Beyond the Wall of Time (50 page)

His self-control deserted him entirely when, some time after dark, he stumbled across the travellers’ campsite. He had not
been able to resist approaching the camp during the night, listening to their conversations and trying to discern their plans,
but later wished he had not. He’d heard intimacies to sicken his stomach, belittling words from his own beloved queen’s mouth.
Fool, fool, fool.
Everything had gone wrong since he’d left Stella’s side, unable to bear any more of her consorting with the Destroyer.

Worse, the delay meant he found himself exposed in the middle of the tall grass plains as the sun rose, easy for the natives
to spot. And spot him they had: one moment he sat on the wagon, chivvying his donkeys to make progress towards the nearest
of the impressive green hills; the next he was surrounded by club-wielding men who had simply appeared from nowhere. He might
perhaps have killed one or two of them before they beat him to the ground had he struck immediately, but had he done so his
plans would have ended in failure and the farmer would have died in vain.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the moment his blade had entered the fanner’s chest. It was as though the man’s frightened
soul had poured out of the wound, flowed along the blade and entered his own body. He could feel it now: a dark weight dragging
him down, making it hard for him to think. Not a religious man, no… but his mother’s teachings crowded into his already cluttered
mind, setting his knees shaking.

He sincerely hoped her stories were not true. And that if they were, he would never find out.

Two of the natives climbed onto the wagon, taking a seat either side of him. “Ride on, stranger,” said one, holding a knife
to his ribs, while the other relieved him of his sword.

“What do you want from me?” Anger rather than fear animated his voice. To have come so close only to be thwarted now!

“We have sent men to surround your friends. We will leave none of them alive, as is our gift from the Lord of Bhrudwo. You
we will spare for a time. You will appear before our Factor to explain your purpose in entering Zizhua Valley.”

Robal laughed. “You think you are going to ambush my companions?” he said with as much scorn as he could manage. “You won’t
harm a hair on any of their heads. They are a group of powerful magicians and soldiers, led by the Undying Man himself. You
had better look to your men!”

At that the two men fell to jabbering in their own language for a few moments, then turned back to him.

“Ride on,” directed the man with the knife. “You will still make your explanation to the Factor.”

“Very well,” said Robal.
Be patient and wait for the opportunity. If there is any justice in the world, it will present itself.

They had led him on a long circuit around the hill, halting before the wide entrance to a cave hidden in the shadows. There
they exchanged information with other strangely clad men that Robal took for scouts, dressed in colours to blend into the
landscape. The donkeys had not wanted to go inside, but the men struck them with large feather-like sticks and into the darkness
they went. It was like entering a children’s tale. A city under the earth! His sleep-ridden eyes could make little sense of
the vision blurring in front of him. Yellow lights, white lights, pale stone walls, massive carvings, a multitude of people
calling out to him, some obviously not friendly.

“We have brought your friends here,” said the knife-man, and Robal felt his luck turning for what he hoped was the final time.

“They’re here? Can I meet them? No… not yet.”

“You are in no position to ask any favours. Do you not understand? You will be asked questions, after which we will have no
further use for you.”

Robal smiled at the man. “Do you think I am a fool? Your men were supposed to kill my companions, yet brought them here to
your secret city instead. That tells me they discovered the truth of what I said to you.” He’d seen the knife-man talking
to another fellow as they descended to the city, no doubt being told of what had happened when the natives had confronted
the Undying Man. Robal didn’t know exactly what had transpired, of course, but he could guess. “The Lord of Bhrudwo goes exactly
where he wants. I am his trusted companion, with my own abilities as yet unrevealed.” There, let them consider that half-truth.
“I wish to speak with my master immediately,” he finished.

More jabbering. “Very well,” the man said finally. “Your wagon is blocking the street. We will find you a place to store it,
and inspect the cargo as our gift requires us to. Then we will alert your master to your presence.”

Robal nodded, determination replacing doubt in his mind. “Don’t take too long,” he warned them.

They found him a largely empty building the size of an Instruian warehouse, and he urged the two nervous animals through the
wide door and into the vast space. Oddly, he felt more uncomfortable in here than he had “out in the open,” as he’d already
begun thinking of the cave itself. Two men remained, tasked with inventory.

“Be careful with my cargo,” Robal warned them. “It is special material commissioned at great expense by the Lord of Bhrudwo
himself. He is most anxious that not a single stick is damaged.”

“Oh,” said the younger of the men, clearly impressed. “Sticks? What do they do?”

“They are tools designed to help carve the rock more efficiently,” Robal extemporised. “Small explosions, cracking the rock
and making work easier.” He waved his hands around vaguely.

Both men broke into smiles. “We have heard of such material!” the older man breathed. “I am surprised the Factor and his elders
have allowed it in. The more progressive among us have long argued to be allowed to acquire some, even if only on a trial
basis. I am pleased the Lord of Bhrudwo has seen fit to respond to our petition.”

Robal grinned at them. Luck, luck, his luck had finally come good. But what was keeping the Undying Man?

“Wait here,” he said to the two men, “and don’t touch anything.”

Once Robal had found out where the travellers had been housed, he’d called out the Destroyer. Of course, the man hadn’t realised
he’d been called out, not in the sense of a one-on-one duel; he had, Robal guessed, suspected nothing. He strode out of the
building willingly enough, nothing more than his usual wariness on his face.

The guardsman had considered a hundred different scenarios for this moment, each more elaborate—and unlikely—than the last.
A master of deception, his intended victim would see through anything complicated with ease; so Robal had decided to use the
simplest of subterfuges.

“Need your help with something,” he said. He tilted his head as though glancing behind the Destroyer to look worriedly at
Stella and the others. “Not for the women to see,” he added, rubbing his hands down the front of his jerkin, as though wiping
blood from them.

“What have you found?” the man asked, clearly curious. He turned and held up a hand. “I’ll be but a moment,” he called to
his companions. “Wait for me.”

The two men entered the warehouse. The wagon was twenty paces away.

“Good to see you again, Robal,” said the Destroyer affably. “Stella misses you.”

“Does she now.” The guardsman winced at the degree of bitterness revealed in those three words.
Mustn’t do anything to make him suspicious…

As part of the purchase paid for by the sliver of huanu stone, the miners had given him a slip of valuable sulphur paper—and
had coached him carefully on how it ought to be used. Robal had made his own modification to the paper, an addition, no doubt,
of which the miners would not have approved. He drew the lead-weighted paper from the inside pocket of his jerkin, then swiftly
peeled the gum-stuck papers apart.

Five.

“Show my lord the contents of the wagon,” Robal said to the two Zizhua men.

Four.

The Destroyer frowned, no doubt sensing that something wasn’t quite right.

Three.

But he shrugged and strode over to the wagon.

Two.

One of the men stripped the oilskin covering away from Robal’s cargo.

One.

A young boy’s voice broke the silence. “Donkeys! Donkeys!”

Every head swung in the direction of the doorway.

Far too late to stop now.

Robal lobbed the paper into the back of the wagon, heaved himself backwards towards the nearest pillar and took what shelter
he could. He knew he might live, he knew he might not…

EAGER TO SPEAK TO ROBAL
, hopefully to clear the air between them, Stella had taken one step onto the marble road when a sharp cry jerked her head
up.

The world exploded.

She glimpsed an instant of blurring. The pale building opposite her shivered, then dissolved, bursting upwards and outwards.
An indivisible moment later—moving far too swiftly for her mind to acknowledge, let alone her body to react—something solid
struck her squarely in her belly, hurling her backwards into the wall behind her. Bones shattered, blood spurted; but, though
consciousness faded, it did not vanish completely. For an intolerably long moment, Stella was nothing but dread of what she
was about to feel.

Immortality did not mitigate pain. If anything, it indirectly amplified her senses. Seventy years of suffering had not succeeded
in inuring her to agony. Instead, it had taught her that she was not to be afforded the blessed relief of unconsciousness
granted to others, to mortals. She waited for the pain to arrive.

It arrived.

Curse it, it did. Such pain. A hundred messages shrieking in her brain all at once as crushed limbs reported their various
agonies. For a time she was drawn into a silent scream.

Only when the initial wave of pain had rolled over her did she receive the report she really wanted. Her eyes sprang open—to
a pale smear. Her ears remained un-hearing. She waited, enduring the unendurable because she had no choice, but the smear
failed to resolve into anything that made sense. The world continued to blur, shake, fall apart. Dust filled the air. Rocks
crashed to the ground in uncanny silence, bouncing or shattering, eerily like snowfall. She waited, waited for the world to
settle, to regain its meaning, but the blurring and shaking increased.

A face intruded on this panorama of uncertainty. Kilfor. Saying something to her, inaudible. The horrified look on his face
as he cast an eye over her confirmed the messages her body continued to send to her, telling her everything she needed—and
feared—to know.

“The others?” she asked him. Or tried to ask: she had no idea if the words came out of her mouth. If she still had a mouth.

Dare she try to stand? Even move? Success seemed laughably unlikely.

Before she could make the attempt, something white landed on the street in front of them, exploding into a blizzard of knife-sharp
shards. She felt a few of them hit her, sink into her, dull thuds adding mere increments to her pain. One took her in the
left eye: vision was replaced by yellow whorls.

Kilfor took the brunt of the stone rain, falling to the ground in a red haze.

She couldn’t move to help him. She didn’t need to. There was no point. Even through one eye it was obvious that the man was
dead.

He did live, apparently, but by the god-cursed torture in and around his waist—and the numbness below—Robal immediately wished
he had not.

A price worth paying if the trap had worked.

The pillar had collapsed on top of him, pinning him. He lay staring into a cloud of dust, covered in something warm, sticky
and metallic. Blood.

Whose?

His enemy lay beside him, torn asunder beyond any hope of repair, his blood pulsing from multiple wounds in already-decreasing
fountains.

Oh, oh,
oh.

Robal lay there, pinned, unable to move, irretrievably broken, undoubtedly dying—and covered in the Destroyer’s immortal blood.

He licked his lips. Stretched his tongue as far as it would go.

Not enough. The Lord of Fear drained a chalice full of Stella’s blood. I need more.

In utter desperation he forced one of his hands to move, then his arm. Placed it under the Destroyer’s neck, ripped open in
a gaping red grin. Waited as the blood oozed into his palm. Then brought it carefully, carefully to his lips. Swallowed it
down without gagging.

More, more. More! Hurry!

His arm snaked back to the wound, shaking now with the effort, spilling half the red harvest. Three more times his hand made
the journey, until the man’s throat ceased its bleeding, denying him any more of the world’s most precious liquid.

His mind whirled in an agony of fear and hope. Had he done enough? Would the miracle blossom within him? Would it be enough
to give Stella another choice? Certainly something, some new thing, had begun to take shape in his veins… burning…

The vast cavern shook as though suffering its own agonies. High above them millennia-old rock formations, formed with infinite
patience one small grain at a time, were shaken loose and plunged to the cave floor, crashing into streets, houses and people
who had run into the open to escape collapsing buildings. Each formation smashed into a thousand deadly pieces, shredding
anyone unfortunate enough to be close by.

As the groans subsided and the shaking diminished, the natives of Zizhua City began to venture from their homes. Many of those
unlucky enough to live within a hundred paces of the warehouse had died, or were in the process of dying, whilst a random
selection of those living further away had been killed by falling debris, the collapse of their homes due to unseen fractures
in their walls or roof, or had been choked to death by the unrelenting dust. None within five hundred paces had heard anything
after the initial blast, and therefore did not breathe a relieved sigh as the sounds of tortured stone gradually faded. Nor
did they start with fear when enormous spears of rock continued to crash to the ground among them.