‘Whatever for?’
‘Well,’ Eliar replied with a lightly pained expression, ‘I did sort of kill her father, I guess, but it was during a war, and that kind of thing happens during wars. I was just doing my job, but Andine took it personally. I didn’t really mean anything by it. I was just following orders, but she can’t quite understand that, I guess.’
‘Did any of that make any sense to you?’ Bheid asked Althalus with a perplexed look.
‘You almost had to have been there,’ Althalus told him. ‘It was all very complicated. We can talk about it on our way to Osthos.’
They went to the northern end of Awes where the black-robed priests stayed, picked up Bheid’s blankets and his few other belongings, and then returned to the rudimentary camp where Althalus and Eliar had spent the previous night. Then Eliar and Bheid went to the corral of a horse trader and returned with a mount for their newest member.
‘I’m awfully hungry, Althalus,’ Eliar said hopefully. ‘Could we have beef tonight instead of fish?’
‘I’ll make a fire,’ Bheid offered.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Althalus told him. Then he called up a fairly large beef roast and several loaves of bread.
Bheid jerked back with a startled oath.
‘Makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it?’ Eliar chuckled. ‘I was almost afraid to eat the first supper he made that way, but the food he makes with words is really very good.’ Eliar started to eat with a great deal of enthusiasm.
‘How do you do that?’ Bheid asked Althalus in an awed voice.
‘Emmy calls it “using the Book”,’ Althalus replied. ‘She taught me how to do it back in the House at the End of the World where the Book is.’
‘Which Book?’
‘The Book of Deiwos, of course.’
‘You’ve actually seen the Book of Deiwos?’
‘Seen it?’ Althalus laughed. ‘I lived with it for twenty-five hundred years. I can recite it from end to end, forward or backward, and from side to side, if you’d really care to hear it that way. I think I could even recite it upside down if I put my mind to it.’
‘Exactly how is it that the Book of Deiwos makes it possible for you to perform miracles?’
‘The Book’s the word of God, Bheid. It’s written in a very antique language that’s sort of like the language we speak now, but not exactly. The words from the old language make things happen. If I say “beef”, nothing happens, but if I say “gwou”, we get supper. There’s a little more involved in the procedure, but that’s the core of it. I spent a lot of years committing the Book to memory.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘I’ve got it in here now, so I don’t have to carry it with me – which isn’t permitted, of course. The Book has to stay in the House. It wouldn’t be safe to carry it out into the real world. You’d better eat your supper before it gets cold.’
Eliar had several more helpings, then they talked a bit more before rolling up in their blankets to sleep.
It was Awes. Althalus was sure that it was Awes, but it had no buildings. He could clearly see the fork of the River Medyo, but a grove of ancient trees had somehow replaced the ruins. He wandered for a time under those mighty oaks, and then he looked toward the west and saw people far off in the distance. As he watched them coming across the grassy plain toward the place where he stood, he seemed to hear a faint wailing sound coming from very far away. There was a lost, despairing quality to that wailing that seemed to wrench at his very soul.
And then the people he’d seen reached the far bank of the river, and he could see them more clearly. They were dressed in the skins of animals, and they carried spears with stone points.
He rolled over, muttering and groping under his blanket for the rock which had been gouging his hip. He finally located it, threw it away, and slid easily back into sleep.
There were crude huts under the oak trees now, and the fur-clad people moved among those huts, talking, talking, talking in hushed and fearful tones. ‘He comes, he comes, he comes,’ the people said. ‘Make ready for his coming, for he is God.’ And the faces of some of the people were exalted, and the faces of others were filled with terror. And still they said, ‘He comes, he comes, he comes.’
And Ghend moved among them, whispering, whispering. And the people pulled back from Ghend with fear upon their faces. But Ghend paid no heed to their fear, and his eyes burned, burned.
And Ghend lifted his face and looked upon Althalus with his burning eyes. And the eyes of Ghend seared at the soul of Althalus. And Ghend spoke then, saying, ‘It is of little moment, my thief. Run, Althalus, run, and I shall pursue you down the nights and down the years, and the Book shall avail you not, for I shall deliver you up to the throne of Daeva, and you – even as I – shall serve him down all the endless eons. And when the eons end, we shall turn and follow them back to their beginning. And then shall we turn again, and behold, they shall not be as they were before.’
The wailing sound rose to an awful shriek.
Althalus started up, sweating profusely. ‘God!’ he exclaimed, trembling violently.
‘Who was he?’ Bheid’s terrified voice came out of the darkness. ‘Who was that man with eyes of fire?’
‘You saw him too?’ Eliar asked, his voice also trembling.
‘Step aside, Althalus,’ Emmy’s voice inside his head had a crisp, no-nonsense quality about it. ‘I need to talk to them.’
Althalus felt himself being rather rudely thrust aside. ‘Eliar,’ Emmy said, ‘tell Bheid who I am.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Eliar responded. ‘Bheid,’ he said, ‘that’s Emmy talking. She does that now and then. Althalus might still be there, but she’s using his voice.’
‘The cat?’ Bheid said incredulously.
‘I wouldn’t think of her as a cat, exactly,’ Eliar advised. ‘That’s just the way she hides what she really is. Her real form would probably blind us if we looked at her.’
‘Hush, Eliar,’ Emmy said gently.
‘Yes, Ma’am.’
‘What you’ve all just experienced, gentlemen, wasn’t exactly a dream,’ Emmy told them. ‘Althalus has met Ghend before, so he’ll be able to tell you about him – after I’ve finished using his voice. What you saw just now wasn’t a dream, but it wasn’t real, either. It’s what Ghend – and Daeva – want to make real.’
‘Who were those people we saw?’ Bheid asked in a trembling voice.
‘The Medyos – the first ones who came to this part of the world ten thousand years ago. They brought the worship of Deiwos with them when they came here, but Daeva’s trying to change that. He’s trying to alter things so that the first Medyos worship him instead of his kinsman, Deiwos.’
‘But that’s impossible,’ Bheid protested. ‘Once something’s happened, it can’t be changed.’
‘Keep a very firm grip on that thought, Bheid,’ she advised. ‘It might help. Daeva doesn’t seem to agree with you, though. He believes that he can change the past – by changing the present. That’s why we’re being gathered together. We’re supposed to prevent what Daeva’s trying to do. This will happen again. You’ll see things that didn’t really happen, and you won’t always be asleep when you see them.’
‘This just stopped being fun, Emmy,’ Eliar complained. ‘If these wide-awake dreams come popping out of nowhere the way that one did, how can we tell what’s real and what’s not?’
‘Because of the wailing,’ she replied. ‘When you hear that wailing off in the distance, it’s a sure sign that Ghend’s trying to alter the past. You’ll also know when the wailing starts that you’re not in the present. You may be in the past or in the future, but you aren’t in the place called now.’
Althalus looked off to the east where the first faint hint of the new day was touching the horizon, ‘It’s almost daybreak,’ he told his companions. ‘Let’s gather up our things and get ready to start.’
‘We are going to have breakfast, aren’t we?’ Eliar asked in a worried tone.
Althalus sighed. ‘Yes, Eliar, we’ll have breakfast.’
The sun was just coming up when the barge ferried them across the west fork of the river, and they rode toward the west. After they’d gone a few miles, Bheid trotted up beside Althalus. ‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘I guess that’s permitted,’ Althalus replied.
‘How did you find out where the Book of Deiwos was located?’ Bheid asked. ‘I’ve been hearing stories about it for years now. Arguments about that Book have been going on for centuries. Most of my teachers said that the Book was actually the night sky, but some said that it really did exist. Evidently those were the ones who were right.’
‘Yes,’ Althalus replied, ‘there really is a Book.’
