“I want you gentlemen to think very hard about this,” Zelana said firmly. “You need to come up with some way to persuade your leaders to stay here and help us. If you can’t, I might just have to burn all their ships to keep them here, whether they like it or not.”

“We should get back,” Longbow told Keselo and Rabbit. “Hook-Beak might miss us, and I don’t think we want any Maags to come looking for us. They don’t really need to know anything about this discussion, do they?”

“Not if we’re going to keep talking about burning ships, they don’t,” Rabbit agreed.

Keselo was profoundly troubled as he lay wrapped in his blankets some distance from the fires in the encampment of the Maags. The thunderous eruption of the twin volcanos at the head of the ravine was subsiding, and there was much cheer in the ranks of Hook-Beak’s army. The Maags continued to marvel about “the greatest stroke of good luck in history” as if the eruption had been nothing more than sheer coincidence.

Keselo, however, knew better, and he profoundly wished that he didn’t. Zelana’s coldly brutal evaluation of the situation here in the Land of Dhrall chilled Keselo to the bone. Although she was beautiful beyond belief, there was a rock-hard practicality at her center, which only Eleria could soften, and Eleria, when the situation required it, was even worse.

The Dreamers could unleash natural disasters far worse than the ordering of armies into hopeless struggles and threatening to burn the ships that were the only hope of escape those armies had.

Worse yet, the soldiers, ignorant of what was truly happening, were cheering.

Keselo, however, had gradually come to perceive the true nature of That-Called-the-Vlagh. Driven by an uncontrollable need to possess the entirety of the Land of Dhrall and surrounded by countless nonhuman servants, the Vlagh would pursue its need despite defeat after defeat after defeat, giving no thought to the vast number of servants it would inevitably lose. Even worse, perhaps, was the fact that the Vlagh did not function solely on instinct. There was an evil cunning there, which in the end might very well overcome them all—human or divine.

And now the Maags and Trogites were effectively trapped here in the Land of Dhrall, doomed to fight a dreadful war that they could not possibly win, given the overwhelming numbers of their enemies.

THE PINK GROTTO

1

Eternal Zelana was filled with unspeakable horror and an overwhelming sense of guilt at the chaos unleashed by the Dreamers. It had seemed at first that her elder brother’s solution to the current crisis had been the perfect answer. Eleria’s flood and Yaltar’s volcanos were natural disasters, after all, and nobody was really to blame for them, were they?

It had seemed so to Zelana at first. Her Domain had been threatened by the creatures of the Wasteland, and now the threat was gone. None of the events in the ravine had been the result of anything she had personally done, so why was she now filled with this wrenching sense of guilt? No matter how many times she said to herself, “I didn’t do any of this,” the accusing finger at the back of her awareness continued to point directly at her.

Slowly, reluctantly, she was finally forced to face a dreadful reality. The disasters unleashed by the innocent Dreamers had been a response to her needs. It was becoming increasingly clear that the children could somehow sense what she wanted, and their dreams provided it. The dreams were gifts, in a certain sense, but they carried with them a dreadful burden of responsibility, and try though she might, Zelana could not shrug off that burden.

And so it was that finally, without so much as saying a word to her brothers or sister, Zelana of the West took her beloved Dreamer Eleria in her arms and fled.

“What are we doing, Beloved?” Eleria cried, clinging to Zelana in fright as they rose up and up through the smoky midnight air toward the pale moon.

“Hush,” Zelana told her as she searched with her mind and senses for an eastward-flowing wind.

Far below them Zelana could see Yaltar’s cursed volcano spewing molten lava high into the air, and the glowing river of liquid rock surging down the ravine toward the village of Lattash. “Idiocy!” Zelana fumed, still rising and searching.

“Please, Beloved!” Eleria cried. “I’m afraid!”

“Everything’s all right, dear,” Zelana told the child, trying her best to sound calm.

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” Zelana replied. “I’ve had about enough of all this, haven’t you?”

“Do we have to go up so high?” Eleria cried, clinging desperately to Zelana.

“Hush, Eleria. I’m trying to concentrate.”

It was hardly more than a fitful breeze, but it was moving in the right direction, so Zelana seized it, and they moved haltingly through the spring night, away from the horror below them.

Once they had moved out beyond the west coast of the mainland, the breeze grew stronger, and it carried them across the straits to the coast of the Isle of Thurn. Zelana thanked the breeze, and she and Eleria drifted south through the moonlit air toward the stark cliffs on the southern margin of the Isle.

“The world looks different from up here, doesn’t it, Beloved?” Eleria said. She seemed a bit calmer now, and she relaxed her desperate grip somewhat. “This is quite a bit like swimming, isn’t it?”

“A little bit, yes,” Zelana agreed. “You do know why we absolutely had to come away, don’t you?”

“Well, not entirely, Beloved,” Eleria admitted. “Is something wrong?”

“Everything was wrong, Eleria. Things weren’t supposed to happen the way they did.”

“We won, didn’t we? Isn’t that all that really matters?”

“No, dear, dear Eleria,” Zelana replied, tightening her embrace about the child. “We lost much more than we won. The Vlagh stole our innocence. We did things we weren’t supposed to do, and nothing will ever be the same again.” She peered down at the south coast of Thurn. “There it is,” she said when her eyes found a familiar beach glowing in the moonlight. “Let’s go home.”

They settled quietly through the cool night air to the calm surface of Mother Sea, and then, as one, they dove deep into the dark water to the hidden mouth of their grotto.

The pink light of the grotto seemed pale and soft under the gentle touch of the moon, and Zelana clung to that light, pushing the horrid memories away.

“It’s nice to be home again, Beloved,” Eleria said. “I think I’ve had about enough excitement for a while, haven’t you?”