The Redemption of Althalus (34 page)

“It’s a little more complex, but that more or less sums it up, yes.”

“If it’s playing with distance that way, can’t it play with time the same way?” He paused for a moment. “I’m not saying this too well, am I? You told us that the House is everywhere—all at the same time.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“It’s Every
when
then, too, isn’t it? What I’m getting at is that there’s probably a door to last week somewhere in the House—or one that leads to next year. Am I making any sense at all with this?”

Dweia’s eyes grew troubled. “You aren’t really supposed to be asking that kind of question yet, Gher.”

“You just said ‘yet,’ Emmy,” the boy said with a certain note of triumph. “That sort of means that we’ll get to that part on down the line, doesn’t it?”

Dweia’s green eyes narrowed. “It’s my turn to ask a question, Gher,” she said.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to answer it, Emmy. I’m just a country boy, remember.”

“Let’s find out, shall we? Distance is space, isn’t it?”

“Well . . . Sort of, I guess.”

“What’s the difference between space and time?”

Gher frowned slightly. “As far as I can tell, there
isn’t
any difference. They’re the same thing, aren’t they?”

Dweia drew in a sharp breath. “Who have you been talking with, Gher?” she demanded. “Where did you get that idea?”

“It just came to me, I guess. When you said ‘space’ instead of ‘distance,’ several things sort of clicked together. Did I say something I wasn’t supposed to say, Emmy? I’m sorry if it upset you.”

“It didn’t upset me, Gher. It just surprised me, that’s all. The unity of space and time is something very few people have realized yet.”

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since Eliar told me about that dream you all had back in Awes,” Gher explained. “Then when we started using the doors to hop around in space, I sort of came up with the notion that maybe Ghend was using
his
doors to hop around in time, and if hopping is hopping, it wouldn’t make any difference whether you were hopping in space or hopping in time. That sort of told me that there isn’t any difference—that space and time are the same thing. It didn’t make much sense at first, but it sort of fits together now. When you get right down to it, it explains a whole lot of things, doesn’t it?”

“Dear God!” Bheid exclaimed in an awed voice.

“Yes?” Dweia replied.

“I wasn’t . . . I mean, I was just . . .” Bheid floundered.

“You really shouldn’t throw the word ‘God’ around like that, Bheid,” she scolded. “It’s very distracting. Does what Gher just said bother you for some reason?”

“Is this boy human?” Bheid asked, looking at Gher with an awed expression. “His thought goes so far beyond mine that I can only understand about half of what he’s talking about.”

“He
is
a bit unusual,” Dweia conceded.

“Unusual or not, he’s still our Gher,” Andine said. She reached out and playfully mussed Gher’s hair. “He’s just a tousle-headed little boy who definitely needs to take a bath.”

“I just took one last week, ma’am,” Gher protested.

“It’s time for another one.”

“Already?”

“It doesn’t really hurt, Gher,” Andine said. Then she laughed, threw her arms about the boy, and hugged him to her.

C H A P T E R     E I G H T E E N

T
hey won’t believe you, Brother Bheid,” Eliar told their priest. “We Arums are trained
not
to believe anything the lowlanders tell us. We don’t believe in your wars, we don’t believe in your customs, and we don’t believe in your Gods.”

“Your lives are empty, then.”

“The money sort of fills that up—at least that’s what Sergeant Khalor told us.”

“He must be a very evil man.”

“You’re wrong, Bheid,” Althalus disagreed. “Sergeant Khalor’s a very good soldier who knows enough not to believe people when they talk about heavenly rewards instead of the money in advance. The Arums work only for pay, and that makes it nice and simple.”

“Where can we possibly get enough money to hire all the Arums?”

“I’ve got a secret little gold mine, Bheid,” Althalus replied. “I can buy the whole of Arum—several times over, probably. The Arums are the best soldiers in the world, and they know how to train other people to be fairly good as well. That’s what we
really
need. The ragtag armies of the rest of the world fight for their beliefs, which can change with the seasons. The Arums fight for gold, which never changes. A platoon of Arums can train an entire army to be fairly good soldiers in about two months. Then they’ll be able to give that army advice about strategy and tactics. Eliar here is only about fifteen years old, and he already knows more about tactics than most of the generals in the low country.”

Eliar made a wry face. “When Sergeant Khalor teaches, you learn—one way or the other—and the first thing you learn is to do just exactly what he tells you to do. He teaches by fist, mostly.”

“That’s cruel,” Andine said.

“No, ma’am,” Eliar disagreed. “Actually it’s a form of kindness. My Sergeant was teaching us how to stay alive, and that’s just about the kindest thing anybody can do. People get killed in wars. My Sergeant trained me not to be one of them.”

“Then it’s a kind of love?”

“I don’t think I’d go
that
far. He wanted us to stay alive so that he’d have enough men when the next battle came along. The most important part of strategy is keeping your men alive. If you take care of your men, they’ll take care of you.”

“Have we more or less finished here in the House, Dweia?” Althalus asked.

“For now, yes.”

“Then we might as well go talk with Chief Albron. His clan isn’t the biggest one in Arum, but he knows us, so we’ll be able to talk with him without all the tiresome introductions.”

“My Chief
is
highly respected by the other Clan Chiefs, Althalus,” Eliar asserted.

“I’m sure he is, and he and I got along quite well. Of course, I
did
sort of lie to him about the Knife, but I should be able to clear that up without too much trouble. The really important thing here is that only a Clan Chief can call for a general conclave of the Chiefs of Arum, and we won’t have time to visit every clan in the entire country. We need to talk to them all at the same time, and Albron’s the key to that.”

“The arms room might be best, Eliar,” Althalus said to the young Arum that evening at supper. “I don’t think we should just suddenly appear in the street outside your Chief’s castle. Ghend probably has eyes everywhere. Do you think you could manage that?”

“I
think
so,” Eliar replied. “I haven’t tried it yet, of course, but I get the feeling that I could even pick which part of a room I want to come out in.”

“Would a suggestion upset anybody?” Leitha asked.

“It wouldn’t bother me,” Eliar replied, filling his plate again.

“I’m supposed to do that for you, Eliar,” Andine objected. “Now put that back and give me your plate.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said apologetically.

“Aren’t people going to be a little startled if we all just suddenly appear out of nowhere?” Leitha asked.

“Is there some way around that?” Bheid asked her.

“Why not just go in through the door? We’ll be going through a door anyway, so it’ll seem more natural to us—and to anybody on the other side.”

“Make it so that this side of the door is here and that side of the door is there?” Gher asked.

“Nicely put, Gher,” Leitha complimented the boy.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Gher dipped his head slightly. “Maybe sometime, though, we
could
just pop out of nowhere.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“Because it’d be funner that way,” Gher said, grinning. “I’d love to see somebody’s eyes pop out.” Then he looked at Althalus. “That’d be a slick way to rob somebody, wouldn’t it, Master Althalus? You know—pop out, grab his purse, and then pop back in again. We could steal most of the money in the world that way—and never really leave home.”

“Well, now,” Althalus said in an almost dreamy voice. “Well now indeed.”

“Never mind,” Dweia told him flatly.

Andine set Eliar’s plate down on the table in front of him. “Eat it before it gets cold, Eliar,” she instructed.

“Yes, Andine,” he replied, picking up his spoon.

There was something slightly unnerving about the intensity of Andine’s expression as she watched Eliar eat. Althalus shuddered slightly and looked away.

“When did you get back home, Eliar?” Rheud, the kilted, red-bearded armorer asked when they all trooped in through the door to his arms room.

“Just now, Rheud,” Eliar replied.

Althalus felt just a bit light-headed as he stepped through the doorway. There seemed to be a peculiar sort of dislocation involved in stepping across all those miles.

Just relax, Althalus,
Emmy the cat purred softly to him from her customary place in the hood of his cloak. Althalus realized that it was ridiculous, but he
had
missed Emmy during the past several weeks.

I wasn’t sure it was really going to work, Em. Looking through a doorway
at a place hundreds of miles away is one thing, but crossing all those miles with
a single step is something altogether different.

You didn’t trust me?

Of course I did, Em—at least out in front.

But not in back, I see.

Talking about it is one thing, Em. Actually doing it is something else.

It gets easier as you go along. Pay attention, Althalus. Don’t let Eliar blurt
out any trade secrets.

“I see that you found our boy, Master Althalus,” Rheud said. “Did he have that knife you were looking for?”

“Oh, yes,” Althalus told him. “It was a little complicated, but everything’s pretty much the way it’s supposed to be now.”

“You don’t seem to be traveling alone anymore,” Rheud observed, stroking his bristling red beard and eying Andine and Leitha.

“Just a few old friends I hadn’t met before,” Althalus replied. “Is Chief Albron in the main hall right now?”

“He should be,” Rheud replied. “He usually lingers over breakfast. He’s all business first thing in the morning, and he says that he can get about half of his day’s work done before he leaves the table. Did your cousin’s assassins give you any trouble down there in the low country?”

“No, not really,” Althalus replied. “I managed to give them the slip.”

“You might want to thank our Chief for that,” Rheud told him. “He sent out the word that anybody asking questions about you—or about that fancy knife—was to be detained. You definitely came down on the good side of Chief Albron, Master Althalus.”

“We got along well. Did he intercept very many of my cousin’s henchmen?”

“There
were
a few,” Rheud replied. “There was one bulky sort of fellow with no forehead to speak of who was a bit of a problem, I understand. From what I hear, it took a dozen men to swarm him under.”

“Oh?”

“He said that his name was Pegoyl, or something like that.”

“Pekhal, maybe?”

“That might have been it, yes. The clansmen who took him in charge finally just slapped an iron collar around his neck and hitched him to a team of six oxen to drag him here—after they discovered that a two-ox team couldn’t budge him.”

“Is he still here, Rheud?” Eliar asked intently.

“No, he managed to escape—ate his way through the door of the dungeon, some men say. You’re lucky you didn’t come across
that
one, Master Althalus. He was more animal than man.”

“I know,” Althalus replied. “I’ve met him. It’s been good talking with you again, Rheud. I’d better go see if I can catch your Chief before he finishes his breakfast. I’ve got a little business proposition for him.”

“Albron’s always ready to talk business.”

Althalus led them back out into the corridor.

“Interesting,” Bheid said. “You must be making Ghend very nervous, Althalus, if he’s got his primary henchmen out looking for you.”

“That’s a little hard to say for certain, Bheid. Pekhal may be acting on his own. I didn’t treat him too well the last time we met. He might have taken it personally.”

“May I carry Emmy?” Andine asked, her huge, dark eyes filled with a kind of longing.

Althalus felt a sudden, hot, irrational surge of jealousy. “I think we’d better leave her where she is,” he replied. “She might want to give me some instructions when we talk with Eliar’s Chief.”

“That’s a cheap excuse,” Andine flared.

“Just let it go, Andine,” he replied wearily.

Chief Albron was still seated at the breakfast table in the main hall when Althalus and the others entered. “Why, blast my eyes if it isn’t Master Althalus!” the kilted young Chief exclaimed, rising to his feet.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Chief Albron,” Althalus replied with a florid bow.

“Now maybe we can get to the bottom of what happened down there in Osthos,” Albron said. “I see that you still have Eliar with you.”

“Yes, he’s been quite useful. Oh, speaking of that, I think I still owe you for his services.”

“We can settle that later. What in the
world
were you doing down there? Those boys you sent home all kept babbling sheer nonsense when they got here.”

“We might want to discuss that privately, Chief Albron,” Althalus replied cautiously. “There’s quite a bit going on that you should know about, and some of it’s on the peculiar side.”

“Eliar!” a stern voice barked from the far end of the table. “Have you forgotten your manners?”

Eliar winced. “Sorry, Sergeant Khalor,” he said quickly. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“That’s no excuse! Report!”

“Yes, sir!” Eliar drew himself up into a rigid posture and snapped a smart salute to Chief Albron. “Soldier Eliar reporting, sir!” he announced.

Albron returned the salute. “You’re still growing, I see, Eliar,” he noted, “and you seem to be filling out quite a bit.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Relax, boy,” Albron said, smiling. “Your mother told me that you’d paid her a visit late last summer. Why didn’t you report in then?”