The Redemption of Althalus (41 page)

“I’ll admit that my manner may have been just a trifle uncivil,” Bheid confessed. “The importance of my Exarch’s message seems to have unhinged my sense of courtesy. I apologize for that.”

“No apologies necessary, Scopas Bheid. Would you have
really
had Brother Akhas killed?”

“Probably not,” Bheid said. “But over the years, I’ve found that the word ‘kill’ opens doors almost immediately.”

“It certainly woke up Brother Akhas. Tell me, Scopas Bheid, what could possibly be so important that you felt obliged to offer general murder to bring it to my attention?”

“There’s trouble brewing on your northern frontier, your Eminence,” Bheid said gravely.

“We’re aware of that, Scopas Bheid. Was there anything else?”

“The trouble may be more serious than it appears on the surface, your Eminence. It’s serious enough at any rate that it’s moved my Exarch to offer assistance.”

“Did the sun go out while I wasn’t watching?” Yeudon said with a surprised look. “What could possibly have shaken Emdahl so much that he’s going
this
far?”

“Have you perhaps heard of a man named Ghend, your Eminence?” Bheid asked carefully.

Yeudon’s face went dead white. “You’re not
serious
!” he exclaimed.

“I’m afraid so, your Eminence. We Black Robes have sources of information that aren’t always available to White Robes or Brown Robes. Exarch Emdahl discovered just this past week that the tribes of southern Ansu are being stirred up by several of Ghend’s underlings. Evidently Gelta, the Queen of Night, is planning to invade Wekti.”

“Daeva’s finally making his move then,” Yeudon said in a trembling voice. “He’s coming out of Nahgharash.”

“So it would seem, your Eminence.
That
was the information that moved Exarch Emdahl to discard his customary hostility to your order to offer his aid. The various orders don’t agree about very much, but we
do
agree that Daeva’s our ultimate enemy.”

“We’re lost, Scopas Bheid,” Yeudon despaired. “We’re priests, not soldiers. There’s no way we can meet those savages from Ansu.”

“Exarch Emdahl’s well aware of that, your Eminence, and he’s already taken steps to bring in a people who
are
qualified to make war. He opened the treasury of our order to hire mercenary soldiers from Arum. They’ll reach Wekti very soon, and even Gelta and Pekhal may have trouble dealing with
those
howling barbarians.”

“Howling barbarians?” Eliar objected.

“A relative term, Eliar,” Bheid apologized. He turned back to the pale-faced Yeudon. “This kilted young man is Eliar, and he’s the representative of the Clan Chiefs of Arum. I prevailed upon him to come with me to confirm my words and to go to your northern frontier to make a preliminary survey of the terrain for the Generals of the approaching army.”

“You move very fast, Scopas Bheid,” Yeudon noted.

“I have all the demons of Hell snapping at my tail, your Eminence,” Bheid said wryly. “That encourages me to step right along. This other gentleman is Master Althalus, the one who dispenses money. He’s widely traveled in many lands, and he’s an expert in getting things done in the most efficient manner. To put it in the bluntest terms, he knows which officials can be bribed to cooperate.”

“You Black Robes are more devious than I’d thought,” Yeudon said.

“We’re the oldest of the orders, your Eminence,” Bheid said rather sadly, “and we’ve had more experience in the
real
world than the White Robes or the Brown Robes. Your orders are innocent of the innate corruptibility of most of mankind. We Black Robes lost all our illusions eons ago, and a world without illusions is a very bleak place. We see the world as it really is, not as we’d like it to be. Our motives are ultimately as pure as yours, but our methods are sometimes a bit cynical. We’ll use whatever it takes to achieve our goals in an imperfect world.”

“Maybe I should take lessons,” Yeudon said.

“Watch, your Eminence,” Althalus told him. “Watch and learn.” Then he grinned roguishly. “And since we’re allies, we’ll even give you a special rate for your education.”

“Back to the House?” Eliar asked when they’d returned to the thicket outside the walls of Keiwon.

Althalus frowned slightly. “Let’s go see Albron first,” he decided. “I think we’d better get things started. I want an advance party in Keiwon by tomorrow morning. Gelta’s not the sort to dawdle around. She could come crashing across that frontier any day now, so let’s be ready for her.”

Eliar had prudently marked the location of the door, and they passed through the House to reach Chief Albron’s study.

“I was hoping you’d stop by, Althalus,” Albron said. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve been cudgeling myself over the head about something ever since the conclave, and I can’t for the life of me come up with any way to get around a notion that might possibly send Dweia right straight up the wall.”

“I try to avoid that if I possibly can. What’s the problem, Albron?”

“I think we’re going to have to let Sergeant Khalor know about the doors.”

“What?”

Albron raised one hand. “Hear me out, my friend,” he said. “When we brush aside all the nonsense about rank and station, Khalor’s the one who’ll
really
be commanding our forces, and if he doesn’t know about those doors, he won’t be able to take full advantage of the strategic edge they’ll give us. When you get right down to it, Althalus, it’s far more important for
him
to know about them than it was for
me
to know.”

“My Chief has a point, Althalus,” Eliar said. “Sergeant Khalor’s the best in all of Arum, and if we tell him the secret of the doors, he’ll be able to use that in ways none of the rest of us could even begin to imagine.”

“I’ll have to talk it over with Dweia,” Althalus said dubiously.

“You
do
understand my point, though, don’t you?”

“Oh,
I
understand right enough. Floating the notion past Dweia might take bit of doing, though.”

“There’s nothing in Wekti to work with, Dweia,” Althalus told her that evening when they were alone in the tower. “If Bheid’s evaluation comes even close, there isn’t anybody with a backbone in the entire county.”

“They might surprise you, love,” she disagreed.

“I don’t think I’ll get my hopes up very much.” Then he braced himself. “One other thing. Albron said something that we might want to consider.”

“Oh? What was that?”

“The key man in what we’re going to try in Wekti—and any other place where Ghend has things afoot—is likely to be Sergeant Khalor. We might be the ones with the grand ideas, but Khalor’s the one who’s going to have to carry them out.”

“He seems competent enough to me.”

“He’s a good soldier, right enough.” Althalus hesitated. “There isn’t any easy way to say this, Dweia, so I’ll put it to you straight out. Albron thinks that we should show Khalor how the doors work.”

“It makes sense,” she replied almost indifferently.

“Emmy!”
he protested.

“I said all right, Althalus. Go ahead and show Khalor how we use the doors.”

“Aren’t you going to object at all?”

“Did you want me to object?”

“Well, no, but I was positive you would.”

“Why should I?”

“I thought that the House and what we can do with the doors was some kind of deep, dark secret.”

“Where on earth did you get
that
absurd idea? Ghend knows all about the doors. He has doors of his own in Nahgharash, and he can do the same things we can by using
his
doors. Why should we hide the doors from our friends when our enemies already know about them? That wouldn’t make any sense at all, would it?”

“What’s going on here, my Chief?” Sergeant Khalor demanded, looking around at the long corridor. “This isn’t the
arms room.”

“No, Sergeant, it’s not,” Albron replied.

“Where are we? And how did we get here?”

“It’s a part of the world that very few people know about, Sergeant,” Althalus told him. “There
is
an explanation for what we just did, but it’s very complicated—and more than a little tedious. Why don’t we just say that certain normal rules don’t apply here and let it go at that? Now, if you decided that you wanted to go back to the city of Kanthon down in Treborea, how would you get there?”

“I’d steal a horse and ride southeast for several weeks. Why would I want to go back to Kanthon, though?”

“I just picked it at random, Sergeant. I know you’ve been there and that you’d recognize the place if you saw it. I happen to know another way to get there. Lead us to Kanthon, Eliar.”

“Right. It’s on down this hall a ways.”

Sergeant Khalor looked suspiciously at his young protégé, but made no comment.

“Here it is,” Eliar said finally, opening the door.

Sergeant Khalor looked briefly at the city beyond the threshold. “That
looks
like Kanthon, all right,” he said almost indifferently. Then he looked at Albron. “Don’t we have anything better to do, my Chief? This is all very entertaining, but I’ve got some troops I’ve got to get ready for a long march.”

“You don’t believe that really
is
Kanthon down there, do you, Sergeant?” Althalus suggested.

“Oh, of
course
it’s Kanthon, Althalus,” Khalor said with heavy sarcasm. “Everybody
knows
that natural laws don’t apply to people like you. Why don’t we take a quick hop to the back side of the moon so that you can show me the sights?”

“Would you like to go into the town for a while, Sergeant?” Albron asked him.

“If I walk through that painting, I’ll rip it, my Chief.”

“It isn’t a painting, Khalor. That really
is
the city of Kanthon.”

“Have you been drinking?” Khalor asked bluntly.

“There’s a thought,” Althalus said. “Why don’t we go on into town and see if we can find a tavern?”

Eliar led them across the threshold onto the road leading toward the gates of the city, pausing briefly to mark the location of the door.

The look of skepticism began to fade from Khalor’s hard-bitten face as they approached the gates of Kanthon. “It’s that blond girl from Kweron—Leitha—isn’t it?” he guessed. “She really
is
a witch after all, isn’t she?”

“If it makes you comfortable to think so, Sergeant,” Althalus replied. “Now then, the point of this overdone theatrical display has been to suggest something that you might find quite useful. Do you really want a cup of ale right now? We can go into town and have a few, if you want, but if you can hold off for a while, there are a couple of other things I’d like to show you.”

“The ale can wait,” Khalor said shortly. He squinted at Althalus. “If this is some sort of game, Master Althalus, I’m going to be very, very disappointed in you. Why don’t we look at some other town? But this time
I’ll
decide which town.”

“All right. Which town would you like to see?”

Khalor looked suspiciously at Albron and Eliar. “Bhagho,” he said shortly.

“Where in the world is Bhagho?” Albron asked. “And when were you ever there?”

Khalor grinned at Althalus. “
That
sort of spokes your wheel, doesn’t it? You haven’t had time to create your illusion, have you?”

“No, I haven’t. You’re a shrewd man, Khalor. Let’s go to Bhagho, Eliar.”

Sergeant Khalor spent the next hour naming towns scattered across most of the lowland countries, and Eliar obediently led them to each one.

“There
has
to be some sort of trick involved in this,” Khalor said finally, “but I’Il be hanged if I can see how you’re doing it.”

“And if it’s not a trick?”

“Then I’ve gone crazy.”

“Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that it’s not a trick and that you haven’t gone crazy. Then let’s say that you’re leading a platoon of soldiers—or an army, for that matter—and you want to take that army from Chief Albron’s castle to some city halfway across the world. Wouldn’t it be sort of useful to have
this
way to travel?”

“If this works the way it
seems
to work, I could put my Chief on the throne of the whole world!” Khalor exclaimed.

“Now
that’s
an interesting thought,” Albron mused.

“Never mind,” Althalus said firmly.

There was an excited young shepherd in Exarch Yeudon’s study when Eliar led Althalus, Bheid, and Khalor into the room. The shepherd had fiery red—almost orange—hair, and he wore a sheepskin tunic. “They were mounted on horses, your Eminence” the young man was shouting, “and they were killing my sheep!”

“Calm yourself, Salkan,” the silver-haired Exarch told him, motioning Bheid and the others to remain silent.

“I showed them, though,” the shepherd said fiercely. “I killed three of them. That’ll teach them to leave my sheep alone.”

“I’m fairly sure that the three you killed won’t bother you again,” Yeudon murmured. “There are some people at the door, Salkan. Would you mind waiting outside for a moment?”

“Perhaps he should stay, your Eminence,” Althalus suggested. “He has some information I think we’re going to need.”

“You certainly move around, Scopas Bheid,” Yeudon observed.

“My Exarch encourages diligence, your Eminence,” Bheid replied. “He insists, actually. This is General Khalor, the commander of the Arums who approach your western frontier even now. We’ve brought him on ahead to introduce him.”

“Your Eminence,” Khalor said with a curt nod of his head. “Would it be all right if I spoke with your young visitor? He’s actually seen our enemies, and I’d like to get some details.”

“Of course, General Khalor,” Yeudon replied.

“Your name is Salkan?” Khalor asked the redhead.

“Yes, sir.”

“How many horsemen were there in the party that attacked you?”

“At least a dozen,” Salkan replied. “I was a little excited, so I didn’t really count them.”

“Where exactly were you grazing your sheep?”

“Up near the frontier—not that you can really tell exactly where the frontier is up there. It’s just open pastureland, so there’s no boundary of any kind.”