back over her shoulder at the mountain peaks looming out beyond the south window. ‘Those weren’t there when I first came,’ she added.
‘I thought mountains lasted forever.’
‘Nothing lasts forever, Althalus – except me, of course.’
‘The world must have been very different back in the days before those mountains,’ he mused. ‘Where did people live back then?’
‘They didn’t. There weren’t any people then. There were other things here instead, but they died out. They’d done what they were supposed to do, so Deiwos let them go. He still misses them, though.’
‘You always talk about Deiwos as if you knew him personally.’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact we’re very well acquainted.’
‘Do you call him “Deiwos” when you’re talking together?’
‘Sometimes. When I really want to get his attention I call him “brother”.’
‘You’re God’s sister?’ That startled Althalus.
‘Sort of.’
‘I don’t think I want to push that any further. Let’s go back to what we were talking about before, Em. Just how long have I been here? Give me a number.’
‘Two thousand, four hundred, and sixty seven – as of last week.’
‘You’re just making that up, aren’t you?’
‘No. Was there anything else?’
He swallowed very hard. ‘Some of those naps I took were a lot longer than I’d thought they were, weren’t they? That makes me just about the oldest man in the world, doesn’t it?’
‘Not quite. There’s a man named Ghend who’s quite a bit older than you are.’
‘Ghend? He didn’t really look all that old to me.’
Her green eyes went very wide. ‘You know Ghend?’
‘Of course I do. He’s the one who hired me to come here and steal the Book.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she almost shrieked at him.
‘I must have.’
‘No, as a matter of fact, you didn’t. You idiot! You’ve been sitting on that for the last twenty-five hundred years!’
‘Calm down, Emmy. We’re not going to get anywhere if you turn hysterical.’ He gave her a long, level look. ‘I think it’s just about time for you to tell me exactly what’s going on, Emmy – and don’t try to put me off this time by telling me that I won’t understand or that I’m not ready to know certain things yet. I want to know what’s going on and why it’s so important.’
‘We don’t have time for that.’
He leaned back on his bench. ‘Well, we’re just going to take the time, little kitten. You’ve been treating me like a house-pet for quite a while now. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have a tail, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t wag it every time you snapped your fingers. You don’t have me completely tamed, Em, and I’m telling you right here and now that we aren’t going any further until you tell me just exactly what’s going on.’
Her look was very cold. ‘What is it that you want to know?’ Her tone was almost unfriendly.
He laid one hand on the Book. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we start out with everything? Then we can move on from there.’
She glared at him.
‘No more deep, dark secrets, Emmy. Start talking. If things are as serious as you seem to think they are, then be serious.’
‘Maybe you are ready to know what’s going on,’ she conceded. ‘How much do you know about Daeva?’
‘Just what it says in the Book. I’d never even heard of him before I came here. He’s very angry with Deiwos, I gather. Deiwos seems to be sorry that he feels that way, but he’s going to keep on doing what he’s doing whether Daeva likes it or not – probably because he has to.’
‘That’s a novel interpretation,’ she said. She mulled it over a bit. ‘Now that I think about it, though, there seems to be a lot of truth in it. Somehow you’ve managed to redefine the concept of evil. In your view, evil’s no more than a disagreement about the way things are supposed to be. Deiwos thinks they’re supposed to be one way, and Daeva thinks they’re supposed to be another.’
‘I thought I just said that. It’s the business of making things that started the fight then, isn’t it?’
‘That might be an oversimplification, but it comes fairly close. Deiwos makes things because he has to make them. The world and the sky weren’t complete the way they were. Deiwos saw that, but Daeva didn’t agree. When Deiwos does things to make the world and the sky complete, it changes them. Daeva believes that’s a violation of the natural order. He doesn’t want things to change.’
‘What a shame. There’s not much he can do about it, though, is there? Once something’s been changed, it’s been changed. Daeva can’t very well go back and unchange it, can he?’
‘He seems to think so.’
‘Time only moves in one direction, Emmy. We can’t go back and undo something that happened in the past just because we don’t like the way it turned out’
‘Daeva thinks he can.’
‘Then both of his wheels just came off the axle. Time isn’t going to run backward just because he wants it to. The sea might run dry and the mountains might wear down, but time runs from the past to the future. That’s probably the only thing that won’t change.’
‘We can all hope that you’re right, Althalus, because if you aren’t, Daeva’s going to win. He’ll unmake everything Deiwos has made and return the earth and sky to what they were at the very beginning. If he can make time go backward, then things he does now will change things that happened in the past, and if he can change enough of the past, we won’t be here any more.’
‘What’s Ghend got to do with all of this?’ Althalus asked her suddenly.
‘Ghend was one of the early men who came to this part of the world about ten thousand years ago. That was before men had learned how to cook certain rocks to make copper or how to mix tin with copper to make bronze. All their tools and weapons were made of stone, and Ghend’s chief put him to work cutting down trees so that the tribe could plant grain. Ghend hated that, and Daeva approached him and persuaded him to abandon Deiwos and worship him instead. Daeva can be very persuasive when he wants to be. Ghend’s the high priest of the Demon Daeva, and the absolute master of Nekweros.’ Emerald looked up suddenly. Then she sinuously flowed down from the bed, crossed the floor and jumped up to the sill of the north window. ‘I should have known,’ she said in an irritated voice. ‘He’s doing it again.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Come here and see for yourself.’
He rose and crossed to the window. Then he stopped, staring incredulously. There was something out there, and there wasn’t supposed to be. The world didn’t seem to end there any more. ‘What is that?’ he asked, staring at what appeared to be a white mountain.
‘Ice,’ she replied. ‘This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Every so often Daeva and Ghend try this way to slow things down – usually when they think Deiwos is getting too far ahead of them.’
‘That’s a lot of ice, Em. When I was coming here, the clouds were a long way down. Did that water down there start rising?’
‘No. It froze solid a long time ago. It snows on it every winter, and the snow