Althalus smiled to himself. ‘I wonder why it took him so long’, he murmured to himself. ‘That notion should have come to him hours ago.’ Obviously, he was going to have to take some steps here to discourage certain loyalties.
They reached the grove of trees, and Althalus dismounted. ‘All right, gentlemen’, he said to his captives, ‘I want you to sit down and listen. You’re right on the verge of making some hasty decisions, and I think there’s something you should know first.’ He took the key to their chains and freed the young man at the end of the line. ‘Come out here in front of the others’, he told him. ‘You and I are going to demonstrate something for your friends.’
‘You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?’ the boy asked in a trembling voice.
‘After what I just paid for you? Don’t be silly.’ Althalus led the boy out to the center of the clearing. ‘Watch very closely,’ he instructed the others. Then he held his hand out, palm up, toward the shaking boy. ‘Dheu’, he said, raising his hand slowly upward.
The slave gave a startled cry as he rose up off the ground. He continued to rise, going higher and higher into the air as Althalus rather over-dramatically continued to lift his hand. After a few moments the boy appeared to be only a tiny speck high above them.
‘Now then,’ Althalus said to his gaping slaves, ‘what lesson have we just learned? What do you suppose would happen to our friend up there if I let go of him?’
‘He’d fall?’ Eliar asked in a choked voice.
‘Very good, Eliar. You’ve got a quick mind. And what’d happen to him when he came back down to earth?’
‘It’d probably kill him, wouldn’t it?’
‘It goes a long way past “probably”, Eliar. He’d splatter like a dropped melon. That’s our lesson for today, gentlemen. You don’t want to cross me. You want to go a long way to avoid crossing me. Does anybody need any further clarification?’
They all shook their heads violently.
‘Good. Since you all understand just exactly how things stand, I suppose we can bring your friend down again.’ Althalus said, ‘Dhreu,’ in the same way he’d said it to his shoe back in the House at the End of the World, slowly lowering his hand as he said it.
The boy descended to the ground and collapsed, blubbering incoherently.
‘Oh, stop that,’ Althalus told him. ‘I didn’t hurt you.’ Then he went down the chain, unlocking each slave’s iron collar, leaving only Eliar still chained up. Then he pointed north. ‘Arum’s off in that direction, gentlemen. Pick up your distracted friend there and go home. Oh, when you get back, tell Chief Albron that I’ve found the Knife I was looking for and that Eliar’s going to be coming with me. Albron and I can settle accounts on that somewhere on down the line.’
‘What’s that all about?’ Eliar demanded.
‘Your chief and I have a sort of agreement. You’ll be working for me for a while.’ Althalus glanced at the others. ‘I told you to go home’, he said. ‘Why haven’t you left yet?’
They were running the last time he saw them.
‘Aren’t you going to unchain me?’ Eliar asked.
‘Let’s hold off on that for a little while.’
‘If you’ve got an agreement with my chief, you don’t have to keep me chained up like this. I’ll honor his word.’
‘The chain makes it easier for you, Eliar. As long as you’re chained up, you won’t have to struggle with any difficult moral decisions. Do you want something to eat?’
‘No’, the boy answered sullenly. Eliar appeared to be very good at sullen. Aside from his pouty expression, he was a fairly handsome young man, tall and blond-haired. Despite his youth, he had fairly bulky shoulders, and his kilt revealed powerful legs. It was easy to see why the other young Arums in Sergeant Khalor’s detachment had accepted this young fellow as their leader.
Althalus looped the boy’s chain around an oak tree, locked it securely and then stretched out on the leafy ground. ‘You might as well catch a few winks,’he advised, ‘I expect we’ll have a long way to go and not much time, so we’ll be a little short on sleep in the not too distant future.’
‘Where are we going?’ Eliar asked as curiosity evidently won out over sullen.
‘I haven’t got the foggiest idea’, Althalus admitted. ‘I’m sure Emmy will tell us when she gets here, though.’
‘Your cat?’
‘Things aren’t always what they appear to be, Eliar. Go to sleep.’
‘Can I have some bread or something?’
‘I thought you said you weren’t hungry.’
‘I changed my mind. I really could eat something.’
Althalus called up a loaf of bread and tossed it to his captive.
‘How did you do that?’ Eliar exclaimed.
‘It’s just a little trick I picked up a few years back. It’s no great thing.’
‘That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anybody do it. You’re not exactly like other people, are you?’
‘Not very much, no. Eat your supper and go to sleep, Eliar.’ Then Althalus settled back and drifted off to sleep.
Emmy ghosted silently into the oak grove not long after midnight and found Althalus just waking up. ‘Aren’t we being a bit irresponsible, pet?’ she chided him.
‘About what?’
‘I sort of thought you’d be keeping an eye on Eliar.’
‘He’s not going anyplace, Em – not unless he plans to take that tree with him.’
‘Did you have any trouble persuading his friends to leave?’
‘No, not really. They were scheming a bit on our way here, but then I showed them that it wasn’t a good idea.’
‘Oh? How?’
‘I picked one at random and did the same thing to him that we did to Pekhal a few weeks ago. They got my point almost immediately. Then I unchained them and told them all to go home. They left in quite a hurry.’
‘Show-off.’
‘I know the way Arums think, Em. They’re intensely loyal, so I had to do something spectacular enough to dispel that loyalty. I didn’t think we’d want them lurking back in the bushes watching for a chance to ambush us. I managed to get my point across to them.’
‘Have you got the Knife?’
He patted the Knife-hilt protruding from his belt. ‘Right here,’ he replied.
‘Come out into the moonlight,’ she told him, leading the way out of the grove.
‘What are we doing?’
‘You’re going to read the Knife.’
‘I take my orders from you, Em, not from this antique.’
‘Just a precaution, Althalus. The Knife’ll make sure you don’t lose interest along the way.’
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?’
‘Trust you?’ Her laugh was sardonic.
‘That wasn’t very nice, Em.’
‘Just take the Knife out and read it, Althalus. Let’s get on with this.’
He drew the Knife