David Eddings - The Dreamers 02 - The Treasured One

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DAVID AND LEIGH EDDINGS

THE TREASURED ONE

Book Two of The Dreamers

PREFACE

It was a time of uncertainty in the nest of the Vlagh, for no word of success had yet

reached the nest from the warrior-servants which had followed the burrows below the

face of the ground toward the broad water which lies beneath the sunset.

All had gone as it should at first as the warrior-servants had moved down through

the burrows toward the land of the sunset, killing the man-things of that land as they

went, and the joy of our dear Vlagh had known no bounds, for once the land of the

sunset was ours, there would be much to eat, and the Vlagh which had spawned us all

could spawn still more, and our numbers would grow to beyond counting, and the

overmind of which we are all a part would expand, for it grows larger and more

complex with each new hatch.

Impatient was our Vlagh, for none of its servants of whatever form had yet brought

word of victory, and without that assurance, our Vlagh could not spawn. Though our

Vlagh reached out with its senses toward the land of the sunset to question the

overmind about the success of the warriors of strange form, the overmind did not

respond, and that was most unusual.

And as the days came and went, our Vlagh grew more and more irritable as the

need to spawn was frustrated by the lack of certainty. ‘Go!’ our Vlagh commanded

the warrior-servants which protect the hidden nest. ‘Go and look, and then return and

tell me that which I must know.’

Many warrior-servants of venomous fangs hurried away, and those of us which are

the true servants who care for our Vlagh and the newborns sought to assure our dear

Vlagh that all was as it should be.

But it was not so.

The venomous warriors of strange form returned to report that they could not find

even one of those of our number which had followed the burrows beneath the face of

the ground toward the broad water which lies beneath the sunset, nor had they even

been able to find any trace of those burrows. More horrible still, they had felt no

sense of the overmind in that region.

And the pain of our dear Vlagh knew no bounds, for the over-mind had been

greatly diminished, and it would remain so until the burrowers and the warriors with

venomous fangs were found and their awareness was rejoined with the overmind.

Then there came to the nest of the Vlagh a burrower with missing limbs and deep

burns in its shell, and the burrower spoke of hot light spewing up from the mountains

and red liquid hotter than fire running down through the burrows below the face of

the ground, consuming all that was in its path. And then the burrower said that which

should never be said. ‘They are no more. The many which went through our hidden

burrows toward the land of the sunset have all been consumed by the red liquid hotter

than fire, and we are all made less because they are gone.’

And then the burrower’s task was complete, and it died.

And our beloved Vlagh shrieked in agony, for the word of the burrower had torn

away the urge to spawn. And all of us were made less by those words, for the many

were now fewer, and the lands beneath the sunset were now and forever beyond our

reach. The grief of our Vlagh was beyond our understanding, and that grief brought us

rage.

Now it came to pass that the servants with strange forms and venomous fangs

which had gone forth to seek knowledge in the lands of the man-things conferred with

one another. The seekers of knowledge are unlike the true servants, for their task has

altered them. The seekers of knowledge go beyond our Vlagh’s immediate

commands, and they consider the knowledge which they have found and even

sometimes offer alternatives when they carry the knowledge which they have found

back to the nest.

And so it was that the seekers of knowledge agreed, each with the others, that the

lands of the sunset were now and forever beyond the grasp of the burrowers and the

warriors by reason of the liquid fire which was coming forth from the mountains, and

they offered the alternative which the knowledge they had found had suggested to

them. Might it not be better, they said, to expand toward a different direction than we

had before? The mountains above the land of longer summers are quiet, and the need

to spew forth liquid fire is not stirring in those mountains, and there are many more

things to eat in the land of longer summers than there had been in the land of the

sunset. Since the presence of things to eat arouses our Vlagh’s urge to spawn, should

we not seek out a land where there is much to eat? Should we do so, the urge to

spawn will grow much greater, and there will soon be even more of us than there had

been when the burrowers had opened the passages below the face of the ground which

had led down to the land of the sunset. And thereby the awareness of the overmind

which we all share will be increased, lifting it to heights which it has never reached

before.

And our beloved Vlagh communed with the overmind concerning the virtue of the

alternative offered by the seekers of knowledge, and the overmind found much that

was good in that alternative, for it had learned much during our attempt to occupy the

land of the sunset. The warriors of strange form had encountered many different

creatures as they had moved toward the sunset, and the overmind perceived that those

different forms might prove to be most useful in our encounters with the man-things

in the land of longer summers, for the man-things are most tenacious and difficult to

push aside as we move toward that which is our goal. Then, however, the overmind

warned our beloved Vlagh that the greatest danger we would face in the land of

longer summers would be - even as it had in the land of the sunset - not the man-

things who stood in our path, but would rather be sleeping infants and peculiar stones.

And so it was that we turned aside from the lands of the sunset and fixed our

attention on the land of longer summers where the two-legged ones produce food

from the ground and where there is much room, for food and space will surely once

again stir our Vlagh’s urge to spawn, and the overmind will grow, even surpassing

what it had been before the mountains of the land of the sunset had reduced it, and

that will bring joy to all of us, for we all share the benefits of the increase of the

overmind.

And surely the time will come when all the lands of the man-things shall be ours,

and we shall grow to numbers beyond counting, and our overmind shall expand until

all knowledge is ours - and the world as well.

And only then will we be content.

The Dream Of Ashad

During the course of my many cycles I’ve grown very fond of the mountains of my

Domain. There’s a beauty in the mountains that no other kind of country can possibly

match. My sister Zelana loves the sea in much the same way, I suppose, but I don’t

think the sea can ever match mountain country. Mountain air is clean and pure, and

the eternal snow on the peaks seems to increase that purity.

Over the endless eons I’ve discovered that a mountain sunrise gives me the most

delicious light I’ve ever tasted, so whenever possible I go up to the shoulder of Mount

Shrak at first light to drink in the beauty of the sunrise. No matter what happens later

in the day, the taste of a mountain sunrise gives me a serenity that nothing else can

provide.

It was on a day in the late spring of the year when the creatures of the Wasteland

had made their futile attempt to seize sister Zelana’s Domain and had been met by

Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s twin volcanos that I went out of my cave under Mount

Shrak to greet the morning sun.

When I reached my customary feasting place, I saw that there was a cloud bank off

to the east, and that always makes the sunrise even more glorious.

I looked around at the nearby mountains, and it seemed that summer was moving

up into my Domain a bit more slowly than usual, and last winter’s snow was still

stubbornly clinging to the lower ridges. It occurred to me that this might be a sign of

one of those periodic climate changes which appear much more frequently than the

people who serve us seem to realize. The temperatures on the face of Father Earth are

never really constant. They’re subject almost entirely to the whims of Mother Sea,

and if Mother’s feeling chilly, Father will get a lot of snow. That can go on for

centuries.

After I’d considered the possibility, though, I dismissed the notion. Zelana had

tampered with the weather extensively during the past winter to delay the invasion of

her Domain by the servants of the Vlagh until her hired army arrived from the land of

Maag, and it might take a while for things to go back to normal.

All in all, though, things had gone rather well this past spring. The more I

considered the matter, the more certain I became that my decision to rouse the

younger gods from their sleep cycle prematurely and to cause them to regress to

infancy in the process had, in fact, fulfilled that ancient prophecy. Eleria’s flood and

Yaltar’s twin volcanos had forever sealed off Zelana’s Domain from any more

incursions by the creatures of the Wasteland.

The morning sun rose in all her splendor, painting that eastern cloud-bank a

glorious crimson, and I feasted on her light. I’ve always found early summer light to

be more invigorating than the pale light of winter or the dusty light of autumn, and

there was a certain spring to my step as I walked on back down the mountain to the

mouth of my cave.

My little toy sun was waiting for me at the cave-mouth, and she flickered her

customary question at me.

‘Just taking a look at the weather, little one,’ I lied. She always seems to get all

pouty and sullen if she thinks that I prefer the light of the real sun to hers. Pets can be

very strange sometimes. ‘Is Ashad still sleeping?’ I asked her.

She bobbed up and down slightly in answer.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t been sleeping too well here lately. I think he was badly

frightened by what happened down in Zelana’s Domain. Maybe you should keep your

light a bit subdued so that he can sleep longer. He needs the rest.’

She bobbed her agreement, and her light dimmed. She had been just a bit sulky

when I’d first brought Ashad into our cave, but that had passed, and she was now very

fond of my yellow-haired little boy. She’d never fully understood Ashad’s need for

solid food rather than light alone, so she habitually hovered near him, spilling light

down on him - just in case he happened to need some.

I went on down through the twisting passageway that led to my cave, ducking

under the icicle-like stalactites hanging down from the ceiling. They were much

thicker and longer than they’d been at the beginning of my current cycle, and they

were starting to get in my way. They were the result of the mineral-rich water that

came seeping down through Mount Shrak, and they grew perceptibly longer every

century. I made a mental note to take a club to them some day, when I had a little

more time.

Ashad, covered with his fur robe, was still sleeping when I came out of the

passageway into the large open chamber that was our home, so I thought it best not to

disturb him.

I was still convinced that my decision to bring our alternates into the tag-end of

our cycle had been the right one, but it was growing increasingly obvious that they’d

brought some of their previous memories with them. I sat down in my chair near the

table where Ashad ate his meals of what he called ‘real food’ to consider some things

I hadn’t anticipated. I rather ruefully admitted to myself that I probably should have

examined our alternates a bit more closely before I’d awakened them, but it was a

little late now. I’d assumed that the children would respond to any dangers in the

Domains of their own surrogate parents, so I’d been more than a little startled when

Veltan had told me that Yaltar’s dream had predicted the war in Zelana’s Domain. I’d

assumed that it’d be Eleria who’d warn us. Then when the real crisis arose, Yaltar

had shoved prediction aside and had gone straight into action with those twin

volcanos. That strongly suggested that Yaltar and Eleria had been very close during

their previous cycle - a suggestion confirmed by the fact that Yaltar had occasionally

referred to Eleria by her true name, ‘Balacenia’, and Eleria in like manner had spoken

of ‘Vash’ -Yaltar’s true name.

‘I think there might just be a few holes in this “grand plan” of mine,’ I ruefully

admitted.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the core of our problem lay in

the fact that the Vlagh had been consciously modifying its servants over the past

hundred or so eons. The modification of various life forms goes on all the time,

usually in response to changes in the environment. Sometimes these modifications

work, and sometimes they don’t. The species that makes the right choice survives, but

the wrong choice leads to extinction. In most cases, survival depends on sheer luck.

Before the arrival of the hairy predecessors of the creatures we now call men, vast

numbers of creatures had arisen in the Land of Dhrall, but at some point most of them

had made a wrong turn and had died out.

The Vlagh, unfortunately, had been among the survivors.

Originally, the Vlagh had been little more than a somewhat exotic insect which

had nested near the shore of that inland sea which in the far distant past had covered

what is now the Wasteland. A gradual climate change had evaporated that sea, and the

Vlagh, driven by necessity, had begun to modify its servants. The change of climate

had made avoiding the broiling sunlight a matter of absolute necessity, but as closely

as I’ve been able to determine, the Vlagh had not simply groped around in search of a

solution, but had relied on observation instead. I’m almost positive that it had been at

this point that ‘the overmind’ had appeared. The ability to share information had

given the servants of the Vlagh an enormous advantage over their neighbors. What

any single one of them had seen, they all had seen. The Vlagh’s species at that time

had lived above the ground - most probably up in the trees. Several other species,

however, had lived beneath the surface of the ground, and ‘the seekers of

knowledge’ - spies, if you wish - had observed those neighbors and had provided very

accurate descriptions of the appendages the neighbors used to burrow below the

surface. Then ‘the overmind’ had filched the design, the Vlagh had duplicated it, and

the next hatch had all been burrowers.

The extensive tunnels had kept the servants of the Vlagh out of the blazing

sunlight, but that had only been the first problem they had been forced to solve. As

the centuries had passed, the changed climate had gradually killed all the vegetation

in that previously lush region, so there was no longer sufficient food to support a

growing population.

The Vlagh had continued to lay eggs, of course, but each hatch had produced

fewer and fewer offspring, and the Vlagh had come face to face with the distinct

possibility of the extinction of its species.

When the burrowing insects had reached the mountains, they’d encountered solid

stone, and their progress had stopped at that point. Not long after that, however,

they’d discovered the caves lying beneath those mountains, and the species which

should have gone extinct lived on.

I’m of two minds about caves. I love mine, but I hate theirs.

Anyway, the servants of the Vlagh had encountered other creatures in the caves

and mountains, and evidently the overmind had realized that some of those creatures

had characteristics which might prove to be very useful, and it had begun to

experiment - or tamper - producing peculiar and highly unnatural variations.

I rather ruefully conceded that the experiment which had produced what Sorgan

Hook-Beak of the Land of Maag colorfully called ‘the snake-men’ had been

extremely successful, though I can’t for the life of me understand exactly how the

Vlagh had produced a creature that was part bug, part reptile, and part warmblooded

mammal that closely resembled a human being.

Biological impossibilities irritate me to no end.

I will admit, though, that had it not been for the near genius of the Shaman One-

Who-Heals, the creatures of the Wasteland would probably have won the war in my

sister’s Domain.

Ashad made a peculiar little sound, and I got up from my chair and crossed in the

dim light of our cavern to the stone bench that served as his bed to make sure that he

was all right. He was nestled down under his fur robe with his eyes closed, though, so

I was sure that he wasn’t having any problems. Our discovery that our Dreamer-

children weren’t able to live on light alone had made us all a little jumpy. It wasn’t

the sort of thing we wanted to gamble with. Then we came face to face with the

question of breathing. Veltan’s ten eons on the face of the moon had been a clear

demonstration of the fact that we didn’t really need to breathe. Many of our pet

people were fishermen, though, and drowning happens quite often. Even though our

Dreamer-children were actually gods, their present condition strongly suggested that

they needed air to breathe and food to eat, and none of us was in the mood to take any

chances.

Ashad was still breathing in and out, though, so I went on back to my chair. I let

my mind drift back to Ashad’s first few hours here in my cave. If anybody with a

cruel mind would like to see a god in a state of pure panic, I think he missed his

chance. Panic had run rampant in my family that day. As soon as Ashad started

screaming at me, I went all to pieces. Eventually, though, I remembered a peculiarity

of the bears which share my Domain with deer, people and wild cows. She-bears give

birth to their cubs during their yearly hibernation cycle, and their cubs attend to the

business of nursing all on their own. Then I remembered that a she-bear called

Broken-Tooth customarily hibernated in a cave that was no more than a mile away.

Still caught up in sheer panic, I grabbed up my howling Dreamer and ran to Mama

Broken-Tooth’s cave. She’d already given birth to the cub Long-Claw, and he was

contentedly nursing when I entered the cave. Fortunately, I didn’t have to argue with

him. He was nice enough to move aside just a bit, and I introduced Ashad to bear’s

milk.

His crying stopped immediately.

Peculiarly - or maybe not - Ashad and Long-Claw were absolutely positive that

they were brothers, and after they’d both nursed their fill of Mama Broken-Tooth’s

milk, they began to play with each other.

I remained in the cave until Mama Broken-Tooth awakened. She sniffed briefly at

her two cubs - totally ignoring the fact that one of them didn’t look at all like a bear -

and then she gently nestled them against her bearish bosom as if there was nothing at

all peculiar taking place. Of course, bears don’t really see very well, so they rely

instead on their sense of smell and after two weeks of rolling around on the dirt floor

of the cave, Ashad had most definitely had a bearish fragrance about him.

Ashad slept until almost noon, but my flaxen-haired little boy still seemed

exhausted when he rose, pulled on his tan leather smock and joined me at our table.

‘Good morning, uncle,’ he greeted me as he sank wearily into his chair. Almost

absently, he pulled the large bowl full of red berries he’d brought home the previous

evening in front of him and began to eat them one at a time. His appetite didn’t seem

quite normal, for some reason.

‘Is something bothering you, Ashad?’ I asked him.

‘I had a nightmare last night, uncle,’ the boy replied, absently fondling a shiny

black stone that was about twice the size of an eagle’s egg. ‘It seemed that I was

standing on nothing but air, and I was way up in the sky looking down at the Domain

of Vash. The country down there in the South doesn’t look at all like our country up

here, does it?’

There it was again. Ashad obviously knew Yaltar’s true name, even as Eleria did.

‘The people of the South are farmers, Ashad,’ I explained. ‘They grow much of their

food in the ground instead of concentrating on hunting the way our people do. They

had to cut down the trees to give themselves open ground for planting, so the land

down there doesn’t look at all like the land up here. What else happened in your

dream?’

Ashad pushed his yellow hair out of his eyes. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it seemed that

there were a whole lot of those nasty things coming into the Domain of Vash - sort of

like the things that crawled down into Balacenia’s Domain a little while ago.’ The

boy put the shiny black stone down on the table and ate more of the red berries.

There it was again. It was obvious now that the Dreamers were, perhaps

unconsciously, stepping over the barrier I’d so carefully set up between them and

their past.

‘Anyway,’ Ashad continued, ‘there were outlanders there, and they were fighting

the nasty things just like they did in Balacenia’s Domain, but then things got very

confusing. A whole lot of other outlanders came up across Mother Sea from the

South, but it didn’t seem like they were interested in the war very much, because they

spent all their time talking to the farmers about somebody called Amar. The ones who

were doing all the talking were wearing black robes, but there were some others who

wore red clothes, and they were pushing the farmers around and making them listen

while the ones in black talked. That went on for quite a while, and then the outlanders

in the South got all excited, and they started to run north toward a great big waterfall,

and the other outlanders - the ones who got there first - sort of got out of their way for

while, and then when everybody got to that waterfall, it looked to me like everybody

was trying to kill everybody else, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t

understand exactly what was going on.’

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DAVIDANDLEIGHEDDINGSTHETREASUREDONEBookTwoofTheDreamersPREFACEItwasatimeofuncertaintyinthenestoftheVlagh,fornowordofsuccesshadyetreachedthenestfromthewarrior-servantswhichhadfollowedtheburrowsbelowthefaceofthegroundtowardthebroadwaterwhichliesbeneaththesunset.Allhadgoneasitshouldatfirstasthewarrior-...

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