Читать книгу The Redemption of Althalus - David Eddings - Страница 16

‘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 his 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 bag-like 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 sounded 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. ‘Don’t forget to turn out the lights,’ he said as they went on down.

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 about it 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 loveable 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 any more. ‘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 bag-like 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 learned 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 started at her. ‘It was you? You were behind all that bad luck?’

‘Of course. If luck hadn’t turned sour, you wouldn’t have even considered Ghend’s proposititon, 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 have even 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 is. 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 strongroom?’

‘No. That was probably 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.

‘What?’ Emmy asked.

‘They’re cutting down trees, Em.’

‘Men do that, pet.’

‘Little men, you mean. Men who are afraid of the dark and invent ways to talk about wolves without actually saying the word “wolf”. Let’s get out of here. The sight of that trash-heap makes me sick.’

They passed a few other villages on their way south, and the opinion he’d formed about the people who lived in those villages didn’t improve very much.

His humor began to improve as they rode up into the foothills of Arum. He was fairly certain that no matter how civilized man became, it was highly unlikely that they’d come up with a way to chop down mountains.

They rode some distance up into the foothills, and on the second day as evening settled over the mountains, Althalus rode back from the narrow track a ways and set up their night’s camp in a small clearing.

‘Could we have fish tonight, pet?’ Emmy asked once he had their fire going.

‘I was sort of thinking about beef.’

‘We had beef last night.’

He was about to say something, but suddenly laughed instead.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Haven’t we had this conversation before? It seems that I can remember long talks about having the same thing six or eight days in a row.’

‘That was different.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ he gave in. ‘All right, dear, if you want fish, we’ll have fish.’

She began to purr in happy anticipation.

Althalus slept well that night, but just before dawn he awoke quite suddenly as some almost forgotten instinct warned him of approaching danger. ‘Somebody’s coming, Em,’ he jarred her awake with an urgent thought.

Her green eyes opened immediately, and he felt her send out a searching thought. Then she hissed.

‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded.

‘Pekhal! Be careful, Althalus. He’s very dangerous.’

‘Didn’t you tell me that he’s one of Ghend’s people?’

‘Ghend’s animal would come closer. There isn’t much humanity left in Pekhal. I’m sure he’ll try to kill you.’

‘Lots of people have tried that, Em.’ He rolled out from under his cloak, reaching for his bronze-tipped spear.

‘Don’t try to fight him, Althalus. He’s a total savage and very vicious. He’ll try to talk his way in close enough to reach you with his sword. I’d imagine that he’s looking for breakfast along about now.’

‘He eats people?’ Althalus exclaimed.

‘That’s one of his nicer habits.’

‘I think I remember a way to make him keep his distance,’ Althalus said with a bleak sort of grin.

There was a crashing sound back in the undergrowth, and Althalus slipped behind a tree to watch.

The man was huge, and his face was almost subhumanly brutish. He was bulling his way through the bushes, and he was swinging a large sword that obviously wasn’t made of bronze. ‘Where are you?’ he roared in a hoarse, animal-like voice.

‘I’m more or less here,’ Althalus replied. ‘I don’t think you need to come any closer.’

‘Show yourself!’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘I want to see you!’

‘I’m not really all that attractive.’

‘Show yourself!’ the beast roared again.

‘If you say so, neighbor,’ Althalus replied mildly. He stepped out from behind the tree, looking intently at the heavily armed savage. Then he said, ‘Dheu.’

The brute rose up off the ground with a startled oath.

‘Just a precaution, friend,’ Althalus explained urbanely. ‘You seem a bit bad-tempered this morning – somebody you ate, no doubt.’

‘Put me down!’

‘No, I don’t think we’ll do it that way. You’re fine just where you are.’

The grotesque brute began swinging his sword at the air around him as if trying to slash at whatever was holding him suspended.

‘You don’t mind if I have a look at that, do you?’ Althalus asked. Then he held out his hand and said, ‘Gwem!’

The huge sword spun out of the giant’s hand and then drifted obediently down to Althalus. ‘Very impressive,’ Althalus said, hefting the heavy weapon.

‘You give that back!’

‘No. Sorry. You don’t really need it.’ Althalus stuck the heavy sword into the ground and then neatly filched the brute’s dagger and purse from his belt as well.

Pekhal began roaring, his face contorted with savage fury.

Althalus lifted his hand and said, ‘Dheu’ again.

Pekhal rose about another twenty feet into the air. His face blanched, his eyes went very wide, and he stopped moving entirely.

‘How’s the view from up there?’ Althalus was beginning to enjoy this. ‘Would you like to take a look at things from a few miles higher up? I can fix that, if you wish.’

Pekhal gaped at him, his eyes filled with sudden terror.

‘Do we understand each other, friend?’ Althalus asked. ‘Now, then, the next time you see Ghend, give him my regards and tell him to quit playing around like this. I don’t work for him any more, so he has no claim on me.’ Althalus picked up his new purse and dagger. He tucked the purse in his pocket, pulled his new sword out of the turf, and tapped its heavy blade with the hilt of the dagger. It made a ringing sound. Then he tested the sword-edge with his thumb. It seemed much sharper than his bronze sword. ‘Very nice,’ he murmured. Then he looked up at Pekhal. ‘I certainly want to thank you for the gifts, friend,’ he said pleasantly. ‘All I have to give you in return are my old weapons, but since you’re so much nobler than I am, I’m sure you won’t mind.’ He shed his bronze weapons. ‘We’ll have to do this again one of these days,’ he called. ‘You have yourself a very nice day now, hear?’

‘Are you going to just leave him up there?’ Emmy asked critically.

‘Oh, I imagine he’ll set along about the same time the sun does, Em. If he doesn’t come down today, he probably will tomorrow – or the next day. Why don’t we have a bite of breakfast and move on?’

She was trying to stifle her laughter without too much success. ‘You’re awful!’ she chuckled.

‘Fun, though, don’t you think? Is that half-wit the best that Ghend can come up with?’

‘Pekhal’s the one Ghend summons when brute strength and savagery seem to be called for. The others are much more dangerous.’

‘Good. This might get kind of boring otherwise.’ He looked closely at his new dagger. ‘What is this metal?’ he asked.

‘Men call it steel,’ she replied. ‘They learned how to forge it about a thousand years ago.’

‘I was a little busy just then. That’s probably why I missed it. Where does this metal come from?’

‘You’ve seen all those red rocks in Plakand, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes. Plakand’s red from one end to the other.’

‘There’s a metal called iron in those rocks. Men couldn’t smelt it out of the rocks until they learned how to make hotter fires. Iron is harder than bronze, but it’s brittle. It has to be mixed with other metals to make weapons or tools.’

‘It’s completely replaced bronze, then?’

‘For most things, yes.’

‘It might be better than bronze, but it’s not as pretty. This grey’s sort of depressing.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with anything?’

‘It’s a question of aesthetics, Em. We should always strive to fill our lives with beauty.’

‘I don’t see anything beautiful in something that was designed to kill people.’

‘There’s beauty in everything, Em. You just have to learn to look for it.’

‘If you’re going to preach at me, I think I’ll just curl up and go back to sleep.’

‘Whatever you wish, Em. Oh, before you doze off, though, do you happen to know which clan here in Arum has that knife we’re looking for? If I’m going to have to search every man in these mountains for it, we could be here for quite a while.’

‘I know where it is, pet, and you’ve been there before. You’re even rather famous in the clan that has the Knife.’

‘Me? I try to avoid fame whenever I can.’

‘I wonder why. You do remember the way to the hall of Gosti Big Belly, don’t you?’

‘Is that where the knife is?’

‘Yes. The current Clan-Chief has it. He doesn’t know how he came by it or how important it is, so he keeps it in the room where all his spare weapons are.’

‘Is that a coincidence of some sort? I mean, that the knife’s in Gosti’s hall?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Would you care to explain that?’

‘I don’t think so. The word “coincidence” always seems to start religious arguments for some reason.’

For the next several days, they traveled along the ridge-line Althalus had followed to make good his escape from Gosti and they finally reached the high pass that overlooked the canyon where Gosti’s hall had stood. The rough log fort had been replaced by a large stone castle. The rickety toll-bridge that had been the source of Gosti’s meager wealth was gone, and the bridge that now spanned the rushing stream was a structure of stone arches. Althalus turned his horse off the trail and rode back into the trees.

‘Aren’t we going on down?’ Emmy asked.

‘It’s almost evening, Em. Let’s wait and go down in the morning.’

‘Why?’

‘My instincts tell me to wait, all right?’

‘Oh, well,’ she replied with exaggerated sarcasm, ‘we must obey our instincts, mustn’t we?’

‘Be nice,’ he murmured. Then he dismounted and went over to the edge of the trees to look at the settlement outside the fort. Something struck him as peculiar. ‘Why are the men all wearing dresses?’ he asked.

‘They call them kilts, Althalus.’

‘A dress is a dress, Em. What’s wrong with leggings like mine?’

‘They prefer kilts. Don’t be picking any fights with them about their clothing. Keep your opinions to yourself.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ he replied. ‘You’ll want fish for dinner again, I suppose?’

‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘And if it is?’

‘That’s just too bad, isn’t it?’