Threshold

by Sara Douglass

I expected him to come back to the bed, but he walked over to the shelves, and lifted out the Goblet of the Frogs. He stood looking at it, then, finally, came over to me.

  “I sat for over eight days with this goblet turning over and over in my hands,” he said, his eyes on the glass. “I thought that when Kiamet brought word of your death I would raise it and throw it against the wall. I thought that might ease my pain.

  “But when Kiamet did come to me, his eyes sunken and his skin as grey as if he had spent those eight days in that cell, and he said, ‘Excellency, I think she is dead,’ then through my pain I thought I heard the frogs cry out.”

  “What did they say, Boaz?”

  He took a deep breath, and raised his eyes to mine. I do not think I have ever seen such pain in another human’s eyes. “They said, hold her, soothe her, touch her, love her, hold her, soothe her, touch her, love her. And –” he broke off and collected himself, “– and I put the glass down, unbroken, whole, and rushed to you. Tirzah…”

  He put the goblet to one side and he lay down beside me, wrapping his arms about me. “Tirzah, that is all I have ever wanted to do. Hold you, soothe you, touch you, love you. All I have wanted to do.”

  “You heard the frogs?” I said.

  He was silent.

  “Boaz,” I said eventually, “there are other means and other ways to power than that which the One and Threshold offer.”

  If I was to be allowed to live, then no longer would I ignore my promise to the Soulenai.

  “I will not revert to childish dreams, Tirzah.” His voice was hard now, and I felt his body tense. Then he relaxed, and he forced some humour into his voice. “I can see that all my preaching at you about the One has come to nought.”

  “Numbers and rigid parameters do not hold the beauty I crave, Boaz,” I said softly. “One day, if you like, I will tell you how I understand the world.”

  He thought about that, then abruptly rolled away and sat up. “One day, Tirzah. But not now. I do not want to know now.”

  He picked up the pitcher that held Isphet’s sleeping brew, and poured out a measure…into the Goblet of the Frogs. “Come now, it is time you slept.”

  I smiled as the glass touched my lips (let us hold you, soothe you, love you), then drank obediently. A dreamless sleep would be good. “Boaz?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Why does the Infinity Chamber touch the Vale?”

  He stilled, but he did not retreat into a chill. “How do you know that?”

  “Boaz, you taught me to read.”

  “Ah. Well,” he thought about it. “The Vale contains the power that we need, Tirzah.”

  “It is dark power, Boaz. Surely the deaths…the manner of deaths show that. Do you know what you do?”

  Now he did retreat into distance. “Nothing will dissuade me from Threshold, Tirzah. No childish hopes. No childish myths. Nothing. I have worked towards it most of my life. I am not going to give up on the dream now.”

  He would not speak again, but he sat with me until I drifted into sleep.

  In the morning, he went back to Threshold.

  24

  THRESHOLD was, I thought, the mistress against whom I could not compete. Over the next few days I tried, softly, gently, to persuade him to see, to admit, the wrongness of Threshold, but he refused. Threshold was the culmination of everything that he, as countless other Magi, had worked towards. He told me that I could not understand what power it would bring, nor would he attempt to explain what that power was.

  I gambled on the fact that Boaz had grown tired of trying to kill me and so, somewhat nervously, I trampled all over what had previously been forbidden ground. I never mentioned the word “Elemental”, but I asked him to tell me of his mother, what she had told him of his father, and if he’d ever heard any other tales of the Soulenai. I talked to him of my love for glass, and while I never quite said that it whispered to me, I went dangerously close to it. I asked him time and time again what it was the frogs had “seemed” to say to him, and then, as he was holding me each night while the sleeping draught took effect, I would ask him to whisper the words back to me again and again.

  Boaz bore all of this with varying degrees of patience…or impatience. Sometimes he would ignore me, often he would stalk off to Threshold. Sometimes he would tell me to go to sleep – and once, exasperated, he fed me the sleeping draught so that I did fall silent. Sometimes he would let me talk on as he sat at his desk, and sometimes he would talk.

  I think in the three or four days after I’d been dragged from the cell, Boaz came to a decision within himself. I did not think it went far enough, but it was an improvement on what had been. Boaz would admit to himself that his true nature was not quite the cold, calculating Magus face he showed the world. He had warmth and humour, and he would no longer deny that. He had ordered me to his residence, and then asked me to his bed, not to use me, but to love me. He would admit that. His Magus side would just have to learn to live with it. With me he would be himself, and not expect me to pretend that I saw someone or something else. Now he discarded completely the robes of the Magus while he was with me and wore the simple blue wrap.

  Despite all this progress, Boaz would not yet admit any elemental magic within himself. Perhaps he did not even recognise it, and I thought it would need even more time before he could be brought to see it, let alone accept it.

  I wondered how much time we had.

  More worrying was the fact that his fascination with Threshold, and with the power it promised, had not dimmed. Perhaps he relaxed and laughed with me, perhaps he allowed himself to remember how much he loved his mother and mourned the tragic loss of his father, but none of this was going to interfere with Threshold or its needs.

  I do not think that anyone beyond Boaz’s residence had any idea of the profound changes within him. Outside the safety of his home, Boaz remained the chilling, calculating, indifferent Magus. It was safer that way.

  Certainly this was the face he continued to show Threshold, and even Isphet, who came once every day, had no idea of the changes my brush with death had wrought in the Magus.

  I was young and I recovered relatively quickly. Eight days in bed to match the eight days I’d spent crawling about the cell, and then I got up. I was weak, but I was whole, and the experience had effected no profound physical changes. Even my womb remained the hard, dry canker it had been. I had hoped that somehow all the fluids Boaz and Isphet had forced down my throat, and the hours I spent soaking in the bathing pool, might have softened it. But apparently not.

  Well, Boaz had not changed so much that he would allow me to subdivide the One, and so I sighed, and put all thought of children from my mind. This was not the place anyway, and I was still a slave.

  On the ninth night, as we sat by the window, I asked Boaz to show me his father’s book again. “Would you like me to read from it? There are many other stories within it, and I, at least, would like to explore them.”

  He sat and thought about that for a while. Old habits were hard to overcome. But he eventually fetched the box and laid it in my lap.

  “It is not too heavy for you? I can bring the table over…”

  “It is not too heavy, Boaz. I thank you.”

  I examined the box closely. It was very finely crafted, so finely that I knew I had yet to meet the craftsman who could match it. The original ruby shade of the wood had darkened almost to black. But it had been well cared for, regularly oiled, and it was in good condition. I ran my fingers over the hinges and lock. They were of a bronze alloy, and they whispered sleepily to themselves. They were so old I think they had no interest beyond their own slow dreaming.

  I opened the box, and Boaz took it from me as I lifted out the book.

  “It is so beautiful, Boaz.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have kept it all these years, and carried it about with you.”

  “Normally not. I have a residence in Setkoth – not the house you came to – and usually it li
es in a locked cupboard there. It lay untouched for many years. But after I saw the frogs that you carved that afternoon…it reminded me…and when I prepared to come to this site I brought it with me, even though I could not read it.”

  “But you thought I might be able to.”

  “Yes. Somewhere in the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that you and your father were here, and perhaps one of you might again read me the story.”

  I grinned. “One of us?”

  “You.” He was relaxed enough to return the smile. “Read to me now.”

  And so I did. I read again the Song of the Frogs, and halfway through Boaz got up and fetched the Goblet of the Frogs from the bookcase. He sat there, turning it over and over in his hands as the story ran to its close.

  Hold me, soothe me, touch me, love me.

  The lovely voices rippled about the room, and as my own voice died we sat and listened to them. I knew he could hear them as well. I knew it.

  “I am always comforted by those words,” I said. “Surely you must be, too.”

  Silence.

  “Yes,” he replied, reluctantly.

  “It is what your father sang to your mother. It is, I think, part of the Song of the Frogs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think,” I said slowly, “that if one day we understood the entire Song, if perhaps you sang it to me one night, we could reach this Place Beyond?”

  “Do not press too far, Tirzah.”

  “I am past fearing you, Boaz.”

  He sighed. “Be careful. Between us and in this place there are words you can say that cannot be said anywhere else.”

  “Certainly not in Threshold’s shadow.”

  Irritated now, he stood up and stared out the window. Then he poured a measure of wine into the goblet. “You are well enough now, I think, to stomach some of this.”

  He fed me a mouthful of the wine as he had fed me over the past days, and I swallowed it and smiled as he then drank from the goblet. He sat, pulling his chair close, and we shared the wine companionably for a few minutes, sharing from the Goblet of the Frogs.

  “Would you like me to read another story, Boaz?”

  “Yes, I think I would like that.”

  And so I opened the book randomly, and read a tale. It was a tale of the very early Soulenai and how they had discovered their magic. They had, it seemed, grown an affinity to metals and gems and a fascination with and love for glass.

  Again, very dangerous, and when it was done Boaz rose and poured another goblet of wine and drank it all himself in four large swallows.

  I had pushed far enough this night. I closed the book, patting it gently in thanks, and put it back in its box.

  “Boaz? Where does this go?”

  “I’ll put it on the cabinet here. Perhaps I will ask you to read from it again one night. And perhaps, now that your translation has been laid to one side,” we had both abandoned the pretence I was there to translate dry geometrical treatises, “you can read from it yourself during the day.”

  Boaz wiped the goblet and put it beside the box. Not back on the crowded shelves.

  Then he fetched a small box from a locked drawer in the desk.

  I had never seen inside the drawer before, and I had certainly never seen the box.

  As on the first night when he’d sat with the box containing the Book of the Soulenai on his lap, so now he sat, distracted, his fingers gently tapping the box.

  “Tirzah, if I give you this box and its contents, will you promise me never, never to tell me what you do with it?”

  “Of course, Boaz. What is it?”

  He handed the box over and I took it in trembling hands. I felt sick, apprehensive, as if I somehow knew the importance of what lay within.

  I opened it…and stared until my eyes blurred with tears.

  Inside lay three locks of black hair, tied with thin golden wire…and a lock of hair that had been completely turned to stone.

  “I know,” he said slowly, “that…others…sometimes like to have a body, or a remnant of a body that they can farewell properly…Look,” and he pointed. “This lock is Raguel’s.”

  I swallowed, and had to grasp the box firmly to stop my hands from shaking.

  “And this, Ishkur’s.”

  I took a shaky breath.

  “This…this one belongs to Ta’uz,” he said.

  My eyes flew to his face.

  “Tirzah, I do not know how they regarded each other, but they died together, and I know how I feel about you. I thought…”

  “Thank you, Boaz,” I whispered, the tears sliding free now.

  “And this.” He picked up the stone curl. He did not have to explain who that belonged to. His fingers closed over it. He stared at his fist and a change came over his face.

  Something happened. I do not know how else to explain it, but something happened in that room.

  When he opened his fingers, there, nestling in his palm, was a lock of greying blond hair.

  He put it back into the box and closed the lid.

  “You did not see that,” he said, and for the first time in many, many days I heard a trace of danger in his voice. “Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing happened, Boaz. But I do thank you for this box. Once I have…emptied…it, I think I shall use it for my kohl sticks.”

  He let his breath out. “Yes, that sounds a suitable use for it. Tomorrow you may visit Isphet in her workshop, I think, but I do not want to know what goes on there, and I do not want you to be gone too long.”

  Kiamet escorted me to the workshop, clucking all the way that I should not be embarking upon such an excursion yet.

  “I shall retreat into the darkness of insanity if I cannot walk about, Kiamet, and it is not that far.”

  He waited outside. “Do not be long,” he said, and there was fear in his face.

  “Kiamet, I shall be as long as it takes. Wait. Do not come in after me.”

  He nodded, and looked unhappy.

  Two steps inside the workshop door I was enveloped in a gigantic hug.

  Yaqob! I was surprised, not only at the vehemence of his embrace, but because I had not thought of him in days. Many days. Poor Yaqob.

  I kissed him gently and asked him to set me down.

  “Soon,” he whispered fiercely. “Soon we’ll have you free from that piece of sun-rotted beetle dung. I will kill him myself.”

  “Yaqob! No!”

  “No?” His arms loosened about me. “No?”

  “No. I, ah, I mean that we have to be careful. Sure. When do you plan your uprising?”

  “Soon,” he said, and kissed my cheek. “Soon.”

  “When?”

  “Shush, love. We’ll warn you beforehand. Tell you to be ready.”

  I wanted to question him further. Surely he wasn’t going to do anything without telling me! But the others were crowding about, touching, kissing, telling me how much they loved me.

  Eventually Isphet rescued me and took me upstairs with Yaqob and Zeldon.

  “What is that you carry, Tirzah?” she asked.

  “Oh, Isphet!” I opened the box and showed them the hair. “Locks from Raguel, Ishkur, Druse…and Ta’uz!”

  Unless I had actually come out and said Boaz was an Elemental Necromancer, I doubt I could have shocked them more.

  Isphet, her hands shaking, reached out and took the box from me. She stared at it, then raised sharp black eyes to my face. “How?”

  Oh, but I was going to be glad when all this pretence was over. “One of the slaves in the compound has helped dispose of most of the bodies. He snipped these from their heads.”

  “Druse?” Yaqob asked. “How? We all saw him.”

  “As they dragged his body away,” I did not have to pretend the heartache in my voice, “a stone curl crumbled off. The slave picked it up and, overnight, away from Threshold, it reverted back to its natural state.”

  “Which slave?” Isphet asked.

  Oh, damn her! “I do no
t know his name, Isphet. A slave. Middle aged. I hardly saw him in the darkness.”

  “And Ta’uz?” Zeldon said. “Ta’uz? Why would we want a lock of his –”

  “They died together, Zeldon,” I said, my voice tight with the strain of this deception, “and they created a child together that we sent into the Place Beyond. I thought it fitting that perhaps we send him with the mother of his child.”

  “And no other locks?” Isphet probed. “These are all he collected?”

  “Damn you, Isphet! These are all he gave me! I know not why he took a lock from one and not another. Perhaps he knew they might mean something to me, perhaps sheer happenchance! If you like, I shall take the box back and throw –”

  “No. No, I am sorry, Tirzah. I did not mean to sound ungrateful. I wonder when we can farewell them?”

  “Now,” I said. “We will not be disturbed. Boaz is busy at Threshold and does not expect me back for an hour or more yet.”

  Isphet looked at me again, her eyes sharper than ever.

  We farewelled them with due reverence and much gladness into the Place Beyond. I like to think that Ta’uz was surprised, but glad to be sent to such an eternity, and his daughter was there to greet him.

  A land where the unborn frolicked with the dead.

  And the murdered with their murderers. But I think such concepts had been left far behind in that wondrous place. Druse was surprised as well, but grateful, and I was grateful – no, more than grateful – that Boaz had given me this chance.

  The Soulenai watched and nodded at me. They would have seen through the Goblet of the Frogs what Boaz had done with the stone curl.

  Persuade him, sweet Tirzah. Only he can destroy Threshold.

  After the swirling colours had slowed and then mottled, I turned to Yaqob. “When? I can hardly wait. I need to know.”

  “Shush, Tirzah,” and I tolerated his kiss. “Before Consecration Day. It must be before then.”

  “Yes, but when?”

  “It is safer for you not to know. I fear each night that Boaz will beat you to such agony that you will let slip –”