The Redemption of Althalus (32 page)

“There’s something I don’t quite understand,” Bheid said while Dweia was recounting the history of Treborea. “You’ve hinted several times that the coastline of the southern sea has been changing.”

“Yes, it has.”

“What can possibly change a coastline? I’d always thought that things like mountains and coastlines were fixed and immutable.”

“Oh, good grief no, Bheid,” Dweia replied, laughing. “They change all the time. The whole world’s in a constant state of flux. Mountains rise and fall like the tides, and the slightest change of climate can move a coastline hundreds of miles. An individual man’s not alive long enough to see those changes, but they
are
taking place. The southern coast’s been expanding for over two thousand years now.” Then she turned and pointed toward the north window. “It’s because of that ice up there.”

“How can ice this far north have any effect on the southern coast?”

“Ice is frozen water, isn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“There’s only so much water. The amount’s constant. Some of it’s in the seas, some’s in the air as rain clouds, and some’s locked up in the glaciers. Every so often there’s a change in the weather. It gets colder, and the glaciers start to grow. More and more of the world’s water is locked up in the glaciers, and there’s less and less water in the seas or in the clouds. It doesn’t rain as much anymore, and the sea level starts to drop. That’s what changes the coastline. The seas off the south coast have always been shallow, so as the water recedes, more and more land is exposed.”

“The works of God are wondrous,” Bheid recited sententiously.

“I’m sure my brother would be pleased to hear that,” Dweia said drily.

“Deiwos rules.”

“I was talking about my other brother.”

Bheid stared at her in horror.

“This particular change in the weather is Daeva’s doing,” she told him. “These are interesting times. Daeva’s gathered up his people, and I’ve gathered mine. We’re standing right on the brink of a very nice war, Bheid, and Daeva’s doing everything he possibly can to give Ghend the advantage. The seas are running away, and when those glaciers start to move, the mountains are going to be ground down into mole hills. The drought will bring famine, and empires will collapse. Isn’t that exciting?”

“It’s the end of the world!” Bheid exclaimed.

“Not if we win, it won’t be.”

“Gives you a nice, warm sense of your own importance, doesn’t it, Bheid?” Leitha suggested slyly. “Save the world, boy! Save! Save!”

“That’ll do, Leitha,” Dweia scolded the pale girl.

“It was too good an opportunity to pass up, Dweia,” Leitha apologized.

“Isn’t it just about time for—?” Eliar started.

Andine was sitting in the chair beside his, and Althalus had noticed that she’d been watching the young Arum quite closely all afternoon. She touched his wrist with one hand and offered him a fairly large piece of cheese with the other. Eliar took the cheese almost absently and began to eat.

Andine’s little smile was rather like the sun coming up.

Dweia flicked a quick glance at Althalus, and her purring thought came into his mind.
You saw that, didn’t you?
she asked.

Of course,
he silently replied.
Did you tell her to do that?

It was actually her own idea. She has a little bag of tidbits under her chair.
Every time Eliar’s stomach starts to growl, she’s going to feed him. If you look
closely, you’ll probably notice that he doesn’t even realize that he’s eating. An
dine
said
that she came up with the notion as a way to keep him from inter
rupting, but I think there might be a little more to it than that. In a peculiar sort
of way, it’s something along the lines of Gher’s haircut.

She’s a very complicated little girl, isn’t she?

Indeed she is,
Dweia agreed.
Fun, though.

“How long have we been here, Althalus?” Eliar asked several days later as they were all going up the stairs to the room in the tower.

“A month at least,” Althalus replied.

“That’s what I thought, too. Is something peculiar happening outside?”

“Peculiar?”

“The days should be getting shorter, but as nearly as I can tell, they aren’t.”

“Dweia’s playing with things, that’s all.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either—not entirely, anyway. She’s tampering with time. Most probably what’s happening is that we’re living the same day over and over again—except that different things happen each time we go through that day.”

“Would it do me any good to say that’s impossible?”

“Not much, probably. Ghend’s moving around out there, and we’ve got to be ready to spoke his wheel every time he tries something. The trouble is that we aren’t ready yet. That’s why Dweia brought us back here to the House. Time here moves the way she wants it to. If it takes us years to get ready, she’ll give us those years, but when we go back outside, it’ll only be a day or so later than it was when we came here.”

“Except that we’ll all be about fifteen years older.”

“I don’t think it works that way, Eliar.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t feel alone.”

“Will you
please
stop browsing, Leitha?” Dweia said later that morning.

“I can’t control it,” Leitha confessed, sighing. “I wish I could. As soon as I look at someone or hear someone talking, this whatever it is seems to home in. Then somebody else says something, and it goes after him. I don’t
want
to do it, but it acts on its own.”

Dweia opened the Book. “Let’s do something about that right now,” she said. “Your gift—if we want to call it that—is so completely random that it’s totally out of control.” She leafed through several of the early pages in the Book. Then she apparently found the page she wanted. “Here we are,” she said, lifting out the page. “This is how Deiwos dealt with the same problem. His answer’s a little simpler than mine is, so it might be better if you start here. Later on, I’ll show you how
I
do it.”

“I’ll try anything, Dweia,” Leitha said fervently. “I don’t
want
this thing in my mind.” She took the crackling parchment sheet from Dweia and looked at it. “I thought I’d be able to read this,” she said, frowning. “But the letters aren’t the same. I can’t make it out at all.”

“It’s a very archaic form, Leitha,” Dweia told her. “There’s a faster way. Just lay the sheet down on the Book and then put the palm of your hand down on it.”

“You want me to read with my hand?” Leitha asked incredulously.

“Unless you’d rather use your foot. Just try it, Leitha.”

The pale blond girl dubiously set the page down on the white-covered Book and placed the palm of her hand on it. Her blue eyes widened as total comprehension filled them. “It can’t be
that
simple,” she objected.

“Why not try it and find out?” Dweia suggested.

Leitha sat back and closed her eyes. Her expression became almost inhumanly serene. Then her eyes opened very wide as she drew in a sharp breath.

Then she suddenly screamed.

“You went too far, Leitha,” Dweia told her, “and just a little too fast.”

“Everything’s so empty!” Leitha said in a shuddering voice. “There’s nothing there anymore!”

“You just went too high, dear. You want to go above it, but not quite
that
far above. You’ll get better at it with practice. All you’re really doing is aiming your gift. You want to point it slightly over the heads of everybody around you. You’ll still hear that slight murmur that you’ve been listening to all your life, but you won’t hear the actual thoughts. When you
want
to hear them, just point your gift straight at the one you want to hear.”

Leitha shuddered. “What was that awful emptiness?” she demanded.

“The sound of nothing, Leitha. You
were
pointing it at the ceiling, you know.”

“Did that make any sense to anybody else?” Eliar asked, his expression baffled.

“Leitha’s got an extra set of ears, that’s all,” Gher replied. “She can hear what we’re thinking—even when she doesn’t want to. Emmy just taught her how to point her ears someplace else. Anybody can see that.”

Leitha gave the boy a startled look. “How could you possibly have known that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Gher confessed. “It just seemed to make sense, that’s all. Of course, I’ve been dodging you ever since we first met.”

“Dodging?”

“I could feel what you were doing, ma’am, so I’d just step out of your way and let you zing right past me.”

Dweia was staring at the boy in absolute astonishment.

“Well, well, well,” Althalus murmured.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dweia demanded.

“Nothing, dear,” Althalus replied innocently. “Nothing at all.”

“Isn’t it just about time for us to—” Eliar started.

Andine gave him a piece of fruit, and he stopped talking.

“Just keep the rest of them entertained, dear heart,” Dweia told Althalus. “I’ll be taking them aside one by one to explain certain things to them.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“It’s faster that way, Althalus. They’ll open their hearts to me if we’re alone. Doing that in front of others is a little embarrassing. Everyone has flaws they’d prefer not to expose to the whole community.”

“I take it that you don’t agree with the notion of open confession.”

“It’s one of man’s sillier ideas. Announcing one’s sins in public is a form of exhibitionism. It serves no purpose, and it wastes time.”

“I thought we had all the time in the world.”

“Not
that
much, we don’t.”

“What are they talking about, Master Althalus?” Gher asked, looking at Dweia and Bheid, who were sitting together at the table with the Book open before them.

“I’d sort of imagine that Dweia’s clearing Bheid’s mind of a number of misconceptions. Bheid was trained for the priesthood and for astrology. There’s a lot of nonsense in his mind that Dweia’s getting rid of.”

“Does anybody really believe in that astrology business?” Gher asked.

Althalus shrugged. “People want to know what’s going to happen next. They think astrology tells them. It’s wrong most of the time, but people keep on believing anyway.”

“Isn’t that sort of stupid?”

“Moderately stupid, yes, but most people need to believe in
some
thing.
There are a few who don’t, but they’re a bit unusual.”

“I’ve never believed very much, myself. The sun’s probably going to come up tomorrow, and spring usually comes after winter, but just about everything else happens by accident.”

“That comes fairly close, I’d say. I used to believe in luck, but Dweia’s sort of cured me of that.”

Gher suddenly chuckled. “Andine just did it again,” he said “Eliar doesn’t even realize she’s feeding him, does he?”

“Probably not,” Althalus agreed. “Eliar’s a nice, uncomplicated boy. As long as she keeps the food coming, he doesn’t ask any questions—or even pay much attention to what she’s doing.”

“What I don’t understand is why she does it. Back when I first joined you folks, she didn’t like him at all. Now she hovers over him all the time.”

“She’s mothering him, Gher. Women do that a lot, I’ve noticed. She hated him at first, but that’s changing.”

“I’m glad she’s picking on him now, instead of me,” Gher said. “I was starting to get real tired of all those haircuts.”

After several days, Dweia left Bheid alone with the Book and turned her attention to Andine. Many of those discussions were quite audible. The Arya of Asthos was a beautiful young lady with dark hair and huge dark eyes, but her emotions leaned in the direction of explosive. The Knife had instructed her to “obey,” and that didn’t suit her at all.

Althalus had unobtrusively moved his chair to a place near the door, and he spent most of his time watching the others, being careful not to be too obvious about it.

“What are you doing, Althalus?” Dweia asked him late one afternoon when they were alone in the tower.

“Watching, Em. Watching and learning. Isn’t that what you told me to do?”

“What have you learned so far?”

“We’ve picked up a very strange collection of people, little kitten, and they aren’t altogether what they seem to be at first glance. Except for Gher, most of them aren’t very happy about what they’re supposed to be doing. Andine absolutely hates the word ‘obey,’ and Eliar’s very uncomfortable with ‘lead,’ since he knows he’s not ready to command an army yet.”

“That isn’t what ‘lead’ means in this situation, pet, but we’ll be getting to that in a bit. What have you learned about the others?”

“I think you might have been a little abrupt with Bheid. Once you threw out astrology, you set him adrift. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore—and he’s right on the verge of believing in nothing. He’s positive that ‘illuminate’ means that he’s supposed to preach, and a sermon about nothing might be a little hard to compose.”

“He doesn’t quite understand yet, Althalus,” she replied. “When the time comes, he will. What about Leitha?”

“
That’s
the one who worries me. She puts on a bright face, and she makes clever remarks, but she read something on the Knife that she probably wasn’t supposed to. The others aren’t entirely certain about what the Knife told them to do; Leitha
knows.
She knows
exactly
what she has to do, and who she has to do it to. She’s not happy about it, Em. Life hasn’t been good to her so far, and she’s almost certain that it’s going to get worse.”

“She’s much stronger than she appears, Althalus. She’ll need some help at some point, so stay close to her. Be ready to give her that help.”

“That’s awfully cryptic, Em,” he accused.

“You were told to ‘seek,’ Althalus. I’m sure you’ll find a way to help her—if you seek hard enough.”

Dweia and Gher were sitting near the east window, deep in conversation. Eliar was telling Andine war stories by the south window, and she was obviously feigning a look of vapid admiration and handing him occasional tidbits of food. Leitha had joined Bheid at the marble table, and they were both deeply engrossed in the Book. This left Althalus more or less to his own devices. He stood at the north window looking out at the mountains of ice out beyond the End of the World. Despite everything Emmy had told him, Althalus still thought of that chasm to the north as the end of everything. He was more comfortable with that, since it seemed to give the world a definite boundary. He didn’t much care for the implications of the word “infinity.”