Читать книгу The Redemption of Althalus - David Eddings - Страница 13

Althalus 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.’

‘Whatever gave you the ridiculous idea that this is the end of the world?’

‘Everybody says it is. The people here in Kagwher won’t even talk about it, because they’re afraid of it. I’ve looked out over that edge, and all there is down there is clouds. Clouds are part of the sky, so that means that this edge is the place where the world ends and the sky starts, doesn’t it?’

‘No,’ she replied, absently licking one of her paws and washing her face. ‘That’s not what it means at all. There is something down there. It’s a long way down, but it is there.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s water, Althalus, and what you saw when you looked over that edge is fog. Fog and clouds are more or less the same thing – except that fog’s closer to the ground.’

‘You know my name?’ That surprised him.

‘Well, of course I know your name, you ninny. I was sent here to meet you.’

‘Oh? Who sent you?’

‘You’re having enough trouble holding onto your sanity already. Let’s not push you off any edges with things you aren’t ready to understand just yet. You might as well get used to me, Althalus. We’re going to be together for a long, long time.’

He shook off his momentary dejection. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve had just about enough of this. It’s been just wonderful talking with you, but if you’ll excuse me now, I think I’ll just take the Book and go. I’d love to stay and chat some more, but winter’s going to be snapping at my tail feathers all the way home as it is.’

‘And just how did you plan to leave?’ she asked calmly as she started to wash her ears.

He turned sharply to look around. But the door through which he had entered the room wasn’t there any more. ‘How did you do that?’

‘We won’t be needing it any more – for a while at least – and it was letting in the cold air, since you were too lazy to close it behind you when you came in.’

A brief panic clutched at the thief’s throat. He was trapped. The Book had lured him into this place, and now the cat had trapped him, and there was no way out. ‘I think I’ll kill myself,’ he said mournfully.

‘No you won’t,’ she said quite calmly, beginning to wash her tummy. ‘You can try, if you like, but it won’t work. You can’t leave, you can’t jump out of the window, and you can’t stab yourself with your sword or your knife or your spear. You might as well get used to it, Althalus. You’re going to stay right here with me until we’ve done what we’re supposed to do.’

‘Then I can leave?’ he asked hopefully.

‘You’ll be required to leave. We have things we need to do here, and then there are other things that have to be done in other places, so you’ll have to go do them.’

‘What are we supposed to do here?’

‘I’m supposed to teach, and you’re supposed to learn.’

‘Learn what?’

‘The Book.’

‘How to read it, you mean?’

‘That’s part of it.’ She began to wash her tail, hooking it up to her tongue with one curved paw. ‘After you learn how to read it, you have to learn how to use it.’

‘Use?’

‘We’ll get to that in time. You’re having enough trouble here already.’

‘I’ll tell you something right here and now,’ he said hotly. ‘I am not going to take any orders from a cat.’

‘Yes, actually you will. It may take you a while to come around, but that’s all right, because we’ve got all the time in the world.’ She stretched and yawned. Then she looked herself over. ‘All nice and neat,’ she said approvingly. Then she yawned again. ‘Did you have any other silly announcements you’d like to make? I’ve finished everything that I have to say’

The light in the dome overhead began to grow dim.

‘What’s happening?’ he demanded sharply.

‘Now that I’ve got my fur all nice and neat, I think I’ll take a little nap.’

‘You just woke up.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything? Since you’re obviously not ready to do what you’re supposed to do, I might as well sleep for a while. When you change your mind, wake me up and we’ll get started.’ And then she settled back down on the thick-furred bison robes and closed her eyes again.

Althalus spluttered to himself for a bit, but the sleeping cat didn’t so much as twitch an ear. Finally he gave up and rolled himself up in his cloak near the wall where the door had been, and he too went to sleep.

Althalus held out for several days, but his profession had made him a high-strung sort of man, and the forced inactivity in this sealed room was beginning to fray at his nerves. He walked around the room several times and looked out the windows. He discovered that he could put his hand through them – or his head – quite easily, but when he tried to lean out, something that he couldn’t see was in his way. Whatever that something was kept out the much colder air outside. There were so many things about this room that couldn’t be explained, and the thief’s curiosity finally got the best of him. ‘All right,’ he said to the cat one morning as daylight began to stain the sky, ‘I give up. You win.’

‘Of course I won,’ she replied, opening her bright green eyes. ‘I always do.’ She yawned and stretched sinuously. ‘Now why don’t you come over here so that we can talk?’

‘I can talk from right here.’ He was a little wary about getting too close to her. It was clear that she could do things he couldn’t understand, and he didn’t want her to start doing them to him.

Her ears flicked slightly and she lay back down. ‘Let me know when you change your mind,’ she told him. And then she closed her eyes again.

He muttered some choice swear-words, and then he gave up, rose from the bench beside the table and went to the fur-robed bed. He sat down, reached out rather tentatively and touched her furry back with his hand to make sure that she was really there.

‘That was quick,’ she noted, opening her eyes again and starting to purr.

‘There’s not much point in being stubborn about it. You’re obviously the one who’s in control of things here. You wanted to talk?’

She nuzzled at his hand. ‘I’m glad you understand,’ she said, still purring. ‘I wasn’t ordering you around just to watch you jump, Althalus. I’m a cat for now, and cats need touching. I need to have you near me when we talk.’

‘Then you haven’t always been a cat?’

‘How many cats have you come across who know how to talk?’

‘You know,’ he bantered, ‘I can’t for the life of me remember the last time.’

She actually laughed, and that gave him a little glow of satisfaction. If he could make her laugh, she wasn’t entirely in control of the situation here.

‘I’m not really all that hard to get along with, Althalus,’ she told him. ‘Pet me now and then and scratch my ears once in a while, and we’ll get along just fine. Is there anything you need?’

‘I’ll have to go outside to hunt food for us before long’, he said, trying to sound casual about it.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Well, not right now. I’m sure I will be later, though.’

‘When you’re hungry, I’ll see to it that you have something to eat.’ She gave him a sidelong look. ‘You didn’t really think you could get away that easily, did you?’

He grinned. ‘It was worth a try.’ He picked her up and held her.

‘You aren’t going anywhere without me, Althalus. Get used to the idea that I’m going to be with you for the rest of your life – and you’re going to live for a very, very long time. You’ve been chosen to do some things and I’ve been chosen to make sure you do them right. Your life’s going to be much easier once you accept that.’

‘How did we get chosen – and who did the choosing?’

She reached up and patted his cheek with one soft paw. ‘We’ll get to that later’, she assured him. ‘You might have a little trouble accepting it right at first. Now then, why don’t we get started?’ She hopped down from the bed, crossed to the table, and without any seeming effort leaped up and sat on the polished surface. ‘Time to go to work, pet,’ she said. ‘Come over here and sit down while I teach you how to read.’

The ‘reading’ involved the translation of stylized pictures, much as it had in Ghend’s Book. The pictures represented words. That came rather easily with concrete words such as ‘tree’, or ‘rock’, or ‘pig’. The pictures that represented concepts such as ‘truth’, ‘beauty’, or ‘honesty’, were more difficult.

Althalus was adaptable – a thief almost has to be – but the situation here took some getting used to. Food simply appeared on the table whenever he grew hungry. It startled him the first few times it happened, but after a while, he didn’t even pay attention to it any more. Even miracles become commonplace if they happen often enough.

Winter arrived at the edge of the world, and as it settled in, the sun went away and perpetual night arrived. The cat patiently explained it, but Althalus only dimly understood her explanation. He could accept it intellectually, but it still seemed to him that the sun moved around the earth instead of the other way around. With the coming of that endless night, he lost all track of days. When you get right down to it, he reasoned, there simply weren’t any days any more. He stopped looking out the windows altogether. It was almost always snowing anyway, and snow depressed him.

He was making some progress with his reading. After he’d come across one of the pictures often enough, he automatically recognized it. Words became the center of his attention.

‘You weren’t always a cat, were you?’ he asked his companion once when the two of them were lying on the fur-covered bed after they’d eaten.

‘I thought I’d already told you that,’ she said.

‘What were you before?’

She gave him a long, steady look with her glowing green eyes. ‘You aren’t quite ready for that information yet, Althalus. You’re fairly well settled down now. I don’t want you to start bouncing off the walls the way you did when you first arrived.’

‘Did you have a name – before you became a cat, I mean?’

‘Yes. You probably wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, though. Why do you ask?’

‘It just doesn’t seem right for me to keep calling you “cat”. That’s like saying “donkey” or “chicken”. Would it upset you if I gave you a name?’

‘Not if it’s a nice name. I’ve heard some of the words you use when you think I’m asleep. I wouldn’t like one of those.’

‘I sort of like “Emerald”, because of your eyes.’

‘I could live with that, yes. I had a very nice emerald once – before I came here. I used to hold it up in the sunlight to watch it glow.’

‘Then you had arms before you became a cat, and hands as well,’ he said shrewdly.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Now would you like to make some guesses about how many and where they were attached to me?’ She gave him an arch look. ‘Stop fishing, Althalus. Someday you’ll find out who I really am, and it might surprise you, but you don’t need to know that right now.’

‘Maybe I don’t,’ he said slyly, ‘but every now and then, you make a slip, and I keep track of those slips. It won’t be too long before I know pretty much what you used to be.’

‘Not until I’m ready for you to know, you won’t,’ she told him. ‘You need to concentrate right now, Althalus, and if I used my real form here in the House, you wouldn’t be able to do that.’

‘That bad?’

She snuggled up against him and started to purr. ‘You’ll see, pet,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

Despite her rather superior attitude – which Althalus strongly suspected had been a part of her original nature – Emerald was an affectionate creature who always wanted to be in close physical contact with him. He slept on the thickly furred bison robes on the stone bed, and she always snuggled up to him, purring contentedly. Right at first he didn’t care for that, so he made a practice of covering himself with his wool cloak and holding it tightly around his neck. Emerald would sit quite calmly at the foot of the bed watching him. Then, as he started to drift off to sleep and his grip relaxed, she would silently creep up the bed until she was just behind his head. Then she would skillfully touch her cold, wet nose to the back of his neck, and Althalus would automatically flinch away from that surprising touch. That was all she needed to burrow down under the cloak, and she would settle down against his back and purr. Her purring was really very soothing, so he didn’t mind having her there. She seemed to get a great deal of entertainment out of the game, though, so Althalus continued to clench his cloak up around his neck so that she could surprise him in the same way each time they slept. It didn’t really cost him anything, and as long as it amused her . . .

She had one habit, though, that he really wished she’d get over. Every so often, Emerald seemed to develop an overpowering urge to bathe his face – usually when he was sound asleep. His eyes would suddenly pop open, and he’d realize that she had her paws firmly wrapped half-way around his head to hold him in place while she licked him from chin to forehead with her rough, wet tongue. He tried to jerk away from her the first few times, but as soon as he started to move, she’d flex her paws slightly, and her claws would come out. He got the point almost immediately. He didn’t really care for those impromptu baths, but he learned to endure them. There are always adjustments to be made when two creatures set up housekeeping together, and – aside from a few bad habits – Emerald wasn’t really all that hard to get along with.

Although the permanent night which blanketed the far north had taken away anything he could really call ‘day’, Althalus was fairly sure that the routine they followed probably coincided rather closely with the rising and setting of the sun farther to the south. He had no real reason for that belief and no way to verify it, but it seemed to him that it made more sense to think of it that way.

His ‘days’ were spent at the table with the Book open before him and with Emerald seated beside the Book, watching. Their conversations were largely limited to his pointing at an unfamiliar symbol and asking, ‘What’s this one mean?’ She would tell him, and he’d stumble along until he came to another unintelligible picture. The parchment sheets were loose inside the white leather box, and Emerald became very upset if he got them back in the wrong order. ‘It doesn’t make any sense if you mix them up like that,’ she’d scold him.

‘A lot of it doesn’t make sense anyway.’

‘Put them back the way you found them.’

‘All right, all right. Don’t tie your tail in a knot.’ That remark always seemed to trigger one of their little mock tussles. Emerald would lay her ears back, crouch low over her front paws and, with her bottom raised up and swinging back and forth ominously, her tail swished. Then she’d leap on his hand and mouth it. She’d never extend her claws and, though she growled terribly, she never actually bit him.

His best response to that was to take his other hand and thoroughly stir up her fur. She seemed to hate that, since it took her quite a while to comb everything back in place with her tongue.

Since Emerald was a cat – at least for right now – she had a keen sense of smell, and she insisted that Althalus should wash frequently – every time he turned around, it seemed. A large tiled tub filled with steaming water would quite suddenly appear near their bed, and after the first few times, Althalus would sigh, rise from his seat and begin removing his clothes. In the long run, he’d found, it was easier to bathe than it was to argue with her. As time went on, he even began to enjoy soaking in hot water before supper every day.

A peculiar notion came to him that winter, brought on perhaps by the continual darkness. He was still not entirely convinced that he wasn’t crazy, and, as insanity usually was, his had been brought on because he’d missed his time to die – just as the madness of the old man who’d talked to God had been. But maybe he hadn’t missed it after all. What if somewhere back in Hule, or maybe after he’d come up into the mountains of Kagwher, someone had slipped up behind him with an axe and chopped his head open, and he was dead? If it’d happened quickly enough, he wouldn’t have even realized it, so his ghost had just kept on walking. His body was probably lying somewhere with its brains dribbling out of its ears, but his ghost had continued on toward this House, totally unaware that he was really dead. It hadn’t been Althalus who’d encountered the crazy man who talked to God, and he hadn’t really reached the edge of the world and watched the fire of God. That was just something his ghost had thought up. Now his ghost had reached its final destination, and it would remain here in this closed room with Emerald and the Book forever. If his theory were correct, he’d crossed over into the afterlife. Everyone knows that the afterlife is filled with all sorts of strange things, so there was no point in getting excited about a room that stayed warm and comfortable and well-lighted without any trace of fire, and no real need to start bellowing, ‘impossible’ every time he turned around and something unusual happened. The whole business was just his own personal afterlife.

All things considered, though, this particular afterlife wasn’t so bad. He was warm and well-fed, and he had Emerald to talk to. He might have wished that there was some of Nabjor’s mead around someplace, or that some sister of the naughty-eyed girl in Nabjor’s camp might pay him a call now and then, but as time went on, those things became less and less important. He’d heard some pretty terrible stories about the afterlife, but if it didn’t get any worse than it was right now, Althalus felt that he could learn to be dead with it – he realized that ‘learn to live with it’ didn’t exactly fit in with his current situation. The one thing that nagged him was the total lack of any possibility of hunting down the man who’d killed him. Since he was now an insubstantial ghost, he wouldn’t be able to hack the rascal to pieces. But then he realized that he might just be able to haunt his unknown assailant, and that might be even more satisfying than butchering him.

He wondered if he might be able to persuade Emerald to agree to that. He could promise her that they could come back here to their private afterlife after he’d haunted his murderer to death, but he was almost positive that she wouldn’t put much store in promises made by the ghost of a man so famous for lying at every chance he got. After he’d thought his way through the idea, he decided that he wouldn’t mention the notion to his furry roommate.

Then the sun came back to the roof of the world, and the notion that he was dead began to fade. Eternal darkness sort of fit in with his concept of an afterlife, but the return of the sun made him almost feel that he’d been reborn.

He could read the Book fairly well by now, and he found it more and more interesting. One thing did sort of bother him, though. Late one spring afternoon, he laid his hand on the Book and glanced at Emerald, who appeared to be sleeping with her chin resting on her paws as she lay on the table beside the Book. ‘What’s his real name?’ he asked her.

Her green eyes were sleepy when she opened them. ‘Whose name?’ she asked.

‘The one who wrote the Book. He never comes right out and identifies himself.’

‘He’s God, Althalus.’

‘Yes, I know, but which one? Every land I’ve ever visited has its own god – or its own set of gods – and they all have different names. Was it Kherdhos – the god of the Wekti and Plakands? Or maybe Apwos, the god of Equero? What is his name?’

‘Deiwos, of course.’

‘Deiwos? The god of the Medyos?’

‘Of course.’

‘The Medyos are the silliest people in the world, Emerald.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You’d think that the people who worshiped the real true God would have better sense.’

She sighed. ‘It’s all the same God, Althalus. Haven’t you realized that by now? The Wekti and Plakands call him Kherdhos because they’re interested in their herds of sheep or cows. The Equeros call him Apwos, because they concentrate most of their attention on the lakes. The Medyos are the oldest people in this part of the world, and they brought the name with them when they first came here.’

‘Where did they come from?’

‘Off to the south – after they learned how to herd sheep and plant grains. After they’d lived in Medyo for a while, they expanded out into those other places, and the people in the new places changed God’s name.’ She rose to her feet and stretched and yawned. ‘Let’s have fish for dinner tonight,’ she suggested.

‘We had fish last night – and the night before.’

‘So? I like fish, don’t you?’

‘Oh, fish is all right, I suppose, but I get a little tired of it after we’ve eaten it three times a day for three straight weeks.’

‘Fix your own supper,’ she flared.

‘You know perfectly well that I don’t know how to do that yet.’

‘Then you’ll just have to take whatever I put on the table, won’t you?’

He sighed. ‘Fish?’ he asked with a certain resignation.

‘What a wonderful idea, Althalus! I’m so glad you thought of it’

There were many concepts in the Book that Althalus couldn’t understand, and he and Emerald spent many contented evenings talking about them. They also spent quite a bit of time playing. Emerald was a cat, after all, and cats like to play. There was a kind of studied seriousness about her when she played that made her absolutely adorable, and she filled up most of the empty places in his life. Every so often she’d do something while she was playing that was so totally silly that it seemed almost human. Althalus thought about that, and he came to realize that only humans could be silly. Animals generally took themselves far too seriously to even suspect that they were being ridiculous.

Once, when he was concentrating very hard on the Book, he caught a slight movement out of the corner of his eye and realized that she was creeping up on him. He hadn’t really been paying much attention to her, and she’d only let that go on for just so long before she’d assert herself. She came creeping across the polished floor one furtive step at a time, but he knew that she was coming, so he was ready for her when she pounced, and half-turning, he caught her in mid-air with both hands. There was the usual mock tussle, and then he pulled her to his face and held her tightly against it. ‘Oh, I do love you, Emmy!’ he said.

She jerked her face back from his. ‘Emmy?’ she hissed. ‘EMMY!?!’

‘I’ve noticed that people do that,’ he tried to explain. ‘After they’ve been together for a while, they come up with pet names for each other.’

‘Put me down!’

‘Oh, don’t get all huffy.’

‘Emmy indeed! You put me down, or I’ll claw off one of your ears!’

He was fairly sure she wouldn’t, but he put her down and gave her a little pat on the head.

She turned sort of sideways, her fur bristling and her ears laid back. Then she hissed at him.

‘Why, Emmy,’ he said in mock surprise, ‘what a thing to say. I’m shocked at you. Shocked.’

Then she swore at him, and that really surprised him. ‘You’re actually angry, aren’t you?’

She hissed again, and he laughed at her. ‘Oh, Emmy, Emmy, Emmy,’ he said fondly.

‘Yes, Althie, Althie, Althie?’ she replied in a spiteful tone.

Althie?’

‘In your ear!’ she said. Then she went off to the bed to sulk.

He didn’t get any supper that night, but he sort of felt that it might have been worth it. He now had a way to respond when she started acting superior. One ‘Emmy’ would immediately erase the haughty look on her face and reduce her to near-inarticulate fury. Althalus carefully tucked that one up his sleeve for future use.

They declared peace on each other the next day, and life returned to normal. She fed him a near-banquet that evening. He understood that it was a peace-making gesture, so he complimented her after about every other bite.

Then, after they’d gone to bed, she washed his face for quite some time. ‘Did you really mean what you said yesterday?’ she purred.

‘Which particular thing I said were you thinking of?’ he asked.

Her ears went back immediately. ‘You said you loved me. Did you mean it?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that. Of course I meant it. You shouldn’t even have to ask.’

‘Don’t you lie to me.’

‘Would I do that?’

‘Of course you would. You’re the greatest liar in the whole world.’

‘Why, thank you, dear.’

‘Don’t make me cross, Althalus,’ she warned. ‘I’ve got all four paws wrapped around your head right now, so be very nice to me – unless you’d like to have your face on the back of your head instead of the front.’

‘I’ll be good,’ he promised.

‘Say it again, then.’

‘Say what, dear?’

‘You know what!’

‘All right, little kitten, I love you. Does that make you feel better?’

She rubbed her face against his and started to purr.

The seasons turned, as seasons always do, although the summers were short and the winters long up here on the roof of the world, and after they’d gone around several times, the past seemed to recede until it was only a dim memory. In time, the days plodded by unnoticed as Althalus struggled with the Book. He began to spend more and more of his time staring up at the glowing dome overhead as he pondered the strange things the Book had revealed.

‘What is your problem?’ Emerald demanded irritably once when Althalus sat at the table with the Book lying almost unnoticed on the polished surface in front of him. ‘You’re not even pretending to be reading.’

Althalus laid his hand on the Book. ‘It just said something I don’t understand,’ he replied. ‘I’m trying to work it out.’

She sighed. ‘Tell me what it is,’ she said in a resigned tone. ‘I’ll explain it to you. You still won’t understand, but I’ll explain anyway’

‘You can be very offensive, did you know that?’

‘Of course. I’m doing it on purpose – but you still love me, don’t you?’

‘Oh – I guess so.’

‘You guess so?’

He laughed. ‘Woke you up, didn’t I?’

She laid back her ears and hissed at him.

‘Be nice,’ he said, putting out his hand and scratching her ears. Then he looked back at the troublesome line. ‘If I’m reading this right, it says that all the things Deiwos has made are of the same value in his eyes. Does that mean that a man isn’t any more important than a bug or a grain of sand?’

‘Not exactly,’ she replied. ‘What it really means is that Deiwos doesn’t think of the separate parts of what he’s made. It’s the whole thing that’s important. A man’s only a small part of the whole thing, and he’s not really here for very long. A man’s born, lives out his life, and dies in so short a time that the mountains and stars don’t even notice him as he goes by.’

‘That’s a gloomy thought. We don’t really mean anything, do we? Deiwos won’t even miss us after the last one of us dies, will he?’

‘Oh, he probably will. There were things that used to be alive, but they aren’t any more, and Deiwos still remembers them.’

‘Why did he let them die out, then?’

‘Because they’d done everything they were supposed to do. They’d completed what they’d been put here to attend to, so Deiwos let them go. Then too, if everything that had ever lived were still here, there wouldn’t be any room for new things.’

‘Sooner or later, that’ll happen to men as well, won’t it?’

‘That’s not entirely certain, Althalus. Other creatures take the world as they find it, but man changes things.’

‘And Deiwos guides us in those changes?’

‘Why would he do that? Deiwos doesn’t tinker, pet. He sets things in motion and then moves on. All the mistakes you make are entirely yours. Don’t blame Deiwos for them.’

Althalus reached out and ruffled her fur.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘It takes forever to get it all straight again.’

‘It gives you something to do between naps, Emmy,’ he told her, and then he went back to the Book.