The Redemption of Althalus (37 page)

“Aren’t you being just a bit overly suspicious, Althalus?”

“Use your head, Albron. Would anybody in his right mind believe the wild story I just told you?”

Albron laughed a bit sheepishly. “Now that you mention it . . .” He left it hanging in the air.

Althalus! You stop that!
Emmy’s voice crackled inside his head, and he laughed with sudden delight.

“What’s so funny?” Albron asked.

“I just received some fairly snippy confirmation of what I was just saying,” Althalus replied. “I was told in no uncertain terms not to pursue this any further.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You wouldn’t have. Emmy talks to me in here.” Althalus tapped his forehead. “She came up with that idea before we left the House last spring. I spent about half a year with this cat riding around in the hood of my cloak telling me exactly what to do. I didn’t really
need
all those instructions; I can make up my own lies. But Dweia seems to have this overpowering urge to tinker.” Althalus shrugged. “Of course she’s female, and all women seem to be that way. Delegating authority seems unnatural to women. First they tell you to do something, and then they keep sticking their noses into it while you’re trying to do it, and all they’re really doing is getting in the way.”

“Isn’t talking about her that way going to get you into trouble?”

“What’s she going to do to me? She needs me too much to set me on fire or turn me into a toad. She knows that I love her, and love’s more important to Dweia than blind obedience or slavish fawning. She and I argue all the time, but argument’s a form of playing, and Dweia spent so much time as Emmy the cat that playing’s second nature to her.”

“I think I’d like to meet her.”

“Not if you want to keep your soul, you don’t. I think the reason for this particular conversation has been to enlist your aid when the conclave meets. I’m not even going to mention religion. I’m going to talk about politics instead so that this whole thing sounds like an ordinary war. I guess I’m supposed to lie to them, and you’re supposed to confirm those lies. You don’t have to
believe
anything I’ve just told you—actually it’ll probably be better if you don’t—but for some peculiar reason, you have to
know
about it. Look at it this way, Albron. We’re going to pull off a hoax. I’m doing it for religious reasons and you’re doing it for money, but we’re still in partnership; so it’s important that we understand each other.”

“Now you’re starting to make sense, Althalus,” Albron said, grinning broadly. “If we keep it on that basis, we’ll get along just fine.” He held out his hand. “Partners?” he suggested.

“Partners it is,” Althalus agreed as they shook hands.

It snowed steadily for the two weeks following Chief Albron’s visit to the House, and all of Arum turned white. The passes were all clogged with snow, and Albron’s messengers to the other clans were obliged to literally claw their way through the drifts to return to the castle in central Arum.

“It’s more or less as I’d expected, Althalus,” Albron said one snowy afternoon when the two of them were alone in the Chief’s study. “Most of the Clan Chiefs are coming to the conclave.”

“
Most
of them?”

“There are ten clans altogether, but the clans of Deloso and Agus have sent excuses. I didn’t really expect them to attend. Their lands are located over on the eastern fringe of Arum, and the rest of us think of them as more Kagwher than Arum. There’s a lot of intermarriage back and forth across that frontier, so those two clans have never really been pure Arum. They’re small clans, anyway, and they aren’t very good warriors. I don’t think we’ll miss them all that much.” He rolled his eyes upward. “I know
I
won’t. I don’t like Deloso, and I
despise
Agus.”

“Oh?”

“They both spend all their time toadying up to the mine owners in Kagwher, because that’s where all their money originates. Their clans are wholly committed to guarding the mines in Kagwher. They don’t march, and they don’t fight. They just stand guard. They’re fat and lazy, and they’re willing to work for short pay, since just standing around isn’t very strenuous.”

“I think we can get along without them. Are there any peculiarities about the other clans I should know about?”

“We’re Arums, Althalus. We’re
all
peculiar. We have no culture and very few manners. No Arum has ever written a line of poetry or composed a song. We’re pure barbarians.”

“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself, Albron.”

“Wait until you meet the others. I’m sure you’ll immediately notice that we all defer to Delur. If it weren’t for the fact that his clan’s the largest in Arum, we wouldn’t pay a scrap of attention to him. He’s about eighty years old, and it pleases him to look upon himself as the Chief of the Clan Chiefs. The old fool even wears a crown. His clansmen are very good soldiers, so the rest of us put up with him. He’s a tiresome, senile old windbag, but I’ll fawn all over him and flatter him outrageously because he’s the key to what we’re trying to accomplish. Once I win Delur over, the rest will probably fall in line. We don’t really need him personally, but we
do
need the number of good men he can put in the field.”

“You know him, Albron, so I’ll leave him to you.”

“Good. That way I’ll earn my commission.”

“Commission?”

“You
were
planning to pay me a bounty for each Chief I recruit, weren’t you, Althalus?”

“We can bounce that around later. Tell me about the other Chiefs.”

“Gweti’s clan is almost as large as Delur’s, but Gweti’s not very well liked. He’s greedy and very stingy. He pays his clansmen the lowest wages in all of Arum, and he makes them buy their own weapons. His clansmen hate him, but they put up with him because he’s their Chief. He’s a scrawny fellow with greying hair and a pinched-in face. He spends most of his time counting his money, and he’s got a musty sort of odor to him.”

“And you don’t like him, I gather.”

“Whatever gave you
that
idea, Althalus?” Albron replied with mock surprise. “I’m almost certain that Gweti has his good points. Just because I’ve never
seen
any of them doesn’t mean that he hasn’t got any.

“Oh, I think I’d better warn you about Twengor,” Albron continued. “He’s big, burly, and belligerent. He’ll pick a fight at the drop of a hat, so be careful what you say around him. He drinks too much, and his normal speaking voice is a loud bellow. He’s got a bristly black beard that sticks way out in front of him, and I don’t think he’s taken a bath in the past dozen years. His clansmen would follow him into Hell, though. He’s unbelievably lucky in a fight, and when he hires his clan out, it’s the whole clan. He won’t hire out a platoon or a battalion. With Twengor, it’s all or nothing, and he personally leads his men.”

“An enthusiast, I take it?”

“At least an enthusiast, and his nephew, Laiwon, is almost as bad, so we have two clans of enthusiasts.”

“They belong to different clans? Isn’t that a bit unusual? I thought a clan was an extended family.”

“It
was
that way a few hundred years ago. Back then, it was all one clan with an east branch and a west branch—connected by a narrow trail that passed through a deep gorge. Then about two hundred years ago, an avalanche blocked that trail, so there wasn’t any way for them to stay in touch. After a while, there were two clans instead of one. Now that the clan wars are over and done with, it’s safe for them to travel through the lands of other clans to visit each other. There’s a certain amount of intermarriage between those two clans now, and I sort of suspect that after Twengor drinks himself to death or gets unlucky in a fight, Laiwon’s going to try to reunite the clans—probably by cutting a new road through that gorge.”

“The politics of Arum are more complicated than I’d thought.”

“Wars are a summer pastime, Althalus. Politics is a year-round entertainment. The southern clans—Smeugor’s and Tauri’s—are fairly large, but they’re not the best soldiers in the world. They’re too close to civilization, I think. The lowlanders won’t hire them for serious wars, anyway. Smeugor and Tauri put their men to work building fine palaces and good roads, so their people are better qualified as builders than they are as soldiers. Smeugor and Tauri can’t quite seem to be able to decide just exactly what they are. They try to impress the lowlanders by pretending to be Arums, and they try to impress
us
by pretending to be civilized lowlanders.”

“Neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring?” Althalus suggested.

“Exactly. Their word’s not to be trusted, I’m afraid. They’ll take your money in a flash, but it might be quite a while before any of their men show up on a battlefield.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Althalus made a quick count. “That’s nine clans counting yours, Albron. Who’s the Chief of the last one?”

Albron made a sour face. “Neigwal,” he replied with some distaste. “I probably couldn’t prove it, but I suspect that he might be some bastard descendant of our own beloved Gosti Big Belly. The Gods know that he’s at least as fat as Gosti was—and almost as bright. His health isn’t very good though, so he probably won’t be around for much longer.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He’s eating himself to death,” Albron replied bluntly. “He’s too fat to get through an ordinary door, and he wheezes like a broken bellows after the slightest exertion. I’m sure he won’t come to the conclave, but his son Koleika usually fills in for him. Koleika’s as lean as his father’s fat. He’s got a huge lower jaw, and he almost never says anything. He’s the
real
Chief of the clan, but he pretends that he has to get his father’s approval on all his decisions. That gives him the chance to see which way the wind’s blowing before he commits himself.”

“You Arums aren’t nearly as simple and uncomplicated as everyone seems to believe, are you?”

“Not by half, Althalus. Your advantage lies in those twenty kegs of gold you’ve got stacked up back in the House. Ride that horse just as hard as you can. Let them see gold at every opportunity. Juggle it and jingle it while you’re talking, and they’ll go along with almost anything you suggest. You’re an entertaining fellow, partner, but it’s your gold that they’ll find more interesting. The dullest man in the world is charming beyond belief when he’s pouring gold coins from one hand to the other.”

The winter dragged on interminably with snowstorm following snowstorm with dreary regularity. Althalus passed the time instructing Gher in the fine art of picking pockets. The boy was quick, there was no question about that, but his mind sometimes wandered off in strange directions. “Pay attention, Gher,” Althalus scolded the boy on one occasion. “That little grab you just made was unbelievably clumsy.”

“I’m sorry, Master Althalus. An idea just came to me, and I got sort of distracted.”

“What sort of idea?”

“Ghend’s trying to make everything in the world different by going back through Everywhen and playing games with what really happened, isn’t he?”

“That’s what Dweia says, yes.”

“If Ghend can do that, couldn’t we do it, too?”

“Probably—if Dweia decides to let us.”

“There isn’t any problem with that. You can make Dweia do almost anything you want her to do. She starts purring every time you touch her. Andine sort of behaves the same way around Eliar. Maybe someday you could explain that to me. I don’t exactly understand what’s going on when people get grown-up. Anyway, if Ghend changes things back in Everywhen, you’re going to just follow along behind him and change them right back again, aren’t you?”

“More than likely, yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just take a trip back into Everywhen and kill Ghend’s father? Then Ghend wouldn’t even be here anymore, would he?”

Althalus blinked.

“Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to murder somebody? You don’t have to kill
him.
You just go back and kill his father.” Gher frowned. “Of course, you wouldn’t have any reason to want to murder him in the first place then, would you? I mean, what’d be the point of murdering somebody who never lived at all? But that isn’t what distracted me when I bumped you while I was picking your pocket. What I was thinking about was some way to get around Ghend. He’s going backward in Everywhen, but couldn’t we go forward instead?” The boy frowned. “This isn’t coming out very well, is it? What I’m getting at is that if
this
happens now, it makes
that
happen next week.”

“It’s called ‘cause and effect,’ Gher.”

“I suppose,” Gher said absently. “Let’s say that you pick up a rock from one place and put it down over there in another place, all right?”

“If you say so.”

“But let’s say that you go forward in Everywhen and put it right back where it was. Wouldn’t that sort of make it so that you hadn’t moved it in the first place? That’s where I start to hit a problem. If you did it like that, you’d be doing something and
not
doing it both at the same time.”

“You’re starting to give me a headache again, Gher.”

“Let me work on it some more, Master Althalus. I’m almost sure I can come up with
some
way to do it.”

“What’d be the point?”

Gher looked at him with astonishment. “Can’t you
see
it, Master Althalus? If we did that to Ghend—made him do something and not do something at the same time like that—wouldn’t it sort of freeze him right there as if he’d suddenly been turned to stone? You could use him for a hat rack after that. What I’m really getting at, though, is that I’m almost sure that time’s not a straight line. I think it’s a circle instead, and if we change anything that happens anywhere around that great big circle of Everywhen, it’ll change everything else, won’t it? Isn’t that just about the funnest idea you’ve ever heard? We can change everything that’s ever happened anytime we want to.”

“Why me?” Althalus moaned, burying his face in his hands.

It was early the following spring when a mud-smeared Arum arrived at Albron’s castle to advise him that Chief Delur would arrive the following day.