Beyond the Wall of Time (44 page)

“Yes,” said Robal, at exactly the time Stella said, “No.”

“No?”

“No. What you experience is desire. Your body wants his body. It is a wonderful feeling, but it is not love.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Robal said, the intensity of his gaze boring into his queen’s dark eyes.

Torve had heard enough. Though every instinct commanded him to restrain himself, to exercise his Defiance in private, he put
those instincts behind him, despising them for the chains they were.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, stepping forward. “Everyone speaks as though love is the most important thing in the world,
yet no one can agree on what it is, or who is entitled to enjoy it. Having listened to you all, I can only draw the conclusion
that love can be anything you make it.

“You people seem to think we’ll not be regarded as truly human because I am unmanned. Lenares and I are familiar with such
regard. I doubt it will bother us. If she is willing, I am prepared to find out whether it is possible for people like us,
people less than human, to love each other. We thank you for your time and your well-meant words.”

He bowed to the small crowd, exactly as though his Defiance was over. As it was, he supposed; though this Defiance had been
expressed with words rather than dance.

Later, when most people had left the square and he and Lenares were left alone to take the first tentative steps towards each
other, Stella came over to them.

“I am sorry,” she said, “sorry for our intolerance and ignorance. If I were to offer you anything, children, it would be every
encouragement to explore your relationship unfettered by any sort of expectations. Find out what you have rather than worrying
about what you might not have. And if what you have is not enough, don’t be frightened to let go.”

“I don’t want to let go,” Lenares said, and Torve felt his throat tighten.

“Neither do I,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

“Good,” said the Falthan queen. “I hope you find happiness.”

“When Umu is dead and the hole in the world is repaired, then I will be happy,” said Lenares.

Torve nodded. Lenares would always be reaching for knowledge and understanding, always trying to fix whatever she saw as being
wrong; she would never be satisfied with the mere love of one man. He couldn’t help feeling a surge of relief course through
him at the thought.

Queen Stella turned away and began to leave the square. There, on the edge of the open space, stood Robal, his beefy arms
folded, a broad smile on his face, waiting for her. Torve did not hear their brief discussion, but as Stella spoke, the guardsman’s
smile contracted and vanished, replaced by a frown. His interjections were short, and overridden by her increasingly irritated
replies. After a few minutes of this, she drew back her hand and slapped him across the cheek, then strode off into the shattered
village.

A short while later Robal left the square, his shoulders slumped. Torve did not need Lenares’ gift to work out what had passed
between the two.

That night, the travellers determined to go on the next day. They sat around a small fire set in the road on the northern
outskirts of Mensaya, talking in subdued voices while beyond the flickering circle drones buzzed and cicadas chirped.

“We need to find somewhere isolated,” Kannwar argued. “We do not know where Umu is, or even if she ‘is’ anywhere. Therefore
we need to draw her to us. I do not wish to meet her in a populated area as our attack would necessarily be constrained by
the presence of innocent Bhrudwan citizens.”

“Never imagined there was any such thing as an innocent Bhrudwan,” Sauxa whispered to his son in a voice just loud enough
to be heard.

Kannwar ignored the old man. Lenares could see the extent of his self-control. This was a man who wished to be treated as
an emperor, who was used to instant obedience and unquestioning respect, but who received none of these things from the Falthans.
Moralye had explained the antipathy to her. Two bitter invasions, one within living memory, had earned Kannwar the epithet
“Destroyer.” The Falthans seemed to be having trouble accepting Umu as a greater enemy than the man who led them.

Not as much trouble, though, as Noetos. His anger at the Undying Man’s presence among them constantly threatened to boil to
the surface. During that afternoon he had engaged in a shouting match with his own children, accusing them of betrayal for
not telling him of Kannwar’s true identity. After that he’d sat alone brooding, no doubt trying to think of a way to revenge
himself on the Bhrudwan lord.
Don’t waste your time
, Lenares wanted to tell the red-haired man.
He’s far too powerful to be wounded by your sword arm.
There was only one person sitting around the fire who was capable of wounding the man, and she sat alone, as she had done
earlier that day, head bowed, her black hair hanging over her face.

So much sorrow.

Seemingly heedless of Stella’s dark mood, Kannwar went on to explain they ought to strike out for the coast. The inland plains
were densely populated, he said, and had likely been sheltered in part from the storm and the quake. The sheer numbers of
people living in the Malayu Basin ensured there would still be many alive. There were, by contrast, only a few fishing villages
along the coast.

“Oh yes,” said the small, rotund man, Bregor. “Fishing villages are expendable. “

Kannwar sighed. “I have done nothing to deserve your ire,” he said testily. “The villages are likely devastated by the storm
and the great waves that followed the earthquake. Short of turning south and inflicting more damage on areas already devastated
by this conflict, I see no other option.”

“You’ll be wantin’ us to leave then, great lord?” said one of the locals.

A few villagers had returned to the wreckage of their houses from whatever place they had holed up in during the storm and
quake; most had borne injuries of some sort. Heredrew had not offered to heal them. Saving his energy for the final conflict,
no doubt. Lenares approved of the man’s practicality.

“Yes, you ought to get as far away from here as you can. Go south and west.”

“Cravin’ your pardon, great lord, but there’s nothin’ but jungle and savages south and west. We’d be safer under your wing,
so t’ speak.” The woman who spoke was the same curly-haired woman who had been in favour of romantic love earlier in the day.

“When the battle comes, none of us will have anything to spare to protect you,” said Kannwar. “You’ll be crushed like insects,
and no one will notice your passing. Certainly a few more lives lost in the context of what has happened means very little,
though perhaps it might do to you. Come with us if you wish,” he concluded, and gave the woman a lopsided smile.

“Ah, no, great lord, you have commanded us to leave. Leave we shall, at sunrise.”

“Can we be certain that Keppia has been dealt with permanently?” asked Seren. “My apologies, all, but I’m only a simple miner,
a digger in dark places. I know nothing of gods and magic.”

“You know a great deal more now than you did,” said Noetos, who was, through circumstances Lenares had not yet enquired about,
the miners’ master. “And more than most other people do, or would want to.”

“Aye,” Seren said. “Doesn’t stop me wondering, though. Or lying awake when I ought to be sleeping. So is he gone?”

“Lenares said so, and I believe her,” Kannwar said.

His words brought a rosy glow to her chest.

“I saw him, you know,” Noetos said. “Just before the earthquake. He tried to get me to set him free.” The big man described
his encounter with Dryman’s corpse in the beachfront forest. “All the while I thought I was outsmarting him, he was tricking
me into releasing him. But the hole in the world was at that point not sufficiently large to admit him fully into the world.
I hacked at Dryman’s body until it could no longer sustain the presence of the god, but Keppia did not achieve freedom. The
earthquake followed within minutes. Provoked, no doubt, by an angry and frustrated god.”

“We have been fortunate,” Moralye remarked. “We came far closer to disaster than we knew.”

“We must be much more careful,” Kannwar warned. “To that end, I believe we should appoint Lenares the leader of this expedition.
More than anyone else, she has the sensitivity to see Umu’s attacks before they arrive. She has held the god captive before,
and still has a link to the void. We need to follow her.”

There were words spoken after this, many words, but Lenares could later remember none of them. All she could remember were
those Kannwar had spoken, placing her right at the centre of the world.

Finally, for the last time, her counting could stop. She had no need to orient herself with regard to some fixed point. She
was herself the very centre of everything. Wherever she chose to go, the centre would move with her.

Yes
, she said to herself.
Yes. This is who I was born to be.

QUEEN

STELLA KEPT HER FEET
moving, her arms swinging and her face expressionless as she and Robal slowly drifted further behind the other travellers.
It did not matter what he said or how he said it, she would not reveal how deeply torn she was.

She had known this agony before, of course. The Arkhos of Firanes had been a man she could have given herself to, heart and
soul, had she not ignored her heart and remained loyal to Leith. And even her relationship with Leith himself had not been
simple: far from it. Phemanderac had loved the Falthan king with far more passion than she had ever been capable of generating,
much as she’d grown to love him. Moreover, she and Phemanderac had grown closer over the years, until the regard she held
him in was similar in every respect to that in which she held Leith. A perfectly triangular relationship, unrequited but energised,
enabling them to achieve great things together. Faltha had never enjoyed such a golden period in its history.

Yes, she had known the bittersweet agony of loving more than one man. And, given the never-ending future stretching away from
her, she would know it again.

Knew it again now.

She worried that all she had done was to replace Leith and Phemanderac with Robal and Kannwar respectively. Robal’s passion,
energy and naivety for Leith’s, and Kannwar’s wisdom and experience for that of Phemanderac. But whether or not this was what
she had done was irrelevant really. She had been about to give her heart to Robal, until it had been taken by Kannwar.

Both men were manifestly unsuitable. Robal was insufferably arrogant, ridiculously overprotective towards her and foolishly
outspoken. Kannwar was far worse with his genocidal morals and his constant dissembling. Yet she loved them both, fool that
she was. In this, and only this, aspect of his discourse on love was Robal correct: the heart could seldom help where it gave
its affections. But what she had learned, what she knew more completely than anyone else alive, was how the heart could be
overridden. How, in fact, it must be overridden if anything beyond momentary pleasure was to be achieved.

So as Robal walked beside her, his hand on her arm, cool fingers whispering secrets that ran along her nerves and straight
to her brain, she fought to reveal none of her feelings to him.

“Are you going to give me any hope at all?” Robal asked her. He had remained silent all morning, at the risk, it seemed to
him, of one or more of his internal organs bursting, but her closeness and her silence could no longer be borne.

She turned to him and, as always, he found himself overwhelmed. She was beautiful, of course, none would dispute that, but
beautiful women were common, more common than men realised. Certainly in his career as a soldier he had romanced his share
of beautiful women. No, what captivated him about her was the sheer intensity of her gaze. It was as though she made every
second count, as though time itself mattered more in her presence. He wasn’t entirely sure he understood what he meant, but
he knew it was as a result of the life she had lived, a long and painful one, filled with suffering and discipline. It made
her all the more precious, a singular jewel, unique; and should such a jewel shine only for him, ah! He would be envied by
all men.

“I have said all I wish to say, Robal, back in Mensaya town square. You spoke plainly, expressing your hopes of me, and I
replied as clearly as possible. I cannot prevent you taking hope from my words, but I intended you to have no such hope.”

Robal glanced down the road: the travellers had turned a corner and were hidden from view by a row of poplars, their upper
branches sheared off by the storm.

“Fair enough. You said your piece, Stella, and I don’t need to hear it again. No one for you, not now, and not in the immediate
future, which for you could mean years. I don’t agree with you, I think you’re in denial, but I must respect your choice.
For now, Stella, it seems we must travel separate paths.”

This got the reaction he intended. He would have said anything to break down the wall she’d erected to keep him out. She loved
him, he knew it. Knew it. The despair on her face at his words confirmed it. It was all he could do not to smile.

“You will no longer guard me?”

“You need no guard. I would guard your body with my own, but your immortal flesh needs no guard. The only person to do you
harm since this adventure began was me, your guardsman. I would guard your heart, but it seems I am, in fact, the chief enemy
of your heart. I plot to capture it. But you have placed a guard on it so strong, so impenetrable, that it is proof against
all would-be conquerors. Body and soul both safe. So what need do you have of me?”

Something in her face broke at his words. “Robal, Robal, don’t force me to make a choice.” Her voice had grown small and carried
a note of desperation. “Remain with me, dear one, or leave me, but do not make it my decision.”

“You’re the queen, Stella. I am merely your guardsman. You are responsible for me. You must send me away. If I leave you of
my own volition, I could be tried as a deserter.”