The Redemption of Althalus (86 page)

“What did this have to do with throwing away your tunic?”

“I was just getting to that, Gher. Gosti was really nothing but the fat Chief of a very minor clan, and he desperately yearned for fame and recognition. I gave him exactly what he wanted. He sent out word that a master thief had just robbed his strong room and carried off a dozen bags of gold. He offered a reward for my capture, and the description he circulated all over Arum described my fine tunic right down to the last whisker. I didn’t have any choice at that point. I
had
to get rid of that tunic.”

“Tragic,” Leitha murmured.

“That story didn’t turn out too happy,” Gher objected.

“Not every story has a happy ending, my boy,” Althalus said philosophically, “and this is one of them.”

“Why don’t we just fix it so that it turns out the way it should?”

“I suppose I
could
change a few things the next time I tell it to make it come out a little better,” Althalus conceded.

“That wasn’t what I meant, Althalus. I wasn’t talking about just changing the story. I was talking about changing the things that happened back then so that the story—and the things the story tells about—come out the way we want them to.” Then Gher frowned slightly. “You hadn’t met Ghend yet when all this happened, had you?”

“No. I didn’t meet Ghend until I finally got away from Arum and went to Nabjor’s camp in Hule. I didn’t even
know
about Ghend back then, but I guess he knew about me. When he came into Nabjor’s camp, he told me that he’d been following me for months. What’s Ghend got to do with this, though?”

“You said he was following you?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Then my idea might work after all. As long as he’s right there following after you, maybe we could use him to make the story better.”

“Gher,” Bheid said with a pained expression, “I wish you’d make up your mind. Are you talking about ‘story’ or ‘reality’ here?”

“Aren’t they the same thing, Mister Bheid? A really good storyteller always changes his story to make it better, and since we’ve got those doors right here in the House, we can do the same thing to reality, can’t we?”

“You can’t go back and change the past, Gher,” Andine objected.

“Why not? Ghend’s been doing it right from the start, hasn’t he? Why should
he
have all the fun?” Gher scratched thoughtfully at his tousled hair. “Let me work on this a little bit, Althalus,” he said. “I’ve got a sort of hunch that we’Il be able to fix things so that you’ll get to keep that tunic you liked so much, and maybe if I think real hard, we might be able to have something pretty awful happen to Ghend at the same time.”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Eliar said with a great yawn, “but I’m just about ready for bed.”

“Why don’t we all go to bed now,” Dweia agreed, “
before
Althalus launches into another story.”

Althalus slept very well that night, but Gher’s eyes were puffy as he sat down to breakfast, and he was yawning.

“Are you all right?” Dweia asked him.

“I didn’t sleep too good, Emmy,” he replied. “It’s real hard to get to sleep when you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

“You need your sleep, Gher,” she scolded.

“I’ll be able to catch up once I’ve straightened out a few kinks in the thing I’m working on.”

“What’s bothering you so much, Gher?” Andine asked the boy.

“Well, it all started with that wolf-skin tunic Althalus was telling us about last night. He had to throw it away after he robbed the fat man, because the fat man was describing it to everybody he met. If we want to fix it so that Althalus doesn’t have to throw it away, then we have to come up with some way to make sure that the fat man didn’t talk about it.”

“That might have taken a bit of doing, Gher,” Althalus said dubiously. “Gosti didn’t care anything about the money, because it was almost worthless. All he was really doing was bragging because I’d taken the trouble to rob him.”

“Oh, I saw that right off, Althalus,” the boy replied, “and I’d already come up with a way to get around that. All you’d really need is somebody to help with the robbery.”

“I didn’t really know anybody that well in Arum back in those days, Gher, and you don’t just pick up a perfect stranger to be your accomplice.”

“But there was somebody you met later who’d have fit right in. You keep forgetting about the doors, Althalus.”

“All right, who was it that I met later who’d have made a good accomplice?”

“I was sort of thinking of Ghend. He knew you, even if you didn’t know him. He wanted to get on your good side so that he could persuade you to go steal the Book for him, so he’d almost have to go along with you if you suggested that he should join you when you went to rob the fat man, wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe so, but I didn’t even so much as see him back then.”

“Couldn’t we fix that with one of those dream things? That was my first idea. I thought that he was probably sneaking around behind you everywhere you went, and we could use Emmy’s window to find just the right time to do it. Let’s say you went into one of those taverns when people were talking about the fat man, and maybe Ghend’s outside listening. Then Emmy does the dream thing, and Ghend’s not outside anymore; he’s inside the tavern instead. Every thief in the world knows another thief almost as soon as he lays eyes on him, doesn’t he?”

“I’ve never had much trouble picking out other businessmen.”

“There you have it, then. After you two hear about that rich fat man, you take Ghend aside and suggest that maybe you two ought to go visit that Big Belly fellow. Ghend’s stuck right there. He wouldn’t dare to say no, because then you might say no when he talked about the Book later on.”

“I
love
the way this boy’s mind works,” Leitha said. “It’d be perfect. Ghend wouldn’t have any choice but to go along with your scheme.”

“I didn’t really need any help, Gher,” Althalus objected.

“Not with the robbery, maybe, but it wasn’t the robbery that caused the problem. It was getting away that fixed it so that you had to throw your tunic away, wasn’t it?”

“How would having Ghend as my partner change that?”

“If you did it right, you wouldn’t have to even
try
to get away. Let’s say that you and Ghend steal a bunch of gold out of that storeroom.”

“But there
wasn’t
any gold, Gher. I told you that.”

“We could fix that in a minute. We’ve still got some of those kegs that we used to hire the Arums with up in Emmy’s tower, haven’t we? We sneak one of the kegs into that storeroom, see, and then you and Ghend break in and steal it. The fat man doesn’t even know it’s there, but that won’t make any difference, because he’s not the one you’re swindling. It’s Ghend you’re after. After you two steal that keg of gold, you divide it up, see, and then you tell Ghend that it might confuse people if each of you ran off in a different direction. Then you jump on your horse and ride off one way, and Ghend rides off in another. As soon as you’re out of sight, you give your share of the gold to Eliar to bring back here, and then you double back to Gosti’s place and act like you never went anywhere at all. Then you go wake up Gosti and tell him that you saw Ghend break into that storeroom to steal stuff. Now, Gosti doesn’t know about the gold we snuck into his storeroom, so he thinks that all there is in there is pennies. He wants people to think he’s rich, though, so he makes a big fuss about how mad he is that Ghend robbed him, and he describes Ghend to everybody he meets instead of describing you. So it’s
Ghend
who’s out there running for his life, and you’re still loafing around in Gosti’s place like you hadn’t done anything at all. You sit in front of the fireplace eating chicken and telling stories like you did all winter long while everybody in Arum’s chasing Ghend as hard as they can because they think he’s got a lot of gold they’d like to steal from him. Then after a week or so, you tell Gosti you’ve got some business you have to take care of, so you tell him goodbye and ride on up to Hule to meet up with Ghend like you two planned in the beginning.
This
time, though, you’ve still got that tunic you liked so much. When you get to Hule, you tell Ghend that you got away easy, and when he tells you about what a bad time he had, you put on a long face and go ‘tsk, tsk, tsk.’ He doesn’t know that you fooled him, so he still thinks you’re his friend. Then when he hires you to go steal the Book for him, you make him pay you with
his
share of all that gold you two stole from Gosti’s place—only you didn’t really steal it, because we’re the ones who put it in that storeroom to begin with. Wouldn’t that sort of work?”

“Could you follow any of that?” Andine asked Althalus with a baffled expression on her face.

“Most of it, yes,” he replied. “There are a couple of twists and turns that I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I caught the broad outline.” He looked at Dweia. “Could we actually
do
that, Em?” he asked her. “The notion of bamboozling Ghend that way lights a warm little fire in my heart.”

“It’s not impossible,” she replied. “It doesn’t make very much sense, but we
could
do it.”

“Dweia!” Bheid exclaimed. “That’s tampering with reality. If you change the past, who knows what’s going to happen to the present?”

“We’ve already seen what
this
now looks like, Bheid,” Gher said, “and there’s a lot of stuff about it that we don’t like very much. Wouldn’t it be funner to make up a different now? If we keep tinkering with way back then, sooner or later we’re bound to come up with a
new
now that suits us right down to the ground and puts Ghend’s nose out of joint at the same time. That’s what Ghend’s been doing with
his
dream things, isn’t it? He tries to make now come out the way
he
wants it to. All we’d be doing would be changing back then enough to make now come out the way
we
want it to instead of Ghend’s way. And if we do it like this, Althalus gets to keep that tunic he liked so much.”

“But if we keep tinkering with the past, nothing’s ever permanent.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure, Bheid?” Leitha asked him. “Permanence is so boring sometimes, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be funner to live in a world Gher can change any time he wants to?”

“Funner?” he asked.

“Isn’t it logical to believe that language would change as well as circumstances? Welcome to the world of Gher, Exarch Bheid.”

“I think that’s about enough of that, Leitha,” Dweia said absently. Althalus noticed that she was looking at Gher in a peculiar sort of way, however.

The following day after supper, Dweia pushed her plate back and looked around the table. “There’s something I’ve been considering for most of the day,” she told them, “and I think maybe we should all take a look at it.”

“Is Ghend up to something else?” Eliar asked.

“Not as far as I know. Of course, with Ghend you can never be sure. This has to do with variations. A rather peculiar idea came to me while we were all listening to Althalus and Gher trying to tamper with reality.”

“We were only fooling around, Em,” Althalus told her. “We weren’t really serious about it.”

“We weren’t?” Gher objected. “I thought it was a real good idea.”

“It
was,
Gher,” Dweia told him. “You just didn’t take it quite far enough, that’s all.”

“What did I miss?”

“You were concentrating too much attention on that ridiculous tunic.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Althalus protested.

“If you
really
want another tunic with ears, dear heart, I’ll make you one. How would donkey ears suit you?”

“You
wouldn’t
!”

“Not if you stop interrupting me, I won’t,” she said sweetly. “Now, then,” she continued, “as soon as someone tells Gher a story, he immediately starts thinking of ways to improve it.
This
time he raised a very interesting possibility. If we were to create a dream vision at some place and time back there when Althalus was just a common thief, it’s entirely possible that he’d be able to cozen poor Ghend into being his accomplice during the famous robbery of Gosti Big Belly. The main goal of Gher’s original scheme was to arrange things so that Althalus could keep that silly tunic, but that’s not really much of a goal, is it? It’s almost like building an entire castle just so that you’ll have a hook to hang your hat on in one of the rooms. Gher’s scheme’s just too good to waste on something that small, don’t you think?”

“
I
thought it was kind of fun,” Gher said defensively.

“I think I know of a way to make it funner,” she said with a fond little smile. “I liked the part where Althalus tricks Ghend into being his accomplice, and I
loved
the part where Althalus betrays Ghend to Gosti so that Ghend has to run for his life. But after that, it doesn’t go anyplace. A great scheme like yours should have a greater goal than some silly shirt, shouldn’t it?”

“Althalus
would
get all the gold in my plan,” Gher said.

“But it’s
his
gold in the first place isn’t it?”

“Well . . . yes, I suppose so, but the idea was to let Ghend hold it for a while and then trick him out of it.”

“Why not use the scheme to steal something from Ghend that’s
much
more important than gold?”

“What
is
there that’s more important than gold, Emmy?” Gher demanded in a baffled tone of voice.

“We’ll get to that in just a moment, Gher. I’ve noticed that you always start these schemes of yours by saying, ‘What would happen if ...’ I came up with a different ‘if’ than you did, though. What if Althalus used your scheme
not
to keep his tunic or to swindle Ghend out of his share of the gold that belonged to Althalus in the first place, but to steal Ghend’s Book instead?”

“Dear God!” Bheid exclaimed.

“I’m a little busy right now, Exarch Bheid,” Dweia told him. “Was it something important?”

“Things
would
sort of fly apart for Ghend if Althalus stole his Book and threw it into a fire, wouldn’t they?” Eliar mused.