already been there, Red-Beard. That’s why I went off to the Isle of Thurn a long time ago. If you think that being “chief” would be unbearably tedious, take a long, hard look at being “god”. Just like you, I didn’t want any part of that, so I ran away. I spent thousands of years in my pink grotto composing music, writing poetry, and playing with my pink dolphins. Then my big brother brought Eleria to me, and my whole world changed.’
‘You love her, though, don’t you?’
Zelana sighed. ‘More than anything in the whole world. That’s what Dahlaine had in mind when he foisted the Dreamers on us in the first place. In a certain sense, it was very cruel, but it was necessary.’
‘Well, I’m not really all that necessary where the tribe’s concerned. They can find somebody else to sit around being important.’ Then a thought came to Red-Beard, and he suddenly burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I know who’d make the best chief the tribe’s ever had,’ he replied. ‘The tribe might not like it very much – at least the men wouldn’t – but Planter really should be the chief.’
Zelana smiled. ‘She already is, Red-Beard. She doesn’t need the title. The tribe does what she wants done, and that’s what really counts, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not out loud, I wouldn’t,’ Red-Beard replied.
The wind was coming out of the east when Sorgan Hook-Beak’s fleet of longships rounded the first peninsula jutting out from the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and when that wind caught the sails, they billowed out with a booming sound. It seemed to Red-Beard that the longships almost flew toward the west. He had a few suspicions about that. Zelana and her family frequently spoke of ‘tampering,’ and a wind coming from the east was very unusual. West winds and south winds were fairly common at this time of the year, but east and north? Not too likely.
The Seagull rounded the third and last peninsula on the south coast of Veltan’s Domain a few days later, and then the Maag fleet turned north. The weather seemed to have a faint smell of early autumn now, and Red-Beard began to feel that seasonal urge to go hunting. Autumn had always been the time to lay in a good supply of food to get the tribe through the coming winter.
He was standing near the slender bow of the Seagull with Zelana’s older brother about midmorning one day when Sorgan Hook-Beak came forward to join them. ‘I got to thinking last night that it might be a good idea for me and my men to know a bit about the people of your Domain, Lord Dahlaine,’ he said. ‘My cousin Skell discovered that it’s not a good idea to turn Maags loose on the natives of this part of the world when they haven’t got the faintest idea of what the local customs are.’
‘You could be right about that, Captain,’ Dahlaine agreed. ‘I suppose a little conference in your cabin might be in order along about now. There are few peculiarities in my Domain that you should all know about.’
Sorgan’s cabin at the stern of the Seagull wasn’t really very large, so things were just a bit crowded when they gathered there about a quarter of an hour later.
‘Captain Hook-Beak spoke with me a little while ago, and he wanted to know a few things about the people of my Domain,’ Zelana’s big brother told them. ‘It’s not a bad idea, really. I’ll give you a sort of general idea about my people and the general layout of the country up there, and then I’ll answer any questions you might have.’
‘He sounds a lot like a chief of one of our tribes, doesn’t he, Longbow?’ Red-Beard said quietly to his friend.
‘Some things are always the same, friend Red-Beard,’ Longbow replied. ‘A chief is a chief, no matter where he lives.’
‘When we get to the north of sister Zelana’s Domain, we’ll go ashore in the Tonthakan nation,’ Dahlaine began.
‘Nation?’ Zelana asked curiously.
‘It’s an idea I came up with quite some time ago, dear sister,’ Dahlaine replied. ‘It was the best way I could think of to put an end to those silly wars between the various tribes. There are three significantly different cultures in my domain, so I set up three “nations” – Tonthakan, Matakan, and Atazakan – and the various tribes in those nations settle their differences with conferences instead of wars.’
‘What an unnatural sort of thing,’ Red-Beard said in mock disapproval.
‘Be nice,’ Zelana chided him.
‘Sorry,’ he replied, although he didn’t really mean it.
‘The nation of Tonthakan lies along the western coast of my Domain,’ Dahlaine continued, ‘and it’s very similar in terrain – and culture – to sister Zelana’s Domain. The mountains are steep and rugged, the forests are dense and mostly evergreens, and there are several varieties of deer roaming through those forests. The Tonthakans are primarily hunters, and they’re quite good with their bows. I’m sure that Longbow and Red-Beard will feel pretty much at home in that region – except that the winters are longer and colder than they are farther to the south. It won’t be quite as noticeable in the autumn, but the days are longer in the summer up there and shorter in the winter.’ He glanced at Keselo. ‘I’m sure our learned young friend from the Trogite Empire can explain that for us.’
‘It has to do with the tilt of our world, Lord Dahlaine,’ Keselo replied. ‘Our world isn’t exactly plumb and square in relation to the sun, and that’s what accounts for the seasons. She spins, and that’s what gives us days and nights, and she travels around the sun in what scholars call “an orbit”. If she didn’t spin, half the world would live in perpetual daylight, and the other half would live in the dark, but it’s that slight lopsidedness that gives us the seasons.’
‘I’ve always known that there was something wrong with this world,’ Rabbit said with no hint of a smile.
‘I wouldn’t really call it “wrong”, Rabbit,’ Keselo told him. ‘If it weren’t for the changing of the seasons, I don’t think anything alive could be here. Perpetual summer might sound nice, but I don’t think it really would be.’
‘Pushing on, then,’ Dahlaine said. ‘The central region of my Domain is a large area of meadowland that’s primarily grassland with very few trees.’
‘That turned out to be very useful last spring,’ Longbow said.
‘I don’t think I quite follow you there, Longbow,’ Dahlaine said with a slightly puzzled look.
‘It has to do with certain customs in Zelana’s Domain,’ Longbow replied. ‘There are certain tasks that we call “men’s work” and others called “women’s work”. Men are supposed to hunt and fight wars, and women are supposed to plant vegetables and cook supper. It might sound sort of fair, but it seems to give the men of any tribe a lot of spare time to sit around talking about hunting and fighting. When the fire-mountains won the first war for us, Red-Beard’s village, Lattash, was buried under melted rock, so the people had to move to a place on down the bay from the old one. There was open land that should have given the women plenty of room for planting – except that it was covered with thick sod. Cutting away the sod would normally be “women’s work”, but Old-Bear, the chief of my tribe, told us that he had once visited that grassland you just described, and that while he was there, he saw the lodges made of sod rather than tree-limbs.
