Threshold

by Sara Douglass

  The streets were calm now. Even the smoke was drifting away, although I could still hear flames crackling somewhere.

  I stopped, worried. “Zabrze…”

  “Tirzah,” he panted, stopping briefly beside me. “It’s close to noon, and I want to be as far from Threshold as possible. Come on, girl, I want to live.”

  And so we fled.

  No-one hindered us, although we passed through a number of units of imperial soldiers who were, I think, still allied with Chad-Nezzar and Threshold. But they were staring behind us – towards Threshold.

  “Don’t look, Tirzah,” Zabrze said, covering a protesting Neuf’s eyes with one hand. “Don’t look!”

  I had no intention of looking, and led us into a series of narrow, dark alleyways that would get us to the river out of the sight of whatever was happening behind us.

  Just as we were covering the last hundred paces or so, Threshold awoke.

  There was a blinding flash of light that sent Zabrze and myself crashing to the dirt. The sun must have reached its peak, pouring its strength through the capstone into the Infinity Chamber and charging Threshold with power. I can imagine what happened – the entire pyramid would have burst – exploded! – into light. Anyone looking at it must surely have been temporarily blinded.

  The bridge to the Vale was complete.

  And something crossed over.

  The stillness that hung over the site was now so dense I could feel it pressing against me, trying to keep me to the ground. Zabrze still held Neuf tight in his arms – she was unprotesting now – and he and I fought through the oppression, crawling close to the northern wall of the alleyway, praying that whatever Threshold now was it would not see us.

  Behold, creatures, and see your god!

  I wailed, and went rigid with horror. The voice had penetrated every structure of the site – yet without sound.

  “Tirzah!” Zabrze whispered. “Please, we’re so close!’

  I got to my hands and knees and crawled a few more steps.

  Behold, creatures, and tremble at the sound of your god!

  And Threshold shrieked and roared.

  I gagged, dry retching, and I heard Zabrze crying a few steps ahead of me. Neuf had fainted, and she was now a dead weight in his arms. I scrambled over to him, and he freed one arm from Neuf and wrapped it about me, and we lay there as the dreadful sound roared about and through us.

  Behold creatures, and know your god! Know that I am the One, and know that I call myself Nzame!

  “Nzame?” Zabrze whispered. “Couldn’t it think of anything better?”

  I would have laughed, except I was crying too hard. Zabrze’s words had broken the spell about us, and we somehow rose to our feet, Neuf now moaning quietly in her husband’s arms, and stumbled down the alleyway towards the Lhyl. Behind us Threshold continued to speak.

  Behold my power, and subject yourself unto it!

  To my right I caught glimpses of the main avenue, and saw scores – hundreds – of people crawling towards Threshold.

  Come, humble yourself before me and power unimaginable shall be yours for the asking.

  “Nzame! Nzame!” Thousands took up the shout.

  And then I stopped, unbelieving. Chad-Nezzar was running down the avenue towards Threshold, screeching and screaming.

  “Nzame! I am yours! Take me!”

  He was tearing off great chunks of jewellery and metal bands and chains as he ran, casting them to each side. “Nzame! Nzame!”

  As he tore the chains and jewels from his body, little gobbets of flesh flew off as well, but in his ecstasy Chad-Nezzar ignored them. “Nzame! Nzame! I am yours! Yours!”

  Zabrze caught me by the hair and hauled me away from the sight.

  Come to me and adore me!

  “Yes! Yes!” The screams rent the streets.

  Do as I ask and Infinity shall be yours.

  “Nzame! Nzame!”

  Feed me. Feed me. Feed me.

  And there was a dreadful crackling sound behind us. Neuf was on her own feet now, sobbing, one of Zabrze’s arms tight about her waist, his other hand still tangled in my hair, dragging me forward.

  If not for him, I think I would have been lost.

  The crackling intensified, and I screamed.

  “Hurry Tirzah! The boats are leaving!”

  I do not know where that scream came from, whether from Zabrze or from those in the boats themselves, but we were close enough to the wharf now to see that yes, indeed, all the boats were pulling away, oars dipping and glistening.

  Terrified faces stared from the boats. Not at us, but beyond us.

  The crackling was now a great roar rushing towards us. Rushing to catch us, to eat us.

  Feed me! Feed me!

  I felt something…something wrong snatch at my heel and I wrenched it away, taking two more huge strides to the edge of the wharf, my eyes frantic.

  Trapped. All the boats had gone.

  Behind me the wrongness lunged.

  And missed, for Zabrze’s hand, still tangled in my hair, pulled me after him when he jumped into the water.

  We hit in a gigantic crash of cool green water. I thought of the great water lizards, but I thought they might be a relief after what had almost got me on the wharf.

  I struggled to the surface, thinking that one or other of the brothers was always throwing me into deep water, then hands reached down from a small craft and we were hauled aboard.

  I crouched on the deck for a minute, retching out the river water I’d swallowed, then I thought to look up as the bank slid by.

  To the north Threshold gleamed.

  Beyond it, in a circle some five hundred paces wide, everything had been turned to stone. Everything. Houses, ladders, the remaining boats moored to the bank, even birds that had been caught on the ground.

  Of people there was no sign.

  I looked one more time upon Threshold.

  It winked.

  30

  THE expanding stone circle had caught the other side of the riverbank as well, but only for a few paces. The dividing line was unbelievable. On one side grass stood carved into stone, tangled into a grey, brittle mass. On the other it waved in the wind and sun, except for those few strands that had been caught half in, half out of the perimeter of stone. These tugged mournfully at their stone parts, as if they could somehow be dragged back into life.

  The Lhyl had not been touched, flowing as cheerfully through stone banks as earthen. But the reed banks had not been so lucky. All those within the circle had been encased in their granite enchantment. I wondered whether the frogs had been caught as well. Flee, I thought, flee before Threshold – Nzame – thinks to eat yet more.

  The small craft that had picked us up ferried us to none other than Chad-Nezzar’s royal barge, still wrapped in its silks and banners.

  Azam leaned down from the deck to help us up, Kiath at his side.

  “Boaz?” I asked as soon as I was safe on deck.

  “Alive,” Kiath said, which did not reassure me greatly, and she then helped Neuf who was still spluttering and retching.

  “Isphet’s got him in the main cabin,” Kiath said, an arm about Neuf’s waist; Neuf herself was too wretched to complain about this treatment. “Come inside and we’ll give you dry clothes.”

  “Go on,” Zabrze said. “I’ll join you shortly.”

  Kiath led us into one of the cabins, gratefully cool and dim. Isphet, forgetting her earlier anger and distrust, enveloped me in a great hug. “Tirzah! We thought you were lost!”

  “I thought I was, too. Isphet, this is Neuf, Zabrze’s wife. She’s –”

  “Oh!” Isphet muttered, “not another invalid!”

  I left Neuf to Isphet’s tender care, wondering briefly at the sparks likely to fly between those two, and hurried over to a bed in the corner. Saboa rose as I approached, kissed my cheek briefly, and stood back. Holdat, I noticed, was huddled in dark shadows at the foot of the bed, still with his blanket-wrapped bund
le.

  Boaz was awake, and tried to smile for me. But pain and fever raged within his eyes.

  I sat on a stool by the bed, and took his hand. “We have escaped, Boaz.”

  “I thought I had lost you, Tirzah, when you dashed after Zabrze like that. Don’t leave me again.”

  “I cannot imagine the nuisance you two got into as children, if this is the trouble you create now.”

  He lifted his free hand and stroked my cheek. “What happened? I heard…”

  I told him what I could.

  “Nzame? I do not know it,” Boaz said slowly.

  “Well,” Isphet’s sharp voice came from behind us, “you have summoned it, and I hope Tirzah speaks the truth when she says that you have the arts to send it back again. Tirzah, here, get out of those clothes.”

  She handed me a dry robe, and I changed, wringing my hair out and towelling it dry.

  “Boaz?” I asked softly.

  “The next day or two will tell, Tirzah. But that is a bad wound. If the sword perforated his bowel on the way through, then he’s dead. We’ll never be able to stop the infection.” She paused. “And already you can see the fever in his eyes.”

  I stared at her, terrified. I couldn’t lose him now! Damn Yaqob! Whatever I was about to say was halted by Zabrze’s entrance, Azam behind him.

  “Where is this Isphet?” Zabrze asked.

  “Yes?” Isphet enquired.

  “Ah,” he swung to face her. “So you are she. Well, Isphet, I am told that we must head for some rag-torn community in hills to the south-east of here. A community where Elemental magic is still strong and Boaz can learn what he needs to know.”

  “I don’t know that –”

  “Isphet,” I said. “You planned to head there anyway. And the Soulenai say that Boaz is the only one who can destroy Threshold – we shall have to contact them so you can hear for yourself. Zabrze has already demonstrated his willingness to help us. If you still think that this is some elaborate device to –”

  “No,” she said tiredly. “No. I must trust you, I suppose.”

  “Many of the imperial soldiers fought for us, Isphet,” Azam put in. “And many died.”

  “Yes, yes. Well, we can travel the Lhyl for a way. But most of the journey will be hard and long. The hills are far distant.”

  Zabrze frowned at her. “These hills. I know only of an insignificant range beyond the Lagamaal Plains at the southeasternmost border of Ashdod and the Great Stony Desert.”

  “Yes. Those are where we will go.”

  “But no-one lives there, Isphet. No-one. The geographers say those hills are barren.”

  “Barren? In places, yes. In other places they can be surprising. You do not know of the Abyss?”

  “The Abyss?”

  “You shall see when we get there. You do not know as much about your country as you think, Zabrze. Now. These hills are at least a two- or three-week trek across the Lagamaal Plains, a dry and inhospitable country. And we have…how many with us?”

  Azam looked at Zabrze, as if unsure whether to defer to him or not, then answered anyway. “There are thirty or thirty-five craft with us, Isphet. Maybe four, perhaps five, thousand people. Slaves, soldiers, servants. Even one or two nobles. And,” he glanced at Boaz, “at least one Magus.”

  “Magus no more,” Boaz said quietly.

  “Well,” Neuf broke in. “I demand to be returned to Setkoth.”

  Zabrze opened his mouth to speak, but was forestalled by a voice from the doorway.

  “You’ll travel where we go, you sorry bitch, and if you don’t like it, then I’ll happily cast you overboard for the water lizards to eat.”

  Yaqob. He jumped down the three or four steps and looked about the room. “You’ll all do as I say here. I led the revolt, and the vast majority of people in these boats are slaves. I will take command.”

  He stared at Zabrze defiantly.

  “No,” Zabrze said very softly but very dangerously. “I do not think so, Yaqob. You have no experience of command –”

  “I led the revolt!” Yaqob shouted.

  “No,” Zabrze replied. “You didn’t. Oh, you planned and talked about it for many a long month, but your revolt was always in the planning and never in the doing. It took me, through Azam, to give it the impetus it needed to see some life. You’re a fine man, Yaqob, and a brave man, but you are no leader.”

  “How can you –”

  “How can I say that? You are too hot-tempered, Yaqob, and you let emotion overwhelm your good sense. Look!” Zabrze’s finger stabbed in Boaz’s direction. “There lies the man – the only man – who can ultimately save us from Threshold, and you try to murder him in a fit of pique! Now you leap into this cabin, snap at a woman who is frightened and unsure, and demand that all bow at your every word. No! I will not have it!”

  Yaqob spun to face Azam. “My friend…”

  Azam looked at Zabrze, then back to Yaqob. “I am sorry,” he said, “but Zabrze is –”

  “Isphet?” Yaqob all but shouted.

  The cabin was very, very quiet now. She looked for a long time at Zabrze, and he at her. Something passed between them, but I could not understand what.

  “Zabrze has a cool head,” she admitted finally, “and he has the ability to command. Yaqob!” She grabbed his arm as he clenched his fist. “Yaqob, our situation is desperate. We need to take advantage of everything we have. Zabrze can command this disparate force.”

  “And I cannot?”

  “No,” she said softly, “I believe you would have trouble, Yaqob.”

  Yaqob stared at Isphet, then pulled free of her, exiting the cabin as suddenly as he had entered it.

  “Damn,” Zabrze muttered. “I wish I didn’t have to do that.”

  “There was no choice,” Azam said. “Besides, you are Chad now.”

  Zabrze blinked. The thought had very obviously not occurred to him. “Chad-Nezzar –”

  “Chad-Nezzar is either dead or running demented about Threshold’s stone temple,” Isphet said. “Chad of nothing save his own slavery to Nzame. Whatever, he’s no use. You are Chad, Zabrze, although,” her mouth twisted very slightly in a smile, “you’ll forgive me if I leave mouthing the pleasantries and flatteries for a more suitable occasion.”

  Zabrze smiled at her, then turned to his wife. “Neuf? Are you well? You understand why we can’t go back to Setkoth, don’t you?”

  She let him fold her in his arms. “Our children…” she whispered.

  “I know, Neuf,” and his voice broke. “But it’s too dangerous to try to get back past Threshold – Nzame now controls all southern approaches to Setkoth, as well as the majority of Ashdod’s army. There’s nothing we can do.”

  Isphet managed to organise food for us all as the afternoon faded. We ate sparingly, not sure what we had with us until a thorough search among the boats was done. But grain fields were sliding past us, and Zabrze did not think it would be too hard to requisition some if we needed it.

  “Isphet,” Zabrze asked, “how long upon this river do we travel?”

  “I do not know it well,” she said, “but I remember that after we’d travelled the great dry land we came to the Lhyl at a place where it broadened into great marshes. There was a lake…”

  “Ah,” Zabrze said. “The river empties into Lake Juit, perhaps five days south of here. And from there southeast?”

  “Yes. A long journey.”

  “Can you find the way? How old were you when you travelled to Setkoth?”

  Her eyes flashed. “I can find the way, Zabrze. I was, oh, twenty, twenty-one. My husband and I were both glassworkers, and we went to Setkoth to ply our trade.”

  “How did you fall into slavery?” I asked.

  “We bought passage on a small fishing boat,” she said, and her voice was hard. “The captain thought to earn extra by handing us over to slavers one night. They sold us to the Magi at Threshold. We never got to Setkoth.”

  “And your husband?”

/>   “He died the first year in Gesholme,” she said. “During the wet season fevers are common.”

  Zabrze nodded, his eyes sympathetic, then he turned to his wife and quietly encouraged her to eat some of the bread.

  I moved back to Boaz’s side. Isphet had brewed an analgesic herbal (one of the few things she bundled into the blanket on leaving the tenement had been her store of herbs), and we’d given it to him an hour ago. Now he was asleep, although he occasionally murmured under his breath, and his skin was ashen and sweaty.

  I felt his forehead. It was hot.

  “Tirzah,” Isphet said quietly behind me. “We can do no more for now. Go up on deck. Sit a while, get some air. I’ll watch him.”

  I nodded, touched his forehead once more, and climbed up on deck.

  The air was cool and pleasant on the river, and I relished the clean smell, and the openness. Irrigated fields stretched to either side of the banks, and water fowl moved softly among the reeds. Fish splashed, and I saw the shadowy form of one of the great water lizards slide into the river at our passing.

  The evening chorus of the frogs was gentle, and puzzled…as if they missed the voices of their stone-clad comrades to the north.

  Behind us, in a colourful string, came the other boats of our flotilla, disappearing into the dusk. Azam had climbed down into a smaller boat an hour or two earlier, and was now wending his slow way through the fleet, finding out exactly who we had with us, what they had, and informing them where we were going and, no doubt, who led us.

  I took a deep breath. Yaqob. He must be on board here somewhere. I looked about, then asked one of the men wandering past. A slave – a free man now, I corrected myself – by the look of him. He pointed to the very prow of the boat, and I thanked him and walked forward, my steps slow, unsure.

  “Yaqob?”

  He sat on the small platform the musicians had occupied when Chad-Nezzar had docked at Threshold’s wharf, and he rose as I approached.

  “Tirzah.” He faced back to the river.