The Redemption of Althalus (85 page)

And the song of the Knife soared joyfully.

And with the joining of their thought did Althalus share his daughter’s pain, and harkened his thought back some brief span of time when pale Leitha had first encountered that emptiness which doth surround all others, but which she had not known before.

And then at last understanding came to him, and he perceived the true horror of his daughter’s dreadful task. “Come to me, my beloved child,” he spake unto her, “and I will care for thee.”

And her thought that flooded over him was filled with gratitude, and with love.

Then bent they their intertwined thought upon the hapless Koman. And the mind of Koman was awash with sound that was not sound, for behold, the mind of Koman had never known silence.

Murmuring, murmuring, the thoughts of they who were beyond the temple did wash over Koman even as the thoughts of others had sung in the vaults of his mind since first he drew breath.

And then pale Leitha did approach the servant of Ghend, and warily did he bend his thought upon her, forsaking the random thought from beyond the temple walls.

And, sorrowing, Leitha did gently close that door behind wary Koman.

And startled Koman did reach forth, seeking with his mind the sound that had been with him always.

But behold, it was no longer within his grasp, and the mind of Koman shrank back from the horror of silence. Then clung he with his thought to the mind of Argan, even though he held the defrocked priest in great despite.

But pale Leitha, with tears coursing down her cheeks, did put forth her gentle thought, and behold, the open door between Koman’s thought and Argan’s did also softly close.

And Koman screamed as even greater emptiness did settle around him.

And he fell to the floor of the holy temple of the Goddess Dweia, and clung he in terror-stricken desperation to the thought of she who even now closed each door that had always stood open for him.

And the soul of Althalus was wrenched with pity.

I beseech thee, my beloved father,
pale Leitha’s thought cried out in anguish,
bend not thy despite upon me for this cruelty. The cruelty is not mine,
but is that of necessity.

And Althalus hardened his heart toward hapless Koman and stood sternly by as pale Leitha did perform the final act compelled of her by stern necessity.

“Fare thee well, my unfortunate brother.” Leitha wept as, with gentle finality, she withdrew her thought from the servant of Ghend.

And behold, endless emptiness and eternal silence did descend upon the mind of hapless Koman as he lay upon the polished temple floor. And his shriek was a shriek of absolute despair, for he was alone and had never been so before. Then curled he his limbs and body tightly, even as though he were yet unborn, and his voice fell silent, and his mind also.

And Leitha cried out, wailing in horror, and Althalus, unthinking, did enfold her in his comforting thought to hold her back from the awful finality of what she had done.

Now flaxen-haired Argan’s incomprehension was writ large upon his face even as the mind of his companion departed forever.

But from the altar came the voice of the Goddess Dweia. Sternly spake she, saying, “Thy very presence doth defile mine holy temple, Argan, servant of Ghend.”

And behold, that which had been cold marble was now warm flesh, and gigantic did Dweia descend upon him who was no longer a priest.

And verily was Argan confounded and unable to move so much as one finger.

Then spake the Goddess further, saying, “Thou wert cast out from the priesthood, Argan, and all temples have been forbidden unto thee, because thou art unclean. Now must I cleanse this holy and sanctified house of worship of thy corruption.”

Then considered Divine Dweia the wretch who stood trembling before her. “Methinks this will be no great task,” mused she, pursing her lips. “Thou art only as dust, apostate priest, and dust is easily removed.” Then stretched she forth her rounded arm and raised her hand as if she lifted that which was of no moment.

And behold, flaxen-haired, apostate Argan was borne aloft to stand on air alone before the Goddess who had judged him and found him wanting. And the servant of Ghend grew as insubstantial as glittering motes of dust that still clung to the form of that which had once been the reality called Argan.

“Come to the window, Bheid,” Althalus suggested. “It’s all yours—or maybe the window
is
you. Emmy’s dream was just a little complicated.”

Bheid, pale and trembling, joined Althalus at the window. “What am I supposed to do, Divinity?” he asked humbly.

“Just open the window, Bheid,” she instructed. “The temple needs to be aired out.”

Bheid obediently opened the window, and then from directly behind him a great wind sprang up and howled about his shoulders to pass through the window into the temple of Dweia.

And the glittering motes of that which had been Argan were swept away in that great wind, leaving behind only the faint echoes of his despairing scream to mingle with the song of the Knife.

And the face of Divine Dweia was filled with satisfaction, and spake she. “And now is my temple once more immaculate.”

And the song of the Knife soared in indescribable beauty as it sang its blessing upon the holy place.

Part Seven

GHER

C H A P T E R     F O R T Y - O N E

A
lthalus sat alone in Dweia’s tower watching the shimmering rise and fall of God’s fire out beyond the Edge of the World with a kind of absent bemusement. So far as he knew, God’s fire served no useful purpose, but it was pretty to look at. Watching it play across the northern sky was peculiarly relaxing, and Althalus needed some relaxation at this point.

The peasant rebellion in Perquaine had faltered without the presence of Argan’s Red Robes, but Bheid had moved with surprising and uncharacteristic speed to install his Grey Robes in positions of authority. Bheid’s tendency to agonize over every decision seemed to vanish, and he started to bull his way through any opposition almost like a junior version of Exarch Emdahl. At first, the nobility of Perquaine had viewed Bheid as their own champion, but he’d rather quickly disabused them of
that
misconception. The Perquaine aristocracy was shocked to discover that Grey Robe churchmen were neither interested in bribes nor intimidated by threats.

As winter receded and spring approached, the nobles of Perquaine began to realize that Exarch Bheid had the upper hand. Planting time was rapidly approaching, and the peasantry let it be generally known that no seeds would touch the ground without Bheid’s permission—and Bheid didn’t seem to be in a permitting frame of mind. At first, the nobles blustered indignantly.

Bheid ignored them.

Spring began to arrive in southern Perquaine, and the nobility in that region began to grow more and more desperate as their fields remained unplowed and unplanted. Their appeals to Exarch Bheid grew increasingly shrill.

Bheid responded with a series of “suggestions.”

The nobility went up in flames when they heard them.

Bheid shrugged and returned to Maghu to wait them out. Leitha slyly referred to the process as “Bheiding his time.” Althalus felt that Leitha’s sense of humor was sometimes a bit warped.

As spring marched on, Bheid’s initial “suggestions” graduated to “demands,” and one by one the nobles of southern Perquaine began to capitulate. Aided by the onset of spring, Bheid had wrung concession after concession out of the panicky aristocrats of southern Perquaine. Then he moved inexorably north, riding springtime like a warhorse and vanquishing all in his path. Several of the more arrogant nobles refused Bheid’s demands as “outrageous.” Bheid smiled briefly and then made examples of them. It soon became very clear that when Exarch Bheid said “final offer,” he meant exactly that. A number of very large estates in central Perquaine remained fallow that year.

After a few weeks, Bheid had stopped trying to explain his seeming ability to be in three or four places at the same time, and wild stories about the new Exarch spread across the land. By early summer, almost everybody in Perquaine stood in awe of “Holy Bheid.” The nobility wasn’t too happy about the way Bheid was disrupting “the way things ought to be,” but they were careful not to make an issue of their disagreement.

“Whatever works, I guess,” Althalus muttered to himself.

“Have we taken to talking to ourself, Daddy?” Leitha asked from the doorway at the top of the stairs.

“Just thinking out loud,” he replied.

“Ah. If everybody did that, I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t I? Dweia says that it’s time for supper.” Her tone was subdued.

Althalus stood up and looked at the pale-haired girl. “Are you still having trouble with what happened in Maghu?” he asked her sympathetically.

She shrugged. “It had to be done,” she replied. “I just wish I hadn’t been the one who had to do it.”

“It’ll pass in time, Leitha,” he assured her.

“That doesn’t make me feel much better right now,” she replied. “We’d better go down to supper. You know how Dweia feels when we’re late.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed as they went to the head of the stairs. “Did Bheid get any sleep? He looked as if he was starting to come unraveled when he came back from Maghu this morning.”

“He rested,” she replied. “I don’t know how much he slept. He has a lot on his mind right now.”

“I’m sure he does. Sooner or later, though, he’ll have to learn how to delegate authority. He can’t do
everything
himself.”

“He hasn’t quite grasped that yet,” Leitha observed.

“It’s too bad Sergeant Khalor’s not here,” Althalus said. “He could probably explain the process better than any of the rest of us.”

“I don’t think I’d suggest that to Dweia, Daddy. When she sent Khalor home, she gave him some very specific instructions regarding Eliar’s mother, and asking her to bring him back wouldn’t make you very popular.”

“I was wondering why he’d left so soon.”

“Now you know. I’d keep my nose out of it, if I were you.”

“I shall be guided by you in this,” he said extravagantly.

“Oh, stop that,” she scolded.

Dweia had prepared a baked ham for that evening’s supper, and it was superb, as always. So far as Althalus had been able to determine, there was no kitchen in the House. For obvious reasons, Dweia didn’t really need one.

Exarch Bheid still looked totally exhausted by events in Perquaine, but Althalus decided not to start giving out advice. It was obviously something Bheid was going to have to work out for himself.

Gher had wolfed down his supper as he usually did, and now he sat fidgeting, kept in his seat by Dweia’s ironclad rule that nobody was to leave the table until after they’d all finished eating.

Althalus didn’t really have anything else to do, so he pushed back his plate and idly reached back into his memories, looking for something that might keep Gher out of mischief. “Did I ever tell you the story about my wolf-eared tunic, Gher?” he asked the bored little boy.

“I don’t think so,” Gher replied. “Is it a good story?”

“All my stories are good stories, Gher,” Althalus assured him. “You should know that by now.”

“Is it a true story?” Gher asked. “Or is it one you just make up as you go along? I like the true ones better, but the made-up ones are pretty good, too.”

“How can you tell the difference, Gher?” Leitha asked. “Once Althalus gets started, his stories seem to run away with him.”

“How does it go, Althalus?” Gher asked eagerly.

Althalus leaned back in his chair. “Well, this all happened a long, long time ago—before I’d even heard about Emmy’s House or the Edge of the World or Books or any of the things that we’ve come across here lately. I’d gone on down into the low country to have a look at civilization—and more importantly, at the rich men who lived down there. Back in those days, I found rich people absolutely fascinating.”

“Was that the time those dogs chased you and when you first found out about paper money?”

“That was the trip, all right. Well, as you can probably imagine, I wasn’t in a very good humor when I gave up on civilization and started back toward Hule where I belonged. Nothing I’d tried down there in the low country had worked out the way it’d been supposed to, so I was feeling grumpy, to say the very least.” Althalus glanced casually around the table and saw that Gher wasn’t the only one who was listening to the story. It was nice to know that he hadn’t lost his touch.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I had to go through Arum to get back to Hule, but that didn’t bother me too much, since I’ve always gotten along fairly well with the Arums. Well, I was sort of plodding my way up into the foothills of southern Arum late that summer, and when I happened to pass a wayside tavern, I decided to stop in for a cup or two of good, rich mead. The lowlanders evidently didn’t know how to brew mead, because all I’d been able to get down there had been wine, and wine leaves a sour taste in my mouth—almost as sour as the taste of all the things that’d gone wrong for me down there.”

“You
are
going to get to the point here eventually, aren’t you, Althalus?” Dweia interjected.

“It’s my story, Em,” he replied complacently, “so I’ll tell it the way it’s supposed to be told. You don’t have to listen, if you don’t want to.”

“Get
on
with it, Althalus,” she said impatiently.

“Anything you say, Em,” he replied blandly. “Well, Gher, as it so happened, there was a half-drunk loafer in the tavern who was babbling on and on about some Clan Chief who was supposed to be the richest man in Arum. I didn’t really pay all that much attention to his story, because at any given time there are probably forty or fifty ‘richest men in Arum’ floating around.”

“The subject
does
come up fairly often,” Eliar conceded.

“I’ll be the first to admit that I find the subject of money fairly interesting,” Althalus admitted, “but on this particular occasion, I was a bit more interested in the wolf-skin tunic that tavern loafer was wearing. Now, back in those days, it wasn’t really unusual to see people wearing clothes made out of the skins of wild animals, but this particular tunic was just a bit odd. Whoever had made it in the first place had left the ears on the wolf skin, and they stuck up from the hood of the tunic in a perky sort of way that looked kind of dashing—even elegant. Well, the fellow who was wearing it was a fairly typical Arum tavern loafer—drunk, stupid, and none too clean. The front of that fine tunic was all spotted with gravy he’d spilled on it, and it obviously hadn’t had a good brushing since the day he’d first put it on. It was clearly much too fine a garment for a man like that to be wearing, so I decided that maybe I should do something about that.”

“And I’ll bet I know exactly what you had in mind.” Gher chuckled.

“Don’t get ahead of the story, Gher,” Althalus chided. “Well, as I said before, the fellow in the tunic was already half-drunk to start with, so I bought him enough good, rich mead to push him on along the rest of the way, and by the time it got dark outside, he was far gone. I decided that we might as well get on with this, so I suggested that we might step outside for a breath of fresh air to clear our heads. He thought that was a wonderful idea, and so we went outside. He stumbled along until we got out a ways from the tavern. I took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching, and then I whanged him on the head a couple of times with the hilt of my sword. He went down as if somebody had just cut the ground out from under him.”

Gher laughed delightedly. “This is a
real
good story, Althalus,” he said enthusiastically. “What happened then?”

“Those of us in the profession call it ‘the transfer of ownership.’ First I peeled my fine new tunic off him, and then I took his purse. The purse wasn’t really very heavy, but mine was quite a bit lighter. Then I took a good look at his shoes. They weren’t new, by any stretch of the imagination, but mine were so badly worn that if I’d held them up, daylight would’ve shown through. After I’d gathered up all my new possessions, the sour taste of civilization began to fade from my mouth.”

“Whatever happened to that tunic?” Gher asked.

Althalus sighed. “I had to throw it away,” he said sadly. “As I went on farther up into Arum, I came across other people who told me stories about that same rich Clan Chief.”

“The story isn’t over yet, is it?” Gher asked eagerly. “I really like stories that keep on going like this one does.”

“Most younger people prefer those stories,” Althalus agreed, “and some who aren’t so young. Some stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Other stories never end, maybe because they’re alive.”

“Those are the kind
I
like,” Gher declared. “What happened next?”

“Well, what happened
might
have been a coincidence, but when Emmy’s around, the word ‘coincidence’ almost never describes what’s really happening. As it turned out, that rich Clan Chief the former owner of my tunic had been talking about just
happened
to be the Chief of Albron’s clan back then. His name was Gosti Big Belly, and he had a toll bridge that was almost like a gold mine—or so the fellows in a little village tavern told me.”

“Have you ever heard about this Gosti fellow, Eliar?” Gher asked curiously. “Since he was the Chief of your clan back then, you’ve probably heard stories about him.”

“Oh, yes,” Eliar said. “The one everybody tells the most often is probably the one Althalus is telling you right now. All of
our
stories call Althalus a scoundrel. His version might be a little different, though.”

“Well, now,” Althalus said, picking up his story again, “every place I turned in Arum, somebody was telling me about how fabulously rich this Gosti was, and it was in that little village tavern that I finally decided that it might be worth my while to pay a call on this rich fat man to see if there was any truth to those stories.”

“And then to rob him?” Gher demanded enthusiastically.

“If the opportunity arose, probably so. Anyway, I went to Gosti’s fort and talked my way inside. This was a very long time ago, and things were a little crude back then. Albron’s hall is pretty much a castle, with stone walls and marble floors. Gosti Big Belly lived in a log fort with dirt floors, and he kept pigs in his dining room.”

Andine made a gagging sound.

“There was a certain practicality there, Andine,” Althalus explained. “If you’ve got pigs in the dining room, you don’t have to keep carrying scraps out to the garbage heap.”

“Will you
stop
that?” Andine scolded him.

“Sorry,” Althalus said. “Anyway, I spent all that winter telling Gosti stories and jokes and eating at his table—
and
locating his strong room and examining the lock, of course.”

“Naturally,” Gher said with a knowing little smirk.

“Well, when spring arrived and melted all the snow off the passes, I decided that it was time to say good-bye to Gosti and his pet pigs, so late one night I visited his strong room and got the shock of my life. As it turned out, all the talk about unlimited wealth was just that: talk. There wasn’t any gold in the strong room—only copper pennies and a few tarnished brass coins. I’d just wasted a whole winter, and I was going to come away with very little to show for it. Anyway, I took as much of Gosti’s brass and copper as I could conveniently carry and left the place before dawn.”