Beyond the Wall of Time (55 page)

“Fascinating,” Kannwar said.

“Fascinating?” Stella replied. They had seen Torve pulled to his doom in the whirlpool, but the House of the Gods had whisked
them away to somewhere else—a room bordered by glittering walls—rendering them powerless to help. “You call the likely deaths
of everyone in our party but us—and that only a matter of time—
fascinating
?”

“Indeed. I’d wondered how she would do it. This method is particularly ingenious.”

“But… Kannwar, what do you mean?”

He sighed. His illusory right hand took hold of her arm and at the same time his consciousness penetrated hers, possessing
her.
Why the Most High persists with such material as yourself is beyond my comprehension. Such blind trust! Capturing Umu will
have to wait, my queen. We must go. We have a more dangerous opponent to dethrone.

A hundred contradictory questions roared in her head, striking her temporarily mute. Though, no doubt, he’d taken her power
of speech anyway.
Oh, Most High, Robal warned me…

You thought you were behaving in such a sophisticated fashion, didn’t you, my queen? Extending your trust to one who appeared
to have reformed himself? Surely the Most High would reward such trust? Ah, Stella, you are his tool. He uses his tools hard,
my queen, I should know. Uses and then discards them. Welcome to the discards pile.

What are you going to do? With me?
she added in the back of her mind.

He didn’t answer her, instead yanking her forward, past the innocent-seeming lake that spread across the floor of this room
and to the base of a broad stone stair that disappeared into a huge mound of sand.

Up there is one of the House’s entrances
, he remarked, then waved a hand at it. A shock spread out from his hand—she could see it, ripples in the air—and crashed
into the shining walls, shaking the room. Parts of both walls came down, falling into the narrow gap at the top of the stair,
above the mound of sand.

An entrance no longer
, he said, his voice a smirk in her mind.
One entrance closed, three more to go.

He beckoned her forward, and her feet were already dancing in obedience before she’d even thought of resisting him.

Lenares stumbled into the Throne Room at precisely the moment she least wished it. Alone, weary, defenceless.

There Umu sat, atop one of the three rebuilt chairs, looking small and rather ridiculous in Conal’s body, but Lenares knew
better than to tell her that. The Daughter lifted an arm in sardonic greeting.

“Welcome, cosmographer,” said the priest’s voice, overlaid with Umu’s thick cadences. “I have spent some time thinking how
I would repay you for my days in captivity. I believe I have come up with a satisfactory plan.”

She raised her—Conal’s—fist and opened it.

Lenares turned and ran, but the rooms beyond the entrance changed faster than thought. Flicker, flicker, flicker. No escape
save into some nowhere void.

“Aren’t you going to look at what I have?”

“No need,” Lenares said, keeping her voice even. “I know what it is.”

“And if you’d let me alone, you could have known it, and its former owner, a great deal better. But as it is, it is a powerful
talisman in my skilled hand. Observe.”

She—it—breathed on the dreadful thing and Torve materialised at the base of the chair. Lenares ran towards him.

“Ah, ah,” Umu said, wagging an admonitory finger. “Stay where you are, please.”

Lenares ignored her. A pale bubble appeared, encasing the pale-faced figure of her beloved—his face has the look of the drowned,
she realised—and began to expand. She didn’t bother to test the strength of the magical barrier.

“You should have taken better care of your huanu fragment,” Umu said, clearly delighting in every word. “You thwarted me with
it at Corata Pit, and never thought of it again. I see your hand darting to your pocket. How many days ago did you last think
to check on it? Robal had it from you, claiming it as part of his own dark plans, some time ago now. Just imagine, girl. With
it you could have marched right through my barrier and called your Omeran toy back from the cold lake in which he currently
lies. Too bad, Lenares. Too bad you are only half a person. A shame you are so narrowly obsessed with yourself that you do
not ever think of the wider picture. And you wanted to be a god! Youl You’d make a splendid anti-god. People would flee from
you in case you offered to help them!”

Lenares gasped at the cruelty in the words, and at their truth.
Look what has happened since you began to lead the others
, she acknowledged.

“You see it, don’t you?” the Daughter said, baiting her.

It’s only truth
, the cosmographer told herself.
Why should it frighten me?

But Umu clearly thought such words would damage her, even destroy her. The notion puzzled Lenares.
What will happen if I play along?
She lowered her head to her chest and began to shake her shoulders, as though sobbing.

The sound that came from the throne above her was as much a purr as a laugh.

Stella could do nothing but watch as Kannwar gambled and won, moving from room to room without encountering Umu or indeed
any of their fellow travellers. She wondered if he had some control over the House of the Gods, or if Umu and he were in collusion.

As he strode ahead and she stumbled unwillingly behind, he continued to expand on his theme of his own brilliance and her
incompetence. She judged this not as some gloating lord at the moment of his triumph, but more an attempt to keep her off
balance to prevent her mounting a defence or even a counterattack.

It follows, therefore, that he believes me capable of such a counterattack.
The thought sharpened her mind.

“I had to do little to incite Robal to madness,” he was saying. “The man was more than somewhat mad already, the possessor
of what he believed was a great love. All I had to do was drive him to jealousy. He was cleverer than I thought, however.
I never imagined he’d try to use explosives. It was I who suggested he take the stone from Lenares—though he thought the instructions
I gave him were but a dream—and I expected him to try to use it on me directly, as he did at Martje’s house in Sayonae. He’d
learned his lesson though. I admired him for that. Others never learn.

“I had a few scant seconds to save myself. Ah, Stella, even you would have to admire my genius. Not only did I protect myself
from the worst of the explosion by diverting it outwards and upwards, I artfully laid my supposedly dying body beside Robal
and practically invited him to partake of his own doom. So eager he was, cupping my blood and drinking death to himself.”

Stella shuddered. It broke her to learn that Robal had succumbed at the last.

“He’s still alive, of course,” Kannwar remarked. “After a fashion, at least. The angle of the blast killed many more Zizhua
than he—or even I—expected. But they have him and will exact their revenge, killing him again and again until the number of
his deaths equals the number of theirs. I suspect he will live many months, if not years.”

Stella leaned forward and vomited on the stone floor of the Children’s Room.

“I was always going to betray you, of course. But when Umu started playing with her house, I moved my timetable forward somewhat.”

You are frightened of him
, she said into his mind.

“Indeed I am. From what Arathé and Duon have said, I have very good reason. He grows stronger every day and is ready to claim
my fortress for his own. That, Stella, I will not tolerate. Umu can wait: I am going after Husk.”

He waved a hand and the new-forged link between the House of the Gods and Zizhua City vanished under a pile of rubble.

“There,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “No escape now, except for us.”

How can you do this? These are people you lived with for months. You shared danger with them, ate with them, laughed with
them.

“And I’m relieved to be rid of them. Fools and half-wits, without exception. If I were you, Stella, I would keep silent in
my presence regarding these people. It would be just as easy for me to slay them all, thus ensuring their silence.”

But they’ll die anyway, trapped in the House of the Gods.

So much death, and she again at the Destroyer’s side, an unwilling observer. A dupe. To be remembered in histories as betraying
her friends. Again.

“At least they’ll have time to prepare themselves for death. Something you must envy them if all your talk of the curse of
immortality is more than mere posturing.”

Did you ever love me?
The question sounded plaintive even to her own ears.

“Of course, my queen,” he said, bowing slightly. “But in my own way.”

By Alkuon, the huanu stone had to be worth something. It negated magic, so dead Omiy had said; then let it negate the surely
magical effect of changing rooms in the House of the Gods. Let it undo the magical snares his companions—his children—had
fallen foul of. Let it be of some use. Or, by every god of the sea, he would throw it away.

In these moments of terror, separated from his family and surrounded by walls so terrifyingly reminiscent of Fossa, Cylene
was his rock. Noetos wanted to stand in the middle of the room and howl his rage; Cylene took him by the arm, steadied him,
and led him onward.

“Come on, love,” she whispered in his ear. “Our enemy may have disadvantaged us, but the battle is not over. Not yet.”

Snare after snare had been activated as they walked through the rooms. In the Children’s Room, the giant toys had begun hurling
themselves randomly around the enclosure, as though propelled by some petulant hand. Probably re-enacting some earlier time,
Cylene speculated. They managed to avoid most of the objects, though the huanu stone in Noetos’s hand may have diverted a
few of the swifter shapes. The floor of the Blood Room turned to… well, blood, Noetos guessed, but not under his feet. Again,
the protection came from the huanu stone. The Sculpture Room ensnared Cylene momentarily as she touched one of the outstretched
limbs, but Noetos broke her free by holding the stone at the place where her arm had fused to the statue.

I suppose it is of some use, after all
, he admitted.

Finally, through the corridor, he spied the room he was looking for: where Torve had been castrated weeks before, and where
Keppia had been driven out of Dryman, at least for a time. At least, he assumed it was the Throne Room: the thrones seemed
to have been rebuilt. He approached the entrance, Cylene by his side.

A figure sitting atop one of the thrones peered in his direction. The room began to fade.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Noetos breathed, and held the huanu stone in front of him as he strode through the entrance. The room
froze, half-dematerialised. Entering it was like breaking through a thick spider’s web.

The figure on the throne was Conal the priest. No, not Conal—Umu. The Daughter wearing a body of rotting meat. At the base
of her throne cowered another figure. Cylene’s twin, Lenares.

“Ah. The man with his stone—and Lenares’ sister. Perfect. Welcome, welcome.”

The dead priest beckoned them forward as though he—she—had been expecting them. Could this have been part of Umu’s plan? Had
she allowed for the likelihood of his making it to the Throne Room?

“What have you done with my children?” Noetos asked, his voice as hard as he could make it, disguising the quaking inside
him.

“Of course, your children. A more sensible man than you would have written them off, realising that my defeat was worth more
than their lives. But you are not a sensible man, are you? You are a child, able to focus on nothing more than the next innocent
receptacle of your wrath. And thereby you can be held hostage.”

She drew something out of Conal’s bloodstained pocket. “For this to work I needed something from each of you. I took hair
from your son and your daughter; be thankful I didn’t take anything less easy to replace.”

“When did you take it?” Cylene asked, her head tilted to one side, birdlike. She took small steps towards her sister, who
sat, head bowed, as though she’d not noticed their arrival.

“Does it matter?”

“You are sorely reduced for a god,” Cylene continued. “Look at you, wearing a body decaying all around you. How can you stand
it? Walking around in it, following us northwards, stopping and going through our cast-offs, picking over our food, our combings,
our sleeping places, looking for hair or shit or skin. How demeaning.”

Cylene had clearly guessed right. Noetos supposed the god would have flushed had there been blood left in Conal’s body. Certainly
it drew itself up and regarded Cylene stiffly.

“What do you know of godhood?” the voice said. “Are you like your sister then, lusting after power and knowledge without being
prepared to pay the price?”

“I am nothing like my sister. The things I desire, Umu, you can never have.”

The god laughed. “You imagine yourself to be unsettling me,” she said, “when in fact you do little more than supply me with
a moment’s amusement. A moment that is now over.”

Cylene smiled then, and Noetos backed away in fright, the hair on his head prickling in awe. For in her smile was power from
beyond the Wall of Time.

Umu saw it too. Her—his—mouth snapped shut. Lenares raised her head. The cosmographer’s mouth described an “O.”

“You watched Keppia as he was driven out of the world and sealed beyond the Worldwall,” Cylene said. “You were surprised I
lived afterwards, but you thought no more of it, suiting your plans to those you considered dangerous. Kannwar, Lord of Bhrudwo.
Noetos and his huanu stone. Stella, who bears the fire of the Most High. Lenares the cosmographer, who had snared you once
before. But you forgot me.”

“Who are you?” asked the god, fear in her voice.

“You ate me once,” Cylene said.

As she spoke, she reached down and touched Lenares on her shoulder. The girl burst into tears.