Since it was quite clear that Omago would be very much involved in the up-coming war, Ara listened carefully to the discussions in Veltan’s map-room and - as she probably should have known that he would - Omago volunteered to go up along the coast to the mouth of the River Vash with the scouting party of Sorgan Hook-Beak’s cousins, Skell and Torl.

As sometimes happened, Ara had a strong premonition that something very significant would turn up as her mate and a small party explored a trail that Nanton the shepherd knew quite well. Ara had learned in times long gone that she should never ignore one of those premonitions, so she decided to accompany the scouting party - inconspicuously of course.

As the two Maag longships sailed north along the eastern coast of Veltan’s Domain, Ara’s thought followed them curiously, and when Skell and a few friends left the ships to follow the shepherd up the steep course of the small tributary of the River Vash, Ara’s thought followed them with that premonition growing stronger and stronger with every mile.

It was about mid-morning on the small party’s second day of struggling up the narrow streambed when a burly Maag called Grock made a startling discovery. ‘I just found gold, Cap’n!’ he shouted. ‘Gold! There’s tons of it up there in that rock wall!’

It was Keselo, the young Trogite soldier, who suggested that the little smith from Sorgan’s longship might be the logical one to verify the nature of the yellow flake.

Ara sensed the enormous disappointment of Skell and the rest of the little group when Rabbit proved to them that the bright yellow flake was not gold.

It was fairly obvious that Keselo had known from the very start that what Grock had discovered was not what it appeared to be, and Ara probed the young man’s mind and discovered that what Grock had found was a peculiar combination of iron ore and sulphur.

Ara realized that this was what had aroused that premonition in the first place. If Jalkan’s greed for gold was going to be the reason for Ashad’s second invasion, this false gold might turn out to be very useful.

Ara withdrew her thought from Skell’s scouting party and went into her kitchen to examine some very interesting possibilities.

It required a bit of experimentation for Ara to get the proper mix, but her kitchen was the natural home of experimentation, so on her third try, she produced a sizeable amount of bright yellow flakes that were identical to the one Grock had found in the mountains. She was very pleased with the results of her experiment - until she saw the heaps of glittering sand lying all over her kitchen floor. Muttering to herself, she went to fetch her broom.

2

The small group of men Nanton the shepherd had led up to the grassy plain above the Falls of Vash were busy exploring the region. It was more open than the ravine above the village of Lattash had been, and that seemed to concern the seafarers quite a bit. Given the number of servants the Vlagh could send charging up out of the Wasteland, Ara could understand that concern.

As evening was settling over the little camp near the geyser, the bats came out, and Longbow the archer quite suddenly came up with a notion that chilled Ara down to her very bones. A single arrow proved that Longbow’s notion had been very correct. The bats were not at all what they had appeared to be, and Ara had a sudden urge to take up her beloved mate and go directly back home.

After a bit of discussion, though, the clever little smith called Rabbit came up with the notion of using fishnets to protect them from the flying enemies, and that eased the tension to some degree.

Then Longbow spoke briefly with the burly Red-Beard. It was fairly obvious that arrows would be the best solution to the problem of flying enemies, and Red-Beard went off to the west to hurry along the archers coming down from Zelana’s Domain. Then Skell sent the gold-hunter Grock back on down to bring more men - and fish nets - up to the basin.

The hard practicality of these men helped Ara to control her sudden panic, and she decided to wait a bit before she grabbed her mate by the arm and ran away with him.

Skell’s brother Torl reached the basin the following day, and Narasan and Sorgan were only a few hours behind him. Skell led them up to the gap at the north end of the basin to show them the most probable route the servants of the Vlagh would follow when they came south.

Then Veltan came crashing in on his pet thunderbolt and advised his friends that the second invasion Ashad’s dream had mentioned was coming up from the south. He went on and on about the incursion into the southern part of his Domain, but Ara pulled her awareness back to her kitchen and then sent her thought south to have a look for herself.

There were several large peninsulas jutting out into Mother Sea on the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and they formed large, protected bays. There were quite a few farming villages along the shores of those bays, and the wheat fields stretched inland for several miles.

It was not the wheat fields that attracted Ara’s immediate attention, however. There were a large number of bulky Trogite ships with red sails anchored in the bay, and the armed soldiers from those ships were going ashore in the vicinity of every village. The soldiers were busily gathering up all the residents of those villages and herding them at sword-point into crudely constructed pens just outside each village as if they were no more than cattle.

It took Ara several minutes to get her sudden rage under control, and it didn’t get any better when unarmed Trogites in flowing black robes entered each pen to harangue the terrified villagers about ‘the only true god in all the world’.

When one of the villagers in the pen near the largest village on the shore of that particular bay politely advised a fat Trogite who’d just made that announcement that the god of this particular region was named Veltan, two of the red-uniformed outlanders clubbed him into unconsciousness. They might have even gone further, but Ara smoothly deflected one outlander’s club, and he very nearly brained his companion.

Since the origin of this invasion was obviously the filthy-minded Trogite called Jalkan, Ara sent her thought out in search of him, and he wasn’t all that hard to find. There was a farming village on the shore near the central bay here on the south coast, and there were several red-sailed Trogite ships anchored just off the coast. The natives were all penned up, and the Trogite priests and their soldiers had stolen the huts of those natives. Jalkan was in a fairly central hut, and he was not alone. He was speaking with a grossly fat man dressed in an ornate yellow robe.

‘Nobody was ever very specific about just where the mines were located, Adnari Estarg,’ Jalkan was saying. ‘I’d imagine that they’re up in the mountains, though.’