“Well, finally,” Narasan said. “There for a while, I thought we might have to walk until the middle of winter. How far off would you say that mountain is, Red-Beard?”
“Three or four days, anyway. We still have a long way to go, I’m afraid. Dahlaine’s almost positive that his pet mountain’s the highest peak in the world, and for all I know, he could just be right. Don’t take off your boots yet, Narasan. We’ve still got a lot of miles spread out there in front of us.”
3
The lack of obstructions in the meadowland of the Matakan Nation had given Narasan the opportunity to spread his army out, and they were now covering much more ground each day than they had in rougher country, so it was only about two and a half days later when they reached Dahlaine’s mountain.
As Red-Beard had suggested, the fact that Mount Shrak was an isolated peak rising up out of the surrounding plain made it appear to be even higher, but it was the herd of Malavi horses grazing in the vicinity of the solitary mountain that got Trenicia’s immediate attention. Ekial, the head man of the Malavi, had told them that he would be able to field fifty thousand men, but fifty thousand horses covered much more land than their owners ever could. It seemed to Trenicia that the horse herd stretched almost from horizon to horizon.
Then Dahlaine, followed by Sorgan and Ekial, came out of a large hole in the side of Mount Shrak. Trenicia had heard about “caves” before, but this was the first time she’d ever seen one. For all she knew, however, Mount Shrak might just be an illusion that Dahlaine had conjured up to conceal a palace. Sorgan went directly to Narasan and the two of them clasped hands in that gesture of friendship that men seemed to find quite necessary.
The Malavi chieftain Ekial, however, came over to Trenicia. “Zelana told us that her sister was trying to deceive everybody and conceal her little girl’s Dream. If I understood what Zelana told us correctly, you threw all those precious jewels right back in her face and told her that you weren’t going to help her anymore.”
Trenicia smiled. “That might have been an even better way to show her that she and I were through, but it didn’t occur to me. I was just a bit angry at the time, so I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I threw them at her feet instead of right in her face.”
“You didn’t really have to just throw them away like that, Trenicia,” Ekial said with a concerned expression. “Her deception was a violation of your agreement. You could have kept the jewels and just walked away, you know. Once she’d put them in your hands, they were yours.”
“As dishonest as Aracia is, I wasn’t at all certain that what she’d given me were really all that valuable, Ekial, and I wasn’t about to start decorating myself with cheap trinkets. That’s why I threw them down on the floor and walked away.”
“I hate to see a friend get cheated the way you were, Queen Trenicia,” Ekial stubbornly declared.
“You and I are friends now, Ekial?” Trenicia asked in mock surprise.
“Of course we are,” he replied. “We’re fighting on the same side in this war, and that automatically makes us friends, doesn’t it?”
“You could be right, Ekial,” Trenicia conceded. “Let’s say that we are friends—up until we wind up on opposite sides in some war on down the line.”
“You seem to have changed a bit since we left Veltan’s part of the Land of Dhrall,” Ekial noted. “We’ve been talking here for ten minutes, and you haven’t once reached for your sword.”
“I’ve got other things on my mind now, Ekial,” she said. “How well did you get to know the Trogite Narasan during that war down in Veltan’s Domain?”
Ekial shrugged. “We talked to each other a few times, but we got a bit better acquainted in Veltan’ s house before Narasan and his men—and you, of course—sailed off to the east. Judging from what I saw during that war above the waterfall, Narasan’s extremely good—for a foot-soldier, anyway. He knows exactly what has to be done, and he does it quite efficiently.”
“I got pretty much the same impression,” Trenicia agreed.
Ekial gave her a lightly puzzled look. “Was there some reason why you didn’t just turn around and go back home when you quit working for Zelana’s sister?”
“Curiosity, Ekial,” Trenicia replied. “These people don’t fight wars the way we do on the Isle of Akalla. I learned a great deal during the war in Veltan’s land, and I thought I might learn more during this war. The more we learn, the better we become. I might even decide to learn how to ride a horse—if you’ll agree to give me lessons.”
“We might want to talk about that someday,” Ekial replied with a faint smile.
Trenicia felt a certain apprehension as they followed Dahlaine on into his cave under the towering Mount Shrak. The notion of spending days and days in a hole in the ground disturbed her more than a little.
The passageways—or perhaps tunnels—that led back into the mountain were decorated, if that was the right term, with what appeared to be icicles made of solid stone, and Trenicia shuddered at the thought of something so unnatural.
The passageway they followed finally opened out into a much larger chamber, and that relieved Trenicia quite a bit.
“We’ll come back here in a while,” Dahlaine told them, “but for right now, we should probably go take a look at my map. It’s fairly accurate, and I think we should all examine it rather closely. If Lillabeth’s Dream was correct—and I’m sure that it was—we should all look at Crystal Gorge very closely.” He looked at Narasan. “Since your man Gunda is the expert on fortifications, I’ve got him down there working with Captain Sorgan’s cousin Skell putting up a solid base for the wall your men will need to hold back the creatures of the Wasteland.”
“Those two work together fairly well,” Narasan agreed, “so I’m sure they’ll have a solid foundation in place by the time my men get there. Let’s go have a look at your map, Lord Dahlaine. I think much more clearly when I’ve got a map in front of me.”
They trooped on back along another tunnel and entered a very large chamber with a balcony that went around the outer edge and closely resembled the balcony in Veltan’s house far off to the south. Trenicia and the others were able to look down at the presentation of the mountains to the south almost as if they were standing on a cloud about a mile above the most probable battleground.
Narasan smiled faintly. “Our maps seem to be getting better and better,” he said. “As I recall, my friend Hook-Beak here was terribly upset back in Lattash when he found out that Red-Beard was using gold blocks as a base for his map.”
Dahlaine shrugged. “The more our people practice, the better they get. There’s one feature that might start some arguments, though. It’s a notion that your man Keselo came up with. There’ll be Malavi horsemen stationed in your fort, and we were all beating our heads on the wall trying to come up with some sort of gate that we could open and close very fast. We wanted the Malavi to be able to ride out of the fort, of course, but we wanted a gate that we could slam shut as soon as the Malavi were clear. Keselo came up with the notion of a gate that slides up and down rather than swinging out and then back in. Keselo’s positive that his new kind of gate can open or close almost instantly.”
“That’s our Keselo for you,” Padan said with a grin. “It sounds like he’s just invented a magic gate.”
“Only if you want to accuse me of using magic,” the little smith called Rabbit said, “since I’m the one who made the silly thing. When we put it in place after your men build the fort, there’ll be a rail on each side of the break in the wall. The gate’s made of iron bars, and there are two wheels on each side of it. Those wheels are supposed to ride up and down those rails. Your people will raise the gate by pulling on ropes that’ll run up through pulleys on top of the wall on either side. When we want to close the gate again, we just tell your people to let go of the ropes. The gate will drop back so fast that nobody will be able to get through.”
“Brilliant!” Narasan exclaimed.
“Keselo an
d I sort of liked it,” Rabbit said modestly. “I think we’ll need quite a bit of grease, though. We don’t want that gate to get stuck when it’s only half-closed.”
“How far apart will the bars on your up-and-down gate be, Rabbit?”
“Not far enough apart to let any snake-men wriggle through,” Rabbit replied. “The gate’s going to be very heavy, so the pulley crews need to be about as strong as bulls. If it won’t break any rules, I’d suggest that Maags might work out better than Trogites, but that’s between you and Cap’n Hook-Beak, Commander Narasan. Keselo and I build things. You and the cap’n decide who’s going to use them.”
Trenicia was leaning over the balcony railing peering down at Dahlaine’s replica of Crystal Gorge. “Could you brighten the light just a bit?” she asked Dahlaine. “It’s a little shadowy down there.”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Dahlaine replied. He made a slight gesture in the direction of the light hanging in the air over the map, and the light grew brighter and brighter. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Much better.” Then Trenicia looked a bit more closely at the light, and her eyes went very wide.
“She’s a pet,” Dahlaine explained with a slight smile. “When Ashad was just a baby, she used to hover over him all the time, and I was never able to persuade her that he didn’t feed on light the way my brother and sisters and I do. We can talk about that some other time, though. Do you see anything about Crystal Gorge that the rest of us might have missed?”
“Probably not,” Trenicia confessed. “I was just wondering what all that gleaming rock is. When I first looked at it, I thought it might be huge deposits of diamonds.”
Dahlaine shook his head. “It’s quartz, Your Majesty,” he said. “You might say that it’s the diamond’s third cousin, but it’s not as hard—nor as rare.”
“It’s still very pretty, though. I was just wondering if it would shatter if Narasan’s people used those catapult things to throw large rocks at it and break it to pieces. A downpour of sharp fragments would make things very unpleasant for enemies who were trying to attack, wouldn’t you say?”
Dahlaine frowned slightly. “It would, wouldn’t it?” he agreed. “We could eliminate enemies by the thousands without putting any of our people in danger. I think you’ve just earned your pay for this day, Queen Trenicia.”
“That’s something we might want to discuss one of these days, Lord Dahlaine,” Trenicia replied. “The way things stand right now, I’m not being paid anything at all. We really should do something about that, wouldn’t you say?”
“The one thing about Lillabeth’s Dream that has me completely baffled is ‘the plague that is not a plague,’ big brother,” Zelana said after they’d returned to Dahlaine’s main chamber. “A disease that’s not really a disease is sort of a contradiction, wouldn’t you say?”
“It doesn’t make much sense to me,” Dahlaine agreed. He looked at the native Tlantar. “Have you heard anything at all about the outbreak of some new disease anywhere here in Matakan, Chief Two-Hands?”
“Nothing particularly specific, Dahlaine,” the tall chief of Asmie replied. “There’ve been a few rumors about an outbreak of some kind of disease that nobody can recognize on up to the north. The Atazaks have been probing down into the lands of the northern tribes. They don’t really pose much of a threat, so nobody up there takes those intrusions very seriously. They set up ambushes and shower the intruders with spears, and then the Atazaks turn around and run. They aren’t the bravest people in the world, after all.”
“Have the people of Atazakan ever intruded into the land of the Matans before, Chief Tlantar?” Longbow asked.
“Not that I’ve ever heard about. The Atazaks aren’t exactly what you’d call warriors, Longbow. I’d say that an ordinary Atazak couldn’t tell one end of a spear from the other even if his life depended on it.”
“But now they’ve suddenly turned aggressive?”
“I don’t think I’d go quite so far as to describe them as ‘aggressive.’ They try to sneak down into Matakan for some reason, but as soon as somebody sees them, they turn around and run back across the border.”
“Do you think it might be another one of those diversions, Longbow?” Keselo asked his friend. “It sounds just a bit like that tribal war the creatures of the Wasteland were trying to stir up back in Tonthakan. If they can somehow prod the Atazakans into invading Matakan, it’s going to pull a lot of people out of the war down in Crystal Gorge, wouldn’t you say?”
“It is possible, I suppose,” Longbow agreed, “but I can’t quite see how a disease of any kind fits into that plan.”
“What we need now, then, are some more descriptions of this disease that isn’t really a disease,” Keselo suggested.
“I’ll send more men on up there to ask questions,” Chief Tlantar said. “The rumors that have been drifting down here have been sort of vague.”
“That’s probably about the best we’ll be able to do for right now,” Longbow agreed. “We’ll need more information before we’ll be able to start looking for a solution.”
4
Trenicia assumed that it was late afternoon several days later when one of Tlantar’s men came into Dahlaine’s central chamber to speak with his chief. Of course, Trenicia hadn’t seen the sky for several days now, so she really had no idea at all whether it was night or day outside. That was the thing about caves that bothered Trenicia the most. Day or night didn’t matter at all when she was in a cave.
“A messenger just came down here from on up to the north,” Tlantar told the rest of them, “and he’s given us more details about this new disease that’s been worrying us lately. If his numbers are at all accurate, the disease has killed several hundred of the northern Matans already. When somebody catches this disease, it seems that he has a great deal of trouble breathing, and then he starts raving almost as if he just went crazy. The messenger told my people that when somebody catches this disease, he’s usually dead within a few hours.”
“That’s hardly possible, Chief Tlantar,” the young Trogite named Keselo objected. “A disease almost always takes several days to run its course. If the northern Matans sicken and die that fast, it has to be something else that’s killing them.”
“Poison, maybe?” Sorgan Hook-Beak suggested, “or maybe even some of that snake-venom that’s caused us so much trouble before?”
Keselo scratched his cheek and then shook his head. “I think we can rule out venom, Captain,” he replied. “The venom we’ve encountered before kills people almost instantly. Various poisons take a bit longer.”
“Wouldn’t that suggest that somebody’s been slipping into the camp of the northern Matans and sprinkling poison on their food?” Padan asked.
“I’d say that poisoning the water supply would be more likely,” the little Maag called Rabbit said. “It’d be a lot easier—and safer—to pour poison into a spring or a well than it would be to slink around at night poisoning the food. Most people guard their food, since they usually have to pay for it. Water’s free, though, so people take it wherever they find it.”
“Isn’t something like that just a bit complicated for a creature that’s at least part bug?” Narasan suggested.
“I don’t know that I’d lock ‘stupid’ in stone, Narasan,” Red-Beard cautioned. “It seems to me that every time we turn around, the bug-people—or whatever they are—have been doing their best to outsmart us. Their ‘fragrance game’ back in Tonthakan came very close to starting a war between the Deer Tribe and the Reindeer Tribe.”
“All we’re doing here is guessing,” the deep-voiced Andar rumbled at them. “We don’t have enough information yet about what’s really killing all those northern Matans, and I can’t think of anybody who’d be able to clear it up for us.”
“I wish that One-Who-Heals was here,” Longbow said. “He could find out just exactly what was killing those people in just a day or so.”
“I could go on back to the village o
f your tribe and bring him on up here,” Veltan said. “I’d have him here in less than an hour.”
Longbow shook his head. “The trip would kill him,” he said. “One-Who-Heals is very old, and he’s not well. I don’t think he’d survive if you carried him up here on your tame thunderbolt, Veltan.”
“I’d say that we’ve definitely got a problem here, Narasan,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said.
“Don’t rush me, Sorgan,” Narasan said with a troubled frown. “I’m working on it.”
“I don’t really have the chemicals I’d need to test the water—or food—for any of the known poisons,” Keselo admitted after Padan had suggested that the young officer was the best qualified to identify the poison that was killing the northern Matans. “And then, too, if it happens to be a new poison, the chemicals that would identify one of the older ones might not work on this new one.”
The pretty lady who was the mate of the farmer named Omago sighed, rolling her eyes upward. “Would it hurt your feelings if I happened to suggest a simpler solution, gentlemen?” she asked. “I’d sooner die than make you all feel very foolish, but we do need an answer, wouldn’t you say?”
“Do you have to do that all the time, Ara?” Veltan complained.
She gave him a sly little smile. “Probably not, dear Veltan,” she admitted, “but it’s a lot of fun sometimes. Now then, we have an expert called One-Who-Heals who could probably identify this poison in about a minute and a half, right?”
“Maybe just a bit longer,” Longbow said mildly.
Ara let that pass. “Our problem, though, is that our expert is old and sick, and he’d probably die before we could bring him up here to examine the Matans that fell over dead. Am I going too fast for anybody yet?” She looked around. “Good. Since we can’t bring our expert up here, why not take a dead Matan on down to Longbow’s home village and let One-Who-Heals examine him down there?”