The Redemption of Althalus
Page 28
“It’s an act of faith, then?” Bheid suggested.
“Exactly. We make things so by believing that they are so.”
“There are people out there who believe all kinds of very strange things, Dweia,” Eliar objected. “Those things aren’t true just because they believe they’re true, are they?”
“They’re true for them.”
“That’s why it’s a lot better not to believe in anything, Eliar,” Gher told him. “That way things don’t get all mixed up.”
“It makes the world a little lonely, though, doesn’t it?” Eliar asked.
“You learn to live with it.”
“Mankind must believe in something, Gher,” Bheid told the boy.
“Why?”
“Because . . .” Bheid faltered.
“We have a long way to go with Gher, don’t we?” Leitha asked.
“I’d say so, yes,” Althalus agreed. “But he’s a good little boy, so he’ll be patient and show us the way.”
“That’s not what I meant, Althalus.”
“I know, but you’re just getting started.”
“That will do, Althalus,” Dweia said quite firmly.
“Yes, dear.”
Gher was frowning. “Ghend can do this, too, can’t he?” he asked. “I mean, he’s got that place in Nekweros, and it’s got doors the same as this house does too, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s called Nahgharash.”
“That’s how he—or those others—can keep popping out of nowhere, isn’t it? That’s going to make this all very interesting.”
“Define ‘interesting,’ ” Dweia told him.
“Fun,” Gher said. “Ghend pops up here; we pop up there; and nobody knows just exactly where anybody else is—or who he’ll have with him—when he shows up. This’ll be the funnest game anybody’s ever come up with.”
“ ‘Funnest’?” Eliar asked. “I don’t think there is such a word.”
“You understood what I meant, didn’t you?” Gher asked.
“I suppose I did, but—”
“Then that makes it a word, doesn’t it?”
“This one’s going to give me headaches, I think,” Dweia said.
“It’s Osthos!” Andine exclaimed when Eliar opened the door at the far end of one of the long, dimly lighted corridors in the south wing of the House.
“Just look, Andine,” Dweia commanded. “Don’t go through right now. We don’t have enough time to go looking for you.”
Althalus noticed that the threshold of the doorway was rather hazy, but everything beyond the doorway was sharp and clear. A cobblestoned street led past a number of the shops he’d seen the last time he’d been in Osthos, and then the street went slightly up a hill to Andine’s palace.
“You’d better close the door, Eliar,” Dweia suggested. “It’s letting in the time.”
“Ma’am?” Eliar asked in a puzzled tone of voice.
“We don’t want time to move just yet. We aren’t prepared. We still have quite a bit of ground to cover, and we need to have time stand still until we’re ready.”
“I really don’t understand this, Emmy,” Eliar said, closing the door.
“You don’t have to just yet.”
“You speak of time as if it were some kind of weather, Divinity,” Leitha observed.
“They’re sort of similar, Leitha.” Dweia paused, looking curiously at the pale girl from Kweron. “Tell me, dear,” she said. “Why do you persist in calling me ‘Divinity’ the way you always do?”
“It’s a term of respect, Divinity,” Leitha replied, her blue eyes open very wide.
“No, Leitha, it isn’t. You don’t really respect anybody. You’re doing it to tease me, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t think of teasing a Goddess, Dweia,” Leitha protested.
“Oh, yes you would. I don’t really mind, of course, but I thought we should clear it up.”
“That takes a lot of the fun out of it,” Leitha protested.
“I don’t mind a little teasing, Leitha. It’s a way of playing. I spent a very long time as Emmy the cat, so I know all about playing. One of these days I’ll show you.”
“I’ll be good,” Leitha promised.
“I sort of doubt that. Take us to Kanthon, Eliar.”
They spent about a week exploring the possibilities of the doors in the House—at least it seemed like a week. Althalus had decided not to pursue the difference between “seems” and “is.”
Eliar served as their guide during these excursions. Dweia’s explanation of the process wasn’t very detailed. The Knife was involved in some way, Althalus gathered. Whatever his inspiration may have been, Eliar unerringly led them to the correct door when Dweia suggested that they look at some other place. “I haven’t got the faintest idea of how I know which door we want,” Eliar confessed. “I just do. Emmy says ‘Agwesi,’ and I immediately know which door I’m supposed to open. Half the time, I don’t even know which country the place is in.”
“You don’t really have to know, dear boy,” Andine said fondly. “The Knife told you to ‘lead,’ didn’t it? That’s exactly what you’re doing. Don’t change a thing. We all love you just the way you are.” She gently stroked his cheek. Andine couldn’t seem to keep her hands off Eliar for some reason.
Finally, Dweia suggested that they return to their classroom. “We’ve more or less taken care of everything we needed to attend to here,” she told them. “We know how to use the House—at least partially—and a few other things are in place now, so it’s time for us to go back out.”
“Partially?” Gher asked shrewdly. “Doesn’t that sort of mean that the House can do some other things as well as take us from place to place?”
“Let’s hold off on that for now,” Dweia said.
“I’m really curious, Emmy,” the boy said. “I think I’ve got an idea—well, sort of, anyway. Would it bother you if I just threw it into the air and we all took a look at it?”
“It takes quite a bit to bother, me, Gher. Go ahead and throw it out.”
“You said that the House plays with time—I mean, time moves or doesn’t move the way you want it to.”
“Yes.”
“Well, the House plays with distance by using the doors, doesn’t it?”
“It’s a little more complex, but that more or less sums it up, yes.”
“If it’s playing with distance that way, can’t it play with time the same way?” He paused for a moment. “I’m not saying this too well, am I? You told us that the House is everywhere—all at the same time.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“It’s Everywhen then, too, isn’t it? What I’m getting at is that there’s probably a door to last week somewhere in the House—or one that leads to next year. Am I making any sense at all with this?”
Dweia’s eyes grew troubled. “You aren’t really supposed to be asking that kind of question yet, Gher.”
“You just said ‘yet,’ Emmy,” the boy said with a certain note of triumph. “That sort of means that we’ll get to that part on down the line, doesn’t it?”
Dweia’s green eyes narrowed. “It’s my turn to ask a question, Gher,” she said.
“I probably wouldn’t be able to answer it, Emmy. I’m just a country boy, remember.”
“Let’s find out, shall we? Distance is space, isn’t it?”
“Well . . . Sort of, I guess.”
“What’s the difference between space and time?”
Gher frowned slightly. “As far as I can tell, there isn’t any difference. They’re the same thing, aren’t they?”
Dweia drew in a sharp breath. “Who have you been talking with, Gher?” she demanded. “Where did you get that idea?”
“It just came to me, I guess. When you said ‘space’ instead of ‘distance,’ several things sort of clicked together. Did I say something I wasn’t supposed to say, Emmy? I’m sorry if it upset you.”
“It didn’t upset me, Gher. It just surprised
me, that’s all. The unity of space and time is something very few people have realized yet.”
“I’ve been thinking about it ever since Eliar told me about that dream you all had back in Awes,” Gher explained. “Then when we started using the doors to hop around in space, I sort of came up with the notion that maybe Ghend was using his doors to hop around in time, and if hopping is hopping, it wouldn’t make any difference whether you were hopping in space or hopping in time. That sort of told me that there isn’t any difference—that space and time are the same thing. It didn’t make much sense at first, but it sort of fits together now. When you get right down to it, it explains a whole lot of things, doesn’t it?”
“Dear God!” Bheid exclaimed in an awed voice.
“Yes?” Dweia replied.
“I wasn’t . . . I mean, I was just . . .” Bheid floundered.
“You really shouldn’t throw the word ‘God’ around like that, Bheid,” she scolded. “It’s very distracting. Does what Gher just said bother you for some reason?”
“Is this boy human?” Bheid asked, looking at Gher with an awed expression. “His thought goes so far beyond mine that I can only understand about half of what he’s talking about.”
“He is a bit unusual,” Dweia conceded.
“Unusual or not, he’s still our Gher,” Andine said. She reached out and playfully mussed Gher’s hair. “He’s just a tousle-headed little boy who definitely needs to take a bath.”
“I just took one last week, ma’am,” Gher protested.
“It’s time for another one.”
“Already?”
“It doesn’t really hurt, Gher,” Andine said. Then she laughed, threw her arms about the boy, and hugged him to her.
C H A P T E R E I G H T E E N
They won’t believe you, Brother Bheid,” Eliar told their priest. “We Arums are trained not to believe anything the lowlanders tell us. We don’t believe in your wars, we don’t believe in your customs, and we don’t believe in your Gods.”
“Your lives are empty, then.”
“The money sort of fills that up—at least that’s what Sergeant Khalor told us.”
“He must be a very evil man.”
“You’re wrong, Bheid,” Althalus disagreed. “Sergeant Khalor’s a very good soldier who knows enough not to believe people when they talk about heavenly rewards instead of the money in advance. The Arums work only for pay, and that makes it nice and simple.”
“Where can we possibly get enough money to hire all the Arums?”
“I’ve got a secret little gold mine, Bheid,” Althalus replied. “I can buy the whole of Arum—several times over, probably. The Arums are the best soldiers in the world, and they know how to train other people to be fairly good as well. That’s what we really need. The ragtag armies of the rest of the world fight for their beliefs, which can change with the seasons. The Arums fight for gold, which never changes. A platoon of Arums can train an entire army to be fairly good soldiers in about two months. Then they’ll be able to give that army advice about strategy and tactics. Eliar here is only about fifteen years old, and he already knows more about tactics than most of the generals in the low country.”
Eliar made a wry face. “When Sergeant Khalor teaches, you learn—one way or the other—and the first thing you learn is to do just exactly what he tells you to do. He teaches by fist, mostly.”
“That’s cruel,” Andine said.
“No, ma’am,” Eliar disagreed. “Actually it’s a form of kindness. My Sergeant was teaching us how to stay alive, and that’s just about the kindest thing anybody can do. People get killed in wars. My Sergeant trained me not to be one of them.”
“Then it’s a kind of love?”
“I don’t think I’d go that far. He wanted us to stay alive so that he’d have enough men when the next battle came along. The most important part of strategy is keeping your men alive. If you take care of your men, they’ll take care of you.”
“Have we more or less finished here in the House, Dweia?” Althalus asked.
“For now, yes.”
“Then we might as well go talk with Chief Albron. His clan isn’t the biggest one in Arum, but he knows us, so we’ll be able to talk with him without all the tiresome introductions.”
“My Chief is highly respected by the other Clan Chiefs, Althalus,” Eliar asserted.
“I’m sure he is, and he and I got along quite well. Of course, I did sort of lie to him about the Knife, but I should be able to clear that up without too much trouble. The really important thing here is that only a Clan Chief can call for a general conclave of the Chiefs of Arum, and we won’t have time to visit every clan in the entire country. We need to talk to them all at the same time, and Albron’s the key to that.”
“The arms room might be best, Eliar,” Althalus said to the young Arum that evening at supper. “I don’t think we should just suddenly appear in the street outside your Chief’s castle. Ghend probably has eyes everywhere. Do you think you could manage that?”
“I think so,” Eliar replied. “I haven’t tried it yet, of course, but I get the feeling that I could even pick which part of a room I want to come out in.”
“Would a suggestion upset anybody?” Leitha asked.
“It wouldn’t bother me,” Eliar replied, filling his plate again.
“I’m supposed to do that for you, Eliar,” Andine objected. “Now put that back and give me your plate.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said apologetically.
“Aren’t people going to be a little startled if we all just suddenly appear out of nowhere?” Leitha asked.
“Is there some way around that?” Bheid asked her.
“Why not just go in through the door? We’ll be going through a door anyway, so it’ll seem more natural to us—and to anybody on the other side.”
“Make it so that this side of the door is here and that side of the door is there?” Gher asked.
“Nicely put, Gher,” Leitha complimented the boy.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Gher dipped his head slightly. “Maybe sometime, though, we could just pop out of nowhere.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because it’d be funner that way,” Gher said, grinning. “I’d love to see somebody’s eyes pop out.” Then he looked at Althalus. “That’d be a slick way to rob somebody, wouldn’t it, Master Althalus? You know—pop out, grab his purse, and then pop back in again. We could steal most of the money in the world that way—and never really leave home.”
“Well, now,” Althalus said in an almost dreamy voice. “Well now indeed.”
“Never mind,” Dweia told him flatly.
Andine set Eliar’s plate down on the table in front of him. “Eat it before it gets cold, Eliar,” she instructed.
“Yes, Andine,” he replied, picking up his spoon.
There was something slightly unnerving about the intensity of Andine’s expression as she watched Eliar eat. Althalus shuddered slightly and looked away.
“When did you get back home, Eliar?” Rheud, the kilted, red-bearded armorer asked when they all trooped in through the door to his arms room.
“Just now, Rheud,” Eliar replied.
Althalus felt just a bit light-headed as he stepped through the doorway. There seemed to be a peculiar sort of dislocation involved in stepping across all those miles.
Just relax, Althalus, Emmy the cat purred softly to him from her customary place in the hood of his cloak. Althalus realized that it was ridiculous, but he had missed Emmy during the past several weeks.
I wasn’t sure it was really going to work, Em. Looking through a doorway at a place hundreds of miles away is one thing, but crossing all those miles with a single step is something altogether different.
You didn’t trust me?
Of course I did, Em—at least out in front.
But not in back, I see.
Talking about it is one thing, Em. Actually doing it is something else.
“I see that you found our boy, Master Althalus,” Rheud said. “Did he have that knife you were looking for?”
“Oh, yes,” Althalus told him. “It was a little complicated, but everything’s pretty much the way it’s supposed to be now.”
“You don’t seem to be traveling alone anymore,” Rheud observed, stroking his bristling red beard and eying Andine and Leitha.
“Just a few old friends I hadn’t met before,” Althalus replied. “Is Chief Albron in the main hall right now?”
“He should be,” Rheud replied. “He usually lingers over breakfast. He’s all business first thing in the morning, and he says that he can get about half of his day’s work done before he leaves the table. Did your cousin’s assassins give you any trouble down there in the low country?”
“No, not really,” Althalus replied. “I managed to give them the slip.”
“You might want to thank our Chief for that,” Rheud told him. “He sent out the word that anybody asking questions about you—or about that fancy knife—was to be detained. You definitely came down on the good side of Chief Albron, Master Althalus.”
“We got along well. Did he intercept very many of my cousin’s henchmen?”
“There were a few,” Rheud replied. “There was one bulky sort of fellow with no forehead to speak of who was a bit of a problem, I understand. From what I hear, it took a dozen men to swarm him under.”
“Oh?”
“He said that his name was Pegoyl, or something like that.”
“Pekhal, maybe?”
“That might have been it, yes. The clansmen who took him in charge finally just slapped an iron collar around his neck and hitched him to a team of six oxen to drag him here—after they discovered that a two-ox team couldn’t budge him.”
“Is he still here, Rheud?” Eliar asked intently.
“No, he managed to escape—ate his way through the door of the dungeon, some men say. You’re lucky you didn’t come across that one, Master Althalus. He was more animal than man.”