The Redemption of Althalus (36 page)

“Someday we might want to talk with her about that,” Althalus said. “For right now, though, let’s grab our shovels and go dig up some gold.”

Eliar led them to a corridor in the south wing of the House, and about halfway along that corridor, he stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like all the others. “This is it,” he said, opening the door.

Just beyond the door was a road, and Althalus saw the familiar hill off to the right. “This is the place, all right,” he told his friends. “We want to go around to the south side.” He stepped through the doorway out onto the road and made a large mark in the dirt at the side of the road with his shovel.

“What’s that for?” Eliar asked him.

“To let us know exactly where the doorway is.”

“I know where it is, Althalus.”

“Let’s not take any chances. It’ll be a long walk back to the House if we lose that door.”

They went around to the south side of the hill, and Althalus led the way up to the spot he’d concealed the previous spring. He stuck his shovel into the ground. “This is it, gentlemen. Start digging. We need to go about four feet down. Don’t throw the dirt too far away. We’ll probably need to fill the hole back in before we leave.”

“Why?” Bheid asked curiously.

“To hide the gold we’ll leave behind.”

“Aren’t we going to take all of it?”

“I hope not. It shouldn’t take
that
much to hire the Arums.”

“How much
is
there?”

“I’m not entirely sure. All I took last time was a hundred or so pounds. We know how to get here now, so if we need more, we can always come back. Let’s start digging, gentlemen.”

It took them about a quarter of an hour to get down to the flagstone floor, and then Althalus probed around with his dagger until he found the loose-fitting flagstone. He pried it up, reached down into the hidden cellar, and lifted out one of the oval-shaped blocks. Then he blew the dust off the block to reveal the rich yellow metal.

“Dear God!” Bheid breathed reverently, staring at the block of gold in Althalus’ hands.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Althalus said. “Here, hold it while I make a lantern. I really don’t know how big this cellar is. It’s fairly dark down there.” He handed the bar to Bheid and made a lantern with the word
“lap.”
He lit it and held it down into the cellar. “Give me your hand, Eliar. I don’t want to break my leg jumping down.”

The cellar was about eight feet deep, and the stacks of gold bars stretched back into the shadows in all directions. “My goodness,” Althalus murmured softly.

“Is there quite a bit of it down there?” Eliar called from up above.

“I don’t think we’re very likely to run out,” Althalus replied. “Climb out of the hole, Eliar. I’ll hand the bars up to Bheid and then he can give them to you. Stack them in a pile a ways back from the edge of the hole. Bheid, keep count. I think two hundred and fifty should cover current expenses.”

“Are there
that
many down there?” Bheid asked in an awed voice.

“It won’t even scratch the surface, Brother Bheid. We’re moving way out past rich this morning, gentlemen. Let’s step right along here. I want the gold back in the House and this hole covered up again before the sun goes down, so let’s get cracking.”

C H A P T E R     N I N E T E E N

W
hy not just leave it in bars?” Eliar asked as the three of them sat in the tower staring at the carefully stacked wealth they’d brought to the House.

“Most people have never seen a bar of gold,” Bheid explained. “They recognize coins, because they probably handle them every day.”

“You could be right about that, I suppose,” Eliar conceded, “but why Perquaine coins?”

Bheid shrugged. “Perquaine coins are a standard all over the known world. I’ve been told that their weights are very precise, and the Perquaines don’t adulterate the precious metals that go into their coins, the way others do.”

Eliar eyed the stack of bars. “This is going to take quite a while, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Not really,” Althalus told him. “Emmy showed me some shortcuts the last time we did this.”

“When was that?”

“Just before I bought you from Andine.” Althalus scratched at his ear. “Maybe I’d better make some stout kegs first, though. Twenty thousand coins might just be a few too many to carry in my purse.”

“Are you busy right now, Albron?” Althalus asked the young Clan Chief the next morning after breakfast.

“Not really. Why?”

“There’s something I’d like to show you.”

“All right. Where is it?”

“Not too far,” Althalus replied evasively.

“It’s snowing outside, you know.”

“That shouldn’t be any problem. Shall we go?”

Eliar and Bheid were waiting for them in the corridor outside Rheud’s armory, and Eliar straightened and saluted his Chief.

“What are you up to, Althalus?” Albron asked suspiciously.

“I want to prove to you that I really
do
have the wherewithal to hire the clans of Arum.”

“You’re keeping your gold in my armory?”

“Not exactly. We have to go through the armory to get to the place where I keep it, though. Take us through the door, Eliar.”

“We go through here, my Chief,” Eliar said, opening the armory door. Then he led them across the threshold into the tower room of the House.

“This isn’t my armory!” Albron exclaimed, looking around in astonishment.

“No, it’s not,” Althalus replied.

“Where are we?” Albron’s eyes were wild.

“It’s a different sort of place, Albron. Don’t get all excited. You’re perfectly safe.”

“We just took a sort of shortcut to get here, my Chief,” Eliar said. “There’s no danger here. This is probably the safest place in the whole world.”

“This is what I brought you here to see, Albron,” Althalus said, gesturing at the stout wooden kegs lined up along the curving north wall. “After you’ve seen what’s in those kegs, we can go back to your castle.”

Albron was still wild-eyed, and his hand was on the hilt of his sword. “What sort of—” He broke off quite suddenly when Bheid opened one of the kegs, reached in, and lifted out a handful of gold coins. The priest raised his hand and slowly let the tinkling coins cascade back into the keg.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” Althalus murmured.

“Are all those kegs filled with—” Albron broke off as Bheid scooped more coins out and once again let them fall in that musical cascade.

“Why don’t you look for yourself, Albron?” Althalus invited. “Open every keg. Pour them out on the floor, if you want. That’s why we came here. It doesn’t really matter how we got here. That’s a little detail you don’t need to concern yourself with. The point of this morning’s excursion is to prove that I’m not trying to hoodwink you and the other Clan Chiefs. I
do
have gold, and I
am
prepared to spend it. Feel free to examine the coins. Bite them or tap them on the wall to make sure that they really
are
gold. I’ve been told to present my credentials to you, and I thought this might be the quickest way to do that.”

Albron was thoughtfully bouncing one of the coins on his palm. “The weight’s right,” he mused. Then he examined the coin. “Newly minted, too. Are they all the same?”

“Look for yourself. It might take you a while, but we’ve got lots of time.”

Albron let the coins in his hand spill back into the open keg. Then he opened several of the others and slipped both hands into each one. “Your credentials are very convincing, Althalus,” he said. Then he laughed. “I feel like a little boy in a candy shop,” he admitted. “Money’s just a word, really. The actuality of this much gold is sort of staggering.” He kept lovingly sliding his hands into the kegs. “I
love
the feel of it!”

“You’re convinced that I’ve been telling you the truth?” Althalus asked.

“How could I
not
be convinced?” Then Albron almost reluctantly drew his hands out of the kegs and looked out the north window at the mountains of ice beyond the End of the World. “We aren’t in Arum, are we?” he asked shrewdly.

“No, we aren’t. We’re a long ways from Arum.” Althalus laughed. “Don’t get any ideas, Albron. You can’t lay siege to this House, because you’ll never be able to find it.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that—well, not too seriously, anyway. It isn’t wise to show an Arum that much gold all in one place at one time, Althalus.”

“Would you like to see some of the rest of the House?”

“I think I would, yes. You’ve managed to stir my curiosity.”

“Good. I’ll give you the grand tour then, and we can talk about this and that as we go along.”

“We’ll wait here,” Bheid said.

“I was just about to suggest that,” Althalus replied, leading Albron to the door.

The two of them went down the stairs, and Althalus showed the kilted Arum Chief the dining hall and the bedrooms. “Quite luxurious,” Albron observed.

Althalus shrugged. “Places to eat and sleep,” he said indifferently.

“You seem to be in a peculiar mood today, my friend,” Albron noticed.

“It’s the House,” Althalus replied, leading Albron down a long corridor. “I always feel different when I’m here.”

“Do you come here often?”

“This is only about the third time, but the first two visits were quite extended.”

“That’s a cryptic sort of answer.”

“I know. It almost has to be that way, though. The House is something on the order of a temple, and I’ve been firmly told
not
to make an issue of that.”

“You’re taking orders from that young priest?”

“No. He takes orders from
me.
I get mine a bit more directly. You’re a skeptic, Albron, and I’ve been ordered not to tamper with that. I didn’t bring you here to try to convert you.”

They continued down the corridor, opening doors and looking into empty rooms. “This is a very peculiar place, Althalus,” Albron said. “It seems to go on forever, but almost all the rooms are empty.”

“Only when I don’t need them. If we happen to get company, I can furnish them.”

“Don’t you have any servants?”

“No. I don’t need any.”

“Trying to get information out of you is like trying to squeeze water out of a stone,” Albron accused.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got quite a few restrictions hanging over me right now—trade secrets and all that sort of thing, you understand.”

Albron looked pensive. “I think I should be alarmed about all of this, my friend, but for some reason, I’m not. I have no idea of where I am or how I got here, but oddly enough, that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m also getting some very peculiar notions.”

“Oh?”

“It just occurred to me that you
might
just be the
real
Althalus.”

“Is there an imitation one running around?”

“Very funny,” Albron said drily. “All that joking about your name when we first met wasn’t really a joke, was it?”

“Some of it was—but not all.”

“You really
are
the same Althalus who robbed Gosti Big Belly some three thousand years ago, aren’t you?”

“Actually it was only about twenty-five hundred. Don’t make it any worse than it already is.”

“How on earth did you manage to live so long?”

“I was sort of encouraged to keep on breathing,” Althalus replied drily. “Are you really sure you want to hear about what happened?”

“Go ahead and tell me the story, Althalus. I’ll decide how much to believe later.”

“All right, then. I was a thief, Albron. That was back before men had learned how to make steel. Anyway, my luck had turned sour on me, and I was having a terrible time of it. I was passing through Arum, and I heard about how rich Gosti was, so I went to his log fort and entertained him with stories and jokes all through one winter. When spring came and all the snow melted, I robbed him—but believe me, that’s
not
how I got those twenty kegs of gold. Gosti was a fat braggart who wanted the world to believe that he was rich. Most of his fabled treasure was nothing but copper pennies.”

“I’ve always wondered about that,” Albron admitted.

“You don’t have to wonder anymore. Anyway, after I’d made good my escape, I met a man named Ghend, and he hired me to steal a book for him. The book was here in the House, so I came here. The Goddess Dweia was waiting for me when I got here. I didn’t
know
she was a Goddess, because she appeared to be a cat.”

“That same cat who rides in the hood of your cloak?”

“That’s her. I called her Emerald because of her green eyes, and when she started talking to me, I was positive that I’d gone crazy. I got over that, though, and she taught me how to read. Then I spent all those years studying that book Ghend had wanted me to steal for him. I can do a lot of things that other men can’t do because of all the time I spent studying that particular book. To keep this short, Emerald—or ‘Emmy’—and I came out of the House last spring and started tracking down the people we needed: Eliar and the others. After we’d found them all, we came back here to the House for some fairly intense education, and that’s when Dweia let us see who she
really
is.”

“I can’t believe I’m listening to all of this,” Albron said, shaking his head. “Worse yet, I almost believe it.”

Althalus gave him a sly, sidelong look. “I’m a master storyteller, Albron. It’s one of the tricks I use to get close to rich people. I kept poor, fat old Gosti giggling for one whole winter just so that I could rob him.” Then he looked around. The corridor
seemed
empty. He was almost sure, however, that it wasn’t. “This is probably going to get me in trouble,” he said then, “but out of courtesy, I think I should tell you that this conversation is almost certainly being manipulated.”

“Manipulated? How?”

“I really wouldn’t know exactly how, but you’re asking all the right questions, and I’m giving you all the right answers. When Dweia told me to bring you here this morning, I thought she just wanted me to show you all those kegs of gold. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe the gold was just bait to get you here so that we could have this particular conversation. I’m almost positive that she’s somewhere nearby, and that she’s feeding you questions and feeding me answers. For some reason she wants you to know what happened here. She doesn’t want to convert you, but she
does
want you to have certain information.”