The Redemption of Althalus (21 page)

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J
ust exactly where’s this war?” Eliar asked as he trotted along beside Althalus’ horse, “and what kind of people are we going to be fighting?”

“War?” Althalus asked.

“People don’t rent soldiers just for show, Althalus. I’m fairly sure you didn’t go to all the trouble of getting me away from Andine just because you were lonesome. Sergeant Khalor always told us that we should find out as much about the people we’re going to be fighting as we possibly can.”

“Your Sergeant’s a very wise man, Eliar.”

“We all looked up to him—even though he could be awfully picky about details sometimes. I’ll swear that he can talk about one speck of rust on a sword for half a day.”

“Some soldiers are like that, I suppose,” Althalus said. “I don’t get all that excited about it myself. A rusty sword kills somebody as well as a polished one does.”

“We’re going to get along just fine,” Eliar said, grinning broadly. “Now, then, who am I supposed to fight?”

“The war we’re involved with isn’t exactly like an ordinary war—at least not yet. We haven’t quite reached the point of armies and battlefields.”

“We’re still choosing up sides?”

Althalus blinked, and then he laughed. “That might just come closer to what we’re doing than anything I’ve heard so far.”

Watch your mouth.
Emmy’s thought had a slight edge to it.

Althalus laughed again. “That’s why we absolutely
had
to get our hands on the Knife, Eliar,” he told the boy. “It’s the only thing that can tell us who’s on our side. The ones we want can read it. Others can’t. Emmy can read more of it than you and I can, and it tells her where we’re supposed to go to recruit the people we’ll need.”

“She’s not really a cat, then, is she? My mother’s got a cat, but all her cat does is eat and sleep and chase mice. If Emmy’s that important, you took an awful chance when you traded her for the Knife the way you did. Andine’s a very strange little lady. You’re lucky she didn’t chain Emmy to her bedpost.”

“The way she had you chained to that pillar in her throne room?”

Eliar shuddered. “That was a real bad time for me, Althalus. The way she used to look at me gave me the wibblies. She’d sit there for hours playing with my knife and staring right straight at me. Women are very strange, aren’t they?”

“Oh, yes, Eliar. Indeed they are.”

Shortly before noon, Althalus noticed a farmstead some distance back from the road they were following, and he turned into the lane that led toward the house. “Let’s get you mounted, Eliar,” he said.

“I can keep up with you on foot, Althalus.”

“Possibly, but we’ve got a long way to go. I’ll talk with the farmer here and see what he’s got to offer.”

While Althalus spoke with the seedy-looking farmer, Eliar carefully examined the farm horses in the large corral behind the farmhouse. “This one,” he said, rubbing the ears of a large sorrel horse.

The farmer started to object, but he changed his mind when Althalus jingled his purse.

“You paid him too much,” Eliar said as they rode away from the farm.

“The money doesn’t really mean anything.”

“Money always means something, unless you just made it up in the same way you make up the food we eat.” Then he looked sharply at Althalus. “You
did,
didn’t you?” he demanded. “You just reared back, waved your hand, and there was a great big pile of gold, wasn’t there?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I—” Althalus stopped, his eyes suddenly going very wide.
Can I
do
that?
he sent his startled question at Emmy, who was dozing in the hood of his cloak.

Probably, yes.

Then why did you make me dig it up?

Honest work’s good for you, pet. Besides, it doesn’t exactly work that way.
Food’s one thing, but minerals are quite a bit different.

Why?

They just are, Althalus. There’s a certain balance involved that we shouldn’t
tamper with.

Would you like to explain that?

No, I don’t think so.

They rode hard for the next couple of days until they were some distance away from Osthos, and then they slowed to give their horses a bit of rest. The plains of Treborea, drought-stricken and barren under the hot summer sun, were depressing, so Althalus passed the time telling Eliar slightly elaborated stories about his adventures back in the days before he’d gone to the House at the End of the World. Like all Arums, Eliar enjoyed good stories, and he was exactly the kind of audience that warmed Althalus’ heart.

Althalus
did
cheat just a little, though, as they rode along. Every time Eliar’s attention started to wander, a chicken leg or a chunk of still-warm bread would immediately recapture it. The arrangement worked out rather well, actually.

Emmy, however, found long naps much more interesting than the stories, for some reason.

Eliar more or less took over the care of their horses when they set up camp each night. Althalus produced the hay and oats their mounts needed, and not infrequently he was obliged to provide water for them as well. Eliar did the actual work, though, and the horses seemed quite fond of him. All in all, Althalus rather liked the arrangement.

They passed the walled city of Leupon a few days later, crossed the River Kanthon, and entered the lands of the Equeros. The lake country was not as parched as the plains of Perquaine and Treborea had been, and the population there had not been forced to huddle around slowly diminishing water holes or along riverbanks.

It took them about ten days to cross Equero, and then they entered mankind’s ancestral homeland of Medyo. Five days later they reached the place where the River Medyo forked and where the ruins of the city of Awes were located.

“What happened here?” Eliar asked as they stood on the west bank of the river waiting for the barge that—for a price—ferried travelers across to the ruins.

“There was a war, I’m told,” Althalus replied. “The way I understand it, back in those days the priesthood ruled all of Medyo and the surrounding lands. They got a little too greedy finally, and the army decided that the world might be a nicer place without so many priests, so they marched in to see if they could arrange that. The priests had an army of their own, and those two armies had some extended discussions in the streets of Awes.”

“It must have been a long, long time ago. They’ve got full-grown trees standing in the streets over there.”

Althalus,
Emmy’s voice murmured,
I need to talk with Eliar directly, so
I’m going to borrow your voice. I think it might be easier if he’s holding me
while we do this.

Why’s that?

Just do it, Althalus,
she replied.
Don’t keep asking silly questions.

Althalus took her up and held her out to their youthful companion. “Here,” he said. “Emmy wants to talk to you. Hold her.”

Eliar put his hands behind his back. “I think I’d rather not,” he said.

“You’d better get over that. Take her, Eliar.”

“I don’t understand cat talk, Althalus,” Eliar protested, taking Emmy with obvious reluctance.

“I’m sure she’ll make you understand.”

Get out of the way, Althalus,
Emmy’s voice commanded.
Count trees or
something. I’m going to be using your voice, so don’t interfere.
Then Althalus heard his own voice saying, “Can you hear me, Eliar?” His voice seemed lighter, and it had a higher pitch.

“Of course I can hear you, Althalus,” Eliar replied. “You’re only a few feet away. Your voice sounds a little odd, though.”

“I’m not Althalus, Eliar,” the voice coming from Althalus’ lips said. “I’m just using his voice. Look at me, not at him.”

Eliar looked down at Emmy with astonishment.

Emmy wrinkled her nose. “You need a bath,” she said.

“I’ve been a little busy, ma’am,” the boy replied.

“You can pet me, if you’d like,” she suggested.

“Yes, ma’am.” Eliar began to stroke her.

“Not quite so hard.”

“Sorry, ma’am,”

“He’s such a nice boy,” Emmy murmured in her borrowed voice. “All right, Eliar, listen to me very carefully. There’s a distinct chance that we’ll encounter enemies over there on the other side of the river. What do you do when you meet an enemy?”

“Kill him, ma’am.”

“Exactly.”

“Emmy!”
Althalus overrode her usurpation of his voice.

“Stay out of this, Althalus. This is between the boy and me. Now, then, Eliar, we’ll be meeting priests over there. I want you to show the Knife to every one of them we meet. Can you pretend to be stupid?”

Eliar made a rueful kind of face. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m a country boy from the highlands of Arum. We
invented
stupid.”

“I’d really prefer it if you called me ‘Emmy,’ Eliar; we don’t have to be so formal. This is the way I want you to do this: When we talk to a priest, put on your best Arum expression and hold the Knife out for him to see. Then you say, ‘Excuse me, yer priestship, but kin you tell me what’s wrote on this here knife?’ ”

“Probably not with a straight face, Emmy,” Eliar said, laughing. “Is there really anybody in the whole world who’s
that
simpleminded?”

“You’d be surprised, Eliar. Practice saying it until you can do it without coming down with the giggles. Now, most of the priests won’t be able to make any sense out of what’s written on the Knife. They’ll either admit that they can’t read it, or they’ll pretend to be too busy to take the time. The one we’re looking for will read it in exactly the same way you did when
you
read it, and the Knife will sing to you as soon as he reads it aloud.”

“I sort of thought that was what was going to happen, Emmy. What’s this got to do with enemies, though?”

“If you
do
happen to show the Knife to an enemy, he’ll scream and try to cover his eyes.”

“Why?”

“Because the sight of the Knife will hurt him—probably more than anything has hurt him in his entire life. As soon as somebody does that, drive the Knife right into his heart.”

“All right, Emmy.”

“No problems? No questions?”

“No, Emmy, none at all. You’re in charge of things. If you tell me to do something, I’ll do it. Sergeant Khalor always told us that we’re supposed to obey orders immediately without asking any stupid questions, and your orders are really very simple. If somebody screams when I show him the Knife, he’ll be dead before the echo fades away.”

Emmy reached up one soft paw and stroked his cheek. “You’re such a good boy, Eliar,” she purred.

“Thank you, Emmy. I try my best.”

“I hope you’ve been listening very carefully, Althalus. Maybe you should have taken some notes for future reference. It saves
so
much time when people know how to follow orders without all the endless discussion I get from
some
people I know.”

“Can I have my voice back now?”

“Yes, pet, you may. I’m done with it—at least for right now. I’ll let you know when I need it again.”

The barge took them across the west fork of the River Medyo, and they rode into the ruins of the city. The priests who lived there wore cowled robes, for the most part, and they had built crude hovels among the ruins. There were some noticeable differences between the various groups of priests. Those who lived in the northern part of the ruins wore black robes, the ones in central Awes were robed in white, and the ones closest to the river fork wore brown. Althalus noted that they tended not to talk to each other very much—except to argue.

“No, you’ve got it all wrong,” a black-robed priest from the northern end of town was saying to a fat priest in a white robe. “The Wolf was in the ninth house when that happened, not the tenth.”

“My charts don’t lie,” the chubby priest replied hotly. “The sun had moved to the fourth house by then, and that definitely moved the Wolf to the tenth.”

What are they talking about?
Althalus silently demanded of Emmy.

Astrology. It’s one of the cornerstones of religion.

Which religion?

Most of them, actually. Religion’s based on a desire to know what’s going
to happen in the future. Astrologers believe that the stars control that.

Are they right?

Why would the stars care what happens here? Besides, most of the stars the
priests argue about don’t actually exist anymore.

I think that one missed me, Em.

The stars are fire, and fires eventually burn out.

If they’re burned out, why are the priests still arguing about them?

Because they don’t know that they’ve burned out.

All they have to do is look, Em.

It doesn’t quite work that way, Althalus. The stars are a lot farther away
than people realize, and it takes a long time for their light to reach us. Probably
about half of what you see when you look up at night isn’t really there anymore.
To put it another way, the priests are trying to predict the future by looking at
the ghosts of dead stars.

Althalus shrugged.
It gives them something to do, I suppose.
He looked around at the ruined buildings and rubble-strewn streets. The robed and cowled priests were moving about singly or in small groups, but there were more conventionally dressed men in Awes as well. He saw one man who’d set up what appeared to be a shop next to a partially collapsed wall. The man had a rough table with pots, pans, and kettles on it.

“Welcome, friends,” the fellow said hopefully, rubbing his hands together. “Look and buy. Look and buy. I have the best pots and kettles in all of Awes, and my prices are the lowest you’ll find in any shop here.”

Be careful, Althalus,
Emmy murmured in his mind.
That’s Khnom. He
works for Ghend.

Then Ghend knew that we were coming here?