Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “Indeed not. And how much longer he remains alive depends on how much truth he’s prepared to tell. But not right now; we have many other things to do. You, Kidson, will come with us.”

  The Undying Man closed his fist and drew it toward himself. Kidson cried out, then stood up jerkily as though he’d lost control of his limbs. A wet patch on his breeches showed he’d definitely lost control of his bladder.

  “I… locked them in… for their… safety,” Kidson wheezed.

  “I did not invite you to speak,” Heredrew said equably. “I’ll hear from you at my convenience, not yours.” Kidson began to make choking sounds. “Until I determine your innocence or guilt, you will be silent.”

  Continued gurgling followed this statement; the men and women who had accused Kidson looked on, horror in their faces.

  “Don’t hurt him, bad man,” said the small girl.

  “If this man tells the truth he has nothing to fear,” Heredrew said, his voice shaded with anger.

  “You’re frightening us,” the little girl continued. “Go away.”

  A man and a woman clutched at the girl. “Forgive her, great lord,” the man said, his eyes averted, as if that would protect him should the Undying Man take exception to his plea.

  Torve sensed that Heredrew would ordinarily have made an example of Kidson and this man both—Torve’s master, the Emperor of Elamaq, certainly would have—but was forbearing because of Stella.

  Kidson continued to choke; his face began to turn blue.

  “Can’t my subjects remain silent for even a moment?” Heredrew said. “Can they not be quiet and reflect upon their lord’s goodness and his gift to them? Can they not be grateful that he will deal justly with this would-be murderer?”

  The frightened folk nodded at each question.

  “Then they can also keep out of sight in this building until I and my companions have left. Does anyone question this?”

  The folk demonstrated they had learned their lesson.

  Torve followed Heredrew and his prisoner out into the sunlight. They were followed by Sauxa and Kilfor.

  “I thought I told you to keep out of sight.” The Undying Man’s voice was ice-cold.

  “You don’t get to tell us what to do,” Sauxa said tartly. Kilfor winced.

  “I have no idea why the Most High tolerates you Falthans. From your queen down to the most insignificant peasant, you are unfailingly insolent and defiant. You do not seem to understand that you are living as a guest in my country. I make the rules. If you do not wish to abide by them, I can enforce the penalties due to disobedience. They are very severe.”

  “Aye, we are guests here,” Sauxa said. “But we are not your guests. If I understand right, we are all the guests of the Most High, who is using us as weapons against the rebellious gods. And as he has given me no instructions as to how I should speak to you, I believe I have broken no rules and am behaving exactly as he would have me. If he didn’t want a hard-headed, contrary plainsman as part of his plan, why did he invite me?”

  Heredrew’s shoulders shook at this, whether from anger or amusement Torve could not immediately discern. The tall man sat down on a wreckage-covered porch, behind which the house had gone, and turned to the old Falthan. Torve was relieved, and somewhat surprised, to see a smile on Heredrew’s face.

  “So, old man” the irony laid on the word ‘old’ was unmistakable—“you have decided to stay with us after al1?”

  “You heard that, did you?” Sauxa smirked toothlessly at the Lord of Bhrudwo. “Perhaps you are as smart as they say.”

  Heredrew returned the smile: a little sardonic, but genuine nonetheless.

  “I thought we were leaving,” Kilfor exclaimed, surprised.

  “You, on the other hand, are even more foolish than I had thought. You make me ashamed to have brought you into the world.”

  Torve winced, but a moment later saw the grin splitting Kilfor’s face and recalled the way the two men spoke to each other.

  “Hah, a compliment,” the younger man crowed. “To be thought foolish by a fool is to be intelligent in truth!”

  Kannwar addressed Kidson. “You will keep to the back of the group. This is not a choice, it is information. If you try approaching any of your former passengers you will be struck down. I do not want unnecessary confrontations.” The white-faced captain nodded shortly.

  “Kannwar!” a voice called; and Torve turned to see Stella leading the other travellers down the debris-strewn street towards them. Striding next to her, at her right shoulder, was Lenares, her face set in that familiar look of concentration. She never failed to excite interest in him. Is that why she fascinates me so? Because, just like my childhood friend, the Emperor of Elamaq, everything she does is done with all of her being?

  It didn’t matter. In the end, the last thing his childhood friend had ever done to him had rendered the question moot.

  * * *

  This totally destroyed place was the first town of any size Lenares had been in since Sayonae, the town in which she had met the woman who turned out to be her real mother. Unsurprisingly, it was to Martje that her mind turned now. She was glad that her mother was alive, and gladder still that she suffered. The Bhrudwan lord had told her what he had done to the evil woman, fully expecting Lenares to be shocked and upset at the news, but she had been happy to hear it. Very happy. The woman had raised a family in order to satisfy her monstrous husband’s perverted desires, and had shown no remorse for what he had done to them. Moreover, in her effort to recapture the person she’d thought was her wayward daughter Cylene, she had been willing to expend her sons, seemingly unconcerned that the Undying Man had hurt them. And from what Conal had confessed, Lenares knew she’d not held back from using one of her daughters as part of a magic spell to bind Kannwar. Martje had actively encouraged her daughter to have sex with the unpleasant priest as part of her plan. Still using her family as tools.

  There had been a moment when Lenares had allowed herself to rejoice at discovering her true family. That moment had been all too brief. She had quickly realised that, of all her siblings, she had been the fortunate one. To preserve his secret, her father had sold her as a slave to someone who took her south to Elamaq. Lenares remembered none of it, but it must have happened that way. In the exchange she’d lost a family, but had gained a life.

  This, Lenares was certain, would be the last time she thought of Martje and her natural family. For all their fractiousness, poor Rouza and Palain and the other cosmographers had been her true family. As much as they had irritated Lenares, they had lived with her and worked together with her, and some of them had even loved her. Mahudia had been her real mother, and Lenares would never forget her.

  But she was alone now. All the cosmographers were dead. She had lost every member of both families. Fated, perhaps, to be on her own—though Mahudia’s unquiet shade seemed still within her reach, on the other side of the Wall of Time. She glanced in Torve’s direction, and saw him look away. She’d lost him too, she knew, through no fault of her own. The losses made her bitterly sad, but she still had work to do. Recapturing Umu would make her happy.

  In the gloaming of the day, the hundred-strong band reached the base of the long slope leading to the Malayu Basin. Ahead of them the land steamed in the half-light, radiating its heat to the purpling sky as dusk gathered like a cloak of secrecy. A few of the children cried, a hungry ache beneath their ribs, as no one had found enough to eat in the village behind them. Their parents and the others in the party walked in a tired shuffle, heads down, their lips pressed closed in a determined effort not to complain.

  So it was they did not see the small group waiting at the place where the road levelled out. The first Lenares knew of it was a shout from someone at the head of their party, a hail returned by a distant voice.

  “Is it Noetos and his family?” Stella asked.

  “Can’t tell,” Robal replied. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  “Where’s Noetos!” s
omeone called, but the voice came from well in front of them. Not more refugees from the storm and earthquake then.

  “He’s not here,” Kannwar replied. “Who are you?”

  A few garbled introductions later, the two groups had met and mingled and had found seats on a series of felled tree trunks. The leaders of the dozen or so new arrivals were a man and a woman: he, small with a largish belly; she, middle-aged, standing on the balls of her feet like a Three-Spire dancer from lost Talamaq. Bregor he called himself, the Factor of Raceme, and his new-wed wife, she of the elegant poise, he named Consina. She smiled politely at this, her self-possession and reserve an odd contrast to the sweaty effusiveness of her husband.

  Lenares looked at them with her numbers, then realised with a sudden shock that it was the first time she’d used her unique gift at all that day. What has happened to me? She felt like a castle of sand slowly eroding away, a special-shaped fortress absorbed into the ordinariness of the beach. Mahudia would know. Lenares longed to talk to her, but didn’t want to draw the attention of the gods to her mother.

  Bregor and Consina knelt before Kannwar—the Emperor here, Lenares reminded herself—and began speaking to him in low tones. Lenares moved closer. They wanted to keep their conversation secret, but why shouldn’t the world’s last cosmographer know what was being said!

  “I was told of events in Raceme by the Noetos you seek,” Kannwar was saying.

  The tubby man sweated freely, even though the air had grown cold. His wife passed him a kerchief, with which he swatted at the moisture glistening on his temples. “Did he tell you of the devastation wreaked by the gods, great lord?”

  “He did, Factor, but he did not mention you. What is your relationship with him?”

  “Great lord, I was his village Hegeoman until the calamity that overtook us.”

  “Do you mean the Neherian invasion? Speak plainly, man; we’re not players in a bard’s tale.”

  “Yes, lord,” the man said, mopping perspiration from his brow. “I mean, yes, it was the Neherians.”

  Lenares noted how adroitly Kannwar had taken over the conversation.

  “Ah, I place you now,” said the Undying Man. “You’re the man who slept with Noetos’s wife.”

  Bregor gave a strangled squeak, and the woman kneeling next to him started, then turned an angry face towards her husband. Lenares laughed, not unkindly. Consina had not known of Bregor’s complex relationship with Noetos.

  “Has he—how much has Noetos told you, great lord?” Bregor said, his voice low.

  “Do you mean, has Noetos told me how you betrayed your village to the Neherians? Of course not; he’s far too loyal a man to say such things.”

  The distraught man swallowed hard. “How do you know?”

  “Why don’t we sit down, you and I, the Hegeoman of an obscure village and the Lord of all Bhrudwo, so I can share with you the secrets of my rule?”

  Consina hissed. “You toy with us,” she said, “while our town is being overrun by Neherians bent on revenge. Punish Bregor if you must, but please first listen to his words.”

  “Your town? Raceme is not Makyra Bay, Hegeoma Consina; it is not your town. I know Bregor was elected as interim Factor following the death of the last governor, and the loss of Makyra Bay to the Neherians sent you and your few surviving villagers north to join forces with him. In more ways than one, clearly. But it is the Undying Man’s prerogative to appoint Factors; they are never elected.”

  “We know, great lord, but—”

  “Yes, I know, conditions were such that you couldn’t allow Raceme to descend into lawlessness, so you reluctantly took up power. I heard your acceptance speech given in the ballroom of the Summer Palace, so recently the site of slaughter.”

  “You heard the speech?” Stella leaned across, eyeing the Undying Man in a way only the truly unafraid could do.

  “Of course I heard it. I have a few informants in Raceme, as I do in every city of interest to me, which, incidentally, is all of them. Naturally they sought to inform me of these developments.”

  “How?”

  Kannwar laughed. “Ah, Stella, do you really want me to reveal my secrets to all and sundry?”

  He didn’t for a moment think she’d reply in the affirmative, but Lenares could see it coming.

  “Yes,” Stella said.

  The cosmographer studied the emotions that sped across the man’s illusory face. Frustration, anger, resignation. No one else would have been able to read them, but with her ability to perceive his life in numerical terms, she could predict his response to the pressure Stella insisted on placing him under.

  Betrayal.

  Of course, he was not bound to do that which Lenares could foresee: she was fairly certain her ability was guesswork, albeit well informed, rather than knowledge. How could it be knowledge, given the future, unlike the past, was not fixed in place? Certainly she didn’t like the idea that someone else with her gift—if anyone else like her existed—could accurately predict her own actions. But betrayal was written all over his numbers.

  “He’s going to play you false, ma dama Stella,” Lenares said in a quiet voice.

  “Of course he is,” the woman replied. “I know that. Why else do you think I want him close by?”

  Because you like playing with fire, Lenares thought of saying to the Falthan woman, but held her tongue. She would have sworn such talk would provoke the Bhrudwan lord’s anger, but as always he managed to surprise everyone.

  “When you two have finished talking about this disreputable man, he’d like to answer your challenge.”

  Stella retained her equanimity. “Go on then.”

  “Actually, I’m not sure why you hadn’t worked it out, since you’ve experienced it yourself.”

  “Ah,” Stella said. “The blue fire. You contact your informers regularly.”

  “Where else did you think I was going all those nights?”

  “Off to betray us all, I expect.” She accompanied her words with a wry smile.

  Consina leaned forward. “Great lord, have you heard from your informers in Raceme these last three weeks?”

  “No, Factor Consina, I have not,” said the man, his voice gentle, enquiring.

  “Then, my lord, you will not know what has happened. Your informers are likely dead, along with many if not most of the survivors of Neherius’s original invasion. Three weeks ago a huge fleet materialised off our harbour and swept into the defenceless city. They had come to avenge the deaths of their leaders, slain, they said, by a renegade Neherian with a personal vendetta, though we knew better. We”—here she glanced at Bregor, who immediately rearranged his scowl into a neutral expression—“regard Noetos as the hero of Makyra Bay, and many of the survivors of the Neherian invasion of Raceme see him as a champion of that city too.”

  “Get to the point, woman.” Not so gentle this time.

  “They went through Raceme without mercy, my lord. I must report that they slew every male of fighting age they could find and piled the corpses on the Summer Flame before setting them alight.” Her voice suddenly changed. “They were at pains to say that this killing, and their campaign against the towns and villages of the Fisher Coast, was all done in the name of the Undying Man, Lord of Bhrudwo.”

  “Was it?” Bregor snapped, and suddenly there was a knife in his hand.

  This has been planned all along.

  “Yes,” Kannwar said.

  Stella gasped, a sound like the final breath leaving a body.

  Bregor drove forward with his knife and buried it to the hilt in the Undying Man’s chest.

  “Don’t!” Stella cried, but far, far too late.

  Bregor slumped backwards, his jerkin stained red. Kannwar took a step forward and stood over the man, his stern face set in stone.

  Why didn’t I see this before it happened? Lenares asked herself, frantic. Have I lost the ability?

  No, the ability to see her numbers remained. Truth was, she admitted to herself, she w
as coming to rely on other ways of interacting with others, more human ways.

  Losing herself.

  Consina stood frozen, seemingly unable to believe what she had seen.

  “Heal him,” Stella demanded.

  The Undying Man turned his adamant face on her, and Lenares could see his anger crawling across his features like maggots on a carcass. “Never. He committed suicide. He knew any attack on me, successful or not, would lead to his death. This is the outcome he expected.”

  “But you lied to him,” Lenares said. She drew on all her powers of analysis.

  “Ah,” said the Undying Man, and the full power of his eyes bored into hers. “I had forgotten about you.”

  “Lied? How?” Stella grabbed at Lenares, as though she could force the cosmographer’s answer to come more quickly.

  “The killing was done in his name, but not with his full knowledge. The attacks were planned by the Undying Man, but he asked for them to be postponed after I showed him the hole in the world. The Neherians ignored him. I don’t know why, because Kannwar doesn’t know why.”

  “How do you know this?” Consina breathed.

  “I am a cosmographer,” Lenares said. “The best cosmographer ever to have lived. I can read truth because I can see the links between things more clearly than other people can.”

  “Your explanation doesn’t make it sound as though he lied,” Consina continued.

  “He did, by not explaining himself. He wanted to make Bregor strike at him.”

  “Then how can Bregor be blamed for his actions?” Stella faced the Undying Man. “Heal him.”

  “He’s already too far gone.”

  “Your fault. Heal him.”

  No one else could see the struggle going on in the Undying Man’s mind. His authority depended on such ruthless behaviour, which the man genuinely believed was fair. And it was: Bregor had acted knowing the price for his action. Yet he valued Stella’s regard highly. No, he was deeply in love with her, a love inextricably bound up with dark cords of self-loathing. If he didn’t do as she asked, he would lose her. Yet if he did, he risked losing his authority and his empire.

  This is who I am, Lenares exulted. Not an ordinary human, having to guess what people intend to do, but a cosmographer, one who sees.