Beyond the Wall of Time (35 page)

I did not think to use magic
, she replied.
A trained magician’s first instinct would be to employ a shield. I don’t think anyone would be capable of actually defusing
the earthquake itself.

To have been a trained magician would have meant learning how to exploit others. This you did not want to do. I approve.

Yet I do it all the time. It seems there is a new crisis every hour of every day. I took from you what I would not take from
those poor prisoners in Andratan.

You took nothing
, he sent.
I gave it.

Such intensity
, she thought, and held the idea deep in her mind, not allowing it to leak into her surface thoughts.
I thought he was such a weak man, dry and passionless, when first I met him. Yet he accompanied my father and aided him in
his defeat of the Neherians, and confronted his Emperor even though he knew the man had become a god.

I could have killed you without meaning to
, she sent.
Could have drained you dry.

No one was thinking clearly at the time. All we wanted to do was to protect Cylene. We failed. Arathé, if we cannot even protect
ourselves, how can we overcome the gods?

She mind-smiled at him.
Husk has given me some ideas
, she said, but did not elaborate.

You’re worried about your father. I know you want to go searching for him, but if you do, he may resent it. I’m sure he’s
safe. You still have a connection to him, so you would know if he was in serious trouble.

Only if he asks for help.

You’re right; we should try to find him.

Despite this thought, she could see he still wasn’t sure.

Cyclamere’s most likely with him
, he sent.

She had forgotten that.
Oh yes, the man who trained him. He’ll be a levelling influence, for certain.

Perhaps the Padouki removed Cylene’s body from the beach.

During an earthquake?

Duon had a wonderful heart, but sometimes she wondered about his common sense. Actually, she supposed, the fact that they
were here was compelling evidence that none of them had any common sense.

Then who took it?

Duon, I was thrown clear into the forest. Cylene may have ended in the sea, or further in the trees. She might have been buried
by one of those sand fountains. Of all our troubles, her missing body is low on the list.

She sensed the fright in his mind before he expressed his thought. In a very odd moment, she shared his vision: he was looking
out over the bay as he spoke, and she saw it through his eyes while facing towards the forest. The ocean was emptying of water.
The crazy phenomenon was accompanied by a loud sucking noise.

Where is it going?

At that moment, in a reversal of the previous sensation, she felt Duon look through her eyes to see her father stagger into
view.

Noetos lumbered forward like a bear, blood streaming from a cut to his scalp. Eyes wide and unfocused, he didn’t seem to notice
his children rushing towards him.

“Where is she?” he growled. “Where is she?”

“Father, we don’t know,” Anomer said, and waited for the explosion.

“I am here,” said another voice.

Unbelievably, Cylene herself emerged from the forest.

“How are you alive?” Noetos asked, his voice filled with wonder.

It was the question Anomer wanted an answer to. Alarms began to sound in his head as Cylene started her explanation.
This is not right. People don’t come back to life just because their deaths are tragic.
Dozens of unlikely things had happened since the gods had begun to break the world, but happy endings had not been a part
of any of them. Through his connection with his sister he could sense she too was uneasy.

“I died,” Cylene said, her voice husky with pain. “There was a noise, then the ship smashed down on top of me. It broke my
back and forced my face into the water.” She took a strained breath. “I tried to breathe, but all I could take in was water.”

“You drowned,” Noetos said.

He hovered over Cylene like a mother hen, kneeling beside her as she sat against a fallen trunk. He obviously wanted to embrace
her, but just as clearly was concerned that she might still be injured.

She gazed up at the fisherman and Anomer’s breath caught in his throat. Had her eyes always been this dark? Was this an effect
of the drowning?

“Yes,” she said. “I drowned. I struggled, but everything faded away and I floated in blackness, surrounded by a million pinpoints
of light. Some of the lights whispered things to me, but I can’t remember what they said. Everything about the black place
scared me; it wasn’t anything like the heaven my parents taught us about when we were children. I heard you roar, and your
magic pulled me back towards my body. But I could not make the leap and I hovered at the edge of the hole in the world, waiting
to see what happened.”

“So what happened?” Noetos asked.

“I watched my body start to disintegrate,” she said. “It was awful. My skin became dry and hard and I could see it turning
a dreadful green colour around my mouth and eyes. There were things crawling under my skin and strange eructations throughout
my body.”

This still did not ring true. Had Cylene been so absorbed in her appearance while alive that it would become her primary concern
when dead? To be fair, Anomer had never been dead, so perhaps he was misreading her—or maybe his love for his mother continued
to prejudice him against the young woman. He chastised himself. Ought he not to be rejoicing with his father at this turn
of fortune?

Arathé’s thought came through.
Eructations? What sort of a word is that for a provincial girl?

Ah, so his sister was suspicious. Even better.

Noetos nodded, encouraging Cylene to continue. “Then a great power began to pour in through the hole in the world, drawing
magic from the void. One of the gods enacted some sort of violence against the earth; you tell me there was an earthquake,
so that must have been the result of the power. The flow pulled my essenza out of the void and through the hole with it. I
couldn’t have avoided being reunited with my body even had I wished to stay dead.”

“Hah! Defeated by their own schemes!” Noetos cried, and hugged her.

Anomer saw the girl stiffen for a mere fraction of a second, then relax into his embrace.

Just like Father to accept this at face value.

And just like you to reject it
, came Arathé’s thought.

Do you believe it? Is this Cylene returned from the dead?

Her answer was equivocal.
Many strange things have happened since this adventure began. Wait and we will see.

Oddly, the sea had not yet returned to the empty bay. Anomer had no idea what had made the sea vanish, though he could imagine
it draining into a great chasm caused by the shaking. Perhaps the water had gone for good, turning the bay into a wide plain.

“We’re so pleased to have you back,” Noetos said, tears in his eyes, and widened his embrace to include his children, beckoning
them closer with his hands.

Arathé put her arms around her father and Cylene, but Anomer pretended he hadn’t noticed.

“Noetos!” cried a voice in the distance. “Are you there? Are you alive?”

It came from somewhere in the forest. Anomer began sprinting in the direction of the sound even before the others had disengaged
themselves.

“Be careful!” came the voice, closer now, as Anomer struggled over the strewn vegetation. “There’s a hole… ”

And there was. An enormous gash slashed across the forest floor like a wound in flesh, perhaps twenty paces wide and—he leaned
forward to check—unguessably deep. A blood-red glow rose from the depths.
They have wounded the earth!

On the far side stood his father’s Padouki friend, Cyclamere.

“Is there any way across?” Anomer asked him.

“I do not think so. I have travelled much of its length and have found no easy crossing point. This chasm describes a great
circle, a mirror of the hole hovering above us. You are marooned on a fortress surrounded by a moat.”

Anomer pointed down into the chasm. “Is that where the water has gone?”

The Padouki shook his head. “I think not. Were water to drain into this unnatural fissure open to the hidden fires below,
the steam would rise into the heavens, obscuring even the sun. The sea must have found some other inlet to the subterranean
depths.”

Noetos and the others lined up beside Anomer, their mouths open at the sight of the cleft in the forest. Cyclamere repeated
his observations.

“Anywhere narrow enough to cross?” Noetos asked.

“Two places I thought might be worth the risk,” his mentor replied. “It is at its narrowest right here, but still much too
broad for a leap. Far easier to place a few of these fallen trees across the gap.”

“Ah,” said Noetos, clearly embarrassed he’d not thought of the obvious.

Anomer reflected on the meaning of this.
We’re always looking for the magical solution. Our good sense has been usurped by the commonplace occurrence of the supernatural.

“It would still be safer for Heredrew to perform his levitation trick,” Duon commented.

“Where are Heredrew and the others?” Noetos asked Cyclamere. “Have you seen them?”

“They may still be at Corata Pit,” the Padouki said. “Wondering where we are. Or perhaps the earthquake has provided them
with problems of their own.”

A faint rumbling shook the ground. Everyone froze, waiting to see if it built into another quake. The hole still hovered overhead,
an eye alive with mischief, and Anomer wondered just how strong the gods had become. Would the next shake be even greater?
The gentle rumble failed to build in intensity, but neither did it die away.

Cyclamere hissed through bared teeth. The urgency of the sound drew Anomer’s attention: the warrior’s suddenly concerned gaze
was fixed on something behind them. As Anomer began to turn, the skin on the back of his neck prickled. He knew his history
and the aftermath of the Great Aneheri Quake came swiftly into his mind.

There it was, a dark smudge far out in the bay.

None of the others reacted with anything like the fear rising in his chest. Likely they knew nothing of what sometimes came
after an earthquake at sea. Cyclamere knew, of course: he had been Father’s tutor, after all. Father clearly had not listened
to his lessons.

“You need to run,” Anomer said to Cyclamere. “Get as far inland as you can.”

“How can I leave when my lord is in danger?”

“Danger? What danger?” Noetos said, head swivelling between his son and his old teacher. “What are you talking about?”

“What are you going to do?” Anomer continued. “Fend it off with your sword?”

“I cannot run away. Better to face it here.”

The vibrations had become, if anything, a little stronger.

Noetos grabbed at his son’s arm. “What are you talking about?”

Anomer shook him off. “If nothing else, friend, you must warn the others.”

Cyclamere nodded once, sense penetrating his stubborn loyalty. “Aye.”

Only now did Anomer address his father and the others. “A wave is coming. When the earth shakes under the sea, it sometimes
creates ripples in the ocean. They become waves when they arrive at the coast.”

“A wave? Ripples? What are you talking about, lad? We have waves all the time.”

“Not like this,” said Cyclamere. “This one will be as high as a tree and will break upon us with the full weight of the ocean
behind it. The shaking you feel is the wave coming.”

“Very well,” said Noetos, clearly disbelieving. “What can we do about it?”

“Nothing, Father; just as the gods planned, we are trapped. Separated from the magicians, exhausted from overuse of our power,
surrounded by this chasm. Please, order your servant away. Let someone at least be saved.”

“It’s just a little wave,” Moralye put in, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand as she stared out to sea. “What damage
can it do?”

“A great deal,” said Cylene dreamily. “What is coming is neither little nor a wave. It is a surge of the sea, a sudden raising
of its height, and it keeps coming long after you think it must stop, battering everything in its path. Then, after it ends,
the surge withdraws from the land, pulling that which it has destroyed back out to sea with it. It is irresistible.”

Could no one else hear the relish with which she spoke?

“How do you know this?” Moralye asked her.

“My father told me stories,” she said. “Stories of the sea and the great surges that came after the earth shook. I thought
they were just stories, but it seems today we are fated to discover they are far more.”

Cyclamere extended his hand across the unbridgeable gulf. “If I hurry I can bring branches,” he said. “Search on your side
for timber. I do not want to see you swept away.”

For a moment Anomer considered wrestling with the fallen trunks around them, felled by storm and quake, but the wave was much
closer now. Far too close. Even had they begun dragging a log the moment they had seen the danger, they would not have made
it in time.

The broad expanse of white foam surged up the beach towards them.

Cyclamere turned and ran, shouting his frustration.

The wave drew closer.

“Gather around me,” Duon said, his voice barely audible above the roar of the water.

There was a thump like the collision of stars and the wave fountained up into the air.
It has found the seaward side of our moat
, Anomer realised;
perhaps the wave will vanish into the earth
. But the hope lasted only a second. The water leaped across the chasm, the power of the ocean far too strong for a mere crack
in its bed.

“Open yourselves to Arathé!” Duon shouted.

Anomer heard the southerner’s urgent voice in his mind more than with his ears. He opened his connection to his sister and
instantly sensed her searching for power.