The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

‘We’re going to need more specific information than just “up in the mountains”, Jalkan,’ the fat man said. ‘There might be gold in this primitive part of the world, but if we can’t get anything more specific than that, it might just as well be on the back side of the moon.’

‘That’s why we brought those Regulators along, Your Grace. The Regulators have ways to make anybody talk. We know for certain that there’s gold here. You saw those gold blocks I showed you back in Kaldacin. They prove that there is gold in this part of the world, and all we have to do to locate it is turn the Regulators loose on the natives. After the natives see a few of their friends die while the Regulators are questioning them, I’m sure they’ll start to be very cooperative. How long do you think it’s going to take for the slave-ships to get here?’

‘A week, at least. The slavers buy; they don’t catch.’

‘Things should work out very well, then. It won’t take the Regulators very long to get the information we need out of the natives, and once we have that information, we can sell the natives to the slavers and get them out of our way. There’s a distinct possibility that we’ll make almost as much gold selling the natives to the slavers as we’ll make in the gold mines.’

‘I never pass up gold, Jalkan,’ the fat man said with a broad grin.

Ara drew back just a bit. The discussion between those two had chilled her to the bone. These people were absolute monsters. Their willingness to wring information out of people with torture raised a very serious problem, though. The people of the Land of Dhrall had never been very interested in gold, so the farmers here in the south probably didn’t even know what the word meant.

Then something came to her out of nowhere. If the Trogites so desperately wanted to hear about gold, Ara was quite sure she could arrange things so that they’d hear enough stories about it to drive them wild.

She directed her thought to the crude pens where the Trogite soldiers had confined the villagers and conjured up an ‘ancient myth’ which she then planted in the minds of everyone in that pen. From here on, every time one of the villagers heard somebody say gold’, he’d automatically recite Ara’s absurd story word for word.

Then with a faint smile, she sat back and waited for the fun to begin.

The Trogites that Jalkan called Regulators now guarded the natives, and they were a harsh, brutal group of men who wore black uniforms, apparently to distinguish them from the soldiers, who wore red. The one Jalkan and his fat friend relied upon was called Konag, and Ara didn’t like him at all. She thought it might be sort of nice if he were the one who carried the story she’d conjured up to Jalkan and Estarg.

It was about mid-morning when Konag went through the gate of the compound where the villagers were confined and approached a rather frightened farmer. ‘We need to know a few things about the mountains to the north,’ Konag said. ‘If you’re the one who tells us what we want to know, I’ll see to it that you get more to eat and a more comfortable place to sleep.’

‘I’d be happy to tell you, stranger,’ the farmer replied, ‘but I don’t really know very much about those mountains. I’ve always stayed pretty close to home. What was it that you wanted to know about?’

‘Where’s the gold?’ Konag demanded.

The farmer’s eyes brightened. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You should have told me what you wanted earlier. Everybody around here knows about gold.’

‘Oh? How’s that?’

‘It was long, long ago when a man of our village grew weary of farming and went up into the mountains far to the north to look at a different land. He came at last to a mighty waterfall that plunged down from out of the mountains to the farmland below. Then he found a narrow trail that led him up into the mountain-land, and there he beheld a wonder such as he had never seen before. It was beyond the mountains that he saw a vast area where there were no trees or grass, for the land beyond the mountains was nothing but sand, and that sand was not the white sand of the beaches where Mother Sea touches Father Earth. The sand beyond the mountains was bright and yellow and it glittered in the Wasteland with great beauty, and now all men in the Land of Dhrall know full-well that the sand of the Wasteland is pure gold, and it reaches far beyond the distance that the eyes can reach.

‘And having seen what was there, the adventurous farmer returned to his home and never again went forth to look for strange new things, for he had seen what lay beyond the mountains, and his curiosity had been satisfied.’

All in all, Ara was quite pleased with the myth she’d implanted in the minds of the villagers the Trogites had penned up. There was adventure, mystery, and an ending that involved a huge treasure. It was all an out-and-out lie, of course, but it was a very good lie.

Konag seemed stunned by the farmer’s recitation, and he abruptly turned and ran off in search of Jalkan.

The farmer who had just recited Ara’s myth looked quite puzzled - which wasn’t at all remarkable, since he had no memory at all of his performance.

‘That’s impossible, Regulator Konag!’ the fat priest called Estarg exclaimed when the black-uniformed Trogite told him what the farmer had said. ‘There isn’t that much gold in the whole world.’

‘I wouldn’t be all that sure, Adnari,’ Jalkan disagreed. ‘Veltan gave Commander Narasan ten blocks of pure gold in the harbor of Castano, and he was treating those gold blocks as if they didn’t mean a thing.’

Ara gently increased the level of avarice in the minds of the three Trogites by placing an image of gold in their minds.

‘I’ll go on up there and take a look, Adnari,’ Konag volunteered eagerly.

‘How did you plan to even find the place that peasant told you about?’ Jalkan demanded.

‘I’ll take a party of Regulators along. They’ll be able to chase down peasants to get information.’

‘Don’t steal any of my gold when you get up there, Konag,’ the fat priest said in a threatening voice.

‘Our gold, Adnari,’ Jalkan corrected. ‘A goodly part of that gold up there is mine.’

The fat man glared at him.

‘Let’s be sure it’s there before we start arguing about it, gentlemen,’ Regulator Konag said firmly. ‘It might just be some local fairy tale.’

‘If that peasant was lying, I’ll rip him up the middle with a dull knife,’ Jalkan declared.