“Don’t eat so fast,” Ara cautioned. “You’ll choke.”

“Yaltar said that you wanted to tell me something,” Veltan said. “He seemed to think it might be important.”

“It could be, Veltan,” Omago replied. “I’ve been hearing about a fair number of strangers drifting around in your Domain here lately. They’re pretending to be traders from the Domain of your sister Aracia of the East, but they can barely speak our language, and all other traders from that part of Dhrall speak the same language we do. They don’t seem to have anything of value to trade, and all they’re really doing is asking questions.”

“What sort of questions?”

“They seem to be curious about how many people live up near the Falls of Vash. Why in the world would anyone want to live there? It’s all rock, and so steep that a man’d have to tie himself to a tree to harvest anything that might sprout. The thing they seem to be most curious about is how much contact there is between the people here and the tribes of your sister Zelana’s Domain and just how close you and Zelana are to each other. I’ve been catching some hints that they’d be much happier if you hated her.”

“That’s absurd!”

“I’m just passing on what I’ve heard, Veltan. I thought you should know about it.”

“I’ll look into it when I come back from my brother’s Domain, Omago. I need to talk with him about a little family matter. Eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”

“I’ll see to it that Yaltar gets enough to eat,” Ara promised. “We wouldn’t want him to start wasting away, now, would we?”

“Isn’t she a treasure?” Omago said fondly.

“Indeed she is,” Veltan agreed.

“Come back soon, dear Veltan,” Ara said.

“That I will, treasured one,” Veltan promised with a broad smile.

“Does this look at all familiar to you?” Veltan asked his older brother later that morning in the cave under Mount Shrak. He handed the picture Yaltar had drawn on a sheet of parchment to Dahlaine. “I get the feeling that it’s somewhere in Zelana’s Domain.”

“Your boy’s quite gifted, Veltan,” Dahlaine observed. “He’s got a good eye for perspective.”

“Notice that he hasn’t included any sign of snow. I didn’t want to make too big an issue of it, so I didn’t press him too hard, but he told me that there wasn’t any snow on the ground in his dream—of course, that might not be all that significant. The war had already begun at the beginning of his dream, I think. He did mention the name Lattash. Isn’t that a village somewhere in Zelana’s Domain?”

“Yes, it is,” Dahlaine agreed, studying the drawing. “There,” he said, pointing at a twisted tree in the middle distance on Yaltar’s drawing. “My thunderbolt did that quite a long time ago, and Zelana scolded me about it for years. Notice the way it’s all twisted and bent over that ravine. I recognize that tree, and I know exactly where it is. This is that ravine that comes down out of the mountains above Lattash.”

“Of course!” Veltan said, snapping his fingers. “All right then, Yaltar’s dream put the battle in that ravine, and he overheard people talking about the Maags. Hasn’t Zelana been trying to persuade the Maags to help her fight off the creatures of the Wasteland?”

Dahlaine nodded. “They’re pirates, so I don’t know how dependable they are, but maybe your boy’s dream means that Zelana’s winning them over. This might just be very useful, Veltan.”

“Maybe,” Veltan replied, “but can we be sure that this will be the first attack? Dreams aren’t too specific, Dahlaine. Isn’t it possible that the attack on Zelana’s Domain will come some time after attacks on the other Domains? Yours? Mine? Aracia’s? For all we know, Yaltar’s dream could be taking place long after the war’s begun.”

“That wouldn’t make too much sense, Veltan. The Dreamers are here to help us, not to add to the confusion.” Dahlaine frowned. “There could be a problem there, though. We don’t really know all that much about the Dreamers, or if there’s any kind of logic or sequence to their dreams. If the dreams are just popping up at random with no connection to sequence, they could give us more trouble than help.”

“Oh, before I forget, when I told Yaltar that his dream was quite probably taking place in Zelana’s Domain, he asked me if that was the region where Balacenia lives.”

“He said what?”

“He called Eleria by her true name, brother.”

“That’s not possible!”

“He called her by name. Vash and Balacenia have always been very close, so evidently he’s aware of her presence, and he doesn’t think of her as Eleria. The young ones are at least as perceptive as we are, Dahlaine, and Yaltar—or Vash—has somehow managed to slip around the barrier you set up when you arranged their premature rebirth. I think we’d better start being very careful. Our cycle hasn’t run its full course yet, and if we break the pattern, everything could start falling apart.”

“Now I’ve got something else to worry about. Thanks a lot, Veltan.”

“Don’t mention it.” Veltan frowned. “Do you have any idea at all about what sort of creatures we’ll be facing when this all starts?”

“A few—and they’re not very pretty. The Vlagh tampers and experiments, and it has very little understanding of what we look upon as natural development. We’ve always permitted the creatures—and plants, for that matter—to develop and grow as their innate nature and their surroundings dictate. There’s a certain harmony in our Domains, but there’s no harmony in the Wasteland. The Vlagh seizes on certain characteristics and it crossbreeds to bring those to the fore. From what I’ve seen, it seems that it’s attracted to venomous reptiles and stinging insects for some reason.”

“There is a certain practicality there, Dahlaine,” Veltan pointed out. “Poisonous creatures wouldn’t need any weapons, would they? Their weapons are built right into them.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Dahlaine conceded.

“The only problem I can see with that is that insects and reptiles are dormant during the winter, aren’t they?”

“It seems that That-Called-the-Vlagh steps over that problem,” Dahlaine responded. “Its crossbreeds also involve warm-blooded creatures. Insects are enormously strong, snakes have deadly venom, and most warm-blooded creatures remain active in the winter. As closely as I’ve been able to determine, the dominant traits derive from certain insects—bees and ants, for the most part. Have you ever examined the colonizing activities of those kinds of bugs?”