Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Arathé. Can you tell me where you are?

  No answer. Of course there would be no answer: he’d probably exhausted the girl earlier, and that after whatever she’d done to the people who had tried to take her.

  Arathé?

  Still no answer.

  He told himself not to worry; there were many reasons why she might not wish to mind-speak him. Perhaps she was speaking to someone else, or the damned voice in her head had her attention. Or, his mind whispered, she’s unconscious, or dead.

  Sighing, he carried on.

  Her body sapped beyond easy recovery, Arathé groaned as she made it to another platform with pursuit close behind. Running across the bridges hadn’t been so bad, but climbing down the rope ladders had taxed her sorely. Her knees and ankles seemed unable to lock in position and time and again she had slipped from the rungs. She had been prevented from falling only by her own desperate grasping and, latterly, by the captain’s strength. But now, as they took a moment to gasp in much-needed air, she could see even his strength was coming to an end.

  She and Captain Duon had become separated from the rest of the travellers at some point in the last few hectic minutes. The others had responded to a call from what sounded like Anomer, but Duon had held her back, unsure if the shout had come from friend or foe. He had apologised for his caution, but as a result they had lost contact with the others, and there was no chance of retracing their steps.

  Frustratingly, she could not communicate with the man. Her speech depended on the fine muscle movements of her fingers and hands; movements severely compromised by her exhaustion. She doubted he could read her words anyway.

  Time to risk it.

  Duon? she sent. Captain Duon? Can you hear me?

  A faint buzzing tickled the back of her head. At the same time Duon grabbed her arm.

  “Was that you?”

  Yes. You can hear me.

  “I can. But so can he.”

  She didn’t need to ask who ‘he’ was. He can hear us anyway if we talk out loud.

  “Come on,” Duon said, taking hold of her arm. “We have to find our way down before the Padouki catch us.”

  Arathé groaned again. More than anything she wanted somewhere to lie down and close her eyes, to wake up in some different time and place with one fewer person in her head. She didn’t have to have a long life or a happy one, just one in which she could rest peacefully and call the inside of her head her own. The chances of either happening seemed remote.

  They hurried across the only available bridge, then made two random choices of direction, only to find themselves on a platform with an upwards ladder and nothing else. Though she’d always thought of herself as a capable girl, Arathé found herself sobbing at the thought of the climb. But she dared not think of…

  Out of strength, little swan? All you had to do was ask.

  “I hear him,” Duon said. “He’s spilling over into my mind.”

  Once again the power of the voice seized her and she found herself a prisoner in her own mind, her body set to climbing the ladder without her willing it.

  I’ll watch over you, Duon said in her mind. I’ll stop him using you to do evil things.

  No reaction from the voice. Had he heard Duon’s mind-voice? Could he hear when he was in possession of her? Could this somehow be used against him?

  Ah, little swan, I hear everything. But struggle away, and as you do, realise that in so doing you provide me with rich entertainment.

  She reached the top of the ladder and the power drained from her limbs. There, on the platform, huddled into a ball, lay Conal the priest.

  Just as he despaired of ever reaching the physic hut, and despite being absolutely convinced he’d taken a wrong turning, Noetos suddenly found himself there. As he’d feared, the hut was the source of the fire and was little more than a burnt-out shell. The flames had moved on to the tree to which the hut was anchored and the Canopy was in some danger of catching alight. The tree burned with a green flame and gave off acrid black smoke, fortunately blowing away from where he stood.

  There was no one about.

  The Padouki had fled, that much was clear, but the burning shell of the hut gave no clue to the fate of the non-magical travellers. He’d left his friends asleep—should have been asleep himself, given the drug had worked on all those without magic—and already, as he looked about wildly, guilt had begun its work on him. Could he have found his way here earlier? Ought he to have tried harder to enlist Cyclamere’s help? Would the time spent sparring with and talking to his old mentor—to be honest, time that had given him deep satisfaction—turn out to be self-indulgent?

  “Noetos!” called a voice from somewhere in the smoke. “Your daughter wants to bid you farewell.”

  The three of them were together, the victims of the nameless voice’s spikes, shackled to each other with invisible, unbreakable chains. The voice had manipulated them from the start, had separated them like sheep from the rest of the flock, and was using its power to keep them alive. Or shepherding them to their deaths. The voice was silent on the matter.

  Arathé tried to read the faces of the two men for any evidence they had suffered an experience similar to hers. Conal’s face was ravaged: in the last few weeks fat had melted away from around his jowls and under his chin, and the hollow where his eye had been glistened with suppurating fluid. The normally immaculate priest was rough-shaven and lank-haired. He had been devastated, no doubt, but not by the voice. He had achieved his demise all on his own.

  Captain Duon, on the other hand, seemed unchanged. Unless one looked closely. She could make out the hollowness around his eyes, and noticed his hands shaking slightly.

  Has he hurt you? she asked them.

  Conal turned away with a snort, which served as an answer of sorts. Duon simply nodded, then added, “But not in the way he hurt you.”

  They both knew then. She felt she would die of horror and shame.

  Come, my children, said the voice. Just a little further.

  Please, she begged the voice, as they stumbled along yet another bridge. Please let us go. What are we to you?

  Not very much, not now. The question is, what are you to him?

  Arathé coughed as they stepped onto a platform shrouded in smoke, and stumbled on the uneven boards.

  Careful now, you don’t want to fall, not in front of your father.

  Across a gap of fewer than ten paces stood Noetos, shoulders slumped, his outline shimmering in the super-heated air. Before Arathé could think of a way of attracting his attention, Captain Duon called out.

  He looked up. Despite the heat shimmer and smoke haze, she saw the emotions flicker across his face: surprise, delight, disgust and frustration. She could be sure she hadn’t imagined his disgust, and knew it to be justified, but it hurt her all the same. She dissolved into tears.

  “Arathé, wait there! I’ll find a way to get to you.”

  “Stay where you are,” Duon commanded him, not in his own voice. “I am taking your advice, fisherman, and removing these three from harm. They will be returned when I have finished with them.”

  “You bastard. I know what you did to Arathé. What makes you think I believe you’ll keep her safe?”

  “Nothing.” This time it was the priest who spoke. The struggle on his face was terrible to watch; she knew just how helpless he felt. “But I can guarantee her death should you seek to rescue her. You must realise I have the power of life or death over them.”

  A sudden burning smote Arathé in the back of her head. She screamed and fell to her knees. Her father shouted something, but she could not make it out over the roaring in her brain. Then silence as the pain ceased. She raised a hand to her nose; it came away bloodied.

  “When I learn who you are, I will find you and kill you,” her father said.

  Conal laughed wheezily. “Come, then. Find me and kill me if you can. As long as you stay away from your daughter.”

  Noetos watched them go, three
shambling figures energised by an unholy power. He put his head in his hands and wept.

  “She is your daughter?”

  The voice did not register for a moment; then his hand jerked automatically for his sword, but another hand rested there, preventing him from reaching it. He relaxed, took a deep breath and nodded to Cyclamere. He was unguarded; the man had his measure. Even were it available, his magical speed could not save him should his former tutor wish him dead.

  “Aye. My elder child.”

  The Padouki warrior grunted and stepped back from Noetos. “You have another? Safe, far from here, able to carry on the Red Duke’s line?”

  Despite all he’d said it mattered to him, clearly. Cyclamere was still in his heart a servant of Roudhos.

  “No. Anomer is here also, hopefully alive, his magic helping protect the rest of our company.”

  “Their mother?”

  “Dead, as much as killed by my hand.”

  He couldn’t keep the bitterness, the self-recrimination, from his voice. Cyclamere would hear it.

  “You have many stories to tell.”

  “Aye.”

  The man grunted again. “It seems I need to hear them. You are right, young Roudhos: I have unfinished business with your family. I have done what I can here. You and I, we must work out how to rescue your daughter and protect your son, then it seems I must aid you in defeating the gods. The elders will have to protect the Padouki as best they can.”

  COSMOGRAPHER

  CHAPTER 4

  LOSS

  SOMEWHERE IN THE THICK grey mists of her childhood, Lenares could remember being told a story. It went something like this. Shell was a beautiful girl who met and fell in love with Gord, a boy who worked on her father’s farm. He wasn’t at all the sort of boy her father would have approved of for his daughter: his cheeks were wind-chapped and ruddy, his hands calloused and his pockets empty. But they loved each other regardless, and settled to run away together.

  Shell spent her last night on the farm packing her treasured possessions into a shoulder bag, and a sweet smile played on her lips as she thought of Gord and the road they would walk together on the morrow. Her father noticed the smile and asked her why she was so happy. She told him she was looking forward to the harvest, and thought no more of it.

  Her father was not convinced and, following his instincts, paid a visit to the single men’s quarters. There he observed Gord, a quiet, dependable chap, gathering together his worldly goods with the same sweet smile on his face the farmer had seen his daughter wearing earlier. Immediately the truth of his daughter’s perfidy became clear, and he spent the night sharpening his favourite axe.

  The next morning Shell slipped out early from her house and met with Gord on the southern road. They hugged and kissed as they celebrated their boldness and cunning. At that moment, however, Shell’s father stepped out from behind a tree, his axe in his hand. Shell and Gord stood there helpless as he—

  Lenares knew how the story ended. She could remember giggling with misplaced delight at the description of what happened to the foolish lovers. And she now knew the terrible reason why her father—her real father—had told his daughters that story. But what she knew most of all was how Shell must have felt standing over the broken body of her beloved. What it felt like to have a broken heart.

  The ladders and bridges and platforms weren’t a problem to Lenares. The only problem was getting the others to listen to her words. It took them a long time to believe her when she said that this was a number problem and they ought to follow her. People were stupid, really, thinking that numbers were abstract things, of no use in the real world. “That’s all very well in theory,” they said, as though reality and theory were opposites. Well, this was the real world, and her numbers and patterns could tell her how to solve the problem of navigating the Canopy.

  Palaman had taught all the young cosmographers about the problem of the Seven Pasture Gates. The Third of Pasture was the largest but least populated of Talamaq’s suburbs, and residents often farmed the spaces between buildings. A man had a series of fields connected by gates, and on one particularly busy day he’d got to thinking about whether it was possible to visit all his fields without going through any gate twice. According to Palaman, who had been Chief Cosmographer even before Mahudia, it was not possible, and he demonstrated the problem on the board for them all. He explained what topology was, how the angles and distances of the paths between the gates were irrelevant. The relationship of the gates to each other was the thing.

  So Lenares searched her memory and thought about the relationships between the bridges and platforms she’d travelled across since being hauled up into this three-dimensional city. It was a lot harder than the Seven Pasture Gates: she could remember forty-one platforms, thirty-four bridges and sixty ladders. How many combinations were there that would lead her from where they were now to the ladder they initially ascended?

  It was a strange thing. Despite her broken heart, despite the horror of what she had seen, of what had been done to her beloved Torve, she could not help herself. She simply had to solve the problem; could no more have refused than water could have stopped flowing downhill. This was what she was.

  “I have seventeen solutions,” she said calmly as the others crowded around her. “I will use the solution that keeps us furthest away from where we are likely to meet people. If we come across anyone I will try another solution.”

  “Good, good, Lenares,” Heredrew said. “Let us make a start before the Padouki locate us. I don’t want any more killing.”

  “You seemed to enjoy it enough,” Robal growled. “Why stop now?”

  He was jealous, that Robal. He wanted Queen Stella for himself. He especially didn’t want Heredrew to have her. His jealousy was a bad thing; Stella knew about it and it made her angry. A younger Lenares would have said something publicly, but this Lenares had learned discretion. Sometimes it was better for people to discover the truth themselves, Torve had said.

  Oh, Torve.

  Six hundred and twelve, went the counter in her mind. Six hundred and twelve times she had said his name to herself since it had happened. But there was nothing her wishing could do to undo the past. He was maimed now, and they could no longer love each other, not in that way.

  Not that they had, not fully. The Emperor had been mistaken. Perhaps if he had arrived in the House of the Gods a few minutes later he might not have been, but that was a perhaps and therefore not true.

  So, what did she feel for Torve now? She still loved him, she knew that for certain, but it was a different kind of love—it had lost that delicious pink edge of excitement. It was now more reserved, a little frightened even. Scariest of all, she didn’t know if he still loved her. Did he? The old Lenares would have asked, would have searched his numbers for the truth, would have confronted him. But the new, grown-up Lenares knew that truth sometimes took time to form. How could he know yet how he felt, so soon after his manhood had been cut away from him? How could he know anything but pain and humiliation? Like a flower, their love would die if she pulled it up by the roots to see if it still lived. She would wait patiently until he knew what he felt for her. Oh, but it was so hard to wait.

  A very scary thought struck her, the scariest she’d had yet. Perhaps he blamed her for what had happened. And if he did, wouldn’t that kill his love? Would he show her a pretend flower, so as not to hurt her feelings, or would he be angry? Oh, she so much wanted to peep, to look at him with her number-sense.

  The others followed her as she led them across empty bridges and up and down ladders.

  “We must be getting close,” one of the men said, more in hope than certainty.

  “I’m sure we passed that tree not ten minutes ago,” another man said. “Bark looks just like my first wife’s face.”

  “Probably a mirror then,” said the first man.

  “Be quiet,” Lenares told them. “I need silence so I can hold all the possible solutions in my he
ad.”

  “Consider yourself told off,” the second voice whispered to the first.

  “I can hear whispers too,” she said.

  After that there was nothing but their feet scraping across timber and rope hissing through their hands, along with the muted noises of the forest canopy. Occasionally they heard the sounds of pursuit, and once they looked up to see a band of Padouki men stamping across a bridge above them; but either the warriors were searching for someone else or they were lazy, because they didn’t look down. Lenares chose a different solution anyway, to be safe.

  Oh, Torve.

  * * *

  There were so many other things to think about that Torve had fallen asleep by the time she was able to check on him. For a while she thought about the hole in the world, which had grown much larger since they had entered the land of the Padouki; and every death in the Canopy above them ripped the hole still wider. Lenares had set herself the task of driving the gods away and closing the hole behind them, but she had no idea how she was going to do it. Even when she had controlled the Daughter she had doubted her ability to repair the damage the gods had made; now she had nothing except her clever mind and a connection—a possible connection—to her dead foster mother on the other side of the hole. How that might be exploited was a mystery.

  Others would surely take care of mundane things like food and water, their destination and choice of route. The warriors and wizards among them would protect them from anyone who sought to attack them, like these foolish tree-dwellers. But only Lenares could save them from the gods. It was a heady responsibility, one she intended to take seriously.