The Redemption of Althalus (26 page)

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s trying to sneak up on our camp—probably to steal whatever he can lay his hands on. He’s fairly inept about it if he can’t move any more quietly than that. He’ll go to where the horses are.”

“Is he going to try to steal our horses?”

“Probably. Work your way around to the far side and come up on him from behind. I’ll slip over to the horses. He won’t see me, so I’ll surprise him. If he gets away from me, you grab him.”

“Right.” Eliar faded into the shadows.

It wasn’t particularly difficult to apprehend the would-be thief. When he reached the place where the horses were tied, Althalus was waiting for him in the shadows, and Eliar was no more than a few feet behind him. They grabbed him from the front and back almost simultaneously. “He’s just a little boy, Althalus!” Eliar said, easily holding their struggling captive.

“Yes, I noticed.” Althalus took the child by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to the fire.

“I didn’t do anything!” the child protested in a shrill voice, struggling to get free.

“That’s probably because you’re too clumsy for this line of work,” Althalus told him. “What’s your name?”

“I’m called Althalus,” the boy answered a bit too quickly.

Eliar doubled over with sudden laughter. “Pick another name, boy,” he chortled. “The man who’s holding you by the back of the neck is the
real
Althalus.”

“Really?” the boy answered in astonishment. “I thought he was just an old legend.”

“What’s your real name, boy?” Althalus demanded. “No more lies. Tell me your name.”

“I’m called Gher, Master Althalus.” The boy stopped struggling.

“Show him the Knife, Eliar,” Althalus said. “I think Gher here is the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Eliar drew out the Knife. “What does the writing on this knife blade say, Gher?” he demanded.

“I can’t read, sir.”

“Try.”

Gher squinted at the Knife. “It looks to me as if it says ‘deceive,’ ” he said dubiously. “Is that anywhere close at all?”

The Knife, however, had burst into joyous song.

“It sounds close enough to me,” Eliar congratulated their newest member. “Welcome, Gher.”

C H A P T E R     F O U R T E E N

T
hings haven’t been too easy since my father finally drank himself to death last year,” Gher said. “I ran errands for Dweni—he keeps a tavern not far from here. He let me eat the scraps from his table and sleep in the shed at the back of his tavern. A lot of thieves drink in Dweni’s tavern, and I’d listen to them talking, but I knew enough not to ask questions. Was I doing something wrong when I tried to sneak up on your camp, Master Althalus?”

“Didn’t the notion of moving quietly ever occur to you?”

Gher sort of hung his head. “I thought you were all asleep.”

“You’re still not supposed to make so much noise. You were crashing around like a drunken bear.”

“Do you suppose you might have the time to give me a few pointers?” Gher asked hopefully.

“We’ll see.”

Gher had muddy blond, tangled hair, and he was dressed in castoffs that he’d evidently tried, without much success, to patch. His clothing was filthy, and his face and hands and hair weren’t much better.

“You have no family at all, then?” Eliar asked.

“Not that I know of, no. Of course, my father couldn’t remember very much along toward the end there. He might have had some brothers or sisters, but he never told me about them. He was too drunk most of the time to make sense.”

“What about your mother?”

“I don’t know for sure if I ever had one.”

Eliar choked on that just a bit. “Aren’t you feeling just a little dizzy?” he asked.

“No. Should I?”

“I did the first time
I
read the Knife.”

“I’m fine. Do you work for Master Althalus here?”

“You could put it that way, yes,” Eliar replied.

Bheid came into the firelight. “I heard the Knife singing,” he said. Then he stared at Gher. “Is
this
our newest acolyte?”

“That’s what the Knife tells us,” Althalus replied.

“He’s only a child!” Bheid objected.

“You can talk to the Knife about that, if you’d like. I don’t choose them, Bheid. I just hunt them down. His name’s Gher.”

“What word did he read?”

“It was ‘deceive,’ wasn’t it, Althalus?” Eliar asked.

“That’s the way I heard it.”

Bheid frowned. “Seek, lead, illuminate, obey, and deceive,” he went down the list. “That last one doesn’t seem to fit. I don’t quite follow the logic there.”

“Emmy can explain it,” Eliar told him. “Emmy can explain anything.”

“What
are
you people doing?” Andine demanded crossly, coming into the light. “How am I supposed to sleep with all this noise going on out here?”

“We were just getting to know our latest recruit, Andine,” Althalus replied.

“This?”
she said, looking disdainfully at Gher. “Is
this
the best we can do?”

“All shall be revealed in time,” Bheid said with mock piety.

“Go preach your sermons someplace else, Bheid,” she flared. She looked Gher up and down. “Did he crawl out from under a rock, perhaps? Or did he just come slithering out of the nearest cesspool?”

“Do I have to take that from her, Master Althalus?” Gher demanded with a certain heat.

Turn him loose, Althalus,
Emmy’s voice whispered.

Won’t that make the rest of the night a little noisy?
he objected.

Just do it, pet.

Whatever you say, Em.
Althalus looked at the boy. “Feel free to respond, Gher. Brace yourself, though. Our beloved Andine has an expressive—and penetrating—voice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Andine demanded, her voice going up several octaves.

“We love your voice, your Highness,” he replied with a straight face. “You need to work on your crescendos just a bit, though. You might think about some deep-breathing exercises. Get some bottom under your voice so that you don’t have to move from a whisper to a shriek quite so fast. It’ll be much more impressive once you learn to control it.” He glanced at Gher. “Was there something you wanted to add, boy?” he asked.

“I just wanted to tell her that I don’t much care for that nose-up-in-the-air way she talks,” Gher replied. He looked Andine in the face. “All right, lady, I’m woodsy. So what? If you don’t like the way I look, don’t look at me. I don’t have any parents, and I wear rags because that’s all I can find to wear. I don’t see where that’s any of your business, though. I’m too busy staying alive to worry about how I look, and if you don’t like it that way, well, that’s just too bad.”

Move over Althalus,
Emmy’s tone was brisk.
I’m going to take care of
something right now.
He felt her roughly shouldering his consciousness out of her way.

Andine was gaping at Gher. “People don’t talk to me that way!” she gasped.

“Not to your face, maybe,” Gher shot back, “but I think if you’d close your mouth and listen to other people once in a while, you might find out what they
really
think of you. But you don’t want to know, do you? I wasn’t raised in a palace the way you were, lady. I grew up in a garbage heap, so I don’t have fancy manners.”

“I don’t have to listen to this!”

“Maybe you don’t have to, but you really should. I breathe in and out the same as you do, lady, and you don’t own the air, so it belongs to me as much as it does to you. Just back away, lady. You make me even sicker than I make you.”

Andine fled.

Did
you
do that?
Althalus silently demanded.

Of course,
Emmy replied.
I told you that I’d have to go through you to do
these things. Gher’s going to work out just fine, Althalus.
Emmy paused.
I think
you
should
clean him up just a bit, though,
she added.

They stayed in Nabjor’s old camp for several days introducing Gher to his new situation. The boy was quick, there was no question about that. In a different time and place, Althalus might have taken him under his wing as an apprentice, since he recognized an enormous potential. It took a while, however, to persuade Gher that regular bathing would keep the noise down. With Emmy’s help, Althalus conjured up some clothing for their recruit, and that made him look much less like the runoff from a passing rag cart.

Andine avoided Gher almost religiously until the morning of the boy’s fourth day in the camp. Then she came to the fire with a determined look on her face and a comb and a pair of scissors in her hands. “You!” she said to him. She pointed at a stump. “Sit. There. Now.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to fix your hair. You took like a haystack.”

“I can smooth it down if it bothers you.”

“Hush. Sit.”

Gher looked quickly at Althalus. “Do I have to take orders from her?” he asked.

“I would, if I were you. Let’s keep peace in the family, if we can.”

“How can you even see through all of this?” Andine demanded, taking hold of the shock of hair that hung down over Gher’s forehead. Then she started combing and cutting, frowning in concentration. For some reason she seemed to be taking her task very seriously.

Gher apparently wasn’t used to haircuts, so he squirmed a bit as Andine barbered at him for all she was worth. “Sit still!” she commanded. She combed and snipped for almost an hour, frequently stepping back to look critically at her handiwork. “Close,” she said finally, reaching out to snip off a stray hair. Then she looked at Althalus. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Very nice.”

“You didn’t even look!” Her voice went up an octave or so.

“All right, all right. I’ll took. Don’t get excited.”

Gher’s shaggy hair was neatly trimmed and well combed now. Andine had cut his forelock into straight bangs, and the rest of his hair ended at his collar line in the fashion Althalus had seen in Osthos. “Really not bad at all, your Highness,” he said. “Where did you learn barbering?”

“I used to trim my father’s hair for him,” she replied. “Shaggy hair makes my fingers start to itch.”

“At least he doesn’t look quite so much like a sheepdog anymore,” Bheid noted.

Andine took Gher firmly by the chin and looked him straight in the face. “You’re presentable now, Gher,” she told him. “You’re clean and you’ve got new clothes and a decent haircut. Don’t go out and play in the mud.”

“I won’t, ma’am,” Gher promised. He looked at her almost bashfully. “You’re awfully pretty, ma’am,” he blurted, “and I didn’t really mean everything I said to you the other night.”

“I knew that,” she said with a little toss of her head. Then she stroked his freshly trimmed hair and kissed his cheek. “Run along now, Gher,” she told him. “Go out and play, but don’t muss your hair or muddy up your clothes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he promised.

Andine looked around, absently clicking her scissors. “Anybody else?” she asked.

Emmy read the Knife that afternoon. “Kweron,” she advised Althalus. “We still have one more to pick up, and we’d better hurry.”

They broke camp the next morning and rode northwesterly through the ancient forest of Hule. Andine, peculiarly, had insisted that Gher ride with her on her placid mare.

“I didn’t really think they were getting off to a very good start right there at first,” Eliar said to Bheid and Althalus. “Did something happen that I didn’t know about?”

“Gher said something to her that night that apparently cut a little close to the bone,” Bheid explained. “I’m sure that he’s the first commoner she’s ever actually encountered. She probably didn’t have any idea at all about how miserable the lives of most common people really are. Gher’s a bit quick with his tongue, and our little Princess was probably surprised that he even knows how to talk at all. The haircut and the ride on her horse are her way of apologizing to him for any past injustices.”

“You’ve got some fairly radical opinions for a member of the priesthood, Bheid,” Althalus suggested.

“The goal of mankind should be justice, Althalus. In their hearts, men really want to be just and kindly, but other things get in the way. It’s the duty of the priesthood to keep man on the right course.”

“Isn’t it just a little early in the day for these dense philosophical discussions?” Althalus asked.

“It’s never too early—or too late—to learn, my son,” Bheid proclaimed sententiously.

“Now, that’s
really
offensive.”

Bheid gave him a mischievous little smirk. “I’m glad you liked it,” he said.

It was early autumn in Kweron, and the leaves of birch and aspen were beginning to turn. Althalus hadn’t been into these particular mountains very often, largely because there’d been very few people in Kweron when he’d met Ghend and gone to the House at the End of the World. The villages here were small and crudely built, and the people who lived in them seemed fearful and withdrawn.

“They aren’t very friendly here, are they?” Eliar asked as they rode along the muddy single street of another hamlet. “Back home, everybody comes out to gawk at strangers who come through, but these people all go hide.”

“The Kwerons are reported to be a superstitious lot,” Bheid told him. “I’ve heard that they grow violent if somebody’s shadow happens to touch them. I think it might have something to do with how close Kweron is to Nekweros. Legends tell us that some fairly awful things come creeping out of Nekweros now and then.”

“Has Emmy told you where we’re going yet?” Eliar asked Althalus.

“I’m sure she’ll get around to it eventually,” Althalus replied.

They rode steadily westward for the next week and came down out of the mountains to the jagged shoreline of the long, narrow inlet that marked the western edge of Kweron. The inlet, like the sea at the Edge of the World in Kagwher, was filled with ice.

We’re getting closer, Althalus,
Emmy’s voice murmured late one afternoon.
Let’s pull back into the woods a ways. Set up a camp of sorts, and then
you, Bheid, and I had better drift into a couple of those villages down by the
edge of the inlet.