Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “Yes, that is it,” agreed the voice. “Your actions will succeed, but at great cost.”

  “We’re prepared to pay that cost,” Arathé said fiercely.

  “The cost will not be borne solely by you. Yes, you can tap into Husk’s power, but what you do not know is that his power comes from beyond the Wall of Time. Drawing significant amounts of power through him will aid in breaking the wall.”

  “But if we can destroy the gods, it might be worth the risk.”

  “You will not destroy them, for they are linked to Husk. Should you widen the channel between yourselves and Husk, you will become vulnerable to the gods. They will have yet more bodies to command, from which they can destroy even more of the world. You saw what became of the Emperor of Elamaq, and you have your own experiences to consider. I am sure you do not want them to possess you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Duon said.

  Arathé took a step back from her father. “Are you the Son or the Daughter?”

  “Neither. I am the giant of the desert, the Most High, the Father.”

  Arathé hissed on an indrawn breath.

  “You say you are,” said Duon, unconvinced.

  “Were I either of my troublesome children, I could have seized you by now and squeezed the life out of you.” The figure blurred and a moment later Duon was taken in a crushing grip by an invisible hand. “You could not break free, even if you were animated by one of the gods yourself.”

  The explorer tried to prise the arm from his throat, but could not move it even a hair: it was as though carved from stone. Already he felt light-headed and, strangely, his cares began to fall away.

  “Let him go!” Arathé pleaded.

  Duon felt quite pleased at that, particularly at the feelings behind her words. He wanted a chance to ask Arathé to expand on her thoughts.

  The pressure vanished and Noetos once again stood before them. “There was a time for caution,” he said, “but it is past. Now you must act—but not as you had planned. Go and find the others. With application, you may in time develop the mental subtlety to exploit your connection with Husk, but be careful. He, as much as the gods, still threatens the world.”

  Noetos’s face began to change, losing some of its fierceness. The god was leaving him.

  “Wait!” Arathé cried. “You have enormous power, far more than any of us. More than your Son and Daughter, surely. Why are you not acting to put an end to all this?”

  “Because I cannot,” said the voice, fainter now.

  “Cannot, or will not?” Duon asked.

  “You are right to correct me,” said the god after a long pause. The voice strengthened a little. “I will not intervene. The act of creation forbids it. Making something that was not myself, as this world and all within it had to be, meant I had to exclude myself from it. Should I interfere in any substantial fashion, the boundary between creation and myself will break down and all will be subsumed into me once again. That I do not wish.”

  “Doesn’t sound much different from what the gods are trying to do,” Duon noted.

  “It is exactly the same, though they do not know it,” the voice agreed. “The Wall of Time is the boundary between myself and creation. When something in the world dies, I gather it back to myself, yet it still retains something of itself, though without true independence. To break down that barrier will be to end the independence of the world itself and everything in it.”

  “Yet you interfere now,” Arathé observed.

  “Yes, but only by invitation, and only as minimally as possible. I am not an agency here. You are the agents. If I am to do anything to assist in healing the breach my children have opened, it will be through people like you.”

  Arathé shook her head and her hands flashed. “I was possessed for near three years. I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

  “Nor should you,” agreed the voice. “Sadly, I doubt whether anything you do will make a difference. It will likely be all you can do to choose which way you die. Yet I do not wish the world’s destruction to be hurried by a foolish use of Husk’s power.”

  Duon’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “Aren’t you the Most High? According to Phemanderac, the Falthans and Dhaurians say you are all-powerful and can see the future. How can you not know what is going to happen? And why can’t you stop it?”

  “Because I am not my creation,” the voice said. “I could know if I wished, but in observing I would change that which I observed. Do you wish to live wondering which actions are your own and which are imposed upon you by a god?”

  “I’m not sure most people would notice the difference,” Duon said sourly. “Actually, I’m not sure I much like the arrangement you’ve come up with. Couldn’t you have thought of something better?”

  The voice ceased for a moment and Noetos stood unmoving, as though he was a machine without motive power.

  “Your own creation legends tell my story more accurately than you know,” the voice said eventually. “I was reluctant to accept creation’s worship, and wanted my worshippers to go their own way. But time and again they have begged for my intervention, and in my folly perhaps—or whatever other name you care to give to love—I have on occasion granted their wish. I do not believe it has been to creation’s betterment. But I am tired, so tired of it all. I am a reluctant god. Like you, I wish for nothing more than to walk away and find somewhere quiet, while others enjoy the produce I have laboured to make.”

  “You are… not what we expected,” Arathé said.

  “A disappointment?” the voice said. “Would you prefer this?”

  The world flashed white and Noetos was suddenly a thousand paces high, towering above them, storm-borne and lightning-eyed. The Padouki beside him drew away, obvious wonder on his face.

  “Do I not fulfil your sense of majesty? Is this form something you could worship?”

  The sense of weight redoubled, forcing them both to their knees.

  “Lenares would tell you to stop telling lies,” Duon said. “The way you appear, and everything you’ve said, shaves the truth.”

  “Of course it does,” said the voice, and in an eyeblink Noetos stood there as he had before. “It is the curse of language. You do not have words for the concepts you are trying to debate. What words would you use were you to find yourself beyond the Wall of Time? Every thought you have is predicated on time. Is, then, when, would, will, had, have, if: all are dependent on one’s temporal perspective. Those outside of time have no need of them. In my need to communicate, the concepts become less than they are in reality.”

  “We’re ignorant then, mere worms graced by your presence.” For some reason the Most High’s words angered Duon, though there was something oddly comforting in the idea of a being far superior to himself.

  “No, it’s simply a matter of perspective. Beyond the wall you receive a new language, tense-less and not predicated on time. Hard to comprehend, but entirely natural.”

  “Do we really have time for such philosophies?” Arathé asked, glancing towards the storm curtain.

  Duon laughed. “That is ironic in so many ways,” he said.

  A moment later she saw it herself and began laughing.

  “You two are in a unique position to think about such things,” the voice said. “Do so most carefully, and take counsel from this man, whom you will find much chastened. He likely has dark times ahead; be patient with him, and do not withhold your love from him, or it may go badly for you all. Whatever happens, I look forward—you see, I cannot help but use such phrases when talking with you—I look forward to meeting you again and continuing this discussion. Farewell.”

  Notwithstanding the god’s manifestation as a giant, Duon couldn’t help but be reminded of his grandfather. He remembered talking with the old man as a child, his grandfather’s slight frame bent over in his chair, his voice frail and his eyes dull. Wise but ineffectual. He’d once been a leader of a minor Alliance and apparently had been accounted a man of subst
ance. The young Duon had despised the old drooler.

  Noetos collapsed as Duon was finishing the thought. One moment his body stood between them, the next it lay twitching on the ground. As they bent over him the fisherman began to groan.

  “Father?” Arathé signed, and put a hand on his forehead.

  Noetos sat up, then bent forward and retched two or three times. Arathé barely withdrew her hand in time. “Oh, that was terrible,” he said weakly.

  Duon and Arathé helped the Padouki warrior lift the fisherman to his feet. They sought shelter from the strengthening rain, finding a small copse of trees growing from a crevice between two large boulders and squeezing in, shoulder to shoulder.

  “We came across the priest’s body,” Noetos said. “You did a fair job at burying it, but an animal had been at it. Not really what the lad deserved.”

  Neither Duon nor Arathé replied, but the explorer noted his unvoiced thoughts matched hers. He nearly killed us.

  “So,” the fisherman said, staring intently at his daughter. “Any gods still in your head?”

  “No,” she signed. “Any still in yours?”

  They both laughed, gestures of relief that ended up in an embrace. The burly red-headed man had tears in his eyes as he hugged his daughter.

  “I finally feel as though I have you back,” he said, “for the first time since I sold you to Andratan. Arathé, will you forgive me?”

  “Father,” she signed, pulling away from him. Her gestures were emphatic. “Please, listen to me. You did not ‘sell’ me. I chose to go. I was the one heart-set on the wide world. You tried to keep me at home.”

  The big man’s eyebrows crinkled as he thought about this. It already seemed strange to Duon that he could not read the man’s thoughts, given how open Arathé’s mind was to him.

  “Did I? I remember differently. Mustar panted all over you all summer like a flop-eared puppy, and I preferred the thought of you learning magic in Andratan to you hauling in the nets with two brats at your feet and you pregnant with the third. You were brighter than us, daughter. You deserved to shine out there in the world, not to be kept in that dreadful, dark, cliff-hedged place I hid in because I was frightened of Neherian assassins.”

  “Oh,” she signed with small, tentative movements. “That’s not how Mother explained your views.”

  He snorted. “Arathé, late in our marriage we both painted the other in the worst light possible. She did it, I did it; I don’t remember who started it. Opuntia, probably, given her gift with words. But I usually finished it. You and Anomer ended up being the fields upon which your mother and father did battle.”

  His words were working on something hard and bitter in Arathé. Duon watched as she prodded at long-held thoughts of anger and resentment.

  “So it wasn’t us you were angry at? We hadn’t failed you?”

  “Alkuon, girl, of course not!”

  She burst into tears and fell to her knees. Her limbs trembled, making signing difficult. “You’ll have to tell Anomer. He’s the one really hurt by all this.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, his hand ruffling her hair. “I didn’t realise. I was thinking only of my feud with Opuntia.”

  He looked up and caught Duon’s eye. Suddenly the explorer felt uncomfortable: one moment he had been conversing with a god; the next, listening in on a private family discussion. He turned to go.

  “Good idea,” Noetos said, but there was no real heat in it.

  Duon noted the Padouki warrior made no move to leave, seemingly having no issue with hearing family secrets.

  “Father, you’ll have to know some time. Duon can hear everything I think. I have no secrets from him. You can ask him to walk away, but he can’t stop hearing.”

  Noetos straightened and looked Duon in the eye. It was like eyeing a he-bear protective of his cub. “You have a link with her? How did this happen?” This time the words carried real heat.

  “The voice—Husk, he has a name—the voice forged links to all of us,” Duon explained carefully. Even without the majesty of the Most High illuminating it, the man’s gaze intimidated him in much the way Dryman’s had; perhaps the look of the god hadn’t entirely left him. “When Conal died, the link burned out, but the connection remained. It’s like… like a window through which I can see your daughter’s mind. She can see mine the same way.”

  “Can you close it?”

  “Close it?”

  “Close the window,” the big man said patiently.

  “No!” Arathé said, and Duon shied away from reading the thoughts behind her cry. “Why should we? Something good has come out of our suffering. It is a blessing, this connectedness, and we might well be able to make something of it.”

  “He might make something of it,” Noetos said, but the look on his face suggested he realised his words were ridiculous.

  “On my honour, I will not,” Duon said. “I am twice your daughter’s age and have half her wit: I am not a match for her. Besides,” he added slyly, “the young man Mustar still has eyes for her. I have no doubt he’d be much the better match.”

  Arathé giggled wickedly and Duon enjoyed the joke. Noetos, however, growled, no doubt knowing they chaffed him; but he let the matter drop.

  “I remember hearing the priest describing the sensation of the god in his mind,” he said. “I thought he was dramatising the experience but, if anything, he underplayed it.”

  “What was it like?” his daughter signed.

  “Like having my brain torn apart, filament by filament. I didn’t think I would survive it, even though I sensed he was trying not to damage me.”

  “It felt much the same when Husk took control of us,” Duon said.

  “You call him Husk. Is that what he called himself? Did you kill him?”

  Arathé told her father what had happened, while Duon resisted breaking in on the conversation. It was so hard to watch such a brilliant woman struggling to speak at a fraction of the pace of her sparkling thoughts. But it would not be right to speak for her.

  Why ever not? What virtue is there in allowing me to struggle?

  I thought you might be offended.

  I’d be offended if you left me to flounder.

  Duon gave his assent and joined in the tale, all the time wondering just how difficult it would prove to be inextricably linked to such a brightly burning light as Arathé.

  “How long do we have?” Stella asked.

  “Could be an hour, could be longer.”

  Kannwar didn’t really know, Lenares could tell, but leaders were always forced to say something. She frowned. Leaders and lies went together.

  “Not enough time to get to safety.” Stella failed to keep the anxiety out of her voice, prompting worried discussion from those around her.

  “This is safety. We’ve seen what happens to anyone outside our protection. “

  “I have a father and sister back in Long Pike Mouth,” a woman said anxiously. “Now the storm’s over, I want to find them.”

  “Let us out!” someone shouted.

  Others picked up the cry. “Let us out! Let us out!”

  Kannwar turned on them. “You dare command me? You think to order the Undying Man?”

  They pulled back from his anger. He had remade his face, but still frightened them. The stories about him were legion, and each one had a cruel twist.

  “Anyone we let out will die,” Stella said, trying to sound reasonable.

  “But the storm is over,” a man called out.

  “No,” she said. “In the centre of this storm is a small area of calm. It is overhead now. When it passes, the second part of the storm will come. It is likely to be worse than the first part.”

  “It’s only bad because of you,” said another man, an old fellow with a hunched back. “What storm ever had claws and acid? There is magic in the air, and I want no part of it.”

  “He makes his point well,” Sautea said. The fisherman had been hurt by one of the balls of ice; his arm was dam
aged, sprained perhaps, or broken. “This is the same as the storm that followed Arathé. If we get out of its way, the worst that will happen is we’ll get a little wet.”

  Kannwar growled his disapproval. Lenares took stock of him. His temper had risen, and only the presence of Stella kept him from exercising it.

  “How many of you wish to leave?” he asked.

  About a third of the few hundred refugees put up their hands.

  “We worked hard to save you,” he snarled. “Take a look at these fools, you with your hands by your sides. This is the last you’ll ever see of them.

  “Very well. Those with their hands up, get out of the pit. And when your death comes roaring at you, think of the mercy of the Undying Man.”

  Not a few of those so addressed lowered their hands, but still fully a quarter of those in Corata Pit lined up to squeeze through a narrow opening Kannwar made in the barrier. Above them blue sky winked at their efforts.

  “Are we wrong?” Stella wondered aloud.

  “We are not wrong,” Kannwar assured her as the last of the line vanished over the lip of the pit. “They are wrong, and it will cost them everything. No doubt this will be remade into a story in which I forced them out into the storm while all the while they begged to remain under my protection.” He sighed. “Now I need your attention. We may have little time and there is something we must do.”

  “What?”

  “We need to modify the barrier.”

  Stella groaned. “I don’t know how much strength I have left.”

  “This doesn’t require strength. At least, I will supply the strength we need. I want you to focus that strength. You must concentrate on this. Do you see this shape?”

  Lenares frowned. Kannwar had shown Stella something without moving his hands: they must be communicating mind to mind. How Lenares wished she had such ability!

  “What do I do with it?”