Crystal Gorge

by David Eddings

  “Could you have a word with Narasan?” Longbow asked Veltan as they walked on down to the beach. “I think we might want to have Keselo with us in the north country. He spent a great deal of his time studying when he was younger, and he carries a lot of information in his head that we might need in Dahlaine’s Domain.” Longbow smiled slightly. “Rabbit and I came to realize that if we named something, Keselo had probably studied it.”

  “He is quite learned,” Veltan agreed. “I’ll have a talk with Narasan before I join Gunda and Ekial in that little yawl. I’m fairly sure that Narasan will agree. I’m sure you noticed that Narasan’s going off to the east just to mollify sister Aracia’s sense of having been offended because everybody didn’t rush over to her Domain to defend her.”

  “I don’t think that’s entirely true, Veltan,” Longbow disagreed. “Red-Beard and I were talking outside your map-room when Aracia and Dahlaine were arguing, and we sort of agreed that your older sister’s problem wasn’t so much offense as it was fear. If the descriptions we’ve heard of her part of the Land of Dhrall are anywhere close to being accurate, she doesn’t have anything that even remotely resembles an army. She has farmers, merchants, and priests, but no soldiers. If the creatures of the Wasteland attack her Domain, there’s nobody there to resist. That’s why she wanted both the Maags and the Trogites to go east. She’s more than a little self-centered, of course, but it was fear that was driving her.”

  “Now that’s something we hadn’t even considered,” Veltan admitted. “It does sort of fit, though. We all get a bit strange and confused at the end of one of our cycles, and the rest of the family assumed that she was being driven by pride, and that being adored by all those priests had dislocated her mind. We never even considered the possibility of fear. You might want to pass this on to Dahlaine and Zelana and see what they think. It could explain Aracia’s odd behavior here lately.”

  Things were a bit crowded on board the Seagull as they sailed south from the house of Veltan in the late summer. Sorgan obviously wasn’t too pleased when Zelana and Dahlaine appropriated his cabin, but it did make sense, since they had the children—Eleria, Ashad, and Yaltar—with them. Maag sailors frequently spoke to each other in colorful terms, and it was probably best to keep the children in a place where they couldn’t hear certain words.

  Also, for some reason that Red-Beard couldn’t really see, Dahlaine had insisted that Omago and his beautiful wife, Ara, should join their party. There was something about Ara that Red-Beard couldn’t quite understand. She was beautiful, of course, but very peculiar things seemed to happen quite frequently when she was around. It could just be coincidence, of course, but Red-Beard was more than a little dubious about that.

  For right now, however, Red-Beard had something a bit more serious to worry about. Once the Seagull and the rest of the Maag fleet were past the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, they’d be sailing north along the coast of Zelana’s part of the Land of Dhrall, and there was a distinct possibility that they’d pull into the bay of Lattash for any one of a dozen or so reasons.

  It took him a while to work up enough nerve to speak with Zelana about the matter.

  “Are you busy?” he asked her one bright, sunny morning as the Seagull raced down along the east coast and Zelana was standing alone near the bow.

  “Are we having some sort of problem?” she asked him.

  “Well, I hope not,” he replied. “Do you think you could see your way clear to persuade Sorgan Hook-Beak to avoid the bay of Lattash?”

  “Is there something wrong with Lattash, Red-Beard?”

  “New Lattash,” he corrected her. “Old Lattash was just fine, but it’s not there anymore. It’s New Lattash that’s got me worried.”

  “And why’s that, dear boy?”

  “Boy?” Red-Beard found the term to be a bit offensive.

  “It’s just a relative term,” she said, smiling. “What’s troubling you so much, Red-Beard?”

  “I’d really be much happier if word that I’m here on the Seagull didn’t leak out anywhere in the vicinity of the new village.”

  “It’s your home, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it used to be. After my uncle White-Braid came apart when Old Lattash was buried by that lava flow, the villagers decided that I should be the chief.”

  “It seems that I’d heard about that. Did I ever congratulate you?”

  “No, and I think I’d like to keep it that way. To be honest about it, I didn’t want to be the chief, and I still don’t. If I’m lucky, these wars in the other parts of the Land of Dhrall will go on and on for years. I’ve never wanted to be the chief of the tribe, and I still don’t.”

  Zelana laughed. “You and my sister make a very odd pair, Red-Beard. She wants all that authority and adoration, but you keep running away from it.”

  “How can she stand all that foolishness?”

  “It makes her feel important, Red-Beard, and being important takes some of the sting out of the fact that our older brother outranks her in this particular cycle.” She paused, looking thoughtfully at Red-Beard. “You do know about our cycles, don’t you, Red-Beard?” she asked.

  “Sort of. As I understand it, you and your family stay awake for a thousand years, and then you hand your task off to some younger relatives and take a long nap. Is that anywhere close to what happens?”

  “Fairly close—except that your number isn’t quite right. Our cycles are twenty-five times longer than one thousand.”

  Red-Beard blinked. “You’ve been awake for that long?” he asked her in a voice filled with wonder.

  “Not quite yet, but it’s getting closer to naptime. When our current cycle began, people—your species—were at a very primitive level. They hadn’t even discovered fire yet, and their most sophisticated weapon was the club. In many ways, this is the most important period in the history of the world. The man-things—your species—spend most of their time changing things. That makes this particular cycle very significant—and very dangerous. There are some things that should not be changed—and that brings us to the Vlagh. Do you know anything about bees?”

  Red-Beard shrugged. “They make honey, and they sting anybody who tries to steal it. Honey tastes good—but not so good that I’d want to get stung a thousand times just to gather it up.”

  “Wise decision, Red-Beard. Bees—and a number of other varieties of insects—have developed very complex societies that are designed to expand their territories and their food supply. That’s what these wars here in the Land of Dhrall are all about. Unfortunately, the Vlagh is an imitator. When one of the creatures of the Wasteland sees a characteristic that seems useful, the Vlagh starts experimenting, and its next hatch will have a variation of that characteristic.”

  “So we end up with bug-men who know how to talk.”

  “Not exactly bug-men, Red-Beard. Bug-women would come closer to what’s really happening. There aren’t really very many males among the creatures of the Wasteland. They’re almost all females, but the Vlagh herself is the only one that lays eggs—thousands and thousands of eggs at a time.”

  “I don’t think baby bug-people would be very dangerous,” Red-Beard scoffed.

  “Maybe not, but they grow very fast.”

  “How fast?”

  “They’re adults within a week. Of course, they only live for about six weeks, but a new generation is already in the works. The outlanders we’ve hired to help us don’t fully understand this, but it’s not really necessary for them to understand. It’s probably better that they don’t. If they knew that the Vlagh can replace all the ones our friends kill in about two weeks, there isn’t enough gold in the whole world to have persuaded them to come here and help us.”

  “Why are you telling me all this, Zelana?” Red-Beard asked her.

  She shrugged. “A few people need to know what’s really happening, Red-Beard, and you just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’ll have a word with Sorgan about your problem, and if
it’s really necessary for the Seagull to go on into the bay of Lattash, we’ll find someplace to hide you so that the people of your tribe won’t be able to find you.”

  “That definitely takes a load off my mind.” Red-Beard hesitated. “You do understand why I don’t want any part of being the chief of the tribe, don’t you?” he asked her.

  “It has something to do with freedom, doesn’t it?”

  “Exactly.” He frowned slightly. “You went right straight to the point, Zelana. How did you pick it up so fast?”

  “I’ve already been there, Red-Beard. That’s why I went off to the Isle of Thurn a long time ago. If you think that being ‘chief’ would be unbearably tedious, take a long, hard look at being ‘god.’ Just like you, I didn’t want any part of that, so I ran away. I spent thousands of years in my pink grotto composing music, writing poetry, and playing with my pink dolphins. Then my big brother brought Eleria to me, and my whole world changed.”

  “You love her, though, don’t you?”

  Zelana sighed. “More than anything in the whole world. That’s what Dahlaine had in mind when he foisted the Dreamers on us in the first place. In a certain sense, it was very cruel, but it was necessary.”

  “Well, I’m not really all that necessary where the tribe’s concerned. They can find somebody else to sit around being important.” Then a thought came to Red-Beard, and he suddenly burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I know who’d make the best chief the tribe’s ever had,” he replied. “The tribe might not like it very much—at least the men wouldn’t—but Planter really should be the chief.”

  Zelana smiled. “She already is, Red-Beard. She doesn’t need the title. The tribe does what she wants done, and that’s what really counts, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not out loud, I wouldn’t,” Red-Beard replied.

  The wind was coming out of the east when Sorgan Hook-Beak’s fleet of longships rounded the first peninsula jutting out from the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and when that wind caught the sails, they billowed out with a booming sound. It seemed to Red-Beard that the longships almost flew toward the west. He had a few suspicions about that. Zelana and her family frequently spoke of “tampering,” and a wind coming from the east was very unusual. West winds and south winds were fairly common at this time of the year, but east and north? Not too likely.

  The Seagull rounded the third and last peninsula on the south coast of Veltan’s Domain a few days later, and then the Maag fleet turned north. The weather seemed to have a faint smell of early autumn now, and Red-Beard began to feel that seasonal urge to go hunting. Autumn had always been the time to lay in a good supply of food to get the tribe through the coming winter.

  He was standing near the slender bow of the Seagull with Zelana’s older brother about midmorning one day, when Sorgan Hook-Beak came forward to join them. “I got to thinking last night that it might be a good idea for me and my men to know a bit about the people of your Domain, Lord Dahlaine,” he said. “My cousin Skell discovered that it’s not a good idea to turn Maags loose on the natives of this part of the world when they haven’t got the faintest idea of what the local customs are.”

  “You could be right about that, Captain,” Dahlaine agreed. “I suppose a little conference in your cabin might be in order along about now. There are a few peculiarities in my Domain that you should all know about.”

  Sorgan’s cabin at the stern of the Seagull wasn’t really very large, so things were just a bit crowded when they gathered there about a quarter of an hour later.

  “Captain Hook-Beak spoke with me a little while ago, and he wanted to know a few things about the people of my Domain,” Zelana’s big brother told them. “It’s not a bad idea, really. I’ll give you a sort of general idea about my people and the general layout of the country up there, and then I’ll answer any questions you might have.”

  “He sounds a lot like a chief of one of our tribes, doesn’t he, Longbow?” Red-Beard said quietly to his friend.

  “Some things are always the same, friend Red-Beard,” Longbow replied. “A chief is a chief, no matter where he lives.”

  “When we get to the north of sister Zelana’s Domain, we’ll go ashore in the Tonthakan nation,” Dahlaine began.

  “Nation?” Zelana asked curiously.

  “It’s an idea I came up with quite some time ago, dear sister,” Dahlaine replied. “It was the best way I could think of to put an end to those silly wars between the various tribes. There are three significantly different cultures in my domain, so I set up three ‘nations’—Tonthakan, Matakan, and Atazakan—and the various tribes in those nations settle their differences with conferences instead of wars.”

  “What an unnatural sort of thing,” Red-Beard said in mock disapproval.

  “Be nice,” Zelana chided him.

  “Sorry,” he replied, although he didn’t really mean it.

  “The nation of Tonthakan lies along the western coast of my Domain,” Dahlaine continued, “and it’s very similar in terrain—and culture—to sister Zelana’s Domain. The mountains are steep and rugged, the forests are dense and mostly evergreens, and there are several varieties of deer roaming through those forests. The Tonthakans are primarily hunters, and they’re quite good with their bows. I’m sure that Longbow and Red-Beard will feel pretty much at home in that region—except that the winters are longer and colder than they are farther to the south. It won’t be quite as noticeable in the autumn, but the days are longer in the summer up there and shorter in the winter.” He glanced at Keselo. “I’m sure our learned young friend from the Trogite Empire can explain that for us.”

  “It has to do with the tilt of our world, Lord Dahlaine,” Keselo replied. “Our world isn’t exactly plumb and square in relation to the sun, and that’s what accounts for the seasons. She spins, and that’s what gives us days and nights, and she travels around the sun in what scholars call an ‘orbit.’ If she didn’t spin, half the world would live in perpetual daylight, and the other half would live in the dark, but it’s that slight lopsidedness that gives us the seasons.”

  “I’ve always known that there was something wrong with this world,” Rabbit said with no hint of a smile.

  “I wouldn’t really call it ‘wrong,’ Rabbit,” Keselo told him. “If it weren’t for the changing of the seasons, I don’t think anything alive could be here. Perpetual summer might sound nice, but I don’t think it really would be.”

  “Pushing on, then,” Dahlaine said. “The central region of my Domain is a large area of meadowland that’s primarily grassland with very few trees.”

  “That turned out to be very useful last spring,” Longbow said.

  “I don’t think I quite follow you there, Longbow,” Dahlaine said with a slightly puzzled look.

  “It has to do with certain customs in Zelana’s Domain,” Longbow replied. “There are certain tasks that we call ‘men’s work’ and others called ‘women’s work.’ Men are supposed to hunt and fight wars, and women are supposed to plant vegetables and cook supper. It might sound sort of fair, but it seems to give the men of any tribe a lot of spare time to sit around talking about hunting and fighting. When the fire-mountains won the first war for us, Red-Beard’s village, Lattash, was buried under melted rock, so the people had to move to a place on down the bay from the old one. There was open land that should have given the women plenty of room for planting—except that it was covered with thick sod. Cutting away the sod would normally be ‘women’s work,’ but Old-Bear, the chief of my tribe, told us that he had once visited that grassland you just described, and that while he was there, he saw the lodges made of sod rather than tree limbs. Building lodges is ‘men’s work,’ so after Red-Beard’s tribe had settled in their new village, the men built the traditional tree-limb lodges, but the wind blew quite a bit harder where the new village was located, and one night, all of the lodges were blown down.”

  “That must have been a very st
rong wind,” the farmer Omago said.

  “Not quite that strong,” Longbow replied with a grin. “Red-Beard and I gave it a bit of help. Then the next morning we put on long faces and told the men of the tribe that tree-limb lodges weren’t strong enough to stand up in ‘windy-village,’ and we suggested sod instead. The men grumbled a bit, but they went on out into the meadow and started digging up sod for all they were worth, while the women came along behind them planting beans and other things that are good to eat. Nobody was offended, and nobody will starve to death this coming winter.”

  “You two are a couple of very devious people,” Omago’s wife, Ara, observed.

  “One should always do one’s best when the well-being of the tribe’s involved,” Red-Beard replied sententiously.

  The pretty lady actually laughed.

  “Pushing on, then,” Dahlaine continued. “There are a few herds of those various deer near the western mountains in Matakan, but the most numerous creatures in Matakan are the bison. They’re quite a bit larger than deer, and they have horns instead of antlers. Since the winters are very cold in my Domain, the bison have dense fur, and their hides are quite a bit thicker. Arrows might penetrate that fur and hide, but spears seem to work better.” Dahlaine went on to describe the Matans’ “spear-thrower” again.

  “Something like that would be very difficult to aim, it seems to me,” Rabbit said.

  “The Matans practice a lot, and they’re good enough to bring home a lot of bison meat.”

  “That’s what counts,” Longbow said. “Their spearheads are stone, aren’t they?”

  “Of course,” Dahlaine replied. “The only metal we have anything to do with here in the Land of Dhrall is gold—and I don’t think gold would make very good spearheads.”

  “I’d say it’s almost time for me to go to work again,” Rabbit added with a glum sort of look.

  “About all that’s left now is ‘crazy land,’ right?” Red-Beard suggested, being careful not to smile.