Beyond the Wall of Time (53 page)

He paused, clearly seeking acknowledgment. Various of the travellers nodded.

“Umu must know where the House is. What better place to confront us?” Noetos growled. Kannwar nodded encouragingly. “Therefore,”
the fisherman concluded, “we should stay well away.”

“You were correct until that last, friend Noetos,” Kannwar said, still insanely cheerful. “What better place for us to confront
her? No one else but us to get hurt.” He nodded to Stella. “It is a place that focuses power, and that will magnify any advantage
we have over her. And she will not be able to resist the place, even though she must suspect it is a trap.”

Stella smiled at him, then frowned. “You said ‘another mystery solved.’ What other mystery?”

The man grinned even more broadly, and for a moment Stella could see the real Kannwar, the boy-man raised in the service of
the Most High two thousand years ago. His glamour was entirely natural and utterly irresistible.

“Nothing you should concern yourself about,” he said. “Just an interesting way one might prolong the punishment of a criminal
for a truly horrific crime.”

“You have a terrifying way of thinking. One moment human, the next something entirely other.”

“Wait until you’ve lived two thousand years, then see how many people understand you,” he said.

Stella could think of nothing, not a single thing, she’d like less.

*   *   *

—please, please, let it end—

Robal’s return to consciousness was as meat through a grinder. Someone was talking, but it took him a while to recognise the
words.

“—struck by a roof-spear while trying to help her neighbour who was pinned by the wall of her home. She was my beloved daughter.”
Sobs, wailing.

Limbs twitching, thoughts firing uncontrollably, a cascade of images, all of them grey, red-edged. Entering a land between
life and death. Entering the realm of insanity.

“We have the right to choose the punishment.” The words came slowly, amid weeping. “I want him flayed.”

His last clear thought before the agony began—the agony that finally drove him into madness—was a desperate wish that the
doubling of time they had experienced might send him back to the moment before he threw the sulphur paper. The moment before
the madness began.

Another chance!
he screamed.
A chance to undo what I have done!

Silence. And then pain.

ONLY TWENTY PACES SEPARATED
them from their goal. But those twenty paces were vertical. The first three were relatively easy, scrambling up a mound of
newly fallen rock, but the rest appeared impossible to Stella.

“Can you do anything?” she asked Kannwar, who stood beside her watching Noetos and his son lead the first attempt to scale
the wall.

“Yes,” he said. “I could fashion a stair out of the air itself that we could ascend to the entrance.”

“Then do it,” she urged him. “Umu may already be within, planning our deaths.”

He inclined his head towards her. “Do you remember my escape from Instruere, Stella?”

Did she remember it? Of course she did. At the climax of the Falthan War, Kannwar had arrived in Instruere a conquering king
leading a victorious army, having defeated the Falthan champion and accepted their surrender. Stella had been his handmaiden,
already cursed with the immortal blood, in thrall to him.

He strode into the Great Hall of Instruere to sign the surrender documents, which were to be sealed magically with a truthspell.
Stella herself had been compelled to deliver the documents into his hand; the walk up to and across the makeshift stage had
been the single most humiliating moment of her life, watched by a thousand of Instruere’s citizens who clearly saw her betrayal,
not knowing how hard she struggled to break his iron will. As Kannwar raised the pen, his hand was struck off by an unseen
assailant in a bizarre parody of his encounter with the Most High two thousand years previously. Leith claimed to have seen
what happened: his story, ever unchanging, was that the carving of the Most High in the Great Hall loosed an arrow at the
Destroyer, taking off his hand at the wrist. Well, everyone saw the arrow flaming as it stood stuck fast in the signing desk,
quivering. Everyone heard the Destroyer’s cry of anguish as his hand was severed from his arm. And, much later, everyone saw
that the face of the Most High on that carving had turned into the face of Leith’s brother, Hal. And so the Halites were born.

Even thinking about it now raised beads of sweat on Stella’s skin.

Kannwar had made his escape in the confusion of the moment, forcing Stella to lend him her strength. They had fled across
Instruere, his handless arms resting on her shoulders, she bearing most of his weight as his magic leached out of him. He
would never have escaped had it not been for her assistance—and the sacrifice of the pride of Bhrudwo, Kannwar’s Lords of
Fear.

They had come at his call, had found him in distress and had sacrificed themselves, one after another, allowing him to drain
them to form a walkway down from the city wall and across the Aleinus River. What a long mile that had been! For every twenty
paces, another Lord of Fear had fallen, eviscerated, nothing more than a shell of skin and bone. With such horrendous cost
Kannwar had escaped, and had limped back to Bhrudwo to rebuild his strength.

“I remember it,” she said.

“How many of your companions should I use up to make the stair?” he asked her. “You are asking me to perform perhaps the most
difficult magic of all, and I am barely recovered from my injuries. Don’t you think we ought to save something in order to
oppose Umu?”

“You are right,” Stella admitted.

“It will not do the men any harm to achieve this by ordinary mortal strength,” Kannwar added.

“If anyone should fall, can you at least cushion their landing?”

“Yes, I can do that. But so could you, if you were willing to explore the limits of your power. Stella, you have had the fire
of the Most High within you for seventy years and never once have you even fanned the embers of its flame. What would it take
for you to embrace the gift you have been given?”

“To see it as a gift and not as a curse,” she snapped. “All very well for you. You snatched the so-called gift from the Most
High in open rebellion. You may not have received exactly what you expected, but at least it was your hand reaching out. What
did I do but defy you one too many times and suffer the consequences?”

Seven decades, it seemed, had not dimmed her outrage after all.

“I struck you down, Stella. But I saved you from death by sharing my blood with you.”

“And I have felt polluted from that moment to this!” she hissed.

He turned away from her. Had she finally daunted him? Broken through his complacent self-confidence? He muttered something
she did not quite catch. She asked him to repeat it.

“Anomer has reached the opening,” he said.

Stella bit her lip to stop from screaming.

It took an hour for all the travellers to climb, assisted or unassisted, to the glowing crack in the wall. The younger members
of the party made a good fist of the climb: Arathé, Lenares and Torve, Mustar, Cylene and Moralye all scampered quickly up
the rock-face as though they were spiders. Cyclamere took his time, moving more cautiously but just as sure-footedly, with
Noetos making the climb immediately following his son and remaining just below the opening to lift anyone who required it
over the last few paces of smoother rock. Consina and Bregor proceeded slowly, but arrived without mishap. Sauxa was a problem,
slow and proud, refusing assistance. Twice he lost his grip, but both times Kannwar supported him with a light touch of magic,
keeping him anchored against the wall. Seren came next, his difficulties caused not by fear or ineptitude but by his incomplete
healing, and he muttered angrily to himself during his ascent. Duon made the climb as easily as the youngsters. Sautea proved
the most difficult to coax up the wall, reluctant to take any risks. In the end Noetos clambered halfway down and hauled his
friend up by main force. The old man spluttered indignantly all the way and thanked Noetos profusely when he reached the opening.

Stella’s limbs felt as though all the life had been leached out of them—a side effect, she supposed, of forced healing. Shaking
with weariness, she approached the rocks, her eyes fixed on anything but the task in front of her.

The next thing she knew she was sitting on the cold limestone floor, weeping.

“I c-c-can’t,” she sobbed, shuddering at the touch of a hand on her shoulder.

“Please don’t give up now, Stella. We’re so close.”

“You d-don’t n-need me. I’m j-just in the way.”

“We do need you,” Kannwar coaxed.

She took a racking breath. “I’m so tired.” She dragged the word out into an embarrassing whine. “Let me s-s-sleep.”

A voice filtered down from above. “Are you all right down there?”

Kannwar didn’t bother replying.

“So, girl, what happens now?”

“I’m s-sorry.”

Too much, she’d been through far too much. Walking for months on end with no clear destination in sight. Watching others fight,
watching others die. Leith. Phemanderac. Robal. Each one worth a lifetime’s sorrow. Dying twice herself. Struggling with the
deepest of emotions: love, hate, attraction, revulsion, confusion.

“You’re worn out.”

“I’ve b-been worn out for years. Walking around as though I’m alive but d-dead inside.” She tried to seal her mouth closed,
but the traitorous words kept coming out. Small, selfish, complaining words. “No use to anyone. A figure of hatred.”

“It’s not like you, Stella, to feel sorry for yourself.”

“It’s not like anyone else to feel s-sorry for me.”

She wanted very badly to apologise to Kannwar for her weakness. Knowing how much he despised any sign of it, imagining the
look of disdain that even now must be forming on his face, she dared not look up at him. But part of her knew how much trouble
she had caused for herself—for everyone around her—by trying to be strong, by refusing help, by going her own way.

“Other people know nothing,” Kannwar said harshly. “They assume we are the most fortunate of people, blessed with life everlasting.
They envy our positions of power. Tell me, Stella, do you feel fortunate?”

“You know the answer to that,” she said. “For a long time I was able to ignore the stares, the gossip behind the hand”—
cowardly gossip, hurting Leith more than it hurt me
—“because I had an empire to care for. The Halites were free to create their religion with me as its evil witch, as long as
it kept them happy. All I cared about was paying back the debt I owed Falthans for the way I betrayed them.”
The way I was forced to betray them.
“More and more, as Leith slipped into his long decline, the real work of administration fell to me, with assistance from
Phemanderac whenever he was around, despite the increasingly strident opposition from my powerful enemies. Then Leith died.”
She hiccoughed a sob. “Everything changed. It was as though in that moment, everything meaningful about my life was stripped
away, like the blankets torn from a familiar bed, leaving me naked. Without Leith I suddenly felt like I had no identity.
I certainly had no protection from those who wished me harm. I fled for my life, and with Robal’s help barely avoided the
Halite Archpriest of the Koinobia and his minions. Do you understand, Kannwar?” It was so important he understood. “I lost
virtually everything when Leith died. My entire kingdom shrank to an uncouth guardsman and a Halite priest, and now they’ve
gone. What you see sitting here is a hollow shell. I have nothing to keep me going save duty and memory, and neither is strong
enough to serve. My flesh endures, but my spirit has left me.”

She buried her head in her folded arms, too weary even to cry. Above them Noetos asked some question or other. Stella let
Kannwar deal with it.

Stella.
Kannwar’s voice swam into her mind as smooth as honey, as warm as a winter cloak.
You and I are linked by more than circumstances. We are bound together by the immortal blood we share. Let me help you.

No!
she retorted.
I don’t trust you! Leave me alone! Get out of my mind!

I’m speaking in your mind to save your embarrassment. You trusted me enough to accept my help when the hole in the world first
came for you, back in the Maremma marshes. What is so difficult about allowing me to lend you the strength to climb a little
wall?

Because I am empty now
, she said simply.
And if I allow you access, you will take me, fill me and never let me go.
Her secret fear, her secret desire.

No, Stella
. Elation, disappointment.
I give you my word.

She laughed mockingly.
Your word?

A glimmer of anger came through the blood-borne connection.
My word is all you have, my queen. At any point in the last seventy years I could have overwhelmed you just as I did during
the Falthan War. Any time, Stella, but I forbore.

The Most High broke your power over me
, Stella sent, trying to hide her uncertainty, her growing terror.

Really? Then how do you explain this?

He seized her, his fist wrapped around her heart, taking her body and mind. Breath stopped, throat closed, eyes bulging, she
stood—he forced her to stand—and walked two paces, placed her hands against the wall, as though about to climb. Then he let
her go.

She collapsed onto the pile of rocks, gasping like a landed fish. “You, you,” she said, searching in vain for a swearword
sufficiently dire.

“Come, Stella. We have shared so much on this quest. This is the Most High’s business. Would he have put us together and left
you defenceless?”

“Apparently,” she breathed.

“I am your defence. I will protect you.”

“It is you I need protecting from! Ah, this is meaningless. All we do is go around in circles. Leave me. I’ll climb your wall.”