The Younger Gods

by David Eddings

  “He’s good at that, all right,” Skell agreed. “Have any new varieties of bug-people shown up yet?”

  “I wouldn’t know for sure,” Red-Beard replied. “I’ve been riding poor old Seven here back and forth across this part of the Land of Dhrall since late last fall, so I haven’t been anywhere near the Wasteland.”

  “Is learning how to ride a horse very difficult?” Skell asked curiously.

  “That sort of depends on the horse. Old Seven here is fairly placid and easy to get along with. Most of the Malavi horses are much more frisky than Seven, and that doesn’t hurt my feelings one little bit. Seven can’t run as fast as most of the other Malavi horses, but I’m not in that big a hurry to get from here to there.”

  “I’ll go along with you there, Red-Beard,” Skell agreed.

  A fair number of Old-Bear’s archers had gone on ahead that afternoon, and along about sunset the main party reached the campsite on the bank of a wide river that flowed down out of the mountain range. Somewhat to Skell’s surprise, the archers had managed to kill several of the bison that grazed nearby. “I’ve been told that it’s very difficult to kill those bison with arrows,” Skell said to the archer called Tracker.

  “Not if you’ve got metal arrowheads,” Tracker replied. “Stone arrowheads aren’t as sharp, and metal cuts through much easier. We’ll have fresh meat for supper tonight. Your cousin Sorgan gave us exactly what we needed to make our lives more pleasant.”

  “I’m sure that he’ll be glad to hear that. Did you happen to encounter any bug-people?”

  “We saw a few of them, but they were holding back for some reason.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask one of you people a question,” Skell said then.

  “I’ll answer it if I can,” Tracker said.

  “Over in the Land of Maag, we almost never see a bug roaming around in the wintertime, but the bugs out in the Wasteland don’t seem to pay any attention to the fact that it’s turned very cold.”

  Tracker shrugged. “The Vlagh does all sorts of things that other bugs don’t,” he replied. “Our shaman, One-Who-Heals, told us that the Vlagh wants the Wasteland all to herself. The other bugs hole up in the wintertime, but the Vlagh’s children don’t. They break into the nests of the other bugs, kill them all, and then run back to the Vlagh’s nest with all the food the other bugs had stored up for the winter.”

  “That’s terrible!” Skell exclaimed.

  “‘Terrible’ pretty much describes the Vlagh, yes,” Tracker replied with a faint smile. “If I understand it right, she wants the whole world, and she wants her children to eat everything—and everybody—who lives there. For her, more food means more children.”

  “We’ve got to get rid of that monster!” Skell declared.

  “You should take that up with Longbow, Skell. That’s his lifelong goal. After one of the Vlagh’s children killed Misty-Water, Longbow set out to kill the Vlagh, and sooner or later, he’ll probably do just that.”

  “Who was Misty-Water?” Skell asked.

  Tracker sighed. “She was the daughter of Chief Old-Bear, and she and Longbow were right on the verge of mating. One of the servants of the Vlagh killed her, though, and now killing the Vlagh is Longbow’s only real goal in life.”

  “That explains a lot of the things about Longbow that I didn’t really understand,” Skell said. “I’m glad that he’s on our side. Having Longbow for an enemy would cut back a man’s life-expectancy by quite a bit, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Almost back to nothing at all,” Tracker agreed.

  2

  It was about noon on a cloudy day when they reached the upper end of Long-Pass, and Skell was forced to concede that Gunda’s fort was very impressive.

  “I can’t really take credit for all those boulders in the front wall,” Gunda said. “Ekial and the Malavi hitched their horses to rocks almost as big as houses and dragged them here. I don’t think the bug-people will have much fun trying to climb that wall, particularly now that we’ve got all those archers you just brought here.”

  Then Longbow and the Trogite army commander Narasan came out to greet Longbow’s friends.

  “Ho, Longbow,” Tracker called.

  “What took you so long?” Longbow asked with a faint smile.

  “We ran into some of the Creatures of the Wasteland. Red-Beard said that they’ve been sneaking around quite a bit. I don’t think the Vlagh’s too happy about all the archers her people are going to come up against. They didn’t rush us or anything, but they were watching. Oh, Chief Old-Bear told us to give you his regards.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “The same as always. He can still put arrows where he wants them.”

  Skell went over to the south side of Gunda’s fort to speak with the other Maag sailors who’d come along with Longbow’s friends. “I want you men to behave yourselves,” he told them. “Don’t insult the Trogites or the natives. They’re on our side in this war, so don’t make fun of them.”

  “We’ve heard all this before, Skell,” a bearded sailor said.

  “Good. Now you’ve heard it again. Maybe if you hear it often enough, it’ll start to seep through into your mind.”

  “We’ve been using Keselo as our go-between, Skell,” Commander Narasan said the following morning. “He has access to a fast sloop that can take him down to the temple-town in about half a day, so your cousin can keep him up to date on what’s happening down there.” Narasan smiled then. “Keselo came up with another idea as well. Prince Ekial gave him a horse called Bent-Nose, and Keselo tamed the horse in about a half a day.”

  “With a whip?”

  Narasan laughed. “No, not really. He even startled Ekial when he used candy instead. It seems that a horse will do almost anything for candy. That means that Keselo can reach your cousin in about a day and a half, and he can bring information back to us in about the same amount of time.”

  “I’d start watching my tail feathers very close, Commander,” Skell said. “A young fellow as clever as Keselo might start to have ambitions, and he might just decide that he’d be a better commander than even you are.”

  “He does show quite a bit of promise,” Narasan agreed. “Anyway, your cousin has persuaded Queen Aracia that the bug-people are running all over her Domain, and she’s even gone so far as to order all those fat, lazy priests of hers to go help your cousin build forts to hold back the Creatures of the Wasteland. The priests aren’t very happy about that, but they’re even unhappier about the steady diet of beans Sorgan offers them three times a day.”

  Skell laughed. “Sorgan’s very good at things like that,” he said.

  “Indeed he is, and he’s keeping Aracia and all of her priesthood so frightened that they don’t even know that we’re fighting the real war up here in Long-Pass.”

  “That’s all that really matters, I guess,” Skell replied.

  A

  REPORT

  FROM

  THE

  NORTH

  1

  “She moves right along, that’s for sure,” Red-Beard said to Keselo as the sloop cut through the waters of Long-Pass bay.

  “When you add oarsmen to a good following wind, you’re not going to stay in one place for very long,” Keselo agreed.

  “How did you get stuck with being the messenger boy between Narasan and Sorgan?” Red-Beard asked the young Trogite.

  Keselo shrugged. “I spent a lot of time with Sorgan during the war in Lady Zelana’s Domain, and we got to know each other quite well. Commander Narasan felt that using somebody Sorgan knew and trusted as the messenger would work out better for all of us. Sorgan will tell me things he wouldn’t mention to a stranger or some low-ranking soldier who doesn’t know what’s really going on.” Then he smiled. “I’m not really complaining about it, Red-Beard. Prince Ekial gave me Bent-Nose, so I don’t have to walk very much.”

  “Horses are sort of fun, aren’t they?” Red-Beard said. “And they do move a lot faster than w
e can.”

  “That’s the good part of the task Commander Narasan dropped on me. Bent-Nose does all the running and these two sailors do the rowing. All I have to do is sit.”

  Red-Beard smirked. “I wouldn’t spread that around too much, Keselo,” he said. “If other men find out how easy life becomes when you’ve got a horse, they might decide to poach old Bent-Nose from you, and you’ll go back to walking.” He looked across the bay at the shoreline. “I sort of hate to admit this,” he admitted, “but this sloop moves almost as fast as my canoe.”

  “I saw you and Longbow moving back and forth out in the bay of Lattash,” Keselo replied. “You were both going very fast, but I’m not sure I’d care to ride in a boat made of tree-bark.”

  “The tribes of Zelana’s Domain have been using tree-bark canoes for a long, long time, Keselo. You wouldn’t want to drop a heavy rock into one of them, but they move very fast and very quiet. That’s important when you’re hunting. Where do you usually have your conferences with old Hook-Beak when you get down to temple bay?”

  “Sorgan kept one of the ships that carried his army on down to the temple harbor,” Keselo replied. “She’s named the Ascension, and she serves Sorgan’s purposes very well. She gives him a private place to confer with his men without worrying about being overheard, and since there’s quite a bit of trickery involved in what he’s doing there, privacy’s fairly important. It also gives me a place to speak with him without being seen by any of Lady Aracia’s priests. Of course, we don’t really have to worry about that now, since Sorgan tricked her into sending all of her priests on down to the south wall of the temple to help the Maags build defenses to hold off their imaginary enemies—maybe not quite all that imaginary now, though. Veltan’s been able to conjure up images of bug-things so awful that even the Maags are about half afraid of them.”

  The sloop heeled over sharply when they reached open water and the two sailors who’d been manning the oars stood up and reset the sails.

  “Sorgan thinks of everything, doesn’t he?” Red-Beard suggested.

  “Actually, he listens well. Most of these deceptions come from men like Rabbit or Torl. Sorgan polishes them a bit and then waves them in Aracia’s face.”

  Red-Beard was staring at the shoreline. “This baby really moves,” he said. “Trying to keep up with her would probably sprain my shoulders if I was in my canoe.”

  “It’s the sail, Red-Beard,” Keselo explained. “Why strain yourself if the wind’s doing all the work?”

  It was about mid-afternoon on a cold, cloudy day when the sloop hauled into the harbor of what Keselo called temple-town, and the two skilled sailors rowed the sloop up alongside a large, squared-off Trogite ship anchored alone in the harbor. As Red-Beard probably should have anticipated, Sorgan and Veltan were standing at the rail of the Ascension watching. Red-Beard straightened and looked up at the two friends. “Zelana and Dahlaine sent me down here to advise you two that the archers of Old-Bear’s tribe are in place at the upper end of Long-Pass,” he called up to them.

  “Come on board, Red-Beard—and you too, Keselo,” Sorgan told them. “Let’s avoid all this shouting back and forth. Aracia seems to be improving, but let’s not get her started again.”

  Red-Beard and Keselo climbed up the rope ladder and joined Sorgan and Veltan on the deck of the Ascension. Then Sorgan led them all into the oversized cabin at the stern, where Rabbit and Torl were waiting.

  “Will I get to see these imaginary bugs you’ve been showing Aracia?” Red-Beard asked Veltan.

  “They couldn’t be much better,” Veltan replied. “My big sister’s finally come to her senses, and she ordered all her priests to go help the Maags.”

  “They’re in the way, naturally,” Rabbit said, “but at least they’re out of the throne room, so Queen Aracia doesn’t have to listen to them all day every day.”

  “Is she really buying that story about invading bugs?” Red-Beard asked.

  “Veltan’s images look pretty real—out in the open where everybody can see them—for like maybe a half a minute or so,” Sorgan’s cousin Torl replied.

  “I don’t really want them to be in sight for very long,” Veltan explained. “My sister’s chubby priests wouldn’t know a bug from a cow, but we don’t want Aracia herself to look at them too closely or too long. Aracia’s starting to come to her senses, and she knows what the bug-people really look like. If she smells this hoax of ours, her head might start to come apart, and she’ll go back to being adored. That’s the last thing we want. She’s finally come to realize that her priests are totally worthless, and we want to keep it that way. We’ll let her catch brief glimpses of our imaginary bug-people, but ‘brief’ is the important word right now.”

  Then Keselo looked at Red-Beard. “I haven’t been that far up the pass for quite a while now,” he said. “You just came down the pass, friend Red-Beard. How many forts are in place now?”

  “Eight, if I counted right,” Red-Beard replied, “and there are several others being constructed right now. I’d say that poor old Mama Vlagh’s going to lose a lot of puppies this time out.”

  “What a shame,” Sorgan replied sardonically.

  “We could send her a note of sympathy, Captain Hook-Beak,” Keselo suggested, “but I don’t think she knows how to read—or just exactly what a note is. She might just crumple it up and eat it.”

  Sorgan squinted. “I don’t suppose that anybody happened to bring any poison with him,” he said.

  “We should be able to come up with something that’ll kill her—or at least make her terribly sick,” Red-Beard added.

  “Don’t rush me,” Sorgan said. “I’m working on it.”

  “Squint-Eye and Gimpy weren’t keeping very close track of all the priests Aracia sent down to the south wall to help them,” Sorgan was saying the following morning after breakfast on board the Ascension, “so there was quite a bit of sneaking back to the main temple going on. The ordinary priests were more interested in getting something to eat besides beans, but the priestess Alcevan was still trying to send young priests there to kill Lillabeth.”

  “You said what?” Red-Beard demanded.

  “We’ve got it all under control, Red-Beard,” Rabbit said. “There are several priests who are terrified by the coming change-over. They know that Aracia will be going off to sleep before long, and then Enalla will take over. They’re quite sure that Enalla will abolish the priesthood and order them to tear down the temple. This Alcevan priestess is a newcomer, and she’s positive that if Lillabeth dies, so will Enalla, and Aracia will have to stay awake. There were a few attempts before Aracia sent all of her priests off to the south wall to help build the fort. Alcevan was sending novice priests back to the main temple to kill Aracia’s Dreamer every chance she had, but we put a stop to that.”

  “How?” Red-Beard asked.

  “More imitation bugs.” Sorgan chuckled. “Rabbit remembered what had happened to Jalkan and Adnari Estarg back in Veltan country. He spoke with Veltan about it, and now there are cobwebs that look like anchor ropes in every corridor leading back to the main temple, and every so often a spider that’s about ten feet across skitters through the shadows. Squint-Eye and Gimpy described what happened to Jalkan and that Trogite Adnari several times, and then Veltan made several skeletons that were wearing scraps of what looked like the material of those priestly robes. The apprentice priests stopped paying attention to Alcevan about then. The notion of being dissolved and then slurped up by a ten-foot spider had terrified them to the point that nothing Alcevan offered even interested them one little bit. All those priests are bunched up by the south wall, and they won’t go near any of those hallways.”

  Red-Beard laughed. “These hoaxes seem to be getting better and better,” he noted. “Who’s guarding the little girl, though?”

  “Torl’s got a hundred men stationed all around Lillabeth’s room,” Sorgan replied. “They’re some of the biggest men in our whole army, and they’ve got som
e very ugly weapons. Nobody’s going to get anywhere near that little girl, we’ll see to that. Most of those priests aren’t at all interested in Alcevan’s scheme, though. They’re all terribly disappointed by the food Squint-Eye and Gimpy are offering. They’re used to eating very fancy food, and a steady diet of beans doesn’t sit too well with them. Gimpy told them that they had a choice, but when he said, ‘You can eat beans, or you can eat dirt,’ it didn’t go over very well.”

  THE

  PLEA

  OF

  ALCEVAN

  1

  Balacenia was floating in the air above the temple of Aracia to keep an eye on things. Since she would be the dominant god during the next cycle, Balacenia felt a certain responsibility, even though she wasn’t supposed to wake up yet. Dahlaine’s “grand plan” had in effect split each one of the younger gods right down the middle. From what she’d seen during several brief encounters with the other younger gods, their Dreamer alternates were pretty much the same as their real personalities. Eleria, however, seemed almost to be a total stranger. She definitely had her own personality, and it did not even remotely resemble Balacenia’s. They were now so far apart that Balacenia was almost positive that they’d never be able to completely unite again. Balacenia sighed. “At least I’ll have somebody to talk with when I’m lonesome.”

  Balacenia had some very serious doubts about Sorgan’s declaration that Aracia had returned to sanity. Zelana’s older sister had always been a towering egomaniac, totally convinced that she was the most important being in the entire universe. That, of course, had opened the door for a number of self-appointed “priests” who’d found their way to lives of luxury over the past several eons. They’d made lifelong careers of piling counterfeit adoration on Aracia, and she’d wiggled like a puppy and begged for more.