Beyond the Wall of Time (58 page)

“Yes, but what I want to know,” said Noetos, concern on his face, “is how easily she might return.” Everyone stared at the
body at their feet. “Not Conal’s body, but down one of the other links, to Duon or Arathé—and through them to others.”

Duon saw the worry on the man’s face.
He’s concerned for his daughter, and also for himself. As am I.

As are we all
, Arathé whispered, her voice a caress even in its anxiety.

“Then the two of you need to work together on some form of defence,” said Anomer, clutching his sister’s hand.

“Aye,” Mustar agreed. The fisherman’s eyes flicked over Arathé.

That one fancies you
, Duon said.

He does. He’s quite the handsome young man, don’t you think?

Indeed, if you like them vacuous.

She laughed in his mind.
Jealous, Captain?

Anomer cleared his throat; clearly they were spilling over into his mind’s ear. “Perhaps,” he said, “you ought not to use
your mental connection for now, in order not to draw the Daughter’s attention?”

Ah
, Arathé and Duon said at the same moment, and damped their minds down.

In the silence, the group heard an exhalation from the corpse’s body.
How undignified we all are in death
, Duon reflected; though a moment later he began to wonder.
This corpse is weeks dead. How could it still be manufacturing gases?

“It’s trying to say something,” he said, and bent down to the rotted face.

“Careful!” Mustar cried. “It might be Umu!”

“Whoever it is, we ought to hear it,” Duon replied.

The breaths, exhalations, came rhythmically, as though something mechanical was expelling breath from the lungs. He winced
at the dire smell contained in the vapour.

“He’s saying sorry,” Lenares said.

“Priest?” Sauxa said, bending over the body. “Is that you?”

“Yesss.”

Duon leaped backwards. Sauxa stayed where he was.

“Speak,” said the plainsman.

“Ssss-Stella?”

“She’s not here,” the plainsman said shortly.

“Sss-sorry,” said the body. “I let everyone down. Too weak. Wanted to… to pleassssse.”

The breathing stopped, and for a moment Duon thought the priest’s spirit had finally fled.

“Ssselfish. Paid for it now. But I fought the monssster, made her sssluggish. S-ss-sent her away. Saved you all.”

“That you did, priest,” Duon said, choosing not to elaborate on the problems this act might have caused. “Your sins have been
absolved.”

“Sssss,” said the body. “Sss-say goodbye to Ssstella for me. I go now to sssee what judgment has in ssstore for me.” The mouth
clicked in what could only be macabre laughter. “I don’t hope for much.”

“Aye,” Sauxa said, his face troubled. “Nor should any of us.”

The body seemed to deflate, as though the breath had gone from it—which, Duon presumed, was likely exactly what had happened.

“Fare well, priest,” Sauxa said, his face stony. Wishing, no doubt, he’d had the luxury of last words with his own son.

Noetos sighed, and eased himself to his feet with a groan. “What next?” he asked the group.

“We must find Kannwar and Stella,” Lenares said firmly. “Then we can decide what to do next.”

“Whatever we decide, it will necessarily involve Andratan,” said Consina. “If that’s where Umu has gone, it is where we must
follow.”

“Aye,” Sauxa said. “Why not? Travel with the Destroyer and invade his fortress. I’m sure I’m asleep in my tent, the
Journeys of the First Men
lying across my lap. Someone wake me up at the end of this dream.” He licked his lips and corrected himself. “This nightmare.”

They buried the body with no ceremony. Everyone felt ambivalent about the little priest, Noetos judged. Brave at the end,
though. The burial was easy, given the soft, sandy floor of the Throne Room.

“So,” he said, as Seren and Mustar hand-shovelled the last of the sand over the shallow grave. “Our quarry is hundreds of
leagues away. By the time we travel to Andratan any conflict will long since have been resolved.”

“We still have to go there,” Lenares said stubbornly.

Such a strange girl, so like and so unlike her sister. Both stubborn, fortunately for him. He took Cylene’s hand in his own;
she smiled in response.

Cylene had said nothing about Conal’s demise, but he knew it had affected her deeply. How else would it have taken her, given
how close she had come to a similar fate? Of them all, she knew best what the priest had endured at the end. Her face had
been pale as they had buried Conal.

Noetos tried not to think of the dead woman keeping his beloved Cylene alive. Madness, the whole story seemed; something to
have been dismissed without comment in the days before this crazy adventure had begun. A dead soul sustaining Cylene, allowing
an infinitesimal amount of magic down the conduit once belonging to Keppia himself? He’d not known what to think when she’d
come to him that first night after her… well, her resurrection, for want of a more accurate term. Offering herself without
a trace of embarrassment. He’d not known whether she was still the same woman he’d fallen in love with, and had been reluctant
in his own secret heart. Partly, he admitted, because of his upbringing. He was supposed to bring his intended home for the
family to inspect:
Look, Father, I’ve found a chaste woman mad enough to spend the rest of her life with me!
Except Cylene was anything but chaste, and she’d make no such promise.
Nor do I need her to
, Noetos had realised.
Keeping such a woman will mean wooing her anew every day.

He’d looked her in the eye, there on the road north of Mensaya, and had quashed his fear.
You don’t need someone frightened of you
, he told her in his mind, knowing she couldn’t hear him and glad of it, glad she couldn’t see his confusion.
You need someone to comfort you, to reassure yourself you are human.

He had reached out his hand and taken hers, then led her to a sheltered place far enough away from where the others slept,
and there had loved her with his body, exercising restraint and tenderness. She had cried in his arms, not needing to explain
her tears, knowing he understood. Healing.

She squeezed his hand now. Perhaps she too had been thinking of that first night.

“The swiftest way north is by ship,” she told her sister.

“No, there is a quicker way,” Sauxa said. “If we can find the Undying Man, he can take us there in but a moment.”

“How?” This from Sautea, the stocky fisherman.

“His blue fire.” Sauxa reminded them of the Falthans’ journey to Bhrudwo and their arrival at Lake Woe. “It’s not a comfortable
voyage, but if it’s speed you want, I can’t think of anything comparable.”

“Can we trust him?” Noetos asked.

Anomer turned to face him, his eyebrows raised. “Father, haven’t you had enough evidence that the Undying Man is on our side?
Didn’t you hear his words? He’s not like us: his morals are necessarily more rarefied than ours. Arathé has accepted his explanation,
as have I. Can’t you accept it too, and move on?”

A fair question, deserving a fair answer.

“No,” he said.

Anomer snorted in disgust and turned away.

“Nevertheless, Sauxa is right,” Noetos continued. “We need to find our two missing companions, whether or not they can provide
us with a shortcut to Andratan.”

“Can we trust the House of the Gods to let us alone?” Cyclamere asked, his face a mask. Noetos wondered how painful had been
his capture.

“We should go in pairs then,” he said. “Enter each new room side by side, so you are not separated. Gather here when you have
investigated as much as you are able.”

“And let us not be too long about it,” Seren said. “I, for one, am in need of sleep.”

Noetos glanced up at the sky, now full night, with piercing stars scattered across the heavens. They all needed sleep. How
long had it been? Since the night before Robal had blown up Zizhua City—how long ago had that been? He rubbed his beard.

“In pairs,” he said, and began to lead Cylene towards the corridor.

“Cylene!” Lenares called. “The search doesn’t need us all. Someone needs to work out how Umu controlled the House of the Gods.
I’m staying here. Could you stay with me?”

“No, Noetos,” Cylene said, tugging against him. “I’m going to stay here.”

My beloved
, he thought to insist, then remembered.
You’ll never be held against your will, not again. See to your sister.

“A good idea,” he agreed, the words coming reluctantly from his tongue. “I’ll go with Sautea.”

“Ah… yes, Noetos,” Sautea said, and came dutifully to his side, leaving Mustar on his own.

“Problem, old friend?” Noetos asked him.

“No,” came the abrupt answer.

It was Sautea, in fact, who discovered Stella and Kannwar—or evidence of their passage. But that discovery came after a number
of far more unpleasant discoveries.

“The entrance to the Rainbow Room is blocked,” Torve reported when the travellers had all gathered back in the Throne Room.
“A recent rock fall. An unfortunate accident, if accident it was.”

Duon frowned. “The same thing has happened to the route back to Zizhua City,” he said. “This cannot be a coincidence.”

“It seems not,” Sautea said. “Noetos and I found the embers of a fire in the Children’s Room. Did anyone else see it?”

No, came the replies. They’d all been in the room at some point over the last few hours of searching, but none had seen the
embers. Looking for people, they were, not embers, a few said defensively.

“What do you make of it?” Mustar asked.

“He’s telling us that Kannwar and Stella have already escaped this place,” Lenares said, “using the blue fire Sauxa told us
about. Leaving us behind.”

“Aye,” said Sauxa, sucking his teeth. “Betrayal, that’s what it is.”

“Why now?” Bregor asked aloud.

“Why not sooner?” Noetos countered.

He did not look at his children for fear of angering them with the look of triumph no doubt plastered on his face.

“So, they have abandoned us and blocked our paths out of this place,” Duon said. “Is that it then? Quest over?”

“Hard to believe,” Sauxa said.

“What, that our journey is at an end?”

“No, Mister Explorer. Hard to believe that Stella would betray us. I suspect she is not acting under her own volition.”

“It doesn’t really matter at this point,” Noetos said impatiently. “Though we will be sure to ask her when next we see her.
In the meantime, we need to find a way out of here. I do not feel like adding my corpse to that of the priest.”

“As to that,” Lenares said, “I have some thoughts.”

Everyone turned to her, and Noetos watched her swell at the attention. He wondered how much she would lie and exaggerate to
keep their attention fixed on her.
No
, he chastised himself.
She adores our consideration, but would not lie to obtain it. Our constant failing has been in not listening to her often
or closely enough.

“Gather around,” she said, “and listen.”

Something dark lurked within her, Stella admitted to herself. Something attracted to dark men, to men who dealt in falsehood,
trickery, bullying and death. Something repelled by decency, by ordinariness. How else could she explain her willingness to
be seduced time and again by power and its concomitants? Her long rejection of everything good encapsulated in Leith Mahnumsen?
Her avid pursuit of Tanghin, who proved to be Deorc of Jasweyah in disguise? And her secret—well, not so secret—desire for
the Destroyer himself?

The door to the Sea Tower closed behind them and soldiers came forward with weapons presented and questions at the ready.
Their voices changed from belligerent to respectful as they saw who had come through the door. Stella cared nothing for their
conversations, totally absorbed in this belated moment of self-awareness.

Even after he wounded me near to death and tortured me back to health, I lusted after him
, she admitted to herself.
I hate him, but want him.
She thought of her parents. Ineffectual Pell, her father, his meekness at home and on the village council; kept meek by her
mother Herza’s constant criticism. Both powerless to help her older brother with his drunkenness. Neither pleading nor nagging
helped. Not an ounce of real strength between them.

A village boy, Druin, had lusted after her. He’d wanted her body, had said so whenever he’d been able to catch her alone—and
sometimes, embarrassingly, in front of her friends or his. Yet something had stirred in her at his words, something wicked,
something urging her to dive right in, to immerse herself in this futureless passion, so far removed from the petty nagging
and calculation she’d been brought up to believe was virtue.

By contrast, Leith’s attempts to woo her had been pitiful. An assignation under the village oak, probably for nothing more
than awkward conversation; dreadfully shy, he’d never have ventured as far as a quick fumble. It had been too easy to agree
with Druin’s cruel assessment of Leith’s intentions. She’d stayed away, leaving him to waste the afternoon under the oak.

Events had unfolded as they had and she’d fled the village, delighted that her deepest wish was to be granted: a passage out
of this dead-end place, new vistas opening up before her. The darkness within her had jumped at the chance.

Then Wira had come into her life. Poor Wira. Virtuous and handsome but somehow flawed; she’d been able to tell that right
from the beginning. Such a contrast to his older brother, Farr, a man with a stick up his backside if ever she’d met one.
Of course Wira attracted her. It was because of his flaw she’d been drawn to him, not in spite of it. The darker the man,
the stronger the attraction… Wira had been a drunkard, and had died trying to save her from the Lords of Fear. The darkness
within her had lamented his death while simultaneously rejoicing in it: such a bright soul dying to save her! How evil she
had become, even then.