Beyond the Wall of Time (52 page)

Six Zizhua natives clad in long black robes—mourning robes, Robal supposed—strode into the room.

“You tricked me!” Robal cried. “That was no trial!”

“You tricked yourself,” came the Destroyer’s answer. “You are a distressingly simple person whose stupidity and short-sightedness
has caused a great deal of pain. Be assured that this pain will be redeemed in full upon your person.”

As the Factor led his fellow Zizhua to stand in a line facing him, Robal felt himself drift into a waking nightmare. His vision
seemed to triple: as well as the Zizhua, he could see the past, the foolish past, where he plotted the fall of an immortal
for what now appeared to be all the wrong reasons; and he could see the future and all the ways the Zizhua might revenge themselves
on him. Tears of sheer terror began to roll down his cheeks.

The Factor spoke. “You, stranger, have confessed to the crime of regicide, the attempted assassination of our lord. That in
itself is a capital offence, the punishment for which we naturally cede to the Undying Man to be carried out at a time and
place of his choosing.”

The Undying Man nodded sombrely. “In turn, Factor, I cede my rights back to you, judging you the more wronged.”

“Where’s Stella? She wouldn’t stand for this!” Robal shouted. “Stella! Stella!”

“Cut out the prisoner’s tongue,” said the Factor calmly.

“No! I’ll be quiet!”

“Do you promise to remain quiet during the rest of the proceedings ?”

“Yes! Yes!” Robal panted his relief.

“Excellent.” The Factor nodded contentedly, then fastened bleak eyes on him. “Cut it out anyway.”

Robal’s pleading made no difference. They loosened his bonds a fraction, rolled him onto his side and forced his jaws apart.
His pleading ended as efficient hands captured and held his tongue, stretching it out so the fellow with the sword could reach
it more easily.

The moment of pain in itself was but a small addition to that coursing within him, but the loss of his tongue was, Robal knew
as he leaned over to spit out the blood, the loss of his last weapon of consequence.

“Never mind, Robal,” said the Destroyer. “As you mature into your immortal gift you might learn enough about the Fire of Life
to grow a new one. It’s a shame, however; you’re unlikely to live that long.”

The Factor resumed his summation of Robal’s deeds as though he’d not been interrupted. “Further, stranger, you stand accused
of causing the deaths of many hundreds of Zizhua, effected as a consequence of the ignition of explosives as part of your
assassination attempt. Because these deaths were accidental, you will avoid, in theory, the ultimate punishment. However,
because they were the side effects of an assassination attempt, each death is treated in law as though it was itself an assassination.
Therefore you are sentenced to as many deaths as there were deaths among us.”

Ridiculous
, Robal thought as he spat blood from his maimed mouth.
I can only die once.
Except a dark suspicion had already begun to form in the back of his mind.
No. Pray Most High they haven’t thought… they won’t… of course they won’t.

“The first death,” the Factor went on, “was that of my son and heir, Shan, whom we nicknamed Sunrise, the light of my eyes.
In his eight years of life he pleased everyone he came in contact with. He was unfailingly polite, always respected his elders
and worked most diligently at home and at his studies. In time he would have made an exceptional administrator, unencumbered
by the suspicious mind and hard heart most administrators are necessarily cursed with. Sadly, his heart was too trusting and
he blundered into the middle of your plot without ever realising he’d encompassed his own death.”

“I saw him,” said the Destroyer. “His face beamed with happiness as he ran towards the donkeys. You saw him too, Robal, but
you did not stay your hand. You touched off the explosion, turning the boy into a red mist.” The gathered Zizhua groaned in
unison at the words. “You judged his life as worth less than my death.”

You do that all the time!
Robal wanted to cry out, but even thinking of speech hurt his mouth.

“You slew my son,” said the Factor of Zizhua. “In doing so you ripped my heart out. Therefore I slay you.”

He took up the guardsman’s own sword, only slightly bent despite the power of the explosion, and walked over to where Robal
lay.

“This first death will be a simple one,” the man continued, and thrust the blade through Robal’s ribs and into his heart.

Tired, sore and sick to her stomach, Stella stumbled through the outer suburbs of the city, her fellow travellers striding
along briskly some way ahead of her. She had begun to shake some time back, some sort of delayed reaction to what might very
well have been her death, she supposed, or to the memory, constantly replayed, of Kilfor dissolving in front of her. The sights
and sounds of the city added their contribution to her miasma.

Robal’s dead
, she thought.
That charming, funny, brave, perpetually indignant blockhead is dead.
Funny, she had not realised how final, how irrevocable, death was until this moment. Leith’s death had set this deadly adventure
in motion, but subsequent events had occupied her mind. She’d grieved for him, yes, but had not dwelled on his absence. Robal,
though, nestled like sorrow and failure in her chest.

That was the difference, she realised. She had been responsible for Robal, had miscalculated the strength of his feeling for
her, and had lost him. More than that: if she was interpreting the signs correctly, she might have inadvertently cost many
innocent people their lives.

But I couldn’t have given him what he wanted. Could I?

Knowing the cost as she now did, of course she could have. Would have, to prevent this awful tragedy, without demur. But it
was too late now—and she knew, better than anyone else alive perhaps, save the Undying Man himself, how futile were self-recriminations.
If Robal brought those explosives into the city with the intention of killing Kannwar, he was the cause of all this. Not me.
Not my spurning of his heart.

She would have appreciated the time to examine the scene of his death more closely, if only to pay her respects to him, to
Kilfor, Tumar and to the many Zizhua people killed. But the Factor had ordered them out of the city forthwith—oh, it had been
phrased most politely, but she had been a ruler and knew a command when she heard one—and they had not been allowed even to
inter Kilfor’s poor remains in the catacombs that served the city as a cemetery.

Sauxa placed a shaking hand on her shoulder. “My lady? Are you well?”

“Oh, Sauxa, no, I am not well,” she said, her voice a raw wound. “We’ve lost him, lost them both. I’m so sorry.”

“Aye.” The man blinked twice, as near to tears as he’d ever likely get. “Reckon you had a small part to play in that, if my
eyes still see. I know you’re thinking about it, my lady, as am I. But these deaths, they’re not about us, not yet. Let’s
wait until we’ve put some distance between us and the dead, and then perhaps we can decide what our responsibilities are,
and what we ought to do about it. In the meantime, content yourself that they made their choices: Robal to taste the sour
fruit of anger; Kilfor to give his life in saving yours. Kind of balances out, wouldn’t you say?”

Stella said nothing to correct his impression of his son’s last moments.
If it helps the old fellow to think of Kilfor as a hero, let him so think. And perhaps he was.

“Anyway, they sent me back here to fetch you. The Zizhua guards are tellin’ us to hurry. Eager to get back to the city, if
you ask me.”

Stella nodded, and willed her leaden legs forward. She lifted her gaze to the winding path before them, leading to the entrance
and the real world—and glimpsed something.

“Sauxa, can you see that light?”

“No, my lady,” the man said.

“Look, sight along my arm. Some way up the cavern wall.”

“Ah, no—oh. Yes. What is that?”

Perhaps twenty paces up from the floor, the wall ahead of them had cracked and rock had fallen to the bottom of the cavern.
Caused by the explosion, no doubt, given how fresh and unadorned the rock around the crack appeared in contrast to the sculptured
wall to either side. But what had drawn Stella’s attention was the glow coming from the crack, as though liquid gold burned
within the rock and had only now found a way out.

She took a pace backwards and the light failed—or, more likely, she was at the wrong angle to see it. A similar result when
she stepped two paces forward. On, off, as though someone was alternately covering and uncovering a lamp with a blanket.

“Wait here, my lady. Someone needs to take a look at this. It don’t look natural to me.”

Sauxa lumbered off, struggling to catch the others, leaving Stella alone with the glow in the cliff and a rising disquiet.

Kilfor, Kilfor
, he thought he called out as the dream ended and reality began, slamming into him like a stone wall.
Kilfor!
But Kilfor was dead, dead by his hand, and Robal was alive, the possessor of life without end. Most High help him.

He had come back to life.

Please, please, have mercy
, he wanted to plead, but his burbling communicated nothing but his terror. His body had quickened, obedient to the immortal
blood, but his tongue had not grown back.

“—will make sure he never leaves this room, my lord. When the debt is paid, we will burn him.”

“Make sure you do. I cannot afford—ah, he has returned. Farewell, Factor. For this service I will allow you to name your reward.”

“I will think on it,” said the Factor.

“Let me have a moment with the prisoner.”

The request was followed by the clatter of booted feet leaving the chamber.

“Your body is about to be tortured beyond anything I’ve managed to accomplish, and I have tried very hard,” said the Destroyer,
his mouth close to Robal’s ear. “It is only fair, then, that we extend this torture to your mind.”

How could anything be worse than this?

“I am returning to Stella’s side. I shall woo her and win her, and while you are dying, again and again, I shall possess her.
Again and again. Then, as you guessed, I shall betray her. Her powers I will press into my service. I will use her up and
discard her, broken and forgotten, to rot. And you, my friend, will not be there to protect her.” The creature smiled. “The
knowledge of how much you are about to suffer eases my own pain,” he added. “I will not say ‘fare well,’ for you will fare
very poorly, I predict.”

With that the monster turned and walked from the chamber.

Stella, oh, Stella!

The Zizhua returned to the chamber.

“Your second death,” the Factor began, “will pay for the loss of my wife.”

“It is an opening of some kind,” the senior Zizhua guard opined.

“To the outside?” Stella didn’t think so: the light had a different quality about it. Otherworldly.

“Unlikely. This is the long axis of the hill. The crack would have to extend many thousands of paces into the rock to let
in light from the outside world.”

“Some unusual seam?” Seren asked. Kannwar had healed his horrific injuries. Though there remained some unsightly remnants,
he required minimal assistance to walk, and was likely to recover completely.

“Never have we seen rock that glowed,” the younger guard answered. “I would wish to examine this more closely.”

“We are commanded to return to aid in the search for further survivors,” the other guard reminded him. “We have already lingered
too long.” He glanced meaningfully at the travellers.

Lenares peered at the crack. “There is power coming from it,” she said. “It reminds me of… I’m not certain. We must climb
up the wall. I must know what this is.”

“You’re not certain?” Stella repeated. “But you think you might know?”

“Faah. I want to be sure before I say anything. But that light reminds me of the light in the House of the Gods. I am wondering
if the earthquake loosened this rock and the explosion brought it down, exposing… somewhere else.”

“The House of the Gods buried in a mountain?” Torve said.

“The entrances have to be somewhere,” the cosmographer replied reasonably enough. “The gods wouldn’t put them where everyone
would come crawling all over them. Perhaps there is an outside entrance, and we’re looking in through the back door, so to
speak.”

Stella turned her head at the sound of crunching feet on the road behind them. It was Kannwar, seemingly completely recovered
from his near-death—or full-death—experience. She wondered about that for a moment, remembering how long it had taken them
both to heal after Conal pushed them over a cliff back in Dhauria. She herself was nowhere near recovered, yet he had been
far closer to the blast. And he had given of himself to help heal the injured.

The man appeared almost ridiculously cheerful, humming under his breath.

“What are you looking at?” he asked as he drew up to them. “The Zizhua want us to leave as soon—oh. Now that is interesting.”

“We think it might be—” began Lenares.

“Yes, one of the Houses of the Gods. Or, more correctly, another entrance to the one and only House. Another mystery solved;
seems like our day for them.”

“What mystery?” Stella asked. All this cheerfulness made her skin prickle.

“I came across a scroll once, in the scriptorium at Dhauria, claiming to be a comprehensive list of the locations of the Houses
of the Gods, although it didn’t call them—it—that. Named it the Crèche. The list can’t have been comprehensive though, as
there was no record of the entrance Lenares and Torve say they found in Elamaq.”

“And on the list was an entrance in the Zizhua Valley,” Lenares interrupted, not to be outdone.

“Indeed,” said Kannwar agreeably, showing no resentment at the interruption. “So, something good comes from an act of darkness.
We should be able to use this against Umu. We have likely been followed into the valley by the Daughter’s avatar; at least,
we have no reason to suspect otherwise, given the gods have identified us as the only impediment to their plan and have therefore
followed us since this began. And you all saw the hole in the world following us, as though we dragged it along.”