The Elder Gods (The Dreamers 1)

“Veltan warned Skell on his way up here, Longbow,” Zelana said. “Tell Sorgan that he worries too much.”

“Your younger brother cut things a little fine, Zelana,” Longbow declared. “He should have warned us earlier.”

“That was Yaltar’s fault,” Eleria told him. “I think his volcano got away from him. Vash tends to overdo things now and then.”

“Who’s Vash, baby sister?” Rabbit asked.

“Did I say Vash?” Eleria asked. “I meant Yaltar, of course.”

“Yaltar was angry, Eleria.” Zelana excused Veltan’s little boy. “Those caves and burrows took us all by surprise, and Yaltar doesn’t like surprises, so he overreacted.”

“Then the earthquakes and all of that melted rock were sort of like Eleria’s warm wind?” Rabbit suggested.

“My wind wasn’t nearly as nasty as Yaltar’s volcano, Bunny,” Eleria sniffed. “Boys are so noisy. They just have to show off when they do something.”

“His liquid rock did seal up the Vlagh’s caves and burn up all the snake-men in the burrows, baby sister,” Rabbit reminded her. “We were in a lot of trouble before those twin peaks up at the gap exploded.”

“There’s something I don’t quite understand, ma’am,” Keselo said to Zelana. “If you and your family are able to unleash these catastrophes, why did you go to all the trouble and expense of hiring armies to fight this war for you? Why didn’t you just go ahead and deal with your enemies by yourselves?”

“It’s just a little complicated, Keselo,” Zelana replied. “That- Called-the-Vlagh created its servants by the thousands, so they vastly outnumber the people of the four Domains, and they’re very savage. Our people aren’t nearly as numerous as the creatures of the Wasteland. When we learned that the Vlagh was about to unleash the monsters of the Wasteland on our Domains, we knew we were going to need help, so my brothers, my sister, and I went out to other lands to buy that help with gold. We didn’t really understand at that time just how far the Dreamers could go. My family and I are limited by certain constraints. I’m sure that none of us could have unleashed that volcano the way Yaltar’s dream did, or caused the flood Eleria’s dream set in motion. Our minds don’t work that way. The dreams don’t have limitations, though. They’re based on imagination—or possibly inspiration—not reality.” She paused. “Is this making any sense to you at all, Keselo?” she asked him.

“Not really, ma’am,” he admitted.

“I’m sure it’ll come to you in time,” she said with a faint smile.

“Things got a little exciting there for a while,” Rabbit was saying to Zelana. “We were all fairly certain that we were up against a bone-stupid enemy, but they’re not nearly as ignorant as we’d thought. If it hadn’t been for that fire mountain, we’d have been in some real trouble.”

“It’s easy to underestimate the intelligence of the creatures of the Wasteland, little man,” Zelana replied. “As individuals, they’re stupid beyond belief, but as a group, they have a surprising intelligence. They have many ways to communicate with each other. Some of them speak, but others are more elemental. Unlike you man-creatures, they tell each other everything they’ve encountered, and those who receive that information share it with still others. Everything that any one of them has seen or experienced becomes the possession of all members of the group, and the group is wiser by far than the individual members. The ultimate decisions are made by That-Called-the-Vlagh, but I think that the Vlagh itself is to some degree susceptible to the dictates of that overmind. They will most probably surprise you many times. I know they’ve surprised me quite a few times already, and that hasn’t made me very happy.”

“What we really need, then, is some way to disrupt their communication with each other, wouldn’t you say?” Keselo suggested. “Loud noise, maybe, or dense smoke, or possibly odors of some kind.”

“Odors is something we should really investigate,” Zelana agreed. “If something smells bad enough, it might very well interfere with their ability to communicate with each other. I’ll speak with my brothers and my sister about it.” She paused and then moved on. “The servants of the Vlagh have been blocked in my Domain, but there are still three more Domains that need protecting. I’m almost positive that Dahlaine and Aracia will need help as much or more than Veltan and I. What I’m getting at, gentlemen, is that I’m sure that we’ll need Hook-Beak and Narasan for much longer than we’d originally anticipated.”

“I’m not too sure that the cap’n will buy into a long war,” Rabbit said dubiously. “He’ll help Commander Narasan because the Trogites helped us, but that might be about as far as he’ll be willing to go. Once we win Narasan’s war, the cap’n might just decide to take his gold and go on back home.” The little fellow paused reflectively. “We Maags aren’t really all that good at land wars,” he admitted. “All this slogging around in the mud, sleeping on the ground, and eating cold food sort of goes against our grain. We like short, noisy wars that’re over by suppertime.”

Zelana shrugged. “The offer of more gold will probably persuade Hook-Beak that land war’s not really all that bad.”

“Gold’s nice,” Rabbit countered, “but you’ve got to live long enough to spend it. I’m not sure how Keselo felt about what happened in the ravine, but it scared me silly.”

“It sort of made my hair stand on end as well,” Keselo admitted. “I’ve been on the opposite side of the ravine from Commander Narasan for quite some time now, so I’m not exactly sure how he feels about what happened here, but he might be starting to have second thoughts. Those serpent-men who were trying to kill us aren’t intelligent enough to be afraid. Usually, we Trogites feel that a stupid enemy is a gift from the gods, but if the stupidity goes far enough to eliminate fear, it might have caused the commander to have second thoughts about this whole arrangement. A key element in any war strategy is undermining the enemy’s morale. A frightened man will usually just give up and run away. An insect or a serpent doesn’t know how to be afraid, though, so many standard Trogite tactics just won’t work.”