The Elder Gods. David Eddings

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.