Threshold

by Sara Douglass

  “Cage!” he said and, grabbing my father’s tool sack, threw it on the table.

  I halted its slide in the instant before it shattered the glass. An unwelcome memory of the vase I had dropped surfaced, and I managed to quell it with only the most strenuous effort.

  “It…it is bad glass, My Lord,” I murmured.

  “Bad glass or not, it is the only thing you have to work with. Cage it!”

  I took a deep breath, clenched my fingers to stop their trembling, then stared at the glass, trying to see what I could do with it. But all I could feel was the weight of the Magus’ eyes behind me.

  I cleared my throat. “I will need oil. Something fine.”

  Silence, then Gayomar spoke. “Kamish. There is a jug of linofer oil standing on the shelf by the inner door. And bring the cloth that is folded beside it. We do not want her to ruin the tabletop as well as the glass.”

  There was rough amusement in that voice, and, deep within me, anger stirred.

  I raised my head and twisted on the stool, staring Boaz in the eye. “What would you like me to cage?”

  “Something that will save your life, your father’s life, and that of the foolish Kamish,” he replied, then stood back a pace, arms folded, waiting.

  And so, with the slaves – now forgotten by all – the two Magi, the ashen-faced Kamish and my father watching on, I did what I could.

  For some minutes I ran my hands over the glass, feeling it, feeling for its soft voice, wondering what it would permit and what it would not. It was rough, discarded glass, a greyish and cloudy blue. Thrown away because of the myriad tiny fractures and air bubbles it contained. To try and cage it…

  I wondered what design would please the Magi, what design would save my life. I knew nothing of their culture, or of the patterns that they considered pleasant. Would one of the myths of Viland please them? No, I thought not.

  I turned the glass over and over in my hands, listening as it finally spoke to me, and I made up my mind.

  I set the glass to one side and opened the tool sack. I took out several pliers of differing sizes, a slender hammer, an even more slender chisel, a drill, two glass cutters, a wax marker and a small, pliable ball with a slender nozzle – this I half filled with linofer oil. It was not the best oil for glassworking, but it would do.

  I took the wax marker and quickly sketched a design on the face of the rectangular glass, and then on its two narrower sides.

  Boaz breathed deeply behind me, and I let myself relax slightly, relieved. This was an arid country, and the Lhyl River was the source of all life. Its culture, as Setkoth itself, was undoubtedly river-orientated, and thus I had sketched the outline of river reeds, two frogs clinging to them. It was a simple design, but pure and delightful because of it.

  Using one of the glass cutters, I scored over the wax markings, cutting thin tracings into the glass. I was careful to only barely score the surface of this delicate and fractured glass, and when I was finished, and the wax wiped away, the score marks were visible only as lines of light running over the surface.

  I breathed more easily now, and smiled, understanding the glass, knowing it would do its best for me.

  “There is no vice here,” I said, and looked at my father. “I need someone to hold the glass as I drill it. Father, will you –”

  “I will serve,” Boaz said, and Kamish scrambled to fetch another stool.

  He sat down opposite me, taking the glass between his hands. My confidence faltering again, I hesitated, then moved his hands slightly so that the glass tilted away from me.

  He made no comment at my hesitant touch, his eyes remained unblinking on my face.

  With the drill I made two score of tiny holes across the surface of the glass, avoiding the fracture lines, and praying to the glass that it would tolerate my intrusion and not shatter. When this was done I drilled more deeply, using the linofer oil to soothe the shock of the drill’s penetration, listening to the song of the glass as the drill bit ever deeper, adding more oil whenever its song swerved towards harshness.

  Then I took the hammer and chisel and tapped out the sections of glass that had been weakened by the drill holes. I held my breath as the glass closest to the most dangerous of the fault lines fell safely out, then I reached for the finest of the pliers, using them to chip and nibble at the outline of the reeds and frogs until the design stood out from the supporting glass.

  I raised my eyes to Boaz.

  By this stage he must have realised that I could work glass with the best craftsman, but it was still not enough. If the design now stood out from the glass, then I had to free it – create the cage.

  Caging was traditionally reserved for round vessels. An outer design, called the lacework, was carved from a thick wall of glass, and then all but freed from the remaining smooth inner wall. Only a few, almost invisible struts would support the outer design – which then became, in effect, a cage of lace about the inner, plain wall of the vessel.

  This was a free-standing block of flat glass, and faulted and sad. It would not cage well, if it would tolerate it at all. But I could do my best. I turned the glass in Boaz’s hands, so that it faced me almost sideways, then I picked up the drill again.

  Use of the drill now was more than dangerous. Normally I would have worked at the glass patiently with chisel and pliers, forceps and soft words, but that process would take days if not weeks, and those I did not have.

  Closing my eyes briefly I winged a prayer to the gods and a gentle lullaby to the glass, then I set to work.

  The glass cried almost instantly, and I winced, but I soothed as best I could, and murmured to it, and pleaded with it, and finally it acquiesced. It was a brave glass, and tears came to my eyes at its courage.

  These drill holes moved horizontally behind the outline of the reeds and the frogs, and, despite my best efforts, one or two cut directly through fault lines.

  Laying the drill and oil bag to one side, I again picked up a pair of pliers, using one of the handles to tap at the glass.

  Sections cracked, crumbled, and then slid to the table.

  I took the glass completely into my hands now, cradling it against my breast, tapping, tapping, tapping, using both drill holes and fault lines to my advantage, murmuring wordlessly, soothing, reassuring.

  There was utter silence about me, and I could feel the eyes of slaves and Magi alike riveted to my face or to my hands, but I did not care. There was only me and my glass and the growing mound of fragments and dust in my lap and on the table.

  The cage was emerging now, and with it emerged the true hidden colour of the glass. Once grey and cloudy as an unwanted and discarded lump, the glass now shone a deep, vivid blue. Most of the air bubbles and the fracture lines had been chiselled out and, despite what I’d originally thought, the cage had been almost entirely freed from the inner wall.

  “Let me see,” Boaz said, his voice peculiarly tight, but I shook my head, my eyes still on the glass wrapped in my arms and hands.

  “No. Wait. Let me just…” Using the inner teeth of the finest of the pliers, I smoothed the rough edges as best I could. The glass should have been patiently sanded over many hours to hone it to its best, but in less than an afternoon I knew I had created something wonderful from a glass that had thought itself fit only for grinding into spare chips.

  Finally I took a deep breath, and inspected it. The intertwining reeds stood completely free from the inner wall of the glass. Two frogs leaped playfully among them, their back legs serving as struts to anchor the cage lacework to the supporting inner wall.

  It was beautiful.

  My hands shaking, I held it up for all to see.

  The failing sunlight – how many hours had I been working? – caught and twinkled in the blue glass, and the reeds and frogs danced back and forth in the shimmering light.

  Boaz stood up slowly, his stool scraping behind him, and lifted the glass from my hands.

  “She has astounding talent,” Gayomar sai
d in the language of Ashdod. “Astounding.”

  Boaz’s face hardened. “Perhaps the glass…speaks…to her, Gayomar. Perhaps she is…Elemental.” His eyes slid over me, their power seeking, searching, and I dropped my gaze quickly, guiltily. Elemental? What was this?

  “Well,” Boaz continued to Gayomar, “I can warn Ta’uz about her, but he will never listen to me. He thinks all Elementals were gone generations ago. Bah! All glassworkers should be watched. Ta’uz has ever been lax in that regard. If I were Master of Site…”

  His fingers tightened about the glass. “What is your name, girl?” he asked, again using the common tongue.

  I told him, and then said my father’s name.

  Boaz regarded me steadily. “Your names are as heavy and cumbersome as your language. You belong to Ashdod and to the Magi now, and from henceforth will wear names that please us. Your name,” he indicated my father, “is Druse, a good worker’s name. And you,” he swung his eyes back to me, “shall be called Tirzah.”

  Gayomar jerked with surprise, but did not speak.

  I was not so reticent. I stood up, my eyes angry. “No! My name is –”

  “Your name is Tirzah!” Boaz shouted. “Do you understand?”

  I closed my mouth with a snap, but my eyes were no less angry and resentful.

  “This glass is very beautiful,” he said, his eyes harder than I’d seen them yet, “and its beauty catches at the hearts of all who gaze upon it. But I own it as tightly as I own your soul, and it will do my bidding as will you. Do you understand?”

  I was still silent, my entire body stiff and resentful.

  His eyes dropped to the glass, and I thought I had bested him. His hands ran over it, and I could see how gentle their touch, how caressing their passing.

  I relaxed. He thought it beautiful, and for its beauty, he would not deny me my name.

  Then he hefted the glass in one hand, raised his eyes to mine, and opened his fingers.

  The glass smashed into a thousand pieces on the tiles, and as I heard its death cry so I remembered the death scream of the vase I had dropped.

  I hated Boaz at that moment, and knew I would take that hatred and stoke it and feed it until I could repay him a thousand times over for the humiliation of my slavery and my rape and the death agony of that brave glass.

  “And so I will dispose of you, Tirzah, should the whim take me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand, Excellency.”

  3

  KAMISH bundled us back through the garden. His relief in being left his life found outlet in his anger at us – particularly me, and by the time I clambered back into the river boat my arms were already darkening with livid bruises.

  “Gesholme!” Kamish shouted at the river boat captain.

  We huddled in the belly of the boat, out of the way of the oarsmen, my father’s arms wrapped protectively about me. He realised a little of what I felt, although not all, for he’d never heard the glass in the same manner I had. The other slaves regarded us silently, then Mayim, the other glassworker, reached out and gently touched my arm.

  “That was wondrous,” he said. “I thought that glass was fractured beyond help, yet you still worked it into beauty. You must have magic in your fingers, Tirzah.”

  I eyed him carefully, wondering at his choice of words, but then decided it was simple praise. Nothing else. I nodded, grateful, then cuddled a little closer to my father. Druse.

  I thought of my new name – Tirzah. It was pretty, and rolled off the tongue with its own special music. But I would ever associate it with Boaz, and with my slavery.

  One day I would cast it off.

  But not now. Tonight all I wanted to do was cling as tightly as I could to my father, and close my eyes and pretend that none of this was happening.

  Time passed, and I dozed.

  I dimly realised we had left the confines of Setkoth, for the sounds of the city grew dim, and the smell of the river changed from rotting vegetable matter and human filth to that of the sweet cleanliness of open countryside and thick reed banks. The breeze grew cold, but my father was warm and there was a tarpaulin beneath our feet that our small group managed to wrap about us to keep out the worst of the night chills.

  I wondered vaguely where this Gesholme was, and what it was, but the river was soothing, and I slipped deeper into sleep.

  Hours later a shout woke me. The night was dark and still, and the boat’s crew had shipped their oars. There were shouts from the crew, and answering shouts from the bank as ropes were thrown and tied. The boat shuddered, then jerked as it bumped against its mooring. It was cold now, and I shivered in my thin cloths and wrapped my arms about myself.

  “Get up!” Kamish shouted, and we struggled to our feet, straining our eyes in the darkness.

  A settlement sprawled from the western river bank far to the west and south. It was tightly walled and closely gated, and guards watched atop towers and walkways.

  A slave encampment, then.

  To the north-west there appeared to be another compound, also walled, but with buildings too low to be seen from here.

  Beyond that loomed a massive structure that ate at the darkness and the stars. I could not make out its exact shape or dimensions, but the cold deepened about me, and the bruises on my arms throbbed anew.

  One of the crew leaned down to offer me his hand in alighting. He noticed the direction of my eyes, but kept his own carefully averted.

  “Threshold,” he said.

  A contingent of guards arrived from the compound to escort us inside the gates. Kamish gave them a small scroll, inscribed with our names and our abilities, then stepped back into the river boat.

  “I wish you the best,” he cried as the crew pushed out into the current and slowly turned the boat about, yet I knew he wished us anything but, and I thought I saw a gleam of teeth as the oarsmen finally made way for Setkoth.

  The walls of the compound were of sandstone and at least five paces wide and fifteen high, the gates of wood reinforced with metal bars and covered over with sun hardened mortar.

  One of the guards atop the wall leaned down as we passed. “Welcome to Gesholme,” he called, and ghostly laughter followed us along the narrow street.

  Regular blocks of tightly packed tenement buildings, some four or five storeys high, loomed to either side of us. An occasional light glinted behind their tightly shuttered doors and windows. Streets intersected the main way at regular intervals, and I realised that the encampment – Gesholme – was much larger than it had appeared from the river. Many thousands must live here.

  The walls and close buildings let no breeze through, and the air was thick and humid. Where minutes previously I had pulled my wraps closer, now I loosened them about my neck, and slapped at the hundreds of small, biting insects that hovered about our group.

  The lead guard called a halt. Another wall loomed before us, but with a smaller gate this time, and the two guards who stood by it were better uniformed than those who escorted us.

  “New arrivals,” said our lead guard, and one of the men by the gate grunted, inspected us, then waved us through. Into a different world.

  Here were no streets, but spacious avenues. The buildings were low, and sprawled comfortably. Pastel lights glinted, not only in windows but strung through date palms and across cool pools of water.

  There were no biting insects here – none had come through the gate with us.

  “The compound of the Magi,” said one of our guards. Then he smiled at the apprehension in all of our eyes. “It seems you’ve run up against them before. Well, here you’ll have to get used to their presence.”

  We stopped while he went into a particularly fine building, surrounded by columned verandahs festooned with hanging, crimson- and purple-flowered vines. The sound of murmured voices came from within a dimly lit room, then the guard reappeared accompanied by two Magi.

  Without prompting, the seven of us fell to our knees, while the guards bobbed their he
ads and saluted with their spears. “Excellencies!” they shouted.

  “Excellencies!” we murmured in quick echo.

  These two radiated the same power as Gayomar and Boaz had done, and were similarly dressed. Their black hair was also clubbed back into severe queues, and sharp eyes swept over us as vultures survey carrion for the most vulnerable flesh.

  One dropped his eyes down to the scroll Kamish had given the guard. “From Boaz, no less,” he muttered, then grimaced and rolled his eyes as he read what followed. “Elemental? The man has been reading legends. But he sends three glassworkers, and that is good.” He raised his eyes. “Druse, Mayim and Tirzah. You will accompany me. My name is Ta’uz, and I am Master of this site. Do you understand?”

  “We understand, Excellency.”

  “Good. The other four,” he read out their names, “will accompany Edohm. Come.”

  Rolling up the scroll with a snap he waved at my father, Mayim and myself. We scrambled to our feet and hurried after him.

  I only ever caught glimpses of the other four slaves again, rare flashes of friendly faces within the walls of Threshold, and what happened to them in the end I know not.

  Ta’uz led us back through the gate of the Magi’s compound, then turned sharp left, hurrying us towards a quarter in the northern part of Gesholme. Eventually he stopped outside one of the tenement buildings, and spoke to us. “Mayim, you will work in Izzali’s workshop. Druse, you and Tirzah will work in Isphet’s workshop. You may well see each other during the day, but at night men and women are quartered separately. Do you understand?”

  “We understand, Excellency.”

  “Good. This is Yaqob’s tenement, and this is where Druse and Mayim will live. You,” he waved at one of the guards, “wait here with the girl.”

  The door of the tenement opened at a sharp knock from a guard, then Ta’uz, my father and Mayim, accompanied by five guards, disappeared inside. I wanted to wish my father goodnight – this was the first time we’d been separated in weeks – but I knew enough now to keep silent. I was content that we’d work together in the same workshop.