The Redemption of Althalus (31 page)

“When has this happened?” Bheid asked.

“The arguments have been going on forever, but humans came to this part of the world about ten thousand years ago, searching for open land where they could grow wheat. Probably nothing has changed the world as much as wheat. It guaranteed the survival of humans, and it kept them in one place long enough to build villages and towns, and that’s how civilization began. Anyway, primitive humans came up out of the south—below Meusa and Plakand. There was a vast tropical forest in their original homeland, and chopping down all those trees with stone axes to make room for farmland didn’t appeal to them very much, so they came north in search of open country.”

“That was ten thousand years ago?” Bheid asked.

“Ten thousand or so,” she replied. “Calendars back then weren’t very good, and my brothers and I don’t pay very much attention to time. As it happened, Ghend was one of those early settlers in Medyo. He’s always had a very high opinion of himself, and that used to irritate his chief. The chief always seemed to think of Ghend when some particularly dirty job came along, and no matter how hard Ghend tried to obey his chief’s commands, his efforts were never quite good enough to satisfy his ruler. His resentment bloomed like a well-watered weed, and he soon hated his chief. It’s a gloomy sort of story that’s been repeated over and over again down through the centuries. Ghend’s puffed-up sense of his own worth made it impossible for him to see just how absurd he was sometimes. I think that if he’d been able to laugh at himself, things might have turned out differently; but he couldn’t laugh, and that opened the door for Daeva. It didn’t take very long. Daeva offered glory and power and immortality, and Ghend accepted it all quite eagerly. Then, just to reinforce his grasp on Ghend’s soul, Daeva took him to Nahgharash to corrupt him even more.”

Leitha gasped. “Not
there
!” she exclaimed.

“Where else?” Dweia said. “Nahgharash
is
the seat of Daeva’s power, after all.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it,” Eliar said.

“It’s a place in Nekweros,” Leitha told him. “It lies deep under the earth, and it’s a place of unspeakable horror.”

“Only if Daeva wants it to be that way, Leitha,” Dweia corrected. “Daeva was trying to enslave Ghend, so he provided him with anything he wanted. As far as Ghend was concerned, Nahgharash was a place of infinite delight. At first, Daeva was almost like a servant to Ghend, but as his grasp of Ghend’s soul became more firm, that changed. Time means nothing in Nahgharash, and Daeva’s infinitely patient; so by the time Ghend left, Daeva was the master, and Ghend was the servant.”

“Do his eyes really burn the way they did in that dream we all had back in Awes?” Eliar asked.

“Oh, yes,” Althalus told him. “Ghend could light his path through the darkest wood with only his eyes.”

“It’s the mark of Daeva,” Bheid explained confidently.

“Not entirely,” Dweia disagreed. “The fire in Ghend’s eyes is his, not Daeva’s. Anyway, once he had Ghend totally under his control, Daeva sent him back to Medyo with the same command the Knife gave Althalus.”

“Seek?” Althalus asked. “What was he supposed to look for?”

“The same things you were, dear,” Dweia replied. “There were certain people Daeva needed, and he ordered Ghend to go find them. We’ve encountered those people, so you know who they are.”

“Pekhal and those others?”

“Exactly. Pekhal was the first, and winning him over wasn’t much of a problem. It was about nine thousand years ago when Ghend came out of Nahgharash and went back to Medyo. Pekhal was a murderer who lurked around the outskirts of several villages in central Medyo killing anybody who happened by carrying anything that took his fancy: clothes, food, weapons—anything of the slightest value. He even killed people who had nothing—if he happened to be hungry.”

“You’re not
serious
!” Andine exclaimed.

“It was more common in those days than most people realize, Andine, and Pekhal was an absolute savage. Ghend used
his
book to subdue the brute, and then he won him over with assorted diversions and entertainments we don’t really need to talk about.”

“Have you ever seen this Pekhal fellow, Master Althalus?” Gher asked.

“Emmy and I came across him in Arum when we were looking for the Knife,” Althalus replied. “The years haven’t improved him very much.”

“You should have killed him when you had the chance.”

“I was told not to. I guess it didn’t exactly fit in with Emmy’s plans.”

“You know perfectly well that wasn’t the reason, Althalus,” Dweia said.

“Whatever you say, dear,” he replied blandly. “Who did Ghend recruit after he’d gotten Pekhal under control?”

“Khnom came next,” she replied, “but that was after the Medyos had expanded into Wekti, Plakand, and Equero. That expansion took fifteen hundred years, but Ghend’s very patient, so he waited. Khnom lived in Ledan in Equero, and he was a notorious cheat. He dealt mostly in flax, but the bales of flax he bartered had a lot of common weeds mixed in. The citizens of Ledan finally drove him out of their town and let it be known in the other cities that he wasn’t to be trusted. All gates were closed to him, and an outcast’s chances of survival were very remote back in those days. Ghend and Pekhal found him hiding in a willow thicket near the lakeshore, on the verge of starvation. Ghend didn’t have much trouble recruiting him, since he really didn’t have any other place to go.”

“He was selling pots and pans when Althalus and I met him in Awes,” Eliar recalled.

“He was
pretending
to be selling pots and pans,” Althalus corrected. “Actually, he was there to keep an eye on us.”

“Khnom’s a born cheat who can change his face and manner at the drop of a hat,” Dweia told them. “He can be charming and very ingratiating, but only a fool would trust him.”

“This is turning into a very good story,” Gher said enthusiastically. “Which one of Ghend’s bad people came next?”

“Gelta.”

“The lady in the iron shirt whose horse stands on clouds?”

“That’s the one. She was the queen of a warrior clan in Ansu about six thousand years ago.”

Bheid frowned. “Wouldn’t that have been a bit unusual in Ansu?” he asked. “As I understand it, the men of Ansu don’t really believe that women are human.”

“You saw her, Bheid,” Dweia reminded him. “She’s as big as any man, and far more savage. She’s a homely woman with a pockmarked face and a big nose. She grew up in the company of her father’s warriors, so she thinks more like a man than a woman. She waded through blood to reach her throne, and any man who made an issue of her gender didn’t live long enough to see the sun go down.”

“How in the world did Ghend ever manage to convert a woman like that?” Bheid asked.

“He offered her power, Bheid. Gelta has lots of appetites, but her hunger for power goes far beyond the others. Ghend offered empire and dominion in exchange for her soul, and Gelta was sure that she was getting a bargain.”

“Which one came next?” Eliar asked.

“It was a thousand years before he found the next one,” Dweia replied. “The Deikan Empire came into prominence after the religious wars of the fifth millennium had sent Medyo into decline. There was a priest of the Equero god Apwos living in the city of Deika early in the sixth millennium. His name was Argan, and he violently disagreed with his high priest on some obscure aspects of astrology. The high priest finally ordered him to recant, and Argan refused. Then the high priest asserted his authority and expelled Argan from the priesthood.”

“Dear God!” Bheid gasped. “That’s dreadful!”

“Argan thought so, too. The center of his life had been removed, and he was sunk in absolute despair. Ghend picked him the way you’d pick a ripe apple from a tree.”

“Is there really a God named Apwos?” Gher asked.

“It’s a variation of ‘Deiwos,’ ” Dweia explained. “The name “Apwos” means ‘Water God,’ and “Kherdhos” means ‘Herd God.’ The Medyos looked at the sky, the Equeros looked at their lakes, and the Wekti and Plakands looked at their herds of sheep or cows. They use different names, but they’re talking about the same God.”

“Do they know that?”

“Not really,” Dweia replied with a shrug. “I’ve had about a dozen different names since this all started. Anyway, Ghend’s last recruit was living in Regwos about three thousand years ago, and he has the same gift Leitha has.”

“I’d hardly call it a gift,” Leitha objected.

“Koman feels differently about it. Regwos is a troubled land. It was originally colonized by Osthos, but the land’s not good, and there’s very little gold there.”

“We still have a few settlements along the coast,” Andine supplied, “but they cost us far more than we ever get out of them. They’re nothing but a burden.”

“Koman used his gift to probe for secrets,” Dweia continued, “and then he sold them. He happened to meet Ghend, and he liked what he found in Ghend’s mind. He didn’t have to be enlisted; he volunteered.” She smiled then. “Althalus did something horrible to poor Koman when we met him,” she recalled. “Leitha might appreciate it more than the rest of you.”

“Emmy warned me that Koman was going to try to sneak into my mind,” Althalus explained. “She told me to start counting, but to put the numbers out of their proper sequence—one, two, three, seventeen, nine, forty-three, and so on. Then, just to make it more interesting, I added a few fractions—seven and five-eighths, ninety-two and twelve thirty-seconds, and some other combinations. Koman didn’t seem to find that very entertaining, for some reason.”

Leitha’s eyes went suddenly very wide, and she shuddered. “Please, Althalus,” she begged. “Promise that you’ll
never
do that to me!”

“Would it really be so painful?” Andine asked her friend.

“It’d be
awful
!” Leitha shuddered again. “How did Koman react when you did that to him, Althalus?”

“As I recall, it sent him off down the road talking to himself, and he was using some very colorful language.”

“Isn’t it almost lunchtime?” Eliar asked suddenly.

“It’s only been a few hours since breakfast,” Andine reminded him. Her voice seemed oddly gentle, and there was no hint of her usual derision or open hostility toward the young Arum.

“I know that the way I talk about food all the time must get tiresome for the rest of you,” Eliar half apologized with an embarrassed expression, “but I just can’t help it. An hour or so after I’ve eaten, I’m starving again.”

“Why not stuff your pockets full of food, Eliar?” Gher suggested. “That way, you’d always have something to nibble on when you got hungry.”

Eliar’s face was shocked. “Oh, I couldn’t do
that,
Gher!” he protested. “Eating in front of the rest of you would be
terribly
bad mannered!”

Then Andine burst forth with peal upon peal of rich laughter that filled the tower with music.

C H A P T E R     S E V E N T E E N

T
he House was strange for the others, but this was home for Althalus, and it was good to be back. Dweia continued her leisurely lectures on the history of the world, but Althalus didn’t really pay much attention. He felt that he knew enough about the world already. If she wanted to waste time giving history lessons, that was up to her, and they wouldn’t be going anywhere until spring anyway.

Then, after a few weeks had passed, a peculiar idea came to him, and he waited until he and Dweia were alone in the tower to bring it up.

“Deiwos built the House, didn’t he?” he asked her.

“The word you want is ‘made,’ not ‘built.’ There’s a difference, you know.”

“Did he give it to you?”

“No, I snitched it.”

“Dweia!”

She laughed. “That got your attention, didn’t it? Deiwos came here to think things over after he’d spun the stars out of his thought. Then he went back out and left the House behind. Since he wasn’t using it anymore, I just moved in—as Emmy the cat.”

“What if he decides that he wants it back?”

“That’ll be just too bad. The House is mine now, Althalus. If Deiwos wants a House, he can go make another one someplace else—on the moon, maybe.”

“Does he know that you feel that way about him?”

“He should. I’ve told him often enough. He made this world and peopled it. That’s all he’s supposed to do. It’s mine now, and he’s just underfoot.”

“We won’t be leaving until spring, will we?”

“The seasons aren’t really all that relevant here, pet. You should know that by now. We’ll leave when we’re ready.”

“We can’t travel in the dead of winter, Em.”

“How much would you care to wager on that, Althalus?” she asked slyly.

“Before much longer, the snow’s going to be fifteen feet deep, and the sun won’t come up anymore. I’d say that more or less pens us up in here.”

“Not really. Watch, Althalus. Watch and learn.”

“That’s really irritating, Em.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she replied smugly.

“Is this going to go on much longer, Master Althalus?” Gher asked quietly while they were eating lunch a few days later.

“This what, Gher?”

“All this business about who was doing what thousands of years ago in places I never heard of before. You don’t have to tell Emmy I said this, but it’s getting awfully boring. Who cares about what happened in the Deikan Empire five thousand years ago?”

“I went there once,” Althalus told the boy. “That was before I came here and Emmy got her paws on me. The merchants of Deika were all very rich, but they didn’t have very good sense. I sort of thought that might provide all kinds of opportunities for somebody in our profession. The idea of stupid rich men gives me a warm little glow.”

“What happened?” Gher asked eagerly.

Althalus told him a much-embroidered version of the adventure in Kweso’s house. Gher proved to be a perfect audience, and Althalus was enjoying himself enormously when Dweia suggested that it was time to go back to work.

As they started up the stairs, Althalus noticed that Andine had a sly little smirk on her face, and he remembered that the girl had drawn Dweia off to one side before they’d all sat down to lunch. A faint smile was also playing about the corners of Dweia’s lips. Something was obviously afoot here.