The Redemption of Althalus (57 page)

Pekhal shrieked, trying to cover his eyes with his remaining hand and the blood-spurting stump of the missing one.

“Go!” Eliar thundered. “Go now, and never return!”

Just then, the terrified Khnom was suddenly thrust violently through his flickering doorway. He dashed forward, seized the maimed and shrieking Pekhal, and dragged him backward.

And then the both of them vanished, and the shimmering flicker of Khnom’s door was no longer there.

Part Five

ANDINE

C H A P T E R     T W E N T Y - N I N E

H
ow did you get up here, Dreigon?” the kilted Sergeant Gebhel demanded of Chief Delur’s silver-haired Captain as they met at the edge of the river that ran both ways to plunge off either side of Daiwer’s Tower.

Dreigon shrugged. “Through the caves, of course,” he replied. “You
did
know about all those caves under your mountain, didn’t you?”

“I know about the one you just came out of,” Gebhel said. “Are you trying to tell me that there are more?”

“You must be getting old, Gebhel,” Dreigon observed. “This whole mountain’s honeycombed with caves. You’re lucky
I’m
the one who found them instead of your enemies. If
they’d
known about them, they’d have come out right in your back pocket. You didn’t even bother to take a look, did you?”

“Don’t grind my face in it, Dreigon,” Gebhel said sourly. “I’ve had a lot on my mind in the last few days.”

“That earthquake
definitely
made things exciting down in the caves, let me tell you,” Dreigon said, rolling his eyes upward.

“I can imagine,” Gebhel agreed.

“Sergeant Khalor,” Eliar said as he and the fiery-haired Salkan came over from the eastern waterfall to join them, “your friend Kreuter’s down below running all over the top of the Ansus.”

“Well,
finally,
” Khalor said as they all trooped over to the edge to have a look. “I wonder what took him so long? He should have been here the day before yesterday.”

“I didn’t know we had horse soldiers,” Salkan said to Eliar.

“My Sergeant fights good wars,” Eliar told him.

“Sometimes he has a little trouble telling the truth, though,” Salkan replied. “He had me convinced that you were dying.”

Bheid stepped in smoothly. “It was sort of necessary, Salkan. Our enemies had quite a few spies in our trenches, and we didn’t want them to find out that Eliar was getting better.”

“You
could
have told me, your Reverence,” Salkan replied. “I know how to keep secrets.”

“It worked out better this way, Salkan,” Bheid told him. “Eliar’s your friend, and we wanted you to be very angry about what had happened to him. You might not have been quite as angry if you’d known that he
wasn’t
dying. We weren’t really lying to you as much as we were using you to send false information to our enemies.”

“You Black Robes are a lot sneakier than
our
priests are,” Salkan observed.

“Sometimes we have to be, Salkan,” Bheid told him. “Church politics can get very complicated sometimes.”

“I think I’ll stick to taking care of my sheep,” Salkan replied. “Every so often, some priest comes by and tries to persuade me to join the priesthood. I’ve never been very attracted to that sort of thing. I know how to take care of sheep, but taking care of people . . .” He spread his hands. “You know what I mean.”

Bheid nodded. “Indeed I do, Salkan,” he agreed.

“Your young Eliar’s
very
good with his sword, isn’t he, Khalor?” Dreigon noted.

Khalor shrugged. “He shows some promise, yes,” he replied.

“What was all that business with his dagger, though? He could have split that frothing maniac right down the middle with his sword. Why’d he throw his sword away and go for his dagger?”

“The dagger’s an ancient Ansu relic, Captain Dreigon,” Althalus lied smoothly. “The Ansus are a superstitious lot, and they all believe that coming within fifty miles of that dagger’s just about the worst thing that can happen to anybody. Young Eliar waved it around in front of Pekhal and then let him get away so that he could go back and tell everybody in Ansu that we’ve got the silly thing. I can almost guarantee that nobody in Ansu’s going to come anywhere
near
the Wekti border for at least ten generations—no matter
who
tells them to.”

“Using the other fellow’s superstitions is a slick way to do business, I guess, but how did
you
get involved in this particular war? Chief Delur tells me that you’re an official in the government of Osthos.”

“It’s all part of the same war, Captain,” Althalus explained. “There’s a fellow in Nekweros with imperial ambitions, and he’s been making alliances with assorted half-wits for quite some time now.”

“Have you ever met this so-called Emperor of the World?”

“Once or twice, yes. He and I don’t get along very well.”

“You should have killed him when you had the chance.”

“And put all my Arum friends out of work? That wouldn’t be very neighborly, would it, Captain?”

“What I don’t understand is how there’s suddenly a river in that ditch,” Sergeant Gebhel declared, “or how that ditch just suddenly appeared all by itself.”

“Oh, that,” Althalus replied deprecatingly. “It was nothing, Sergeant. I just reared back and passed a miracle, that’s all.”

“Oh,
really
?”

“Haven’t you ever seen miracles before?”

“I’m serious, Althalus. What
really
happened?”

“You’re not going to let me take credit for it, I gather?”

“Not hardly.”

“You’re taking a lot of the fun out of this, Sergeant. Actually, though, it appears that it was sheer coincidence. This tower’s sitting on some very unstable ground, I guess. We should have realized that as soon as we saw it;
something
had to push it up out of the surrounding meadows. Then, too, we didn’t bother to explore that cave where the spring is. If we’d gone in a little deeper, we’d have found those caves Captain Dreigon came through. When you’ve got unstable ground—and caves—you’ve got a landscape that can change right in front of your eyes. When the roof of a cave collapses during an earthquake, you suddenly have a ditch—without even touching a shovel.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Gebhel admitted, “but where did the water come from?”

“The same place that spring comes from, probably.” Althalus shrugged. “Who cares
where
it came from, Sergeant? It saved our bacon for us.”

“Water doesn’t run uphill,” Gebhel said stubbornly.

“Not usually, no. This is just a guess, but I’d imagine that there’s some huge underground river hereabouts that comes down out of the mountains of Kagwher, or someplace. Since the ground around here’s unstable, that river was most likely dammed up by an earthquake a few hundred years ago, and the pressure’s been building up ever since. This new earthquake turned it loose—just in time to carry off the troops who were attacking your position.”

“Pure coincidence?” Gebhel said skeptically.

“We can go back to miracles if coincidence bothers you so much,” Althalus suggested.

“Up your nose, Althalus!” Gebhel snorted.

“Why, Sergeant!” Althalus said in mock chagrin. “What a thing to say! I’m shocked at you. Shocked.”

As soon as the sun goes down, I think you and the rest of the family should
come home, Althalus,
Dweia suggested.

Truly,
another voice agreed.

Althalus blinked. The second voice in his mind was Andine’s.
What’s
going on here?
he demanded.

The family’s getting larger, that’s all,
Dweia told him.
It gave us some
thing to do while Eliar was recovering. I hadn’t really planned for this to hap
pen, but I think it might work out rather well.

It made Leitha more comfortable, Althalus,
Eliar’s voice added.
She
wasn’t very happy about being alone with me, so Emmy invited Andine to
come along. It was very crowded inside my head for a while.

Let’s not go into too many details right now,
Dweia scolded.
We’re leav
ing Bheid and Gher out, and I don’t think we want Koman eavesdropping.
Let’s wait until evening. Then we’ll be able to talk freely.

“It’s good to be home again,” Althalus said, looking around the tower room after they’d returned to the House.

“How long did it
really
take for your eyes to get better?” Gher asked Eliar.

“I started catching some glimmers of light—on my own—after a few days,” Eliar replied. “It took a while before I could see very many details, though.”

“Emmy must have stopped time, then.”

“I wasn’t paying too much attention,” Eliar conceded. “Other things were happening that were a lot more interesting.”

“Maybe you’d better let me explain that, Eliar,” Dweia said.

“What made you decide to speak to Althalus through Gher?” Bheid asked her.

“He was available,” she replied, “and it seemed sort of appropriate. The whole idea was to conceal what we were doing from Koman. Althalus understood that in fairly short order. If Ghend had known that Eliar was recovering, he’d have done things differently.”

“Are there really caves under that tower?” Bheid asked.

“Not nearly as many as Captain Dreigon thinks there are,” Eliar replied with a faint smile. “Most of the caves he thought he was marching through are here in the House. After he’d set up his camp out in that big pasture, I led him about a half mile toward your mountain and then slipped him through a door back here in the House. That was about as close as we wanted to get him to Koman. By then, Leitha was camped on Koman’s doorstep, and every time he started getting at all close to what we were
really
doing, she’d warn me so that I could do something to throw him off track. At the same time, Andine was watching Kreuter and his Plakands in
their
camp and passing things on to me about
their
plans.” He tapped his forehead with one finger. “We had what amounted to a council of war going on in here for most of the night.”

Bheid’s expression grew a bit wistful.

“You can join us, if you want,” Leitha suggested, “and probably even if you don’t.”

“Not me,” Gher announced quite firmly.

“It doesn’t hurt, Gher,” Andine told him.

“Just leave me out of it.”

“He’s right,” Dweia told Andine. “He’s a bit young for certain ideas. Bheid, on the other hand—”

“My thought exactly,” Leitha said, giving the priest a sly, wicked look. “Come, Brother Bheid. Come with me. I’ll take care of you.”

That has a familiar ring to it,
Althalus said silently to Dweia.

The old ones are the best,
she replied with a slight shrug.

It was about midafternoon, and Althalus was standing at the window watching Kreuter’s cavalry running roughshod over the Ansu horsemen around the foot of Daiwer’s Tower.

They’re even better than Sergeant Khalor said they were, aren’t they?
Eliar observed silently, joining Althalus at the window.

“You don’t have to do that here, Eliar,” Althalus told him, speaking aloud.

“It got to be sort of a habit, I guess,” Eliar replied. “It’s quite a bit faster, isn’t it? You can just hand over a whole idea without fumbling around looking for the right words to make it clear.”

“How are you feeling?” Althalus asked. “You were in fairly bad shape when you and the ladies left to come back here to the House.”

“I’m fine now, Althalus. I get headaches now and then, but Emmy says that’s only natural. My hair’s even starting to grow back. Have you seen any sign at all of Gelta?”

Althalus shook his head. “I think she’s given up on this particular war, so she ran off and left her Ansus to fend for themselves.”

“If word of that gets out, she’ll have a lot of trouble recruiting new troops.”

“What a shame. Isn’t that Kreuter coming up the rock slide?”

Eliar peered out the window. “It sort of looks like Kreuter, yes.” Then the young Arum frowned. “Is that a woman he’s got with him?”

“I think you’re right, Eliar. It’s a long ways down, but it
does
look a lot like a woman. I think maybe you and I’d better go on down there and see what’s afoot.” He turned slightly. “Emmy,” he called, “Eliar and I are going back to Wekti for a while. Kreuter’s coming up that rock slide—probably to collect the rest of his pay. I want to talk with him a bit. We might need him later.”

“Don’t be late for supper, Althalus,” she replied.

“No, ma’am. Let’s go, Eliar.”

Eliar nodded and reached for the handle of his special door.

“I think you’re the luckiest man in the world, Khalor,” the burly Kreuter declared as he came puffing up the last few yards of the rock slide. “This silly mountain you stumbled across is probably what they had in mind when they invented the word ‘unassailable.’ I know
I
wouldn’t want to attack it.”

“Are you bringing your womenfolk to war with you now, Kreuter?” Sergeant Khalor asked curiously.

“This is my niece, Astarell,” Kreuter replied, introducing the tall, dark-haired young lady coming up the slide with him. “Her father—my brother—died recently, and I pretty much have to take her under my wing until I can kick some sense into her older brother.”

“One of those family disputes?”

“My nephew’s a thoroughgoing scoundrel. He arranged a marriage for Astarell—for money—that was so inappropriate that I was tempted to kill him. I didn’t find out about it until after you and I had our little discussion in Kherdon, so I didn’t have any choice but to bring her along.”

“That’s
why it took you so long to get here.”

“Don’t be silly, Khalor. Astarell here can ride a horse better than just about any of my men. I’d have been here several days ago if you hadn’t kept changing your mind.”

“You said what?”

Kreuter clambered up the last few feet of the rock slide with his niece close on his heels. “First you sent a messenger who said ‘Hurry.’ Then one came running up and said ‘Wait.’ I was just about ready to turn around and go back to Plakand.”

“I only sent
one
messenger, Kreuter.”

“Well, two of them reached me.”

“I’d say that somebody on the other side was playing games,” Althalus said. “We might want to come up with some way to prevent that in the next war. Our enemy seems to have some very efficient spies.”

“Passwords might help a bit,” Kreuter’s niece suggested.