Even thinking about it now raised beads of sweat on Stella’s skin.
Kannwar had made his escape in the confusion of the moment, forcing Stella to lend him her strength. They had fled across Instruere, his handless arms resting on her shoulders, she bearing most of his weight as his magic leached out of him. He would never have escaped had it not been for her assistance—and the sacrifice of the pride of Bhrudwo, Kannwar’s Lords of Fear.
They had come at his call, had found him in distress and had sacrificed themselves, one after another, allowing him to drain them to form a walkway down from the city wall and across the Aleinus River. What a long mile that had been! For every twenty paces, another Lord of Fear had fallen, eviscerated, nothing more than a shell of skin and bone. With such horrendous cost Kannwar had escaped, and had limped back to Bhrudwo to rebuild his strength.
“I remember it,” she said.
“How many of your companions should I use up to make the stair?” he asked her. “You are asking me to perform perhaps the most difficult magic of all, and I am barely recovered from my injuries. Don’t you think we ought to save something in order to oppose Umu?”
“You are right,” Stella admitted.
“It will not do the men any harm to achieve this by ordinary mortal strength,” Kannwar added.
“If anyone should fall, can you at least cushion their landing?”
“Yes, I can do that. But so could you, if you were willing to explore the limits of your power. Stella, you have had the fire of the Most High within you for seventy years and never once have you even fanned the embers of its flame. What would it take for you to embrace the gift you have been given?”
“To see it as a gift and not as a curse,” she snapped. “All very well for you. You snatched the so-called gift from the Most High in open rebellion. You may not have received exactly what you expected, but at least it was your hand reaching out. What did I do but defy you one too many times and suffer the consequences?”
Seven decades, it seemed, had not dimmed her outrage after all.
“I struck you down, Stella. But I saved you from death by sharing my blood with you.”
“And I have felt polluted from that moment to this!” she hissed.
He turned away from her. Had she finally daunted him? Broken through his complacent self-confidence? He muttered something she did not quite catch. She asked him to repeat it.
“Anomer has reached the opening,” he said.
Stella bit her lip to stop from screaming.
It took an hour for all the travellers to climb, assisted or unassisted, to the glowing crack in the wall. The younger members of the party made a good fist of the climb: Arathé, Lenares and Torve, Mustar, Cylene and Moralye all scampered quickly up the rock-face as though they were spiders. Cyclamere took his time, moving more cautiously but just as sure-footedly, with Noetos making the climb immediately following his son and remaining just below the opening to lift anyone who required it over the last few paces of smoother rock. Consina and Bregor proceeded slowly, but arrived without mishap. Sauxa was a problem, slow and proud, refusing assistance. Twice he lost his grip, but both times Kannwar supported him with a light touch of magic, keeping him anchored against the wall. Seren came next, his difficulties caused not by fear or ineptitude but by his incomplete healing, and he muttered angrily to himself during his ascent. Duon made the climb as easily as the youngsters. Sautea proved the most difficult to coax up the wall, reluctant to take any risks. In the end Noetos clambered halfway down and hauled his friend up by main force. The old man spluttered indignantly all the way and thanked Noetos profusely when he reached the opening.
Stella’s limbs felt as though all the life had been leached out of them—a side effect, she supposed, of forced healing. Shaking with weariness, she approached the rocks, her eyes fixed on anything but the task in front of her.
The next thing she knew she was sitting on the cold limestone floor, weeping.
“I c-c-can’t,” she sobbed, shuddering at the touch of a hand on her shoulder.
“Please don’t give up now, Stella. We’re so close.”
“You d-don’t n-need me. I’m j-just in the way.”
“We do need you,” Kannwar coaxed.
She took a racking breath. “I’m so tired.” She dragged the word out into an embarrassing whine. “Let me s-s-sleep.”
A voice filtered down from above. “Are you all right down there?”
Kannwar didn’t bother replying.
“So, girl, what happens now?”
“I’m s-sorry.”
Too much, she’d been through far too much. Walking for months on end with no clear destination in sight. Watching others fight, watching others die. Leith. Phemanderac. Robal. Each one worth a lifetime’s sorrow. Dying twice herself. Struggling with the deepest of emotions: love, hate, attraction, revulsion, confusion.
“You’re worn out.”
“I’ve b-been worn out for years. Walking around as though I’m alive but d-dead inside.” She tried to seal her mouth closed, but the traitorous words kept coming out. Small, selfish, complaining words. “No use to anyone. A figure of hatred.”
“It’s not like you, Stella, to feel sorry for yourself.”
“It’s not like anyone else to feel s-sorry for me.”
She wanted very badly to apologise to Kannwar for her weakness. Knowing how much he despised any sign of it, imagining the look of disdain that even now must be forming on his face, she dared not look up at him. But part of her knew how much trouble she had caused for herself—for everyone around her—by trying to be strong, by refusing help, by going her own way.
“Other people know nothing,” Kannwar said harshly. “They assume we are the most fortunate of people, blessed with life everlasting. They envy our positions of power. Tell me, Stella, do you feel fortunate?”
“You know the answer to that,” she said. “For a long time I was able to ignore the stares, the gossip behind the hand”—cowardly gossip, hurting Leith more than it hurt me—“because I had an empire to care for. The Halites were free to create their religion with me as its evil witch, as long as it kept them happy. All I cared about was paying back the debt I owed Falthans for the way I betrayed them.” The way I was forced to betray them. “More and more, as Leith slipped into his long decline, the real work of administration fell to me, with assistance from Phemanderac whenever he was around, despite the increasingly strident opposition from my powerful enemies. Then Leith died.” She hiccoughed a sob. “Everything changed. It was as though in that moment, everything meaningful about my life was stripped away, like the blankets torn from a familiar bed, leaving me naked. Without Leith I suddenly felt like I had no identity. I certainly had no protection from those who wished me harm. I fled for my life, and with Robal’s help barely avoided the Halite Archpriest of the Koinobia and his minions. Do you understand, Kannwar?” It was so important he understood. “I lost virtually everything when Leith died. My entire kingdom shrank to an uncouth guardsman and a Halite priest, and now they’ve gone. What you see sitting here is a hollow shell. I have nothing to keep me going save duty and memory, and neither is strong enough to serve. My flesh endures, but my spirit has left me.”
She buried her head in her folded arms, too weary even to cry. Above them Noetos asked some question or other. Stella let Kannwar deal with it.
Stella. Kannwar’s voice swam into her mind as smooth as honey, as warm as a winter cloak. You and I are linked by more than circumstances. We are bound together by the immortal blood we share. Let me help you.
No! she retorted. I don’t trust you! Leave me alone! Get out of my mind!
I’m speaking in your mind to save your embarrassment. You trusted me enough to accept my help when the hole in the world first came for you, back in the Maremma marshes. What is so difficult about allowing me to lend you the strength to climb a little wall?
Because I am empty now, she said simply. And if I allow you access, you will
take me, fill me and never let me go. Her secret fear, her secret desire.
No, Stella. Elation, disappointment. I give you my word.
She laughed mockingly. Your word?
A glimmer of anger came through the blood-borne connection. My word is all you have, my queen. At any point in the last seventy years I could have overwhelmed you just as I did during the Falthan War. Any time, Stella, but I forbore.
The Most High broke your power over me, Stella sent, trying to hide her uncertainty, her growing terror.
Really? Then how do you explain this?
He seized her, his fist wrapped around her heart, taking her body and mind. Breath stopped, throat closed, eyes bulging, she stood—he forced her to stand—and walked two paces, placed her hands against the wall, as though about to climb. Then he let her go.
She collapsed onto the pile of rocks, gasping like a landed fish. “You, you,” she said, searching in vain for a swearword sufficiently dire.
“Come, Stella. We have shared so much on this quest. This is the Most High’s business. Would he have put us together and left you defenceless?”
“Apparently,” she breathed.
“I am your defence. I will protect you.”
“It is you I need protecting from! Ah, this is meaningless. All we do is go around in circles. Leave me. I’ll climb your wall.”
Halfway up she turned and snarled at him. “Don’t think I can’t tell what you’re doing. You’re sending me strength, curse you.”
Hugging the wall just below her, he offered no comment apart from a bland smile.
I could never give myself to you, she thought. Not when I have no idea what is going on behind those black eyes.
* * *
The opening led to a narrow corridor, barely wide enough to squeeze through. Stella barked the skin on both knees trying to ease her way past one sharp, stony obstruction.
“All this is new,” Noetos said, indicating the tunnel they were navigating. “The rock is clean. No growth, no patina.”
“Get on, rock expert,” his son said to him, a smile on his open face.
Now there’s one I could have fallen for seventy years ago, Stella admitted to herself.
“It’s the Children’s Room!” Lenares said, her voice drifting back down the corridor to where Stella laboured.
“So we’ve found the House of the Gods?” Kannwar called out.
“Oh yes,” came the reply, from Duon this time.
“Huh,” said the Undying Man under his breath. “I didn’t think it was possible.”
“What wasn’t possible?” Stella asked him.
“To get into one of the Houses apart from using the proper entrances.”
“If you were so doubtful, why did you suggest we all climb up here and risk breaking our necks?”
He smiled crookedly. “I was curious.”
After assembling in what Lenares had called the Children’s Room, the travellers stood and stared at what lay around them. Even those who had been here—wherever it was—before found themselves astonished anew at the room; and those who had not—Cylene, Cyclamere, Bregor and Consina—wandered around the space with their mouths open. Of them all, Cyclamere looked the most troubled. Keppia had forbidden this place to the Padouki. It would no doubt take him time to overcome his unease.
“The child who grew up here must have been enormous,” Bregor said, one hand resting on a bulbous object twice his own height that might have been some sort of baby rattle.
“Children, I think,” Kannwar said. “My suspicion is that the House of the Gods was built by the Most High as a place to raise his two children, the Son and the Daughter.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lenares protested. “The Son and the Daughter were selected as adults from the world of men. How could they have become children?”
“Things were likely much more… fluid back then. Just because Keppia and Umu were adults doesn’t mean they didn’t have to become child-gods. And I’m not entirely sure, Lenares, that either Keppia or Umu were ever what we’d call human.”
He crossed the room to a pile of rocks. “Counting devices, if my guess is correct. Stones from an abacus.”
Bregor grunted what sounded like suspicion, if not outright disbelief, but he did not follow it up with a question. Still in awe of his lord, no doubt. With reason.
The feature of the room that bemused Stella was the open sky above. She knew they ought to have been deep beneath the limestone hill in Zizhua Valley, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the House of the Gods. It seemed as though whenever someone crossed the threshold of the Godhouse they were transported somewhere else.
Lenares came and stood next to her as Stella stared into the cloudless night pierced with stars. “Is it even night in the Zizhua Valley?” the cosmographer wondered aloud, echoing Stella’s own thoughts. “Where exactly are we?”
Stella smiled tiredly at the woman. “What surprises me is that there might be more than one entrance to the House of the Gods in each continent. Seduced by the symmetry, I suppose. Three continents, three entrances, I thought. The place you told me about in Elamaq, by the river… ” A glance at the cosmographer, an unspoken encouragement to supply the name.
“Marasmos,” Lenares said. “But you’re forgetting Nomansland. There was an entrance there too.”
“Hmm. Two in Elamaq then, and two in Bhrudwo: Patina Padouk and Zizhua. I wonder where in Faltha the entrances are, if there are any at all. I would surely have heard of them.”
Kannwar spoke from just behind them. “My guess is that the entrances themselves are fluid. The Patina Padouk entrance is fairly recent, I’m certain of that. It was negotiated with the Padouki in return for… a favour. I suspect neither of the younger gods has been back to Faltha since the Most High brought the First Men north with him after their eviction from Elamaq. No gods, no entrances necessary. “
“So they just wither away from lack of use?
”Kannwar shrugged. “Perhaps we ought to search the House for any unwelcome guests,” he said, raising his eyebrows in Lenares’ direction.
She heads the group in name, but he is the real leader. Stella frowned. Has there ever been a time when Kannwar didn’t get his own way? Aside from the climax of the Falthan War, of course. And in his choice of consort. That was entirely within her own control. She hoped.
“We must find Umu,” Noetos said. “Shall we split up to search for her?”
“No need for that,” Lenares said smugly. “As soon as we entered the House of the Gods I could tell she was here.”
“So what do we do then?” Seren asked on behalf of them all. On Stella’s behalf, at least.
“Everything depends on the huanu stone,” said Lenares.
Mustar grunted. “But we defeated Keppia without the stone. Why not do the same to Umu?”
“Because we received help from Mahudia and all the newly dead.” Lenares frowned. “Mahudia has sacrificed herself by becoming a living tourniquet, holding Keppia on the other side of the Wall of Time. We might be able to muster enough strength to drive Umu out of the world, but it would only be temporary. What we need is something to heal the breach in the wall. Since the breach is magical, and the huanu stone can undo magic, it seems we have a weapon that can win us this battle.”
Stella cleared her throat. “Umu saw what happened to her brother. Do you not think she has thought long and carefully about how to avoid a similar fate?”
“So we will exercise caution,” Kannwar said to her. To them all. “But we are here now, and have an opportunity without parallel. We must strike.”
“But we need a plan,” Stella tried to argue.
“No plan long survives a change in circumstance,” Noetos said, glancing across the room at his old tutor, the Padouki Cyclamere. “What is most important is that we remain flexible.”
“I still want to know how the huanu stone can be used to heal the hole in the world. And if it can, why we haven’t used it before.�
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Stella thought her questions were perfectly legitimate, even pressing, but the others had already moved on.
“Follow me,” Lenares commanded, waving her hand at them.
Oh my, Stella thought worriedly. The last time we found ourselves in the House of the Gods we needed the intervention of the Most High himself to survive—and we did not survive intact. Had everyone forgotten Torve? There he was now, walking awkwardly after Lenares. What might happen this time?
The first serious check came as the travellers passed through a narrow corridor between the Orange Pool Room, in which mist rose from a small pool and allowed itself to be sculpted into ever-changing shapes by a slight breeze, and the Room of Nine Ponds, where each pond was overlooked by a shady palm tree. Lenares had led most of her charges over the threshold when they felt a sudden shift. Looking behind her, Stella realised the rooms had changed position relative to each other. The Rainbow Room had taken the place of the Orange Pool Room. Who had been following her? Noetos, Cylene, Anomer, Arathé, Cyclamere and Duon, who had no doubt gone… somewhere with the Orange Pool Room.
“Damn,” Kannwar said as Stella explained what had happened.
“Indeed,” said Consina. Others nodded their agreement. “Noetos’s huanu stone is crucial. Now it is lost to us.”
“For the moment only, surely,” Lenares responded. “The rooms do all connect up. We just have to be patient.”
“My fear,” Kannwar said slowly, thinking it through, “is that Umu has control of the mechanism for changing the position of the rooms. She has isolated Noetos, and now she can play with the controls, dividing us into smaller and smaller groups.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Lenares said, her face turning pale. Then she brightened. “I bet the mechanism is in the Throne Room. I bet that’s where she is. That’s where we need to go.”
“Perhaps,” said Kannwar. “But we must be cautious.”
Caution, as Stella anticipated, turned out to be Kannwar assuming the leadership from Lenares and instructing them to run between rooms. She doubted the cosmographer was aware of the subtle change, but everyone now addressed their concerns to the Bhrudwan lord.
Beyond the Wall of Time Page 41
