Beyond the Wall of Time (59 page)

A question stirred itself in her mind. “What happened to your Lords of Fear?”

“A failed experiment, my queen,” said the Destroyer, his voice just behind her in the darkened corridor. The red-haired servant’s
torch bobbed some distance ahead. “One that will not be repeated. I ended their lives myself on my return to Andratan.”

“You didn’t track them all down,” she said. He gave no answer to this.

They climbed another stair, this one circular, inscribed into the barrel of the Sea Tower. No one save the servant and his
torch shared the stair with them.
Perhaps the servants go home in the evening
, Stella thought, then considered the island.
No, this fortress is their home. What a bleak place to live.

She returned to her thoughts. Between herself and her parents, they had succeeded in birthing and nurturing something dark
within her. Something that had lusted after Tanghin without considering the consequences; another man who had appeared to
be pure—a member of the Ecc1esia, high in their confidences—while hiding a dark secret. Darker by far than she’d suspected.
Tanghin had been Deorc, sent by the Destroyer to Instruere as a vanguard of invasion, a spy to infiltrate and control the
Council of Faltha. A far deeper kind of evil than even her inner darkness had believed possible, let alone contemplated joining
with. This was well beyond the delicious excitement of the forbidden and into the terror of the truly depraved. Torturer,
executioner, killer. Stella had betrayed him to his master, who turned out to excel in the vices in which Deorc was merely
competent.

Was this dark companion an indivisible part of her, or could she put it aside?

Seventy years, Stella, and finally you ask the right question.

She stopped, arrested by the shock of the voice speaking into her mind. The Destroyer bumped into her.

“Something the matter, my queen?”

“Apart from being force-marched through the rancid home of the man I hate most in the world, you mean?” she replied sweetly.

The Destroyer tilted back his head and roared with laughter, each bark echoing—resonating—with the dark tar inside her.

Can I, Leith? Can I put it aside?

No
, said the most patient and loving man she’d ever known.
No, these desires are a part of you, a part of all of us.

Not of you, surely
, she said to him.

Stella, we all suffer from such things. Take them out—even if it were possible—and you leave behind something less than a
human.

She resumed walking, following the Destroyer now. The link between her and the man in front of her felt more like a string,
less like a chain. She wondered at the change and what it might mean.

There was nothing wrong with wanting more than a small village could offer you
, Leith said.
Nor in desiring dark and dangerous experiences. What trapped you and led you here was the day you made it the core of who
you are. From that day on you sought out abusive relationships and gloried in the pain they brought you.

Why didn’t you tell me?

I didn’t understand. Only when I passed through the veil and into the void beyond did I see clearly.

You were given insight into my problems?
she said ruefully.

He laughed.
Only incidentally, dear one. What I saw most clearly were my own problems, and the choices I’d made affixing them to me.

Too late then
, she said.
What’s the point of realising where you went wrong when your life is over?

Over?
Leith said, and the question hung between them like the promise of eternity.

Ahead of her the Destroyer unlocked a door and stepped out into the night air. She followed, to find herself on a roofed walkway
high above one of the fortress’s keeps. People and animals moved about far below.

And besides, your life here has not yet ended
, Leith added.

She acknowledged the corollary.
I, therefore, can benefit from the knowledge.

Indeed
, he said.

She smiled at his voice.
Stay with me a while?

As long as I can
, he said.

Lenares pushed her mind as far as it would go, thinking furiously. She paced around the Throne Room, climbed first one then
another of the three great chairs arranged around the great bronze map set into the ground, and stared at the map, searching
for inspiration. Occasionally one of the others tried to speak with her, but she waved them away.
Well meaning but ignorant, of no help here.

The bronze map held immense fascination for Lenares. She remembered the power she’d felt when, on her second visit to the
Godhouse, she’d climbed into one of the seats and first understood the map. It was a wonder of the world without a doubt,
representing a way of thinking beyond even her imagination. Distance wasn’t measured in leagues on this map; instead the scale
was logarithmic, and the size of things was large in the centre and shrank towards the edges. The Elamaq Diminiq, the most
southern of Elamaq’s peninsulas and a vast ice-locked land, took barely more space on the periphery of the bronze map than
the House of the Gods had in the map’s centre, despite being many thousands of times larger.
Scale
, she reminded herself,
is far less important than distance and bearing.
There had to be a reason for this, but she could not work it out.

Umu had used this room to control the House of the Gods. She had been able to come and go from the House without using the
entrances. What was her secret? Was it something stemming from her godhood, or something intrinsic to the Throne Room? It
had to be the latter, it had to be: why else would she have come to this room if any of the other rooms might have served
equally well?

Despite Lenares’ repeated signals intended to tell Cylene she wished to be left alone, her sister joined her on her search.
She wanted to tell Cylene to go away, but could you say things like that to a sister? It had been so long she couldn’t remember…
she supposed not. And she didn’t want Cylene to go away, not really, not now, leaving her alone with no cosmographers, no
Mahudia, no family.

The sisters walked slowly around the perimeter of the room, asking their companions to move despite many of them having settled
down to sleep. A few grumbled, but moved when Lenares reminded them of their predicament.

“You love Torve, don’t you?” Cylene asked her as they walked.

Lenares turned away from her sister, highly embarrassed for some reason. Certainly not a logical reason: love was nothing
to be ashamed of, and she’d had no difficulty in talking about her feelings for Torve to a square full of strangers. This
was her sister! Of course, that might be the problem.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile as she nodded to Cylene. “Yes,” she said. “He makes me go pink.”

Her sister raised her eyebrows at this. “Hmm. How many others have you loved before?”

“You mean love between girl and boy?”

“Well, unless you’re more broad-minded than I suspect, yes, love between a girl and a boy.”

It took Lenares a moment to figure out what Cylene meant by this. “Why do you steer every conversation away into irrelevant
places?” she complained.

Cylene frowned. “Humour, sister. We’re trapped in a frightening place. Even I can feel the strangeness here and I have no
magic at all. I don’t know if we’ll ever get out. So I try to make you feel better, to take your mind off the seriousness
of our situation, by making you laugh.”

“But I don’t want to laugh. And I certainly don’t want my mind taken off finding a way out of here.”

Her sister nodded politely, but Lenares could tell she was angered by the rebuff. They continued for a while in silence, running
their hands over the rocks within their reach, looking for some clue to understand how the room functioned.

“What do you mean, Torve makes you go pink?”

Lenares clicked her tongue. How could she concentrate with such interference?

You’re angry because you’re embarrassed
, she told herself.
That’s not reason enough.

“Torve is the first man who makes me… makes me want to lie with him,” she admitted.

“You mean you’ve never lain with a man?”

The surprised look on her sister’s face compounded Lenares’ embarrassment. “Why would I? I haven’t loved any man before.”

“Why? Because it feels so wonderful, that’s why.”

“You’re lying with Noetos.”

“Of course!” Cylene smiled. “He’s a wonderful man. I think I’m falling in love with him.”

“He’s a grumpy old man with a bad temper and he’s mean to his children,” Lenares said without thinking. At Cylene’s stricken
look, she put her hand to her mouth. “Oh. Sorry… ”

Cylene shrugged. “He appears that way, doesn’t he? But he’s been through a great deal. I can understand why he’s protective
of his children: after all, he has lost an entire family, and saw his wife cut down only a few months ago. But he’s a sensitive
fellow under all that grumpiness. And he’s not old, not really, not compared to… ” She faltered.

“Compared to what?” Lenares didn’t like it when people left things unsaid.

Cylene squared her shoulders. “Compared to many other men I’ve slept with.”

“You’ve been in love with men even older than Noetos?”

“Not in love, no. Lenares, for a clever person, you really don’t know much about how the world works, do you?”

Why was her sister insulting her?
It’s been nice talking to you
, she wanted to say,
but go away now and let me search on my own.
But she couldn’t say that: the first part was a lie, and the second part was too truthful. Learning to live, really live,
with other people on their terms was very difficult. She sighed. Why couldn’t they all behave sensibly, like her?

“I slept with many men I didn’t love, didn’t have any pink feelings towards, and some who revolted me, so I could escape Sayonae
and my family. Do you think I would have been better to stay on the steading?”

“They paid you money to sleep with them?”

“Yes,” Cylene said.

“Oh. That I can understand. It sounds like a sensible arrangement, actually. If you need food and clothing, and they have…
urges, it makes a good trade. Better than staying with Martje and those dreadful boys.”

Cylene regarded Lenares, wide-eyed. “Sister, you are a constant surprise to me. I love you.” And she wrapped Lenares in a
hug.

Don’t touch…
The words died on her lips.

They completed their third circuit of the room, then moved back to the centre where the chairs stood. Lenares wished she knew
what she was looking for; her numbers helped to a certain extent, but the purpose of the three chairs and the bronze map remained
tantalisingly hidden from her.

“Was our father like Noetos?” she blurted to her sister.

“What? Of course not! No similarity at all, apart from the age. Don’t you remember Father?”

“No. I know he must have existed, and I’ve been told the bad things he did to me—to us—but there is no picture of him in my
mind.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if I were you,” Lenares said carefully, “I would be worried that I was loving Noetos only because he was like Father.”

“A substitute, you mean? Lenares, how horrid!”

“But isn’t it possible, sister? We had a bad father, so now you’ve fallen in love with someone you think is a good father?”

“Oh, I thought you meant… Well, yes, that is probably part of it, though there have been many other older men—Captain Kidson,
for example—and I never wanted… Ah, Lenares, you ask the most awkward questions.”

“You started it.”

“Indeed I did. And what I realise now is that while we are sisters—twins—we couldn’t be more different. You’ve slept with
no one, I’ve slept with everyone. You think logically, I think emotionally. You’re clever, I’m… well, slow.”

“Noetos says he loves how you are able to cut through words and get to the heart of a person,” Lenares said.

“He told you that?”

“No, I heard him talking to his son. But I think you and I are alike, sister. We’ve walked very different paths, but we are
still twins.”

“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better,” Cylene said, and her smile warmed Lenares’ heart.

“Wait here a moment,” she said. “I want to keep talking, but I need to go to relieve myself.”

Not that it really mattered where in the room she went; there was no privacy here. She left Cylene leaning against one of
the chairs and walked towards the wall in the deepest shadow. As she strode past another of the chairs she reached out and
slapped a stone leg in frustration.

Beside her the bronze map flickered.

“I am a fool,” Lenares breathed to herself.
Such a colossal fool.
Where had her wits gone? Of course, her attention had been distracted by Cylene’s well-meaning conversation. But it was more
than that. Lenares had been making an effort to fit in, to be like the others. She had to learn more about how to be human
or how could she lead them? This journey had changed her, she could see that. No longer did she count every step. Once, she
would have had a total for the number of rocks in this room she’d touched, the number of words she’d spoken in a day; even
on a bad day the number of stars visible in the night sky. She’d stayed indoors at night for that reason.

Was it wrong to want to be like others? To be thought of as human and not as some kind of animal?

Yes. If it meant losing her gift, yes. Yes, if it meant becoming someone different. Yes, if it meant she was condemning her
friends to a slow death in this many-roomed trap.

But there was no danger of that, not now. The key had fallen into her hand. So simple. She sighed. Time to be Lenares as hard
as she could.

She woke them, ignoring their complaints—they were just ordinary people, after all, ruled by their bodies—and made them stand
in a circle around the bronze map.