“Gunda mentioned it to me. He said that you and your family can play games with reality, and he referred to that as ‘tampering,’ and he said you do it all the time.”
“Interesting definition, there,” Veltan said. “Anyway, I’ll tamper with size this time. Your horses will be quite large before they go onto that Trogite ship, but as soon as they go on inside, they’ll be a lot smaller, and they won’t need nearly as much food.”
“How much smaller?” Ariga demanded.
Veltan squinted at the huge Trogite ship. “Oh,” he said then, “probably about the same size as mice are. There’s more than enough room on that big ship for fifty thousand mice, wouldn’t you say? And there’ll also be plenty of room for their feed as well.”
“Why did you hire so many ships, then?”
“To carry fifty thousand men, of course.”
“If you can shrink horses, can’t you shrink people as well?”
Veltan blinked and then he suddenly flushed with embarrassment. “I never even thought of that,” he admitted. “Now that you mention it, though, I probably could.” He put one hand on Ariga’s shoulder. “I’d take it as a kindness if you didn’t tell this to any of your friends, Ariga. For some reason, my mind seems to have blanked out. It’s probably one of the signs of old age.”
“You aren’t really all that old, are you?”
“I’m quite a bit older than I look, Ariga. I think it’s just about time for me to take a long nap—a very, very long nap. It appears that my mind’s already gone to sleep.”
2
They sailed from the north coast of Malavi at first light the next morning, and the blond-haired Veltan had suggested that Ariga might as well join them on Gunda’s fishing-yawl, which he referred to as the Albatross. Ariga had a few suspicions about that. Veltan had been quite embarrassed by Ariga’s suggestion that he could have saved time and money if he’d gone ahead and shrunk down the Malavi in the same way that he’d shrunk their horses. Evidently, Veltan didn’t really want Ariga telling stories to the other Malavi.
The weather was nice that day, so they’d covered a fair distance by the time evening was approaching. “Those big tubs you hired back in Castano don’t really move very fast, do they, Veltan?” Ekial said when the herd of Trogite ships lowered their sails and dropped the heavy bronze weights they called “anchors” into the water.
“I wouldn’t blink if I were you, Ekial,” bald Gunda suggested. “Our friend Veltan here is a master of cheating, so we’re probably a lot farther north than it might seem.”
“‘Cheating’ is such an ugly word, Gunda,” Veltan said rather plaintively. “We much prefer ‘tampering.’ I’m not really cheating anybody. All that I’m really doing is modifying time just a little bit—and distance as well, of course. The coast of sister Zelana’s Domain is pretty enough, I suppose, but we’re not really here to look at the scenery. My big brother needs us on up to the north, and I think we’d better do our best to make him happy. He tends to get grouchy when things don’t go the way he wants them to.”
“Did he ever manage to get his older sister calmed down?” Ekial asked.
“We hope so. Aracia’s having some problems, and Dahlaine sent Commander Narasan on over to her Domain to make her feel just a bit more secure. We don’t know for sure just where the creatures of the Wasteland will strike next, so we more or less have to cover the East and the North at the same time. Narasan will have the help of the warrior women from the Isle of Akalla, and we’re going north to help Sorgan Hook-Beak.”
“Now that’s a very peculiar name,” Ariga said. “Do all of those Maags have those odd names?”
“It’s a cultural peculiarity,” Veltan explained. “Most Maags have names that sort of describe them. The one called Ox is a huge man with big shoulders and a thick neck.”
“He doesn’t have horns, though, does he?” Ariga asked.
“Not yet, I think,” Gunda said with a faint smile. “I haven’t checked his head lately, though.”
“Ox is a good sailor,” Veltan said, “and the crew on Sorgan’s ship, the Seagull, usually do what he tells them to do. He’s the second in command on the Seagull, and Sorgan depends on him to get things done.”
“That little one they call Rabbit is very clever, I noticed,” Ekial said, “and he seems to get along with the archer called Longbow. Now there’s a man that you don’t want to irritate, Ariga. I’d say that he’s probably the finest archer in the whole world—probably because he doesn’t know how to miss when he shoots an arrow. If Dahlaine had ten men like Longbow, he wouldn’t need anybody else.”
“Longbow has a very personal reason to hate the creatures of the Wasteland,” Veltan said. “He’s turned killing them into his life’s work.” Then he looked off toward the western horizon. “The sun’s going down, gentlemen. Why don’t you have some supper and then get some sleep? We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Would beans be all right for supper?” Gunda asked Ekial and Ariga. “I hope so, because that’s just about the only thing I know how to cook.”
“What would you prefer, Veltan?” Ariga asked.
“Veltan doesn’t really matter, Ariga,” Gunda said. “He doesn’t even know how to eat—or to sleep either.”
Veltan shrugged. “Family peculiarity,” he said without bothering to explain. “Eat and get to bed, my friends. Tomorrow promises to be a very long day.”
“You’re going to cheat some more, I take it,” Gunda said with a broad grin. “Didn’t that get you into a lot of trouble once? I’ve heard that once you spent quite a few years camped out on the moon.”
“It was just a misunderstanding,” Veltan replied. “I got everything straightened out last spring. Mother wasn’t really that angry with me, but the moon lied through her teeth to keep me there because she was lonesome.” He looked at Gunda with one raised eyebrow. “Did you want any more details, Gunda?” he asked. “I’d be more than happy to fill you in if you’re really curious.”
“Ah—no, Veltan,” Gunda replied. “I think I know just about as much as I really want to know. Why don’t I go get started on supper?”
“Excellent idea, Gunda,” Veltan replied without changing his expression.
It was a couple of days later and the good weather showed no signs of changing. The wind continued to come up from the south, and Gunda’s sleek little fishing yawl seemed almost to fly along the west coast of an island Veltan called Thurn. “My sister Zelana lived here for many years,” he told them. “That was before our brother drifted around with the ‘gifts’ that changed our lives.”
“What would people who own tons of gold need with gifts?” Ekial asked curiously.
“They were children, Prince Ekial,” Veltan replied, “and they were the most precious things in our lives. I’m sure that you encountered sister Zelana’s little girl Eleria a few times when we were in that basin above the Falls of Vash.”
“Oh, yes,” Ekial replied with a sudden grin. “She’s the one who goes around kissing people into submission, isn’t she?”
“That’s Eleria, all right,” Veltan agreed. “She started that kiss-kiss game when she was just a baby. My sister had some very close friends who were dolphins, and she persuaded them to feed Eleria. After Eleria started thanking the dolphins with kisses, they’d argue with each other for hours about whose turn it was to nurse the child. She’s even managed to soften Longbow, and he’s the hardest man in the whole world. Eleria didn’t learn how to talk the language of people until just a couple of years ago. She spoke dolphin instead.”
“It seems that I heard something about that during the war in your Domain,” Ekial said. “I was fairly sure it wasn’t really the truth, though.”
“Oh?”
“The fellow who told me about it said that the dolphins were pink. There’s no such thing as a pink dolphin, is there?”
“There’s one hopping around just ahead of us, Ekial,” Veltan replied, pointing toward the bow of Gund
a’s yawl. “It looks to be pink to me.”
Ekial turned quickly, and Ariga leaned out over the rail just to one side of his friend. “It looks pink to me, Ekial,” Ariga said. “Just because you’ve never seen one before doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. If you really like that color, I’ll see if I can find you a pink horse when we go on home after this war’s over—or maybe you’d prefer a blue one. A blue horse would really make you stand out in a crowd, wouldn’t you say?”
Ekial glared at his friend, but he didn’t say anything.
“This one’s almost as bad as Red-Beard, isn’t he, Veltan?” Gunda said with a broad grin. “I think he and I are going to get along just fine.”
The fleet of Trogite ships continued north for the next several days, and Ariga was a bit startled by the size of the trees in that region. They were immense and they seemed to rise up almost like columns. “How long would you say it takes a tree to grow that big?” he asked Veltan.
“Several thousand years at least,” Veltan replied. “Until recently, the people of sister Zelana’s Domain made their tools out of stone, and an axe with a stone blade wouldn’t work very well if you decided to cut down a tree of that size. That means that the trees just keep growing and getting bigger every year.”
“They’re pretty enough, I suppose,” Ariga said, “but I don’t think I’d want to live in a place like this.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t see any grass growing in those woods, and that means that there wouldn’t be anything for our cows to eat. Cows are what the Malavi are all about. What do the people around there eat?”
“Wild animals, for the most part. Zelana’s people are primarily hunters. The people of my Domain are farmers.” Veltan peered on ahead. “Well, finally,” he said. “I’d say that we’ve reached the place that we’ve been looking for.”
“How can you tell? The forest here looks about the same as it was farther south.”
“Pretty much, yes, but there’s a man in a canoe just ahead of us, and I think it’s Red-Beard. My older brother told me that Red-Beard would guide us to Mount Shrak—Dahlaine’s home.”
“You’re not going to have any trouble unshrinking our horses, are you?”
“Not really.” Veltan straightened. “Ho, Red-Beard!” he called. “I’m over here.”
“What took you so long, Veltan?” the man in the canoe called back, digging his paddle into the water.
“Have you encountered any of the creatures of the Wasteland yet?”
The native pulled his canoe in beside the front end of the Albatross. “We came across a few of them,” he answered. “We didn’t know what they were right at first, but once we recognized them, we did what needed to be done. They were trying to stir up trouble between the tribes around here, but now that they’re all dead, things are going more smoothly.” He looked out at the fleet of Trogite ships following the Albatross. “It’s going to take a while to get your people out on dry land, I’d say. There’s a little fishing village just on ahead. I’ll lead you there, and then I’ll tell you the wonderful story about how we got rid of those nasty bug-people.”
“I can hardly wait,” Veltan replied.
“That one exaggerates things a bit, doesn’t he?” Ariga observed.
“He’s a funny sort of fellow,” Veltan replied, “but we all like him. He’s Longbow’s closest friend, and that makes him quite important.”
“Ekial mentioned Longbow,” Ariga said. “It’ll be good to get my feet back on dry land again. Boats are all right when you have to cross water, I guess, but I still prefer dry land. There’s something you should probably know, Veltan,” he said then. “It’s going to take us a little while to get our horses settled down after we unload them. Horses start to get a little belligerent if they haven’t been ridden for a few days.”
“I thought that they’d all been tamed.”
“Well, sort of tamed. If a horse is really any good, though, he’s quite spirited, and it takes a little while to remind him that we’re the ones who make the decisions. He’ll get the point—eventually—but it does take some time.”
Ekial’s face had a slightly awed expression as what appeared to be an endless string of horses came down the wide ramp from the Trogite ship. “How did Veltan do that?” he asked Ariga.
“He didn’t go into too many details, Ekial,” Ariga replied. “He just said that he reduced the size of the horses when they went from the pier into that ship.”
“Reduced?”
“He shrank them down until they were about the size of mice—or so he told me. I’d say that he’s unshrinking them now. It’s going to take a while to get that many horses off of one lone ship, I’d say.”
Ekial shuddered. “That’s making my hair stand straight up,” he said. “Let’s go talk with Red-Beard. Veltan told me that they had some problems when they first came here. If we can persuade him to stop joking around, we might be able to get a few details about what happened.”
The two of them went a ways on down the beach to the shady grove where the native called Red-Beard was talking with Veltan, telling him about how the bug-people had deceived the Tonthakans and how their “clicking” that the farmer Omago had described gave them away. “I’m not sure just exactly how the ‘clickers’ persuaded that Tonthakan chief that he’d been terribly insulted, but, evidently, he believed them, even though they never told him just exactly what that insult had been all about. His mind cleared up immediately after Ox brained those ‘clickers’ with his axe.”
Veltan winced. “Wasn’t that just a little extreme?” he asked.
Red-Beard shrugged. “You know how Ox is. He doesn’t waste any time when he encounters an enemy. With Ox, it’s bash first and then talk. The chief who’d been causing all of the trouble apologized all over the place, and everything went back to normal again. I’m not trying to frighten you or anything, Veltan, but it looks to me like the bug-people are getting a lot smarter than they were in those earlier wars. We might want to start being a little more careful this time. A clever enemy is a dangerous enemy, so I don’t think we’ll want to rush into anything.”
“You had to go and say that, didn’t you, Red-Beard,” Veltan reproached his friend.
“I just thought you ought to know, Veltan,” Red-Beard replied. “Aside from this ‘Nation’ foolishness your big brother devised, the people here in Tonthakan are pretty much the same kind of people that those of us who live farther south are. They use bows and arrows and they spend a lot of their time hunting. Longbow has a new friend now. His name’s Athlan, and he’s a fair hunter. He’s not as good as Longbow, of course, but who is?”
3
He’s a pretty tired old horse, Red-Beard,” Ariga told the native from Zelana’s part of the Land of Dhrall. “He just sort of plods along, but he will get you to where we’re going. If Veltan was right about how far it is to this mountain, you probably won’t want to walk.”
“I do know how to walk, Ariga. I can cover a lot of ground when it’s necessary. What happened to the fellow who owns this tired old beast?”
Ariga shrugged. “He and some other men were playing dice on one of those Trogite ships, and they were using his dice. Things were going very well for him until one of the other players checked the dice rather carefully and found out that they’d been weighted on one side. If a man knew how to roll them just right, he could make any number he wanted come up every time.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“Indeed it is, my friend,” Ariga replied. “The other players weren’t very happy, so they threw him into the water behind the ship. I guess he’d never learned how to swim, so he sank like a rock. Now we’ve got a horse that doesn’t have anybody to ride him.”
“Oh, the poor thing,” Red-Beard said in mock sorrow.
“We wouldn’t want that horse to feel neglected, now would we?” Ariga said, grinning.
“I’ll sacrifice myself to make him feel happy, then,” Red-Beard said. “Sometime
s I’m so noble that I just can’t stand myself.”
“I’ve noticed that. Now, you want to be certain that your foot’s firmly in place in the stirrup before you mount. If that foot slips out, you’ll wind up face-down on the ground, and the horse will run off and leave you behind.”
“Let’s try it and see what happens,” Red-Beard said. He took hold of the saddle, jammed his foot into the stirrup, and hauled himself up onto the horse’s back. “It’s sort of awkward, isn’t it?” he said.
“You’ll get smoother with practice.”
“How do I persuade him to start walking?”
“Nudge his sides with your heels—gently right at first. You want him to walk. If you thump his sides too hard, he’ll run.”
“How do I tell him that I want him to stop?”
“Pull back on the reins. He knows what that means.”
“All right. Let’s give it a try and see what happens.”
Red-Beard fell off the horse a few times, but by the end of the day he’d grown more proficient, and if the horse wasn’t running too fast, he managed to stay in the saddle.
“It’s going to take a few more days to get all of the men off those ships,” Ariga told Red-Beard, “so you’ll have time to practice and grow more proficient.”
“Does this horse have a name?”
“I think he’s called ‘Seven,’” Ariga replied. “His original owner was very interested in dice games, and seven’s very important when you’re playing dice.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, but I’ll take your word for it,” Red-Beard said. He patted his horse on the neck. “You’re a good boy, Seven,” he said. “Why don’t you go rest your feet for a while, and I’ll go rest my bottom.” He looked at Ariga. “Does it get any easier on your backside as time goes by?”
“There are some ways you’ll develop in time to keep from bouncing up and down so much. Right at first, though, you’ll probably eat most of your meals standing up. Seven will get you to where you want to go quite a bit faster than your feet will, and your feet won’t hurt at the end of the day.”