The Redemption of Althalus

MAP

DEDICATION

For the sisters, Lori and Lynette, who have made our lives so much more pleasant.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! ! ! ! ! !

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

MAP

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

PART ONE The House at the End of the World

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

PART TWO The Gathering

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

PART THREE Dweia

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

PART FOUR Eliar

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

PART FIVE Andine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

PART SIX Leitha

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

PART SEVEN Gher

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

EPILOGUE

KEEP READING

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

Now before the Beginning, there was no Time, and all was Chaos and Darkness. But Deiwos, the Sky-God, awoke, and with his awakening, Time itself began. And Deiwos looked out upon the Chaos and the Darkness, and a great yearning filled his heart. And he rose up to make all that is made, and his making brought encroaching Light into the emptiness of his kinsman, the Demon Daeva. But in time Deiwos wearied of his labors, and sought him a place to rest. And with a single thought made he a high keep at that edge which divides the light from the darkness and the realm of Time from that place where there is no Time. And Deiwos marked that awful edge with fire to warn all men back from Daeva’s abyss, and then he rested there in his keep and communed with his Book while Time continued her stately march.

Now the Demon Daeva was made sore wroth by the encroachment upon his dark domain by his kinsman Deiwos, and eternal enmity was born in his soul, for the light caused him pain, and the orderly progression of Time herself was an agony unto him. And then retreated he to his cold throne in the echoless darkness of the void. And there he contemplated vengeance against the Light, and against his kinsman, and against Time herself.

And their sister watched, but said nothing.

From The Sky and the Abyss

The Mythology of Ancient Medyo

In defense of Althalus, it should be noted that he was in very tight financial circumstances and more than a little tipsy when he agreed to undertake the theft of the Book. Had he been completely sober and had he not reached the very bottom of his purse, he might have asked more questions about the House at the End of the World, and he most certainly would have asked many more about the owner of the Book.

It would be sheer folly to try to conceal the true nature of Althalus, for his flaws are the stuff of legend. He is, as all men know, a thief, a liar, an occasional murderer, an outrageous braggart, and a man devoid of even the slightest hint of honor. He is, moreover, a frequent drunkard, a glutton, and a patron of ladies who are no better than they should be.

He is an engaging sort of rogue, however, quick-witted and vastly amusing. It has even been suggested in some circles that if Althalus really wanted to do it, he could make trees giggle and mountains laugh right out loud.

His nimble fingers are even quicker than his wit, though, and a prudent man always keeps a firm hand over his purse when he laughs at the sallies of the witty thief.

So far as Althalus could remember, he had always been a thief. He had never known his father, and he could not exactly remember his mother’s name. He had grown up among thieves in the rough lands of the frontier, and even as a child his wit had made him welcome in the society of those men who made their living by transferring the ownership rights of objects of value. He earned his way with jokes and stories, and the thieves fed him and trained him in their art by way of thanks.

His mind was quick enough to make him aware of the limitations of each of his mentors. Some of them were large men who took what they wanted by sheer force. Others were small and wiry men who stole by stealth. As Althalus approached manhood, he realized that he’d never be a giant. Sheer bulk was apparently not a part of his heritage. He also realized that when he achieved his full growth, he’d no longer be able to wriggle his way through small openings into interesting places where interesting things were kept. He would be medium-sized, but he vowed to himself that he would not be mediocre. It occurred to him that wit was probably superior to bull-like strength or mouse-like stealth anyway, so that was the route he chose.

His fame was modest at first in the mountains and forests along the outer edges of civilization. Other thieves admired his cleverness. As one of them put it one evening in a thieves’ tavern in the Land of Hule, ‘I’ll swear, that Althalus boy could persuade the bees to bring him honey or the birds to lay their eggs on his plate at breakfast time. Mark my words, brothers, that boy will go far.’

In point of fact, Althalus did go far. He was not by nature a sedentary man, and he seemed to be blessed – or cursed – with a boundless curiosity about what lay on the other side of any hill or mountain or river he came across. His curiosity was not limited to geography, however, since he was also interested in what more sedentary men had in their houses or what they might be carrying in their purses. Those twin curiosities, coupled with an almost instinctive realization of when he’d been in one place for quite long enough, kept him continually on the move.

And so it was that he had looked at the prairies of Plakand and Wekti, at the rolling hills of Ansu, and at the mountains of Kagwher, Arum, and Kweron. He had even made occasional sorties into Regwos and southern Nekweros, despite the stories men told of the horrors lurking in the mountains beyond the outer edges of the frontier.

The one thing more than any other that distinguished Althalus from other thieves was his amazing luck. He could win every time he touched a pair of dice, and no matter where he went in whatever land, fortune smiled upon him. A chance meeting or a random conversation almost always led him directly to the most prosperous and least suspicious man in any community, and it seemed that any trail he took, even at random, led him directly to opportunities that came to no other thief. In truth, Althalus was even more famous for his luck than for his wit or his skill.

In time, he came to depend on that luck. Fortune, it appeared, absolutely adored him, and he came to trust her implicitly. He even went so far as to believe privately that she talked to him in the hidden silences of his mind. The little twinge that told him that it was time to leave any given community – in a hurry – was, he believed, her voice giving him a silent warning that unpleasant things lurked on the horizon.

The combination of wit, skill and luck had made him successful, but he could also run like a deer if the situation seemed to require it.

A professional thief must, if he wants to keep eating regularly, spend a great deal of his time in taverns listening to other people talk, since information is the primary essential to the art of the thief. There’s little profit to be made from robbing poor men. Althalus liked a good cup of mellow mead as much as the next man, but he seldom let it get ahead of him in the way that some frequenters of taverns did. A befuddled man makes mistakes, and the thief who makes mistakes usually doesn’t live very long. Althalus was very good at selecting the one man in any tavern who’d be most likely to be in possession of useful information, and with jokes and open-handed generosity, he could usually persuade the fellow to share that information. Buying drinks for talkative men in taverns was something in the nature of a business investment. Althalus always made sure that his own cup ran dry at about the same time the other man’s did, but most of the mead in the thief’s cup ended up on the floor instead of in his belly, for some reason.

He moved from place to place, he told jokes to tavern loafers and bought mead for them for a few days, and then, when he’d pinpointed the rich men in any town or village, he’d stop by to pay them a call along about midnight, and by morning he’d be miles away on the road to some other frontier settlement.

Although Althalus was primarily interested in local information, there were other stories told in taverns as well, stories about the cities down on the plains of Equero, Treborea, and Perquaine, the civilized lands to the south. He listened to some of those stories with a profound skepticism. Nobody in the world could be stupid enough to pave the streets of his home town with gold, and a fountain that sprayed diamonds might be rather pretty, but it wouldn’t really serve any practical purpose.

The stories, however, always stirred his imagination, and he sort of promised himself that someday, someday, he’d have to go down to the cities of the plain to have a look for himself.

The settlements of the frontier were built for the most part of logs, but the cities of the lands of the south were reputed to be built of stone. That in itself might make the journey to civilization worthwhile, but Althalus wasn’t really interested in architecture, so he kept putting off his visit to civilization.

What ultimately changed his mind was a funny story he heard in a tavern in Kagwher about the decline of the Deikan Empire. The central cause of that decline, it appeared, had been a blunder so colossal that Althalus couldn’t believe that anybody with good sense could have even made it once, much less three times.

‘May all of my teeth fall out if they didn’t’, the storyteller assured him. ‘The people down in Deika have a very high opinion of themselves, so when they heard that men had discovered gold here in Kagwher, they decided right off that God had meant for them to have it – only he’d made a mistake and put it in Kagwher instead of down there where it’d be convenient for them to just bend over and pick it up. They were a little put out with God for that, but they were wise enough not to scold him about it. Instead, they sent an army up here into the mountains to keep us ignorant hill-people from just helping ourselves to all that gold that God had intended for them. Well, now, when that army got here and started hearing stories about how much gold there was up here, the soldiers all decided that army life didn’t really suit them any more, so the whole army just ups and quits so that they could strike out on their own.’

Althalus laughed. ‘That would be a quick way to lose an army, I suppose.’

‘There’s none any quicker,’ the humorous story-teller agreed. ‘Anyhow, the Senate that operates the government of Deika was terribly disappointed with that army, so they sent a second army up here to chase down the first one and punish them for ignoring their duty.’

‘You’re not serious!’ Althalus exclaimed.

‘Oh, yes, that’s exactly what they did. Well, sir, that second army decided that they weren’t any stupider than the first one had been, so they hung up their swords and uniforms to go look for gold, too.’

Althalus howled with laughter. ‘That’s the funniest story I’ve ever heard!’ he said.

‘It gets better,’ the grinning man told him. ‘The Senate of the Empire just couldn’t believe that two whole armies could ignore their duty that way. After all, the soldiers were getting paid a whole copper penny every day, weren’t they? The Senators made speeches at each other until all their brains went to sleep, and that’s when they took stupidity out to the very end of its leash by sending a third army up here to find out what had happened to the first two.’

‘Is he serious?’ Althalus asked another tavern patron.

‘That’s more or less the way it happened, stranger,’ the man replied. ‘I can vouch for it, because I was a sergeant in that second army. The city-state of Deika used to rule just about the whole of civilization, but after she’d poured three entire armies into the mountains of Kagwher, she didn’t have enough troops left to patrol her own streets, much less the other civilized lands. Our Senate still passes laws that the other lands are supposed to obey, but nobody pays any attention to them any more. Our Senators can’t quite seem to grasp that, so they keep passing new laws about taxes and the like, and people keep ignoring them. Our glorious Empire has turned itself into a glorious joke.’

‘Maybe I’ve been putting off my visit to civilization for too long,’ Althalus said. ‘If they’re that silly down in Deika, a man in my profession almost has to pay them a visit.’

‘Oh?’ the former soldier said. ‘Which profession do you follow?’

‘I’m a thief,’ Althalus admitted, ‘and a city filled with stupid rich men might just be the next best thing to paradise for a really good thief.’

‘I wish you all the best, friend’, the expatriate told him. ‘I was never all that fond of Senators who spent all their time trying to invent new ways to get me killed. Be a little careful when you get there, though. The Senators buy their seats in that august body, and that means that they’re rich men. Rich Senators make laws to protect the rich, not the ordinary people. If you get caught stealing in Deika, things won’t turn out too well for you.’

‘I never get caught. Sergeant,’ Althalus assured him. ‘That’s because I’m the best thief in the world, and to make things even better, I’m also the luckiest man in the world. If half the story I just heard is true, the luck of the Deikan Empire has turned sour lately, and my luck just keeps getting sweeter. If the chance to make a wager on the outcome of my visit comes along, put your money on me, because in a situation like this one, I can’t possibly lose.’

And with that, Althalus drained his cup, bowed floridly to the other men in the tavern, and gaily set off to see the wonders of civilization for himself.

PART ONE

The House at the End of the World

CHAPTER ONE

Althalus the thief spent ten days on the road down out of the mountains of Kagwher to reach the imperial city of Deika. As he was coming out of the foothills, he passed a limestone quarry where miserable slaves spent their lives under the whip laboriously sawing building blocks out of the limestone with heavy bronze saws. Althalus had heard about slavery, of course, but this was the first time he’d ever actually seen slaves. As he strode on toward the plains of Equero, he had a little chat with his good luck about the subject, strongly suggesting to her that if she really loved him, she’d do everything she possibly could to keep him from ever becoming a slave.

The city of Deika lay at the southern end of a large lake in northern Equero, and it was even more splendid than the stories had said it was. It was surrounded by a high stone wall made of squared-off limestone blocks, and all the buildings inside the walls were also made of stone.

The broad streets of Deika were paved with flagstones, and the public buildings soared to the sky. Everyone in town who thought he was important wore a splendid linen mantle, and every private house was identified by a statue of its owner – usually so idealized that any actual resemblance to the man so identified was purely coincidental.

Althalus was garbed in clothes suitable for the frontier, and he received many disparaging glances from passers-by as he viewed the splendors of the imperial city. After a while, he grew tired of that and sought out a quarter of town where the men in the streets wore more commonplace garments and less superior expressions.

Finally he located a fishermen’s tavern near the lakefront, and he stopped there to sit and to listen, since fishermen the world over love to talk. He sat unobtrusively nursing a cup of sour wine while the tar-smeared men around him talked shop.

‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you here before,’ one of the men said to Althalus.

‘I’m from out of town,’ Althalus replied.

‘Oh? Where from?’

‘Up in the mountains. I came down to look at civilization.’

‘Well, what do you think of our city?’

‘Very impressive. I was almost as impressed with your city as some of the town’s rich men seemed to be with themselves.’

One of the fishermen laughed cynically. ‘You passed near the forum, I take it.’

‘If that’s the place where all the fancy buildings are, yes I did. And if you want it, you can take as much of my share of it as you want.’

‘You didn’t care for our rich men?’

‘Apparently not as much as they did, that’s for certain. People like us should avoid the rich if we possibly can. Sooner or later, we’ll probably be bad for their eyes.’

‘How’s that?’ another fisherman asked.

‘Well, all those fellows in the forum – the ones who wear fancy nightgowns in the street – kept looking down their noses at me. If a man spends all his time doing that, sooner or later it’s going to make him cross-eyed.’

The fishermen all laughed, and the atmosphere in the tavern became relaxed and friendly. Althalus had skillfully introduced the topic dearest to his heart, and they all spent the rest of the afternoon talking about the rich men of Deika. By evening, Althalus had committed several names to memory. He spent another few days narrowing down his list, and he ultimately settled on a very wealthy salt merchant named Kweso. Then he went to the central market-place, visited the marble-lined public baths, and then dipped into his purse to buy some clothing that more closely fit into the current fashion of Deika. The key word for a thief who’s selecting a costume for business purposes is ‘nondescript’, for fairly obvious reasons. Then Althalus went to the rich men’s part of town and spent several more days – and nights – watching merchant Kweso’s walled-in house. Kweso himself was a plump, rosy-cheeked bald man who had a sort of friendly smile. On a number of occasions Althalus even managed to get close enough to him to be able to hear him talking. He actually grew to be rather fond of the chubby little fellow, but that’s not unusual, really. When you get right down to it, a wolf is probably quite fond of deer.

Althalus managed to pick up the name of one of Kweso’s neighbors, and, with a suitably business-like manner, he went in through the salt merchant’s gate one morning, walked up to his door and knocked. After a moment or two, a servant opened the door. ‘Yes?’ the servant asked.

‘I’d like to speak with Gentleman Melgor,’ Althalus said politely. ‘It’s on business.’

‘I’m afraid you have the wrong house, sir,’ the servant said. ‘Gentleman Melgor’s house is the one two doors down.’

Althalus smacked his forehead with his open hand. ‘How stupid of me,’ he apologized. ‘I’m very sorry to have disturbed you.’ His eyes, however, were very busy. Kweso’s door latch wasn’t very complicated, and his entryway had several doors leading off it. He lowered his voice. ‘I hope my pounding didn’t wake your master,’ he said.

The servant smiled briefly. ‘I rather doubt it,’ he said. ‘The master’s bedroom is upstairs at the back of the house. He usually gets out of bed about this time in the morning anyway, so he’s probably already awake.’

‘That’s a blessing,’ Althalus said, his eyes still busy. ‘You said that Melgor’s house is two doors down?’

‘Yes.’ The servant leaned out through the doorway and pointed. ‘It’s that way – the house with the blue door. You can’t miss it.’