The Treasured One

‘Different places have different customs, I guess,’ Omago said. ‘We’re fairly relaxed here in the South.’

‘Where are all the gold mines located?’ Jalkan quickly changed the subject. ‘That’s what this war’s all about, isn’t it? I mean, these invaders we’ll be fighting are coming here because they want your gold, don’t they?’

‘I doubt it. I don’t think the servants of the Vlagh are very interested in the yellow metal some people use for trinkets. The Vlagh wants our land and the food we grow.’

Jalkan’s expression turned suspicious, and he abruptly stalked away.

‘I wouldn’t answer too many of that one’s questions, Omago,’ the tall archer Longbow suggested quietly. ‘The other Trogites don’t like him very much. He’s very greedy, and he doesn’t treat his men too well.’

‘These outlanders are peculiar, aren’t they?’

Longbow smiled faintly. ‘They seem to think that we’re the peculiar ones. Their lives are very complicated, but we try our best to keep everything simple. I’m not sure exactly why, but that seems to offend them for some reason.’

‘I’ll be glad when this is all over and they pack up and go home.’

‘You’re not alone there, friend Omago.’

‘That’s impossible!’ the Trogite called Padan exclaimed, staring in awe at Veltan’s house. ‘It’s all one solid rock!’

Veltan shrugged. ‘It keeps the bad weather out,’ he said. ‘I noticed back in Kaldacin that most of the fancy buildings down there let in a lot of cold air.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘Are you sure that you really want to know, Padan?’ Veltan asked with a sly little grin.

Padan gave him a quick, slightly startled look. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’m getting a strong notion that I won’t sleep too well if you tell me exactly how you made it.’

‘Let’s all go on inside, friends,’ Veltan said to the outlanders. ‘I stole an idea from Rabbit and made a detailed map of the region where we’ll probably meet the enemy. I think you should all have a look at it so you’ll know what we’ll be coming up against.’

Omago waited near the door until Ara joined him. ‘How’s Yaltar?’ he asked his wife quietly.

‘Not all that well, dear,’ Ara replied. ‘As I understand it, he had to do something fairly awful up there in Zelana’s Domain, and it’s really bothering him. Zelana’s doing what she can to calm him, but about the only thing that helps him is holding Eleria’s hand.’

‘Are you going to stay with them?’ Omago asked her.

‘I think I’d better, dear. We’ll be in the kitchen. I’ll need to fix supper for these outlanders anyway, and the smell of cooking food usually makes Yaltar feel better.’

Omago smiled. ‘The smell of your cooking makes everybody feel better, dear heart,’ he said fondly.

‘It seems that way, doesn’t it? Run along, dear. Veltan might need some help explaining things to the strangers.’

Omago rejoined the others, and they trailed along behind Veltan and entered a large room that so far as Omago could recall he’d never seen before. That wasn’t really unusual, though. Every now and then Veltan rearranged his house, switching the locations of various rooms for no particular reason.

‘This is my map-room,’ Veltan announced with a certain pride. ‘It’s sort of based on your war-room back in Kaldacin, Commander Narasan, but there are a few variations.’

‘I noticed that,’ the Trogite commander said with a kind of awe in his voice. The room was circular, and the doorway opened onto a sort of balcony that was perhaps ten feet above the floor. The map Veltan had constructed lay down below, and so far as Omago could determine, it was a perfect duplicate of the mountainous country around the Falls of Vash. Omago knew that Veltan was gifted, but the map was astonishingly accurate.

‘Where’s all that water coming from?’ Sorgan Hook-Beak asked. ‘I don’t see any little streams leading into that river that’s tumbling over the edge of the cliff.’

‘It comes up from beneath the ground,’ Veltan explained. ‘It’s a bit quiet right now. Every now and then it gets sort of excited, and the water spurts about a hundred feet up into the air.’

‘Did you put that there, Veltan?’ the young Trogite Keselo asked.

Veltan shook his head. ‘I think an earthquake might have caused it. The ground’s a bit unstable under those mountains.’

‘The ground up there by that waterfall’s a whole lot steeper than what we encountered in the ravine above Lattash,’ Sorgan observed. ‘That might give us a bit of trouble on down the line.’

‘Could you come up with a notion of just when we can expect the enemy to reach that area, Veltan?’ Commander Narasan asked.

‘We’re encountering the same problem we came up against in the ravine above Lattash,’ Veltan replied. ‘My brother’s Dreamer told him where, but he couldn’t be very specific about when.’

‘If they’ve been boring tunnels under the ground, they might be up there waiting for us already,’ Padan suggested.

‘No,’ the young Trogite Keselo disagreed. ‘It took them centuries to bore their way through the rock from the stairway to the caves leading to those ancient villages in the ravine. They haven’t had enough time to get to that waterfall yet.’

‘I think Keselo might be right, Padan,’ Narasan said. ‘If the tunnels were already there, the enemies would probably have invaded both regions at the same time. I don’t think we’re going to encounter tunnels this time. It seems to me that this invasion is an act of desperation. The volcanos closed off that ravine permanently, and something’s driving the enemy to seize new land, and it doesn’t seem to matter which region the new land lies in. Does that sound about right to you, Sorgan?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it that much, but it does sort of make sense,’ Hook-Beak conceded. ‘If that’s the way it really stands, we’d better hustle right along. As soon as we get up there, we’ll probably have to start building forts and such. We don’t want to come up against those snake-men on open ground if we can avoid it.’

‘I think you’re right, Sorgan,’ Narasan said. ‘The rest of my army should be arriving fairly soon, but let’s get some advance forces up to the top of the falls as quickly as we can. I definitely don’t want those snake-men creeping up behind me like they did last time. I’m getting just a little too old for surprises.’