Читать книгу The Elder Gods - David Eddings - Страница 9

Zelana swam out of her hidden grotto and onto a nearby gravel beach where the waves rolled in and then receded with a mournful sound that seemed filled with regret. Then she raised her face to the sky to search for one of those winds that rushed far overhead in perpetuity, streaming eternally above the clouds and weather. She encountered several, but they were not moving in the proper direction, so she continued her search. Then at last she felt a wind that streamed northward toward the Domain of her elder brother, and she rose up and up through the buffeting of those winds which had not suited her until she reached that wind which rushed northward along the outer edge of the sky, and she bestrode that wind, and it obediently carried her toward the bleak Domain of her brother Dahlaine.

Now Dahlaine dwelt in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the crags and eternal snow of Mount Shrak, which the people of the North believe is the tallest peak in all the world. And Zelana descended from the darkouter edge of the sky to the forbidding mountain that seemed almost to scowl down at her brother’s Domain with a bleak expression of superiority. The mouth of Dahlaine’s cave was a deep indentation in the north side of the mount, and Zelana entered there and followed the twisting passage that led down and down through glittering black rock to the vast chamber far beneath the mountain that was Dahlaine’s home.

Zelana paused at the mouth of the passage. Her burly, grey-bearded brother, stripped to the waist, was standing over a ruddy fire beating on something that glowed and made a sort of ringing sound. A small, glowing orb hovered just over him, bathing him with light.

‘What in the world are you doing, Dahlaine?’ Zelana asked curiously.

Dahlaine turned sharply to look at his sister. ‘Why, Zelana!’ he exclaimed. ‘You startled me. Is something wrong?’

‘Perhaps – or perhaps not. Are you taking up music now? If you are, you’re a little off-key.’

‘Just experimenting, dear sister,’ he replied. ‘Some of the people beyond Mother Sea have discovered something they call “metal.” I wanted to see if I could duplicate it. Is something afoot?’

Zelana looked cautiously around Dahlaine’s cave. ‘Where’s your Dreamer?’ she asked.

‘Ashad? He’s out playing with the bears.’

‘Bears? Surely you don’t allow him to play with bears! They’ll eat him, won’t they?’

‘Of course they won’t, Zelana. They’re his friends – in the same way the pink dolphins are Eleria’s friends. Is something unusual happening?’

‘Perhaps. Eleria had a dream last night, and I think it may have been significant. I thought you should know about it. There’s something else that may be even more significant than the dream itself.’

‘Oh?’

‘It appears that Mother Sea’s taking a hand in this herself.’ Dahlaine stared at her.

‘Eleria was out playing with the young pink dolphins yesterday, and they introduced her to an old cow whale.’

‘I didn’t know that whales and dolphins spoke the same language,’ Dahlaine said.

‘They don’t. That’s what leads me to believe that it wasn’t really a whale. Anyway, the old cow led Eleria to a small islet off the south coast of Thurn and showed her an oyster shell that was about fifty times bigger than any oyster I’ve ever seen. Then the whale touched the shell with one of her fins, and the oyster opened as if someone had just knocked on its door. There was a pearl inside – pink, and a bit larger than an apple.’

‘That’s impossible!’ Dahlaine exclaimed.

‘You’ll have to take that up with the oyster, Dahlaine. Then the whale told Eleria that the oyster wanted her to have the pearl, so Eleria took it, and the whale gave her a ride back to Thurn.’

‘Now that’s something I’d like to see,’ Dahlaine said, laughing. ‘It might be a bit difficult to saddle a whale.’

‘Did you want to hear the rest of this, or did you want to make funny remarks?’ Zelana said tartly.

‘Sorry, dear sister. Please go on.’

‘Eleria’d had a busy day, so she was very tired. She went to sleep almost immediately, and then some very strange things started to happen. That pink pearl rose up into the air above Eleria, and it started to glow – almost like a small pink moon – and its light shone down on Eleria. Then it spoke to me and told me to mind my own business. I recognized the voice immediately, since I’ve been listening to it since the beginning of time.’

‘You’re not serious!’ Dahlaine exclaimed.

‘Very serious, brother dear. It was the voice of Mother Sea, and that seems to suggest that the whale might have been something other than an ordinary whale as well, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She’s never done that before,’ Dahlaine said in a troubled voice.

‘You’re being obvious again, Dahlaine,’ Zelana said. ‘I think we’d better step around her very carefully until we get a better idea of what she’s doing and why. Mother Sea’s the central force of the whole world, so let’s stay on the good side of her.’

‘What happened next?’ Dahlaine asked.

‘Eleria had a dream, naturally. Evidently, that was the whole idea. In some peculiar way, that pearl’s the essence of Mother Sea’s awareness. Her tides still rise and fall, and her waves wash the shores of Father Earth, but she’s awake now. I’m almost positive that the pearl, which is really Mother Sea incarnate, dictated Eleria’s dream, image by image.’

‘Did Eleria tell you about her dream?’

‘Of course she did. Why do you think I’m here?’

‘What did the dream involve?’

‘The world,’ Zelana replied. ‘Eleria saw it when it was still on fire before the continents separated and before life began. Then she saw the continents move away from each other and watched living things crawl up out of Mother Sea. She saw the big lizards roam the world and the falling star that killed them all. She was aware of us and of the others – the ones who are asleep now – and somehow she knew about the Vlagh. She saw the age of ice and then the more recent man-things. As closely as I can determine, she dreamt all the way from the beginning up until the day before yesterday.’

‘She managed to dream all of that in one night?’ Dahlaine said incredulously.

‘She had help, Dahlaine. I’m sure that the pearl was guiding her step by step. I think we’d better advise our alternates what’s afoot here. Our cycle’s very nearly reached its conclusion, and our alternates will be waking soon. We’d better warn them that the crisis we’ve been expecting since the beginning’s very likely to boil to the top during their cycle.’

‘That’s assuming that it doesn’t come before our cycle’s finished,’ Dahlaine said. ‘I think that we’d all better get together and thrash this out. Why don’t you go fetch Aracia, and I’ll see if I can run Veltan down. We need to make some decisions, and we might not have much time.’

‘It shall be as thou hast commanded, my dear, dear brother,’ Zelana replied with exaggerated formality.

‘Do you have to do that, Zelana?’ he said with a pained sort of expression.

‘When you’re being obvious, yes. Go get Veltan, Dahlaine, and I’ll see if I can pry holy Aracia out of that silly temple of hers. Do we want to meet here?’

‘I think we’d better. It’s more secluded than the other places – except for yours, of course. We could meet there, I suppose, but Veltan doesn’t swim very well. And let’s keep the Dreamers away from our meeting. We don’t want to contaminate their visions.’

Zelana went up out of Dahlaine’s cave and probed the northern sky until she found a wind that suited her purpose, and then she rose up through the chill northern air to join with the obliging wind to ride it on down in a southeasterly direction toward Aracia’s Domain.

The arrival of the later variety of people had elevated Aracia’s opinion of herself quite noticeably. Until their appearance. Aracia had seemed sensible enough – a little vain, perhaps, but not unbearably so. The later people, unlike the more brutish early ones, had religious yearnings, and they longed for gods.

Aracia had thought that was very nice of them, and she’d been more than happy to oblige. She’d suggested that a fancy dwelling where she could stay while she was looking after them might be appropriate, so her people built one for her – several, actually. The first one had been a bit crude, since it had been constructed primarily of logs. It had been all right for a while, but the wind blew through the cracks, and the dirt floor grew muddy during the spring rains.

Aracia had then suggested stone blocks instead of logs, and the people who served her labored long and hard to build a dwelling for her that was almost as comfortable as Zelana’s grotto or Dahlaine’s cave. And now Aracia of the East dwelt in her splendid, though drafty, palace-temple with servants by the score to tell her how wonderful she was and how beautiful and how they could not possibly get along without her – and if it wasn’t too much trouble, could she turn that fellow who’d been so insulting the other day into a toad and maybe make it rain because the oats really needed some water along about now, but not too much rain, since that made everything all muddy.

Zelana descended through the crisp autumn air to the marble dome of her sister’s temple and adjusted her eyes to look through the polished marble at Aracia’s regal throne room. It was sheathed in palest marble, of course, and there were tall columns around its outer edge, and red drapes behind Aracia’s golden throne.

Aracia was garbed in a regal gown, and she wore a regal crown of gold and a regal sort of expression on her face.

A fat man garbed in black linen vestments and a tediously ornate miter was standing before Aracia’s throne delivering a tiresome oration of praise.

Aracia, Zelana noticed, seemed to hang on the fat man’s every word.

Although she knew that it would be terribly impolite, Zelana simply couldn’t resist a sudden impulse.

The fat orator broke off suddenly when Zelana, clad only in filmy gauze, abruptly appeared out of nowhere before the throne of her elder sister. Several plump, overfed servants fainted dead away, and a few of the more theologically inclined began to contemplate revisions of several articles of the faith.

Aracia gasped. ‘Cover yourself, Zelana!’ she said sharply.

‘What for, dear sister?’ Zelana said. ‘I’m immune to the weather, and I don’t have any defects that I want to hide. If you want to wrap yourself in that silly-looking cocoon, that’s your business, but I don’t think it’ll turn you into a butterfly.’

‘Have you no modesty?’

‘Of course not. I’m perfect. Didn’t you know that? Dahlaine needs to see us – now. Leave your Dreamer here, though. Our brother will explain why when we join him.’

‘If Dahlaine wants to explain something to me, he can come here and do it,’ Aracia said. ‘I will not bow down to him in that grubby hole in the ground where he lives.’

‘Splendid, dear sister mine,’ Zelana said sweetly. ‘I’m sure all your fat servants will be delighted to see you bow down right here in your own temple – assuming, of course, that it’s still standing after he arrives on that silly thunderbolt he always rides. It’s a nice enough thunderbolt, I suppose, but the noise it makes when it passes shakes down buildings sometimes. Putting your temple back together should give your fat servants something to do while they’re pondering the fact that the supreme goddess of the universe just bowed down to somebody who looks for all the world like some shaggy bear.’

‘You never bow down to him, Zelana,’ Aracia accused.

‘Of course I don’t,’ Zelana replied. ‘I don’t have to, because I don’t demand – or expect – anybody to bow down to me. That’s the way it works, Aracia. Had you forgotten about that? It’s time to shed your cocoon, my butterfly sister. The dreams have begun, and the Vlagh could be on our doorstep before the week’s out. Let’s go talk with Dahlaine while there’s still time.’

Zelana took her sister’s hand and they rode the wind toward the northwest. It was early autumn now, and the land far below was ablaze with color. The rivers sparkled in the autumn sun, and the mountains to the north of Aracia’s Domain gleamed white beneath their eternal snow.

Actually, the sisters were rather looking forward to the meeting. There hadn’t been a general family get-together for almost a dozen eons. There’d been occasional squabbles among them, of course. No family lives in absolute harmony forever, but in times of crisis the family was able to set their differences aside and work together to reach a solution.

‘Isn’t that Dahlaine’s mountain?’ Aracia asked, pointing at the land of the North lying far below.

Zelana glanced down. ‘No,’ she replied ‘Mount Shrak’s quite a bit taller.’

‘I’ve never looked at Father Earth from this high up before,’ Aracia said. ‘He looks different from up here, doesn’t he?’

‘Try looking at him from the edge of the sky sometime, dear sister.’ Zelana suggested.

‘Edge of the sky?’ Aracia sounded puzzled.

‘Up where it isn’t blue any more. After Eleria told me her dream, I needed to tell Dahlaine what she’d seen, but when I went looking for a wind that was blowing in his direction, the only one I could find was up at the outer edge of the air. You can even see the curve of the world from that high.’

‘Does it really curve?’ Aracia asked. ‘Veltan told me that if you look at Father Earth from the moon, he looks like a round blue ball.’ She frowned. ‘I never did understand just why it was that Mother Sea exiled Veltan to the moon for all those eons. Did he do something to offend her?’

Zelana laughed. ‘Indeed he did, Aracia. He told her that she bored him.’

‘He didn’t!’

‘Oh, yes he did. He told her that she’d be much more interesting if she varied her shades of blue now and then. He even went so far as to suggest stripes. He kept pestering her about it until she lost her temper and told him to go away. That’s why our baby brother spent ten thousand years on the moon.’

‘And he passed the time cataloging shades of blue,’ Aracia added. ‘That seems to be his major preoccupation.’

‘How many shades of blue has he found so far?’

‘Something in excess of thirteen million that last time I spoke with him. That was about an eon or so ago, though, so he’s probably found more by now.’

‘There’s Mount Shrak,’ Zelana told her sister, pointing toward the earth far below. ‘Let’s go and see if Dahlaine’s managed to track Veltan down yet.’

They descended through the lambent air toward the craggy peak of Mount Shrak, startling a flock of geese as they went. Zelana rather liked geese. They were silly birds most of the time, but their migrations marked the change of the seasons very precisely, and that added a certain stability to an unpredictable world.

The sisters came to earth near the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave, and Zelana led Aracia down the long, winding passage toward their brother’s underground home.

‘Hideous,’ Aracia observed, looking around. ‘Did he put all those icicles on the ceiling himself?’

‘They aren’t ice, dear sister,’ Zelana replied ‘They’re stone. They grow the same way icicles grow, but they take quite a bit longer.’

‘He’ll starve to death if he lives here in the dark for too long,’ Aracia observed.

‘He has a little sun that follows him here in his cave,’ Zelana said. ‘It’s like a puppy, and it gives him all the light he needs.’

‘He’s manufacturing suns now?’ Aracia seemed a bit startled. ‘I tried that once, but the silly thing flew apart as soon as I started to make it spin.’

‘You probably didn’t make it heavy enough. The balance of a sun has to be very precise – too light and it flies apart; too heavy and it collapses in on itself.’

Aracia looked around cautiously. ‘Where’s Dahlaine’s Dreamer?’ she whispered.

‘Ashad? Dahlaine told me that he was out playing with the bears. We all seem to have our favorite animals, don’t we? I love my pink dolphins, Dahlaine loves bears, Veltan’s fond of sheep, and you’re attached to the seals who nest along your coasts.’

Aracia shrugged. ‘They gave us something to play with while we were waiting for the man-creatures to grow up,’ she said. She peered back into the dim cave. ‘It seems that Dahlaine hasn’t found Veltan yet,’ she noted. ‘I don’t see them anywhere. How far back does this cave go?’

‘Miles and miles, I think,’ Zelana replied. ‘Let’s wait. I’m sure they’ll be along soon. Has your Dreamer told you any interesting stories yet?’

‘No,’ Aracia replied. ‘I don’t think she’s quite ready. From what you’ve told me, I’d say that your Dreamer might be the first. The story of the world sort of sets things up for the other Dreamers. Did she really see it right from the beginning in her dream?’

‘It came very close to what really happened,’ Zelana replied. ‘What’s your child’s name?’

‘Lillabeth,’ Aracia replied fondly, ‘and she’s the most beautiful creature in all the world.’

‘They seem to do that to us, don’t they?’ Zelana said.

‘Do what?’

‘Distort our perceptions, dear sister,’ Zelana replied. ‘I’d imagine that Dahlaine and Veltan feel the same way about their Dreamers. I know that I have exactly the same feelings about Eleria. It’s probably very simple. We love them because they are ours.’

‘Could you be a bit more specific about this dream your Eleria had?’ Aracia asked.

‘Let’s wait for Dahlaine and Veltan. There were some complex things happening when Eleria began to dream, and I think Dahlaine’s the best qualified to interpret them.’

‘That’s assuming that he ever gets here,’ Aracia added.

It was probably late afternoon outside when a pair of shattering thunderclaps shook the air for miles around. ‘That is so childish,’ Aracia noted. ‘Do they really have to do that?’

‘They’re still little boys, dear,’ Zelana replied. ‘and showing off is part of their nature. Riding a lightning-bolt is a sure way to get everybody’s immediate attention.’

‘But they look so silly after they do that – glowing and with their hair standing on end the way it does.’

‘I think lightning does that,’ Zelana said. ‘It is a very fast way to travel, but I think I’ll stick to riding the wind. It’s almost as fast, and it doesn’t make nearly so much noise.’

A few moments later their brothers emerged from the twisting passageway that led down from the surface.

‘What kept you?’ Zelana asked mildly.

‘I had a little trouble locating our baby brother,’ Dahlaine replied sourly.

‘He can be such a grouch sometimes,’ the tall, fairhaired Veltan noted.

‘I wouldn’t be nearly so bad-tempered if you’d stop trying to hide from me,’ Dahlaine said. ‘Did you tell our sister about Eleria’s dream, Zelana?’

‘Not in any great detail, no,’ Zelana replied. ‘A number of her servants were there, and I didn’t think they needed to know the full extent of what was happening just yet.’

‘Tell us all, then, my fishy sister,’ Veltan said, grinning at her outrageously.

‘Of course, moon-boy,’ Zelana replied tartly, and she proceeded to tell them all; the whale, the pearl, the dream.

‘You’re just making this up, Zelana,’ Veltan scoffed.

‘No, baby brother, I’m not. The pearl – and quite probably that whale as well – aren’t what they seem to be.’

‘Our sister believes that Mother Sea’s starting to tamper with things,’ Dahlaine said to them, ‘and I think she might be right.’

‘Now we come to the interesting part, big brother,’ Zelana said brightly. ‘Just exactly who and what are these children you so generously gave us a few years ago?’

‘The Dreamers, of course, Zelana.’ Dahlaine replied just a bit too quickly.

‘And?’ she pressed.

‘And what?’

‘What else are they, Dahlaine? You’re so obvious most of the time that the rest of us can see right through you.’

‘You didn’t!’ Veltan exclaimed, his eyes almost popping out as he stared at Dahlaine.

‘I don’t quite –’ Aracia began. Then her eyes bulged out as well. ‘Dahlaine!’ she gasped.

‘Well,’ he floundered, ‘it was a kind of emergency, wasn’t it?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Are you insane?’ Veltan demanded. ‘They can’t be present during our cycle. The world can’t bear that much weight!’

‘They aren’t very heavy right now,’ Dahlaine replied defensively. ‘I was careful to blot out their previous memories before I woke them, and I modified them slightly to make them more closely resemble new-born man-creatures. They sleep and breathe and eat food instead of light. Their minds are still infantile, and they have no idea of who – or what – they really are, so their presence during our cycle won’t make the world collapse. They’re really nothing more than children, and our cycle will come to a close before they’re fully mature and realize just who they actually are.’

‘You’ve put the whole world at risk with this idiocy!’ Aracia flared.

‘Calm yourself, Aracia,’ Zelana said. ‘Now that I’ve had time to catch my breath, I’m beginning to see what Dahlaine had in mind. If the hideous thing in the Wasteland is on the verge of moving against us, we’ll need all the help we can get, and the others have as much to lose as we do. Besides, we’ve never gotten to know them, have we? They’re really very sweet. I didn’t particularly like them before, but now that I’ve gotten to know Eleria, I love her. That was sort of what you had in mind when you came up with this scheme, wasn’t it, Dahlaine? If we know them and love them, we can trust them. Isn’t that the short and the long of this grand plan of yours?’

‘Sometimes you’re so clever you make me sick, Zelana,’ he said sourly.

‘He’s brighter than I thought he was,’ Veltan told his sisters. ‘If we awaken the others before the end of our cycle, we can raise them as if they were our children and prepare them for anything that might happen after we’ve gone to our rest.’

‘And then they can return the favor at the end of their cycle,’ Zelana added. ‘I get to mother Eleria this time, and then she mothers me next time.’

‘It sounds fair to me,’ Veltan said. Then he paused. ‘We’ve been strangers to the others for far too long, I think. We all have the same responsibilities, so a bit of cooperation might be in order. I’m still not too happy that you didn’t tell the rest of us what you had in mind, Dahlaine, but we can set that aside for now. What’s next?’

‘First off,’ Zelana said, ‘I don’t think we want to get too specific about what’s happening when we’re speaking with our Dreamers. They’re still children, and children are impressionable, no matter what their species. We don’t want to contaminate their dreams by explaining what these dreams really mean. Mother Sea might not like that very much, and she might decide to exile all four of us to the moon, not just Veltan.’

‘You’re probably right, Zelana,’ Dahlaine agreed. ‘Let’s keep the dreams as pure as we possibly can.’ He scratched at his chin speculatively. ‘We’ve got a problem now,’ he said. ‘This first dream is likely to bring the creatures from the Wasteland swarming across the mountains, and our people won’t be a match for them. I think we’ll have to bring in the outsiders.’

‘Absolutely out of the question!’ Aracia exclaimed. ‘Our people are pure and innocent. The outsiders are barbaric monsters. They’re almost as bad as the creatures of the Wasteland.’

‘Not quite, Aracia,’ Dahlaine disagreed. ‘We can manipulate them if we need to. The only problem I can see is linguistic. The outsiders don’t speak the same language our people speak.’

‘That’s not a problem, Dahlaine,’ Veltan told him. ‘I’ve looked in on several of the outsider cultures. Their babbling didn’t make any sense at first, but I found a way to get around that.’

‘Oh?’ Dahlaine said. ‘I’d like to hear about that.’

‘All you have to do is step around language and go straight to thought.’

‘He has a point, Dahlaine,’ Zelana said. ‘It didn’t take me much more than a week to learn the language of my dolphins. If you listen with your mind instead of your ears, it comes very fast.’

‘Interesting notion,’ Dahlaine mused. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t think people could do that.’

Veltan shrugged. ‘I’ll do it for them, then.’

‘Would you like to clarify that, Veltan?’ Aracia asked.

‘It’s a little complicated, dear sister,’ he replied. ‘Are you sure you want all the details?’

Aracia shuddered. ‘Spare me that, please. Just tell me what the results are likely to be.’

‘The outlanders will babble in their own language, and our people will babble in ours. Neither group will hear babbles, though. They’ll think that they’re listening to their own language, so they’ll understand each other perfectly.’

‘Would it work that way between different groups of outsiders as well?’ Dahlaine asked. ‘We’ll probably be bringing in several different cultures.’

‘No problem,’ Veltan said. ‘We’ll have to decide how far out we want to take it, is about all. We might want to limit it to the Land of Dhrall, though. The outlanders all speak different languages, and maybe we should keep it that way. If they can communicate with each other, they might start forging alliances, and that could cause trouble down the line.’

‘You may have a point there,’ Dahlaine conceded. ‘Let’s try it and see how it works.’

‘I’m against the whole silly notion!’ Aracia said adamantly. ‘We can’t bring those murdering barbarians here to the sacred land!’

‘How sacred do you think it’ll be after the unholy monsters of the Wasteland sweep over the mountains?’ Dahlaine asked her pointedly. ‘The outsiders are a little crude, I’ll admit that, but they are mostly warriors. Our people haven’t even discovered iron yet, so they’re still using stone tools. The people of the outside world have no idea of the significance of Dhrall, but they do know how to fight. They spend most of their time practicing on each other. I think maybe we’d all better visit those outlands and find the various warrior people. There are several tricks we can use to get them here to Dhrall, and once they’re here, we can wave gold in their faces to get their interest.’

‘Gold? It isn’t very useful, Dahlaine,’ Veltan objected. ‘It’s sort of pretty, but it’s too soft for any practical uses. It’s much like lead, when you get right down to it.’

‘The outlanders seem to like it, and if they hear about mountains of gold in the Wastelands of the interior, we won’t be able to drive them away with whips. I don’t think we’ve got much choice. Our people are too simple and gentle to face the armies of the Vlagh. We need large numbers of what Aracia calls howling barbarians, and we need them in a hurry. Let’s go to the outer world and find warriors. It’s the only way we have to save Dhrall from the forces of the Vlagh.’