The Redemption of Althalus

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  Then the sense of intrusion began to fade and he felt the gentle rumble of her purring within his mind. Now you are mine, her purring gloated.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded in alarm.

  You don’t have to talk out loud anymore, pet, she breathed inside his mind. Now that I’m in here, I can hear your thoughts; and you can hear mine, if you’ll just take the trouble to listen.

  “How did you do that?”

  Just think the words, Althalus. There’s an awful echo in here when you think them and say them at the same time.

  Are you really in there? He sent his thought inward.

  My awareness is. It’s also over on the bed, but it’s easy to be in two places at once with your mind. There was a kind of tickling sensation over his left ear. It’s bigger in here than I thought it’d be. You’re more clever than I’d imagined, and you’re really rather poetic.

  Will you quit rummaging around in there?

  Not a chance, pet. Cats are curious. Didn’t you know that?

  How did you manage to break through so quickly? I thought this was going to take a long time.

  So did I, to be honest. I was pushing at the barrier before you started counting. I couldn’t get through it, though. As soon as you started counting trees, the barrier went down.

  Does that mean that I’ll have to say “one-two-three” every time I want to talk with you this way?

  Not anymore, pet. I’m in now, and you’ll never get rid of me.

  It’s going to take some getting used to. I’ve never had somebody inside my head before.

  Is it really that unpleasant?

  Not really.

  Now I’ll be with you wherever you go.

  I wasn’t going to leave without you, Em. I’d been meaning to talk with you about that. I’m not going anywhere without you, kitten—even if that means that the world goes all to smash. The world doesn’t matter; you do.

  Please don’t say things like that, Althalus. Her voice inside his head had a melting sort of tone. You’re making it very hard for me to think.

  Yes, I noticed that. He considered it. When you get right down to it, though, this is where we’ve been going since I first came here, isn’t it? You started out by talking to me out loud, and a talking cat isn’t the most natural thing in the world. All we’ve done is take that one step further, so now you won’t have to waste all those thousands of years teaching me how to use the Book. We could leave right now if winter weren’t settling in. He looked at her with one raised eyebrow. “Now that you’ve opened the door, all sorts of things are coming through,” he said aloud. “I don’t want to seem critical, Em, but you shouldn’t really be having those kinds of thoughts, you know.”

  She glared at him for a moment. Then she jumped down from the bed and stalked away.

  “Are you blushing, Em?” he asked mildly.

  She turned and hissed at him.

  Part Two

  THE GATHERING

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  Stay out of there, Althalus! What’s in there is none of your concern!”

  “You’re the one who opened the door, Em,” he replied mildly. “It swings both ways, you know.”

  “Just mind your own business and quit snooping. You have to start paying closer attention. When I tell you which word to use, I’m sending a picture of what the word’s going to do. You must have the picture in your mind as well as the word. The word’s just a sound, pet. Nothing’s going to happen if all you’re doing is making noises. Now try it again.”

  “How much longer is it before we have to leave?”

  “About a month—six weeks at the most. As soon as spring arrives, we go, whether you’re ready or not.”

  “We have to pick something up in Arum?”

  “The Knife, yes.”

  “Is that the knife I’ll use when I kill Ghend?”

  “Will you stop that?”

  “Isn’t that what this is all about? Ghend’s interfering with what Deiwos is trying to do, so I’m supposed to get rid of him. It’s not really all that uncommon, Em. I’ve done it before. I’m primarily a thief, but I’ll take on a murder if the pay’s right. I thought that’s what you had in mind.”

  “It most certainly is not!”

  “It is a simple solution, Em, and you wouldn’t even have to get your little paws dirty. We go to Arum and pick up the knife. Then I go to Nekweros and cut Ghend’s throat with it.”

  “That’s not what it’s for, Althalus. It has writing on the blade. There are some people we’re going to need, and we’ll recognize them because they’ll be able to read that writing.”

  “Isn’t that just a little exotic? Talk to your brother and find out who these people are. Then we’ll chase them down and get on with this.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Althalus. Situations change. If things have happened one way, we’ll need certain people. If they’ve happened in another way, we’ll need different people. Circumstances decide exactly who we’re going to need.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean that the writing on the knife blade changes as the circumstances change?”

  “No. It’s not the writing that changes, pet. It’s the reading.”

  “Wait a minute. Doesn’t the writing mean the same thing to everybody?”

  “Of course it doesn’t. Everybody who reads any writing gets a different meaning from it. When you look at the writing on the blade, you’ll see a certain word. Other people will see a different word. Most people won’t see words at all—only decorations. The people we want will see a word, and they’ll say that word out loud.”

  “How will we know that they’ve read it right?”

  “We’ll know, pet. Believe me, we’ll know.”

  The tag end of winter dragged on for the next month or so, and then one night a warm wind blew in from the southwest, cutting the snow away almost overnight. Althalus stood at the south window watching the muddy brown streams overflowing their banks as they ripped their way down the mountainsides of Kagwher. “Did you do that, Em?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Call up that wind that’s melting all the snow.”

  “I don’t tamper with the weather, Althalus. Deiwos doesn’t like it when we do that.”

  “If we don’t tell him, maybe he won’t notice. We’re already cheating, Em. What’s one more little cheat? Maybe we should work on that a bit. You teach me how to use the Book, and I’ll teach you how to lie, cheat, and steal.” He grinned at her.

  “That isn’t funny, Althalus!” she flared.

  “I sort of liked it. How about a little wager on which of us can corrupt the other first?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Corruption’s a lot of fun, Em. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try it?”

  “You stop that!”

  “Think it over, Em, and let me know if you change your mind.”

  They were both edgy for the next week while they waited for the spring runoff to subside. Then, after the mountain streams had returned to their banks, Althalus gathered up his weapons and they made ready to leave.

  He pulled his cloak over his shoulders and looked around. “I guess that’s everything,” he said. “I’m going to miss this place. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a permanent home. Do you think we’ll be able to come back some day?”

  “I think so, yes. Shall we leave?”

  He picked her up, reached back, and spread the hood of this cloak. “Why don’t you ride back there, Em?” he suggested. “Once we get outside, I might need to have both hands free in a hurry.”

  All right, her voice murmured in his head. She crawled up over his shoulder and down into the baglike hood. This should work out just fine.

  “Will other people be able to see you when we get outside?”

  If we want them to. If we don’t, they won’t.

  He looked at the curved wall and saw that she’d put the door back.

  No questions or comments? Her silent voice sounde
d disappointed.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Em. How’s this?” He threw himself back in an exaggerated posture of amazement. “Astonishing!” he exclaimed. “There seems to be a hole in that wall! And somebody even covered that hole with a door! Would you fancy that?”

  She hissed in his ear.

  He laughed, opened the door, and started down the stairs.

  He remembered something as they were crossing the drawbridge. “This might not mean anything, Em,” he said, “but I’ll tell you anyway, since you always seem to tie your tail in a knot when I mention something that doesn’t seem very important. There was some kind of animal following me when I first came here. I never saw it, but I could definitely hear the silly thing.”

  What did it sound like?

  “It was a sort of wailing sound, but not quite like the howl of a wolf. I heard it off and on all the way here.”

  A kind of despairing scream? The kind of cry a man might make if he’d just fallen off a cliff?

  “That comes close. It wasn’t a man, though.”

  No, it probably wasn’t.

  “Should I have hidden so that I could get a look at it?”

  You wouldn’t have really wanted to see that creature. It’s something that Ghend sent to follow you, to make sure you were doing what he wanted you to do.

  “Ghend and I are going to have a little talk about that one of these days. Will that thing still be waiting out there on the other side of the bridge?”

  It might be. There’s not much we can do if it is.

  “I could chase it down and kill it.”

  You can’t kill it. It’s a spirit. Is killing always your first answer to every problem?

  “Not every problem, Em, but I can kill things—or people—when the situation calls for it, and I don’t get all weepy about it. It’s part of the business I’m in. If I do my job right, I don’t have to kill anybody, but if something goes wrong . . . ah, well.”

  You’re a terrible person, Althalus.

  “Yes, I know. Isn’t that why you hired me?”

  Hired?

  “You want something done, and you want me to do it for you. One of these days before long we’ll have to discuss my wages.”

  Wages?

  “I don’t work for nothing, Em. That’s unprofessional.” He continued on across the bridge, his spear at the ready.

  You want gold, I suppose? she asked in an accusatory tone.

  “Oh, gold’s all right, I suppose, but I’d really rather get paid in love. Love can’t be counted, so it’s probably even more valuable than gold.”

  You’re confusing me, Althalus.

  “I was trying hard enough.”

  You’re teasing me, aren’t you?

  “Would I do that? Me? Little old lovable me?”

  They reached the other side of the bridge, and Althalus stopped, listening intently for the wailing sound of Ghend’s sentinel, but the forest and mountains remained silent. “It must have gotten bored,” he said.

  Maybe, her voice murmured dubiously.

  He turned to take one last look at the House, but it wasn’t there anymore. “Did you do that?” he demanded.

  No, it takes care of that itself. You were able to see it when you came here because you were supposed to. Nobody else needs to see it, so they can’t. Let’s go to Arum, pet, she said. Then she stirred around inside the baglike hood of his cloak until she was comfortable and went to sleep.

  They covered about fifteen miles that day, traveling along the brink of the precipice Althalus still thought of as the Edge of the World, despite the frozen glaciers that now loomed off to the north. As evening approached, they took shelter in a clump of stunted trees, and Althalus built a fire. Then Emmy provided him with the words that produced bread and a roasted chicken.

  Not too bad, she observed, nibbling at a piece of chicken, but isn’t it a little overdone?

  “I don’t criticize your cooking, Em.”

  Just a suggestion, pet. I wasn’t criticizing.

  He leaned back against a tree, stretching his feet out to the fire. “I think there’s something you need to know, Em,” he said after some reflection. “Before Ghend hired me to go steal the Book, I was having a run of bad luck. It might have worn off by now, but nothing was working for me the way it was supposed to.”

  Yes, I know. I thought the paper money in Druigor’s strongbox was a nice touch, didn’t you?

  He stared at her. “It was you? You were behind all that bad luck?”

  Of course. If your luck hadn’t turned sour, you wouldn’t even have considered Ghend’s proposition, would you?

  “And before that, you were the one responsible for all the good luck I was so famous for?”

  Well, of course it was me, pet. If you hadn’t had such a streak of good luck, you wouldn’t even have recognized bad luck when it came along, would you?

  “You’re the Goddess of Fortune, aren’t you, Em?”

  It’s a sideline, pet. We all play with the luck of certain people. It’s a way to get them to cooperate.

  “I’ve been worshiping you for years, Emmy.”

  I know, and it’s been just lovely.

  “Wait a minute,” he objected. “I thought you said that you didn’t know that it was Ghend who hired me to steal the Book. If you were perched right on my shoulder to play games with my luck, how could you have missed it?”

  I wasn’t quite that close, Althalus. I knew that somebody was going to do it, but I didn’t know it’d be Ghend himself. I thought he’d have some underling take care of it—Argan, maybe, or Khnom. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been Pekhal.

  “Who are they?”

  Ghend’s underlings. I’m sure you’ll meet them before this is all over.

  “You almost got me killed in Equero, you know. Some of those arrows came awfully close when I was running across Kweso’s garden.”

  But they didn’t hit you, did they? I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you, pet.

  “That notion of paper money was your idea, wasn’t it? Nobody could actually believe that paper’s worth anything.”

  The idea’s been around for a while. People who are in the business of buying and selling things write little notes to each other. They’re a sort of promise to pay, and they’re not as cumbersome as gold. The people of Maghu have sort of formalized the idea.

  “Were you the one who arranged for Gosti Big Belly to lie to me about what was in his strong room?”

  No. That might have been Ghend. He had as much reason as I did to want you to be unlucky right then.

  “I wondered why everything was turning so sour. I had people pouring trash on my luck from both sides of the fence.”

  Isn’t it nice to have everybody so concerned about you?

  “Then my luck has changed back now?”

  Of course it has, Althalus. I’m your luck, and I’ll love you all to pieces—as long as you do just exactly as I tell you. She patted his cheek then with one soft paw.

  A few days later they reached the place where the dead tree stood. “It’s still here?” Althalus was a bit startled.

  It’s a landmark, pet. We sort of like to keep it here as a reference point.

  They turned south there and traveled down through Kagwher for a week or so. Then late one afternoon they crested a hill and saw a rude village huddled in the next valley. “What do you think, Em?” Althalus said back over his shoulder. “Should we go on in and talk with a few people? I’ve been out of touch for quite a while, so it might not be a bad idea to find out what’s happening in the world.”

  Let’s not leave memories of our passing lingering behind us, pet. Ghend has eyes and ears everywhere.

  “Good point,” he agreed. “Let’s sleep here, then. We can slip past that village before daybreak tomorrow.”

  I’m not really sleepy, Althalus.

  “Of course not. You’ve been sleeping all day. I’m the one who had to do the walking, and I’m tired.”

  All right, we�
��ll rest your poor little legs here, then.

  Althalus wasn’t really all that tired, however. There was something about the rude village below that had immediately caught his eye when he’d crested the hill. There was a corral on the southern edge of the village, and there were horses in that corral and a number of rude saddles laid over the top rail. It was still a long way to Arum, and riding would probably be faster—and easier—than walking.

  He decided not to burden Emmy with his plan. He was a master thief, after all, so he was perfectly capable of stealing a horse and saddle without any help—or commentary.

  He fixed supper, and after they’d eaten, they curled up under his cloak and went to sleep.

  What are you doing? Emmy asked with a sleepy thought as he was preparing to leave not long after midnight.

  “I thought we should get an early start and slip past that village before the people woke up. Traveling at night’s the best way I know of to avoid being seen.”

  You don’t mind if I sleep a bit longer, do you?

  “Not at all, Em,” he said. “Just curl up in your little pouch and go back to sleep.”

  She squirmed around in the hood of his cloak as he started out. Then she got settled in and purred herself back to sleep.

  She woke up rather abruptly, however, when Althalus nudged his new horse into a loping canter. I suppose I should have guessed, she murmured.

  “We are on a sort of sacred mission, aren’t we, Em?” he replied with a tone of high-minded justification. “We’re going out to save the world. It’s only right and proper that the people along the way should lend a hand, isn’t it?”

  You’ll never change, will you, Althalus?

  “Probably not, no. Go back to sleep, Em. I’ve got everything under control now.”

  Once they were mounted, they made good time, and they crossed out of Kagwher into the vast forest of Hule a couple of days after Althalus had acquired the horse.

  There were villages here and there in the deep wood of Hule now, and that offended Althalus. Hule was supposed to be wild, but now grubby little men had come here to contaminate it. The villages were squalid-looking collections of rude huts squatting on muddy ground and surrounded by garbage. They weren’t much to look at, but what really offended Althalus were the tree stumps. These wretched intruders were cutting down trees. “Civilization,” he muttered in tones of deepest contempt.