The Redemption of Althalus

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

The room to the right of the stairs was large and well furnished. Althalus had peeked into that room once when he’d first come to the House centuries before, and it’d been totally empty. Now that Emmy could use the Book herself rather than going through him, she’d evidently given her creativity full rein. The floor of the room was carpeted, there were drapes at the windows, and there was a fair amount of heavy, ornate furniture. The beds were large, with blankets and pillows, and there was a massive table in the center of the room with four large chairs. There was a cheery fire in the large fireplace, and as Althalus had more or less expected, a large bathtub in one corner.

  “I hadn’t realized that Emmy could be quite so . . .” Bheid groped for a word.

  “Snippy, you mean?” Althalus supplied. “Oh, yes, Emmy comes from the capital city of snip. What would you gentlemen like for supper?”

  “Anything but fish,” Gher said quickly.

  “I’d sort of like beef, myself,” Eliar suggested, “lots and lots of beef.”

  Althalus could not seem to get to sleep. He’d returned to the House, but without Emmy curled up beside him purring softly, he couldn’t drift off.

  He finally gave up, threw off his blanket, and went out into the corridor. The House seemed the same, but without Emmy it was empty for him. He sourly went up the stairs to the familiar room at the top.

  He stood at the north window looking out at the ice with a sour discontent rankling at him.

  Then he heard a soft sound coming from behind him, and everything was all right again. The sound of Emmy’s purring welcomed him home.

  “Come,” he heard her say. “Come with me, pet, and I will care for you.”

  And he turned, filled with more than astonishment.

  The girl from his ancient dream sat on the bison-robed bed beyond the table where the Book of Deiwos lay, and her face and form were more beautiful than he remembered.

  “Come to me, my beloved Althalus,” she purred. “I will care for you.”

  Part Three

  DWEIA

  C H A P T E R S I X T E E N

  Her face was still the face that had sung in his dreams for two thousand and more years: a face of ancient, serene perfection. She rose, and her green eyes penetrated his soul even as her rounded arms reached out to possessively clasp him in a fierce embrace.

  His senses reeled in that embrace, and he was lost in her kiss.

  How long they remained in each other’s arms he would never know, and then as he held her closely to him he heard a very familiar sound, and it filled him with a kind of wonder. The Goddess who had permeated his dreams had always been with him here in the House, and their lives were inseparably interwoven. So much that had been strange before was now clear to him. “You’re doing that to let me know that we’ve always been together here, aren’t you?” he said to her.

  “What on earth are you talking about, Althalus?”

  “You’re purring, Emmy.”

  “I most certainly am not!” she exclaimed, and the purring stopped.

  Althalus smiled inwardly and stored that away. Their game obviously wasn’t over yet. “Maybe it was only my imagination,” he said. Then he once more kissed her soft, perfect mouth, and she began to purr again.

  “Talk to me, Althalus,” she told him, pulling back.

  “What?”

  “Things are getting just a little intense.”

  “I thought that was what you had in mind.”

  “Not right now, love. We’ll have all the time in the world for that later, but for now we need to keep our heads clear.”

  A hot surge of disappointment filled him. Then he pushed it aside. “I think we should talk a bit,” he said.

  She stepped back a pace and ran her fingers up her temples through her autumn hair. “My,” she said, “isn’t it warm for this time of year? What were you saying again?”

  “You really are Dweia, aren’t you? That’s what you told me when we were passing through Maghu, anyway.”

  “And you even remembered. Amazing.”

  “Be nice,” he said almost from force of habit. “What I’m getting at here is whether or not the others are going to see you in the same way that I do. Or will you be Dweia for me and Emmy for them?”

  “That might be just a little difficult, Althalus. I could probably do it, but what’d be the point?”

  “Your reality’s just a bit overwhelming, you know. The others all have things they need to do here, and they’ll probably have to concentrate. Won’t a divine distraction sort of get in their way?”

  She laughed a silvery little laugh and impulsively threw her arms about him. “How sweet!” she said, kissing him again. “You want to keep me all to yourself, don’t you?”

  “Well,” he said sheepishly, “that might have been part of it, I guess, but I still think we ought to talk it over. It’s very hard to concentrate when you’re around, Dweia.”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir,” she said with a little mock curtsey.

  “Will you please be serious? I think there might be a problem here that we’d better look at. Andine and Leitha are both probably going to turn bright green when they see you, and trying to talk to Eliar or Bheid while you’re around is going to be almost like shouting down a well. Just the sight of you is very likely to blot out everybody’s mind.”

  “I’m not doing it on purpose, love. My brothers and I exist on a different level of reality, and that always seems to come blazing through, even when we try to hide it. If you’ll think back a bit, you’ll probably remember that flashes of it came through even when I was Emmy the cat. I’m affectionate by nature, and it always seems to show.”

  “I still think it might be better if you put your fur back on, Em. The children have to be able to think while we’re here, and they won’t be able to do that in the presence of a perpetual sunrise.”

  “That’s part of what we have to do here, Althalus. The others have to get used to having me around. It’s far better to turn their heads off here than it’d be to turn them off in the middle of a crisis out there in the real world.”

  “Maybe.” Althalus was still very dubious about the whole notion. “There’s another thing, too,” he said. “Aren’t you going to be rather conspicuous when we go back outside the House? I think you’re going to attract a lot of attention out there.”

  She shrugged. “Back to Emmy the cat, then.”

  “Is that your own idea, or has your brother forbidden you to go outside in your real form?”

  “Forbidden?” Her tone was flat, even unfriendly.

  “Well, he is God, after all.”

  “So am I, Althalus, and nobody tells me what I can or can’t do. Emmy’s my idea, not my brother’s. I use her when I want to sneak. You should know all about sneaking. It’s part of your trade, and it’s also part of mine. Neither one of my brothers needs to know what I’m doing, and sneaking keeps them from knowing.” She laughed a sly little laugh. “Every now and then, I sneak up on Deiwos, and he doesn’t even know that I’ve been there.”

  “You and Deiwos are very close, aren’t you?”

  “Not really. We have different interests, so we don’t have very much to talk about. We say hello to each other when we pass, and that’s about as far as it goes.”

  “Being a God sounds very lonely.”

  “It isn’t. We have our thoughts for company.” She gave him a smoldering sort of look. “And now I have you as well as my thoughts, don’t I?”

  “Oh, yes. And you’ll never get rid of me.” Then a thought came to him. “If you and your brothers are so totally complete, why’s Daeva trying to change everything? What does he expect to get out of it?”

  “It goes back a long, long way, Althalus,” she replied pensively. “Daeva destroys—but only the things Deiwos and I permit him to destroy. That immediately reduces him. He’s the rag man of the universe, gathering up our castoffs. In a certain sense, he’s the God of Nothingness, and that leaves him empty and alone in the dark. Deiwos jo
ys in creation, and I joy in mothering everything he makes. There’s not much joy in emptiness, though, so when Daeva’s loneliness became more than he could bear, he sought out Ghend to find companions to fill the emptiness. I think Ghend was the wrong choice for my brother.”

  “You pity him, don’t you, Dweia?”

  “A little, yes. I’m notorious for being soft-hearted.”

  Althalus glanced at the east window and saw that the morning star had risen. “It’s almost time to wake the children,” he said. Then he scratched his chin. “You’re probably right about the sleeping arrangements,” he agreed, “but wouldn’t a sort of neutral dining room give them a place to gather together? When you start putting high walls between boy people and girl people, they spend most of their time trying to think of ways to climb those walls. If we let them mingle at mealtimes and up here in this room, they might even pay attention to you when you’re trying to teach them. A little closely supervised mingling might help to keep certain urges under control. Is this making any sense at all?”

  “Very good sense, Althalus; sometimes you surprise me. Why don’t you go ahead and set up a dining room near the places where we sleep. I’ll wait up here for you. That way, you’ll be able to prepare them a little for the new Emmy.”

  “That’s probably a good idea, too.”

  “Oh, as long as the subject of mealtime’s come up, there’s one other thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When I sit down at your table, I don’t want to see fish.”

  “I thought you loved fish.”

  “Emmy’s the one who loves fish, Althalus. I can’t stand the sight of it, myself.”

  Althalus “made” some fairly luxurious furniture for their dining room. It cost him no more effort than a trestle-based table and rude benches, and he rather thought that pleasant surroundings might encourage “the children” to linger and socialize. He felt that if they were close-knit when they went back across the drawbridge, things might go more smoothly. Then, to increase their fondness for the place, he made a breakfast fit for a King.

  He woke them by knocking on their doors and then waited in the hall outside the dining room like an expectant innkeeper. “Hurry right along,” he told them as they emerged from their sleeping quarters. “Emmy’s waiting for us upstairs, and you all know how cranky she gets when we’re late.”

  “Isn’t she going to eat with us anymore?” Eliar asked.

  “Not this time,” Althalus replied. “She wanted to give me a chance to warn all of you that she’s not Emmy the cat anymore.”

  “She’s not?” Eliar sounded injured. “I like Emmy!”

  “Wait until you see her now.”

  “She hasn’t taken her true form, has she?” Leitha gasped.

  “Oh, yes,” Althalus replied fervently. “She’s Dweia now, and I think she’s going to take some getting used to.” Then he felt a faint touch brush his mind.

  “Oh, dear,” Leitha said, biting her lip.

  “What’s wrong?” Andine asked.

  “Is that what she really looks like?” Leitha demanded of Althalus.

  “It’s probably fairly close. I have a very good eye for details.”

  “Oh, dear,” Leitha said again.

  “What is it, Leitha?” Andine looked puzzled.

  “We’re crows now, Andine.”

  “She can’t be that beautiful, can she?”

  “She’s even worse,” Leitha mourned.

  “Couldn’t we talk about this while we’re eating?” Eliar demanded, hungrily eying the groaning table.

  “Eliar’s right,” Althalus told them. “Let’s eat breakfast before it gets cold. Then we’ll all go upstairs and I’ll introduce you to Dweia.”

  “I don’t think I’m really very hungry.” Leitha sighed.

  After breakfast, they all nervously followed Althalus up the stairs to the circular room at the top of the tower.

  Dweia was standing at the marble table with her hand lying almost absently on the Book. She wore a white gown of an ancient style that left her arms bare to the shoulders, and her sunset hair streamed down her back. Her perfect face was a mystery. “Good morning, children,” she greeted them.

  There was a sort of stunned, awkward silence as they all gaped at her.

  “Are you really our Emmy?” Gher asked finally.

  “Yes, Gher,” she replied gently. “I hid behind Emmy for a while, but that isn’t necessary anymore, so I’ve stopped hiding.” She gave Althalus a sly, sidelong glance. “Our glorious leader here was a bit concerned about the changeover. He was positive that my unspeakable perfection would reduce you all to gibbering lunacy.” She paused, cocking her head as if listening intently. “How odd,” she said. “I don’t seem to hear a single gibber. Could it be that Althalus was wrong? Is it possible that he underestimated your comprehension?”

  “All right,” Althalus conceded sourly. “I was wrong. You don’t have to beat it into the ground.”

  “Of course not. Beating things into the ground is your department, isn’t it?”

  “Are you actually God’s sister?” Bheid asked in a voice trembling in awe.

  “That depends on your point of view, Bheid,” she replied with a faint smile. “From where I sit, Deiwos is God’s brother. I’m sure he doesn’t see it in those terms, but that’s his problem, isn’t it? The three of us—Deiwos, Daeva, and I—all look at things from a slightly different perspective. In my own personal view, Deiwos makes things for me to love, and Daeva hauls out the trash.”

  “That’s a novel set of definitions, Divinity,” Leitha noted. “Have you presented them to your brothers lately?”

  “It’d just be a waste of time, Leitha. My brothers are both too impressed with themselves to look at things the way they really are. They can be so tiresome sometimes.” She looked at them, her eyes slightly narrowed. “I see that you’ve all sort of adjusted to the situation, so maybe it’s time for us to get to work. Make some furniture, Althalus. We might as well be comfortable.”

  “Anything you say, Dweia.”

  “Would it be at all possible for you to grow a few freckles or something, Divinity?” Leitha asked. “You’re making life terribly difficult for poor Andine and me, you know.”

  “We’re not really in competition, Leitha,” Dweia suggested gently.

  “What an unworldly attitude,” Andine murmured.

  “How are we to address you?” Bheid asked when they were all seated in the comfortable chairs Althalus had made.

  “Can’t you pronounce ‘Dweia,’ Bheid?” Leitha asked him with feigned curiosity.

  “Some orders of the priesthood tell us that it’s forbidden to speak the name of God,” Bheid explained.

  “They’re wrong,” Dweia told him. “The small mind tries to conceal its inadequacy in senseless formality and endless disputes about meaningless trivia. You’re above that, Brother Bheid, or you wouldn’t be here. I have a name. Please use it. It’s very confusing when somebody looks at the sky and says, “Oh, God.” My brothers and I can never be sure which of us he’s talking to.” She laughed then. “That started a whole new religion in Plakand once,” she recalled. “When all three of us answered a priest at the same time, he took it to be a revelation, and three-headed idols began popping up all over Plakand.”

  “Some orders of the priesthood denounce statues of God,” Bheid said with a troubled look. “They tell us that no one can really see God.”

  “You can see me, can’t you?” Dweia asked. “Actually, the statues don’t concern us too much—except for that monstrosity in Maghu.” She paused, her hand resting on the Book. “We’re getting a little far afield,” she noted. “I think it might be best to put things in their simplest terms right at the beginning here so that we’re all starting from the same point. The three of us—Deiwos, Daeva, and I—have always existed, and we seldom agree with each other about anything.”

  “A war of the Gods, you mean?” Eliar asked.

  “Th
ere are only three of us, Eliar,” she said. “I’d hardly call that a war. As long as only the three of us were involved, our disagreements generated some interesting arguments and not much else. We were civil to each other when we met—which wasn’t very often—and we more or less let it go at that. Then humans came along and everything changed. Other creatures take the world as they find it, and so does most of mankind. There are a few humans, however, who have urges to tamper—to change things. Some of the changes are good; some aren’t. But it’s human nature to try them just to find out if they’ll work.”

  “When has this happened?” Bheid asked.

  “The arguments have been going on forever, but humans came to this part of the world about ten thousand years ago, searching for open land where they could grow wheat. Probably nothing has changed the world as much as wheat. It guaranteed the survival of humans, and it kept them in one place long enough to build villages and towns, and that’s how civilization began. Anyway, primitive humans came up out of the south—below Meusa and Plakand. There was a vast tropical forest in their original homeland, and chopping down all those trees with stone axes to make room for farmland didn’t appeal to them very much, so they came north in search of open country.”

  “That was ten thousand years ago?” Bheid asked.

  “Ten thousand or so,” she replied. “Calendars back then weren’t very good, and my brothers and I don’t pay very much attention to time. As it happened, Ghend was one of those early settlers in Medyo. He’s always had a very high opinion of himself, and that used to irritate his chief. The chief always seemed to think of Ghend when some particularly dirty job came along, and no matter how hard Ghend tried to obey his chief’s commands, his efforts were never quite good enough to satisfy his ruler. His resentment bloomed like a well-watered weed, and he soon hated his chief. It’s a gloomy sort of story that’s been repeated over and over again down through the centuries. Ghend’s puffed-up sense of his own worth made it impossible for him to see just how absurd he was sometimes. I think that if he’d been able to laugh at himself, things might have turned out differently; but he couldn’t laugh, and that opened the door for Daeva. It didn’t take very long. Daeva offered glory and power and immortality, and Ghend accepted it all quite eagerly. Then, just to reinforce his grasp on Ghend’s soul, Daeva took him to Nahgharash to corrupt him even more.”