THE
REDEMPTION
OF ALTHALUS

COPYRIGHT

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2000

Copyright © David and Leigh Eddings 2000

David Eddings and Leigh Eddings assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

A catalogue record for this ebook is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006514831

Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007375097

Version: 2018-10-08

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.’

‘My thanks, friend, and I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’ Then Althalus turned and went back out to the street. He was grinning broadly. His luck was still holding him cuddled to her breast. The ‘wrong house’ ploy had given him even more information than he’d expected. His luck had encouraged that servant to tell him all sorts of things. It was still quite early in the morning, and if this was Kweso’s normal time to rise, that was a fair indication that he went to bed early as well. He’d be sound asleep by midnight. The garden around his house was mature, with large trees and broad flowering bushes that would provide cover. Getting inside the house would be no problem, and now Althalus knew where Kweso’s bedroom was. All that was left to do was to slip into the house in the middle of the night, go directly to Kweso’s bedroom, wake him, and lay a bronze knife against his throat to persuade him to cooperate. The whole affair could be settled in short order.

Unfortunately, however, it didn’t turn out that way at all. The salt merchant’s chubby, good-natured face obviously concealed a much sharper mind than Althalus expected. Not long after midnight, the clever thief scaled the merchant’s outer wall, crept through the garden, and quietly entered the house. He stopped in the entryway to listen. Except for a few snores coming from the servants’ quarters, the house was silent. As quietly as a shadow, Althalus went to the foot of the stairs and started up.

It was at that point that Kweso’s house became very noisy. The three dogs were almost as large as ponies, and their deep-throated barking seemed almost to shake the walls.

Althalus immediately changed his plans. The open air of the night-time streets suddenly seemed enormously attractive.

The dogs at the foot of the stairs seemed to have other plans, however. They started up, snarling and displaying shockingly large fangs.

There were shouts coming from upstairs, and somebody was lighting candles.

Althalus waited tensely until the dogs had almost reached him. Then, with an acrobatic skill he didn’t even know he had, he jumped high over the top of the dogs, tumbled on down to the foot of the stairs, sprang to his feet and ran back outside.

As he raced across the garden with the dogs snapping at his heels, he heard a buzzing sound zip past his left ear. Somebody in the house, either the deceptively moon-faced Kweso himself or one of his meek-looking servants, seemed to be a very proficient archer.

Althalus scrambled up the wall as the dogs snapped at his heels and more arrows bounced off the stones, spraying his face with chips and fragments.

He rolled over the top of the wall and dropped into the street, running almost before his feet hit the paving stones. Things had not turned out the way he’d planned. His tumble down the stairs had left scrapes and bruises in all sorts of places, and he’d managed to severely twist one of his ankles in his drop to the street. He limped on, filling the air around him with curses.

Then somebody in Kweso’s house opened the front gate, and the dogs came rushing out.

Now that, Althalus felt, was going just a little too far. He’d admitted his defeat by running away, but Kweso evidently wasn’t satisfied with victory, but wanted blood as well.

It took some dodging around and clambering over several walls, but the thief eventually shook off the pursuing dogs. Then he went across town to put himself a long way away from all the excitement and sat down on a conveniently placed public bench to think things over. Civilized men were obviously not as docile as they appeared on the surface, and Althalus decided then and there that he’d seen as much of the city of Deika as he really wanted to see. What puzzled him the most, though, was how his luck had failed to warn him about those dogs. Could it be that she’d been asleep? He’d have to speak with her about that.

He was in a foul humor as he waited in the shadows near a tavern in the better part of town, so he was rather abrupt when a couple of well-dressed patrons of the tavern came reeling out into the street. He very firmly persuaded the both of them to take a little nap by rapping them smartly across the backs of their heads with the heavy hilt of his short-bladed bronze sword. Then he transferred the ownership of the contents of their purses, as well as a few rings and a fairly nice bracelet, and left them slumbering peacefully in the gutter near the tavern.

Waylaying drunken men in the street wasn’t really his style, but Althalus needed some traveling money. The two men had been the first to come along, and the process was fairly routine, so there wasn’t much danger involved. Althalus decided that it might be best to avoid taking any chances until after he’d had a long talk with his luck.

As he went toward the main gate of town, he hefted the two purses he’d just stolen. They seemed fairly heavy, and that persuaded him to take a step he normally wouldn’t even have considered. He left the city of Deika, limped on until shortly after dawn, and then stopped at a substantial looking farmhouse, where he bought – and actually paid for – a horse. It went against all his principles, but until he’d had that chat with his luck, he decided not to take any chances.

He mounted his new horse and, without so much as a backward glance, he rode on toward the west. The sooner he left Equero and the Deikan Empire behind, the better. He absently wondered as he rode if geography might play some part in a man’s luck. Could it possibly be that his luck just didn’t work in some places? That was a very troubling thought, and Althalus brooded sourly about it as he rode west.

He reached the city of Kanthon in Treborea two days later, and he paused before entering the gates to make sure that the fabled – and evidently interminable – war between Kanthon and Osthos had not recently boiled to the surface. Since he saw no siege engines in place, he rode on in.

The forum of Kanthon rather closely resembled the forum he’d seen in Deika, but the wealthy men who came there to listen to speeches seemed not to be burdened with the same notions of their own superiority as the aristocrats of Equero were, so Althalus found that he was not offended by their very existence. He even went into the forum once to listen to speeches. The speeches, however, were mostly denunciations of the city-state of Osthos in southern Treborea or complaints about a recent raise in taxes, so they weren’t really very interesting.

Then he went looking for a tavern in one of the more modest neighborhoods, and he no sooner entered a somewhat run-down establishment than he became convinced that his luck was once again on the rise. Two of the patrons were involved in a heated argument about just who was the richest man in Kanthon.

‘Omeso’s got it all over Weikor,’ one of them asserted loudly. ‘He’s got so much money that he can’t even count it.’

‘Well, of course he has, you fool. Omeso can’t count past ten unless he takes his shoes off. He inherited all his money from his uncle, and he’s never earned so much as a penny on his own. Weikor worked his way up from the bottom, so he knows how to earn money instead of having it handed to him on a platter. Omeso’s money flows out as fast as he can spend it, but Weikor’s money keeps coming in. Ten years from now, Weikor’s going to own Omeso – though why anybody would want him is beyond me.’

Althalus turned and left without so much as ordering a drink. He’d picked up exactly the information he wanted; clearly his luck was smiling down on him again. Maybe geography did play a part in fortune’s decisions.

He nosed around Kanthon for the next couple of days, asking questions about Omeso and Weikor, and he ultimately promoted Omeso to the head of his list, largely because of Weikor’s reputation as a man well able to protect his hard-earned money. Althalus definitely didn’t want to encounter any more large, hungry dogs while he was working.

The ‘wrong house’ ploy gave him the opportunity to examine the latch on Omeso’s front door, and a few evenings spent following his quarry revealed that Omeso almost never went home before dawn and that by then he was so far gone in drink that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if his house happened to be on fire. His servants, of course, were well aware of his habits, so they also spent their nights out on the town. By the time the sun went down, Omeso’s house was almost always empty.

And so, shortly before midnight on a warm summer evening, Althalus quietly entered the house and began his search.

He almost immediately saw something that didn’t ring at all true. Omeso’s house was splendid enough on the outside, but the interior was furnished with tattered, broken-down chairs and tables that would have shamed a pauper. The draperies were in rags, the carpets were threadbare, and the best candlestick in the entire house was made of tarnished brass. The furnishings cried louder than words that this was not the house of a rich man. Omeso had evidently already spent his inheritance.

Althalus doggedly continued his search, and after he’d meticulously covered every room, he gave up. There wasn’t anything in the entire house that was worth stealing. He left in disgust.

He still had money in his purse, so he lingered in Kanthon for a few more days, and then, quite by accident, he entered a tavern frequented by artisans. As usually was the case down in the lowlands, the tavern did not offer mead, so Althalus had to settle for sour wine again. He looked around the tavern. Artisans were the sort of people who had many opportunities to look inside the houses of rich people. ‘Maybe one of you gentlemen could clear something up for me,’ he addressed the other patrons. ‘I happened to go into the house of a man named Omeso on business the other day. Everybody in town was telling me how rich he is, but once I got past his front door, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There were chairs in that man’s house that only had three legs, and the tables all looked so wobbly that a good sneeze would knock them over.’

‘That’s the latest fashion here in Kanthon, friend,’ a mud-smeared potter told him. ‘I can’t sell a good pot or jug or bottle anymore, because everybody wants ones that are chipped and battered and have the handles broken off.’

‘If you think that’s odd,’ a wood-carver said, ‘you should see what goes on in my shop. I used to have a scrap-heap where I threw broken furniture, but since the new tax law went into effect, I can’t give new furniture away, but our local gentry will pay almost anything for a broken-down old chair.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Althalus confessed.

‘It’s not really too complicated, stranger,’ a baker put in. ‘Our old Aryo used to run his government on the proceeds of the tax on bread. Anybody who ate helped support the government. But our old Aryo died last year, and his son, the man who sits on the throne now, is a very educated young man. His teachers were all philosophers with strange ideas. They persuaded him that a tax on profit had more justice than one on bread, since the poor people have to buy most of the bread, while the rich people make most of the profit.’

‘What has that got to do with shabby furniture?’ Althalus asked with a puzzled frown.

‘The furniture’s all for show, friend,’ a mortar-spattered stone-mason told him. ‘Our rich men are all trying to convince the tax collectors that they haven’t got anything at all. The tax collectors don’t believe them, of course, so they conduct little surprise searches. If a rich man in Kanthon’s stupid enough to have even one piece of fine furniture in his house, the tax collectors immediately send in the wrecking crews to dismantle the floors of the house.’

‘The floors? Why are they tearing up floors?’

‘Because that’s a favorite place to hide money. Folks pry up a couple of flagstones, you see, and then they dig a hole and line it with bricks. All the money they pretend they don’t have goes into the hole. Then they cement the flagstones back down. Right at first, their work was so shabby that even a fool could see it the moment he entered the room. Now, though, I’m making more money teaching people how to mix good mortar than I ever did laying stone block walls. Here just recently, I even had to build my own hidey-hole under my own floor, I’m making so much.’

‘Why didn’t your rich men hire professionals to do the work for them?’

‘Oh, they did, right at first, but the tax collectors came around and started offering us rewards to point out any new flagstone work here in town.’ The mason laughed cynically. ‘It was sort of our patriotic duty, after all, and the rewards were nice and substantial. The rich men of Kanthon are all amateur stone-masons now, but oddly enough, not a single one of my pupils has a name that I can recognize. They all seem to have names connected to honest trades, for some strange reason. I guess they’re afraid that I might turn them in to the tax collectors if they give me their real names.’

Althalus thought long and hard about that bit of information. The tax law of the philosophical new Aryo of Kanthon had more or less put him out of business. If a man were clever enough to hide his money from the tax collectors and their well-equipped demolition crews, what chance did an honest thief have? He could get into their houses easily enough, but the prospect of walking around all that shabby furniture, while knowing that his feet might be within inches of hidden wealth, made him go cold all over. Moreover, the houses of the wealthy men here were snuggled together so closely that a single startled shout would wake the whole neighborhood. Stealth wouldn’t work, and the threat of violence probably wouldn’t either. The knowledge that the wealth was so close and yet so far away gnawed at him. He decided that he’d better leave very soon, before temptation persuaded him to stay. Kanthon, as it turned out, was even worse than Deika.

He left Kanthon the very next morning and continued his westward trek, riding across the rich grainfields of Treborea toward Perquaine in a distinctly sour frame of mind. There was wealth beyond counting down here in civilization, but those who had been cunning enough to accumulate it were also, it appeared, cunning enough to devise ways to keep it. Althalus began to grow homesick for the frontier and to wish devoutly that he’d never heard the word ‘civilization’.

He crossed the river into Perquaine, the rich farmland of the plains country where the earth was so fertile that it didn’t even have to be planted, according to the rumors. All a farmer of Perquaine had to do each spring was put on his finest clothes, go out into his fields, and say ‘wheat, please,’ or, ‘barley, if it’s not too much trouble,’ and then return home and go back to bed. Althalus was fairly sure that the rumors were exaggerations, but he knew nothing about farming, so for all he knew there might even be a grain of truth to them.

Unlike the people of the rest of the world, the Perquaines worshiped a female deity. That seemed profoundly unnatural to most people – either in civilization or out on the frontiers – but there was a certain logic to it. The entire culture of Perquaine rested on the vast fields of grain, and the Perquaines were absolutely obsessed with fertility. When Althalus reached the city of Maghu, he discovered that the largest and most magnificent building in the entire city was the temple of Dweia, the Goddess of fertility. He briefly stopped at the temple to look inside, and the colossal statue of the fertility goddess seemed almost to leap at him. The sculptor who’d carved the statue had quite obviously been either totally insane or caught up in the grip of religious ecstasy when he’d created that monstrosity. There was a certain warped logic to it, Althalus was forced to concede. Fertility meant motherhood, and motherhood involved the suckling of the young. The statue suggested that the goddess Dweia was equipped to suckle hundreds of babies all at the same time.

The land of Perquaine had been settled more recently than Treborea or Equero, and the Perquaines still had a few rough edges that made them much more like the people of the frontiers than the stuffier people to the east. The taverns in the seedier parts of Maghu were rowdier than had been the case in Deika or Kanthon, but that didn’t particularly bother Althalus. He drifted around town until he finally located a place where the patrons were talking instead of brawling, and he sat down in a corner to listen.

‘Druigor’s strongbox is absolutely bulging with money,’ one patron was telling his friends. ‘I stopped by his counting-house the other day, and his box was standing wide open, and it was packed so full that he was having trouble latching down the lid.’

‘That stands to reason,’ another man said. ‘Druigor drives very hard bargains. He can always find some way to get the best of anybody he deals with.’

‘I hear tell that he’s thinking about standing for election to the Senate,’ a wispy looking fellow added.

‘He’s out of his mind,’ the first man snorted. ‘He doesn’t qualify. He doesn’t have a title.’

The wispy man shrugged. ‘He’ll buy one. There are always nobles running around with nothing in their purses but their titles.’

The conversation drifted on to other topics, so Althalus got up and quietly left the tavern. He went some distance down the narrow, cobblestoned street and stopped a fairly well-dressed passer-by. ‘Excuse me,’ he said politely, ‘but I’m looking for the counting house of a man named Druigor. Do you by any chance happen to know where it is?’

‘Everybody in Maghu knows where Druigor’s establishment’s located,’ the man replied.

‘I’m a stranger here,’ Althalus replied.

‘Ah, that explains it then. Druigor does business over by the west gate. Anybody over in that neighborhood can direct you to his establishment.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Althalus said. Then he walked on.

The area near the west gate was largely given over to barn-like warehouses, and a helpful fellow pointed out the one which belonged to Druigor. It seemed to be fairly busy. People were going in and out through the front door and there were wagons filled with bulging sacks waiting near a loading-dock on one side. Althalus watched for a while. The steady stream of men going in and out through the front door indicated that Druigor was doing a lot of business. That was always promising.

He went on up the street and entered another, quieter warehouse. A sweating man was dragging heavy sacks across the floor and stacking them against a wall. ‘Excuse me, neighbor,’ Althalus said. ‘Who does this place belong to?’

‘This is Garwin’s warehouse,’ the sweating man replied. ‘He’s not here right now, though.’

‘Oh,’ Althalus said. ‘Sorry I missed him. I’ll come back later.’ Then he turned, went back out into the street, and walked on down to Druigor’s warehouse again. He went inside and joined the others who were waiting to speak with the owner of the place.

When his turn came he went into a cluttered room where a hard-eyed man sat at a table. ‘Yes?’ the hard-eyed man said.

‘You’re a very busy man, I see,’ Althalus said, his eyes covering everything in the room.

‘Yes, I am, so get to the point.’

Althalus had already seen what he’d come to see, however. In the comer of the room stood a bulky bronze box with an elaborate latch holding it shut.

‘I’ve been told that you’re a fair man, Master Garwin,’ Althalus said in his most ingratiating manner, his eyes still busy.

‘You’ve come to the wrong place,’ the man at the table said. ‘I’m Druigor. Garwin’s establishment’s over to the north – four or five doors.’

Althalus threw his hands up in the air. ‘I should have known better than to trust a drunkard,’ he said. ‘The man who told me that this was Garwin’s place of business could barely stand up. I think I’ll go back out into the street and punch that sot right in the mouth. Sorry to have bothered you, Master Druigor. I’ll revenge the both of us on that sodden idiot’

‘Did you want to see Garwin on business?’ Druigor asked curiously. ‘I can beat his prices on just about anything you can name.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, Master Druigor,’ Althalus said, ‘but my hands are tied this time. My idiot brother made some promises to Garwin, and I can’t think of any way to wriggle out of them. When I get back home, I think I’ll take my brother out behind the house and brick his mouth shut. Then, the next time I come to Maghu, you and I might want to have a little chat.’

‘I’ll look forward to it, Master –?’

‘Kweso,’ Althalus picked a name at random.

‘Are you by any chance a relation of that salt merchant in Deika?’

‘He’s our father’s cousin,’ Althalus replied glibly. ‘They aren’t talking to each other right now, though. It’s one of those family squabbles. Well, you’re busy, Master Druigor, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go have some words with that drunkard and then visit Master Garwin and find out how much of the family holdings my half-wit brother’s given away.’

‘I’ll see you next time you come to Maghu, then?’

‘You can count on it. Master Druigor.’ Althalus bowed slightly, and then he left.

It was well after midnight when Althalus broke in through the door on Druigor’s loading-dock. He went on silent feet through the wheat-fragrant warehouse to the room where he’d spoken with Druigor that afternoon. The door to the room was locked, but that, of course, was no problem. Once Althalus was inside the room, he quickly ignited his tinder with his flints and lit a candle sitting on Druigor’s table. Then he closely examined the complex latch that held the bulky lid of the bronze strongbox shut. As was usually the case, the complexity had been designed to confuse anyone who might be curious about the contents of the box. Althalus was quite familiar with the design, so he had the latch open in only a few moments.

He lifted the lid and reached inside, his fingers trembling with anticipation.

There were no coins inside the box, however. Instead, it was filled to overflowing with scraps of paper. Althalus lifted out a handful of the scraps and examined them closely. They all seemed to have pictures drawn on them, but Althalus couldn’t make any sense of those pictures. He dropped them on the floor and dug out another handful. There were more pictures.

Althalus desperately pawed around inside the box, but his hands did not encounter anything at all that felt anything like money.

This made no sense whatsoever. Why would anybody go to the trouble to lock up stacks of worthless paper?

After about a quarter of an hour, he gave up. He briefly considered piling all that paper in a heap on the floor and setting fire to it, but he discarded that idea almost as soon as it came to him. A fire would almost certainly spread, and a burning warehouse would attract attention. He muttered a few choice swear-words, and then he left.

He gave some thought to returning to the tavern he’d visited on his first day in Maghu and having some words with the tavern loafer who’d spoken so glowingly about the contents of Druigor’s strongbox, but he decided against it. The sting of constant disappointments he’d endured this summer were making him very short-tempered, and he wasn’t entirely positive that he’d be able to restrain himself once he started chastising somebody. In his present mood, chastisement might very well be looked upon as murder in some circles.

He sourly returned to the inn where his horse was stabled and spent the rest of the night sitting on his bed glaring at the single piece of paper he’d taken from Druigor’s strongbox. The pictures drawn on the paper weren’t really very good. Why in the world had Druigor bothered to lock them up? When morning finally arrived, Althalus roused the innkeeper and settled accounts with him. Then he reached into his pocket. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I just remembered something.’ He drew out the piece of paper, ‘I found this in the street. Do you have any idea at all what it means?’

‘Of course,’ the innkeeper replied. ‘That’s money.’

‘Money? I don’t follow you. Money’s made out of gold or silver – sometimes copper or brass. This is just paper. It’s not worth anything, is it?’

‘If you take that to the treasury behind the Senate, they’ll give you a silver coin for it.’

‘Why would they do that? It’s just paper.’

‘It has the seal of the Senate on it. That makes it as good as real silver. Haven’t you ever seen paper money before?’

A sense of total defeat came crashing down on Althalus as he went to the stable to pick up his horse. His luck had abandoned him. This had been the worst summer in his entire life. Evidently, his luck didn’t want him down here. There was wealth beyond counting in these cities of the plain, but no matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t managed to get his hands on any of it. As he mounted his horse, he amended that thought. Last night in Druigor’s counting house, he’d had his hands on more money than he’d likely ever see in the rest of his entire life, but he’d just walked away from it, because he hadn’t realized that it was money.

He ruefully conceded that he had no business down here. He belonged back on the frontier. Things were just too complicated down here.

He mournfully rode his horse to the central marketplace of Maghu to trade his civilized clothes for apparel more suitable to the frontier where he belonged.

The clothier swindled him, but he’d more or less expected that. Nothing down here was ever going to go well for him.

He wasn’t even particularly surprised to discover when he came out of the clothier’s shop that someone had stolen his horse.

CHAPTER TWO

His sense of defeat made Althalus a little abrupt with the first man who passed his place of concealment late the next night. He stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the unwary fellow by the back of his tunic, and slammed him against a stone wall just as hard as he could. The man sagged limply in his hands, and that irritated Althalus all the more. For some reason he’d been hoping for a bit more in the way of a struggle. He let the unconscious man collapse into the gutter and quickly stole his purse. Then, for no reason he could really justify, he dragged the inert body back into the shadows and stole all the man’s clothes.

He realized as he walked down the dark street that what he’d just done was silly, but in some obscure way it seemed appropriate, since it almost perfectly expressed his opinion of civilization. For some reason the absurdity made him feel better.

After he’d gone some distance, however, the bundle of clothes under his arm became a nuisance, so he shrugged and threw it away without even bothering to find out if any of the garments fit him.

As luck had it, the city gates were open, and Althalus left Maghu without even bothering to say goodbye. The moon was almost full, so there was light enough to see by, and he struck out to the north, feeling better with every step. By dawn he was several miles from Maghu, and up ahead he could see the snow-capped peaks of Arum blushing in the pink light of the sunrise.

It was a long walk from Maghu to the foothills of Arum, but Althalus moved right along. The sooner he left civilization behind, the better. The whole idea of going into the low-country had been a mistake of the worst kind. Not so much because he hadn’t profited. Althalus usually squandered every penny he got his hands on. What concerned him about the whole business was the apparent alienation between him and his luck. Luck was everything; money meant nothing.

He was well up into the foothills by late summer. On a golden afternoon he stopped in a shabby wayside tavern, not because of some vast thirst, but rather out of the need for some conversation with people he could understand.

‘You would not believe how fat he is,’ a half-drunk fellow was saying to the tavern keeper. ‘I’d guess he can afford to eat well, he’s got about half the wealth of Arum locked away in his strongroom by now.’

That got our thief’s immediate attention, and he sat down near the tipsy fellow, hoping to hear more.

The tavern keeper looked at him inquiringly. ‘What’s your pleasure, neighbor?’ he asked.

‘Mead,’ Althalus replied. He hadn’t had a good cup of mead for months, since the lowlanders seemed not to know how to brew it.

‘Mead it is,’ the tavern keeper replied, going back behind the wobbly counter to fetch it.

‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you,’ Althalus said politely to the tipsy fellow.

‘No offense taken,’ the fellow said. ‘I was just telling Arek here about a Clan-Chief to the north who’s so rich that they haven’t invented a number for how many coins he’s got locked away in that fort of his.’

The fellow had the red face and purple nose of a hard-drinking man, but Althalus wasn’t really interested in his complexion. His attention was focused on the man’s wolfskin tunic instead. For some peculiar reason, whoever had sewn the tunic had left the ears on, and they now adorned the garment’s hood. Althalus thought that looked very fine indeed. ‘What did you say the chief’s name was?’ he asked.

‘He’s called Gosti Big Belly – probably because the only exercise he gets is moving his jaw up and down. He eats steadily from morning to night.’

‘From what you say, I guess he can afford it.’

The half-drunk man continued to talk expansively about the wealth of the fat Clan-Chief, and Althalus feigned a great interest, buying more mead for them each time the fellow’s cup ran dry. By sundown the fellow was slobbering drunk and there was a sizeable puddle of discarded mead on the floor near Althalus.

Other men came into the tavern after the sun had set, and the place grew noisier as it grew dark outside.

‘I don’t know about you, friend,’ Althalus said smoothly, ‘but all this mead is starting to talk to me. Why don’t we go outside and have a look at the stars.’

The drunken man blinked his bleary eyes. ‘I think that’s a wunnerful idea’, he agreed. ‘My mead’s telling me to go see some stars, too.’

They rose to go outside, and Althalus caught the swaying man’s arm. ‘Steady, friend,’ he cautioned. Then they went outside with Althalus half-supporting his drunken companion. ‘Over there, I think’, he suggested, pointing at a nearby grove of pine trees.

The man grunted his agreement and lurched toward the pines. He stopped, breathing hard, and leaned back against a tree. ‘Kinda woozy’, he mumbled, his head drooping.

Althalus smoothly pulled his heavy bronze short-sword out from under his belt, reversed it and held it by the blade. ‘Friend?’ he said.

‘Hmm?’ The man’s face came up with a foolish expression and unfocused eyes.

Althalus hit him squarely on the forehead with the heavy hilt of his sword. The man slammed back against the tree and bounced forward.

Althalus hit him on the back of the head as he went by, and the fellow went down.

Althalus knelt beside him and shook him slightly.

The man began to snore.

‘That seems to have done it,’ Althalus murmured to himself. He laid his sword down and went to work. After he’d removed his new wolf-skin tunic from the unconscious man, he took the fellow’s purse. The purse wasn’t very heavy, but his drinking companion’s shoes weren’t too bad. The trip up from Maghu had left Althalus’ own shoes in near tatters, so replacing them was probably a good idea. The snoring man also had a fairly new bronze dagger at his belt, so all in all, Althalus viewed the entire affair as quite profitable. He dragged the man farther back into the shadows, then put on his splendid new tunic and his sturdy shoes. He looked down at his victim almost sadly. ‘So much for wealth beyond counting,’ he sighed. ‘It’s back to stealing clothes and shoes, I guess.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Oh, well. If that’s what my luck wants me to do, I might as well go along with her.’ He half saluted his snoring victim and left the vicinity. He wasn’t exactly deliriously happy, but he was in better spirits than he’d been down in the low-country.

He moved right along, since he wanted to be in the lands of the next clan to the north before the previous owner of his fine new tunic awakened. By mid-morning of the following day, he was fairly certain that he was beyond the reach of last night’s victim, so he stopped in the tavern of a small village to celebrate his apparent change of luck. The wolf-eared tunic wasn’t equal to all that unrecognizable wealth in Druigor’s counting house, but it was a start.

It was in that tavern that he once again heard someone speak of Gosti Big Belly. ‘I’ve heard about him,’ he told the assembled tavern loafers. ‘I can’t imagine why a Clan-Chief would let his people call him by a name like that, though.’

‘You’d almost have to know him to understand,’ one of the other tavern patrons replied. ‘You’re right about how a name like that would offend most Clan-Chiefs, but Gosti’s very proud of that belly of his. He even laughs out loud when he brags that he hasn’t seen his feet in years.’

‘I’ve heard tell that he’s rich,’ Althalus said, nudging the conversation around to the topic that most interested him.

‘Oh, he’s rich, all right,’ another confirmed the fact.

‘Did his clan happen to come across a pocket of gold?’

‘Almost the same thing. After his father was killed in the last clan war, Gosti became Clan-Chief – even though most of the men in his clan didn’t think none too highly of him on accounta how fat he was. Gosti’s got this here cousin, though – Galbak his name is – and Galbak’s about seven feet tall, and he’s meaner than a snake. Anyway, Gosti decided that a bridge across the river that runs through their valley might make things easier for him when he had to go meet with the other Clan-Chiefs, so he ordered his men to build him one. That bridge isn’t none too well-made, and it’s so rickety that it’s as much as a man’s life is worth to try to cross it, but let me tell you, that’s not a river that a man with good sense would want to wade across. The current’s so swift that it carries your shadow a good half-mile downstream. That rickety bridge is as good as any gold mine, since it’s the only way to cross that river for five days’ hard travel in either direction, and Gosti’s cousin’s in charge of it, and nobody who’s got his head on straight crosses Galbak. He charges an arm and a leg to cross, and that’s how it is that Gosti’s got a sizeable chunk of the loose money in Arum salted away in that fort of his.’

‘Well now,’ Althalus said, ‘how very interesting.’

Different lands required different approaches, and up here in the highlands of Arum our thief’s standard plan of attack had always been to ingratiate himself into the halls of men of wealth and power with humorous stories and outrageous jokes. That kind of approach obviously would not have worked in the stuffier cities of the plain where jokes were against the law and laughter was held to be in extremely bad taste.

Althalus knew that tavern stories are almost always exaggerations, but the tales of Gosti Big Belly’s wealth went far enough to suggest that there was probably at least sufficient money in the fat man’s fort to make a journey there worth the time and effort, so he journeyed to the lands of Gosti Big Belly’s clan to investigate further.

As he moved north into the mountains of Arum, he occasionally heard a kind of wailing sound far back in the hills. He couldn’t immediately identify exactly what kind of animal it was that was making so much noise, but it was far enough away that it posed no immediate threat, so he tried to ignore it. Sometimes at night, though, it seemed very close, and that made Althalus a bit edgy.

He reached the shaky wooden bridge he’d been told about, and he was stopped by a burly, roughly dressed toll-taker whose hands and forearms were decorated with the tattoos that identified him as a member of Gosti’s clan. Althalus choked a bit over the price the tattooed man demanded for crossing the bridge, but he paid it, since he viewed it in the light of an investment.

‘That’s a fine-looking garment you’ve got there, friend,’ the toll-taker noted, looking with a certain envy at the wolf-eared tunic Althalus wore.

‘It keeps the weather off,’ Althalus replied with a casual shrug.

‘Where did you come by it?’

‘Up in Hule,’ Althalus replied. ‘I happened across this wolf, you see, and he was about to jump on me and tear out my throat so that he could have me for supper. Now, I’ve always sort of liked wolves – they sing so prettily – but I don’t like them well enough to provide supper for them. Particularly when I’m going to be the main course. Well, I happened to have this pair of bone dice with me, and I persuaded the wolf that it might be more interesting if we played dice to decide the matter instead of rolling around on the ground trying to rip each other apart. So we put up the stakes on the game and started rolling the dice.’

‘What stakes?’ the bearded clansman asked.

‘My carcass and his skin, of course.’

The toll-taker started to laugh.

‘Well,’ Althalus began to expand the story, ‘I just happen to be the best dice-player in all the world – and we were playing with my dice, and I’ve spent a lot of time training those dice to do what I want them to do. Well, to cut this short, the wolf had a little run of bad luck, so I’m wearing his skin now, and he’s up there in the forest of Hule shivering in the cold because he’s running around naked.’

The tattooed man laughed even harder.

‘Have you ever seen a naked wolf with goose-bumps all over him?’ Althalus asked, feigning a sympathetic expression. ‘Pitiful! I felt terribly sorry for him, of course, but a bet is a bet, after all, and he did lose. It wouldn’t have been ethical for me to give his skin back to him after I’d fairly won it, now would it?’

The toll-taker doubled over, howling with laughter.

‘I felt sort of sorry for the poor beast, and maybe just a little bit guilty about the whole business. I’ll be honest about it right here and now, friend. I did cheat the wolf a few times during our game, and just to make up for that I let him keep his tail – for decency’s sake, of course.’

‘Oh, that’s a rare story, friend!’ the chortling toll-taker said, clapping Althalus on the back with one meaty hand. ‘Gosti’s got to hear this one!’ And he insisted on accompanying Althalus across the rickety bridge, through the shabby village of log-walled and thatch-roofed huts, and on up to the imposing log fort that overlooked the village and the bridge that crossed the foaming river.

They entered the fort and proceeded into the smoky main hall. Althalus had visited many of the clan halls in the highlands of Arum, so he was familiar with these people’s relaxed approach to nearness, but Gosti’s hall elevated untidiness to an art-form. Like most clan halls, this one had a dirt floor with a fire-pit in the center. The floor was covered with rushes, but the rushes appeared not to have been changed for a dozen years or so. Old bones and assorted other kinds of garbage rotted in the corners, and hounds – and pigs – dozed here and there. It was the first time Althalus had ever encountered pigs as house-pets. There was a rough-hewn table across the front of the hall, and seated at that table stuffing food into his mouth with both hands was the fattest man Althalus had ever seen. There could be no question about the man’s identity, since Gosti Big Belly came by his name honestly. He had pig-like little eyes and his pendulous lower lip hung down farther than his chin. A full haunch of roasted pork lay on the greasy table in front of him, and he was ripping great chunks of meat from that haunch and stuffing them into his mouth. Just behind him stood a huge man with hard, unfriendly eyes.

‘Are we disturbing him at lunchtime?’ Althalus murmured to his guide.

The tattooed clansman laughed. ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘With Gosti, it’s a little hard to tell exactly which meal he’s eating, since they all sort of run together. Gosti eats all the time, Althalus. I’ve never actually seen him do it, but there are some here who swear that he even eats while he’s asleep. Come along. I’ll introduce you to him – and to his cousin Galbak, too.’

They approached the table. ‘Ho, Gosti!’ the tattooed man said loudly to get the fat man’s attention, ‘this is Althalus. Have him tell you the story of how he came by this fine wolf-eared tunic of his.’

‘All right,’ Gosti replied in a deep, rumbling voice, taking a gulp of mead from his drinking horn. He squinted at Althalus with his pig-like little eyes. ‘You don’t mind if I keep earing while you tell me the story, do you?’

‘Not at all, Gosti,’ Althalus said. ‘You do appear to have a little gaunt spot under your left thumbnail, and I certainly wouldn’t want you to start wasting away right in front of my eyes.’

Gosti blinked and then he roared with laughter, spewing greasy pork all over the table. Galbak, however, didn’t so much as crack a smile.

Althalus expanded the story of his dice game with the wolf into epic proportions, and by night-fall he was firmly ensconced in the chair beside the enormous fat man. After he’d told various versions of the story several times for the entertainment of all the fur-clad clansmen who drifted into the hall, he invented other stories to fill the hall of Gosti Big Belly with nearly continuous mirth. No matter how hard he tried, however, Althalus could never get so much as a smile out of the towering Galbak.

He wintered there, and he was more than welcome to sit at Gosti’s table, eating Big Belly’s food and drinking his mead, as long as he could come up with new stories and jokes to keep Gosti’s belly bouncing up and down with laughter. Gosti’s own occasional contributions obviously bored his clansmen, since they were largely limited to boasts about how much gold he had stored away in his strongroom. The clansmen had evidently heard those stories often enough to know them all by heart. Althalus found them moderately fascinating, however.

The winter plodded on until it was finally spring and by then Althalus knew every corner of Big Belly’s hall intimately.

The strongroom wasn’t too hard to locate, since it was usually guarded. It was at the far end of the corridor where the dining hall was located, and three steps led up to the heavy door. A massive bronze lock strongly suggested that things of value were kept inside.

Althalus noticed that the night-time guards didn’t take their jobs very seriously, and by midnight they were customarily fast asleep – a condition not uncommon among men who take large jugs of strong mead to work with them.

All that was left to do now was to wait for the snow to melt – and to stay on the good side of Gosti and his sour-faced giant cousin. If all went well, Althalus would be in a hurry when he left. Galbak had very long legs, so Althalus didn’t want deep snow in the passes to slow him down enough for Galbak to catch up with him.

Althalus took to frequently stepping out into the courtyard to check the progress of the spring thaw, and when the last snowdrift disappeared from a nearby pass, he decided that the time had come for him to take his leave.

As it turned out, the strongroom of Gosti Big Belly wasn’t nearly as strong as Gosti thought it was, and late one night when the fire in the pit in the center of the hall had burned down to embers and Gosti and his clansmen were filling the corners with drunken snores, Althalus went to that strongroom, stepped over the snoring guards, undid the simple latch, and slipped inside to transfer some ownership. There was a crude table and a sturdy bench in the center of the room and a pile of heavy-looking skin bags in one corner. Althalus took up one of the bags, carried it to the table, and sat down to count his new wealth.

The bag was about the size of a man’s head, and it was loosely tied shut. Althalus eagerly opened the bag, reached his hand inside, and drew out a fistful of coins.

He stared at the coins with a sinking feeling. They were all copper. He dug out another fistful. There were a few yellow coins this time, but they were brass, not gold. Then he emptied the bag out onto the table.

Still no gold.

Althalus raised the torch he’d brought with him to survey the room – maybe Gosti kept his gold in a different pile. There was only the one pile, however. Althalus picked up two more bags and poured their contents onto the table as well. More copper sprinkled with a little brass lay on the now-littered table.

He quickly emptied out all the bags, and there wasn’t a single gold coin in any of them. Gosti had hoodwinked him, and he’d evidently hoodwinked just about everybody in Arum as well.

Althalus began to swear. He’d just wasted an entire winter watching a fat man eat. Worse yet, he’d believed all the lies that slobbering fat man had told him. He resisted the strong temptation to return to the hall and to rip Gosti up the middle with his dagger. Instead he sat down to pick the brass coins out of the heaps of copper. He knew that he wouldn’t get enough to even begin to pay him for his time, but it’d be better than nothing at all.

After he’d leached all the brass out of the heaps of copper, he stood up and disdainfully tipped the table over to dump all the nearly worthless copper coins onto the floor, and left in disgust.

He went out of the hall, crossed the muddy courtyard, and walked on down through the shabby village, cursing his own gullibility and brooding darkly about his failure to take a look into the strongroom to verify the fat man’s boasting.

Fortune, that most fickle goddess, had tricked him again. His luck hadn’t changed after all.

Despite his bitter disappointment, he stepped right along. He hadn’t left Gosti’s strongroom in a very tidy condition, and it wouldn’t be long until the fat man realized that he’d been robbed. The theft hadn’t been very large, but it still might not be a bad idea to cross a few clan boundaries – just to be on the safe side. Galbak had the look of a man who wouldn’t shrug things off, and Althalus definitely wanted a long head-start on Gosti’s hard-faced cousin.

After a few days of hard travel, Althalus felt that it was safe enough to stop by a tavern to get a decent meal. Like just about everyone else on the frontiers, Althalus carried a sling, and he was quite skilled with it. He could get by on an occasional rabbit or squirrel, but he was definitely in the mood for a full meal.

He approached a shabby village tavern, but stopped just outside the doorway when he heard someone saying, ‘–a wolf-skin tunic with the ears still on.’ He stepped back from the door to listen.

‘Gosti Big Belly’s fit to be tied,’ the man who’d just mentioned the tunic went on. ‘It seems that this Althalus fellow’d just spent the whole winter eating Gosti’s food and drinking his mead, and he showed his gratitude by sneaking into Gosti’s strongroom and stealing two full bags of gold coins.’

‘Shocking!’ somebody else murmured. ‘What did you say this thief looked like?’

‘Well, as I understand it, he’s about medium sized and he’s got a black beard, but that description fits about half the men in Arum. It’s that wolf-eared tunic that gives him away. Gosti’s cousin Galbak is offering a huge reward for the fellow’s head, but for all of me, he can keep his reward. It’s those two bags of gold this Althalus fellow’s carrying that interest me. I’m going to track him down, believe me. I’d like to introduce him to the busy end of my spear, and I won’t even bother to cut off his head to sell to Galbak.’ The man gave a cynical laugh. ‘I’m not a greedy man, friends. Two bags of gold are more than enough to satisfy me.’

Althalus stepped around to the side of the tavern to swear. It was the irony of it all that stung so much. Gosti desperately wanted everybody in Arum to believe that he was rich. That absurd reward offer was nothing more than a way for the fat man to verify his boasts. Gosti, still eating with both hands, was probably laughing himself sick right now. Althalus had stolen no more than a handful of brass coins, and now he’d have to run for his life. Gosti would get the fame, and Althalus now had Galbak on his trail and every man in Arum looking for him – with a knife.

Obviously though, he was going to have to get rid of his splendid new tunic, and that really bit deep. He went back to the door and peeked inside to identify the man who’d just described him. What had happened had been Gosti’s doing, but Gosti wasn’t around to punish, so that loud-mouthed tavern loafer was going to have to fill in for him.

Althalus etched the man’s features in his mind, and then he went outside the village to wait and watch.

Dusk was settling over the mountains of Arum when the fellow lurched out of the tavern and came wobbling out to the main trail that passed the village. He was carrying a short spear with a broad-bladed bronze tip, and he was whistling tunelessly.

He stopped whistling when Althalus savagely clubbed him to the ground.

Then Althalus dragged him back into the bushes at the side of the trail. He turned the unconscious man over. ‘I understand you’ve been looking for me,’ he said sardonically. ‘Was there something you wanted to discuss?’

He peeled the man’s knitted smock off the limp body, removed his own splendid tunic, and regretfully dropped it on his would-be assassin’s face. Then he put on the shabby tunic, stole the man’s purse and spear, and left the vicinity.

Althalus didn’t have a very high opinion of the man he’d just robbed, so he was fairly certain that the idiot would actually wear that tunic, and that might help to muddy the waters. The description the fellow had been spreading around had mentioned a black beard, so when the sun rose the following morning, Althalus stopped by a forest pool where he could see his reflection in the surface of the water and painfully shaved with his bronze dagger.

Once that had been taken care of, he decided that it might be prudent to continue his northward journey along the ridge-lines rather than in the canyons. His shave and his change of clothing had probably disguised him enough to conceal his identity from people who were searching for somebody with a black beard and a wolf-eared tunic, but a fair number of men had stopped by Gosti’s hall during the preceding winter, and if some of those guests were among the searchers, they’d probably recognize him. And if they didn’t, Gosti’s cousin Galbak certainly would. Althalus knew the Arums well enough to be certain that they’d stay down in the canyons to conduct their search, since climbing the ridges would be terribly inconvenient, and there weren’t many taverns up on top where they could rest and refresh themselves. Althalus was positive that no real Arum could ever be found more than a mile away from the nearest tavern.

He climbed the ridge with a sense of bitterness dogging his heels. He’d make good his escape, of course. He was too clever to be caught. What really cankered at his soul was the fact that his escape would just reinforce Gosti’s boasts. Gosti’s reputation as the richest man in Arum would be confirmed by the fact that the greatest thief in the world had made a special trip to Arum just to rob him. Althalus mournfully concluded that his bad luck was still dogging his heels.

Up on the ridge-line, the sodden remains of last winter’s snowdrifts made for slow going, but Althalus doggedly slogged his way north. There wasn’t much game up here on the ridges, so he frequently went for days without eating.

As he sourly struggled north, he once again heard that peculiar wailing sound he’d first noticed back in the mountains on his way to Gosti’s fort the previous autumn. Evidently it was still out there, and he began to wonder if maybe it was following him for some reason. Whatever it was, it was noisy, and its wailing cries echoing back from the mountainsides began to make Althalus distinctly edgy.

It wasn’t a wolf; Althalus was sure of that. Wolves travel in packs, and this was a solitary creature. There was an almost despairing quality about its wailing. He eventually concluded that it was most probably the mating season for that particular creature, and that its mournful, hollow cries were nothing more than an announcement to others of its species that it would really like to have some company along about now. Whatever it was, Althalus began to fervently wish that it’d go look for companionship elsewhere, since those unearthly cries of absolute despair were beginning to get on his nerves.

CHAPTER THREE

Althalus was in a somber mood as he slogged north. along the ridge-lines of Arum. He’d had set-backs before, of course. Nobody wins every time, but always in the past his luck had returned in short order. This time had been somehow different. Everything he’d touched had gone sour. His luck had not just deserted him, she seemed to be going out of her way to ruin everything he attempted. Had he done something that’d turned her love to hate? That gloomy thought hounded him as he came down out of the mountains of Arum into the deep-forested land of Hule.

Hule is the refuge of choice for men who are the unfortunate victims of various misunderstandings in the surrounding lands. Helpful men who ‘just wanted to give your horse some exercise’ or were ‘just taking your silver coins out into the light so that I could polish them for you,’ found sanctuary in Hule, since there’s nothing resembling a government or laws of any kind in Hule, and in a land where there aren’t any laws, there’s no such thing as a law-breaker.

Althalus was in a foul humor when he reached Hule, and he felt a great need for the companionship of people of his own kind with whom he could be completely open, so he made his way directly through the forest to the more or less permanent encampment of a Hulish man named Nabjor who brewed good mead and sold it at a fair price. Nabjor also had several plump young ladies available for the convenience of customers who might be feeling lonely for conversation or consolation.

There’s a hushed quality about the vast forests of Hule. The trees of that land of the far north are giants, and a traveler can wander under the endless canopy of their outspread limbs for days on end without ever seeing the sun. The trees are evergreens for the most part, and their fallen needles blanket the ground in a deep, damp carpet that muffles the sound of a traveler’s footsteps. There are no trails in the land of Hule, since the trees continually shed their dead needles in a gentle sprinkle to cover all signs of the passage of man or beast.

Nabjor’s congenial camp lay in a small clearing on the banks of a cheerful little stream that giggled its way over brown rocks, and Althalus approached it with some caution, since a man reputed to be carrying two heavy bags of gold tends to be very careful before he enters any public establishment. After he’d lain behind a fallen tree watching the camp for a while, Althalus concluded that there were no Arums around, so he rose to his feet. ‘Ho, Nabjor,’ he called. ‘It’s me, Althalus. Don’t get excited; I’m coming in.’ Nabjor always kept a heavy-bladed bronze axe close at hand to maintain order and to deal with interlopers who might have some questions about his own indiscretions, so it was prudent not to surprise him.

‘Ho! Althalus!’ Nabjor bellowed. ‘Welcome! I was beginning to think that maybe the Equeros or the Treboreans had caught you and hung you up on a tree down there.’

‘No,’ Althalus replied with a rueful laugh. ‘I’ve managed to keep my feet on the ground so far, but only barely. Is your mead ripe yet? That batch you had the last time I passed through was just a trifle green.’

‘Come and try some,’ Nabjor invited. ‘This new batch came out rather well.’

Althalus walked into the clearing and looked at his old friend. Nabjor was a burly man with dun-colored hair and beard. He had a large, bulbous nose, shrewd eyes, and he was dressed in a shaggy bearskin tunic. Nabjor was a businessman who sold good mead and rented out ladies. He also bought things with no questions asked from men who stole for a living.

The two of them clasped hands warmly. ‘Sit you down, my friend,’ Nabjor said. ‘I’ll bring us some mead, and you can tell me all about the splendors of civilization.’

Althalus sank down on a log by the fire where a spitted haunch of forest bison sizzled and smoked while Nabjor filled two large earthenware cups with foaming mead. ‘How did things go down there?’ he asked, returning to the fire and handing Althalus one of the cups.

‘Awful,’ Althalus said glumly.

‘That bad?’ Nabjor asked, seating himself on the log on the other side of the fire.

‘Even worse, Nabjor. I don’t think anybody’s come up with a word yet that really describes how bad it was.’ Althalus took a long drink of his mead. ‘You got a good run on this batch, my friend.’

‘I thought you might like it.’

‘Are you still charging the same price?’

‘Don’t worry about the price today, Althalus. Today’s mead is out of friendship.’

Althalus lifted his cup. ‘Here’s to friendship then,’ he said and took another drink. ‘They don’t even make mead down in civilization. The only thing you can buy in the taverns is sour wine.’

‘They call that civilized?’ Nabjor shook his head in disbelief.

‘How’s business been?’ Althalus asked.

‘Not bad at all,’ Nabjor replied expansively. ‘Word’s getting around about my place. Just about everybody in Hule knows by now that if he wants a good cup of mead at a reasonable price, Nabjor’s camp is the place to go. If he wants the companionship of a pretty lady, this is the place. If he’s stumbled across something valuable that he wants to sell with no embarrassing questions about how he came by it, he knows that if he comes here, I’ll be glad to discuss it with him.’

‘You’re going to fool around and die rich, Nabjor.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather live rich. All right, since that’s out of the way, tell me what happened down in the low-country. I haven’t seen you for more than a year, so we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

‘You’d better brace yourself, Nabjor,’ Althalus warned. ‘This isn’t going to be one of those happy stories.’ Then he went on to describe his misadventures in Equero, Treborea, and Perquaine at some length.

‘That’s awful!’ Nabjor said. ‘Didn’t anything turn out well?’

‘Not really. Things were so bad that I had to waylay men coming out of taverns to get enough money to pay for my next meal. My luck’s gone sour on me, Nabjor. Everything I’ve touched for the past year and a half’s turned to ashes on me. I thought for a while that it was because my luck hadn’t followed me when I went down into the low-country, but things didn’t get any better when I got to Arum.’ Then he told his friend about his misadventures in the hall of Gosti Big Belly.

‘You really do have a problem, don’t you, Althalus?’ Nabjor observed. ‘It’s your luck that’s always made you famous. You’d better see what you can do to get back on the good side of her.’

‘I’d be more than happy to, Nabjor, but I don’t know how. She’s always been so fond of me that I didn’t have to take any special pains to keep her in my pocket. If she had a temple someplace, I’d steal somebody’s goat and sacrifice it on her altar. But the way things have been going here lately, the goat would probably kick my brains out before I could cut his throat.’

‘Oh, cheer up, Althalus. Things have got to get better for you.’

‘I certainly hope so. I don’t see how they could get any worse.’

Just then Althalus heard that almost despairing wail again, far back in the trees. ‘Do you have any idea of what sort of animal makes that kind of noise?’ he asked.

Nabjor cocked his head to listen. ‘Can’t quite place it,’ he admitted. ‘It wouldn’t be a bear, would it?’

‘I don’t think so. Bears don’t go around singing in the woods that way. I heard that beast howling for days on end while I was up in Arum.’

‘Maybe it’s heard about Gosti’s lies and it’s following you to rob you of all your gold.’

‘Very funny, Nabjor,’ Althalus said sarcastically.

Nabjor smirked at him. Then he took their cups back to the crock to refill them. ‘Here,’ he said, coming back to the fire and holding one of the cups out to Althalus, ‘smother your laughter with this and quit worrying about animals. They’re afraid of fire, so whatever it is out there howling among the trees isn’t likely to come in here and sit down with us.’

Althalus and Nabjor had a few more cups of mead, and then the thief noticed that his friend had a new wench in his camp. The wench had wicked eyes and a provocative way of walking. He decided that it might be sort of nice if he and the wench got to know each other a little better. He was very much in need of friendship just now.

And so Althalus remained in Nabjor’s establishment for quite some time to enjoy the entertainments available there. Nabjor’s mead was plentiful, there was usually a haunch of forest bison on a spit near the fire in case anyone grew hungry, and the wench with wicked eyes was talented. Not only that, other thieves, almost all of them old friends and acquaintances, stopped by from time to time, and they could all spend happy hours together, bragging, talking shop, and engaging in friendly dice games. After this past year, Althalus really needed some relaxation to unwind his nerves and restore his good humor. His stock in trade was witty stories and jokes, and a grumpy man can’t tell jokes very well.

His meager supply of brass coins was not inexhaustible, however, and after a time his purse grew very slender, so he regretfully concluded that he’d probably better start thinking about going back to work.

And then along toward the end of summer on a blustery day when the racing clouds overhead were blotting out the sun, a man with deep-sunk eyes and lank, greasy black hair rode into Nabjor’s camp on a shaggy grey horse. He slid down from the back of his weary mount and came to the fire to warm his hands. ‘Mead!’ he called to Nabjor in a harsh voice.

‘I don’t know you, friend,’ Nabjor said suspiciously, fingering his heavy bronze axe. ‘I’ll have to see your money first.’

The stranger’s eyes hardened and then he wordlessly shook a heavy leather purse.

Althalus squinted speculatively at the stranger. The fellow was wearing a kind of bronze helmet on his head that reached down the back of his neck to his shoulders, and there were thick bronze plates sewn onto his black leather jerkin. He also wore a long, hooded black cloak which looked rather fine and which Althalus was sure would fit him, if the stranger happened to drink too much of Nabjor’s mead and drift off to sleep. The man also had a heavy-bladed sword tucked under his belt and a narrow bronze dagger as well.

There was an oddly archaic look about the stranger’s features that made his face appear to have been only half-finished. Althalus didn’t really pay too much attention to the stranger’s face, though. What he was really looking for were the characteristic clan-tattoos of the Arums. At this particular time Althalus thought it might be prudent to avoid Arums. The stranger, however, had unmarked hands and forearms, so our thief relaxed.

The black-haired stranger seated himself on a log across the fire-pit from where Althalus lounged and looked penetratingly at the thief. It might have been some trick of the light, but the dancing flames of the fire were reflected in the stranger’s eyes, and that made Althalus just a bit edgy. It’s not every day that a man comes across somebody whose eyes are on fire. ‘I see that I’ve finally found you,’ the stranger said in a peculiarly accented voice. It appeared that this man was not one to beat about the bush.

‘You’ve been looking for me?’ Althalus said as calmly as possible. The fellow was heavily armed, and as far as Althalus knew, there was still a price on his head back in Arum. He carefully shifted his own sword around on his belt so that the hilt was closer to his hand.

‘For quite some time now,’ the stranger replied. ‘I picked up your trail in Deika. Men down there are still talking about how fast you can run when dogs are chasing you. Then I tracked you to Kanthon in Treborea and on to Maghu in Perquaine. Druigor’s still trying to figure out why you just dumped all his money on the floor and didn’t steal any of it.’

Althalus winced.

‘You didn’t know that it was money, did you?’ the stranger said shrewdly. ‘Anyway, I followed you from Maghu up into Arum, and there’s a fat man up there who’s looking for you even harder than I am.’

‘I sort of doubt that,’ Althalus said. ‘Gosti wants people to think he’s rich, and I’m probably the only man around who knows that there was nothing in his strongroom but copper pennies.’

The stranger laughed. ‘I thought there was something that didn’t quite ring true about the way he kept going on about how you’d robbed him.’

‘And just why have you spent all this time looking for me?’ Althalus asked, getting to the point. ‘Your clothing says Nekweros, and I haven’t been there in years, so I’m sure I haven’t stolen anything from you recently.’

‘Set your mind at rest, Althalus, and slide your sword back around your belt so the hilt doesn’t keep poking you in the ribs. I haven’t come here to take your head back to Gosti. Would you be at all interested in a business proposition?’

‘That depends.’

‘My name’s Ghend, and I need a good thief who knows his way around. Are you at all familiar with the land of the Kagwhers?’

‘I’ve been there a few times,’ Althalus replied cautiously. ‘I don’t care very much for the Kagwhers. They have this habit of assuming that everyone who comes along is there to sneak into their gold mines and just help himself. What is it that you want me to steal for you? You look like the kind of man who can take care of things like that for himself. Why would you want to pay somebody else to do it for you?’

‘You’re not the only one with a price on his head, Althalus,’ Ghend replied with a pained expression. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t care much for the reception I’d get if I happened to venture into Kagwher just now. Anyway, there’s someone in Nekweros who’s holding some obligations over my head, and he’s not the sort I’d want to disappoint. There’s something he really wants over in Kagwher, and he’s told me to go there and get it for him. That puts me in a very tight spot, you understand. You’d be in the same sort of situation if someone told you to go get something for him and it just happened to be in Arum, wouldn’t you?’

‘I can see your problem, yes. I should warn you that I don’t work cheap, though.’

‘I didn’t expect you to, Althalus. This thing my friend in Nekweros wants is quite large and very heavy, and I’m prepared to pay you its weight in gold if you’ll steal it for me.’

‘You just managed to get my undivided attention, Ghend.’

‘Are you really as good a thief as everyone says you are?’ Ghend’s glowing eyes seemed to burn more brightly.

‘I’m the best,’ Althalus said with a deprecating shrug.

‘He’s right about that, stranger,’ Nabjor said, bringing Althalus a fresh cup of mead. ‘Althalus here can steal anything with two ends or with a top and a bottom.’

‘That might be a slight exaggeration,’ Althalus said. ‘A river has two ends, and I’ve never stolen one of those; and a lake has a top and a bottom, but I’ve never stolen one of those either. What exactly is it that this man in Nekweros wants badly enough to offer gold for it – some jewel or something like that?’

‘No, it’s not a jewel,’ Ghend replied with a hungry look. ‘What he wants – and will pay gold for – is a Book.’

‘You just said the magic word “gold” again, Ghend. I could sit here all day and listen to you talk about it, but now we come to the hard part. What in blazes is a book?’

Ghend looked sharply at him, and the flickering firelight touched his eyes again, making them glow a burning red. ‘So that’s why you threw all of Druigor’s money on the floor. You didn’t know that it was money because you can’t read.’

‘Reading’s for the priests, Ghend, and I don’t have any dealings with priests if I can avoid it. Every priest I’ve ever come across promises me a seat at the table of his god – if I’ll just hand over everything I’ve got in my purse. I’m sure the dining halls of the gods are very nice, but you have to die to get an invitation to have dinner with God, and I’m not really that hungry.’

Ghend frowned. ‘This might complicate things just a bit,’ he said. ‘A book is a collection of pages that people read.’

‘I don’t have to be able to read it, Ghend. To be able to steal it, all I have to know is what it looks like and where it is.’

Ghend gave him a speculative look, his deep sunk eyes glowing. ‘You may be right,’ he said, almost as if to himself. ‘I just happen to have a Book with me. If I show it to you, you’ll know what you’re looking for.’

‘Exactly,’ Althalus said. ‘Why don’t you trot your book out, and I’ll have a look. I don’t have to know what it says to be able to steal it, do I?’

‘No,’ Ghend agreed, ‘I guess you don’t at that.’ He rose to his feet, went over to his horse, reached inside the leather bag tied to his saddle, and took something square and fairly large out of the bag. Then he brought it back to the fire.

‘It’s bigger than I thought,’ Althalus noted. ‘It’s just a box, then, isn’t it?’

‘It’s what’s inside that’s important’, Ghend said, opening the lid. He took out a crackling sheet of something that looked like dried leather and handed it to Althalus. ‘That’s what writing looks like’, he said. ‘When you find a box like this one, you’d better open it to make sure it has sheets like that one inside instead of buttons or tools.’

Althalus held up the sheet and looked at it. ‘What kind of animal has a hide this thin?’ he asked.

‘They take a piece of cowhide and split it with a knife to get thin sheets,’ Ghend explained. ‘Then they press them flat with weights and dry them so that they’re stiff. Then they write on them so that other people can read what they’ve put down.’

‘Trust a priest to complicate things,’ Althalus said. He looked carefully at the neatly spaced lines of writing on the sheet. ‘It looks sort of like pictures, doesn’t it?’ he suggested.

‘That’s what writing is,’ Ghend explained. He took a stick and drew a curved line in the dirt beside the fire. ‘This is the picture that means “cow”,’ he said, ‘since it’s supposed to look like a cow’s horns.’

‘I thought learning to read was supposed to be difficult,’ Althalus said. ‘We’ve only been talking about it for a few minutes, and I already know how to read.’

‘As long as all you want to read about is cows,’ Ghend amended, half under his breath.

‘I don’t see anything about cows on this page,’ Althalus said.

‘You’ve got it upside down,’ Ghend told him.

‘Oh.’ Althalus turned the page and studied it for a little while. Some of the symbols carefully drawn on the parchment chilled him for some reason. ‘I can’t make any sense of this,’ he admitted, ‘but that’s not important. All I really need to know is that I’m looking for a black box with leather sheets inside.’

‘The box we want is white,’ Ghend corrected, ‘and it’s quite a bit bigger than this one.’ He held up his Book. The cover of the Book had red symbols on it, ones that chilled Althalus.

‘How much bigger than yours is the book we want?’ he asked.

‘It’s about as long and as wide as the length of your forearm,’ Ghend replied, ‘and about as thick as the length of your foot. It’s fairly heavy.’ He took the sheet of parched leather from Althalus and almost reverently put it back inside the box. ‘Well?’ he said then, ‘are you interested in the proposition?’

‘I’ll need a few more details,’ Althalus replied. ‘Just exactly where is this book, and how well is it guarded?’

‘It’s in the house at the end of the world over in Kagwher.’

‘I know where Kagwher is’, Althalus said, ‘but I didn’t know that the world ended there. Exactly where in Kagwher is this place? What direction?’

‘North. It’s up in that part of Kagwher that doesn’t see the sun in the winter and where there isn’t any night in summer.’

‘That’s a peculiar place for somebody to live.’

‘Truly. The owner of the Book doesn’t live there any more, though, so there won’t be anybody there to interfere with you when you go inside the house to steal the Book.’

‘That’s convenient. Can you give me any kind of landmarks? I can move faster if I know where I’m going.’

‘Just follow the edge of the world. When you see a house, you’ll know it’s the right place. It’s the only house up there.’

Althalus drank off his mead. ‘That sounds simple enough,’ he said. ‘Now, then, after I’ve stolen the book, how do I find you to get my pay?’

‘I’ll find you, Althalus.’ Ghend’s deep-sunk eyes burned even hotter. ‘Believe me, I’ll find you.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You’ll do it then?’

‘I said I’ll think about it. Now, why don’t we have some more of Nabjor’s mead – since you’re the one who’s paying.’

Althalus didn’t feel very well the next morning, but a few cups of Nabjor’s mead quieted the shaking in his hands and put out the fire in his belly. ‘I’ll be gone for a while, Nabjor’, he told his friend. ‘Tell the wench with the naughty eyes that I said goodbye and that I’ll see her again someday.’

‘You’re going to do it then? Go steal that book thing for Ghend?’

‘You were listening.’

‘Of course I was, Althalus. Are you really sure you want to do this, though? Ghend kept talking about gold, but I don’t remember that he ever showed you any. It’s easy to say “gold”, but actually producing some might be a little more difficult.’

Althalus shrugged, ‘If he doesn’t pay, he doesn’t get the book.’ He looked over to where Ghend lay huddled under his excellent black wool cloak. ‘When he wakes up, tell him that I’ve left for Kagwher and that I’m going there to steal that book for him.’

‘Do you really trust him?’

‘Almost as far as I could throw him,’ Althalus replied with a cynical laugh. ‘The price he promised me sort of hints that there’ll be some fellows with long knives nearby when I demand my pay. Besides, if somebody offers to pay me to steal something for him, I’m always certain that the thing’s worth at least ten times what he’s offering me to steal it. I don’t trust Ghend, Nabjor. There were a couple of times last night after the fire had burned down when he looked at me, and his eyes were still on fire. They were glowing bright red, and the glow wasn’t a reflection. Then there was that sheet of parched leather he showed me. Most of those pictures were sort of ordinary, but some of them glowed red the same way Ghend’s eyes did. Those pictures are supposed to mean words, and I don’t think I’d like to have anybody saying those particular words to me.’

‘If you feel that way about it, why are you going to take on the job, then?’

Althalus sighed. ‘Normally I wouldn’t, Nabjor. I don’t trust Ghend, and I don’t think I like him. My luck’s turned sour on me here lately, though, so I sort of have to take what comes along – at least until fortune falls in love with me again. The job Ghend offered me is fairly simple, you know. All I have to do is go to Kagwher, find a certain empty house, and steal a white leather box. Any fool could do this job, but Ghend offered it to me, so I’m going to jump on it. The job’s easy, and the pay’s good. It won’t be hard to do it right, and if I do pull it off, fortune might change her mind and go back to adoring me the way she’s supposed to.’

‘You’ve got a very strange religion, Althalus.’

Althalus grinned at him. ‘It works for me, Nabjor, and I don’t even need a priest to intercede for me – and take half my profits for his services.’ Althalus looked over at the sleeping Ghend again. ‘How careless of me,’ he said. ‘I almost forgot to pick up my new cloak.’ He walked over to where Ghend lay, gently removed the black wool cloak, and put it around his own shoulders. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Nabjor, striking a pose.

‘It looks almost as if it’s been made for you,’ Nabjor chuckled.

‘Probably it was. Ghend must have stolen it while I was busy.’ He walked back, digging several brass coins out of his purse. ‘Do me a favor, Nabjor,’ he said, handing over the coins. ‘Ghend drank a lot of your mead last night, and I noticed that he doesn’t hold his drink very well. He won’t be feeling too good when he wakes up, so he’s going to need some medicine to make him feel better. Give him as much as he can drink, and if he’s feeling delicate again tomorrow morning, get him well again with the same medicine – and change the subject if he happens to ask what happened to his cloak.’

‘Are you going to steal his horse, too? Riding’s easier than walking.’

‘When I get so feeble that I can’t do my own walking, I’ll take up begging at the side of the road. A horse would just get in my way. Keep Ghend drunk for a week, if you can manage it. I’d like to be a long ways up into the mountains of Kagwher before he sobers up.’

‘He said that he’s afraid to go into Kagwher.’

‘I don’t think I believe him on that score either. He knows the way to that house up there, but I think it’s the house he’s afraid of, not the whole of Kagwher. I don’t want him hiding in the bushes when I come out of that house with the book under my arm, so keep him drunk enough not to follow me. Make him feel good when he wakes up.’

‘That’s why I’m here, Althalus,’ Nabjor said piously. ‘I’m the friend of all men when they’re thirsty or sick. My good strong mead is the best medicine in the world. It can cure a rainy day, and if I could think of a way to make a dead man swallow it, I could probably even cure him of being dead with it.’

‘Nicely put,’ Althalus said admiringly.

‘Like you always say, I’ve got this way with words.’

‘And with your brewing crocks. Be the friend of Ghend then, Nabjor. Cure him of any unwholesome urges to follow me. I don’t like to be followed when I’m working, so make him good and drunk right here so that I don’t have to make him good and dead somewhere up in the mountains.’

CHAPTER FOUR

It was late summer now in deep-forested Hule, and Althalus could travel more rapidly than he might have in less pleasant seasons. The vast trees of Hule kept the forest floor in perpetual twilight, and the carpet of needles was very thick, smothering obstructing undergrowth.

Althalus always moved cautiously when traveling through Hule, but this time he went through the forest even more carefully. A man whose luck has gone bad needs to take extra precautions. There were other men moving through the forest, and even though they were kindred outlaws, Althalus avoided them. There weren’t any laws in Hule, but there were rules about behavior, and it was very unhealthy to ignore those rules. If an armed man doesn’t want company, it’s best not to intrude upon him.

When Althalus was not too far from the western edge of the land of the Kagwhers, he encountered another of the creatures who lived in the forest of Hule, and things were a little tense for a while. A pack of the hulking forest wolves caught his scent. Althalus didn’t really understand wolves. Most animals don’t bother to waste time on things that aren’t easy to catch and eat. Wolves, however, seem to enjoy challenges, and they’ll chase something for days on end just for the fun of the chase. Althalus could laugh at a good joke with the best of them, but he felt that the wolves of Hule tended to run a joke all the way into the ground.

And so it was with some relief that he moved up into the highlands of Kagwher, where the trees thinned out enough to make the forest wolves howl one final salute and turn back.

There was, as all the world knows, gold in Kagwher, and that made the Kagwhers a little hard to get along with. Gold, Althalus had noticed, does peculiar things to people. A man with nothing in his purse but a few copper coins can be the most good-natured and fun-loving fellow in the world, but give him a little bit of gold and he immediately turns suspicious and unfriendly, and he spends almost every waking moment worrying about thieves and bandits.

The Kagwhers had devised a charmingly direct means of warning passers-by away from their mines and those streams where smooth round lumps of gold lay scattered among the brown pebbles just under the surface of the water. Any time a traveler in Kagwher happened across a stake driven into the ground with a skull adorning its top, he knew that he was approaching forbidden ground. Some of the skulls were those of animals; most of them, however, were the skulls of men. The message was fairly clear.

So far as Althalus was concerned, the mines of Kagwher were perfectly safe. There was a lot of back-breaking labor involved in wrenching gold out of the mountains, and other men were far better suited for that than he was. Althalus was a thief, after all, and he devoutly believed that actually working for a living was unethical.

Ghend’s directions hadn’t really been too precise, but Althalus knew that his first chore was going to be finding the edge of the world. The problem with that was that he wasn’t entirely sure what the edge of the world was going to look like. It might be a sort of vague, misty area where an unwary traveler could just walk off and fall forever through the realm of the stars that wouldn’t even notice him as he hurtled past. The word ‘edge’, however, suggested a brink of some kind – possibly a line with ground on one side and stars on the other. It was even possible that it might just be a solid wall of stars, or even a stairway of stars stretching all the way up to the throne of whatever god held sway here in Kagwher.

Althalus didn’t really have a very well-defined system of belief. He knew that he was fortune’s child, and even though he and fortune were currently a bit on the outs, he hoped that he’d be able to cuddle up to her again before too long. The Ruler of the universe was a little distant, and Althalus had long since decided to let God – whatever his name was – concentrate on managing the sunrises and sunsets, the turning of the seasons, and the phases of the moon without the distraction of suggestions. All in all, Althalus and God got along fairly well, since they didn’t bother each other.

Ghend had said that the edge of the world lay to the north, so when Althalus reached Kagwher, he bore off to the left rather than climbing higher into the mountains where most of the gold mines were located and where the Kagwhers were all belligerently protective.

He came across a few roughly clad and bearded men of Kagwher as he traveled north, but they didn’t want to discuss the edge of the world for some reason. Evidently this was one of the things they weren’t supposed to talk about. He’d encountered this oddity before, and it had always irritated him. Refusing to talk about something wouldn’t make it go away. If it was there, it was there, and no amount of verbal acrobatics could make it go away.

He continued his journey northward, and the weather became more chill and the Kagwher villages farther and farther apart until finally they petered out altogether, and Althalus found himself more or less alone in the wilderness of the far north. Then one night as he sat in his rough camp huddled over the last embers of his cooking fire with his new cloak wrapped tightly around his shoulders, he saw something to the north that rather strongly told him that he was getting closer to his goal. Darkness was just beginning to settle over the mountains off to the east, but up toward the north where the night was in full bloom, the sky was on fire.

It was very much like a rainbow that had gotten out of hand. It was varicolored, not the traditional arch of an ordinary rainbow, but rather was a shimmering, pulsating curtain of multi-colored light, seething and shifting in the northern sky. Althalus wasn’t very superstitious, but watching the sky catch on fire isn’t the sort of thing a man can just shrug off.

He amended his plans at that point. Ghend had told him about the edge of the world, but he’d neglected to mention anything about the sky catching on fire. There was something up here that frightened Ghend, and Ghend had not seemed to be the sort of man who frightened easily. Althalus decided that he’d continue his search. There was gold involved, and even more importantly, the chance to wash off the streak of bad luck that had dogged his steps for more than a year now. That fire up in the sky, however, set off a very large bell inside his head. It was definitely time to start paying very close attention to what was going on around him. If too many more unusual things happened up here, he’d go find something else to do – maybe over in Ansu, or south on the plains of Plakand.

Just before sunrise the next morning he was awakened by a human voice, and he rolled out from under his cloak, reaching for his spear. He heard only one voice, but whoever was talking seemed to be holding a conversation of some kind, asking questions and seeming to listen to replies.

The conversationalist was a crooked and bent old man, and he was shambling along with the aid of a staff. His hair and beard were a dirty white, he was filthy, and he was garbed in scraps of rotting fur-covered animal skins held together with cords of sinew or twisted gut. His weathered face was deeply lined, and his rheumy eyes were wild. He gesticulated as he talked, casting frequent, apprehensive glances up at the now-colorless sky.

Althalus relaxed. This man posed no threat, and his condition wasn’t all that uncommon. Althalus knew that people were supposed to live for just so long, but if someone accidentally missed his appointed time to die, his mind turned peculiar. The condition was most common in very old people, but the same thing could happen to much younger men if they carelessly happened to miss their appointment. Some claimed that these crazy people had been influenced by demons, but that was really far too complicated. Althalus much preferred his own theory. Crazy people were just ordinary folk who’d lived too long. Roaming around after they were supposed to be lying peacefully in their graves would be enough to make anybody crazy. That’s why they started talking to people – or other things – that weren’t really there, and why they began to see things that nobody else could see. They were no particular danger to anyone, so Althalus normally left them alone. Those who were incapable of minding their own business always got excited about crazy people, but Althalus had long since decided that most of the world’s people were crazy anyway, so he treated everybody more or less the same.

‘Ho, there,’ he called to the crazy old man, ‘I mean you no harm, so don’t get excited.’

‘Who’s that?’ the old man demanded, seizing his staff in both hands and brandishing it.

‘I’m just a traveler, and I seem to have lost my way.’

The old man lowered his staff. ‘Don’t see many travelers around here. They don’t seem to like our sky.’

‘I noticed the sky myself just last night. Why does it do that?’

‘It’s the edge of things,’ the old man explained. ‘That curtain of fire up in the sky is where everything stops. This side’s all finished – filled up with mountains and trees and birds and bugs and people and beasts. The curtain is the place where nothing begins.’

‘Nothing?’

‘That’s all there is out there, traveler – nothing. God hasn’t gotten around to doing anything about it yet. There isn’t anything at all out beyond that curtain of fire.’

‘I haven’t lost my way then after all. That’s what I’m looking for – the edge of the world.’

‘What for?’

‘I want to see it. I’ve heard about it, and now I want to see it for myself.’

‘There’s nothing to see.’

‘Have you ever seen it?’

‘Lots of times. This is where I live, and the edge of the world’s as far as I can go when I travel north.’

‘How do I get there?’

The old man stabbed his stick toward the north. ‘Go that way for about a half a day.’

‘Is it easy to recognize?’

‘You can’t hardly miss it – at least you’d better not.’ The crazy man cackled. ‘It’s a place where you want to be real careful, ‘cause if you make one wrong step when you come to that edge, your journey’s going to last for a lot longer than just a half a day. If you’re really all that eager to see it, go across this meadow and through the pass between those two hills up at the other end of the grass. When you get to the top of the pass you’ll see a big dead tree. The tree stands right at the edge of the world, so that’s as far as you’ll be able to go – unless you know a way to sprout wings.’

‘Well then, as long as I’m this close, I think I’ll go have a look.’

‘That’s up to you, traveler. I’ve got better things to do than stand around looking at nothing.’

‘Who were you talking to just now?’

‘God. Me and God, we talk to each other all the time.’

‘Really? Next time you talk to him, why don’t you give him my regards? Tell him I said hello.’

‘I’ll do that – if I happen to think of it.’ And then the shabby old fellow shambled on, continuing his conversation with the empty air around him.

Althalus went back to his camp, gathered up his belongings and set out across the rocky meadow toward the two low, rounded hills the old man had indicated. The sun rose, climbing above the snowy peaks of Kagwher, and the night chill began to fade.

The hills were darkly forested, and there was a narrow pass between them where the ground had been trampled by the hooves of deer and bison. Althalus moved carefully, stopping to examine the game-trail for any unusual footprints. This was a very peculiar place, and it was entirely possible that unusual creatures lived here. Unusual creatures sometimes had unusual eating habits, so it was time to start being very careful.

He moved on, stopping frequently to look around and listen, but the only sounds he heard were the songs of birds and the sluggish buzzing of a few insects just starting to come awake after the chill night.

When he reached the top of the pass, he stopped again for quite a long time to look to the north, not because there was anything to see in that direction, but because there wasn’t. The game-trail went on down through a narrow patch of grass toward the dead snag the crazy old man had mentioned, and then it stopped. There wasn’t anything at all beyond that tree. There were no distant mountain peaks and no clouds. There was nothing but sky.

The dead snag was bone-white, and its twisted limbs seemed to reach in mute supplication to the indifferent morning sky. There was something unnerving about that, and Althalus grew even more edgy. He walked very slowly across the intervening stretch of grass, stopping quite often to bring his eyes – and his spear – around to look toward his rear. He’d seen nothing threatening so far, but this was a very unusual place, and he didn’t want to take any chances.

When he reached the tree, he put his hand on it to brace himself and leaned out carefully to look down over the edge of what appeared to be a precipice of some kind.

There wasn’t anything down there but clouds.

Althalus had been in the mountains many times before, and he’d frequently been in places that were above the clouds, so looking down at the tops of them wasn’t really all that unusual. But these clouds stretched off to the north with absolutely no break or occasional jutting peak for as far as he could see. The world ended right here, and there was nothing past here but clouds.

He stepped back from the tree and looked around. There were rocks lying here and there, so he lifted one that was about the size of his head, carried it back to the tree, and heaved it as far as he could out over the edge. Then he cocked his head to listen.

He listened for a long time, but he didn’t hear anything. ‘Well,’ he murmured ‘this must be the place.’

He stayed some distance back from the edge of the world and followed it off toward the northeast.

There were places where tumbling rock-slides had rolled down from nearby mountainsides to spill over the edge, and Althalus idly wondered if those sudden avalanches might have startled the stars. That thought struck him as funny for some reason. The notion of stars whirring off in all directions like a frightened covey of quail was somehow vastly amusing. The cold indifference of the stars sometimes irritated him.

In the late afternoon he took his sling and picked up several round stones from a dry creek-bed. There were hares and beaver-faced marmots about, and he decided that some fresh meat for supper might be an improvement over the tough strips of dried venison he carried in the pouch at his belt.

It didn’t take too long. Marmots are curious animals, and they have the habit of standing up on their hind legs beside their burrows to watch passing travelers. Althalus had a good eye, and he was very skilled with his sling.

He chose a small grove of stunted pines, built a fire, and roasted his marmot on a spit. After he’d eaten, he sat by his fire watching the pulsating, rainbow-colored light of God’s fire in the northern sky.

Then, purely on an impulse that came over him just after moon-rise, he left his camp and went over to the edge of the world.

The moon gently caressed the misty cloud-tops far below, setting them all aglow. Althalus had seen this before, of course, but it was different here. The moon in her nightly passage drinks all color from the land and sea and sky, but she could not drink the color from God’s fire, and the seething waves of rainbow light in the northern sky also burnished the tops of the clouds below. It seemed that they almost played there among the cloud-tops with the moon’s pale light encouraging the amorous advances of the rainbow fire. All bemused by the flicker and play of colored light that seemed almost to surround and enclose him, Althalus lay in the soft grass with his chin in his hands to watch the courtship of the moon and the fire of God.

And then, far back among the jagged peaks of the land of the Kagwhers, he once again heard that solitary wailing that he’d heard before in Arum and again in the forest outside Nabjor’s camp. He swore, rose to his feet, and went back to his camp. Whatever it was out there was obviously following him.

His sleep was troubled that night. The fire of God in the northern sky and the wailing back in the forest were somehow all mixed together, and that mixing seemed to have a significance that he couldn’t quite grasp, no matter how he struggled with it. It must have been along toward dawn when his dreams of fire and wailing were banished by yet another dream.

Her hair was the color of autumn, and her limbs were rounded with a perfection that made his heart ache. She was garbed in a short, archaic tunic, and her autumn hair was plaited elaborately. Her features were somehow alien in their perfect serenity. On his recent trip to the civilized lands of the south, he had viewed ancient statues, and his dream-visitor’s face more closely resembled the faces of yore than the faces of the people of the mundane world. Her brow was broad and straight and her nose continued the line of her forehead unbroken. Her lips were sensual, intricately curved, and as ripe as cherries. Her eyes were large and very green, and it seemed that she looked into his very soul with those eyes.

A faint smile touched those lips, and she held her hand out to him. ‘Come,’ she said in a soft voice, ‘come with me. I will care for you.’

‘I wish I could,’ he found himself saying, and he cursed his tongue. ‘I would go gladly, but it’s very hard to get away.’

‘If you come with me, you will never return,’ she told him in her throbbing voice, ‘for we shall walk among the stars, and fortune will never betray you more. And your days will be filled with sun and your nights with love. Come, come with me, my beloved. I will care for you.’ And she beckoned and turned to lead him.

And, all bemused, he followed her, and they walked out among the clouds, and the moon and the fire of God welcomed them and blessed their love.

And when he awoke, there was a sour emptiness in him, and the taste of all the world was bitter, bitter.

He continued on toward the northeast for the next several days, and he almost hoped that at some point he might see a peak or even a low-lying shadow emerging from the perpetual cloud beyond the edge of the world to prove that this was not the place where everything ended, but nothing ever emerged, and he gradually and with great reluctance was forced to concede that the sharp brink he followed was indeed the very edge of the world and that there was nothing beyond but cloudy emptiness.

The days grew shorter and the nights more chill as Althalus followed the edge of the world, and he began to look at the prospect of a very unpleasant winter looming ahead. If he didn’t come to the house Ghend had described very soon, he’d have to pull back, seek some kind of shelter and lay in a supply of food. He decided that the first snowflake that touched his face would send him south in search of someplace to hole up until spring. He began to keep his eyes directed toward the south in search of a break in the mountains even as he continued along the edge of the world.

Perhaps it was because his attention was divided that he didn’t even see the house until he was quite close to it. The house was made of stone, which was unusual here on the frontier, where most houses were made of logs or thatched limbs. Moreover, such houses as he had seen in civilized lands had been made of limestone. This house, however, had been built of granite blocks, and granite would eat up the bronze saws which slaves used to cut limestone at a ferocious rate.

Althalus had never seen a house like this one before. The granite house at the edge of the world was enormous, bigger even than the log fort of Gosti Big Belly back in Arum or the temple of Apwos in Deika. It was so huge that it rivaled several nearby natural spires for sheer size. It wasn’t until he saw windows that he finally accepted the fact that it really was a house. Natural rock formations do break off into square shapes from time to time, but a natural formation with windows? Not very likely.

It was about noon on a short, overcast late autumn day when Althalus first saw the house, and he approached it with some caution. Ghend had told him that the house was unoccupied, but Ghend had probably never been here, since Althalus was still convinced that Ghend was afraid of the house.

The silent house stood on a promontory that jutted out from the edge of the world, and the only way to approach it would be to cross the drawbridge that had been built to span the deep chasm that separated the house from the narrow plateau that lined the precipice where the world ended. If the house were indeed deserted, the owner would certainly have devised some way to raise that drawbridge before he’d left. But the drawbridge was down, almost inviting entry. That didn’t ring true at all, and Althalus ducked down behind a moss-covered boulder to gnaw at a fingernail and consider options.

The day was wearing on, and he’d have to decide soon whether to just walk on in, or wait until night. Night was the native home of all thieves, but under these circumstances, might it not be safer to cross that bridge in the daylight? The house was unfamiliar, and if the place were indeed occupied, the people inside would be alert at night, and they would know exactly how to slip up behind him if he tried to sneak inside. Might it not be better to openly cross the bridge and even shout some kind of greeting to the unseen occupants? That might persuade them that he had no evil intent, and he was fairly sure that he could talk fast enough to keep them from immediately hurling him into the void beyond the promontory.

‘Well,’ he muttered. ‘I guess it’s worth a try.’ If the house were indeed empty, all he’d be wasting was his breath. He still had lots of that, and trying to sneak in at night might be a very good way to cut it short. A show of friendly innocence really seemed to be the best approach right now.

Acting on that, he rose to his feet, took up his spear, and walked on across the bridge, making no effort to conceal himself. If anyone were in the house watching, he’d certainly see Althalus, and a casual saunter across the bridge would shout louder than words that he had no unsavory motives.

The bridge led to a massive arch, and just beyond that arch lay an open place where the ground was covered with closely fitting flat stones with weeds growing up through the cracks. Althalus braced himself and took a tighter grip on his spear. ‘Ho!’ he shouted. ‘Ho, the house!’ He paused, listening intently.

But there was no answer.

‘Is anybody here?’ he tried again.

The silence was oppressive.

The main door of the house was massive. Althalus poked his spear at it a few times and found it to be quite solid. Once again the warning bell sounded inside his head. If the house had been empty for as long as Ghend had suggested, the door should have completely rotted away by now. All sorts of normal rules didn’t appear to be in force here. He took hold of the massive ring and pulled the heavy door open. ‘Is anybody here?’ he called once more.

He waited again, but again there was no answer.

There was a broad corridor leading back into the house beyond the doorway, and there were other corridors branching off from that main one at regular intervals, and there were many doors in each corridor. The search for the book would obviously take longer than he’d thought.

The light inside the house was growing dimmer, and Althalus was fairly certain that evening was rapidly descending. He was obviously running out of daylight. The first order of business now was to find a secure place to spend the night. He could begin his search of the house tomorrow.

He looked down one of the side corridors and saw a rounded wall at the far end, which hinted strongly that there might be a tower there. A tower room, he reasoned, would probably be more secure than a chamber on the ground floor, and the notion of security in this peculiar structure seemed fairly important just now.

He hurried down the hall and found a door somewhat larger than those he’d previously passed. He rapped his sword-hilt against the door. ‘Ho, in there?’ he called.

But of course there was no answer.

The door-latch was a bronze bar that had been designed to slip into a hole chipped deep into the stone door-frame. Althalus tapped its knob with the butt of his sword until it cleared the hole. Then he poked the point of his sword into the edge of the door, flipped the door open, and jumped back, sword and spear at the ready.

There was nobody behind that door, but there were steps leading upward.

The likelihood that these hidden steps just happened to be behind a door Althalus had just happened to notice in passing was very, very slim. The clever thief had a profound distrust of things that came about by sheer chance. Chance was almost always a trap of some kind, and if there was a trap in this house, there almost had to be a trapper.

There wasn’t much daylight left, however, and Althalus didn’t really want to meet whoever it was at night. He drew in a deep breath. Then he tapped the first step with the butt end of his spear to make certain that the weight of his foot wouldn’t bring something heavy down on top of him. It was slow going up the stairs that way, but the careful thief methodically checked every single step before he put his foot on it. Just because ten steps had been perfectly safe, there were no guarantees that the eleventh wouldn’t kill him, and the way his luck had been going lately, it was better to take some extra precautions.

He finally reached the door at the top of those hidden steps, and he decided not to rap this time. He tucked his sword under his left arm, slowly pushed the latch back until it came clear of the stone door-frame. Then he took hold of his sword again and nudged the door open with his knee.

Beyond the door there was one room, and one only. It was a large circular room, and the floor was as glossy as ice. The whole house was strange, but this particular room seemed stranger still. The walls were also polished and smooth, and they curved inward to form a dome overhead. The workmanship that had created this room was far more advanced than anything Althalus had ever seen before.

The next thing he noticed was how warm the room seemed to be. He looked around, but there was no fire-pit to explain the warmth. His new cloak wasn’t necessary here.

Reason told him that the room should not be warm, since there was no fire and there were four broad windows, one looking out in each direction. There should be cold air blowing in through each of those unglazed windows, but there was not. That wasn’t at all natural. Winter was coming, so the air outside was bitterly cold; but it wasn’t coming in, for some reason.

Althalus stood in the doorway carefully looking over every bit of the domed, circular room. There was what appeared to be a very large stone bed against the far wall, and the bed was covered with dark, thick-furred bison robes. There was a table made of the same polished stone as the floor and walls, and the table rested on a stone pedestal in the center of the floor, and there was an ornately carved stone bench beside that table.

And there, resting on the precise center of that gleaming tabletop, was the Book Ghend had described.

Althalus cautiously approached the table. Then he leaned his spear against it and, with his sword firmly gripped in his right hand, he rather hesitantly reached out with his left. Something about the way Ghend had handled that black-boxed Book of his back in Nabjor’s camp had suggested that books should be approached with extreme caution. He touched his fingers to the soft white leather of the Book’s enclosing box, and then he snatched his hand away to grab up his spear as he heard a faint sound.

It was a soft, contented sort of sound that seemed to be coming from the fur-covered bed. The sound was not exactly continuous, but seemed to change pitch slightly, going in and out almost like breathing.

Before he could investigate, though, something else happened that took his attention away from that soft sound. Twilight was deepening outside the windows, but it was not growing dark in this room. He looked up in astonishment. The dome above him had begun to glow, growing slowly brighter and perfectly matching its brightening to the pace of the increasing darkness outside. The only source of light other than the sun, the moon, and the shimmering curtain of God’s light at the edge of the world was fire, and the dome over his head was not on fire.

Then that contented sound coming from the bed grew even louder, and now that the light from the dome over his head was growing brighter, Althalus could see the source of that sound. He blinked, and then he almost laughed. The sound was coming from a cat.

It was a very dark cat, almost black, and it blended so well into the dark fur of the bison robes on the bed that his cursory glance when he’d first entered the room had missed it entirely. The cat lay on its belly with its head up, though its eyes were closed. Its front paws were stretched out on the robe in front of its short-furred chest, and they were making little kneading motions. The sound which had so baffled Althalus was the sound of purring.

Then the cat opened its eyes. Most of the cats Althalus had seen before had looked at him with yellow eyes. This cat’s eyes, however, were a brightly glowing green.

The cat rose to its feet and stretched, yawning and arching its sinuous back and hooking its tail up. Then the furry creature sat down, looking into the face of Althalus with its penetrating green eyes as if it had known him all its life.

‘You certainly took your own sweet time getting here’, the cat observed in a distinctly feminine voice. ‘Now why don’t you go shut that door you left standing wide open? It’s letting in the cold, and I just hate the cold.’

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