Beyond the Wall of Time (36 page)

The water surged towards them.

Birds fell from the sky, insects stopped crawling, things smaller than insects died as Arathé drew essenza from every living
thing around them. She reached further, and further still, into the silent and dark world of inanimate objects. Every object
contributed something; Anomer felt his sister pull power even from the approaching wall of water.

The wave struck.

It surged around the small group cowering together without touching them, slipping past and over them as though unable to
penetrate a barrier. And barrier it was: Arathé had hastily erected a wall of pure gold essenza between them and the wave.

Anomer turned in time to see the wave strike the chasm behind them. The fissure swallowed the water, but was not large enough
to take it all and within moments the wave surged up the other side and out into the forest. The ground rumbled and shook
and steam swirled around them.

Still not safe
, Arathé sent, though her thoughts were triumphant rather than worried. The ground continued to shake, and suddenly began
to rise. Another quake. Anomer threw himself to the ground.

Relax, brother, this is part of my plan.

The whole of the fortress—the land surrounded by the circular fissure—rose a pace, two paces, five paces, and the water battering
at them drained away. Within moments they found themselves on a large island in the midst of a roaring, foam-cloaked sea.

I thought I might be able to do this
, Arathé sent, exulting.
Our teachers at Andratan talked about the new magical discoveries being made, and told us that sorcerers didn’t have to draw
power from within themselves to work their magic. But they wrongly assumed that power would have to be stolen from others.
That’s why I refused to cooperate with them: I hated the idea of taking power from others. So they took me and made me a source
of power for others. But they were wrong! Everything has power.

So the more powerful the weapon the gods throw at us, the more we can draw our protection from it?

Yes
, she sent.
Yes. That is exactly what it means.

Then we’re safe.

Yes.

Anomer had not realised how heavily his constant fear had been weighing upon him until it lifted.

The wave roared in the distance as it crashed through the forest, tossing fallen trees around like kindling wood. The steam
from the deep fissure condensed above them and began to fall as a light drizzle.

How long will we have to wait here?
Anomer heard Duon ask Arathé.

The sea will drain away soon, Taleth. We will wait a while to see if any further waves come, then return to the others at
Corata Pit.

That sounds sensible. Thank you, Arathé.

The jealousy Anomer felt at this exchange was foolish—it wasn’t Duon’s fault he now had an intimate link to Arathé—but his
sister had called the southerner by his first name. Anomer hadn’t even known he had one. Moreover, the mind-tone she had used
had been friendly, to say the least of it—as had his.

Foolish to feel it, he knew, but feel it he did.

The group waited through the night for the water to recede. Five enormous waves came past their circular island during the
hours of darkness, the second and third larger than the first, the fourth and fifth tapering away.

The waxing moon rose some time in the small hours, and Anomer bumped into Cylene while returning from relieving himself over
the side of Arathé’s magical island. The unguarded look of rage on the girl’s face frightened him, though within moments it
was replaced by her usual friendly, slightly licentious grin. He almost asked her what she was so angry about, but then remembered
his suspicions and said nothing.

At least Father isn’t sleeping with her yet.
But how much longer could Noetos resist her charms? She had draped herself around his neck like a scarf while they partook
of their scanty meal of fresh fish, but he’d not said much to her—or to anybody.

Indeed, few of the group had felt like talking. Cylene tried to make conversation, but no one offered her more than perfunctory
replies. Moralye and Arathé spoke in low tones for a few minutes, then settled down to sleep.

The silence, Anomer considered, was fitting, given how the hole in the world still hovered above them, marked at night by
an absence of glittering stars, perfectly mirroring the island on which they stood.

COSMOGRAPHER

LENARES HATED UNCERTAINTY
.

There was no telling how Torve would react to the questions she intended to ask him. Perhaps he would become angry and tell
her he wanted nothing more to do with her, and that would make her sad. Just when she had found someone she was comfortable
with, whom she talked to with ease, she feared she could lose him. Of course, he might show sensitivity and understanding.
He might even promise to remain with her, though she doubted this. The doubt made her miserable.

A frightening thing, not being able to control someone else. Lenares’ world depended on being certain of those close to her.
Mahudia had always responded swiftly to her needs, and over the years Lenares had devised ways of getting what she wanted
from her foster mother. But Torve owed her nothing. No duty, no responsibility, leaving no way Lenares could make him do what
she wanted. Worse, she had come to realise that even if she could manipulate him, such behaviour would work against her happiness
in the long run.

If only she knew more! On the afternoon they had left Corata Pit and made their way north she had spent an hour or so talking
with the Undying Man, Kannwar. She had asked him to tell her whatever he knew about the effects on a man of having his worm
cut off as well as his balls. At first he’d refused, claiming that he didn’t want to distress her, but he was lying, behaving
“diplomatically.” Eventually, though, she pestered him into telling her. Lenares usually got what she wanted.

In some respects Kannwar knew entirely too much. The procedure was called castration, he told her, and had been a not-uncommon
practice all across northern Bhrudwo until about five hundred years ago. Apparently begun as a punishment for enemies defeated
in battle, its practitioners believed it allowed them to possess the sexual energy and prowess of their victims in addition
to their own. Lenares had frowned at this, barely believing that people would be so foolish, but his words had the ring of
truth about them. Castration also resulted in a more practical outcome, Kannwar had added, in that it justified the conquerors’
taking of the enemy’s women. What use were they, after all, if their emasculated men could no longer service them?

Such talk angered Lenares. It made women seem like child manufactories. Kannwar himself didn’t believe this, he’d said when
she’d snapped at him, but her anger did not lessen. It was so unfair that men did things and women had things done to them.
If women had the outies and men had the innies, things would have been different, Lenares was sure.

Kannwar had laughed at her outrage. Sexual politics, he had called it, and advised her to abandon her concerns. “Women are
what we make them,” he had said, his long face carrying a faintly distasteful look, not caring or even noticing Stella’s frown
as she walked beside them; she a woman once queen of an empire the equivalent of his, answerable to no man bar her husband,
and, according to what Stella had said, seldom even then.

Did this mean, then, that Torve would no longer be considered a man? Of a certainty, Kannwar had replied to her anxious question.
Eunuchs had formed a third class of people, not as low as women but lower than men, considered ideal for bureaucratic work
because of their serene emotional state. Lenares had questioned this. She would have been anything but serene had she lost
a part of herself like that, but Kannwar assured her that the removal of the penis and testicles—the first time she’d heard
a man’s thingy given such names—removed the strength and passion that made a man a man, sinking him into a life directed by
the mind rather than the glands.

Lenares thought this would be rather an improvement for most of the men she had known, but was careful not to say so.

“Can a castrated man still love?” she had asked, trying and failing to keep the hope out of her voice.

Stella had looked on with pity in her lovely eyes as Kannwar had all but mocked her with his reply. He’d ridiculed the idea
of a eunuch being capable of love. “What, dear girl, could he love a woman with? Why would such a man want to become involved
with a woman when they have nothing to offer each other? No, love takes passion, and passion has been sliced away from the
eunuch.”

What, then, of the eunuch’s future?

Magnanimously, Kannwar offered to take Torve into his employ. “He seems a bright enough fellow,” the Undying Man had said,
seemingly unaware of, or perhaps impervious to, the distress his comments were causing. Ignoring the disaster that had been
Torve’s life serving the previous tyrant.

He’s wrong
, Lenares had thought then, and thought now.
The Undying Man is wrong. Torve is still a man, is still capable of emotion, of passion, of love.
His years with the cruel Emperor of Elamaq had crippled him far more severely than the loss of a flappy bit of skin, yet
he had revealed passion hidden in the depths of a scarred character. Surely he would still love her.

But what worried her was the possibility that Torve might believe of himself what Kannwar had said. That he might simply give
up loving her and leave her alone.

The nine remaining travellers were accompanied by perhaps a hundred of those they had rescued from Corata Pit, straggling
in a long line behind them. Most of the survivors had departed in various directions to seek out family and friends or to
recover what they could from their towns and villages; these hundred who remained were, in the main, too frightened to leave
the shelter of the powerful magicians in case the god-storm—or something worse—returned.

They surmounted a low ridge and came to an involuntary halt as the spectacle of the Malayu Basin spread out before them. Directly
ahead the land fell away to a vast level plain, a chequerboard of fields and forests fading into the distance, dotted with
animals, everything painted golden in the soft morning light. But many of the animals were motionless, heaped together in
the middle of green fields, others lying alone where they had fallen. And the trees of the forests were strewn about as though
harvested by a scythe wielded by a blind and careless giant. To their right, in the west, the sea glimmered, the wide curve
of Malayu Bay looking like a rough bite out of the land. Closer to hand a village lay athwart the path they trod, some distance
down the slope, but even at a distance they could see that not one roof remained intact and many of the houses had been blown
or shaken to pieces.

The travellers were drawn to the village like flies to a carcass, and as they picked their way along the narrow path between
piles of debris, they looked in vain for someone alive. Bodies they saw aplenty, but no movement.

“Just how fierce was this storm and earthquake?” Mustar asked, shaking his head in sorrow.

Lenares knew. Fierce enough to extinguish thousands of lives. The hole in the world had grown rapidly, and was perhaps now
already wide enough to admit the gods on a permanent basis. The void beyond the wall was leaking into the world, meaning that
time itself had begun to lose its grip. Everywhere she looked Lenares could see severed threads, vanished nodes.

The world was unravelling.

“They have killed my subjects,” said the Undying Man, and Lenares flinched at the tone of his voice. The Emperor of Elamaq
had frightened her, but not as much as this man did.

“They have killed my subjects,” he repeated, “and destroyed my land. They are fools and tyrants, and I will destroy them.”

Stella put a hand on his elbow. “We, Kannwar. We will rid the world of them. The Most High has called us all together for
this purpose, remember? This is not just your fight.”

“Oh?” he said, and as he turned to her, his face, limbs and body began to elongate as he struggled to retain control of his
illusion. His voice emerged from his lips like a ghost from a grave. “Whose land is this, Queen Stella? Are you able to look
me in the eye and tell me that were this happening in fair Faltha, and were you to look down from Fealty on the devastation
of the Central Plains and the ruins of Instruere, you would not feel as I feel? That you would not vow as I have vowed? Can
you? Can you tell me that?”

“No,” she said. “I would react the same way you have.” She licked her lips. “But I would be wrong.”

“Your caution is why an unruly gaggle of priests rules your land in your stead.”

Her eyes flashed. “And your folly is why Husk likely sits in your throne room while you lament the loss of your citizens.”

“Ah, Stella, could you ever doubt why I love you?” Kannwar said, his lips curling into a smile. “I fell in love with your
tongue before any other part of you.”

“You did nothing of the sort,” she snapped, really angry now. “You were intrigued by the aroma of the Most High set in me,
and held me against my will while you plotted to harness it. Don’t play the lovable cad with me. I remember what you were,
and what you did. I heard what you said to Lenares this afternoon. You were an evil man seventy years ago, and I fail to see
any evidence you have changed since.”

She took a series of swift strides away from him and disappeared down a side street. After a few moments Robal followed her,
just as Lenares knew he would. Kannwar stared after her, expressionless.

“What is the name of this town?” she asked the Lord of Bhrudwo, as much to fill the awkward silence as anything. As she asked,
she realised this was a very human thing to do. She was becoming like them.