Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “Sit down,” Duon said, his voice firm; but Noetos was already on his knees, breathing shallowly as the pain began. It was far more intense than anything he’d received in his youth on the practice ground. His thoughts started to flutter, his mind fogging.

  “Do we take it out?”

  “He’ll bleed to death!”

  “It is the captain’s poison-tipped knife.” Cylene’s voice, edged with panic, fading into the mist.

  More words, all incomprehensible.

  “Noetos, can you hear me?”

  The last speaker was Opuntia, apparently. She stood over him, her blonde hair obscuring her features but not the dreadful wound in her stomach. It dripped blood onto his chest. What was this? Noetos didn’t want to dream, not now when Cylene had returned to him. He tried to wake up.

  “You can hear me; stop pretending otherwise. I’m barely cold in my grave and already you’ve found someone else to distract you. You needn’t think I’ll let you forget how you treated me, fisherman. Do you think for a moment a new love will remove all the bitter self-destructiveness at the heart of you?”

  “No, ’puntia,” he croaked.

  His dead wife bent over him, her hair touching his face, stinging his eyes.

  “You imprisoned me in that fishing village,” she said. “I was destined to be the queen of Neherius and you were to be my king. But for a little courage, we could have ruled them. Our every desire indulged! Fortune and fame! Knowledge, travel, consorting with the best people! But you lied, you kept the truth from me; instead of a crown, you gave me the stink of fish and their sandpapery scales in your clothes. When I desired your caresses, you gave me callouses on my hands and bruises on my face. You gave me talk of the sea, of currents and shoals, when I wanted to hear of heroic deeds and faraway places. You drove me to Bregor and Merle, yes, you did; it was your fault I slept with them. At least they did more than grunt! And you killed me with your foolish rescue. You meant to kill me. You were more interested in revenge than in rescue. It suited you that I died! Don’t deny it—I can read your thoughts, such as they are. And now I live beyond the veil, in this emptiness, where you drove me!”

  She spat in his face. It stung like acid.

  “I hope you die,” she said, and he could see her face now, her beautiful features distorted by hatred: her mouth twisted, her eyes bloodshot and staring, her cheeks flushed, her breath hot on his face.

  “I hope the poison takes you. I am pouring my power into the poison to increase its potency. I want you here in the void with me, where I can punish you forever for what you did to me.”

  “No, my love, you do not understand,” he said, or thought he said. “I could not tell you of my family. The Neherians were searching for us. Had they found us, they would have taken you and… and done to you what they did to my family. You would have died screaming, as their men or their dogs; if you can see my thoughts, you know this. You know this! Ruling in Neherius was just a fantasy. Old Roudhos is no more than a dream, Opuntia!”

  He might as well have not spoken for all his argument swayed her. “You were pleased I died,” she said.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Yes. Relieved rather than pleased, but your death did take a great weight from my mind. I’m sorry for what I did to you, but I didn’t make you into the mean-spirited seagull you became, picking over the bones of others’ lives rather than finding food of your own. It is not where you live that makes you big or small, Opuntia. Mean people can live in castles and great souls in fishing villages. What of the widow Nellas? She lost two husbands, yet remained as generous with her heart as ever. She was greater than any of the Neherian nobility.”

  “The widow Nellas? That ignorant fishwife? She was generous with far more than her heart, so all the talk went. I suppose you desired even her, didn’t you?” Opuntia’s voice shrilled in his ear.

  “No, dear; I just no longer desired you. Your beautiful body and your sword-edged tongue held no attraction for me. I couldn’t bear to touch you. If I had not loved you so deeply I could have closed my ears and used your body, but it was precisely because I once loved you dearly that I was so hurt by your constant tearing down of everything I did.”

  He blinked a couple of times, but her face seemed oddly out of focus, as though turning to smoke.

  “You had been dead for years,” he said to her. “You were a hook in our mouths, serving no purpose other than to irritate us at best and leave us flopping in the boat at worst. When I saw you dying in Bregor’s arms I felt saddened for you, but glad that your bitter spirit was about to find rest.”

  “Rest?” Her voice was a mixture of outrage and terror. “What do you know about life after death? Rest is something I’ll never have, thanks to you, not here in the void. And as repayment for a life of bitterness I will ensure you never have any peace. Turn and turn about! Fisherman, I promise I will haunt you for the remainder of eternity. Do you hear me, Noetos? The remainder of eternity!”

  “Noetos?” another voice said, insistent. “Stay with us.”

  “On the count of three,” said another. “One, two, three!”

  “They’ll not save you,” Opuntia insisted, her face growing even harder. “You’re coming with me!”

  Something like fishhooks tore at his back, pulling him out of his body. He hovered above the broken ship, gazing with interest on his companions—his former companions, he supposed, now he was dead—as they bent over him. There was Cylene, her face above his, tears in her eyes; alongside her stood Arathé and Anomer, hand in hand, eyes closed.

  “Put it back, put it back,” a voice wailed. “He’s bleeding to death!”

  “It’s not lack of blood we need to worry about,” Anomer said. “It’s the poison working towards his heart.”

  “He’s gone,” Arathé signalled, though Noetos heard her voice in his head, that pure voice she’d possessed before Andratan had started them all on this bitter path. It warmed his cold heart.

  “No, he’s still close. Hold onto him!” Anomer’s lips turned pale with effort.

  “Let him go!” Opuntia shrieked.

  All three faces turned towards the place where Noetos hung in the air.

  “Hold him, hold him!” Anomer commanded, and the hooks bit deeper into the fisherman’s skin. In moments his vision faded and his world was reduced to those bright points of pain, the fishhooks tearing at his soul. He groaned, then gave in and let go.

  “His eyes are twitching,” Cylene said, her voice excited despite being laced with obvious weariness.

  Anomer turned from his sewing and scrambled across the beach to his father’s side. “How are you?” he asked, placing a hand on his father’s battered face.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Cylene’s hand joined Anomer’s on Noetos’s forehead.

  Noetos’s eyes sprang open and fixed on Cylene. “Get her away from me,” he whispered. “Why do you permit her to be here?”

  “What?” Anomer supposed he must have misheard. He glanced at Cylene; her hand remained on Noetos’s brow, but her eyes had opened wide in surprise.

  “Get her away from me! Make her leave!” his father shouted. “She wants to kill me!” He took a feeble swipe at her, still enough to connect with her shoulder and knock her to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Anomer cried. “This is Cylene! She helped save you from the poison. She does not want to kill you!”

  Cylene had begun to shake, her lip quivering, her face suddenly bloodless, in the grip of shock.

  “She does wish to kill me,” said Noetos, speaking with a disconcerting reasonableness. “She poisoned me. She intended for me to die. I will not have her anywhere near me.” His hand felt around his belt. “Where is my sword? I’ll deal with her.”

  The girl started sobbing. Arathé took her by the hand, pulled her to her feet and led her away.

  “She’s gone now, Father,” Anomer said. “Lie still; you are gravely wounded. Arathé and I drew the poison out with our water magic and attempte
d to heal the wound, but neither of us is trained and we may not have been entirely successful. Had it not been for Cylene, we would have lost you. She has real strength, Father, and she never gave up hope. You should be proud of her.”

  He was babbling, he knew, but he could not understand what was happening. Why had his father turned on Cylene? Was it some strange side effect of the poison, or was something else at play here?

  Certainly the girl had done more for his father than he had done himself. He’d had a chance to let his father die, and for a moment the anger within him had overruled his feelings and he’d been willing to let Noetos go. Just like he let go of Mother. But Arathé had connected to him, exhorting him to lend her his magical strength, and he could not refuse her. Together they had immersed themselves into a battle for their father’s life, and all the while Anomer had wrestled with his rising guilt, knowing he would not have intervened without his sister’s prompting, and knowing she knew this. After a few moments Cylene had joined them, along with Captain Duon, and together the four of them had prised Noetos away from the force dragging him into darkness. It was more complicated than that, of course, but Arathé had handled the complexity; Anomer had merely supplied his strength. Boorish, so much like the man they had struggled to save.

  Anomer would give anything not to turn out like his father, yet it seemed that exactly this fate lay in store for him.

  Arathé signalled to him.

  “I don’t know what is the matter with him,” he replied, “save being rescued from death. But something is definitely wrong. Even Noetos would not behave like this.”

  * * *

  There is nothing wrong with me. On the contrary, it seemed, he saw perfectly, perhaps for the first time. It had been Opuntia hovering over him, ready to strike him dead, and he wondered why the others had not seen this. Perhaps it took an experience like the one he’d just endured, a close encounter with death, to remove the scales from his eyes.

  The fisherman eased himself onto one elbow, stared angrily at the woman who had tried to kill him—and saw Cylene. Saw the hurt expression on her face, saw his children staring at him in puzzlement and anger. He blinked once, twice, but nothing changed.

  I have been deceived.

  “What have I done?” he croaked.

  He knew well what he had done. And what had been done to him.

  “You struck Cylene,” Anomer said, speaking slowly as though to an imbecile. “You knocked her down.”

  “Cylene, I’m sorry,” Noetos said, and licked his lips nervously. He had to say something or he would lose her forever. She deserved nothing less than the truth, but the truth might prove difficult to speak, especially with his children present.

  She nodded. “You were befuddled by the poison from Kidson’s knife,” she said. “You did not know it was me.” But you still struck me, her face said.

  Her recent past would have involved much physical abuse, he reminded himself, including violence from patrons unhappy with her performance.

  “It is worse than that,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Opuntia, my dead wife and the mother of my children, visited me in a fever-dream.”

  He went on to tell as much as he could remember of his discussion with the dead woman. To their credit, none of his audience doubted him. Noetos supposed it was as much a sign of their present lives as anything: given what had happened to them over the last weeks and months, any story, no matter how far-fetched, might well be true. They heard him out without interruption.

  “You suffer from guilt,” Anomer said, shaking his head. “Your mind has manufactured our mother and turned her into a monster because you have been reunited with Cylene. Until you deal with your guilt, you will never be free to love again.”

  Arathé shook her head violently. “No,” she signalled. “Opuntia may well have really been there as Father lay dying. Because of the hole in the world, the boundary between life and death is breaking down: hence the Emperor coming back to life, and more recently Conal. Remember, Lenares believes she can communicate with her dead foster mother. So Mother may well have discovered the breach in the Wall of Time and found a way to trouble Father. She’s certainly determined enough to do so.”

  “She said she will haunt me forever,” Noetos said, sickened.

  Cylene stood and came over to where he lay. Her steps were tentative, the cautious approach of a wounded animal who must nevertheless trust its torturer. He nodded, and placed his arms carefully by his sides.

  “How old was your wife when you married her?” she asked.

  “Just a little older than you,” Noetos said, and for a moment her features blurred and were replaced by Opuntia’s older, thinner face. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Did you love her with all your heart?”

  “Yes,” he whispered. It had been the truth, but love hadn’t been enough to conquer the dark cliffs of Fossa.

  “And did you really treat her as well as you intend to treat me?”

  He swallowed. Truth, now. “No,” he said. “I tried, I really tried, Cylene. I intended to give her the world, but I was afraid. Had we left Fossa in pursuit of the life she desired, the Neherians, in all likelihood, would have found me. I didn’t want her to be hurt.”

  Cylene’s face softened. “You tried to protect her, to keep her from being hurt, and in doing so hurt her nonetheless. Noetos, do you intend to protect me?”

  “No,” he whispered, not knowing what she wanted to hear, afraid that every word he spoke might be the word that drove her away. “I cannot. You have already faced many things I am unable to protect you from, and we are all threatened by forces beyond my power.”

  “Even if you could keep me safe, you ought not,” she said. “Otherwise you will smother me as you smothered her.”

  So different: gentle where Opuntia was abrasive; calm where Opuntia was excitable. Brave where she was fearful. Yet every time Noetos looked at Cylene’s face he saw Opuntia’s features.

  This is what she meant when she said she’d haunt me, he realised with dread. His punishment was he would always see Opuntia in any woman he desired. The future stretched before him and it appeared bleak. With one stroke his dead wife had stolen everything.

  * * *

  An hour or so later Cyclamere returned, his rough clothes slathered with mud and grass stains, frustration in his eyes. Noetos managed to struggle from a lying to a seated position, though the effort cost him. One look at Cyclamere’s angered visage ensured he did not have to ask his former tutor whether he’d been able to catch Kidson, which was fortunate, as he had insufficient breath. He gulped a few deep lungfuls, the last of which set him coughing.

  “Listen to the old man,” Cylene said, leaning into Arathé, who was sitting next to her. She raised her voice. “You’re not going to peg out on us, are you?”

  The two girls laughed, genuine mirth mixed with a deal of relief.

  Noetos couldn’t help himself: he felt a surge of emotion for Cylene. He had never met anyone like her. Though she was the same age as his daughter, the cheerful girl seemed a full generation older. Attributable to the life she had led, of course: the appalling childhood, having been used by her father, suffering guilt over the loss of her twin sister and the deception that followed; and more recently the prostitution she’d acceded to as a way of escaping her family. Noetos could barely credit her survival, let alone the shining beauty of her personality.

  He felt ludicrously happy that Cylene seemed to be making friends with Arathé. Anomer acted a little more standoffish, though that was understandable. The boy continued in his unreasonable anger at his father, still blaming Noetos for his mother’s death. Noetos was prepared to acknowledge there had been a degree of reconciliation, but Anomer still harboured a serious grudge. The boy would not sanction anything that made his father happy, and of course refused to acknowledge Cylene as any sort of replacement for Opuntia. Noetos wondered how long his patience with his son would last.

  “No, I’ll draw b
reath for a while yet,” he answered, and waved his hand in their direction. “I can see a number of reasons to keep breathing.”

  Cylene smiled, but did not gush, and Noetos silently thanked her. He had seen old men fall for young women and had been of the repeated public opinion that there was no more pathetic sight. Janne Lockleg, who ran the largest stall at Fossa market, had made a fool of himself mooning after the long-limbed daughter of his business partner. Enela had exploited the man’s obsession, leading him on, the inevitable result being a brawl on Lamplight Street and the subsequent acrimonious termination of the business partnership. The girl had been sent away somewhere west. Noetos sighed. She was probably still alive—unlike Lockleg and Petros, who were probably both dead, killed by the Neherians.

  The only survivors are those who left Fossa, Noetos realised. A message in that perhaps: I should never have stayed. Opuntia, he admitted, was right. In fact, had Arathé not left for Andratan and later returned, drawing me out of that cursed village, I would likely have died there.

  Cyclamere nodded to him, having waited patiently for the exchange to end. “I pursued the sailor for some time,” he said, “but I lost track of him in the rubble of Long Pike Mouth.”

  Noetos groaned as he adjusted his position. “The town is destroyed?”

  His old tutor nodded.

  “They were good to us when Dagla died,” Noetos said sadly. It had only been… what, a week ago? A little more? He’d lost track of the days. “They gave us food and treated the injuries Kidson and his men inflicted on us. They did not deserve such a fate.”

  “No one deserves to be taken before their time by a storm like that one.”

  “Did you see any supplies?”

  “Aye, my friend; though much is broken and scattered across the town, the forest and the beach, there were plenty of supplies. A town’s worth. Certainly there are no people left alive to consume them.” He frowned.

  “You’re worried about the Padouki.”

  Cyclamere nodded approvingly. “Something your grandfather might have noticed. Yes, I wonder how they fare in the wake of the great storm. But my mind tells me that if anyone could survive, they could.”