“I wish that One-Who-Heals was here,” Longbow said. “He could find out just exactly what was killing those people in just a day or so.”

“I could go on back to the village of your tribe and bring him on up here,” Veltan said. “I’d have him here in less than an hour.”

Longbow shook his head. “The trip would kill him,” he said. “One-Who-Heals is very old, and he’s not well. I don’t think he’d survive if you carried him up here on your tame thunderbolt, Veltan.”

“I’d say that we’ve definitely got a problem here, Narasan,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said.

“Don’t rush me, Sorgan,” Narasan said with a troubled frown. “I’m working on it.”

“I don’t really have the chemicals I’d need to test the water—or food—for any of the known poisons,” Keselo admitted after Padan had suggested that the young officer was the best qualified to identify the poison that was killing the northern Matans. “And then, too, if it happens to be a new poison, the chemicals that would identify one of the older ones might not work on this new one.”

The pretty lady who was the mate of the farmer named Omago sighed, rolling her eyes upward. “Would it hurt your feelings if I happened to suggest a simpler solution, gentlemen?” she asked. “I’d sooner die than make you all feel very foolish, but we do need an answer, wouldn’t you say?”

“Do you have to do that all the time, Ara?” Veltan complained.

She gave him a sly little smile. “Probably not, dear Veltan,” she admitted, “but it’s a lot of fun sometimes. Now then, we have an expert called One-Who-Heals who could probably identify this poison in about a minute and a half, right?”

“Maybe just a bit longer,” Longbow said mildly.

Ara let that pass. “Our problem, though, is that our expert is old and sick, and he’d probably die before we could bring him up here to examine the Matans that fell over dead. Am I going too fast for anybody yet?” She looked around. “Good. Since we can’t bring our expert up here, why not take a dead Matan on down to Longbow’s home village and let One-Who-Heals examine him down there?”

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Dahlaine said, looking just a bit ashamed of himself.

“You don’t really want me to tell you, do you, Dahlaine?” Ara replied with a naughty little smirk.

It was almost certainly well past midnight when Zelana, Veltan, and Longbow returned from a journey that Trenicia was positive would have taken her several months at least.

“As it turns out, big brother, the Matan was killed with venom rather than some ordinary poison,” Zelana reported to Dahlaine.

“That’s not—” Dahlaine began to protest.

“Hear me out, Dahlaine,” Zelana scolded him. “It appears that the creatures of the Wasteland have come up with a way to spray their venom up into the air instead of leaking it out through their fangs.”

“In a sort of mist, you mean?” Dahlaine suggested.

“Exactly. The venom is still deadly, but it doesn’t kill people quite as fast as the usual dose of it would if it were injected into the victim’s veins. The victim breathes the mist in, and it takes a while for it to get into his blood. The old—but still very skilled—shaman of Longbow’s tribe found traces of the venom in the dead Matan’s nose, and that fine mist didn’t kill him instantly as it would have had it gone straight into his blood. If the servants of the Vlagh can make that mist fine enough, it could probably kill several dozen Matans with the same amount of venom as it could deliver with one bite to kill just one man.”

“That’s terrible!” Dahlaine gasped.

“Moderately terrible, yes,” Veltan agreed. “The next question that sort of leaps to mind is, what are we going to do about it?”

Were these gods children? Trenicia had almost instantly come up with a solution. Why couldn’t they see it? “Correct me if I’m wrong here, but can’t you and the other members of your family control the wind?”

“Well, up to a point, I suppose,” Dahlaine conceded, “but—” He abruptly stopped. “How in the world did you come up with that, Queen Trenicia?”

“On occasion in the past I’ve used smoke to drive an enemy away,” she replied. “A little bit of smoke doesn’t bother people very much, but a lot of smoke makes it almost impossible for them to breathe. At that point, they have to run away—or stay and die.”

“Omago came up with something very much like that a little while back, Queen Trenicia,” Veltan said. “There’s a peculiar sort of tree down in my Domain that the farmers call ‘greasewood.’ When they’re having trouble with insects, the farmers make a large pile of those trees and then set fire to them. The bugs can’t stand that smoke, so it drives them away before they can eat all the food the farmers are growing. The smoke bothers the farmers almost as much as it bothers the bugs, though, so the farmers cover their lower faces with wet cloth. If Dahlaine’s Matans covered their lower faces with wet cloth, it might protect them—particularly if the wind suddenly changes direction. Our people would be fairly safe, but the wind would blow that mist right back into the faces of the creatures of the Wasteland and those Atazakans who’ve joined forces with them. When Omago suggested this, we thought that our enemies from the Wasteland were using mushroom spores to poison the Matans with this imitation disease, but a sudden change in the direction of the wind would blow this misty venom back into the faces of our enemies just as fast as it’d blow mushroom spores, wouldn’t it?”

Sorgan the pirate chortled. “I love it when an enemy provides just exactly what we need to kill him,” he said.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Dahlaine said, “but I think it might just break one of the rules. Mother Sea won’t let us kill anybody—or anything—and changing the direction of the wind in this situation would be almost as bad as throwing thunderbolts at our enemies.”

“I don’t think I’d worry very much, Dahlaine,” Longbow suggested. “We have this ‘unknown friend,’ remember? The wind will go where she wants it to go. If she could change the direction of a waterfall, changing the course of a breeze wouldn’t give her many problems.”

“But how are we going to get word to her?” Veltan protested.