David Eddings - The Treasured One

‘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 warm-blooded 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?’