The Redemption of Althalus (97 page)

Althalus held up the sheet and looked at it, feigning a look of blank incomprehension. “Is this what writing’s supposed to look like?” he demanded. “It looks to me like meaningless scrawling.”

“You’ve got it upside down,” Khnom told him.

“Oh.” Althalus turned the page and looked at it blankly for a while. “It still doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

It was all he could do, however, to keep from throwing the dreadful sheet into the fire. The Book of Daeva was not something for the faint at heart, and some of the words on the page seemed almost to leap into flame right before his eyes. “I still can’t make any sense out of this,” he lied, handing the sheet of parchment back to Ghend, “but that’s not important. All I really need to know is that I’m looking for a black box with leather sheets inside.”

“The box we want is white,” Ghend corrected as he reverently replaced the sheet in the box. “Well,” he said then, “are you interested in the proposition?”

“I’ll need a few more details,” Althalus replied. “Just exactly where is this book, and how well is it guarded?”

“It’s in the House at the End of the World over in Kagwher.”

“I know where Kagwher is,” Althalus said, “but exactly where in Kagwher is this place?”

“Up north. It’s up in that part of Kagwher that doesn’t see the sun in the winter and where there isn’t any night in summer.”

“That’s a peculiar place for somebody to live.”

“Truly. The owner of the book doesn’t live there anymore, though, so there won’t be anybody there to interfere with you when you go inside the House to steal the book.”

“That’s convenient. Can you give me any kind of landmarks? I can move faster if I know where I’m going.”

“Just follow the Edge of the World. When you see a House, you’ll know it’s the right place. It’s the only House up there.”

Althalus drank off his mead. “That sounds simple enough,” he said. “Now, then, after I’ve stolen the book, how do I find you to get my pay?”

“I’ll find you, Althalus.” Ghend’s deep-sunk eyes burned even hotter. “Believe me, I’ll find you.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“I said I’d think about it. Now, why don’t we have some more of Nabjor’s mead? I seem to have come into some money here lately, so we can afford to have a good time.”

They talked and drank mead until well after sundown, and after a while, Nabjor began to yawn rather ostentatiously.

“Why don’t you go to bed, Nabjor?” Althalus suggested.

“I have to mind the store, Althalus.”

“Just mark the side of the crock, Mister Nabjor,” Gher suggested. “Put a line where the mead is now and another line where it is in the morning. That way you’ll know how much we drank. I can carry their cups to them.”

Nabjor threw a quick glance at Althalus.

Althalus nodded, and then he winked.

“I
am
just a little tired,” Nabjor admitted. “You gentlemen wouldn’t mind if I left you to take care of yourselves, would you?”

“Not a bit,” Khnom told him. “We’re all old friends here, so we won’t start brawling and breaking up your furniture.”

Nabjor laughed. “I’d hardly call a few peeled logs furniture,” he said. “Good night then, gentlemen.” He crossed the clearing to the roughly built hut where he slept.

Gher took over the chore of bringing mead to the men at the fire, and Althalus soon noticed that
his
mead had been watered down noticeably; he suspected that the mead Ghend and Khnom were drinking had also been altered, but
not
with water.

It didn’t really take very long for the doctored mead Ghend and Khnom were drinking to begin to show some results. They’d been exhausted when they’d come into camp anyway, and the mead Gher was serving them soon pushed them over the edge. The fire in Ghend’s eyes grew dim, and Khnom began to sway from side to side on the log where he sat. After two more cups of the doctored mead they both slid off the log and began to snore.

“Where did you get the special mead?” Althalus asked Gher.

“The lady who’s been darning my socks told me about it. Nabjor uses it on some of his customers now and then—
if
they’ve got a lot of money, but don’t want to spend it.”

“Just exactly what are you up to, Althalus?” Nabjor demanded in a hoarse whisper as he came out of his hut. “Aren’t those two your friends?”

“I wouldn’t go quite
that
far, Nabjor,” Althalus replied. “Business associates, yes, but not exactly friends. Ghend’s trying to bamboozle me into stealing something for him that’s a lot more valuable than he cares to admit, and it’s in a place that’s so dangerous that he’s afraid to go steal it himself. That’s hardly the act of a friend, now is it?”

“Not hardly,” Nabjor agreed. “If you’re going to kill them, don’t do it here.”

“Oh, we’re not going to kill them, Nabjor,” Althalus said with a wicked grin. “I’m just going to prove to Ghend that I’m a lot slicker than he is. Go fetch our imitation Book, Gher.”

“Right,” Gher said, grinning broadly.

“I thought you didn’t know what a book was,” Nabjor said. “You certainly made quite a show of that.”

“It’s called ‘playing dumb,’ Mister Nabjor,” Gher said. “It’s always easy to swindle somebody who thinks he’s smarter than you are.” Gher went to where their saddles were and took out the book Dweia had given them. “Do you want me to switch them now, Althalus?” he asked.

“That’s your job, Gher. Just make sure that Ghend’s saddlebag looks the same when you’re finished.”

“And did you want to show me how to walk, too?” Gher asked.

“That boy’s got a very clever mouth, doesn’t he?” Nabjor said.

“I know,” Althalus agreed. “He’s good though, so I put up with him.” He fished a gold coin out of his purse and held it up for Nabjor to see. “Do me a favor, old friend. Ghend and Khnom drank quite a bit of your special mead before they drifted off, and they won’t be feeling very good when they wake up. They’ll need some medicine to make them feel better. Give them as much of that doctored mead as they can drink, and if they’re feeling delicate again the day after tomorrow, get them well again with the same medicine.”

“How did you find out about my special mead?”

“I’ve used doctored mead occasionally myself, Nabjor, so I recognize the effects.”

“Are you going to steal their gold, too?”

“No, I don’t want them to get excited and start looking at Ghend’s book
too
closely. It’s a fairly good copy, but it’s not entirely the same. Keep the two of them drunk and happy, and if they ask, tell them that I’ve gone to Kagwher to steal that other book for them.”

“After this is all over, come on back and tell me how it all turned out,” Nabjor said with a broad grin.

“I’ll do that,” Althalus promised, even though he knew that this was the last time he’d ever see Nabjor. “Be the friendly tavern keeper, my friend,” he said. “Cure Ghend and Khnom of any unwholesome urges to follow Gher and me. I don’t like to be followed when I’m working, so make them good and drunk right here, so that I don’t have to make them both good and dead somewhere up in the mountains.”

“You can depend on me, Althalus,” Nabjor said, eagerly snatching the gold coin from his friend’s fingers.

C H A P T E R     F O R T Y - S E V E N

A
lthalus had a peculiar sense of dislocation as he and Gher rode east from Nabjor’s camp through the tag end of night. Their elaborate modification of the past had gone well—almost too well, perhaps. Their alterations hadn’t really been all that extensive, but they’d set some things in motion that Althalus didn’t fully understand.

“You’re awful quiet,” Gher said as they rode through the forest.

“I’m just a little edgy, that’s all,” Althalus told him. “I think we might have opened some doors that we didn’t really want to.”

“Emmy can take care of it.”

“I’m not sure she’s supposed to. I get the feeling that
I’m
the one who’ll have to deal with it.”

“How much longer are we going to keep poking along like this?” Gher asked. “We could just give Eliar a shout and go home in a blink, you know.”

“I don’t think we should, Gher. It’s only a hunch, but I think there are some things that happened last time that we’d better not step over.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t
know.
That’s what’s making me edgy. I think we’d better just stay on the ground.”

“Did you float this past Emmy?”

“Not yet. I’ll get around to it—one of these days.”

“You’re going to get yourself yelled at, Althalus.”

Althalus shrugged. “It won’t be the first time. I think we’ve changed just about enough of the past. We swindled Ghend, I got to keep my tunic, and we stole the Book of Daeva. I don’t think we want to change anything else. Something happened last time that
has
to happen this time as well. If it doesn’t, this whole thing might fall apart on us.”

“Are you certain sure you didn’t get hold of Ghend’s cup by mistake back there in Nabjor’s camp? You’re not making much sense right now.”

“We’ll see.”

The dawn came up murky and sullen over deep-forested Hule, and Althalus and Gher rode east among the gigantic trees. “We need to watch out for wolves,” Althalus cautioned.

“Wolves?” Gher sounded a bit surprised. “I hadn’t heard that there are any wolves in Hule.”

“There were—are—now. We’re in a different Hule right now. This isn’t the place you’re familiar with. It’s a lot wilder than it’s going to be later on. The wolves shouldn’t be much of a problem, since we’ve got horses this time and we’ll be able to outrun them, but keep your eyes and ears open.”

“It was real exciting back then, wasn’t it?”

“It had its moments. Let’s move right along, Gher. If Nabjor does what he’s supposed to do, it should be quite some time before Ghend wakes up to what we’ve done, but I want to get a long way ahead of him—just to be on the safe side.”

“What could he do?”

“Put an army out in front of us, possibly. He still has access to Pekhal and Gelta at this particular time, you know.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Gher admitted.

“I didn’t think you had.”

“Maybe we should gallop for a while.”

“Excellent idea, Gher.”

Because they were mounted, they covered the distance between Nabjor’s camp and the edge of the vast forest in less than half the time it’d taken Althalus before. The trees thinned as they moved up into the highlands of Kagwher and turned north, retracing the route Althalus had taken some twenty-five centuries ago rather closely.

The air turned chill as they moved north, and then one frosty night as they sat near their campfire, Althalus saw a familiar sight in the northern sky. “I think we’re getting closer,” he told Gher.

“Oh?”

Althalus pointed to the north. “God’s fire,” he said. “I couldn’t swear to it, but I think we’re getting closer to one of those things that has to happen this time in more or less the way it did last time.”

“I wish you could give me some hints about what we’re supposed to be looking for.”

“So do I. I just hope we’ll recognize it when it comes along.”

“Well, I hope so, too. We’re getting awful close to winter, you know, and we’re still a long way from home.”

“We’ll make it in time, Gher,” Althalus assured him. “That’s one thing I can be sure of. I’ve been through this before, you know.”

Just before sunrise the next morning, they were awakened by a human voice—a voice Althalus recognized. “Don’t be alarmed,” he told Gher quietly. “This is that crazy man I told Gosti about. He’s not dangerous.”

He was a bent and crooked old man, and he was shambling along with the aid of a staff. His hair and beard were silvery white, and he was garbed in animal skins. His face was deeply lined, and his eyes were shrewd and alert. He was talking in a resonant voice, speaking in a language Althalus could not quite recognize.

“Ho, there,” Althalus called to the crazy man. “We mean you no harm, so don’t get excited.”

“Who’s that?” the old man demanded, seizing his staff in both hands and brandishing it.

“We’re just travelers, and we seem to have lost our way.”

The old man lowered his staff. “Don’t see many travelers around here,” he said. “They don’t seem to like our sky.”

“We noticed that fire in the sky ourselves, just last night. Why does it do that?”

“People say it’s supposed to be a warning. Some think that the world ends a few miles to the north of here, and that God set the night sky on fire to warn everybody to stay back.”

Althalus frowned slightly. The crazy old man didn’t seem to be quite as crazy as he’d been last time, and he didn’t look quite the same either. “It sounds to me as if you don’t quite agree with those who say that the world ends someplace around here,” he noted.

The old man shrugged. “People can believe anything they want to,” he said. “They’re wrong, of course, but that’s none of
my
business, is it?”

“Who were you talking to just now?” Althalus asked, trying to wrench the conversation back to the track he remembered.

“I was talking to myself, of course. Do you see anybody else out there for me to talk to?” Then the old man straightened and indifferently tossed his staff away. “It’s not going to work, Althalus,” he said. “You’ve changed too many things. Our conversation won’t be the same as it was last time.” He made a wry face. “Of course, it was fairly silly last time, if I remember it correctly, and we have more important things to discuss. When you get back to the House and see my sister, tell her that I love her.” He smiled faintly. “Dweia and I don’t agree about too many things, but I love her just the same. Tell her that I said to be
very
careful this time. This scheme you all cooked up was clever, certainly, but it’s extremely dangerous. Our brother’s shrewd enough to have guessed what you’ve been up to by now, so he won’t let Dweia get away with what she’s planning without a fight.”

“Are you who I think you are?” Althalus choked.

“Can’t you accept the obvious without asking all these idiotic questions, Althalus? I’d have thought that Dweia’d slapped that out of you by now.”