The Elder Gods by David Eddings, Leigh Eddings Read Free Book Online Page A

them at the deepest level of their awareness, and
that
raises the possibility of total disasters. At that point, Mother Sea might decide to exile all eight of us to the moon—not just Veltan.”
    “You’re probably right, Zelana,” Dahlaine agreed. “Let’s keep the dreams as pure as we possibly can.” He scratched at his chin speculatively. “We’ve got a problem now,” he said. “I’m almost positive that the Vlagh can sense these dreams—not the details, maybe, but the fact that the Dreamers are here and doing what they were sent here to do will certainly stir it to send the creatures of the Wasteland swarming across the mountains, and we don’t have enough people to meet them. I seriously doubt that there are even a half-million man-things in the whole of the Land of Dhrall, and the Vlagh probably has at least ten times that many servants. The servants of the Vlagh aren’t very bright, but the sheer numbers alone put us in an impossible situation. I think we’ll have to bring in the outlanders from other parts of the world.
    “Absolutely out of the question!” Aracia exclaimed. “Our people are pure and innocent. The outsiders are barbaric monsters. They’re almost as bad as the creatures of the Wasteland.”
    “Not quite, Aracia,” Dahlaine disagreed. “We can manipulate them if we need to. The only problem I can see is linguistic. The outsiders don’t speak the same language our people speak.”
    “That’s not really a problem, Dahlaine,” Veltan told him. “I’ve looked in on several of the outsider cultures. Their babbling didn’t make any sense at first, but I found a way to get around that.”
    “Oh?” Dahlaine said. “I’d like to hear about that.”
    “All you really have to do is step around language and go right straight to thought.”
    “He has a point, Dahlaine,” Zelana said. “It didn’t take me much more than a week to learn the language of my dolphins. If you listen with your mind instead of your ears, it comes very fast.”
    “Interesting notion,” Dahlaine mused. “Unfortunately, I don’t think people could do that.”
    Veltan shrugged. “I’ll do it for them, then.”
    “Would you like to clarify that, Veltan?” Aracia asked.
    “It’s a little complicated, dear sister,” he replied. “Are you really sure you want all the details?”
    Aracia shuddered. “Spare me that, please. Just tell me what the results are likely to be.”
    “The outlanders will babble in their own language, and our people will babble in ours. Neither group will hear babbles, though. They’ll
think
that they’re listening to their own language, so they’ll understand each other perfectly.”
    “Would it work that way between different groups of outsiders as well?” Dahlaine asked. “We’ll probably be bringing in several different cultures.”
    “No problem,” Veltan said. “We’ll have to decide how far out we want to take it, is about all. We might want to limit it to the Land of Dhrall, though. The outlanders all speak different languages, and maybe we should keep it that way. If they can communicate with each other, they might start forging alliances, and that could cause trouble on down the line.”
    “You may have a point there,” Dahlaine conceded. “Let’s try it and see how it works.”
    “I’m against the whole silly notion!” Aracia said adamantly. “We can’t bring those murdering barbarians here to the sacred land!”
    “How sacred do you think it’ll be after the unholy monsters of the Wasteland sweep over the mountains?” Dahlaine asked her pointedly. “The outsiders are a little crude, I’ll admit that, but they
are
mostly warriors. Our people haven’t even discovered iron yet, so they’re still using stone tools. The people of the outside world have no idea of the significance of Dhrall, but they
do
know how to fight. They spend most of their time practicing on each other. I think maybe we’d all better visit those outlands and find those