Threshold

by Sara Douglass

  “Yes,” I admitted, “they are very distant, Excellency. This sun is too hot for them, and there are no rolling grey seas for them to wallow in.”

  “But you have a curious mind, Tirzah. You think deeply, and you must entertain many questions. How do you answer them, if your Vilander gods are silent in this land?”

  I looked him directly in the eye, and risked a tiny smile. “I ask you, Excellency, when you allow.”

  He stared at me, then burst into laughter.

  I was shocked, but his laughter was infectious, and my smile stretched wider.

  “You have a lovely smile, Tirzah. It lights your eyes. You should smile more often.”

  Then he leaned across the space between us and kissed me. He took my face in his hands, but his fingers were gentle, and his mouth tasted of the wine he had drunk. Both his touch and kiss were tender, and very, very sweet. This was not the mouth nor the hands of the Magus who’d sought to trap me under the eaves of the verandah.

  Then he leaned back, and the light shone so directly into his face I saw exactly what happened next.

  His eyes widened, the fright in them very real. “Go,” he whispered hoarsely. “Go, leave me…before…”

  But I was still trapped by the lingering sweetness of his kiss, and I was not quick enough. As I hesitated a change swept over him. The Magus resurfaced, coldness replacing warmth and humour…and then fury boiled forth.

  “Get out!” he shouted. “Get out!”

  And I fled, sending the chair crashing to the floor in my haste to leave.

  My mind was in turmoil, and it was a very long time before I slept. I had talked to two people this night, the Magus and the man. And the Magus did not like the man very much. Underneath the chilling, eminently dangerous face of the Magus, lay a man whom I thought was the very antithesis of the Magus. I wondered when the walls of the Magus had been constructed, and I remembered the scroll he’d shown me. Even by nine he’d stepped onto the path of the Magi, had been seduced by the numbers and the power of the One, and in succeeding years he had built walls so thick that whoever Boaz really was had little chance of escape.

  But he did surface occasionally. I thought hard, furrowing my forehead in the darkness of Isphet’s quarters. Boaz would only let the face of the man show when he thought it was safe…when he thought I had been so thoroughly cowed and frightened I would not attempt to take advantage of him.

  The second night I had gone to him I had fumbled in my attempts to draw some of the figures and characters, and he had shouted at me until I’d cringed against the desk.

  Then he’d relaxed and laughed when I’d tried to write “Excellency” as his name. But the moment I’d relaxed, and called him Boaz, he had instantly reverted to the Magus, and had scared me back into submission.

  Tonight he’d watched the effect his threats had on me, then relaxed, sure I was so chastened I would attempt to take no advantage if he softened towards his true character.

  And, oh, I’d been so cautious, and had not presumed even when he’d not only laughed, but kissed me. My response had been hesitant and more than careful, and I had not pushed the kiss beyond what it had asked itself.

  Then something had frightened him, had scared the Magus back into control.

  It had not been my actions, but his. He had been the one to presume, to overstep the bounds, and the Magus had been furious – at himself more than me, I think.

  I drifted towards sleep, hating the Magus, but wondering about the man. After that shared laughter and the sweetness of the kiss, I think I would have answered any question honestly.

  But the Magus never had the chance to ask it, because Boaz had thought to warn me.

  16

  YAQOB put his arm around me, and pulled me into his body. I relaxed against him, relishing his closeness and warmth. It had been too long…

  Boaz had not called me back for over a week, and I thought he’d been so disturbed by what he had revealed of himself that I might never be called back again. Well, perhaps I would not mind overmuch. Yaqob’s touch was good, and for the first time in weeks I allowed myself to dream a little. When we finally won our freedom we could have all the time we needed together; his mouth brushed my hair, and I reminded myself of how much I loved him. I could not wait to be his wife in freedom.

  We were in the upper room of Isphet’s workshop. Zeldon had hurried in from a visit to one of the neighbouring workshops, and had asked Isphet and Yaqob to join us in our caging room. Now Isphet sat at the table with Orteas and Zeldon, while Yaqob and I relaxed on a bench set against the wall.

  “A new boatload of slaves arrived two nights ago,” Zeldon said, and Isphet shrugged.

  “New slaves arrive all the time.”

  “But on this boat were four glassworkers. Four men who are skilled in the art of caging.”

  All of us sat forward, and I felt Yaqob’s hand tighten about my shoulder.

  “Are they…?” He hesitated to put the danger into words.

  “Elementals?” Zeldon had no such compunction. “No. They are not.”

  “Have you seen their work?” Isphet asked. How could men who were not Elementals cage with any degree of skill?

  “Yes. After collecting the potash from Izzali, he mentioned the new workers, and took me to meet them. They already had yesterday’s work spread before them, and I inspected it. It is well formed, but it has no life. The glass does not sing like that made by Elementals.”

  He paused, and looked at me. “It was caged glass meant for the Infinity Chamber. Izzali’s shop has also been firing the golden glass. Boaz is spreading the work about.”

  “Spreading about both work and those who can cage,” Isphet said. Her professional pride had been wounded that another workshop had also been given the task of firing the golden glass. “Why?”

  I wet my lips. I should have said something about this earlier, but there had been no time, and both Yaqob and Isphet had kept their distance.

  “He does not trust this workshop,” I said. “He suspects us in the attempt to kill him. I think that if he becomes certain he will have us killed. But, until now, he could not afford to. This workshop was too important.”

  “How long have you known this?” Yaqob snapped, and I felt the tension in his body. “You have not been to Boaz’s quarters in a week!”

  “He told me this the last night I was there, Yaqob. I’m sorry. I should have said…but there was no time…and I have hardly seen you…”

  Yaqob looked to Isphet, then they both exchanged glances with Zeldon and Orteas.

  “Tirzah,” Yaqob said very gently, “Isphet tells me you are keeping secrets. She says that she can almost smell them about you.”

  “I…”

  “Secrets, Tirzah,” he continued. His hand stroked my arm, but it did not comfort me. “And yet you tell us nothing of what goes on in Boaz’s quarters. Until a week ago you spent many nights with him, longer than Raguel ever did with Ta’uz, and we wonder why. Now we find out that Boaz clearly suspects us –”

  “You knew that already,” I said. “Why else would he visit this workshop and warn us about practising the Elemental arts?”

  “But we did not know he realised that the falling glass was no accident but an attempt on his life, and connected it with this workshop,” Yaqob said angrily. “Does he suspect a planned revolt? Have you told him the details?”

  “Yaqob!” I pulled away from him, tears in my eyes.

  “Some women are indiscreet in a man’s bed,” he said. “Are you one of them?”

  I stared at him. I remembered how the Magus had wrapped me in his arms, had stroked me and kissed me, and had almost beguiled me into betraying not only myself, but all those within this room. Perhaps I was weak.

  “No,” I whispered. “Yaqob, how could you ask that? You were the one who insisted I went to his bed. How can you suspect me?”

  “Then tell us what you do for so many hours and nights with the Magus,” Isphet said. “Tell us!”
>
  Should I tell them that he teaches me to write, and kisses me with tenderness?

  No, how could I? “He uses me –”

  “For eight or nine hours, Tirzah?” Isphet said. “No Magus needs that long to commune with the One.”

  “And sometimes he requires me to sit in silence. On a stool, as Ta’uz required of Raguel. And,” this at least I could tell them, “he tries to tell me something of the way of the One.”

  They accepted that, and Isphet even smiled grimly, remembering.

  “He begins to relax about me, now. The last time I was with him he said something that might be useful.”

  “And now she thinks to tell us,” Yaqob said, but his tone was mild.

  I told them of the incomposite numbers, and of their peculiarly strong relationship with the One. “They are, he said, different expressions of the One.”

  “And they stretch into Infinity,” Yaqob muttered. Everyone was appalled. Seven would die, then eleven, then…

  “He has also mentioned a Vale, but I do not know what that means.” Something curled and died within me at such a blatant lie. But I could not say that I had read the inscriptions on the Infinity Chamber. If I confessed that, then I would have to confess I could write as well as read, and then they would wonder just how far I’d fallen under the power of the One.

  And Yaqob would never hold me so close again. Damn you, Magus Boaz, I thought, damn you for your manipulations!

  The three men shook their heads, but Isphet frowned.

  “Isphet?” Yaqob said. “What do you know?”

  “I have heard of the Vale only briefly, when I was a child,” she said slowly. “The elders within our community in the hills – the Graces – are so steeped in the understanding of the Soulenai I sometimes think they spent more time gazing into the Place Beyond than they did looking at this world. My father trained with them in his youth. He mentioned a Vale, and I think he must have had the knowledge from the Graces. The Vale…”

  Her voice trailed off as she tried to recall exactly what it was her father had said. “The Vale is a place, I think, that harbours darkness and shadows. Yet it contains power. My father really did not like to speak of it. It is not a prison, but it is a place that is deliberately sequestered from this world and the Place Beyond. It does not have anything to do with Elemental magic or the Soulenai. It simply exists somewhere.”

  “And yet apart from you, none of us here has heard of it,” said Zeldon.

  Isphet looked up sharply. “The Graces of the hill community have far more understanding than most Elementals, Zeldon. We are workers, they sages.”

  “Tirzah,” Yaqob said, “in what context did Boaz mention the Vale?”

  “Ah, it was something to do with the Infinity Chamber. And a Bridge.”

  “A Bridge?” Isphet cried. “By the Soulenai! Do the Magi indeed intend to touch the Vale through the Infinity Chamber?”

  “We need more information,” Yaqob said. “Tirzah, why hasn’t Boaz asked you back for this week?”

  “Um…it is my monthly time,” I said, and managed to blush.

  “It hasn’t stopped them before,” Isphet muttered, but said no more about it.

  “Well then,” Yaqob said, “he’ll ask you back soon. Tirzah, this news of the incomposite numbers is disturbing. And the vague mention of the Vale is even worse. Are you sure he’s said nothing else of help?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you must do your best to find out more,” he said. “With new workers to cage for the Magi, Threshold is only a few short months away from completion. Soon we’ll be asked to begin work on the capstone. Then…”

  He shivered. “I will speak to Azam within the day. I fear we shall have to bring forward our plans.”

  Then he smiled, and hugged me tight. “And then we’ll be free, Tirzah, running across the plains towards Isphet’s magical hill home, leaving Boaz lying dead and forgotten behind us.”

  I tried to smile for him, and was glad when he leaned forward to kiss me.

  17

  HE called me back within a day, and to the workshop it appeared as if it had indeed been my monthly flux that had kept him distant. When I went to him I found only the Magus, aloof, easily pushed into rage, and very, very careful.

  “You were impertinent to so flaunt your body before me, girl,” he said as I washed his hands and feet my first night back.

  “I will never do so again, Excellency,” I whispered.

  “And then to kiss me!” he said. “Did I not made it clear that I have not Ta’uz’s weakness?”

  “I am sorry, Excellency!”

  “You were repulsive, Tirzah.”

  “I know, Excellency.”

  Satisfied, he set me to a translation of a Geshardi treatise on the properties of the square, and then sent me away the instant I dared to yawn over the dry text.

  But he called me back the next night, and then the next, until I was so tired Zeldon and Orteas had to let me sleep through the mornings.

  “And what does he say?” Yaqob asked me one afternoon as we stood underneath a canvas awning. I leaned close to him, and touched his body, hoping he would make love to me, but he shifted irritably and I dropped my hands.

  “He says nothing,” I said truthfully. “He is cold and distant and does not think to natter on about what patrols he will send where on the morrow.”

  Yaqob did not laugh at my poor attempt at humour, and led me silently back to the workshop.

  Within the week, the addition of four more glassworkers had its effect. We no longer had to work such long hours, and one afternoon I actually found myself with little to do.

  I wandered down to chat with my father.

  Druse was inspecting a dozen goblets one of the Magi had asked him to make. They were lovely, of rich ruby glass, and my father had done well.

  He smiled as I admired them, then reached down to a shelf underneath his work table.

  “Tirzah, look. This is one that did not fire as cleanly as the others. Can you do something with it?”

  He placed a rough goblet into my hands. It had been blown, but not finished, and I could see why. The glass had fired into amber rather than red, and the walls of the cup were too thick for a Magus to be asked to wrap his fingers about.

  “I didn’t mean it for caging,” Druse said, “but rather than throw it away…”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “It would give me pleasure to work something other than that cursed glass for the Infinity Chamber, Father. Thank you.”

  I took it back to the upper room. Orteas and Zeldon were supervising glass placement within Threshold. I sat cross-legged on the floor by the open doorway to the balcony, turning the cup slowly over in my hands, listening to it speak, understanding its weaknesses and strengths, wondering what I could do with it.

  I found myself remembering the tenderness of Boaz’s kiss. I thought of the man hidden behind the Magus, and I smiled to myself. Then I realised that Boaz only had wooden goblets in his quarters. He would appreciate one of glass, and this amber glass was lovely – and would look beautiful in his hands.

  I wondered what design he would like, and I remembered how his fingers had caressed the glass I’d caged for him in Setkoth.

  Back at the work table, I reached for the wax marker, hesitated, then sketched a design on the goblet of leaping frogs among river reeds. One frog peeking out mischievously from behind the reeds; another leaping upwards as if he wanted to dive into the goblet itself; one sitting, as if in the contemplation of mysteries; and two chasing each other about the reeds, their faces stretched in friendly grins.

  I imagined, as I worked, that I was surrounded by the croaking of the frogs as their song floated up from the Lhyl, but it was bright afternoon, and the frogs only sang at dawn and dusk.

  Not once during that long afternoon, as I began the painstaking work on the Goblet of the Frogs, did I wonder why I should be taking so much care and expending so much effort on a gift for a Magus. Nor did
I ask myself why I went to so much trouble to hide it from the curious eyes of Zeldon and Orteas, or why, on successive days when I had free time, I only worked the goblet when I was alone.

  One day Boaz surprised me, and all who heard his summons, by ordering me to his quarters mid-afternoon.

  Stunned, I stared at the guard who had delivered the order, then nodded and went back to the tenement building to wash and change. It felt strange to walk the streets dressed in the linen dress in the revealing light of day, and I felt the weight of eyes as I passed: there goes Tirzah, poor Tirzah.

  I looked up at Threshold, avoiding the pity of the passers-by. The southern and western faces were completely glassed now – and the sight would have been supremely beautiful on any other building.

  As I watched I thought I saw bright trails of light flicker underneath the plate glass, almost as lightning forks. I frowned, and looked again.

  There, a flicker, and a flash further down, perhaps from the mouth of one of the shafts.

  Then I heard the rough voice of a guard, and I dropped my eyes. I had reached the gate to the compound, and the guards gave me a cursory glance and let me through.

  This was the first time I’d been inside the compound during the day, and I slowed my pace a little to satisfy my curiosity. The gardens were uglier now, for darkness and moonlight did much to hide their rigid geometry. Even the trees had been trimmed into precise shapes, and the pathways had been raked into crisp lines and right angles whenever a bend appeared.

  Boaz’s residence also looked less pleasing by day than it did by night. I had grown so used to seeing it only in the pastel lights which softened its lines, and now I realised that it was stark and uncompromising – as uncompromising, perhaps, as the soul of the Magus.

  Fifteen paces from the house I stopped, stunned. When first Boaz had summoned me I had wondered briefly that he’d not taken over Ta’uz’s residence, which was larger and much grander, and situated in the centre of the Magi’s compound. This house was stuck against one of the boundary walls, and its low verandah made it appear secretive and sly.