Crystal Gorge: Book Three of the Dreamers

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  “It’s a lie!” Aracia howled. “A lie! A lie! A lie!”

  “No, Aracia,” Zelana said sadly, “you’re the one who’s been lying. We all know that now.” Then she looked at Commander Narasan. “I think you just got your marching orders, Commander. I’m sure that Sorgan will be happy to see you.”

  “You can’t leave, Narasan!” Aracia screamed. “I forbid it.”

  “Forbid all you want, sister mine,” Zelana said, “but Narasan goes north—now.”

  Then the warrior queen Trenicia glared at Aracia. “I see that you’re not to be trusted,” she said. “You lied to me, and I won’t have anything more to do with you. I’m going north with my dear friend, Narasan.”

  “You can’t do that! You’re leaving me alone and unprotected! I paid you!”

  Trenicia began to rip various jewels off her clothes and to throw them on the floor at Aracia’s feet. “Take back what you paid me, Aracia,” she said in a voice filled with loathing.

  “It didn’t work, did it, Aracia?” Zelana said then. “Your lies and foolish attempts at deception just fell apart, and now you’re all alone. Our brothers and I will come here to protect your Domain when the servants of the Vlagh attack, but we won’t do it because we love you. When you get right down to it, nobody really loves you. Your fat, lazy priests pretend that they love you, but they really don’t. All they want is a life of luxury, and they’d sooner die than work for it. You’re pathetic, Aracia—stupid, arrogant, and pathetic. I think it’s time for you to grow up and look at the real world, but that’s up to you. I don’t really ever want to see you again.”

  Aracia stared at her in horror, and then she wailed and fled, weeping uncontrollably.

  “Just a bit extreme there,” Narasan suggested with a faint note of disapproval.

  “She’ll get over it,” Zelana replied. “I know my sister very well. She’ll twist it around for a while, and then—in her own mind at least—she’ll come to see this as a victory. It’s much too late for Aracia to look reality right in the face.” Then she turned and looked at Eleria. “How did you manage to pick up Lillabeth’s Dream that way?” she asked. “I knew that you had a general idea of her Dream, but I didn’t know that you could recite it word for word like that.”

  “When I told you that we could share our Dreams, I meant share, Beloved. I knew exactly everything that was happening, and I also knew the words Lillabeth would use to describe her Dream. That’s been going on since my very first Dream. If you want, we can go back to Dahlaine’s cave, and you’ll find out that Ashad and Yaltar can tell you exactly the same story, and they’ll use the same words that Lillabeth and I used. It’s not really something that we’re doing ourselves, Beloved. Our jewels take care of that part. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No,” Zelana replied, “actually, I didn’t. I think you might have forgotten to tell me about it.”

  “Oh, maybe I did at that.” Then Eleria smiled. “Everything’s all right now, though. You might want to tell your brothers about it as well. It’s not nice to keep secrets from your family, you know. Your sister just tried to do that, and look how angry that made you.”

  THE MALAVI

  1

  It was early autumn in the Land of Malavi, arid the little clumps of birch trees had turned golden, while the tall grass was now a pale yellow, sure signs that winter was not far away. Since Ekial had run off to some place to the east of Malavi, Ariga was obliged to take over his friend’s duties, and he wasn’t the least bit happy about that. The annual cattle-drive was no particular problem. Ariga had been involved in those drives for years now, so he knew what had to be done. It was the prospect of being obliged to deal with the Trogite cattle-buyers in the coastal village that irritated him. Always before, he’d gone off with his friends to celebrate at the end of the drive, but this time he wouldn’t be able to do that.

  That just didn’t seem fair to Ariga.

  The village on the coast was a shabby sort of place with rickety buildings where assorted Trogites desperately tried to swindle the Malavi herdsmen with watered-down beer and scruffy-looking prostitutes. There were piers jutting out into the harbor and each pier had a little shack on its shoreward side where the cattle-buyer waited, obviously hoping that he could cheat the Malavi herdsmen out of a few pennies.

  Ariga swung down from his horse to one side of the pier where Ekial usually did business and went on up to the canvas door of the Trogite shack.

  “Is anybody in there?” he called.

  “Come in, come in,” somebody inside called eagerly.

  Ariga braced himself and went on in.

  The Trogite was a scrawny-looking man with one eye that seemed to be looking off to one side while the other one appeared to be looking at the ceiling. He was dressed in fancy clothes that weren’t very clean, and he didn’t smell too good. “Welcome! Welcome!” he greeted Ariga. Then he squinted slightly. “I don’t believe we’ve ever met before,” he said.

  “My name is Ariga, and I am of the Clan of Prince Ekial.”

  “Is the prince ill?”

  “He’s busy right now,” Ariga replied curtly. “I drove our herd here this time. Let’s get down to business, shall we? I’ve got five thousand prime cows. I’m sure that you know what price the elders have set for this year, so we won’t have to argue about that.”

  “I think maybe we should get to know each other a little better,” the Trogite said, his off-center eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Why? I’m selling, and you’re buying. That’s the only thing that matters.”

  “I have a cask of very fine ale, Ariga. Why don’t we have a few tankards before we get down to business?”

  Ariga was tempted, but this was the one thing Ekial had warned all his friends about. “Don’t ever accept a drink of anything—even water—from a Trogite cattle-buyer,” was the first rule. “I’m not really all that thirsty,” Ariga said. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? I have other things to take care of today.”

  “Well—” the wall-eyed Trogite said, “I think maybe the Malavi elders overlooked a few things when they set the price for this year. We’ve already bought more cows than we’ll probably be able to sell when we sail on back to the empire, so I won’t be able to pay you the full price your elders demanded this year. The market goes up, and it goes down. You know how that is.”

  “It’s been nice talking with you,” Ariga said, turning abruptly and starting toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” the Trogite almost screamed.

  “Anyplace but here. I don’t think we’ll be able to do business this year, and I don’t really have time to dicker with you—particularly since my price just went up.”

  “You can’t do that!” the Trogite protested.

  “I just did. And I’ll keep on doing it every time you try to play these silly games. Have a nice day.” Ariga pushed the canvas flap aside and went on back outside.

  “Come back!” the Trogite screamed from his doorway.

  “No. I’m not going to waste any more time with you. Maybe next year—or possibly the year after that.”

  “But I’ve hired all these ships to carry your cows back to the empire!”

  “That’s your problem, not mine.” Ariga went back to where his horse was waiting, mounted, and rode on down to the next pier and a different Trogite cattle-buyer. He was fairly sure that word of what he’d just done would get around among the Trogites rather quickly, so the next time he and his friends drove a herd of cows down to the coast, the cattle-buyers would know enough not to try to play games with him.

  He was a bit surprised to find that he’d actually enjoyed himself when he’d jerked the wall-eyed Trogite up short. This was turning out very well.

  Ekial returned to the lands of the clan a few weeks after Ariga had trounced the wall-eyed Trogite, and Ariga was very happy to see his friend again. “What took you so long?” he asked.

  “I had to watch a war,” Ekial replied. “Then some frien
ds and I had to go to a place called Castano to hire enough ships to carry our men and their horses on up to the north end of a place called ‘The Land of Dhrall.’ From what I saw during that war I mentioned, we shouldn’t have too many problems, and the pay’s very good. How did the cattle-drive go this year?”

  “No problems,” Ariga replied. “I had to jerk that wall-eyed Trogite cattle-buyer up short, though.” With a chuckle he described the encounter to Ekial.

  “He thinks he’s the cleverest man in the whole wide world, and he always tries to cheat—particularly when he has dealings with somebody for the first time. Did you find a dealer willing to pay the right price?”

  “I had to go through a couple more cheaters before I found an honest buyer, but I’m fairly sure that the word’s been passed around, so nobody’s going to try to cheat me again. I got the full price for our herd, and then we all came back here. What’s this business about a war off in some other part of the world?”

  “This is what it’s all about, Ariga,” Ekial said, pulling a yellow block out from under his tunic and handing it to his friend.

  The block was very heavy, and Ariga almost dropped it. “Is this what I think it is?” he demanded in a trembling voice.

  “It is gold, yes.”

  Ariga hefted the block. “This weighs almost fifty pounds, Ekial,” he exclaimed.

  “That’s fairly close, yes, and I’ve got several more. You and I and our friends are going to have to visit several other clans. The fellow who’s hiring armies right now wants about fifty thousand men—and horses—to help his people fight off an enemy who’s trying to take over his part of the Land of Dhrall. They’re just a bit unusual, but they’re foot-soldiers, so we shouldn’t have any trouble dealing with them. Have you had anybody ride Bright Star lately? If he’s feeling frisky, I might have to wear him down just a bit. Then you and I should ride on back to the coast and talk with a Trogite named Gunda and our employer’s younger brother, Veltan. He’s the one who hands out the gold.”

  “How many guards has he got with him? A man with several of these gold blocks needs lots of protection.”

  “He keeps it very well hidden, Ariga,” Ekial said with a faint smile. “It doesn’t show up until he needs it.”

  “How does he manage that?”

  “I haven’t got the foggiest idea. Get word to the other clans here in the north. We’ll need about fifty thousand men—and their horses, of course—and we’re just a bit pressed for time. Dahlaine’s not sure just exactly when his enemies will attack, so he wants us up there in his territory as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll pass the word, Ekial,” Ariga said. Then he patted the heavy block of gold. “I’m fairly sure that this pretty little thing will get everybody’s immediate attention.”

  “I’m not really sure who it was that came up with the idea, Gunda,” Ariga told Ekial’s bald Trogite friend a few days later when the two of them were sitting in one of the shabby taverns, in the coastal village where the cattle-buyers did business. The crews of the huge Trogite ships were busy building raftlike floating piers so that they could load men and horses, so Ariga and Gunda had stopped by the tavern to pass some time away.

  “I’m sure that it was a long time ago, though,” Ariga continued. “As far as I’ve heard, we’ve been riding horses for hundreds of years now.”

  “I’m sure that it’s easier than doing your own walking,” Gunda said.

  “And faster, too,” Ariga said. “I don’t want to offend you, Gunda, but you don’t act at all like the Trogites we come across here on the north coast. The only thing they seem to be interested in is finding new ways to cheat us.”

  “They refer to themselves as ‘businessmen,’ Ariga,” Gunda said. “It’s a nicer word than ‘thieves,’ I guess, but it means the same thing when you get right down to the bottom of it. I grew up in an army compound, and we were taught not to lie, cheat, or steal. We’re so honorable that we make other Trogites sick to their stomachs.”

  “I can imagine,” Ariga said. “Just exactly who is this fellow who took Ekial off to the west after he decided to hire us to fight his war for him?”

  “That would be Dahlaine,” Gunda said. “That one scares me just a little bit. Veltan is pleasant, and Zelana is beautiful—even if she is a little silly sometimes—but Dahlaine’s as bleak as a mountain, and Aracia’s crazy.”

  Ariga swallowed hard. “Why are we working for them, then?” he demanded.

  “For the gold they pay us, Ariga. I thought you knew about that. I’ll work for anybody—well, almost anybody—if the pay’s good.”

  “Just exactly who—or what—are we going to be fighting, Gunda?” Ariga asked. “Ekial wasn’t too clear when he was describing the enemy in that last war.”

  “That’s probably because we were fighting two separate and different enemies in Veltan’s Domain. The ones we came up against in the first war—the one in Lady Zelana’s part of the Land of Dhrall—were what Sorgan Hook-Beak called ‘snake-men.’”

  “No arms or legs? They wouldn’t be much of a problem.”

  “Oh, they had arms and legs, Ariga,” Gunda said. “Sorgan was talking about their fangs and the venom that came out of those fangs. Are there any poisonous snakes here in Malavi?”

  “I’ve heard about them,” Ariga said, “but there aren’t any around here—at least I hope not. Who—or what—was your second enemy?”

  “The Trogite Church,” Gunda replied, “—which isn’t really around anymore. If you think we’re interested in gold, we don’t even come close to the Trogite Church. They invented greed—and that’s what finally killed them—well, most of them, anyway. When the Church found out that the Land of Dhrall had mountains of gold just lying around for anybody who wanted it to just bend over and pick it up, they went completely insane. When you get right down to it, the Church fought that second war for us. All we really had to do was get out of the way.” Gunda laughed then. “There’s somebody in the Land of Dhrall who can do things that you wouldn’t believe, Ariga. We think that she’s a woman, but as far as I know, nobody’s actually seen her. The Wasteland in the center of the Land of Dhrall is a desert—all sand and rocks—and this mysterious lady somehow made the whole thing look exactly like gold. The snake-men were charging up a slope that led into Veltan’s territory, and the Church-men were charging down. They were busy killing each other, but then a solid wall of water came out of the ground, and drowned every single enemy on that slope.”

  “Where did the water come from?”

  “The way I understand it, there’s an underground sea five or six miles down below that part of the Land of Dhrall, and it broke loose just exactly when we needed it. I guess there was a bit of what the Dhralls call ‘tampering’ involved. Dahlaine’s family tampers with things all the time, but even they seemed to be more than a little startled by that vast amount of water that suddenly came blasting up out of the ground to wash away all of our enemies.”

  “How long did that water keep on running down that slope?” Ariga asked.

  “If I understood it correctly, it’ll keep on running like that for several hundred years at least. The last time I looked, there was a huge lake at the bottom of the slope, but that lake’s still growing. Give it a few more years, and it’ll be an ocean. The bug-people won’t be able to attack the southern part of Dhrall again.”

  “I think you just lost me, Gunda,” Ariga said. “First you called our enemies ‘snake-men,’ but just now you called them ‘bug-people.’ Just exactly what are we going to have to deal with when we reach the Land of Dhrall? Are they bugs, or are they snakes? Or are they some odd mix of both breeds?”

  “They’re all kinds of things, Ariga. We even came up against a variety of them that appeared to be bats—and you don’t ever want to encounter a venomous bat that does its hunting in the dark.” Gunda laughed suddenly. “There’s a clever little fellow called Rabbit on one of those Maag ships, and he came up with the idea of holding the bat-thing
s back with fish-nets. I’ve heard that the nets snared thousands of the bug-bats, and they didn’t come around after that.” Gunda frowned slightly. “I’m a soldier, Ariga. I can follow orders, and I know how to use my weapons, but there are a lot of things going on in the Land of Dhrall that I don’t understand. I’ve heard that ‘the Vlagh’ is the leader—or maybe the mother—of the snake-bug-bat things that live out in the Wasteland. It lays eggs—like a chicken—but when the eggs hatch, the new little chicks aren’t anything at all like their older brothers and sisters. I guess that this Vlagh thing tampers even more than Dahlaine or his brother and sisters do. We kept coming up against things that seemed to be impossible—but we keep on winning, and I can’t for the life of me understand how we did that. If the dice suddenly go sour on us, though, I think we’ll be in a whole lot of trouble.”

  “You’re just full of good news, aren’t you, Gunda?” Ariga said just a bit sourly.

  Ariga found it to be very crowded on the big Trogite ships that had been hired to take them to the Land of Dhrall. He’d had to help Ekial lead the newly hired horsemen from several other clans down to the coast, so he was among the last of the Malavi to go onto one of the ships. When Ekial’s other friend—the one with all the pretty gold blocks—told them that he was going to put fifty thousand horses on a single one of those ships, Ariga laughed right in his face. “That’s ridiculous, Veltan,” he said. “You’ll need twice as many ships to carry the horses as it took to load up the men.”

  “That might be true, Ariga,” Veltan replied, “if the horses stayed as big as they are now. Are you at all familiar with the word ‘tampering’?”