The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

‘I’ll be there, dear sister,’ he promised.

Balacenia reached out to Dakas, and she was a bit surprised to discover that he’d already summoned reality on his own. Of course, Dakas was closer to Dahlaine than any of the rest of them were, so he’d already realized how deceptive the eldest of their alternates could be. ‘Just exactly where’s this place where we’ll meet?’ he asked.

‘It isn’t a real place, Dakas. It’s a product of the imagination. Vash and I built it so that we could visit each other. It’s quite a bit prettier than the real world. Reach out to Vash, and he’ll guide you there.’

‘I’ll be there, big sister.’

Enalla was a bit more difficult. She clung to the childhood memories of Lillabeth with a kind of desperation. Of course, Aracia had spoiled Lillabeth outrageously, and Enalla obviously hated the idea of growing up and accepting her real identity. It took a little while, but Balacenia’s upcoming status as the eldest of the gods gave her all the leverage she needed. Enalla was a bit sulky when they joined their brothers, however.

The place where Balacenia and Vash had frequently met during their previous cycle existed only in their joined imaginations, and it was far more beautiful than any place in mundane reality. The aurora seethed through the starry sky above a dark forest and the Dreamers floated there absorbing that beauty in sheer delight.

‘How did you two do this?’ Dakas asked in a voice filled with wonder.

‘Combined imagination, dear brother,’ Balacenia explained. ‘It took us quite a while to get it right, but I guess it turned out to be worth the trouble.’ She looked around and then sighed. ‘I think we’d better get on with this,’ she said with regret. ‘I’m sure that we all agree that Dahlaine’s clever scheme was extremely dangerous, but there’s not much we can do about it now.’

‘You’re probably right, dear sister,’ Vash agreed, his face illuminated by the flickering aurora. ‘Since you’ll be the eldest during our next cycle, I think we’d be wiser to let you decide how we should deal with this.’ He looked at Dakas and Enalla. ‘Would either of you object?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be more than happy to lay that burden on our divine sister’s shoulders,’ Dakas replied. ‘It almost broke my back during our last cycle.’

‘I won’t argue either,’ Enalla agreed almost absently as she gazed up at the swirling light in the night sky. ‘That’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen,’ she declared.

‘Wait till you see it at sunrise, Enalla,’ Vash said proudly.

‘All right, then,’ Balacenia said. ‘We’ll have to be very careful not to upset the balance of the world while both we and our elders are awake at the same time. Evidently, we can tamper with natural forces while we’re dreaming without splitting the world right down the middle, but I don’t think we’ll dare try anything like that while we’re awake.’

‘I still think Dahlaine was taking an awful chance,’ Enalla said. ‘The extra weight could have made the world fall into the sun, you know.’

‘The alternative wasn’t very attractive, sister mine,’ Dakas reminded her. ‘The Vlagh - or whatever it is that’s guiding the creatures of the Wasteland - has been violating the natural order of things for a long, long time, so we might have to take a few chances.’

‘We’re wandering here,’ Balacenia noted, ‘and we probably don’t have too much time left before one of us wakes up. I’m getting a strong suspicion that if we start to overtly tamper with the natural order of things, the results might be disastrous. We can do almost anything while we’re asleep and dreaming, but once we wake up, that stops. No matter what happens while we’re awake, we’ll have to endure it until one of us goes back to sleep.’

‘That’s easy, big sister,’ Vash said with a broad grin. ‘One of us has to be asleep during every hour of the day. The outlanders call that “sleeping while you’re on guard duty”, and they seem to think it’s a mortal sin. We’ll just do it in reverse, that’s all. If each one of us sleeps for six hours, we’ll have somebody guarding the rest of us all the time.’

‘It makes sense, Balacenia,’ Enalla said. ‘Dear Vash can be terribly clever - once in a great while.’ She gave Vash a sly, sidelong smirk.

‘Be nice, Enalla,’ Balacenia chided.

‘I’m always nice, dear sister - even though it’s terribly boring. “Nice” isn’t really very much fun.’

‘I wouldn’t wave that in Aracia’s face, Enalla,’ Dakas warned. ‘She’s got all those fat, tedious churchmen around watching her every move. If you get her interested in “not nice”, the church of Aracia could start to crumble.’

‘It’s going to do more than crumble as soon as Aracia goes to sleep, Dakas,’ Enalla replied. ‘Those fat, lazy priests make me sick, so the very first thing I’ll do when I wake up will be to smash those stupid temples. Then I’ll tell them that I don’t ever want to see them again. I’m sure they’ll have to go out and find honest work at that point.’

‘I think Vash found the answer to most of our problems,’ Balacenia told them. ‘If one of us is asleep, that one can be ready to respond to the moves of the Vlagh almost instantly. It’s quite obvious that the Vlagh deliberately waited to make its move until our elders had lapsed into their dotage. I occasionally had to push Zelana very hard to get her to respond, and I didn’t like that one little bit. Have any of you noticed any signs of similar behavior in your elders?’

‘Dahlaine has been sort of vague lately,’ Dakas replied. ‘Sometimes he forgets that Long-Claw and I are sort of like brothers, and he has trouble keeping track of the chiefs in some of the villages.’

‘Veltan seems to be all right,’ Vash said a bit dubiously. ‘He’s always been just a little silly, though. I get so tired of listening when he goes on and on about the time he spent on the moon, but Ara always tells me to mind my manners when he does that.’

‘You’re very fond of Ara, aren’t you, Vash?’ Enalla asked him.

‘Everybody loves Ara. Omago’s probably the luckiest man in the world, since she’s his wife.’

‘She’s a wonderful cook, that much is certain,’ Dakas agreed. ‘Our elders don’t know a thing about food.’