Crystal Gorge

“There’s one other thing you should know about, Tlantar. The creatures of the Wasteland are venomous—much like certain snakes are. We don’t have venomous snakes this far to the north, so you might not quite realize just how deadly that venom can be. There’s an archer called Longbow down in my sister’s Domain who pokes his arrow points into the venom sacs of the dead enemies, and that makes his arrow points as deadly as the snake-fangs are. Over the years, he’s killed thousands and thousands of the bug-people by using their own venom.”

“Now that’s the man I want to meet,” Tlantar declared.

“You will, Tlantar,” Dahlaine replied. “He’ll be coming up here as well. He’s not doing it out of any affection for us, though. He’ll be coming here to kill more of the bug-people. He wants to kill them all. I’m not sure exactly why, but his hatred for the bug-people goes far beyond anything I’ve ever encountered before.”

“Will he be coming north before much longer?” Tlantar asked.

Dahlaine spread out his hands almost helplessly. “I have no way of knowing, Chief Two-Hands,” he replied. “Things are looking very positive in Zelana’s Domain—so far, at least—but we can’t even guess which direction the bug-people will decide to attack next. They could come this way, or go south, or maybe even east. We’ll have to wait until the Dreamers tell us where before we can make any decisions.”

Dahlaine periodically returned to Mount Shrak and Asmie to keep Tlantar and the other Matan chieftains advised of the progress in his sister’s Domain. Tlantar liked Dahlaine, of course, since they’d been friends since Tlantar’s boyhood. Tlantar chose not to make an issue of it, but he definitely wished that Dahlaine would find a quieter way to travel.

It was almost summer when Dahlaine briefly stopped by to advise Tlantar that the war in his sister’s Domain had come to a rather abrupt conclusion. “I think I might have underestimated the capabilities of the Dreamers, Tlantar,” he said in a troubled tone of voice.

“Oh? What happened down there?”

“The creatures of the Wasteland turned out to be burrowers, and they had tunnels running below the ground all over that ravine where the fighting was going on. Then, without any warning at all, my brother’s little boy blew the tops off of a couple of dormant volcanos at the head of the ravine, and a wave of molten rock came pouring down the ravine—and through all the burrows where the bug-people were hiding. I don’t think we’d have won that war without that Dream, but I go cold all over just thinking about it.”

“How hot a fire does it take to melt rock?”

“Probably about a thousand times hotter than any fire you’ve ever seen, Tlantar. The bug-people hiding in those burrows turned into puffs of smoke when the molten rock went boiling on down the ravine, and the little river that followed that ravine turned into steam, and it’s not there anymore. Has Ashad told you about his Dream?”

“He’s been pretty much staying in your cave, Dahlaine. We don’t bother him when he’s in there—except to make sure that he’s got enough food.”

“I appreciate that, Tlantar. Sometimes I forget that he has to eat real food. Anyway, the last time I came home, he told me that he’d been dreaming about my brother Veltan’s Domain, and it’s beginning to look like things are getting a bit more complicated. Ashad’s Dream strongly suggests that there’ll be two invasions of the South instead of just the one we met in Zelana’s Domain.”

“Two different kinds of bugs, you mean?”

Dahlaine shook his head. “The way Ashad described it, the second invasion involved people rather than bugs, and they came here to the Land of Dhrall in boats from somewhere off to the south of Veltan’s Domain. Anyway, Zelana offered more gold to the Maags if they’d sail on down to help the Trogites Veltan had hired to fight off the creatures of the Wasteland, and then she sent many of her own people on down there to help as well.”

“Then it’s not very likely that we’ll be invaded before autumn, is it?” Tlantar asked. “That might work better for us here in the North. I’ve had the men of the various tribes practicing with their spear-throwers, but most of them can’t get the distance we’ll probably need. They’ll get better, I’m sure, but it’s going to take them a while. If we’re lucky, the war in the South will last longer than the other one did. I don’t think anything will move once the snow starts.”

“We’ll see, Tlantar, but keep your men practicing—even after the snow flies. The better they get with their spear-throwers, the more chance we’ll all have of living long enough to see next summer.”

4

Dahlaine seldom returned to his Domain during the war in his brother’s part of the Land of Dhrall, and Tlantar had a distinct feeling that things were not going as well as Dahlaine had hoped they would, but along toward the end of summer Dahlaine came crashing home on his pet thunderbolt, and he seemed to be greatly relieved—but deeply puzzled at the same time. “We won the war in the South, Tlantar,” he said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea of how. Somebody—or, for all I know, some thing—stepped in when everything was starting to fall apart on us, and that whatever or whoever it was started to do things that I didn’t even understand. As Ashad’s dream had told us, there were two invasions, but what Longbow called ‘our unknown friend’ instructed us to just step aside. Then she—we’re all positive that ‘unknown friend’ is a woman—started to do some unbelievable things that pitted our two enemies against each other in what I’d call a war of mutual extinction. Then, just when things were starting to get interesting, she moved a geyser that’d been spouting from the same place for almost twenty-five thousand years about five miles to the north of its original home and swept away both of our enemies at the same time. Her geyser produced a lake that’s getting bigger every day and will permanently block off any possible new incursions into Veltan’s Domain by the creatures of the Wasteland. The way things stand right now, we’ve won two wars—or had them won for us—and we have no idea of which way the creatures of the Wasteland will come next. All we know for sure is that fire and water have blocked off the West and the South. We haven’t a clue about where the creatures of the Wasteland will come next or what we’ll use to stop them.”