Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “No,” he said.

  Anomer snorted in disgust and turned away.

  “Nevertheless, Sauxa is right,” Noetos continued. “We need to find our two missing companions, whether or not they can provide us with a shortcut to Andratan.”

  “Can we trust the House of the Gods to let us alone?” Cyclamere asked, his face a mask. Noetos wondered how painful had been his capture.

  “We should go in pairs then,” he said. “Enter each new room side by side, so you are not separated. Gather here when you have investigated as much as you are able.”

  “And let us not be too long about it,” Seren said. “I, for one, am in need of sleep.”

  Noetos glanced up at the sky, now full night, with piercing stars scattered across the heavens. They all needed sleep. How long had it been? Since the night before Robal had blown up Zizhua City—how long ago had that been? He rubbed his beard.

  “In pairs,” he said, and began to lead Cylene towards the corridor.

  “Cylene!” Lenares called. “The search doesn’t need us all. Someone needs to work out how Umu controlled the House of the Gods. I’m staying here. Could you stay with me?”

  “No, Noetos,” Cylene said, tugging against him. “I’m going to stay here.”

  My beloved, he thought to insist, then remembered. You’ll never be held against your will, not again. See to your sister.

  “A good idea,” he agreed, the words coming reluctantly from his tongue. “I’ll go with Sautea.”

  “Ah… yes, Noetos,” Sautea said, and came dutifully to his side, leaving Mustar on his own.

  “Problem, old friend?” Noetos asked him.

  “No,” came the abrupt answer.

  It was Sautea, in fact, who discovered Stella and Kannwar—or evidence of their passage. But that discovery came after a number of far more unpleasant discoveries.

  “The entrance to the Rainbow Room is blocked,” Torve reported when the travellers had all gathered back in the Throne Room. “A recent rock fall. An unfortunate accident, if accident it was.”

  Duon frowned. “The same thing has happened to the route back to Zizhua City,” he said. “This cannot be a coincidence.”

  “It seems not,” Sautea said. “Noetos and I found the embers of a fire in the Children’s Room. Did anyone else see it?”

  No, came the replies. They’d all been in the room at some point over the last few hours of searching, but none had seen the embers. Looking for people, they were, not embers, a few said defensively.

  “What do you make of it?” Mustar asked.

  “He’s telling us that Kannwar and Stella have already escaped this place,” Lenares said, “using the blue fire Sauxa told us about. Leaving us behind.”

  “Aye,” said Sauxa, sucking his teeth. “Betrayal, that’s what it is.”

  “Why now?” Bregor asked aloud.

  “Why not sooner?” Noetos countered.

  He did not look at his children for fear of angering them with the look of triumph no doubt plastered on his face.

  “So, they have abandoned us and blocked our paths out of this place,” Duon said. “Is that it then? Quest over?”

  “Hard to believe,” Sauxa said.

  “What, that our journey is at an end?”

  “No, Mister Explorer. Hard to believe that Stella would betray us. I suspect she is not acting under her own volition.”

  “It doesn’t really matter at this point,” Noetos said impatiently. “Though we will be sure to ask her when next we see her. In the meantime, we need to find a way out of here. I do not feel like adding my corpse to that of the priest.”

  “As to that,” Lenares said, “I have some thoughts.”

  Everyone turned to her, and Noetos watched her swell at the attention. He wondered how much she would lie and exaggerate to keep their attention fixed on her. No, he chastised himself. She adores our consideration, but would not lie to obtain it. Our constant failing has been in not listening to her often or closely enough.

  “Gather around,” she said, “and listen.”

  Something dark lurked within her, Stella admitted to herself. Something attracted to dark men, to men who dealt in falsehood, trickery, bullying and death. Something repelled by decency, by ordinariness. How else could she explain her willingness to be seduced time and again by power and its concomitants? Her long rejection of everything good encapsulated in Leith Mahnumsen? Her avid pursuit of Tanghin, who proved to be Deorc of Jasweyah in disguise? And her secret—well, not so secret—desire for the Destroyer himself?

  The door to the Sea Tower closed behind them and soldiers came forward with weapons presented and questions at the ready. Their voices changed from belligerent to respectful as they saw who had come through the door. Stella cared nothing for their conversations, totally absorbed in this belated moment of self-awareness.

  Even after he wounded me near to death and tortured me back to health, I lusted after him, she admitted to herself. I hate him, but want him. She thought of her parents. Ineffectual Pell, her father, his meekness at home and on the village council; kept meek by her mother Herza’s constant criticism. Both powerless to help her older brother with his drunkenness. Neither pleading nor nagging helped. Not an ounce of real strength between them.

  A village boy, Druin, had lusted after her. He’d wanted her body, had said so whenever he’d been able to catch her alone—and sometimes, embarrassingly, in front of her friends or his. Yet something had stirred in her at his words, something wicked, something urging her to dive right in, to immerse herself in this futureless passion, so far removed from the petty nagging and calculation she’d been brought up to believe was virtue.

  By contrast, Leith’s attempts to woo her had been pitiful. An assignation under the village oak, probably for nothing more than awkward conversation; dreadfully shy, he’d never have ventured as far as a quick fumble. It had been too easy to agree with Druin’s cruel assessment of Leith’s intentions. She’d stayed away, leaving him to waste the afternoon under the oak.

  Events had unfolded as they had and she’d fled the village, delighted that her deepest wish was to be granted: a passage out of this dead-end place, new vistas opening up before her. The darkness within her had jumped at the chance.

  Then Wira had come into her life. Poor Wira. Virtuous and handsome but somehow flawed; she’d been able to tell that right from the beginning. Such a contrast to his older brother, Farr, a man with a stick up his backside if ever she’d met one. Of course Wira attracted her. It was because of his flaw she’d been drawn to him, not in spite of it. The darker the man, the stronger the attraction… Wira had been a drunkard, and had died trying to save her from the Lords of Fear. The darkness within her had lamented his death while simultaneously rejoicing in it: such a bright soul dying to save her! How evil she had become, even then.

  A question stirred itself in her mind. “What happened to your Lords of Fear?”

  “A failed experiment, my queen,” said the Destroyer, his voice just behind her in the darkened corridor. The red-haired servant’s torch bobbed some distance ahead. “One that will not be repeated. I ended their lives myself on my return to Andratan.”

  “You didn’t track them all down,” she said. He gave no answer to this.

  They climbed another stair, this one circular, inscribed into the barrel of the Sea Tower. No one save the servant and his torch shared the stair with them. Perhaps the servants go home in the evening, Stella thought, then considered the island. No, this fortress is their home. What a bleak place to live.

  She returned to her thoughts. Between herself and her parents, they had succeeded in birthing and nurturing something dark within her. Something that had lusted after Tanghin without considering the consequences; another man who had appeared to be pure—a member of the Ecc1esia, high in their confidences—while hiding a dark secret. Darker by far than she’d suspected. Tanghin had been Deorc, sent by the Destroyer to Instruere as a vanguard of invasion, a spy to infilt
rate and control the Council of Faltha. A far deeper kind of evil than even her inner darkness had believed possible, let alone contemplated joining with. This was well beyond the delicious excitement of the forbidden and into the terror of the truly depraved. Torturer, executioner, killer. Stella had betrayed him to his master, who turned out to excel in the vices in which Deorc was merely competent.

  Was this dark companion an indivisible part of her, or could she put it aside?

  Seventy years, Stella, and finally you ask the right question.

  She stopped, arrested by the shock of the voice speaking into her mind. The Destroyer bumped into her.

  “Something the matter, my queen?”

  “Apart from being force-marched through the rancid home of the man I hate most in the world, you mean?” she replied sweetly.

  The Destroyer tilted back his head and roared with laughter, each bark echoing—resonating—with the dark tar inside her.

  Can I, Leith? Can I put it aside?

  No, said the most patient and loving man she’d ever known. No, these desires are a part of you, a part of all of us.

  Not of you, surely, she said to him.

  Stella, we all suffer from such things. Take them out—even if it were possible—and you leave behind something less than a human.

  She resumed walking, following the Destroyer now. The link between her and the man in front of her felt more like a string, less like a chain. She wondered at the change and what it might mean.

  There was nothing wrong with wanting more than a small village could offer you, Leith said. Nor in desiring dark and dangerous experiences. What trapped you and led you here was the day you made it the core of who you are. From that day on you sought out abusive relationships and gloried in the pain they brought you.

  Why didn’t you tell me?

  I didn’t understand. Only when I passed through the veil and into the void beyond did I see clearly.

  You were given insight into my problems? she said ruefully.

  He laughed. Only incidentally, dear one. What I saw most clearly were my own problems, and the choices I’d made affixing them to me.

  Too late then, she said. What’s the point of realising where you went wrong when your life is over?

  Over? Leith said, and the question hung between them like the promise of eternity.

  Ahead of her the Destroyer unlocked a door and stepped out into the night air. She followed, to find herself on a roofed walkway high above one of the fortress’s keeps. People and animals moved about far below.

  And besides, your life here has not yet ended, Leith added.

  She acknowledged the corollary. I, therefore, can benefit from the knowledge.

  Indeed, he said.

  She smiled at his voice. Stay with me a while?

  As long as I can, he said.

  Lenares pushed her mind as far as it would go, thinking furiously. She paced around the Throne Room, climbed first one then another of the three great chairs arranged around the great bronze map set into the ground, and stared at the map, searching for inspiration. Occasionally one of the others tried to speak with her, but she waved them away. Well meaning but ignorant, of no help here.

  The bronze map held immense fascination for Lenares. She remembered the power she’d felt when, on her second visit to the Godhouse, she’d climbed into one of the seats and first understood the map. It was a wonder of the world without a doubt, representing a way of thinking beyond even her imagination. Distance wasn’t measured in leagues on this map; instead the scale was logarithmic, and the size of things was large in the centre and shrank towards the edges. The Elamaq Diminiq, the most southern of Elamaq’s peninsulas and a vast ice-locked land, took barely more space on the periphery of the bronze map than the House of the Gods had in the map’s centre, despite being many thousands of times larger. Scale, she reminded herself, is far less important than distance and bearing. There had to be a reason for this, but she could not work it out.

  Umu had used this room to control the House of the Gods. She had been able to come and go from the House without using the entrances. What was her secret? Was it something stemming from her godhood, or something intrinsic to the Throne Room? It had to be the latter, it had to be: why else would she have come to this room if any of the other rooms might have served equally well?

  Despite Lenares’ repeated signals intended to tell Cylene she wished to be left alone, her sister joined her on her search. She wanted to tell Cylene to go away, but could you say things like that to a sister? It had been so long she couldn’t remember… she supposed not. And she didn’t want Cylene to go away, not really, not now, leaving her alone with no cosmographers, no Mahudia, no family.

  The sisters walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, asking their companions to move despite many of them having settled down to sleep. A few grumbled, but moved when Lenares reminded them of their predicament.

  “You love Torve, don’t you?” Cylene asked her as they walked.

  Lenares turned away from her sister, highly embarrassed for some reason. Certainly not a logical reason: love was nothing to be ashamed of, and she’d had no difficulty in talking about her feelings for Torve to a square full of strangers. This was her sister! Of course, that might be the problem.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile as she nodded to Cylene. “Yes,” she said. “He makes me go pink.”

  Her sister raised her eyebrows at this. “Hmm. How many others have you loved before?”

  “You mean love between girl and boy?”

  “Well, unless you’re more broad-minded than I suspect, yes, love between a girl and a boy.”

  It took Lenares a moment to figure out what Cylene meant by this. “Why do you steer every conversation away into irrelevant places?” she complained.

  Cylene frowned. “Humour, sister. We’re trapped in a frightening place. Even I can feel the strangeness here and I have no magic at all. I don’t know if we’ll ever get out. So I try to make you feel better, to take your mind off the seriousness of our situation, by making you laugh.”

  “But I don’t want to laugh. And I certainly don’t want my mind taken off finding a way out of here.”

  Her sister nodded politely, but Lenares could tell she was angered by the rebuff. They continued for a while in silence, running their hands over the rocks within their reach, looking for some clue to understand how the room functioned.

  “What do you mean, Torve makes you go pink?”

  Lenares clicked her tongue. How could she concentrate with such interference?

  You’re angry because you’re embarrassed, she told herself. That’s not reason enough.

  “Torve is the first man who makes me… makes me want to lie with him,” she admitted.

  “You mean you’ve never lain with a man?”

  The surprised look on her sister’s face compounded Lenares’ embarrassment. “Why would I? I haven’t loved any man before.”

  “Why? Because it feels so wonderful, that’s why.”

  “You’re lying with Noetos.”

  “Of course!” Cylene smiled. “He’s a wonderful man. I think I’m falling in love with him.”

  “He’s a grumpy old man with a bad temper and he’s mean to his children,” Lenares said without thinking. At Cylene’s stricken look, she put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. Sorry… ”

  Cylene shrugged. “He appears that way, doesn’t he? But he’s been through a great deal. I can understand why he’s protective of his children: after all, he has lost an entire family, and saw his wife cut down only a few months ago. But he’s a sensitive fellow under all that grumpiness. And he’s not old, not really, not compared to… ” She faltered.

  “Compared to what?” Lenares didn’t like it when people left things unsaid.

  Cylene squared her shoulders. “Compared to many other men I’ve slept with.”

  “You’ve been in love with men even older than Noetos?”

  “Not in love
, no. Lenares, for a clever person, you really don’t know much about how the world works, do you?”

  Why was her sister insulting her? It’s been nice talking to you, she wanted to say, but go away now and let me search on my own. But she couldn’t say that: the first part was a lie, and the second part was too truthful. Learning to live, really live, with other people on their terms was very difficult. She sighed. Why couldn’t they all behave sensibly, like her?

  “I slept with many men I didn’t love, didn’t have any pink feelings towards, and some who revolted me, so I could escape Sayonae and my family. Do you think I would have been better to stay on the steading?”

  “They paid you money to sleep with them?”

  “Yes,” Cylene said.

  “Oh. That I can understand. It sounds like a sensible arrangement, actually. If you need food and clothing, and they have… urges, it makes a good trade. Better than staying with Martje and those dreadful boys.”

  Cylene regarded Lenares, wide-eyed. “Sister, you are a constant surprise to me. I love you.” And she wrapped Lenares in a hug.

  Don’t touch… The words died on her lips.

  They completed their third circuit of the room, then moved back to the centre where the chairs stood. Lenares wished she knew what she was looking for; her numbers helped to a certain extent, but the purpose of the three chairs and the bronze map remained tantalisingly hidden from her.

  “Was our father like Noetos?” she blurted to her sister.

  “What? Of course not! No similarity at all, apart from the age. Don’t you remember Father?”

  “No. I know he must have existed, and I’ve been told the bad things he did to me—to us—but there is no picture of him in my mind.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because if I were you,” Lenares said carefully, “I would be worried that I was loving Noetos only because he was like Father.”

  “A substitute, you mean? Lenares, how horrid!”

  “But isn’t it possible, sister? We had a bad father, so now you’ve fallen in love with someone you think is a good father?”

  “Oh, I thought you meant… Well, yes, that is probably part of it, though there have been many other older men—Captain Kidson, for example—and I never wanted… Ah, Lenares, you ask the most awkward questions.”