The Younger Gods

by David Eddings

  “Let’s go on inside,” Narasan suggested. “Sorgan Hook-Beak is here, and he’ll want to know about this too.”

  “It is just a bit chilly out here,” Trenicia said. Then she reached out and patted Narasan’s cheek. “You worry too much, Narasan. I’m a big girl now, and I do know how to take care of myself.”

  They went on inside the fort and found Sorgan, who was talking with Gunda and the pretty lady Ara. “What’s happening, Narasan?” Sorgan asked.

  “It appears that the slope to the west of this fort isn’t as deserted as we all thought it was,” Narasan replied. “There are still bug-people down there, but they’re all dead.”

  “Arrows?” Sorgan asked.

  Narasan shook his head. “Cold weather, I’ve been told. Tell him what you saw, Trenicia.”

  “It seemed a bit peculiar to me that the horde of bug-people who’d been charging up that slope for several weeks had just vanished—without even leaving any footprints in the snow,” Trenicia told Hook-Beak, “so I went on down to have a look. The bug-people are still there, but they aren’t moving. I’d say that they all froze to death.” She drew out her heavy sword and ran her thumb along the edge of the blade and winced. “It’s going to take me weeks to grind away all those nicks,” she complained. “I chopped several of the bug-people into pieces, and they were all frozen solid. For some reason they just stopped moving, and the weather turned them all into blocks of ice.”

  “The bug-people aren’t very clever,” Sorgan said, “but standing out in the open when it’s as cold as it’s been here lately is senseless.”

  “Of course it is,” Ara replied. “The bug-people don’t have any sense. That’s what ‘the overmind’ was all about. Now that Omago has shut down the Vlagh’s voice, the overmind can’t contact her children. They’re waiting for orders, but they aren’t getting any. They don’t know what to do, so they just stand there and freeze.”

  “It seems that they stood there for much too long,” Sorgan observed.

  “Not too long for me, they didn’t,” Narasan said with a faint smile.

  “I’d take it as a great kindness if you’d let me know where you’re going before you go running off, Trenicia,” Narasan told the warrior queen again when they were alone in Narasan’s quarters. “When I discovered that you were gone, I thought that I’d lost you, and that almost made me want to die. Please don’t do that anymore, dear heart.”

  Trenicia’s eyes suddenly went very wide as she stared at Narasan. Then quite suddenly they were filled with tears. She threw her arms about him and held him tightly.

  “Are you all right, Trenicia?” Narasan asked.

  “I’m just fine,” she replied with tears streaming down her face. “You just called me ‘dear heart,’ and that means that you love me, doesn’t it?”

  “I thought you already knew that.”

  “Well, I had some hopes, but you never came right out and said it before.”

  “We’d have gotten to it eventually,” Narasan told her with a faint smile. “Please forgive me, dear heart. I’ve never had these feelings before, so I’m just a bit clumsy when I try to let you know how I feel.”

  “You’re doing just fine, dear heart,” she said, wiping her eyes. “The only problem I can see is that I’ll probably break down and cry every time you call me ‘dear heart.’”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “It should wash the dust out of your eyes.”

  “Must you always be so practical?” she complained.

  “Practical is what I’m supposed to be, Trenicia,” he told her. “It keeps my people alive. Why don’t I save ‘impractical’ just for you?” Then he laughed and fondly embraced her.

  THE

  NEST

  1

  Keselo was having more than a little difficulty with the true identity of the farmer Omago. He realized that he should have had some suspicions, in view of the evidently unlimited capabilities of Omago’s mate. For some reason, however, it had never occurred to him that Omago could probably hurl disasters on the Creatures of the Wasteland in much the same way that Ara could.

  The more that Keselo thought about it, though, the more he realized that Omago could almost certainly “tamper” with those around him so that they’d all look upon him as just an ordinary farmer with no unusual talents.

  Of course, if what Omago had told them back in Gunda’s fort had been true, Omago had even deceived himself. In his search for understanding of the people of the Land of Dhrall, Omago had erased all knowledge of just who—and what—he really was, and he’d grown up as just an ordinary farmer who planted grain and vegetables, watched them grow all summer, and then harvested them when autumn arrived.

  It appeared, however, that a certain part of Omago’s mind knew exactly who—and what—he really was, and when it became necessary, that part of Omago’s mind stepped over the “farmer” subterfuge and took over. That meant that Keselo and his friends were dealing with an entirely different Omago—one who could, and would, step over “impossible” whenever it suited him. He’d gone down to Aracia’s temple-town, picked up Rabbit, and returned to Gunda’s fort at the head of Long-Pass in slightly more than an hour. Then, to make things even worse, Omago had made them all “unnoticeable”—evidently a variation of invisibility—and then had started taking ten-mile steps across the Wasteland toward the nest of the Vlagh—up until Longbow had firmly suggested that those long jumps might cause some problems.

  And so it was that late in a cold winter day they had reached “the nest” of the Vlagh.

  “Are we going to go through that cave to the Vlagh’s main chamber, or are you going to ‘poof’ us in there?” Rabbit asked Omago.

  “Poof?” Omago asked, sounding just a bit puzzled.

  “You know what I mean,” Rabbit replied. “Lady Zelana ‘poofs’ every time she gets a chance.”

  “Let’s just walk in,” Longbow suggested. “If we happen to get into trouble in the main chamber, we might need to know which way to go when we run away.”

  “You still don’t entirely trust me, do you, Longbow?” Omago asked.

  “You’re doing fine so far,” Longbow replied, “but if anything can possibly go wrong, it probably will. If it doesn’t though, we can all be pleasantly surprised.”

  Keselo was awestruck when Omago responded to his question about the peculiar shape of the peak that was the nest of the Vlagh by describing erosion in a manner that indicated that he’d actually witnessed something that had taken thousands of years to occur. Then he remembered that Longbow had told him that Omago and Ara had been around since before the beginning of time.

  Rabbit seemed to be concerned about the probability that the entire nest would be totally dark, “since bugs don’t know much about building fires, do they?”

  Keselo reached back to what One-Who-Heals had taught him and remembered something the shaman had briefly mentioned about bugs called fireflies that generate light inside their bodies. “But there isn’t any fire involved,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never actually seen one of them myself.”

  As dusk settled down over the nest of the Vlagh, Omago led them to the mouth of the cave that almost certainly led to the home of the Vlagh herself. He stopped before they entered, however, and asked his friends again if they could hear a buzzing sound. They all listened carefully, but it seemed that Omago was still the only one who could hear it.

  “Is it possible that you’re listening to the voice of the Vlagh herself?” Keselo asked.

  “It is a possibility, I suppose,” Omago conceded. “Let’s go on into the cave. The sound might become more clear when we get closer to the Vlagh.”

  The cave had seemed to be a natural opening in the side of the mountain peak when they’d seen it from the outside, but just a few yards in, the walls were very smooth, and they even looked polished. There were quite a few bug-people moving around in the cave, and Keselo was almost startled when he saw several of them who glowed in the dark.<
br />
  “Living lamps, I see,” Rabbit noted. “The Vlagh seems to think of almost everything, doesn’t she?”

  “I’d say that she’s been filching again,” Keselo added. “I’d swear that I’ve already seen thirty or forty different varieties of bugs—beetles and ants and locusts, and flies—as well as several that have wings.”

  “Then there are the ones that look like worms—except that they’ve got fifty or a hundred legs,” Longbow added.

  “There are a lot of other varieties that we haven’t seen yet as well,” Omago said.

  “How does she manage to keep the peace?” Keselo demanded. “It’s more than a little weird to see natural enemies all bunched together like this.”

  “That might turn out to be very useful,” Omago said. “If these bugs start killing each other, we won’t have to do very much except stand around and watch.”

  “Those are the very best kind of wars,” Rabbit said. “Am I going to keep on being invisible even if I go on ahead?” he asked. “We probably ought to know what’s there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They won’t see you, friend Rabbit,” Omago assured the little smith. “It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to go have a look, now that you mention it. I don’t like surprises all that much.”

  As Keselo, Longbow, and Omago moved through the seemingly endless cave, they noted that the more recent hatches of the Vlagh were much larger than the ones that had preceded them. “It would seem that the Vlagh was greatly impressed by the Maags,” Longbow observed.

  “That’s not really a very good idea,” Keselo said. “Bigger children have bigger appetites, and there’s not really that much food out here in this desert, is there?”

  “Other bugs is about all,” Longbow replied. “Of course, that might have been part of the idea. There are other nests and ‘queens,’ if we want to use that term. If the Vlagh’s idea was to eliminate all the other bug-tribes out here in the Wasteland, ‘hungry children’ could be quite useful.”

  When Rabbit came back with a slightly awed expression on his face and told them about the big, open chamber at the end of the tunnel, Omago became very quiet.

  Keselo explained that the big cluster of spiderweb Rabbit had seen was called a cocoon. Though Rabbit and Longbow were listening to him, Keselo noticed that Omago was standing off to one side, listening to something that only he could understand.

  “Don’t make any noises,” Longbow cautioned them. “We’d better take a look at this ‘cocoon’ thing.”

  Omago came along behind the rest of them, but Keselo was fairly certain that their friend was very busy now with something else.

  They entered what Rabbit had called “the throne room,” and Keselo was stunned by the incredible number of assorted bugs crawling across the floor and up the walls in the dim light given off by the few glowing “fire insects.” Keselo turned to speak to Omago, but Omago had a look of intense concentration on his face, and he waved Keselo off.

  “Where’s this ‘cocoon’ thing you mentioned?” Longbow quietly asked Rabbit.

  “I’d say that it’s probably in the very center of this cavern,” the little Maag replied. “It’s a little hard to see from this far back, because there are thousands of bugs between us and that silly bird’s nest.”

  Keselo winced slightly. “Bird’s nest” didn’t exactly fit.

  “Get back against one of the walls,” Omago told them. Keselo noted that their friend had a wicked sort of grin on his face. “Several thousand of these servants are just about to leave, and we don’t want to get trampled.”

  “Aren’t they supposed to stay here and tend to the baby-bugs?” Keselo asked.

  “They just received new orders,” Omago replied.

  “The Vlagh told them to go away?”

  “They think she did, but I’m the one they’re obeying.”

  “How did you manage that?” Rabbit asked.

  Omago shrugged. “I shut off the buzz that was coming from the Vlagh, and then I buzzed a new set of orders. I told them that invaders were coming across the Wasteland, and I ordered most of the care-givers to go out of the cave and fight off all those evil people-people. A few of them will stay behind to care for the new hatch that’s just about to come out of the cocoon. I’m almost certain that the Vlagh will come out of the cocoon before the new hatch does, and I want enough care-givers here in the cave to make the Vlagh believe that everything’s all right. She’s in for a very nasty shock before long, and her screaming will probably go on for quite a long time—a long, long, long time, if I’ve done this right.”

  “Have you ever done anything wrong?” Keselo demanded, feeling more than a little irritated.

  “Not that I can remember,” Omago replied.

  After the last of the departing care-givers had left the vast central chamber of the nest of the Vlagh, Omago assured his friends that they were still “unnoticeable” so they crossed the now virtually empty central chamber of the nest to take a closer look at their enemy.

  The upper part of the cocoon began to bulge out, a fair sign that the Vlagh was squirming her way out into the open.

  Keselo gasped as the Vlagh came into sight. “That’s impossible!” he exclaimed.

  “Not really,” Omago disagreed. “We probably should have expected this.”

  “That’s not the real Lady Aracia, is it?” Rabbit demanded.

  “No,” Omago said. “She’s gone for good. She was the ruler of the East, though, and she was behaving as if she was the queen of the entire Land of Dhrall. The Vlagh thinks that she’s the queen, so her duplication of Aracia makes a certain amount of sense. You might want to approve, Rabbit. You don’t really want to see the real Vlagh. Nine feet tall the last time I looked and with six legs, waving antennae, and mandibles that could turn rocks into dust. Aracia wasn’t quite as beautiful as Zelana, but she was much nicer to look at than the Vlagh is in her real form.”

  “There’s something moving in the bottom of that cocoon,” Longbow said then.

  “The new hatch,” Omago said. “They won’t resemble adult bug-people—or Aracia either, for that matter.”

  The bottom of the web began to give way, and a cluster of worm-shaped infants came wriggling out.

  “Caterpillars?” Rabbit said in a voice charged with disbelief.

  “It’s the standard form of the infant bug-people,” Omago explained. “After they’ve been fed for a week or so, they assume the shape the Vlagh’s got in mind for them. They have plenty of feet to get them from here to there and an overpowering appetite. The remaining care-givers have a lot of work ahead of them, I’d say. But I don’t think they’ll be doing much ‘caring.’”

  “They’re still wriggling out of that cocoon,” Keselo said. “How many of them would you say have just hatched?”

  “A quarter of a million anyway,” Omago replied. “More, probably. The Vlagh needs a lot of servants just now.”

  The new “puppies” scurried across the floor of the vast chamber toward the greatly reduced “care-givers,” and they were making sounds not unlike the crying of newborn humans. Keselo couldn’t translate what the infants were saying, but he was quite sure that “feed me!” was a significant part of it.

  The “care-givers” didn’t seem to be very interested—at least not until the howling newborns reached the area near the west side of the chamber.

  Then something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen. One of the “care-givers” reached down and snatched up one of the babies and examined it as if the care-givers had never before seen any infant bugs.

  Then, evidently satisfied with what it saw, the servant stuffed the caterpillar-like infant into its mouth and bit down hard. The other “care-givers” watched closely, and then they too snatched up infant bugs and stuffed them into their mouths.

  “They’re eating the babies!” Rabbit exclaimed.

  “So it would seem,” the farmer Omago agreed. “Isn’t that nice of them?”

  At that point,
the imitation Aracia standing near the cocoon began to scream.

  “Now I think you’ll put your arrows aside, Longbow,” Omago suggested. “The Vlagh’s doing exactly what we want her to do.”

  “How long would you say that she’s going to continue the screaming?” Longbow asked.

  Omago shrugged. “Forever, most likely,” he said.

  “It won’t really be very hard for her to lay a new batch of eggs, will it?” Longbow asked.

  “Not in the least,” Omago replied. “Of course, the eggs will never hatch. That’s the main reason we came here, friend Longbow. The Vlagh won’t produce any live servants now. I’d say that the Vlagh will never have any children—or warriors either. From here on until the end of time, the Vlagh will never produce another child, and after about six weeks she’s going to be all alone here in her nest—weeping and screaming. Does that satisfy your need for vengeance, mighty hunter?”

  “Her screaming is sort of beautiful, isn’t it?” Longbow agreed, “and I wouldn’t for all the world want to interrupt her.” Then he carefully slid the arrow he’d been holding back into his quiver.

  THE

  LAST

  GENERATION

  1

  It came to Rabbit that they shouldn’t really be surprised that Omago was more than just a farmer. Omago’s mate, the beautiful Ara, could do things that not even the gods of the Land of Dhrall could duplicate. A woman with that kind of power wouldn’t be very interested in a man whose main goal in life was to grow lots of turnips. So Rabbit was not surprised that Omago understood the nature of the creatures that confronted them in the throne room of the nest.

  The bulging eyes of every bug on the chamber floor, those who were partway up the walls, and even those clinging to the ceiling were fixed on the strange cocoon as if it were some kind of holy object.

  “We seem to have arrived right on time, then,” Omago said. “The Vlagh is instructing the horde of ‘care-givers’ to take good care of this new hatch.”