They waited for a while in Baskoi’s comfortable parlor. “That’s long enough,” Althalus decided finally. “Let’s go to the temple and educate a few clergymen, shall we?”
“Aren’t you pushing things just a bit?” Andine suggested.
“Naturally,” Althalus replied gaily. “I want Emdahl’s undivided attention.”
They left the house and went across town to the temple, and there were a fair number of unfriendly looks cast in their direction as they entered. Althalus ignored the obvious hostility and marched through the temple to Aleikon’s private chapel. “Are they in there?” he demanded of the priest who’d originally come to Baskoi’s house.
“Ah . . . no, your Grace,” the priest replied nervously. “Exarch Aleikon’s still indisposed, and Exarchs Emdahl and Yeudon are conferring in the library.”
“I think you’d better take me to them at once,” Althalus said.
The priest scurried on ahead, and Althalus and the rest marched on behind, Althalus drawing an icy calm about himself.
“It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes, your Grace,” the nervous priest reported when they reached an arched door.
“You’ve been quite helpful in the past several weeks, young man,” Althalus said, “so I don’t want to get you in trouble. Isn’t there some important duty you just absolutely must see to in another part of the temple?”
“I’ll think of something, your Grace,” the priest replied gratefully, and then he scurried away.
What are you up to? Dweia’s voice demanded.
I’m going to get their attention, Em. I’m going to ignore some customary courtesies and bull my way into the presence of Yeudon and Emdahl. I’m not going to dance to their tune as they most likely expect me to. Then he slammed open the library door and marched into the presence of Emdahl and Yeudon. “Don’t get up, gentlemen. I’m told you want to see me,” he announced to the two startled clergymen. “Well, here I am. What’s your problem?”
“What kept you?” the harsh-faced Emdahl demanded.
“Courtesy, your Eminence,” Althalus replied with a florid bow. “Since it’s customary to keep visitors cooling their heels in an anteroom for a certain amount of time, I took care of that in more comfortable surroundings. We have a great deal to discuss, gentlemen, so let’s get down to business, shall we? What is it that you want to know?”
“Let’s start with everything,” Emdahl replied in his gravelly voice, “and we’ll go on from there. Just who are you? There’s been a great deal of turmoil in the world here lately, and you and your people seem to have been at the center of most of it. You’ve been running roughshod over people who outrank you everywhere you go, and that disrupts the natural order of things. The Church wants to know what your intentions are.”
Althalus seated himself at the opposite end of the table, motioned the others to sit, and leaned back in his chair. “How much truth are you prepared to deal with, Exarch Emdahl?”
“As much—or more—than you’re ready to give me. Let’s start with who you are.”
Althalus shrugged. “Is that all? This shouldn’t take very long, then. My name’s Althalus, but you already know that. I’m a thief and a swindler, and if the money’s right, a sometime murderer. I was born a very, very long time ago, and I was having a long spell of bad luck when this all started. I was approached by a man named Ghend—a disciple of the demon Daeva—who hired me to go to Kagwher to steal something he called a book. I went to the House at the End of the World where the Book was, and there was a cat there—except that she wasn’t really a cat. She’s the Goddess Dweia, the sister of Deiwos and Daeva.” He paused slightly. “You did know that Deiwos and Daeva are brothers, didn’t you, Emdahl? Anyway, the cat, who I call Emmy, taught me how to read the Book of Deiwos, and then about two years ago, she and I left the House to pick up certain people: a young Arum named Eliar; Andine, the Arya of Osthos; a Black Robe priest named Bheid; a boy-thief named Gher; and the mind leech Leitha. Then we all went to the House and saw the real form of the Goddess Dweia. She explained some things to us, and then we came out of the House to deal with Ghend and his underlings in the inevitable war between good and evil. That’s what we’re doing right now. We’ve already eliminated two of Ghend’s underlings—Pekhal and Gelta—and we’ve come to Perquaine to deal with Argan, who is a defrocked priest, and Koman, who is Ghend’s mind leech. You gentlemen can either lend a hand or back off and leave me alone. That’s entirely up to you, but I should probably advise you that if you try to interfere with me in any way, I’ll destroy you and anything you gather up to try to resist me. I can do things you can’t even begin to imagine, so get out of my way and let me get on with my work.” Althalus paused. “Was that bald enough for you, Emdahl?” he asked.
Exarch Emdahl’s eyes were bulging.
“Oh, one other thing,” Althalus added. “Dweia tampered with Exarch Aleikon just a bit to get your attention. The poor fellow hasn’t really gone crazy. Dweia’s been filling his dreams with visions of Nahgharash, that’s all. It only takes a little bit of Nahgharash to get somebody’s total attention.”
“Nahgharash is only a metaphor, Althalus,” Yeudon objected. “It’s a way to explain a spiritual condition.”
“I think you’ve got it upside down, Yeudon,” Althalus disagreed. “Nahgharash is much more real than your sometimes-obscure definition of sin. It’s not just a state of mind. I’ve caught a few glimpses of it—usually when Ghend was trying to surprise me.”
“Just exactly where is it?”
“It’s supposed to be a vast cave filled with fire under the mountains of Nekweros. Actually, it’s wherever Ghend wants it to be. It’s very similar to the House at the End of the World, which can be Everywhere and Everywhen all at the same time.” Althalus smiled faintly. “There’s an alternative to everywhere and Everywhen, but we aren’t even supposed to think about it. Gher started playing with the notion of ‘Nowhere and Nowhen’ once, and it sent Dweia right straight up the wall. I guess there’s a chaos out beyond good and evil that’s so hungry that it can swallow the universe. Let’s get back to the question of reality, though. When you get right down to the core of things, the House and Nahgharash are the ultimate realities, and what we call the real world is just a reflection of them. That almost suggests that we’re the metaphors—concepts, if you wish—designed to act out the realities of the struggle between Dweia and Daeva.” He laughed. “We could discuss that for several centuries, couldn’t we? Right now, though, we’ve got this little war on our hands, so maybe we should concentrate on that. In those other realities, time and distance aren’t constant in the same way they are in the ordinary world. Scopas Eyosra sent a message to you two gentlemen urging you to come to Maghu because Exarch Aleikon was starting to come unhinged. In this world, that message would have taken about six weeks to reach you, and it would have taken you another six weeks to come here to Maghu. If you wanted to investigate a little, though, I think you’d find that Eyosra’s message left here early last week. Emmy could have done it even faster, but she prefers not to make big splashes and all kinds of noise.” He looked at Emdahl and Yeudon. “I don’t seem to be getting through to you gentlemen,” he noted.
“I think you’re even crazier than Aleikon,” Emdahl rasped.
“Aleikon isn’t crazy, Exarch Emdahl,” Leitha told him. “He’s having nightmares about Nahgharash, that’s all, and those nightmares aren’t coming from his own mind. Dweia’s giving them to him. The whole idea was to make him appear to be insane so that the two of you would come here. It seems to have worked, so I’d imagine that Aleikon will recover almost immediately.”
“You’re the witch-woman, aren’t you?” Emdahl demanded.
“That’s beginning to make me very tired,” Leitha told him in a flat, unfriendly voice.
“I’d be awful careful right here, Mister High Priest,” Gher cautioned. “Leitha’s not afraid of anything—or anybody—and if you make her mad at you, she’ll melt your
brains down into a mud puddle.”
“This is all nonsense!” Emdahl exploded. “I think you people all belong in a madhouse somewhere. We are the leaders of the faith, and we tell you what you can or cannot believe.”
“I think you’d better show him how wrong he is, Leitha,” Althalus suggested, speaking aloud.
“Yes, Daddy,” she agreed. “Maybe I should at that.” She looked at the harsh-faced Exarch of the Black Robes. Then she sighed. “How very sad,” she said. “Deiwos is real, your Eminence,” she told him. “He’s not just some fiction the priesthood invented to foist off on the gullible among the population. Your uncertainty and your anguish are unnecessary. Don’t keep punishing yourself about your doubts.”
Emdahl’s expression was suddenly stricken, and he began to tremble violently. “How . . .” he started, but left it hanging.
“Leitha is gifted, my Exarch,” Bheid explained gently. “She can hear your innermost thoughts.”
“I do wish you people would stop calling it a gift,” Leitha complained. “It’s more like a curse. I don’t want to hear most of what comes to me unbidden.”
Dweia’s voice crackled in Althalus’ mind. This is tiresome as well as annoying, Althalus. Stand clear. I’ll take care of it.
Then one wall of Aleikon’s high-vaulted library was no longer there. Where the wall had been was the perfect face of Dweia: calm, beautiful, and so enormous that Althalus flinched back in near panic. Her perfect arms were crossed on what had been the floor, and her chin was resting pensively on those arms. “I sometimes forget how small you people are,” she murmured. “So tiny, so imperfect.” She reached out with one vast hand and gently picked up the rigid body of Exarch Emdahl and placed him on the palm of her other hand. Then she took up Yeudon and stood him beside Emdahl. “Does this put things in perspective for you gentlemen?” she asked.
The two clergymen clung to each other, squeaking almost like mice.
“Oh, stop that,” she scolded in a voice that seemed oddly gentle. “I’m not going to hurt you. Althalus isn’t the most reliable person in the world, but this time he’s telling you the truth. I am who he told you that I am, and this is not an illusion or some kind of trick. I want you both to behave yourselves and to do exactly as Althalus tells you to do. We aren’t going to argue about this, are we, gentlemen?”
Emdahl and Yeudon, still clinging to each other in panic, both shook their heads violently.
“I knew all along that you were good boys,” she murmured. Then she reached out one enormous finger and touched each of them with a kind of gently stroking motion. “So tiny,” she murmured again. “So very, very tiny.” Then she took each of them in turn and set them back down in their chairs. “Bring them here, Althalus,” she said, “and fetch Aleikon as well. They have some decisions to make, and it might take them quite a while to make them. Once they’re in the House, I can give them as much time as they’ll need.”
Exarch Aleikon was trembling violently when Althalus and Eliar led him through the door into the tower. You might have gone just a little too far with him, Em, Althalus silently suggested. The nightmares pushed him very close to the edge, and dropping the House on him like this might just be more than he can handle.
Bring him to me, pet, she replied. I’ll bring him back to his senses.
Althalus rather gently took Exarch Aleikon by the arm and led him to the marble table where Dweia sat with Emdahl and Yeudon. He noted that the Book was covered with a piece of heavy cloth.
“You aren’t looking too well, Aleikon,” Emdahl rasped.
“Where are we?” Aleikon asked, looking around in confusion.
“We’re not entirely sure, Aleikon,” the silver-haired Yeudon told him. “Reality seems to be very far away right now.”
“That might depend on your definition of reality,” Emdahl said. “Can you put Aleikon’s head back together, Divinity?” he asked Dweia. “The three of us have to make some decisions, and Aleikon’s not functioning very well right now.”
“Perhaps we did push him a little far,” Dweia conceded, looking at Aleikon’s anguished face. “Your nightmares are over now, Aleikon,” she told the Brown Robe Exarch. “They’ve served their purpose, so let’s get rid of them.” She reached out and uncovered the Book. “Give me your hand, Aleikon,” she told him.
The Brown Robe Exarch held out his trembling hand, and Dweia gently took it and placed it palm down on the white, leather-bound Book. “Just relax,” she told him. “My brother’s Book will banish all memory of your nightmares.”
“Is that . . . ?” Yeudon started in an awed voice.
“It’s the Book of Deiwos, yes,” Althalus told him. “It’s really quite interesting—once you get into it. It’s a bit tedious right at first. Dweia’s brother has a little trouble sticking to the point.”
“Be nice,” Dweia scolded.
“Sorry,” Althalus apologized.
A look of wonder had come over Exarch Aleikon’s face.
“That should be enough for right now,” Dweia noted clinically. “We don’t want to go too fast here. You gentlemen need to discuss practicalities, and religious ecstasy isn’t the best route to that.”
“Could I . . . ?” Yeudon pleaded, reaching his hand out toward the Book with a look of longing.
“Let them touch it, Em,” Althalus suggested. “It’s all they’ll think about if you don’t, and we’ve got work to do.”
Dweia gave the Exarchs a stern took. “If you really think you must touch the Book, I suppose it’s all right,” she told them, “but no peeking.”
Althalus burst out laughing at that.
“What’s so funny?” Dweia demanded.
“Nothing, Em,” he replied with mock innocence. “Something just struck me as sort of funny, that’s all.”
Exarch Emdahl’s harshly lined face was pensive as he sat at the marble table in the tower of the House. “There’s no question that the Church has strayed from her original purpose, gentlemen,” he said sadly to Aleikon and Yeudon. “We sought to impress the wealthy and powerful by imitating them, and in the end, we became more arrogant and filled with pride than they were. We’ve totally lost contact with the commoners, and that opened the door for the enemy.”
“Face reality, Emdahl,” the plump-faced Aleikon told him abruptly. “The Church has to live in the real world, imperfect though it may be. Without the aid of the aristocracy we’d never have been able to perform our task.”
“Have we really succeeded all that well, Aleikon?” Emdahl asked him. “From where I sit, it rather looks as if it’s all falling down around our ears.”
“I think we’re straying just a bit,” Althalus suggested. “When your house is on fire, you don’t really have time to argue about which kind of bucket you should use to throw water on the flames. Why don’t we have a look at the faces of the people who’re setting the fires? It might be useful to get to know them.”
“I don’t think we have the time, Althalus,” Yeudon disagreed.
“Time doesn’t mean anything here in Emmy’s House,” Gher told him, “and neither does distance, but that’s only natural, I guess, since time and distance are the same thing. Everything in the world’s always moving, since the world’s part of the sky, and the sky moves all the time. When we talk about miles, what we’re really talking about is hours—how long it takes to get from here to there. I think that might be why nobody can see Emmy’s House, since, even though it’s always here, Emmy can make it be here somewhen else.”
“Is this boy all right in the head, Althalus?” Emdahl asked.
“He just thinks faster than anybody else can, Exarch Emdahl,” Althalus replied, “and he takes ideas further than the rest of us do. If you talk with him for a while, I think you’ll come away with your eyes popping.”
“Or with your brain turned inside out,” Sergeant Khalor added. “I don’t think Gher even lives in the same world with the rest of us. His mind moves so fast that nobody but Dweia can keep up with
him.”
The three Exarchs looked speculatively at the little boy.
“Never mind,” Dweia told them firmly. “Don’t get any ideas, gentlemen. The boy’s mine, and he’s going to stay mine. Tell them about the windows, Gher.”
“All right, Emmy.” Gher looked earnestly at the three. “Since the House is Everywhere, the windows look out at any place Emmy wants them to, so we can find out what the bad people are doing and what they’re going to try to do next. The great thing about the windows is that we can see and hear the bad people, and they don’t even know we’re right behind them—except that we really aren’t.” Gher frowned. “This is awful hard to explain,” he told them. “I know what’s happening, but I just don’t know the right words to make it clear to anybody else. If the House is Everywhere, then wouldn’t that sort of mean that it’s Nowhere? I mean, not really Nowhere, but only sort of Nowhere. At least it’s Nowhere enough so that the bad people can’t see us while we’re watching them.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘omnipresence,’ boy,” Emdahl suggested. “It’s part of the standard definition of God. If God’s Everywhere, man can’t hide from him.”
“That makes me feel a lot better, Mister Priest,” Gher said gratefully. “I thought I was the only one who’d ever had these ideas, and that’s a really lonesome sort of feeling.”
“I think that maybe you’d better get used to that, boy,” Emdahl told him. “You seem to be able to grasp instinctively concepts that others can only touch the edges of after a lifetime of study.” Emdahl sighed regretfully. “What a theologian we could have made of this boy if we’d gotten to him first.”
“He’s doing just fine on his own, Emdahl,” Dweia said. “Don’t tamper with him.”
The Redemption of Althalus Page 66