Threshold

by Sara Douglass

“I am as nimble and invisible as a cat across those rooftops, Isphet. The guards will never see me.”

  “Well, be careful anyway, Yaqob. None of us can afford to lose you now.”

  Although the events of the daytime had twisted my world awry, the revelations of that night altered the very fabric of my life.

  In the evening we dampened down the furnaces and I walked in companionable silence with the women of Isphet’s household through the dusk to our quarters. We left the doors and windows open for the cool of the evening air while we ate, but once the meal was done and the dishes cleaned and set aside, Isphet ordered that the windows be shuttered, and all the doors save the one to the inner courtyard were locked.

  Then we waited. Saboa and I played listlessly at a game of tebente, taking it in turns to throw the marked sticks and move our clay figurines about the wooden board. But our hearts were not in it, and we jumped every time an insect frizzled in one of the two lamps Isphet had allowed to be lit.

  Yaqob came an hour after it was fully dark, and he brought with him a fellow glassworker from our workshop, Yassar. They had come across the rooftops of the tenement buildings, crawling slowly and silently, waiting as sporadic patrols of guards passed beneath them, then moving on again. Once they reached the roof of our building, they had come down the stairs of the courtyard.

  “Druse and Mayim?” Isphet asked as Yaqob and Yassar sat down.

  “They will sleep well tonight, Isphet. No, Tirzah, it is all right. A sleeping draught in their evening meal is all I have done. Your father will wake refreshed in the morning and not realise he has been drugged.”

  “We had to do it,” Yassar said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I know it.”

  “Good,” said Isphet. “Tirzah, I will now speak for some time. You will listen. If you have questions, you will wait until after I have spoken. First, I will speak a warning. If you betray us to the Magi, then you will eventually die, even if no-one in this room is left alive to take the revenge. Do you understand?”

  I rocked back on my stool at the threat in her voice and her eyes. I risked a glance at Yaqob, but his eyes were as implacable as Isphet’s. “I understand, Isphet.”

  “Good. We place our lives in your hands with what we are about to reveal.”

  She breathed deep, relaxed, and spoke.

  “Many generations ago, long before the building of Threshold, Ashdod was a land where the people lived their lives surrounded by the voices of the elements – particularly the elements within metals and gems. The Elemental arts and magic flourished, as did reverence for the Soulenai. The Soulenai are deeply learned and magical spirits who live in a region we know only as the Place Beyond. They speak to us through the elements – they have ever had an affinity for metals and gems – and lend us the power for our work and our arts. So in the glass, or the metals and gems you handle, Tirzah, you may hear the voices not only of the particular element you hold, but sometimes also of the Soulenai, echoing from the Place Beyond.”

  I blinked. Very occasionally when I worked glass the voices were far stronger and more vivid than usual. Such was the case when I’d worked the glass for the two Magi in Setkoth. Had this then been the Soulenai speaking to me through the glass, rather than the glass itself?

  Isphet watched my face, then continued. “Glass-workers – we in this room – are particularly attuned to the voices of the elements and Elemental magic because of the metals used in the making and colouring of glass. Any who hear the elements’ voices or who practise the Elemental arts are known simply as Elementals. Once there were great magicians – Necromancers – among us, many descended from the bloodlines of the Soulenai themselves. The Necromancers attained a level of power that left ordinary Elementals gasping; Necromancers were only one level below the Soulenai in understanding and skill. But they have vanished, and we lesser Elementals must make shift as we may.”

  Isphet looked to Yaqob, her eyes tender. “Yaqob has great talent, and I hope that eventually he may master the arts of the Necromancers. I pray that he will, if one day we can find him the teachers…”

  Her voice drifted into silence, then she shook herself and continued. “Among the other workers in Gesholme, the ranks of the metalworkers, as you would expect, and those few gemworkers in Gesholme have Elementals among them who still listen to the voices of the elements and the Soulenai as they craft. But of them Yaqob will speak later.

  “Ashdod was a wondrous land when many could hear the elements, when the Soulenai were able to speak and laugh as they desired, and when we still had the great Necromancers to work their wonders for us. The people of Ashdod would consult with the Necromancers and the Soulenai for advice, or to beg their favour and intervention in our lives. We did not worship the Soulenai as gods, but we learned to respect them and to accept the advice and aid they were willing to offer. The crafts flourished, for it was among the crafts that Elemental magic was at its strongest.

  “So Ashdod society existed for hundreds of years. But then came a change. The higher caste of Ashdod society has ever been inclined to the philosophical arts and less inclined to listen to the voices of the Soulenai.” Isphet shrugged slightly. “In that sense, Elemental magic has always been strongest among the lower castes rather than the nobility. Anyway, over generations there grew among the nobility a taste for mathematics, and eventually this taste solidified into a caste. Men only, for they claimed that women did not have the agility of mind to embrace the myriad complexities of numbers and forms. As I told you on your first night, Tirzah, the Magi, as these mathematicians came to be known to distinguish them from the Elemental Necromancers, command power through contemplation of the One, and of all numbers and forms that the One generates.

  “Gradually their power and influence increased. The Magi loathed the magic of the Elementals, because they said it was unpredictable, reliant on chance and the whims of the Soulenai. Their magic, they claimed,” and Isphet’s voice became hard and brittle, “was powerful because of its very predictableness and because, once its rules and parameters were understood, it could be manipulated to the Magi’s needs. They work their magic according to set rules! Tables! Parameters! Can you imagine that?

  “Their influence over the nobility and the monarchy increased, and eight or nine generations ago they moved against us, moved to destroy Elemental magic. Life became ordered – you have seen fields and gardens locked into rigid geometric shapes, the length and angle of their borders carefully defined according to the Magi’s dictates – and any Elementals caught practising their arts were put to death.

  “Tirzah, never let the Magi know you can hear the glass sing to you, for they would kill you on the spot.”

  I nodded.

  “And so,” Isphet waved one hand about, “we practise in secret as best we can. Most Magi believe that all Elementals have been exterminated, but even so, we must be wary. If any really suspected…”

  I thought of the Magus Boaz – he still believed the Elementals existed, and suspected me of the art. I closed my eyes briefly, thankful he was in Setkoth rather than here, then wondered if I should say something. But as I opened my eyes and prepared to speak, Isphet continued.

  “Now, I want to tell you what I can about Threshold. Much of this is supposedly secret, confined to Magi circles, but we have gleaned it over many years, from indiscreet words and whispers and from what we have seen about us; the Magi are not always as inscrutable as they believe. Eight generations ago a cadre within the Magi conceived of a mathematical formula so perfect, yet so powerful in its perfection, that many among the Magi argued it should be allowed to fall into distant memory. Nevertheless, those in favour won out. The formula consisted – consists – in constructing a building that physically embodies the perfect mathematical–geometrical form.”

  “Threshold,” I said.

  “Yes, Threshold. For generations its construction has consumed Ashdod, and consumed us. Gesholme grew alongside Threshold to house the workers needed to build it. Th
e encampment was once much larger, when tens of thousands were needed for the major construction work; what you see about you now is about a third of its previous size. Once the workers were free and paid for their labour. No more. All of us in this room, save you and I, Tirzah, were born into slavery.

  “Threshold’s purpose – the purpose of the formula – is not exactly clear to us, but some of it we can guess. The heart of Threshold is the Infinity Chamber.” Now Isphet looked carefully at me. “The One.”

  I must have looked confused, for Isphet immediately explained. “The Magi believe that the One is birth and death within itself, for it is the number from which all other numbers and forms are born and into which they will eventually collapse and die.”

  “Thus it represents Infinity,” Yaqob said very quietly to one side. “The Magi always strive for complete union with the One. With Infinity.”

  Isphet wriggled irritably at his interruption. “The fact that Threshold, as a building and as a mathematical formula, has as its heart a chamber named Infinity makes us believe that it is being built to enable the Magi to eventually achieve complete union with the One.”

  There was a very long silence.

  “We believe,” Isphet eventually said, very quietly now, “that when Threshold is complete, it will provide the Magi with the means to step into Infinity.”

  She let me think about this for a moment, then went on. “Frankly, if they want to step into Infinity and thus rid this land of their presence, then I for one care not. Indeed, there would be celebrations and laughing the night they stepped through. But there is something wrong with Threshold. All of us have felt it. Threshold’s shadow stretches across us all, even at night we can feel its weight in our dreams. Day by day the sense of wrongness grows. Anyone who has been into the Infinity Chamber knows just how deep the wrongness has spread. Tirzah, you know.”

  I nodded again, not sure I could have spoken, even had I wanted to.

  “Yes,” Isphet said, “we all know about it but none of us can tell exactly what the wrongness is. The glass screams inside the Infinity Chamber…but why? Have the Magi miscalculated? Is the formula flawed? No-one is sure and,” her mouth quirked, “no-one dares question the Magi on the matter. Yaqob, I wish that you would now speak.”

  He stared at each of us in turn. “We are enslaved here, trapped unwilling in the wrongness that is Threshold by these loathsome dung lice who call themselves Magi.”

  My head snapped up at the bitterness in Yaqob’s voice. I knew he resented his lot, but I had never realised the depth of it.

  “It will kill us, eventually. And if Threshold does not do it, then once the building is finally complete, I believe the Magi will. We know too much about Threshold and its secrets.”

  Abruptly Yaqob leapt to his feet and started to pace restlessly about the room.

  “But I want to live, as does everyone here. I want to be free. I want my children to be free and to grow in pure sunlight far from this foul shadow. I want us all to be able to practise our arts without constant fear. For months I, as Yassar and Isphet and scores of other Elementals in this damned calculus of a compound, have been planning. It has been slow, hard, and we’ve had to be careful, but it goes well. Within the year we hope to have built up a sufficient store of blades and to have enough support among the other slaves to overwhelm the guards and the Magi – and to kill every one of them! – and make our escape.”

  His anger frightened me, and I had to look away. Overthrow the guards? The Magi? How?

  But escape…I had never dared hope. Free? Oh, to be free again!

  “I will help,” I said, my voice low but fierce.

  “Yes,” Yaqob said, “you will. You have no choice now that you have heard all you have this night.”

  He watched me carefully, then relaxed, reassured by what he saw in my face. “For a long time we would not trust you. We constantly fear that the Magi will plant spies among us. And your arrival on the night that Raguel gave birth seemed extraordinarily coincidental.”

  Raguel stared into her lap, her face hidden. She spent her days silent and still, her nights tossing in restless and noisy sleep. When she was with us. Over the past two weeks Ta’uz had occasionally required her presence for an hour or two at night.

  “But no spy the Magi planted would be able to hear the glass as you can. Until we were sure you were Elemental yourself, well, we would not trust you.”

  “What do you plan to do, Yaqob?” I asked. “And where can we go once we escape? What is there for us?”

  “There is no need for you to know the details of our plans yet, and the less you know, the safer it will be for you. And as for where we go once we escape…well, Isphet?”

  “I was born free,” Isphet said, and her eyes were very distant. “Free. Far to the south-east of this place, across a great arid plain, stands a range of low hills that hide a lovely secret. Deep within this secret lives an isolated community devoted to the study and development of Elemental magic and service to the Soulenai. The elders among them are powerful beyond anything I could be; indeed, they live in such seclusion that few of us ever see them. We call them Graces, for the serenity their contemplation and power gives them. These hills are where I come from, and they are to where I hope the majority of us will be able to make our escape.

  “Now, Tirzah, I know you must have questions, but I would like you to sleep on them, absorb what you have heard here tonight. I, or Yaqob, will be pleased to answer anything you ask – but only ask when you can be sure we will not be overheard.”

  “Yes, Isphet. Thank you.” Underlying all the swirling thoughts and questions in my head was a sense of quiet gladness. They trusted me.

  “Good,” Isphet said. “Tirzah.” She reached out and took my hand. “In the morning I will induct you and begin your instruction. Druse, and the three others in the workshop who are not among us, shall have to be sent on a long and involved errand to one of the other workshops, I think. Raguel?”

  She looked up from her lap, her eyes dead.

  “Raguel, I will need you in the morning, and Yaqob, too, I think.”

  Isphet’s face saddened.

  “It is time to farewell the spirit of Raguel’s baby and to wish her well. Yaqob, your presence will infuse strength into the ceremony and into Tirzah, for already she hears the voices strongly and may well be afraid of what she will experience tomorrow.”

  7

  I HARDLY slept that night. I had my own sleeping pallet by now, but I am sure that my tossing and turning must have disturbed everyone else in the room. For as far back as I could remember I’d heard the voices. As a tiny child, sitting under my father’s work table, I’d been mesmerised by the shards of glass sifting through my fingers. Not only by their colours, although they were glorious enough, but by their soft cries and their words. When I was old enough to work the glass I used what they said to make the working easier. Now I knew why I had mastered the art of caging so young: my voice shaped the glass as much as my tools did, and I listened to what the glass told me it could or could not bear.

  Who were these Soulenai? Was it not so much the voice of the glass I’d heard, but the voices of these strange spirits who sometimes spoke through it?

  I remembered how I’d sat before Boaz and shaped the glass, drawing on the voices to help me. He’d sat but a pace away, his hands about that glass, his fingers touching mine from time to time. Deaf to the beauty and music beneath his fingers.

  Magus! I thought, and I put all the loathing Yaqob had taught me into that thought.

  Thank the Soulenai the Magi here had shown no special interest in me. There had been Kofte’s brief display, but that had been only a transient sexual interest which had faded the moment I’d fainted in the Infinity Chamber. Perhaps the Magi required their women to retain control of their consciousness while they communed with the One.

  My mind drifted back to the glass. Why had Isphet said I’d be frightened? Surely she wasn’t going to show me anything so
horrifying as what had touched me in the Infinity Chamber?

  Well, it would be good to have Yaqob there, anyway. I smiled into the darkness, and turned over, and spent the last remaining hours of the night drifting in and out of dreams of Yaqob.

  My father was cheerful in the morning, and looked very bright of eye. He had slept extremely well, he said, and did not complain when Isphet sent him off with several others to help out in another workshop.

  They would be gone for the rest of the day.

  We continued working at our assigned tasks until almost noon, and then Yaqob came to fetch Orteas, Zeldon and me.

  “Will we be safe?” Orteas asked.

  “Yes. Watch is being kept along the alley and down the main thoroughfare. There are no guards and no Magi close.”

  Later I would realise that when anyone in our workshop planned to practise the arts, an effective system of watch was kept by Elementals in the other workshops. But for now we followed Yaqob down the stairs.

  Work had ceased. Most of the workers were silently lining the sides of the room, but in the very centre of the room stood Isphet and Raguel in front of a small table.

  In its centre was a great bowl of molten glass.

  “The others will watch,” Yaqob said quietly, “but in this ceremony they will not participate.”

  Isphet nodded as I reached her, and I saw that she and Raguel had loosened their dark hair.

  “Let yours out, too,” Isphet said, and I hastened to comply, shaking it out over my shoulders. “If we were free we would come to the Soulenai garbed in our best raiment and garlanded with flowers. That is impossible here. The loosening of our hair from the chains that binds it is the best we can do. The Soulenai know of our difficulties, and appreciate the effort.

  “Tirzah. You have heard the voices in the glass, and in many of the other elements about you. Some of the voices are those of the element itself, some the voices of the Soulenai. But what we hear of their voices in our daily lives through elements like metal or glass is an echo only. Today we will touch them intimately, and let them touch us. It is a frightening experience the first time, and that is partly the reason I have asked Yaqob to stand with you. Already you trust him, and today you will learn to trust him further.”