Beyond the Wall of Time (26 page)

This is not a spike? You are not controlling me from somewhere else?

A laugh echoed in his mind.
I need a body, and here yours lay cooling.

How did I die?
Real fear began to grow, though it was a strange fear, not affecting his glands or his muscles.

I do not know, and I do not care. From your injuries it appears you were beaten perhaps, or you fell. Given the cliff above
us, I’d guess the latter.

Injuries?

Oh dear, I’ve picked a clever one. Of course injuries. Your legs are shattered, your back is broken, your skull shattered
and your heart has failed.

But I’m standing now and I don’t feel any pain.

You’ll never feel anything again,
Umu said.
I’m doing the feeling for you.

It has been many centuries since I enjoyed physical sensations, and while this is not pleasant, it is better than the void.
You see, your body is not alive. I am merely animating it with magic. It will not do to allow anyone too close, but there
are advantages. I can, for example, walk with fractured legs.

He—she—took a few steps, and he could hear the crunching of bones and gristle. His fear crested—
this is real, it is not a dream
—and he thought he would go mad.

Please, let me go!

If I let you go you will find yourself in the void. Surely an unsurpassed intimate view of my triumph is better than that?

Why did Keppia dig me out? I thought you and your brother hated each other!

Oh, we do. Once we have killed or enslaved your friends and broken asunder the Wall of Time, we will fight again. But until
then we will cooperate.

“Does he understand yet?” Dryman’s body asked.

“He’s beginning to,” Conal’s body replied. No, not Conal’s body. Umu’s body. “Perhaps he’ll appreciate his position a little
better on the way back to Stella and her friends.”

What are you going to do with me?

With you? Nothing. I am going to take this body and use it to bring mayhem to those you ought to have trusted.

She began rummaging through his memories, pushing and prodding his body from the inside, matching her movements to his gait,
her expressions to his.

You were rather an unpleasant person
, she said to him.
I’m sure no one liked you. They are certain to hate you after I’ve finished with you.

Despite her boast that she could propel his injured body, it was so badly damaged she had to take the time to exercise some
rough healing. Bones fused together, skin healed, and something akin to blood flowed through his veins. She had walked him
backwards and forwards, perfecting his slightly waddling gait, laughing and taunting him all the while.

Now he stood at the lip of a giant hole in the ground. His friends—he truly thought of them as friends now, in contrast to
the enemy that had hold of him—looked up at his greeting. He could not fight it. He was a puppet with the strings cut.

“Conal!” Stella cried, a smile on her face.

Inside his tiny prison Conal shrieked. Far, far better to be dead and gone than to watch this.

“Where are the others?” asked Noetos’s brat. “Where are my father and sister? Have you seen them?”

A memory stirred: a whirl of arms and legs, falling. A pact he’d tried to pull out of. Arathé explaining how one of them needed
to die in order to break Husk’s hold on them all. His memories, lying open to Umu.

“I have seen Arathé,” she said through his mouth. “She and Duon are well.”

“Where are they?” pressed Anomer.

Not a question Umu could answer. “They will be here soon,” she temporised. “In the meantime, what are our plans?”

The cosmographer girl stared at her, at him. Conal tried to prevent Umu from accessing his memories, but she rifled through
them.
Bah, I know all that, she said. With her strange powers she will see through me very soon. Therefore she must be our first
target.

“What has happened to you, Conal?” Lenares said as he drew closer, walking carefully around the rim of the hole.

Umu’s thoughts flashed across his mind like fireflies. “I was badly hurt,” he said, pulling a pitiful face. “About to die.
But I used some residual magic from my captivity by Husk to heal myself. It is no wonder I appear different.”

Curse Umu’s cleverness.

“That could be it,” Lenares said doubtfully. “But who is Husk?”

“Sit down, everyone, and I will tell you,” said his mouth.

When they had done so, Umu began his sorry tale, tapping his memories. She kept largely to the facts, surprising Conal. The
key difference was, of course, his death: Umu told her listeners that the combined effects of three falls were enough to break
Husk’s hold over them. “He is now no longer a factor in this conflict,” she concluded, “likely licking his wounds in Andratan.”

“Andratan?” said half a dozen voices.

Umu quailed inside Conal’s body. She’d made a mistake of some kind perhaps. The priest rejoiced.

Kannwar stood, towering above him, his shadow falling across Conal’s face. “This voice controlling you called himself Husk
and dwells in Andratan?”

Conal’s head nodded.

The tall man, possessor of so much power it unnerved even Umu, turned to Stella, his face clouded with anger. “I know who
this man is. You and I, we have made a huge mistake.”

“Doesn’t anyone want to hear my plan?” Lenares said, but the others were no longer paying her any attention.

“I do, tell me,” said Conal’s mouth.

But even Lenares turned away, wandering over to where Stella and Kannwar sat, heads together.

Umu ground Conal’s teeth in frustration.

“
I
’
VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING
like it,” Kilfor said.

Sauxa stepped carefully over another body. “Course you haven’t. We’re from the plains, boy; we don’t get storms like that
one, ulcers to its black soul. ’Cept, of course, the whirlwinds of 990. Now there were storms set to blow your teeth out your—”

“Enough of your foolish stories,” Kilfor said, not un-gently. “This was not a normal storm.”

“Oh? You’re an expert on Bhrudwan weather then?”

Kilfor pushed aside a splintered and broken pile of timbers. “No, of course not.”

“Well then.” The old man folded his arms, his smug expression indicating he thought he’d won the argument.

“But the people who lived in this village would have been experts,” Kilfor said. “If storms like this one were commonplace,
they would not have been slaughtered like this.”

“Huh,” Sauxa said grudgingly, unfolding his arms.

The two men arrived at the end of the street. At least, it was the end of the street now: the paved road ended in a newly
formed cliff twenty feet high. Between them and the sea, a hundred paces distant, lay a pile of mangled wreckage. The upturned
hulls of fishing boats, timber from houses, large tree trunks, boulders and bodies—everywhere, bodies—were covered in a thin
layer of sand. Seagulls and other winged scavengers fought over any morsel they could find, whether fish or human flesh. Beyond
the wreckage, which stretched as far as Kilfor could see in either direction, the sea lapped gently.

The stench was unbearable.

“Huge waves smashed the village to a pulp,” Kilfor said. “The wind would have been bad enough: we’ve seen what it did to the
farmhouses and barns inland. Like I said. No normal storm.”

Kilfor and Sauxa had made their way east and then south through the fringes of Patina Padouk, beginning their long walk home
to Chardzou. They had seen the clouds forming out to sea, their plainsman’s weather sense warning them to hurry southwards.
Even so, they had been forced to take shelter in a shallow limestone cave, while all around them the violent wind ripped trees
up by the roots. They had sheltered for a day, venturing out only when the storm had ended, to find the great forest decimated.
A few trees remained standing, stripped of leaves and branches, while the majority of the forest lay broken on the ground,
bare trunks pointing to the northeast like accusatory fingers.

The two men had looked at each other for a few minutes; then, without a word being said, turned and made their way north,
back from where they had come.

“Can’t leave Robal and his friends to deal with this,” Sauxa said eventually.

“They might need help,” Kilfor agreed.

“Even that magician might not have been able to protect them,” Sauxa added.

They had emerged from Patina Padouk—or what was left of its northern marches—on a bluff overlooking the remnants of a fishing
village. There had been a pier, Kilfor thought, judging by the few bent piles some distance out to sea. There had been fishing
vessels. They had passed two of them an hour or so back, wedged high up in trees. The men had wondered what else there had
been, and what might be left.

Now they knew. What was left were flies, millions of them, and a liberal coating of debris.

“How many people do you think lived here?” Kilfor asked his father.

“A thousand perhaps. I don’t know. I’m not skilled at estimating the size of places like this.”

“Why not? You spent enough time inside their taverns and dosshouses.”

“Inside being the operative word,” the old man said.

There was no heart in their sparring, it was a reflexive action.

“No one alive.”

“I don’t know about that.” Sauxa leaned forward, better to look to his right along the beach, to where the coast curved around
to a headland. “Look there.” He pointed. “Tell me what your young eyes see.”

Kilfor squinted. “There’s wreckage, lots of it. It looks like a boat—no, a ship. A large ship.”

“I could see that,” said his father. “What else?”

“Movement,” Kilfor concluded after a long look. “Can’t tell what.”

“People clambering over the wreckage?”

“More like birds, I think, after whatever food the ship was carrying.”

“We had better see if there are any survivors who need our help,” Sauxa said.

Kilfor laughed. “Better see if any treasure needs our help is what you mean.”

“If we can’t help the people, we’ll help ourselves,” said the old man, chuckling. “Come on.”

The day was about done by the time the two plainsmen reached the wreck. As the fiery sun set behind them, it lit up the cracked
and broken timbers of the ship’s hull with a golden glow. Spars and masts littered the beach around the shipwreck. Apart from
the groaning of overstretched timber, the scene was silent.

“Where are the people you saw?” Sauxa asked.

“Hola!” cried Kilfor. “Anyone there?”

A flock of brightly coloured birds leapt into the air at his shout, arrowing away towards the headland to his left.

“No one. Come, boy, let us examine the ship more closely. It might be to our advantage.”

Kilfor felt uneasy about this. “Father, I have no objection to taking whatever valuables we might find. But Robal might be
lying under a tree somewhere. I think we ought first to assure ourselves our friends are well before spending time searching
for treasure.”

“Fine sentiments,” Sauxa said, smiling. “At first light tomorrow we head back to the place we left him. But we can’t travel
anywhere now, can we? Look, the sun is about to set. Do you fancy walking through this land at night, with the bodies of the
dead everywhere and debris ready to ensnare you? We’re here now; what harm in having a look?”

Kilfor had to laugh. The old man was clever still.

The travellers sat in a wide semicircle, Kannwar and Stella at its centre. Ten hard faces, all wearing accusatory expressions,
sitting in judgment on them. Stella wanted to weep.

They had every right to be judgmental. The story Kann war had told was an evil one, with few redeeming features, and even
Stella had not known it all. The bare facts seemed to confirm everything Falthans believed about the Destroyer and his consort.
She knew that after the telling had ended they would be fortunate to keep any of their companions.

Deorc of Jasweyah was a very ambitious man, Kannwar had said. The mountainous land of Jasweyah was an amalgam of various kingdoms,
always warring, requiring much intervention on the part of Andratan—until Deorc rose to power and changed everything. From
being a drain on the Undying Man’s resources, Jasweyah under Deorc was transformed into a net exporter of men and produce.
Kannwar rewarded Deorc for this by promoting him to Lord of Andratan Keep, second in the Bhrudwan Empire only to the Undying
Man himself.

Deorc had not wanted the promotion, apparently being content to rule in Jasweyah, yet he could not resist the Undying Man’s
summons. In truth, Kannwar told them, he promoted the young magician to keep him under close surveillance, fearing he would
lead another rebellion. Deorc was clever enough to know this, yet not strong enough to refuse.

So began years of planning for the invasion of Faltha. Deorc lobbied to be granted the leadership of the Undying Man’s mighty
army, but was refused. That honour would not be given to anyone but the Destroyer himself. Instead, Deorc was given the task
of infiltrating Faltha and using his magical power to corrupt the Falthan leadership.

Instruere, Stella explained, was Faltha’s largest city, a city independent of the sixteen kingdoms that made up the land of
the First Men. Here the sixteen Arkhoi—each an ambassador, the representative of their king—met to coordinate the government
of the land. So it was to Instruere that Deorc took himself, and in Instruere he settled, beginning his task of deception
and betrayal. He seduced members of the Council of Faltha, offering Arkhos after Arkhos whatever they desired, until he held
a majority in the Council. Instruere’s defences were neglected under his dominion, and plans were laid to open the gates to
the Undying Man’s army when, in the fullness of time, his master chose to invade.

But resistance had arisen in the form of a group of northerners, led by Leith and Hal Mahnumsen. Their parents had been taken
captive by four Lords of Fear, a response to Mahnum having discovered the timing of the coming invasion. Leith and Hal, along
with other villagers, pursued the Lords of Fear and rescued their parents, ending up in Instruere. Stella explained that she
had been one of those villagers.