The Redemption of Althalus (29 page)

“I do
not
!” Andine protested, blushing furiously.

“Yes you do, Andine.” Leitha smiled. “It’s not your fault, you know. This is what I was talking about when I told you that we’re all part animal. Maybe someday we should talk it over with Dweia. She’s the one who arranges those things—or so I understand.” Leitha looked over at Emmy, who was watching and listening with a great deal of interest from her usual place in Althalus’ hood. “Did you want to join in, Dweia?” she asked with artful innocence.

Never mind,
Emmy replied shortly.

“Why do you use that other name when you talk to Emmy?” Andine asked curiously.

“It’s who she really is, Andine,” Leitha said, shrugging, “and she’s not really a cat. In her own reality, she looks much as we do—except that she’s much more beautiful.”

“She cheats.”

“Of course she does,” Leitha replied. “Don’t we all? Don’t we put soot on our eyelashes to make them look longer? Don’t we pinch our cheeks to make them look rosier? Dweia’s a girl, the same as you and I are. She’s a much better cheat than we are, though.”

That will do, Leitha,
Emmy said quite firmly.

“Well, aren’t you?” Leitha’s blue eyes went innocently wide.

I said that will do!

“Yes, ma’am.” Then Leitha laughed.

I don’t want any clever remarks from you either, Althalus.

“I didn’t say anything, Em.”

Well, don’t.

They crossed the mountains of Kweron and rode down into Hule without incident. Despite Emmy’s reassurances, Althalus pushed their horses as much as he dared. The idea of being caught by an early snowstorm in northern Kagwher didn’t appeal to him very much. Better, he felt, to arrive a week or so early than half a year late.

They avoided the few settlements in Hule and made good time. Despite his objections to “civilization,” Althalus was forced to admit that roads
did
make travel somewhat easier and much faster.

It was late autumn by the time they reached the foothills of Kagwher, and they’d been together as a group for more than a month now. They’d all grown accustomed to Andine’s vocal extremes and to Eliar’s overwhelming interest in food. Althalus and Bheid had smoothed over some of Gher’s rough edges, and on several occasions they’d found Leitha’s special ability quite useful, particularly when they wanted to avoid contact with local inhabitants. Leitha’s melancholy was no longer quite so pronounced, and she and the sometimes explosive Andine had grown very attached to each other.

They turned toward the northeast at the indistinct frontier between Hule and Kagwher, and they more or less followed the same route Althalus had taken some twenty-five centuries earlier on his journey to the House at the End of the World.

“Things were a lot different then,” he reminisced to Bheid one afternoon when they were nearing the precipice he still thought of as “the Edge of the World.”

“It
was
quite a while back, Althalus,” Bheid noted.

“Why, I
do
believe you’re right,” Althalus replied in mock astonishment.

“All right,” Bheid said, laughing. “I was being obvious, wasn’t I? Sometimes I get this overpowering urge to preach little homilies.”

“When we get to the House, the Book may cure you of that.” Then Althalus remembered something. “Are you still examining the stars every night, Bheid?” he asked, trying to make the question sound casual.

“It’s a habit, I guess. I still can’t quite shake off the notion that the stars control our destinies.”

Althalus shrugged. “It’s a clean, inexpensive hobby, I suppose, so watch the sky all you want. You might start paying particular attention to the north. I think the northern sky may have a surprise for you before too much longer.”

“Oh, I’m very familiar with that part of the sky, Althalus. I’m sure there’s not much up there that’ll surprise me.”

“We’ll see.” Althalus squinted off to the southwest. “We’d better start looking for a place to camp,” he said. “Sunset’s not too far off.

They reached the Edge of the World about two days later.

“How could you have possibly believed that the world came to an end here?” Andine asked Althalus. “There are all those white mountains out there.”

“They weren’t there then, your Highness,” Althalus explained.

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” she told him.

“Just practicing my good manners, Andine,” he told her.

“Well, don’t practice on me. You don’t have to keep reminding me what a silly girl I used to be.”

They made their camp by the dead tree at the Edge of the World, and Althalus called up fish for supper.

“Fish?” Gher objected. “Again?”

“We sort of have to keep Emmy happy, Gher,” Eliar explained. “Fish is supposed to be good for you, anyway.”

Why haven’t you told them, pet?
Emmy asked Althalus.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, kitten,
he replied innocently.

You’re being childish.

He shrugged.
Advancing age, no doubt. Please don’t interfere. I want to
see their faces when it happens.

When are you ever going to grow up, Althalus?

Never, I hope.

“Eliar,” Althalus said after supper, “why don’t you and Gher gather up a little more firewood? We’ll need some in the morning.”

“Right,” the young Arum agreed, rising to his feet. “Come along, Gher.”

The two of them went back across the narrow strip of grass to a grove of stunted trees to pick up limbs. After a little while Gher cried out sharply. “Althalus!” The boy’s voice was shrill. “The sky’s on fire!”

“My, my,” Althalus replied blandly. “Imagine that.”

“That was cruel, Althalus,” Leitha scolded him. “Why didn’t you tell them about the northern lights?”

“I thought they might enjoy the fire more if they discovered it for themselves,” he replied.

They all went to look, of course. The fire of God was particularly bright that night, shimmering and pulsating in great undulating waves in the northern sky.

“What
is
that?” Andine demanded, her voice frightened.

“It’s called by many names,” Leitha replied, “and people have many explanations for it. Some of the explanations are very far-fetched, and religion always seems to play some part in them.”

Bheid was gaping at the seething light to the north.

“Which astrological house would you say that’s in, Bheid?” Althalus asked slyly.

“I . . . I couldn’t say.” Bheid faltered. “It keeps moving.”

“Do you suppose it might be a portent of some kind?”

“He’s teasing you, Bheid,” Leitha told the young priest. “Nobody in northern Kweron even pays any attention to those lights anymore.”

“They stretch all the way across the north?” Bheid’s voice was trembling.

“Evidently so. I didn’t know you could see them here as well as in Kweron.”

“Does that light burn every night?”

“You can’t see it so much when its cloudy, and it’s much more visible at certain seasons.”

“You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you, Althalus?” Bheid accused.

“I was fairly sure we’d notice it eventually,” Althalus replied. “I found it moderately interesting the first time I saw it.” Then he remembered something he hadn’t thought of for a very long time. “I was on my way to the House at the End of the World to steal the Book the first time I saw it. I was fairly superstitious at the time, and I was positive that the fire in the sky was God’s way of warning me away. Then one night I went over to the Edge of the World and looked out. The moon was up, and there were clouds down below the edge. I lay down in the grass and watched the moonlight and God’s fire playing along the top of those clouds. It was probably the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Then that night I had a dream about a very beautiful lady who told me that if I went with her she’d care for me forever. I have my suspicions about the source of that dream.” He sent a quick, sly glance back over his shoulder at Emmy.

Would
I
do that, pet?
she asked with exaggerated innocence.
Little old me?

Leitha laughed.

“How much farther is it, Althalus?” Eliar asked on a chill, cloudy afternoon a few days later. “I’m starting to smell snow in the air.”

“We’re fairly close now,” Althalus replied, squinting off to the south. “These mountains are starting to look very familiar.”

“What’s that?” Andine exclaimed as a familiar, haunted, wailing sound began to faintly echo from the nearby peaks.

“Let’s close up here,” Althalus commanded. “That’s Ghend out there. We don’t want to be spread out just now.”

“Ghend? Himself?” Bheid asked, his voice alarmed.

“Maybe, maybe not. Any time you hear that screaming, though, you’ll know that Ghend or one of his underlings isn’t very far away.”

“No,” Leitha said, “not far at all. She’s very impressive, but her horse seems to have wandered.”

Althalus looked sharply at the pale girl from Kweron.

“She’s out there,” Leitha said calmly, pointing toward the north.

The clouds had built up beyond the Edge of the World—dirty grey clouds that seethed and boiled in the vagrant air currents rising off the ice below, and a dark figure sat astride a black horse on a roiling pinnacle of cloud.

The figure was quite obviously a woman. Her gleaming, tight-fitting breastplate made that abundantly clear. Her black hair streamed in the wind and she held an archaic-looking spear. There was a large sword with a wide, curved blade at her belt. Her features were angular and very cold. “I am Gelta, Queen of the Night,” she declaimed in a hollow voice.

“You are the
image
of Gelta,” Leitha corrected, “and quite insubstantial. Go back to Ghend and tell him that he should carry his own messages.”

“Have a care, mind leech,” the dark figure spat. “Speak not so to me, or I shall give you cause to regret your words.”

“We go to the House at the End of the World,” Leitha replied quite calmly. “If you wish to discuss this further, visit us there—if you dare.”

Try
“dhreu,”
rather sharply, pet,
Emmy suggested.
It might not bother
Gelta, but her horse may not care for it all that much.

Althalus chuckled. Then he looked at the heavily armed Queen of the Night. “Better hold on,” he called to her. Then he snapped,
“Dhreu!”

Her horse screamed as they fell down through the clouds and vanished.

Well, that’s the last of them,
Emmy said complacently.
I was sort of
wondering when she was going to show up.

“You knew we’d see her?” Leitha asked.

Of course. Symmetry, Leitha. We’ve encountered all the others along the
way. Ghend would never have left Gelta out.

“Is it just coincidence that there are as many of them as there are of us?” Althalus asked.

Of course not.
Emmy started to settle back in.

“We’ll be meeting them all again, won’t we, Dweia?” Leitha asked.

Naturally,
Emmy said.
That’s what this has all been about, dear Leitha.

“Will you be able to talk out loud again when we get back to the House, Em?” Althalus asked.

Yes. Why?

“Just curious. It’ll be sort of nice not to have you ladies using my head for a meeting hall.”

Eliar was looking at Leitha with an awed sort of expression. “I’m very glad you’re on our side, ma’am,” he said. “You don’t back away from anybody at all, do you?”

“Not often, no.”

“Let’s move along,” Althalus said. “There won’t be any more of Ghend’s surprises once we go inside the House.”

They reached the House at the tag end of a blustery morning when tattered clouds had been spitting stinging pellets of snow at them since daybreak.

“It’s enormous!” Bheid exclaimed, staring at the vast granite structure.

“Just a little place Emmy and I like to think of as home,” Althalus replied. “Let’s get in out of this wind.”

They crossed the drawbridge, the hooves of their horses clattering on the thick, heavy planks.

“Why did you leave the drawbridge down when you came out?” Eliar asked Althalus. “That’s an open invitation to anybody who happens by.”

“Not really,” Althalus disagreed. “The only people who can see the House are the people who are
supposed
to see it.”

“It’s right out in the open, Althalus.”

“Not to the people who aren’t supposed to see it, it isn’t.” Althalus led them into the courtyard and swung down from his horse.

“You know where the stables are, don’t you, Althalus?” Emmy asked, speaking aloud in her own voice.

“She
talks
!” Andine exclaimed.

“Oh, yes,” Althalus chuckled. “I’m sure that before too long you’ll wish she didn’t.”

“Take care of the horses, Althalus,” Emmy said very firmly. “I’ll take the ladies inside out of the weather.” She climbed out of the hood of his cloak and dropped silently to the flagstones. “There’s fresh hay in the stable. Unsaddle the horses and feed them. Then come inside. We’ll be in the tower.”

“Yes, dear,” he replied.

Emmy, her tail moving sinuously, led Andine and Leitha inside while Althalus and the others took the horses across the courtyard.

“That’s going to take a bit of getting used to,” Bheid observed.

“Oh, yes,” Althalus agreed, unsaddling his horse. “When I first came here, I was positive that the House had driven me insane. Sometimes I’m still not completely certain that all my wheels are running in the same direction.”

The House had a familiar smell to it when Althalus led Bheid, Eliar, and Gher inside and down the corridor to the stairs that went up to the room at the top of the tower.

“It’s really quite warm, isn’t it?” Bheid said, unfastening the front of his cloak. “These halls aren’t the least bit drafty.”

“Whoever built it did a very good job,” Eliar agreed.

“I’m sure he’ll be glad you approve,” Althalus noted.

“Who
did
build it, Althalus?”

“The one who lived here, most likely. He likes to do things himself—or so his Book says.”