The Elder Gods. David Eddings

that’s all right,’ he said, perhaps a bit too quickly. ‘You can carry it.’ So far as Sorgan was able to determine, the lump was not enclosed in glass – or anything else, for that matter. It appeared to be raw fire, but the little girl seemed very casual about the whole thing.

      ‘All right. Come along, then.’ She led him back into the cave, holding up the fire to light the way.

      ‘Doesn’t that burn your hand?’ Sorgan asked Eleria as they went back into the rocky passageway.

      ‘No,’ she replied. ‘The Beloved asked it not to.’

      ‘Why do you keep calling her “the Beloved”?’ he asked curiously.

      ‘That’s what the pink dolphins call her,’ Eleria replied. ‘I used to play with the pink dolphins when I was younger.’

      ‘We saw some of those when we were coming here from Longbow’s village,’ he said.

      ‘I know. The Beloved asked them to show you the way. She didn’t want you to get lost. The gold you want to look at is right around this corner.’

      Sorgan followed her, but then he stopped suddenly, his eyes almost starting out of their sockets. The rocky passageway he and Eleria had been following was blocked by a solid wall of what appeared to be gold bricks.

      ‘Will this much do for now?’ Eleria asked him. ‘The Beloved can send for more, but it might take Red-Beard and the rest of the villagers a while to carry it here.’

      ‘How far back does this passage go?’ Sorgan asked in a trembling voice.

      ‘I’m not sure,’ Eleria replied. ‘Quite a long way, I think. Hold me up in the air and I’ll take a look.’

      Sorgan picked her up and sat her on his shoulder. She held out her ball of fire and peered back into the cave. ‘The light doesn’t reach all the way back,’ she reported, ‘but there’s gold back as far as I can see. It’s nice enough, I suppose, but it’d be prettier if it was pink instead of yellow. Yellow’s sort of tiresome, don’t you think?’

      ‘It doesn’t tire me out much,’ Sorgan disagreed.

      ‘Let’s go back,’ Eleria suggested. ‘The Beloved’s sort of impatient.’

      ‘Would it be all right if I took a couple of these bricks to show my men?’ Hook-Beak asked her.

      ‘I’m sure it would,’ she said with a sunny smile. ‘There are lots of them here, aren’t there?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ Sorgan said fervently.

      They went back to the front of the cave.

      ‘Was there enough gold there to suit you, Hook-Beak?’ Zelana asked.

      ‘It looks about right to me,’ he replied. ‘I could probably buy the whole Land of Maag with that much. I’ll have to take some of it with me to show to the other Maags, though. They probably won’t believe me when I tell them about it.’

      ‘Not too much, Sorgan,’ Zelana told him. ‘The Seagull isn’t built to carry a lot of weight, and we don’t want her to sink out from under us when we sail back to Maag, do we?’

      ‘We?’ Sorgan asked sharply.

      ‘Eleria and I’ll be going with you, and so will Red-Beard and Longbow.’

      ‘You don’t really have to come along, Lady Zelana,’ Sorgan protested.

      ‘I think I do, Hook-Beak,’ she disagreed. ‘We need to hurry, and I can persuade the Seagull to go faster – and make sure that you don’t forget about your obligation to return.’

      ‘But –’ he started weakly.

      ‘No “buts”, Sorgan,’ she cut him off. ‘We sail on the afternoon tide. Go back to the Seagull and get her ready. I’ll have Red-Beard make the arrangements to put some gold on board before we leave. Take Eleria with you. I’ll have to talk with my brother before we leave.’

      ‘I haven’t agreed to any of this yet,’ Sorgan protested.

      ‘Were you going to say no?’

      ‘Well…’ His objection dribbled off as he remembered that solid wall of gold bricks.

      ‘I didn’t think so,’ Zelana said smugly. ‘Now go.’

      He looked longingly toward the back of the cave.

      ‘Quickly, quickly, Sorgan,’ she said, snapping her fingers at him. ‘The day runs on, and we want to be well on our way before the sun goes to bed.’

       THE LAND OF MAAG

       1

      Now Old-Bear was the chief of the tribe, and though he seldom spoke, Longbow’s parents had told their son when he had been but a child that Old-Bear was very wise. Longbow had been busy being a child at that time, so he had accepted what his parents had told him without question and had continued his childhood with great enthusiasm.

      The village of Old-Bear’s tribe at that time had been located atop a high bluff where the deep forest lay at its back and the shining face of Mother Sea stretched from the foot of the bluff to the far western horizon. Longbow had been certain that there could be no better place in the entire world to be a child.

      It had been in the late summer of Longbow’s fifth year when many members of Old-Bear’s tribe had been overcome by a strange illness that had first burned them with fever and then had wracked them with chill. Their skin had been marked with purple splotches, and they had seen things which had not really been there – things so horrible that they had screamed for many days, and then they had died.

      Now One-Who-Heals was the shaman of Old-Bear’s tribe, and he was very skilled in the healing arts, but the pestilence which had crept out of the night resisted his every attempt to conquer it, and fully half of the tribe of Old-Bear had been carried off. And among those who had been lost had been the parents of Longbow and the mate of Chief Old-Bear. And One-Who-Heals, realizing that the pestilence had defeated him, had gone to the lodge of Old-Bear and had urged his chief to gather up those members of the tribe who still lived and to flee.

      In sorrow, Old-Bear had agreed and had commanded the survivors to burn their lodges, and then he had led them to a new location near the shore of Mother Sea where they could build lodges on uncontaminated ground, and he had taken the orphaned Longbow into his new lodge and had reared him as if he were his own son.

      Now Old-Bear had a daughter named Misty-Water, but the children had not, as children often do, contended with each other for Old-Bear’s attention, but rather had joined together in their grief. Though they had grown up together in the same lodge, Misty-Water and Longbow had never thought of each other as brother and sister – perhaps because Old-Bear had always referred to Longbow as their ‘guest’.

      Even as a child, Longbow had been very perceptive, and it had seemed to him that Old-Bear’s use of the word ‘guest’ had been his way to carefully manipulate the thinking of the two children in his lodge. The ultimate goal of the clever chief had been fairly obvious, but as Misty-Water had matured, Longbow had seen no reason to complain. Misty-Water had grown up to be the sort of girl who made men stop breathing as she walked by. Her long hair was as black as raven’s wings, and her skin was as pale as the moon. Her eyes were large, and her lips were full. She was quite tall and slender, and as she began to mature, other interesting aspects emerged as well. Longbow had found it difficult to take his eyes from her.

      The