The Redemption of Althalus

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  “Who’s Emmy?”

  “As I understand it, she’s the sister of God, but right now she sort of looks like a cat, and she spends all her time sleeping in that hood Althalus has on the back of his cloak. It’s sort of complicated. Emmy’s older than the sun, and she’s very sweet, but if you make a mistake and cross her, she’ll swat the end of your nose right off.”

  Bheid looked at Althalus. “Is this boy all right?” he asked.

  “Eliar?” Althalus replied. “I think so. Of course he hasn’t had anything to eat for an hour or two, so he might be a little light-headed.”

  “I don’t understand any of this at all,” Bheid confessed.

  “Good. That’s the first step toward wisdom.”

  “This might all make more sense if I knew your sign, Althalus—and Eliar’s as well. If I can cast your horoscopes, I’ll probably know just who you are.”

  “Do you actually believe that, Bheid?” Althalus asked.

  “Astrology’s the core of all religion,” Bheid told him. “Deiwos has written our destinies in the stars. The duty of the priesthood is to study the stars so that we can give man the word of God. What’s your sign? When were you born?”

  “A very long time ago, Bheid,” Althalus said with a faint smile. “I don’t think you’d have much luck trying to cast my horoscope, because the stars have changed a lot since then. They had different names, and the people who looked at the skies didn’t see them in the same combinations that you do. Half of the Wolf was the bottom of something the old sky watchers called the Turtle, and what astrologers call the Boar now was the top half.”

  “That’s blasphemy!” Bheid exclaimed.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, Bheid. Those astrologers all died, so they won’t be able to accuse you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know, but they’d see it that way, wouldn’t they?” Althalus put his hand on Bheid’s arm. “There aren’t really any pictures in the sky, you know. As I said before, the stars aren’t connected to each other to make pictures for us to look at, but you’ve already guessed that, haven’t you? That’s why you’re having your crisis of faith. You want to believe that there’s a wolf and a boar and a dragon up there, but when you look, you just can’t really see them, can you?”

  “I try.” Bheid almost wept. “I try so very hard, but they just aren’t there.”

  “Things have just been rearranged, Bheid. You won’t have to look at the sky anymore, because Eliar’s got the Knife of Deiwos. The Knife will tell us where to go next.”

  “Are we going to leave Awes?”

  “I’m sure we are. We have a long way to go, I think.”

  You’re wasting time, Althalus. Emmy’s voice crackled inside his head. You and Bheid can speculate about the stars on the way back to Osthos.

  “Osthos!” Althalus protested out loud. “Emmy, we just came from there!”

  Yes, I know. Now we have to go back.

  “Were you talking with Emmy just now?” Eliar demanded. “Did she say that we have to go to Osthos again? I can’t go back there, Althalus! Andine would have me killed if I went back!”

  “Is there something wrong?” Bheid asked, sounding very confused.

  “We just got our marching orders,” Althalus told him. “Eliar’s a little bit unhappy about them.”

  “Did something happen just now that I missed?”

  “Emmy just told me that we have to go to Osthos.”

  “I’m not sure I understand all this talk about somebody named Emmy.”

  “Emmy’s the messenger of Deiwos—sort of. It’s a bit more complex than that, but let’s keep it simple for right now. Deiwos tells Emmy what he wants done. Then she tells me, and I pass it on.”

  “We’re taking orders from a cat?” Bheid asked incredulously.

  “No, we’re taking orders from God. We can talk about that on our way to Osthos, though. Emmy wants us to start getting ready to leave.” Althalus glanced about. “Let’s pile some more rocks on top of that dead man so that he’s not quite so visible. Then we’ll go pick up your belongings, and I’ll buy you a horse. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  They concealed the body more thoroughly and started off through the ruins toward the northern end of Awes. “Who’s this Andine person you were talking about?” Bheid asked Eliar.

  “She’s the ruler of Osthos,” Eliar replied. “She wants to kill me.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Well,” Eliar replied with a slightly pained expression, “I did sort of kill her father, I guess, but it was during a war, and that kind of thing happens during wars. I was just doing my job, but Andine took it personally. I didn’t really mean anything by it. I was just following orders, but she can’t quite understand that, I guess.”

  “Did any of that make any sense to you?” Bheid asked Althalus with a perplexed look.

  “You almost had to have been there,” Althalus told him. “It was all very complicated. We can talk about it on our way to Osthos.”

  They went to the northern end of Awes where the black-robed priests stayed, picked up Bheid’s blankets and his few other belongings, and then returned to the rudimentary camp where Althalus and Eliar had spent the previous night. Then Eliar and Bheid went to the corral of a horse trader and returned with a mount for their newest member.

  “I’m awfully hungry, Althalus,” Eliar said hopefully. “Could we have beef tonight instead of fish?”

  “I’ll make a fire,” Bheid offered.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Althalus told him. Then he called up a fairly large beef roast and several loaves of bread.

  Bheid jerked back with a startled oath.

  “Makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it?” Eliar chuckled. “I was almost afraid to eat the first supper he made that way, but the food he makes with words is really very good.” Eliar started to eat with a great deal of enthusiasm.

  “How do you do that?” Bheid asked Althalus in an awed voice.

  “Emmy calls it ‘using the Book,’ ” Althalus replied. “She taught me how to do it back in the House at the End of the World where the Book is.”

  “Which Book?”

  “The Book of Deiwos, of course.”

  “You’ve actually seen the Book of Deiwos?”

  “Seen it?” Althalus laughed. “I lived with it for twenty-five hundred years. I can recite it from end to end, forward or backward, and from side to side, if you’d really care to hear it that way. I think I could even recite it upside down if I put my mind to it.”

  “Exactly how is it that the Book of Deiwos makes it possible for you to perform miracles?”

  “The Book’s the word of God, Bheid. It’s written in a very antique language that’s sort of like the language we speak now, but not exactly. The words from the old language make things happen. If I say ‘beef,’ nothing happens, but if I say ‘gwou,’ we get supper. There’s a little more involved in the procedure, but that’s the core of it. I spent a lot of years committing the Book to memory.” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve got it in here now, so I don’t have to carry it with me—which isn’t permitted, of course. The Book has to stay in the House. It wouldn’t be safe to carry it out into the real world. You’d better eat your supper before it gets cold.”

  Eliar had several more helpings, then they talked a bit more before rolling up in their blankets to sleep.

  It was Awes. Althalus was sure that it was Awes, but it had no buildings. He could clearly see the fork of the River Medyo, but a grove of ancient trees had somehow replaced the ruins. He wandered for a time under those mighty oaks, and then he looked toward the west and saw people far off in the distance. As he watched them coming across the grassy plain toward the place where he stood, he seemed to hear a faint wailing sound coming from very far away. There was a lost, despairing quality to that wailing that seemed to wrench at his very soul.

  And then the people he’d seen reached the far bank of the ri
ver, and he could see them more clearly. They were dressed in the skins of animals, and they carried spears with stone points.

  He rolled over, muttering and groping under his blanket for the rock that had been gouging his hip. He finally located it, threw it away, and slid easily back into sleep.

  There were crude huts under the oak trees now, and the fur-clad people moved among those huts, talking, talking, talking in hushed and fearful tones. “He comes, he comes, he comes,” the people said. “Make ready for his coming, for he is God.” And the faces of some of the people were exalted, and the faces of others were filled with terror. And still they said, “He comes, he comes, he comes.”

  And Ghend moved among them, whispering, whispering. And the people pulled back from Ghend with fear upon their faces. But Ghend paid no heed to their fear, and his eyes burned, burned.

  And Ghend lifted his face and looked upon Althalus with his burning eyes. And the eyes of Ghend seared at the soul of Althalus. And Ghend spoke then, saying, “It is of little moment, my thief. Run, Althalus, run, and I shall pursue you down the nights and down the years, and the Book shall avail you not, for I shall deliver you up to the throne of Daeva, and you—even as I—shall serve him down all the endless eons. And when the eons end, we shall turn and follow them back to their beginning. And then shall we turn again, and behold, they shall not be as they were before.”

  The wailing sound rose to an awful shriek.

  Althalus started up, sweating profusely. “God!” he exclaimed, trembling violently.

  “Who was he?” Bheid’s terrified voice came out of the darkness. “Who was that man with eyes of fire?”

  “You saw him, too?” Eliar asked, his voice also trembling.

  Step aside, Althalus. Emmy’s voice inside his head had a crisp, no-nonsense quality about it. I need to talk to them.

  Althalus felt himself being rather rudely thrust aside. “Eliar,” Emmy said, “tell Bheid who I am.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Eliar responded. “Bheid,” he said, “that’s Emmy talking. She does that now and then. Althalus might still be there, but she’s using his voice.”

  “The cat?” Bheid said incredulously.

  “I wouldn’t think of her as a cat, exactly,” Eliar advised. “That’s just the way she hides what she really is. Her real form would probably blind us if we looked at her.”

  “Hush, Eliar,” Emmy said gently.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What you’ve all just experienced, gentlemen, wasn’t exactly a dream,” Emmy told them. “Althalus has met Ghend before, so he’ll be able to tell you about him—after I’ve finished using his voice. What you saw just now wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t real, either. It’s what Ghend—and Daeva—want to make real.”

  “Who were those people we saw?” Bheid asked in a trembling voice.

  “The Medyos—the first ones who came to this part of the world ten thousand years ago. They brought the worship of Deiwos with them when they came here, but Daeva’s trying to change that. He’s trying to alter things so that the first Medyos worship him instead of his kinsman Deiwos.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Bheid protested. “Once something’s happened, it can’t be changed.”

  “Keep a very firm grip on that thought, Bheid,” she advised. “It might help. Daeva doesn’t seem to agree with you, though. He believes that he can change the past—by changing the present. That’s why we’re being gathered together. We’re supposed to prevent what Daeva’s trying to do. This will happen again. You’ll see things that didn’t really happen, and you won’t always be asleep when you see them.”

  “This just stopped being fun, Emmy,” Eliar complained. “If these wide-awake dreams come popping out of nowhere the way that one did, how can we tell what’s real and what’s not?”

  “Because of the wailing,” she replied. “When you hear that wailing off in the distance, it’s a sure sign that Ghend’s trying to alter the past. You’ll also know when the wailing starts that you’re not in the present. You may be in the past or in the future, but you aren’t in the place called now.”

  Althalus looked off to the east where the first faint hint of the new day was touching the horizon. “It’s almost daybreak,” he told his companions. “Let’s gather up our things and get ready to start.”

  “We are going to have breakfast, aren’t we?” Eliar asked in a worried tone.

  Althalus sighed. “Yes, Eliar, we’ll have breakfast.”

  The sun was just coming up when the barge ferried them across the west fork of the river, and they rode toward the west. After they’d gone a few miles, Bheid trotted his horse up beside Althalus. “Can we talk?” he asked.

  “I guess that’s permitted,” Althalus replied.

  “How did you find out where the Book of Deiwos was located?” Bheid asked. “I’ve been hearing stories about it for years now. Arguments about that Book have been going on for centuries. Most of my teachers said that the Book was actually the night sky, but some said that it really did exist. Evidently those were the ones who were right.”

  “Yes,” Althalus replied, “there really is a Book.”

  “How did you find it? Did God come to you in a vision?”

  Althalus laughed. “No it wasn’t God who came to me. It was Ghend.”

  “Ghend?”

  “He looked me up and hired me to steal the Book for him. It was Ghend who told me where the House was.”

  “Why would any honest man agree to something like that?”

  “An honest man probably wouldn’t have, but I don’t have that problem. I’m a thief, Bheid.”

  “A thief?”

  “That’s a man who steals things. I’m probably the best thief in the world, so I’ve got a good reputation. Ghend tracked me down and told me that he’d pay me if I stole the Book for him. Then he told me where it was.”

  “The House at the End of the World?”

  “Well, that’s what it’s called. It’s built on the edge of a cliff up in northern Kagwher, and it’s the biggest house I’ve ever seen. It’s almost completely empty though. As far as I could tell, there’s only one room that has any furniture in it. That’s where the Book was. Of course, Emmy was there, too. She scolded me for being late, and I thought for certain that I’d gone mad. She told me to stop being silly, and then she taught me how to read.”

  “From the Book of Deiwos?” Bheid asked reverently.

  “It was the only Book there.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s a box covered with white leather. The pages are stacked inside the box. Emmy used to come all unraveled if I mixed up the pages. Anyway, I learned how to read the Book, and then Emmy and I found a way to speak to each other without using our voices. Then we left the House to go find the Knife. We discovered that Eliar had it. He’s a mercenary soldier, and he was fighting in that war between Kanthon and Osthos that’s been going on for forty or fifty generations now. Eliar was leading an attack on the walls of Osthos, and he killed the Aryo during the fighting. The Aryo’s daughter, Andine, didn’t like that at all, and since Eliar’d been taken prisoner, she started thinking about all sorts of interesting things to do to him. I posed as a slave trader and bought him from her. Then we came here to find you. Now we’re going back to Osthos to find somebody else.”

  “How long ago was it? When Ghend hired you, I mean?”

  “Emmy says it was twenty-five hundred years ago. From what she tells me, people don’t age in the House. It’s just as well, really. If I’d aged normally, I’d have a white beard about twelve miles long by now.”

  “Is Emmy really the sister of God?”

  “That’s what she tells me. Her name’s Dweia, but she says she doesn’t actually look much like that statue in her temple in Maghu.”

  “You worship a female God?” Bheid’s eyes bulged in outrage.

  “I don’t worship her, Bheid. I love her, but I don’t worship her. Worship means absolute obedience, and i
t involves a lot of groveling. I do what Emmy tells me to do most of the time, but I don’t spend much time on my knees. We argue all the time, actually. Emmy likes to argue—almost as much as she likes to sneak up and pounce on me.”

  “May I touch her?” Bheid asked in an almost reverent tone.

  “Emmy,” Althalus said back over his shoulder. “Wake up. Bheid wants to rub your ears.”

  Emmy poked her sleepy-eyed face up out of his hood. “That would be nice,” she murmured.

  Althalus reached back, lifted her out of his hood, and held her out to Bheid. “Go ahead and hold her, Bheid,” he said. “She’ll steal your soul, of course, but why should you be any different from Eliar and me?”

  Bheid jerked his hand back.

  “I’m only joking, Bheid,” Althalus said.

  Are you really all that certain, pet? Emmy asked, her green eyes turning sly.

  Bheid’s hands were trembling as he took her from Althalus, but he relaxed when Emmy started purring.

  “When are we going to stop for lunch?” Eliar called from behind them.

  They rode on across western Medyo, keeping off the main roads whenever possible. The sudden appearance of the cockeyed man back in Awes indicated a likelihood that Ghend had agents everywhere. Althalus knew that they could deal with those agents, but unnecessary killings went against his grain. A really good thief shouldn’t have to kill people.

  It was midsummer by the time they approached the bridge across the west fork of the River Osthos, and Althalus prudently turned aside from the road and led Eliar and Bheid into a grove of trees some distance upstream.

  Em, he said silently after they’d dismounted, just exactly who are we supposed to find there in Osthos?

  Guess, she replied rather smugly.

  Don’t do that, he scolded.

  You’ve already met her, pet.

  He blinked. You’re not serious! He almost said it out loud.

  Oh, yes.

  How are we supposed to get inside her palace?

  You’re the thief, Althalus, she replied. If you can steal things, I’m sure you’ll be able to steal one little girl.