And Big-Me broke down and laughed.
Balacenia sort of faded out of sight as we drifted down through the shabby roof of Aracia’s poorly constructed temple. I could still sense her presence, but she wasn’t visible anymore. Enalla was sitting in Lillabeth’s ornate room, and she looked so much like Lillabeth that she even startled me. I had met Lillabeth during the war in the Beloved’s Domain last spring, and I’d joined her during our joint recitation of her Dream—to the great chagrin of Aracia, who’d been desperately trying to hide that Dream—so even though I knew that she was really Enalla, I felt quite comfortable with her.
“We are the same person, Eleria,” Lillabeth’s other personality reminded me in a voice that was a bit more mature than Lillabeth’s. “We’re much the same as you and Balacenia are.”
“Not entirely, sister,” Balacenia’s voice told her. “Eleria here spent most of her time with the pink dolphins during her early childhood, and I’m afraid that the dolphins permanently separated us.”
“Why did Zelana permit that?” Enalla demanded.
“The Beloved had her mind on music and poetry,” I explained. “She was very fond of the pink dolphins, and after Dahlaine dropped me in her lap, she knew that somebody—or some thing—would have to nurse me. That’s when she turned to Meeleamee.”
“Dolphins have names?” Enalla asked, sounding a bit startled.
“Oh, yes,” I replied, “and they also have a language. The Beloved speaks their language, so she could call out to Meeleamee when she discovered that I couldn’t live on just light the way she does. Meeleamee nursed me, and in some sense she was the mother I never had.”
“Aracia just handed me off to a fair number of local women to nurse me,” Enalla said. “I never grew as close to any of them as you did to Meeleamee. They nursed me, but I never grew attached to any of them.”
“That’s probably what kept you from having any fun when you were a baby. The pink dolphins seemed to think that teaching me how to swim was almost as important as nursing me was. I could swim like a fish long before I learned how to walk.”
“Why don’t you tell me all kinds of stories about your pink dolphins, Eleria?” Enalla whispered. “Balacenia and I are fairly sure that might persuade Aracia that we’re just an empty-headed pair of little girls.” Then she spoke louder. “How in the world could a baby possibly learn how to swim?” she asked as if she was terribly interested.
“It’s not really all that difficult, Lillabeth,” I replied. “Meeleamee wasn’t the only female dolphin who was nursing me. There were many others as well, and more of them turned up in that pond inside the grotto when they heard that I was rewarding the ones that nursed me with kisses.”
“So that’s where you picked up your kiss-kiss habit,” Enalla said. “I’ve always wondered about that.”
“I found out early that kisses and hugs will get you almost anything you want, Lillabeth,” I told her. “I kissed Longbow into submission in about five minutes. Anyway, the pink dolphins began to herd fish into the grotto so that I could learn how to feed myself. Once a baby starts to grow teeth, nursing the child can start to be quite painful. Dolphins are sea-animals, so they live on a steady diet of fish. They started to give me bits and pieces of fish, and after a while they decided to teach me how to catch fish by myself. They were all very pleased when I caught and ate my very first fish.”
“I’ve noticed that there aren’t any fires in Zelana’s grotto. How were you able to cook the fish you were eating?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t cook them. It might be a little hard to keep a fire burning if it’s under water.”
“Are you saying that you ate those fish raw?”
“Of course. That’s one of the reasons Meeleamee and the others gave me pieces of raw fish when they were weaning me off a steady diet of dolphin milk. I was so proud when I caught and ate my first fish in the little shallow pool at the mouth of the grotto. The fishing was much better out in deep water, though, so I didn’t miss too many meals.”
“Are you saying that Zelana approved?”
“The Beloved doesn’t eat anything at all—except for light, of course, so she turned the feeding over to the dolphins.”
“I’ve always been curious about just why you always call her ‘the Beloved.’”
“That’s what the dolphins called her. I picked it up from them, but I used her language instead of theirs. Of course that’s fairly recent. I spoke ‘dolphin’ long before I learned how to speak in ‘people.’ I didn’t care too much for the name they gave me, though. They called me ‘Beeweeabee,’ which translates into ‘Short-Fin-With-No-Tail.’ I was much happier when the Beloved named me Eleria. I still swam with the dolphins when I got hungry. And then one day Meeleamee introduced me to an old cow-whale—who probably wasn’t a whale at all—and she led me on down to the bottom of the sea where an oyster opened its shell and gave me the pink pearl that started to give me Dreams as soon as I rejoined the Beloved in her pink grotto.”
“Zelana mentioned that,” Enalla-Lillabeth said. “Did that first Dream you had go all the way back to the beginning of the world?”
“That’s what the Beloved told me,” I said. “From what I saw in the Dream, the whole world was on fire.”
“I wouldn’t take it any further back, Little-Me.” Balacenia’s voice came silently to me. “If Aracia happens to still be listening, we don’t want her to know where—and when—your Dream really began.”
“How did you know about that?” I demanded.
“Eleria,” Balacenia’s silent voice came to me again, “we are the same person, you know, so I can remember your Dream as well as you can. I remember that when your Dream began, the universe wasn’t there, and neither was time.”
“Then you saw Mother and Father too?”
“Of course I did, Little-Me.”
I felt just a little pouty about that. I’d always believed that the earliest part of the Dream was mine alone—something on the order of a gift from Mother and Father because I was their favorite child. Big-Me had just filched my gift, and I didn’t like that one little bit.
“We’ll talk about that some other time, Little-Me,” Balacenia said. “We don’t want Aracia to find out about it. She’ll do something even more stupid if she knows the whole story of the Dream. Let Enalla-Lillabeth talk for a while now. Ask them about life here in this silly temple. That should draw Aracia’s attention away from your Dream. Let’s stay on the safe side.”
“Sometimes it almost made me want to throw up,” Lillabeth told me. “Fat Bersla could go on for hours and hours telling Aracia how wonderful she is. It made me sick to my stomach, but Aracia just couldn’t get enough of it. She adores being adored, so those speeches were meat and drink. She didn’t seem to realize that he was waving what he called his adoration in her face every chance he got for one reason and one only. As long as she hungered for what he called his adoration, he didn’t have to do any honest work, and not working has always been Fat Bersla’s main goal in life.”
Then Big-Me spoke silently to Enalla. “Don’t get too specific, dear sister,” she said. “Alcevan the bug might be listening, and her purpose right now is persuading Aracia to kill Lillabeth—and you, of course. The bug-people really want Aracia to live—or stay awake—for a while longer, because they can control her. I’m quite sure they know that they won’t have that kind of control of you, and that’s why they want Aracia to kill you.”
“Then they don’t know about what will happen to Aracia if she even tries to do that, do they?”
“It’s not one of those things we mention very often,” Big-Me replied.
“There is one thing that I don’t quite understand,” Enalla admitted. “So far as I can determine, Alcevan is the only female priest in Aracia’s Domain. How did she manage to foist that off on dear old Bersla?”
“Dear old ‘Stinky’ probably used her gift to pull it off,” Big-Me replied.
“Stinky?” Enalla silently aske
d, trying quite hard to keep from laughing.
“That’s what Little-Me calls her,” Balacenia replied. “She does use an odor to control people, and that’s probably how she pulled Fat Bersla into line.” Then she paused. “I’m not entirely positive that she actually stinks terribly, but just that name alone takes her down a peg or two, wouldn’t you say?”
“I think I’ll keep that name tucked under my arm,” Enalla said. “It might be very useful at some time in the not-too-distant future.” Then she sighed. “I was fairly sure that Sorgan Hook-Beak’s deception had brought Aracia to her senses. You wouldn’t believe the look of pure horror on Bersla’s face when Aracia ordered him—and all the other priests—to go on down to the south wall of the temple to help construct the stronger defenses. How did Stinky manage to escape and come back here and steal Aracia from us again?”
“She went out over the wall and came back here out on open ground,” Big-Me replied. “She’d been trying to send novice priests back here to murder Lillabeth—in much the same way she tried before Aracia ordered her to go down to the south wall.”
“Are you saying that there are novices out there so stupid that they’d believe her after she cut the throat of the first assassin she sent here to murder Lillabeth—or me?” Enalla demanded.
“I’d imagine that news of that killing didn’t get around very much,” Big-Me replied. “It wasn’t as if Alcevan had left the body lying in the throne room or anything like that. Anyway, her plan fell apart after that clever little Maag called Rabbit came up with a way to make just about everybody too terrified to even think about coming back here through the corridors.”
“Oh?”
“He managed to make everybody believe that there were giant spiders creeping around in the corridors, and that being killed—and eaten—by a spider is the most hideous fate in all the world.”
“Even worse than snake-bites?”
“Much, much worse, dear sister,” Big-Me declared. “Nobody—and I do mean nobody—would even consider taking that kind of a chance, no matter what kind of reward has been offered.”
“Why don’t we just send for Longbow, Big-Me?” I suggested. “He could kill Stinky from so far away that her odor wouldn’t reach him.”
“That might just be the best idea of all, Balacenia,” Enalla said. “Once we get rid of Stinky, Aracia should return to good sense.”
“Except that Longbow’s involved in the war up in Long-Pass,” Big-Me replied. “I’m afraid that Stinky is our problem, and we’d better solve it very soon.”
2
“I think it’s time for you to go to sleep, child Eleria,” Mother’s voice came to me.
“You said what?” I demanded.
“You’re going to have to Dream, Eleria. That’s probably the only way we’ll be able to prevent Aracia from destroying herself—and I’m not sure even that will be enough. Alcevan has warped Aracia’s mind to the point she thinks that she’s immune to what’s almost certain to be the result of her attempt to obliterate Lillabeth. I’m hoping that your Dream will bring her back to her senses.”
“You want me to pretend that I’m asleep and then tell her a story so awful that she won’t dare to try to kill Lillabeth?”
“Drop ‘pretend,’ Eleria,” Mother told me. “You will be asleep, and you will have a Dream. Then you and Enalla—who appears to be Lillabeth—will recite the Dream in unison, in the same way that you and Lillabeth did last autumn. Aracia knows that the Dreams have power far beyond anything she can do, and your Dream should frighten her enough to make her reconsider Alcevan’s suggestion.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“We’ll lose Aracia,” Mother bluntly replied, “and I’m not sure what the result will be.”
I knew that I was asleep. That’s one of the things that separates “those” Dreams from ordinary ones. The Dream that Mother provided was moderately terrible, and I was fairly sure that it would give Aracia some second thoughts.
But it didn’t turn out that way. Aracia—or Alcevan, the bug—was already ahead of us. The door to Lillabeth’s nursery banged open, and Aracia, wild-eyed with fury and with her hair tangled and sticking out in all directions, burst into the room. She was screaming what sounded much like curses in a hoarse voice. Little Stinky was right behind her with an expression of victory on her face.
“I have Dreamed.” Lillabeth, who was really Enalla, and I began to recite the content of the Dream Mother had given me, but I saw almost immediately that Aracia wasn’t even listening. I suppose that it’s possible that Alcevan the bug had turned her ears off.
“Foul usurper!” Aracia screamed at the child she thought was Lillabeth. “Violator of my temple! I have cared for thee with all my heart, but thy first act when I have gone to my sleep will be to betray me. Know ye that thou shall not have this temple, nor the worship of those who serve me, for I must banish thee now and forever from the world of the living, wicked child. Be no more, wicked Lillabeth!” Aracia screamed. “Exist no longer!”
For about a moment she stood in one place as if she had just been frozen, and then, as my Dream had predicted, she gradually began to change from what appeared to be human into tiny speckles of light—even as she had in my Dream. Her outward shape didn’t seem to change, but it now consisted of those specks of light. I was quite sure that Big-Me and Enalla had simply turned her command around and thrown it back at her, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that her command had turned on her all by itself. Had Enalla and I been allowed to describe my Dream, would that have saved Aracia? I do not know. If killing is forbidden, telling someone—or something—to die, might just destroy the speaker rather than the intended victim. From what I could make out of Aracia’s face, she had an expression of sheer horror on what passed for her face. Then her face was gone, and the specks of light grew brighter and brighter. Then there was an enormous burst of pure light, and Aracia wasn’t there anymore.
Alcevan howled in frustration, and then she fled as Lillabeth began to weep and moan in her grief. Enalla was standing with Big-Me near the door, so poor Lillabeth was suffering her grief all by herself. I took her in my arms and held her. It wasn’t really all that much in the way of comforting her in her time of sorrow, but it was the best I could come up with.
Lillabeth was still weeping when Veltan came rushing into the room. “What was that awful noise just now?” he demanded.
I wasn’t feeling very kindly toward anybody just then, so I answered Veltan’s stupid question in a cold, blunt tone of voice. “Your sister just destroyed herself. She came in raving and with Stinky right behind her. Then she commanded Lillabeth to be no more. Since that’s forbidden, her curse—or whatever you want to call it—turned and flew right back into her face, and she suddenly turned into little speckles of very bright light. The speckles grew brighter and brighter, and then there was a huge burst of pure light, and your sister wasn’t there anymore.” I had decided not to reveal my involvement to any members of the family. If Mother wanted to tell them, that was up to her, but I chose to keep my mouth shut.
Veltan went suddenly very pale, and then he also began to weep as his sorrow overwhelmed him.
Then Mother suddenly appeared. “What’s going on here?” she demanded—as if she didn’t know.
“Aracia came here with that bug-thing that calls herself Alcevan right behind her,” I replied. “I’d say that Alcevan turned her odor loose and persuaded Aracia to try to destroy Lillabeth. I couldn’t prove that Alcevan was responsible, but she was there, and Aracia ignored a very important rule and ordered Lillabeth to dissolve—or something like that—but her order turned around and dissolved her instead. I’m afraid you just lost one of your babies, Mother, and there isn’t enough of Aracia left to even try to bury.”
Mother touched her finger to her lips and then gave me a very stern look to keep Veltan and the others in the room from finding out what had really happened. Then she spoke in that voice she uses to reach out t
o her assorted children. “Dahlaine,” she said, “and Zelana. We’ve got a crisis here in Aracia’s silly temple. You’d better come here as fast as you can, and bring the children.”
Lillabeth was still weeping when the others joined us in her room, and I was still doing my best to comfort her. But then, at Mother’s suggestion, I’m sure, Enalla took Lillabeth into her arms, and Mother told me to repeat the story of Aracia’s self-destruction for the others.
“It’s better without her,” Vash of Veltan’s Domain declared.
“No, Vash,” Big-Me disagreed. “Actually, it’s worse. We’re one god light now, and that throws everything out of balance. If we don’t do something to correct that, it won’t be long, I’m afraid, before we’ll all be joining her.”
“Don’t be absurd, Balacenia,” Mother told Big-Me. “All you have to do is replace her.”
“With who?” Enalla, still holding Lillabeth in her arms, demanded. Then she turned to speak to Dahlaine. “You’d better come up with something very soon, big brother, or we’ll all be turning into gleaming dust.”
Mother, quite naturally, was about three jumps ahead of Enalla—and all the rest of us as well. “The answer is really very simple, dear Enalla,” she said. Then she smiled at me. “You’ll have plenty of time to get used to the idea, Eleria,” she told me. “It’s going to be twenty-five eons before you’ll have to take Aracia’s place as the goddess of the East. Your childhood with the pink dolphins has separated you from Balacenia—or ‘Big-Me’—so much that you aren’t the same anymore. That leaves you floating around with nothing to do, so you’ll replace poor Aracia.” She paused a moment and then threw my own favorite remark right back in my face. “Won’t that be neat?” she demanded.
THE
DECLINE
OF THE
TEMPLE
The Younger Gods Page 22