The Redemption of Althalus (9 page)

“I wish I could,” he found himself saying, and he cursed his tongue. “I would go gladly, but it’s very hard to get away.”

“If you come with me, you will never return,” she told him in her throbbing voice, “for we shall walk among the stars, and fortune will never betray you more. And your days will be filled with sun and your nights with love. Come. Come with me, my beloved. I will care for you.” And she beckoned and turned to lead him.

And, all bemused, he followed her, and they walked out among the clouds, and the moon and the fire of God welcomed them and blessed their love.

And when he awoke, there was a sour emptiness in him, and the taste of all the world was bitter, bitter.

He continued on toward the northeast for the next several days, and he almost hoped that at some point he might see a peak or even a lowlying shadow emerging from the perpetual cloud beyond the Edge of the World to prove that this was
not
the place where everything ended. But nothing ever emerged, and he gradually and with great reluctance was forced to concede that the sharp brink he followed was indeed the very Edge of the World and that there was nothing beyond but cloudy emptiness.

The days grew shorter and the nights more chill as Althalus followed the Edge of the World, and he began to look at the prospect of a very unpleasant winter looming ahead. If he didn’t come to the house Ghend had described very soon, he’d have to pull back, seek some kind of shelter, and lay in a supply of food. He decided that the first snowflake that touched his face would send him south in search of someplace to hole up until spring. He began to keep his eyes directed toward the south in search of a break in the mountains, even as he continued along the Edge of the World.

Perhaps it was because his attention was divided that he didn’t even see the house until he was quite close to it. The house was made of stone, which was unusual here on the frontier, where most houses were made of logs or thatched limbs. Moreover, such houses as he had seen in civilized lands had been made of limestone.
This
house, however, had been built of granite blocks, and granite would eat up at a ferocious rate the bronze saws that slaves used to cut limestone.

Althalus had never seen a house like this one before. The granite house at the Edge of the World was enormous, bigger even than the log fort of Gosti Big Belly back in Arum or the temple of Apwos in Deika. It was so huge that it rivaled several nearby natural spires for sheer size. It wasn’t until he saw windows that he finally accepted the fact that it really
was
a house. Natural rock formations
do
break off into square shapes from time to time, but a natural formation with windows? Not very likely.

It was about noon on a short, overcast late autumn day when Althalus first saw the house, and he approached it with some caution. Ghend had told him that it was unoccupied, but Ghend had probably never been here, since Althalus was still convinced that Ghend was afraid of the house.

The silent house stood on a promontory that jutted out from the Edge of the World, and the only way to approach it would be to cross the drawbridge that had been built to span the deep chasm that separated the house from the narrow plateau that lined the precipice where the world ended. If the house was indeed deserted, the owner would certainly have devised some way to raise that drawbridge before he’d left. But the drawbridge was down, almost inviting entry. That didn’t ring true at all, and Althalus ducked down behind a moss-covered boulder to gnaw at a fingernail and consider options.

The day was wearing on, and he’d have to decide soon whether to just walk on in or wait until night. Night was the native home of all thieves; but under these circumstances, might it not be safer to cross that bridge in the daylight? The house was unfamiliar, and if the place was indeed occupied, the people inside would be alert at night, and they would know exactly how to slip up behind him if he tried to sneak inside. Might it not be better to openly cross the bridge and even shout some kind of greeting to the unseen occupants? That
might
persuade them that he had no evil intent, and he was fairly sure that he could talk fast enough to keep them from immediately hurling him into the void beyond the promontory.

“Well,” he muttered, “I guess it’s worth a try.” If the house was indeed empty, all he’d be wasting was his breath. He still had lots of that, and trying to sneak in at night might be a very good way to cut it short. A show of friendly innocence really seemed to be the best approach right now.

Acting on that, he rose to his feet, took up his spear, and walked on across the bridge, making no effort to conceal himself. If anyone was in the house watching, he’d certainly see Althalus, and a casual saunter across the bridge would shout louder than words that he had no unsavory motives.

The bridge led to a massive arch, and just beyond that arch lay an open place where the ground was covered with closely fitting flat stones with weeds growing up through the cracks. Althalus braced himself and took a tighter grip on his spear. “Ho!” he shouted. “Ho, the house!” He paused, listening intently.

But there was no answer.

“Is anybody here?” he tried again.

The silence was oppressive.

The main door of the house was massive. Althalus poked his spear at it a few times and found it to be quite solid. Once again the warning bell sounded inside his head. If the house had been empty for as long as Ghend had suggested, the door should have completely rotted away by now. All sorts of normal rules didn’t appear to be in force here. He took hold of the massive ring and pulled the heavy door open. “Is anybody here?” he called once more.

He waited again, but again there was no answer.

There was a broad corridor leading back into the house beyond the doorway, and there were other corridors branching off from that main one at regular intervals, and there were many doors in each corridor. The search for the book would obviously take longer than he’d thought.

The light inside the house was growing dimmer, and Althalus was fairly certain that evening was rapidly descending. He was obviously running out of daylight. The first order of business now was to find a secure place to spend the night. He could begin his search of the house tomorrow.

He looked down one of the side corridors and saw a rounded wall at the far end, which hinted strongly that there might be a tower there. A tower room, he reasoned, would probably be more secure than a chamber on the ground floor, and the notion of security in this peculiar structure seemed fairly important just now.

He hurried down the hall and found a door somewhat larger than those he’d previously passed. He rapped his sword hilt against the door. “Ho, in there?” he called.

But of course there was no answer.

The door latch was a bronze bar that had been designed to slip into a hole chipped deep into the stone door frame. Althalus tapped its knob with the butt of his sword until it cleared the hole. Then he poked the point of his sword into the edge of the door, flipped the door open, and jumped back, sword and spear at the ready.

There was nobody behind that door, but there were steps leading upward.

The likelihood that these hidden steps just
happened
to be behind a door Althalus had just
happened
to notice in passing was very, very slim. The clever thief had a profound distrust of things that came about by sheer chance. Chance was almost always a trap of some kind, and if there
was
a trap in this house, there almost had to be a trapper.

There wasn’t much daylight left, however, and Althalus didn’t really want to meet whomever it was at night. He drew in a deep breath. Then he tapped the first step with the butt end of his spear to make certain that the weight of his foot wouldn’t bring something heavy down on top of him. It was slow going up the stairs that way, but the careful thief methodically checked every single step before he put his foot on it. Just because ten steps had been perfectly safe, there were no guarantees that the eleventh wouldn’t kill him, and the way his luck had been going lately, it was better to take some extra precautions.

He finally reached the door at the top of those hidden steps, and he decided not to rap this time. He tucked his sword under his left arm and slowly pushed the latch back until it came clear of the stone door frame. Then he took hold of his sword again and nudged the door open with his knee.

Beyond the door there was one room, and one only. It was a large, circular room, and the floor was as glossy as ice. The whole house was strange, but this particular room seemed stranger still. The walls were also polished and smooth, and they curved inward to form a dome overhead. The workmanship that had created this room was far more advanced than anything Althalus had ever seen before.

The next thing he noticed was how warm the room seemed to be. He looked around, but there was no fire pit to explain the warmth. His new cloak wasn’t necessary here.

Reason told him that the room should not be warm, since there was no fire and there were four broad windows, one looking out in each direction. There should be cold air blowing in through each of those unglazed windows, but there was not. That wasn’t at all natural. Winter was coming, so the air outside was bitterly cold; but it wasn’t coming in, for some reason.

Althalus stood in the doorway carefully looking over every bit of the domed, circular room. There was what appeared to be a very large stone bed against the far wall, and the bed was covered with dark, thick-furred bison robes. There was a table made of the same polished stone as the floor and walls, and the table rested on a stone pedestal in the center of the floor, and there was an ornately carved stone bench beside that table.

And there, resting on the precise center of that gleaming tabletop, was the book Ghend had described.

Althalus cautiously approached the table. Then he leaned his spear against it, and with his sword firmly gripped in his right hand, he rather hesitantly reached out with his left. Something about the way Ghend had handled that black-boxed book of his back in Nabjor’s camp had suggested that books should be approached with extreme caution. He touched his fingers to the soft white leather of the book’s enclosing box, and then he snatched his hand away to grab up his spear as he heard a faint sound.

It was a soft, contented sort of sound that seemed to be coming from the fur-covered bed. The sound was not exactly continuous, but seemed to change pitch slightly, going in and out almost like breathing.

Before he could investigate, though, something else happened that took his attention away from that soft sound. Twilight was deepening outside the windows, but it was not growing dark in this room. He looked up in astonishment. The dome above him had begun to glow, growing slowly brighter and perfectly matching its brightening to the pace of the increasing darkness outside. The only source of light other than the sun, the moon, and the shimmering curtain of God’s light at the Edge of the World was fire, and the dome over his head was not on fire.

Then that contented sound coming from the bed grew even louder, and now that the light from the dome over his head was growing brighter, Althalus could see the source of that sound. He blinked, and then he almost laughed. The sound was coming from a cat.

It was a very dark cat, almost black, and it blended so well into the dark fur of the bison robes on the bed that his cursory glance when he’d first entered the room had missed it entirely. The cat lay on its belly with its head up, though its eyes were closed. Its front paws were stretched out on the robe in front of its short-furred chest, and they were making little kneading motions. The sound that had so baffled Althalus was the sound of purring.

Then the cat opened its eyes. Most of the cats Althalus had seen before had looked at him with yellow eyes. This cat’s eyes, however, were a brightly glowing green.

The cat rose to its feet and stretched, yawning and arching its sinuous back and hooking its tail up. Then the furry creature sat down, looking into the face of Althalus with its penetrating green eyes as if it had known him all its life.

“You certainly took your own sweet time getting here,” the cat observed in a distinctly feminine voice. “Now why don’t you go shut that door you left standing wide open? It’s letting in the cold, and I just
hate
the cold.”

C H A P T E R     F I V E

A
lthalus stared at the cat in utter disbelief. Then he sighed mournfully and sank down onto the bench in absolute dejection. His luck hadn’t been satisfied with everything else she’d done to him. Now she was twisting the knife.
This
was why Ghend had hired somebody else to steal the book instead of doing it himself. The House at the End of the World didn’t need guards or hidden traps to protect it. It protected itself and the book from thieves by driving anyone who entered it mad. He sighed and looked reproachfully at the cat.

“Yes?” she said with that infuriatingly superior air all cats seem to have. “Was there something?”

“You don’t have to do that anymore,” he told her. “You and this house have already done what you’re supposed to do. I’ve gone completely insane.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Cats can’t talk. It’s impossible. You aren’t really talking to me, and now that I think about it, you’re probably not really even there. I’m seeing you and hearing you talk because I’ve gone crazy.”

“You’re being ridiculous, you know.”

“Crazy people
are
ridiculous. I met a crazy man on my way here, and he went around talking to God. Lots of people talk to God, but that old fellow believed that God talked back to him.” Althalus sighed mournfully. “It’ll probably all be over before long. Since I’m crazy now, it shouldn’t be very long until I throw myself out of the window and fall on down through the stars forever and ever. That’s the sort of thing a crazy man would do.”

“What do you mean by ‘fall forever’?”

“This house is right at the end of the world, isn’t it? If I jump out that window, I’ll just fall and fall through all that nothing that’s out there.”