‘I’m not really certain,’ her reply came back. She watched Eliar eat with a slightly bemused look in her large green eyes. ‘See if you can distract him enough to get him to show me the Knife. I need to find out where we’re supposed to go next.’
‘Eliar,’ Althalus said, ‘you can keep chewing, but Emmy needs to take a quick look at your Knife.’
Eliar mumbled something.
‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ Althalus told him. ‘Just take the Knife out from under your belt and show it to her.’
Eliar shifted the chunk of ham he’d been eating to his left hand, wiped the grease off his right hand on the grass, and drew out his Knife. Still chewing, he held the Knife out to Emmy.
She glanced at it briefly. ‘Awes,’ she said.
‘Isn’t it in ruins?’ Althalus asked.
‘So?’
‘Just thought I’d mention it, that’s all. I’ll go saddle my horse.’
Emmy had gone back to watching Eliar eat. ‘There’s no real hurry, Althalus,’ her silent response sounded slightly amused. ‘From the look of things, our boy here’s just getting started.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_637d6245-b59e-504e-bffe-d9b20442f5a0)
‘Just exactly where’s this war?’ Eliar asked as he trotted along beside Althalus’ horse, ‘and what kind of people are we going to be fighting?’
‘War?’ Althalus asked.
‘People don’t rent soldiers just for show, Althalus. I’m fairly sure you didn’t go to all the trouble of getting me away from Andine just because you were lonesome. Sergeant Khalor always told us that we should find out as much about the people we’re going to be fighting as we possibly can.’
‘Your sergeant’s a very wise man, Eliar.’
‘We all looked up to him – even though he could be awfully picky about details sometimes. I’ll swear that he can talk about one speck of rust on a sword for half a day.’
‘Some soldiers are like that, I suppose,’ Althalus said. ‘I don’t get all that excited about it myself. A rusty sword kills somebody as well as a polished one does.’
‘We’re going to get along just fine,’ Eliar said, grinning broadly. ‘Now, then, who am I supposed to fight?’
‘The war we’re involved with isn’t exactly like an ordinary war – at least not yet. We haven’t quite reached the point of armies and battlefields.’
‘We’re still choosing up sides?’
Althalus blinked, and then he laughed. ‘That might just come closer to what we’re doing than anything I’ve heard so far.’
‘Watch your mouth,’ Emmy’s thought had a slight edge to it.
Althalus laughed again. ‘That’s why we absolutely had to get our hands on the Knife, Eliar,’ he told the boy. ‘It’s the only thing that can tell us who’s on our side. The ones we want can read it. Others can’t. Emmy can read more of it than you and I can, and it tells her where we’re supposed to go to recruit the people we’ll need.’
‘She’s not really a cat, then, is she? My mother’s got a cat, but all her cat does is eat and sleep and chase mice. If Emmy’s that important, you took an awful chance when you traded her for the Knife the way you did. Andine’s a very strange little lady. You’re lucky she didn’t chain Emmy to her bed-post.’
‘The way she had you chained to that pillar in her throne room?’
Eliar shuddered. ‘That was a real bad time for me, Althalus. The way she used to look at me gave me the wibblies. She’d sit there for hours playing with my knife and staring right straight at me. Women are very strange, aren’t they?’
‘Oh, yes, Eliar. Indeed they are.’
Shortly before noon, Althalus noticed a farmstead some distance back from the road they were following, and he turned into the lane that led toward the house. ‘Let’s get you mounted, Eliar,’ he said.
‘I can keep up with you on foot, Althalus.’
‘Possibly, but we’ve got a long way to go. I’ll talk with the farmer here and see what he’s got to offer.’
While Althalus spoke with the seedy-looking farmer, Eliar carefully examined the farm horses in the large corral behind the farmhouse. ‘This one’, he said, rubbing the ears of a large sorrel horse.
The farmer started to object, but he changed his mind when Althalus jingled his purse.
‘You paid him too much,’ Eliar said as they rode away from the farm.
‘The money doesn’t really mean anything.’
‘Money always means something – unless you just made it up in the same way you make up the food we eat.’ Then he looked sharply at Althalus. ‘You did, didn’t you?’ he demanded. ‘You just reared back, waved your hand, and there was a great big pile of gold, wasn’t there?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I –’ Althalus stopped, his eyes suddenly going very wide. ‘Can I do that?’ he sent his startled question at Emmy, who was dozing in the hood of his cloak.
‘Probably, yes.’
‘Then why did you make me dig it up?’
‘Honest work’s good for you, pet. Besides, it doesn’t exactly work that way. Food’s one thing, but minerals are quite a bit different.’
‘Why?’
‘They just are, Althalus. There’s certain balance involved that we shouldn’t tamper with.’
‘Would you like to explain that?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
They rode hard for the next couple of days until they were some distance away from Osthos, and then they slowed to give their horses a bit of rest. The plains of Treborea, drought-stricken and barren under the hot summer sun, were depressing, so Althalus passed the time telling Eliar slightly elaborated stories about his adventures back in the days before he’d gone to the House at the End of the World. Like all Arums, Eliar enjoyed good stories, and he was exactly the kind of audience that warmed Althalus’ heart.
Althalus did cheat just a little, though, as they rode along. Every time Eliar’s attention started to wander, a chicken leg or a chunk of still-warm bread would immediately recapture it. The arrangement worked out rather well, actually.
Emmy, however, found long naps much more interesting than the stories, for some reason.
Eliar more or less took over the care of their horses when they set up camp each night. Althalus produced the hay and oats their mounts needed, and not infrequently he was obliged to provide water for them as well. Eliar did the actual work, though, and the horses seemed quite fond of him. All in all, Althalus rather liked the arrangement.
They passed the walled city of Leupon a few days later, crossed the River Kanthon, and entered the lands of the Equeros. The lake country was not as parched as the plains of Perquaine and Treborea had been, and the population there had not been forced to huddle around slowly diminishing water holes or along river banks.
It took them about ten days to cross Equero, and then they entered mankind’s ancestral homeland of Medyo. Five days later they reached the place where the River Medyo forked and where the ruins of the city of Awes was located.
‘What happened here?’ Eliar asked as they stood on the west bank of the river waiting for the barge that – for a price – ferried travelers across to the ruins.
