Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “You started it.”

  “Indeed I did. And what I realise now is that while we are sisters—twins—we couldn’t be more different. You’ve slept with no one, I’ve slept with everyone. You think logically, I think emotionally. You’re clever, I’m… well, slow.”

  “Noetos says he loves how you are able to cut through words and get to the heart of a person,” Lenares said.

  “He told you that?”

  “No, I heard him talking to his son. But I think you and I are alike, sister. We’ve walked very different paths, but we are still twins.”

  “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better,” Cylene said, and her smile warmed Lenares’ heart.

  “Wait here a moment,” she said. “I want to keep talking, but I need to go to relieve myself.”

  Not that it really mattered where in the room she went; there was no privacy here. She left Cylene leaning against one of the chairs and walked towards the wall in the deepest shadow. As she strode past another of the chairs she reached out and slapped a stone leg in frustration.

  Beside her the bronze map flickered.

  “I am a fool,” Lenares breathed to herself. Such a colossal fool. Where had her wits gone? Of course, her attention had been distracted by Cylene’s well-meaning conversation. But it was more than that. Lenares had been making an effort to fit in, to be like the others. She had to learn more about how to be human or how could she lead them? This journey had changed her, she could see that. No longer did she count every step. Once, she would have had a total for the number of rocks in this room she’d touched, the number of words she’d spoken in a day; even on a bad day the number of stars visible in the night sky. She’d stayed indoors at night for that reason.

  Was it wrong to want to be like others? To be thought of as human and not as some kind of animal?

  Yes. If it meant losing her gift, yes. Yes, if it meant becoming someone different. Yes, if it meant she was condemning her friends to a slow death in this many-roomed trap.

  But there was no danger of that, not now. The key had fallen into her hand. So simple. She sighed. Time to be Lenares as hard as she could.

  She woke them, ignoring their complaints—they were just ordinary people, after all, ruled by their bodies—and made them stand in a circle around the bronze map.

  “I have a question for Torve and Captain Duon,” she said. “Why did Umu return the bronze map to this room?”

  “What do you mean?” Duon answered her, but even as the question slipped out of his mouth, comprehension dawned on his face.

  Lenares willed him on, wanting him to work out what it implied. The four southern survivors of the Valley of the Damned—Lenares, Torve, Duon and Dryman—had been corralled into Nomansland, where they were trapped in the House of the Gods. There, in the Throne Room, they were snatched up by a god, chair, bronze map and all, and deposited in Raceme. The huge, circular bronze image had landed on top of Lenares, knocking the breath from her.

  Torve saw it more quickly even than the explorer. “The map was ripped away from this room when we were taken up by the god and dropped in Raceme. Yet here it is now. Umu must have gone to a great deal of effort to bring it back.”

  Lenares smiled. “Umu has rebuilt the chairs and retrieved the bronze map. There can be only one reason. They are the components of the secret mechanism.”

  She scrambled up onto the chair she associated with the Father. “Cylene!” she called excitedly. “Get up in the chair nearest you!”

  Dear sister, she did what she was asked without question. Who else should Lenares ask but Torve?

  “Torve! Please, Torve, could you climb the remaining chair?”

  Yes! she exulted as Cylene reached the seat and sat herself down in it. Immediately her rear made contact with the stone, the numbers embedded in the bronze map changed… amplified… began to make sense. There were just as many lines and names on the map as before, but some of them thickened and changed colour, making the whole map easier to read. Now, if only there was a legend.

  Torve sat on the third chair. For the first time in who knew how long, all three chairs were occupied. Not by gods, but did that matter?

  Everyone in the circle gasped as the map began to glow as though backlit with sunlight. The room filled with light, and the travellers cast huge shadows on the walls behind them.

  Yes, yes, yes!

  The legend appeared. Not that it was really needed now: Lenares could read the map as though it was a part of her own mind.

  Oh, of course. The centre of the map wasn’t in the same place as she remembered from Marasmos, because they were much further north now. The bronze map was centred in the Bhrudwan continent, and Elamaq and Faltha were small and stretched around the periphery of the map. Bhrudwo was much larger, and many places were marked. One colour for towns, another for roads—all named, if she looked closely enough—a third for rivers. And so it went. Forests, bays, oceans, mountains.

  But the legend had far more on it than mere physical features. It was the oddest legend Lenares had ever seen on a map, and she had seen—and drawn—plenty of them as part of her training. She focused on the heading “Fear” and the map changed. Muttering from below indicated the others saw the change too. The names were still there, but they had turned grey and become smaller. Instead, the map was covered by shades of red. A pinprick of bright red pulsed in the room at the centre of the map—the room they were in. She desired to see this more closely, and the map obliged. She found she was looking down on the back of her own head, and in the centre of the bronze map was… a bronze map, which, if she looked more closely—no. She stopped, worried that she might be starting down a never-ending path.

  Could she enlarge other areas of the map? Anywhere else wouldn’t entail the sick-making effect she’d just experienced.

  Talamaq, her mind said. Immediately she was drawn down into the map—or the map swelled, she couldn’t tell which—and the red-coloured city spread out before her, just as it appeared on the maps she had studied in the city’s scholarium. Oh. Thinking the name sent her down, so that she hovered just above the scholarium itself, an annexe to the Talamaq Palace. The view readjusted.

  Something odd was happening. She could actually see the heads of people running to and fro across the map—although not a map: at this scale, she was seeing the physical world as it actually was, watching events as they happened. Everything was covered in a deep red wash. The scholarium’s glass roof was broken and smoke spiralled up towards her, borne away to her left on a sea breeze. Part of the palace was in flames, and as she looked more closely she saw that the people were fighting with each other. Some lay prone on the ground. She almost found herself shouting down to the figures, warning them of soldiers approaching from around a corner. She doubted they would hear her—and, of course, she had no idea what side she should take, if any.

  Voices were calling out to her, but she ignored them: not from the map. Fear? Was this a map of fear? Well, there was certainly enough fear in this room to show up as a red patch on the map. In fact, it had grown since she’d first changed the legend. Hah. Just like her, her companions had been frightened when she’d swooped in for a closer look. Where else did fear lie? Another scarlet blob lay on—she zoomed closer—an island off the coast of Malayu. Ah, Andratan. That made sense. Other places she knew glowed red: Aneheri, Raceme. And Talamaq, of course. She greatly wished she could return there.

  Back to the legend. “Wealth” said one heading. “Love.” “Weather.” “Wars.” Oh my. She so wanted to explore, but there wasn’t time, she knew that. Her body shook with excitement, the glory of revelation almost overwhelming her. Oh, if I could only sit here forever.

  One more thing to try. She reached into the map with her mind and touched one of the rooms of the Godhouse. Immediately it was outlined in gold. She tugged it to her left, and all the rooms changed places. She tore her gaze away from the map in time to see the corridor out of the room blur.

  So t
hat’s how she did it.

  Lenares could not resist the sweet feeling of power pulsing through her body. So this is what it is like to be a god.

  In her exalted state she almost missed the last heading. “Travel” it said, in small letters.

  Containing her excitement, she mentally indicated the heading and the map reverted to its initial appearance—but now threads snaked out of the map, connected to every feature, and up into the night sky. She needed no explanation as to what this was.

  “Duon!” she said, her voice not much more than a croak. “Take hold of that thread there! No, the one to the right, the one marked ‘Andratan.’ ”

  “Wait, everyone,” Noetos said. “Think about this. I know what this looks like, but we have no way of knowing what will happen if one of us does as Lenares asks.”

  “But it says ‘Travel’!” Lenares said, agitated.

  “And I’m sure that’s what it allows us to do,” the fisherman said reasonably. “But why not take a moment to test it? The room next to this has an orange thread. I’ll take hold of that thread and see what happens. If it works as we think it will, I’ll be back amongst you in a moment. If not, well.” He stepped forward and leaned over the map.

  “Someone else,” Cylene said. Lenares didn’t think her sister had intended to say the words aloud.

  Sauxa snatched the thread in his beefy hand and nodded to the fisherman. “More expendable, me.”

  “Aye,” said Noetos, and nodded back.

  What should Lenares say? Was intent enough, or was there some magic word? Examining the legend was no help: the word “Travel” was now lit in the same orange as the thread the plainsman held in his hand.

  The answer, she supposed, was the obvious one.

  “Travel,” she said.

  Sauxa vanished.

  A thin orange line appeared in the next room, spearing up into the sky. Or, Lenares corrected, spearing down into the room.

  A few moments later Sauxa came walking back into the Throne Room. “That was… odd,” he said.

  “Can we go now?” Cylene called from her seat.

  “Not just yet,” Noetos said. “Sauxa, we need to repeat the experiment.”

  “Why?” the plainsman asked. But Lenares knew.

  “We need to know if we can make a return journey,” said the fisherman.

  It was disconcerting to see Sauxa vanish, but even more so to see him return. One moment gone, the next moment there.

  “I can return myself,” he reported. “Just by keeping hold of the thread and saying the word ‘Travel.’ ”

  “A third time, my friend,” Noetos said.

  This time even the old man understood. “You want to see what happens if I release the thread.”

  A few moments later he returned to report success. “It just hung there in the darkness.”

  Noetos leaned across the map and grabbed a strand, then vanished.

  “Such an impulsive man,” Sautea said. “I know exactly where he’s gone.”

  An odd comment, Lenares thought, as his destination, Fossa, was marked clearly on the map. But the older fisherman wasn’t looking at the map, staring instead into the night sky as though expecting to see his friend returning, sliding down the thread as though it was a rope.

  Noetos reappeared about ten minutes later. “We have a problem,” he said.

  “Oh?” Bregor said. “What’s happened to Fossa?”

  “Nothing beyond what we already knew,” the fisherman replied, wiping at his eyes. “Houses burned, no sign of anyone from what I could see, no lights, boats lying around in the harbour or beached on the rocks. Deserted, destroyed, desolate. That’s not what I meant.”

  Bregor gave a huge sigh. “What then?”

  “I didn’t end up in Fossa,” he said. “The beam of light deposited me at the top of the Cliff of Memory, about half an hour’s walking distance from the centre of town. It took me a few minutes to work out where I was, actually.”

  “The map is inaccurate?” Moralye said, alarmed.

  “A little, I think,” Noetos acknowledged. “Enough to be of concern.”

  “Only a few minutes’ walk,” Consina said. “Better than walking from here!”

  “I’ve worked with maps and charts before, and inaccurate charts are dangerous things,” said the fisherman. “Unmarked shoals, hidden reefs, islands marked on the map but not really there. Hegeoma, what would have happened had I arrived, say, ten minutes’ walk out to sea?”

  “Oh,” the woman said, and nodded acknowledgment to him.

  “Well, we may not be able to get to Andratan,” Seren said, “but at least we can come close. The sooner we start, the more time we have to walk the extra distance required.”

  “Or swim,” Mustar said quietly.

  “We can do better than that,” Lenares said, her mind whirling. “I suspect the map was damaged when it fell into Raceme. Bent, perhaps, out of its perfect shape. So all we have to do is send people to various parts of the world and measure the extent to which the map is inaccurate. I can then calculate the degree of error for travel to Andratan.”

  “We’d be trusting to your figuring?” Noetos said.

  “Unless you think you can do better,” she snapped back at him.

  The next hour was likely the strangest in their lives, Lenares considered. Certainly of their journeys so far. One by one she sent people to their chosen destinations: Moralye to Dhauria, Sauxa to Instruere, Seren to Eisarn Pit, Sautea and Mustar to Fossa, as they could not be persuaded otherwise, Bregor to Raceme, Cyclamere to the canopy at Patina Padouk, Consina to Makyra Bay. Everyone but Sauxa and Bregor wanted to go to their own towns; if it were her, Lenares considered, she’d go somewhere storied and exotic, like Crynon or Lake Pouna. Or Ilixa Island, which until this moment had been considered a legend. She ached to take one of those threads in her hand and travel there, but she dared not move from her seat. The travellers might be able to leave their threads and return, but the cosmographer doubted she could climb down from the seat without dire consequences. She imagined the threads winking out, her companions left on their own with no hope of resuming their adventure.

  She wondered how many of them would return. Would any of them opt to resume their lives at home, leaving the contention with Umu to others?

  Sauxa reappeared first. “Nothing wrong with the map,” he said. “I appeared in the middle of the Great Hall of Instruere, exactly as I intended. Gave a few fellows putting out chairs quite a fright.” He laughed shortly, then frowned. “Things aren’t going so well there, it seems. The Koinobia have taken over the city, according to one fellow I spoke to. Guardsmen replaced by priests, citizens forced into Hal worship, public houses closed or converted into places of worship. Violence in the streets, so the lad said.”

  “Didn’t he wonder about the beam of coloured light?” Torve asked.

  “Didn’t see it,” the plainsman said. “Said he didn’t anyway, and he had no reason to lie. Queen Stella needs to go back there and straighten that Koinobia out. Put this Halite thing down.”

  Moralye and Seren returned within moments of each other. The scholar echoed Sauxa’s comments about the accuracy of the map, explaining how she had appeared within ten paces of the door to the scriptorium. “I walked in and that blind oaf Palanget greeted me as if I hadn’t been away. Didn’t anyone notice I’d gone?”

  “But you returned,” Lenares prompted.

  “I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough,” Moralye said, her face sour. “I’d rather be a part of making history than stuck in the darkness reading about it.”

  Seren shook his head at Lenares’ enquiry. “I walked for a thousand paces or more,” he said, “before I came across the Altima Road. Even then I was perhaps another hour’s journey on foot from the pit, not a journey I’d undertake at night on my own.”

  “In what direction would you have had to travel from the beam of light to go directly to the pit?” Bearing and distance, she wanted to demand of them. Gi
ve me bearing and distance! But these were ordinary people and didn’t calculate such things as a matter of course.

  “Seven thousand paces, give or take, in a sou’souwest direction.”

  Hopefully not much give or take. Sou’souwest? She converted it into proper directions—just to the daughterwards of fatherback—and considered the result. A greater distortion than that Noetos had experienced and in a different direction. Maximum distortion, then, to be expected between the two.

  Confirmed by Consina when she returned from Makyra Bay—or, at least, from as close to it as she could come. Out of breath, she explained how she’d run hard along the North Road and finally found the top of the cliff, and had spent no more than a regretful moment staring down at the darkness where her town used to be.

  Bregor’s return added further confirmation. “Raceme is on fire,” he said, puffing out the words. “All is confusion. I could hear the shouting and the crackling of the flames from atop the hills beyond the Shambles. Wanted to go closer but I would probably just have met my death.”

  When the last of the travellers had returned, Lenares smiled at them as confidently as she could. “The map is dented, not badly distorted. I have calculated the error for the region of Andratan and have chosen a feature from the map to travel to. If you please, I want to make one final test: I do not want to end up swimming for my life in Malayu Bay.”

  “What test?” Noetos asked, impatience in his voice.

  “Send someone to Malayu itself,” she said. “It’s near enough to Andratan that the amount of error is almost exactly the same. If I select a feature the error-distance away, the traveller should be transported into the heart of Malayu.”

  “Lenares,” Noetos said, his arms wide, “we would have been literally lost without you. None of us could have worked this out for ourselves. You are a marvel. But there just isn’t the time to check everything. We must trust you. Let us leave.”

  “Really?” she asked, her eyes shining.