If you feel that way about it, why are you going to take on the job, then?
Althalus sighed. Normally I wouldnt, Nabjor. I dont trust Ghend, and I dont think I like him. My lucks 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 Im going to jump on it. The jobs easy, and the pays good. It wont 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 shes supposed to.
Youve got a very strange religion, Althalus.
Althalus grinned at him. It works for me, Nabjor, and I dont 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 its 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 doesnt hold his drink very well. He wont be feeling too good when he wakes up, so hes going to need some medicine to make him feel better. Give him as much as he can drink, and if hes 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? Ridings easier than walking.
When I get so feeble that I cant do my own walking, Ill 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. Id like to be a long ways up into the mountains of Kagwher before he sobers up.
He said that hes afraid to go into Kagwher.
I dont think I believe him on that score either. He knows the way to that house up there, but I think its the house hes afraid of, not the whole of Kagwher. I dont 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.
Thats why Im here, Althalus, Nabjor said piously. Im the friend of all men when theyre 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, Ive 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 dont like to be followed when Im working, so make him good and drunk right here so that I dont 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 werent any laws in Hule, but there were rules about behavior, and it was very unhealthy to ignore those rules. If an armed man doesnt want company, its 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 didnt really understand wolves. Most animals dont bother to waste time on things that arent easy to catch and eat. Wolves, however, seem to enjoy challenges, and theyll 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.
Ghends directions hadnt 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 wasnt 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 wouldnt 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 didnt really have a very well-defined system of belief. He knew that he was fortunes child, and even though he and fortune were currently a bit on the outs, he hoped that hed 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 didnt bother each other.
Althalus didnt really have a very well-defined system of belief. He knew that he was fortunes child, and even though he and fortune were currently a bit on the outs, he hoped that hed 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 didnt 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 didnt want to discuss the edge of the world for some reason. Evidently this was one of the things they werent supposed to talk about. Hed encountered this oddity before, and it had always irritated him. Refusing to talk about something wouldnt 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 wasnt very superstitious, but watching the sky catch on fire isnt 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 hed 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 hed 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, hed 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 wasnt 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 whod lived too long. Roaming around after they were supposed to be lying peacefully in their graves would be enough to make anybody crazy. Thats why they started talking to people or other things that werent 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 worlds 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 dont get excited.
Whos that? the old man demanded, seizing his staff in both hands and brandishing it.
Im just a traveler, and I seem to have lost my way.
The old man lowered his staff. Dont see many travelers around here. They dont seem to like our sky.
I noticed the sky myself just last night. Why does it do that?
Its the edge of things, the old man explained. That curtain of fire up in the sky is where everything stops. This sides 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?
Thats all there is out there, traveler nothing. God hasnt gotten around to doing anything about it yet. There isnt anything at all out beyond that curtain of fire.
I havent lost my way then after all. Thats what Im looking for the edge of the world.
What for?
I want to see it. Ive heard about it, and now I want to see it for myself.
Theres nothing to see.
Have you ever seen it?
Lots of times. This is where I live, and the edge of the worlds 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 cant hardly miss it at least youd better not. The crazy man cackled. Its a place where you want to be real careful, cause if you make one wrong step when you come to that edge, your journeys going to last for a lot longer than just a half a day. If youre 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 youll see a big dead tree. The tree stands right at the edge of the world, so thats as far as youll be able to go unless you know a way to sprout wings.
Well then, as long as Im this close, I think Ill go have a look.
Thats up to you, traveler. Ive 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 dont you give him my regards? Tell him I said hello.
Ill 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.