starts to dig a tunnel.”

  “I knew that there had to be a weakness!” Trenicia exclaimed triumphantly.

  “Take a look around, dear,” Narasan suggested. “You won’t see very much dirt. This is a mountain pass, and that means that it’s mostly rock. I guess it’s theoretically possible to burrow through solid rock, but I’d say that it’d take at least ten years to get as far as the front side of the fort—and another four or five years to burrow under the fort to get to the back side.”

  Trenicia glared at him for a moment, but then she laughed. “I was being just a bit silly there, wasn’t I? It’s just that I hate forts. The notion of being locked in one place for years and years makes me want to scream.”

  “You made very good time, sir,” Sub-Commander Andar said when Narasan and Trenicia joined him at the front of the fort.

  “Not as good as you and Gunda made,” Narasan replied. “How in the world were you able to cover a hundred and twenty miles in four and a half days?”

  “Longbow discarded several customs, sir,” Andar replied with a faint smile. “First he abolished the standard rest period.”

  “How was he able to persuade the men to do that? That custom’s been locked in stone for centuries now.”

  “He used the cooks as the key to unlocking it, sir.”

  “The cooks? I don’t quite follow you there.”

  “He put the cooks at the head of the column, sir,” Andar explained. “He must have made a few threats, because the cooks did their best to keep up with him. That put breakfast, lunch, and supper farther and farther ahead of the men who felt the need to rest. It took the men a day or so to get his point. ‘Rest or eat’ is a little brutal, but it did get his point across. Sauntering along more or less vanished along about then, and running became all the rage—particularly after that lady cook from Lord Veltan’s Domain took charge of the preparation of the meals. An occasional gust of wind went down the pass, and it carried the smell of her cooking down to the men who’d been stubbornly insisting that their right to rest was more important than anything else in the whole world. The pace of the army picked up quite noticeably at that point.”

  “That Longbow’s an absolute genius,” Narasan declared.

  “I’d say so, yes,” Andar agreed. “It seems that when he wants something, he always comes up with a way to get it.”

  “How far on up the pass is Gunda’s fort?” Narasan asked then.

  “Almost exactly a mile, sir,” Andar replied. “That might vary a few times as we go on down the pass, but we’ll always be quite close to a mile.”

  “I suppose I’d better go on up and say some nice things about Gunda’s fort,” Narasan said then.

  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that, sir,” Andar said with no hint of a smile.

  Since it was obviously going to take the rest of the day for the main army to get past Andar’s fort, Narasan and Trenicia went on ahead to Gunda’s fort. Longbow was there, of course, and Narasan had learned quite some time back that when he needed information about the Creatures of the Wasteland, Longbow was the man to speak with.

  Gunda’s fort went quite a ways farther than the standard Trogite one in that there were huge boulders mixed in with the standard granite blocks. “It wasn’t really my idea, Narasan,” Gunda conceded. “Prince Ekial took a look at our rock wall and suggested that bigger rocks might add a bit. Then he had a fair number of his men start dragging those boulders here. I was more than a little surprised when I saw the size of the rocks a dozen or so horses could drag across the ground. No matter how many bug-people come charging up here, this is as far as they’re going to get.”

  “Have you seen any of them yet?” Narasan asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Gunda replied. “They’re still about five miles away, but there are thousands of them out there. Prince Ekial and his horse-soldiers are slowing them down quite a bit, but they will reach this fort before too much longer.”

  “The main army’s not far behind, Gunda,” Narasan assured his friend. “They’re climbing over Andar’s fort right now, but I’d say that your fort will be fully manned by about noon tomorrow.”

  “They do have those poisoned stakes with them, don’t they?”

  “Oh, yes. Your impregnable fort’s going to be even more impregnable after we’ve planted those stakes to the front. Andar told me that there were quite a few bug-people up on the rims of the pass.”

  “They’re still there, Narasan,” Gunda replied, “but they’re dead now. Kathlak’s archers went on up there and showered them with poisonous arrows. There are a lot of trees up on those rims, and once the main army gets here, I’d suggest that we send a good number of them up there with axes. Catapults are always nice to have on hand when your enemies are charging. If we do this right, this will be about as far as our enemies will get.”

  “Why have you got people building more forts then?�
�� Queen Trenicia asked.

  “Just a precaution, ma’am,” Gunda replied. “Things sometimes go wrong no matter what we do, and those extra forts will give us someplace to fall back to if it turns out to be necessary. As our mighty commander here says quite often, ‘Always expect the worst, and be ready for it.’ If it doesn’t turn out that way, it’s a pleasant surprise, but we don’t take any chances.”

  “You’re a gloomy sort of fellow, aren’t you, friend Narasan?” Trenicia said.

  “Maybe,” Narasan conceded, “but I am still alive.”

  “That’s all that really matters, dear one,” Trenicia said with a fond smile.

  2

  “Where’s Prince Ekial?” Narasan asked the Malavi Ariga the following morning when they were all gathering for the customary conference.

  “Ekial is giving instruction to that young Keselo on riding a horse. The two of them get along well with each other,” Ariga replied.

  Narasan nodded, then looking around at everyone, he said, “First, of course, the question is how far away from here is the enemy—and how many of them are there?”

  “I drifted out over the Wasteland yesterday,” Lady Zelana said, “and it looked to me like the Vlagh was throwing everything she’s got at us this time.”

  “And how many would that be, ma’am?” Gunda asked.

  “A half million at least,” Zelana replied. “Probably closer to a whole million.”

  “She’s definitely pushing her luck, then,” Lord Dahlaine declared. “In the past she’s always kept a great number of her children in reserve.”

  “Children?” Trenicia asked in a startled voice.

  “I know that it sounds very unnatural, Queen Trenicia,” Dahlaine replied, “but the Vlagh gives birth to all of her servants. Of course she doesn’t have children in the same way that human mothers do. She lays eggs instead. Evidently, she realizes that this will be her last chance to gain dominion of some part of the Land of Dhrall that’s out beyond the Wasteland, so with the exception of the ones that take care of her in her nest, she’s probably emptied the place out. If things turn out the way we want them to, she’ll have very few servants left if this attack falls apart the way that the previous ones have.”