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.’
Althalus stared at the cat in utter disbelief. Then he sighed mournfully and sank down onto the bench in absolute dejection. His luck hadn’t been satisfied with everything else she’d done to him. Now she was twisting the knife. This was why Ghend had hired somebody else to steal the Book instead of doing it himself. The House at the End of the World didn’t need guards or hidden traps to protect it. It protected itself and the Book from thieves by driving anyone who entered it mad. He sighed and looked reproachfully at the cat.
‘Yes?’ she said with that infuriatingly superior air all cats seem to have. ‘Was there something?’
‘You don’t have to do that anymore,’ he told her. ‘You and this House have already done what you’re supposed to do. I’ve gone completely insane.’
‘What in the world are you talking about?’
‘Cats can’t talk. It’s impossible. You aren’t really talking to me, and now that I think about it, you’re probably not really even there. I’m seeing you and hearing you talk because I’ve gone crazy.’
‘You’re being ridiculous, you know.’
‘Crazy people are ridiculous. I met a crazy man on my way here, and he went around talking to God. Lots of people talk to God, but that old fellow believed that God talked back to him.’ Althalus sighed mournfully. ‘It’ll probably all be over before