The Treasured One

‘He’ll expel you and your friends from the church, won’t he?’ Jalkan suggested.

‘He can try,’ Adnari Estarg replied slyly, ‘but we’ll ignore his proclamations and kill every Regulator he sends to our part of the world to enforce those commands. He’ll get the point - eventually. How many armies do you think we’ll need, Jalkan?’

‘I gave it quite a bit of thought on my way home, Your Grace,’ Jalkan said. ‘I think we should start out with five, at least. A half-million men should be able to occupy the southern portion of Veltan’s Domain. That’ll give us a good foothold. Veltan’s concentrating on an invasion from the north, so it’s highly unlikely that he’ll divert many troops to meet us.’

‘We’ll start out with five, then,’ the Adnari agreed. ‘If it happens to turn out that we need more, we’ll hire more.’

‘I thought that Naos Udar has the church treasury heavily guarded.’

‘Indeed he does, Jalkan,’ Adnari Estarg said with a faint smile, ‘but there wasn’t really very much money in that treasury when Udar usurped the holy throne. I’d pretty well cleaned it out when I first saw those twelve armies of his marching up from the south. I’ve got it stored in a well-concealed place, and I’m the only one who knows the location.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We didn’t really treat you very well during your trial, did we, Jalkan?’ he asked rather apologetically.

‘I don’t see that you really had much choice, your Grace. The new Naos was trying his best to purge the church of all clergymen who didn’t come from his part of the Empire. If any of you had tried to come to my defense, you’d have ended up chained to the whipping post right beside me.’

‘We will reward you for your discovery, Jalkan.’

‘Yes, your Grace, you definitely will,’ Jalkan replied very firmly. ‘Since I’m the only one who knows how to reach the Land of Dhrall, I’m very valuable, wouldn’t you say?’

The chubby Adnari looked at Jalkan sharply.

‘Did you actually think I was just going to roll over and play dead, Your Grace?’Jalkan asked. ‘How does twenty percent sound to you?’

‘Twenty percent of what?’

‘Of everything, your Grace - the gold, the slaves, the land, everything.’

‘That’s outrageous!’ Estarg exploded.

‘That’s my price, your Grace,’ Jalkan said bluntly. ‘Take it or leave it. If you don’t want to play the game my way, my memory of the route back to the Land of Dhrall might start to fade. I’m not a churchman any more, your Grace, so I don’t automatically obey those who outrank me now. That means that I’ll be the one who makes up the rules this time around.’ Jalkan felt a warm sort of glow when a look of consternation came over Estarg’s face.

Jalkan was riding north to the port of Castano seated in an ornate sedan chair carried by eight slaves, and he was considering matters of personal safety along the way. He was fairly sure that the high-ranking churchmen Adnari Estarg had recruited would look upon him as redundant once their forces reached southern Dhrall, so it was an absolute necessity for him to remain a vital part of the operation.

The answer was really quite simple. He was the only one in this expedition who’d seen Veltan’s map of the region around the Falls of Vash, and since it was obvious that the gold-mines of southern Dhrall were located there, his familiarity with that map virtually guaranteed his safety. He was going to have to make an issue of that once they reached the coast of Dhrall.

The guarantees would probably start to slip once their forces located the mines, though. Jalkan cudgeled his brain trying to come up with a solution. The answer was quite obvious, but it didn’t sit too well with him. He’d have to hire - and pay - a large number of professional soldiers to serve as bodyguards, and the wages of those bodyguards would be exorbitant. Worse yet, if he tried to swindle them, they’d almost certainly either walk away and leave him unprotected - or even turn on him and kill him themselves. Protecting himself - and his money - was likely to be very expensive.

Jalkan sighed mournfully. Wealth appeared to be terribly inconvenient.

‘Ah, well,’ he murmured with a note of resignation. ‘The price of fame and fortune is evidently very high.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a lot better than being poor and despised, I guess.’

Interlude in the Land Of Dreams

Eleria’s sleep was troubled that night. The Beloved seemed almost to be her old self, but there were a few hints that the disorder which had driven her to flight after Yaltar’s twin volcanos had erupted at the head of the ravine was still there. The Beloved’s cycle was nearing its conclusion anyway, and her need for sleep was obviously clouding her mind.

Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem of any significance, but things in the Land of Dhrall were anything but normal right now, so it was time to take certain steps. Eleria regretfully decided that playtime was over, and the time for ‘serious’ had arrived.

The barriers Dahlaine had set in place when he’d roused the younger gods from their sleep and pushed them back to infancy were not really very substantial, so Balacenia pushed them aside quite easily, and reality came flooding in. The sense of duality - of being two separate and distinct individuals - was a bit disturbing at first, but Balacenia, who had never had a childhood, found joy and delight in Eleria’s memories, and Eleria’s love and adoration for Zelana brought tears to Balacenia’s eyes. For a time she lingered there, but she finally set her reverie aside and reached out to her siblings.

Vash, of course, was the first to answer, since he and Balacenia had been very close since the world had been born. ‘Were you calling me, Eleria?’ he responded in a sleep-dulled voice.

‘Don’t play Dahlaine’s silly game, Vash,’ Balacenia told him. ‘If you step around his makeshift barriers, your own memories will return, and you’ll know your true identity. We need to talk about something that’s very important, but we can only do that while we’re dreaming. I don’t think we want our elders listening in.’

She heard Vash gasp as reality crashed in on him.

‘That was quick,’ she observed.

‘This is unreal!’ he exclaimed.

‘Don’t let go of Yaltar, dear Vash,’ Balacenia suggested. ‘His memories are yours now, and they’re all you have in the way of a childhood. Go to that imaginary place where we used to meet and wait there. I’ll bring Dakas and Enalla as soon as I’ve opened their eyes.’