Threshold (20 page)

“Get out, and let no-one in.”

“Yes, Excellency,” and I heard Kiamet’s steps retreat.

Still I had not opened my eyes, for I thought that would break the spell. I was wrapped about in fever and pain and, I believe, very close to death. I was trying hard not to let anything interest me lest I begin to fight to live.

He leaned over the bed and tore the dress from me, throwing it aside with a murmur of disgust. My body was caked in dried sweat and blood, abraded and bruised with my nightly forages across the walls for moisture; the flesh was a shade somewhere between yellow and grey.

At least that’s what it had looked like when last I’d inspected it, and that was…how long ago? Two days? Three? I doubt the intervening time would have improved its appearance.

Than he gathered me into his arms, forcing me to cry out softly, for his touch was rough, and my entire body
ached and throbbed. He carried me through the room, then into a back room. The temperature was cooler here and I tried to think…where?

He dropped me.

I grabbed at his arms but I was weak and I failed.

The next instant I was enveloped in cool, fragrant water, and I had to fight to the surface, gasping and spluttering as my head broke through. He’d brought me to the great bathing pool.

“You
do
want to live then.” He’d jumped into the pool as well, and I felt him grasp me and hold me upright. “Then
live
, damn you. Live!”

I gulped at the water. He’d trickled some down my throat in the cell, but this…this…I took another great gulp.

“That’s enough.” He seized my hair again and forced my mouth away from the water. “Too much at once and you’ll kill yourself. Do you understand?”

“No, Excellency, I do not,” I managed. “Tell me why, Excellency, I should fight to live when it will only give you one more chance to try to kill me?”

That little speech was almost too much, and I gagged, the water I’d drunk roiling about in my stomach.

He pulled me closer, supporting me in the deep water. “Tirzah –”

“Drown me now!” I said. “It will save you the trouble of a greater effort later!”

He stared at me, and opened his mouth to say something, but was halted by Kiamet’s – dear, sweet Kiamet’s – entrance.

“Excellency,” the man was almost on his knees, “Excellency, I have presumed, but I thought…someone skilled in healing…herbals…”

“Isphet!” I gasped.

And then Isphet was in the chamber, bowing, then throwing a bag down on the tiled floor. “Excellency,” she said, and raised her head. Her eyes widened in horror at
the sight of me. Without waiting for the command from Boaz she jumped straight in.

“We will wash her, Excellency, then put her back to bed. Kiamet, get out. Excellency, you will have to support her while I wash.”

And both men did as she ordered.

Later, when Boaz had carried me back to the bed, Isphet gave me a small drink, then rubbed soothing unguents over my entire body.

“Excellency,” she said, turning her head slightly to where Boaz stood silent and unreadable at the foot of the bed, “she must be fed small drinks every half hour for the rest of the day. This evening, if she is well enough, some bland food. I will mix a herbal that will help ease her pain, and then another to make her sleep dreamless through the night. I will stay with her –”

“No,” Boaz said. “You have done enough. Mix the herbals then get out.”

Isphet drew an angry breath, but dropped her eyes and acquiesced. “Very well, Excellency. But she needs care. If –”

“I will arrange it.”

“Then call me if you need me, Excellency.” She rose and busied herself for a while mixing the herbals and putting them to one side in two pitchers. Then she gave me another drink, and soothed the hair back from my brow.

“Tirzah,” she said, her eyes swimming with tears. “Live.”

I tried to smile for her, and grasped her hand. “Thank you, Isphet. I shall do my best.”

“Well,” a smile trembled through her tears, “at least today I’ve managed my first decent bath in six years.”

That did make me grin, and she wiped her tears away, stood, bowed at Boaz, and left.

There was silence.

It was an uncomfortable day, for many reasons. I had been so close to death when Kiamet had carried me back to
Boaz’s residence that I was aware only of a myriad troublesome discomforts about my body. As I recovered, took a firmer grip on life, they flared into spears of agony. But I lay quietly as the pain spread, not wanting to give in to it, not wanting to give Boaz the satisfaction of knowing I suffered.

He sat at his desk, engaged in his infernal scribbling. As distant as if leagues separated us instead of paces. He had a small hourglass on the desk, and when it indicated time for me to be watered, he would do so. Holding my head, allowing me small sips of the honey-sweetened water Isphet had mixed for me. Silent, watching.

In the late afternoon he came over to water me yet again, then paused as he read the pain in my eyes.

“You should have said something.”

“I did not want to disturb you, Excellency,” I said, with little respect in my voice.

He sat down on the bed and lifted me up, supporting me with one arm as he fed me Isphet’s analgesic mix with the other. When I had finished he lowered me back to the pillows.

“I will wait,” he said, and so he did, sitting with me, holding my hand between his, gently rubbing and stroking.

The pain eased and, grateful, I slid into sleep.

I woke in the early evening. I did not think I made a sound, but Boaz knew, and he came over.

“Threshold must be missing you, Excellency. You have spent the entire day with me.”

His mouth tightened. “Can you eat something?”

I nodded, and he left the room. I heard him speak quietly to Holdat, and I heard both he and Kiamet ask after me.

I almost smiled. Boaz must have felt under siege.

Holdat returned with some mashed fruits such as mothers feed teething babies, softened yet further with a thin syrup. He smiled at me, then left.

Boaz fed me like a baby. I tried to push his hand away, but he gestured irritably, and so I let him hold the spoon. Perhaps it assuaged his guilt.

I finished the fruit, mildly surprised that my stomach did not rebel.

“We must talk,” he said.

“If you wish, Excellency.”

“Stop calling me Excellency in that tone of voice!” he snapped.

“Then what would you have me call you? How much sweetness would you have me inject into my voice?”

“In this room you may call me Boaz. Outside, Excellency. Although if you cannot inject some
respect
into your tone then I would prefer you call me nothing at all.”

“I remember that once before you asked me to call you Boaz – in this bed. The next morning you sent me into convulsions of agony for the presumption.”

He was silent at that. Then…“I was afraid. I had been…”

“You had been honest, Boaz. Honest enough to let me see something of who you really are. But I think that if you are going to be so honest in future I’d prefer to be somewhere else. I cannot survive another of your attacks.”

“If you want me to stop hurting you,” he said, “then stop giving me reasons to!”

“What? Nothing forced you to show me that book! Nothing forced you to –”

“What were you
thinking
of, to stand there, in the midst of Threshold, and shout those things at me?”

“I was thinking that I had just seen my father die a death that should not be visited on the worst criminal. I had seen
eleven
men die such a death, not to mention the others who have died. I was thinking that my beloved father had cried out to me to save him, and I could not. I was thinking that all you could do was admire Threshold’s power. I –”

“Threshold would have let none of us live if I had let you say any more.”

“Threshold certainly would not have let us live if you had stood there and admitted I was right,” I said quietly.

He glared at me, then stood up, pacing about the room, his robes swishing angrily. Then he sat down at his table, picked up the stylus and began to write.

Scratching back and forth, back and forth. The evening darkened into night. Holdat came and took the tray, but did not smile this time.

Scratching back and forth. Back and forth.

Finally Boaz threw down the stylus and dropped his head into his hands. He sat like that for a few minutes, then his shoulders shuddered, and he stood up.

I expected him to come back to the bed, but he walked over to the shelves, and lifted out the Goblet of the Frogs. He stood looking at it, then, finally, came over to me.

“I sat for over eight days with this goblet turning over and over in my hands,” he said, his eyes on the glass. “I thought that when Kiamet brought word of your death I would raise it and throw it against the wall. I thought that might ease my pain.

“But when Kiamet did come to me, his eyes sunken and his skin as grey as if
he
had spent those eight days in that cell, and he said, ‘Excellency, I think she is dead,’ then through my pain I thought I heard the frogs cry out.”

“What did they say, Boaz?”

He took a deep breath, and raised his eyes to mine. I do not think I have ever seen such pain in another human’s eyes. “They said,
hold her, soothe her, touch her, love her, hold her, soothe her, touch her, love her.
And –” he broke off and collected himself, “– and I put the glass down, unbroken, whole, and rushed to you. Tirzah…”

He put the goblet to one side and he lay down beside me, wrapping his arms about me. “Tirzah, that is all I have
ever wanted to do. Hold you, soothe you, touch you, love you.
All
I have wanted to do.”

“You heard the frogs?” I said.

He was silent.

“Boaz,” I said eventually, “there are other means and other ways to power than that which the One and Threshold offer.”

If I was to be allowed to live, then no longer would I ignore my promise to the Soulenai.

“I will not revert to childish dreams, Tirzah.” His voice was hard now, and I felt his body tense. Then he relaxed, and he forced some humour into his voice. “I can see that all my preaching at you about the One has come to nought.”

“Numbers and rigid parameters do not hold the beauty I crave, Boaz,” I said softly. “One day, if you like, I will tell you how I understand the world.”

He thought about that, then abruptly rolled away and sat up. “One day, Tirzah. But not now. I do not want to know now.”

He picked up the pitcher that held Isphet’s sleeping brew, and poured out a measure…into the Goblet of the Frogs. “Come now, it is time you slept.”

I smiled as the glass touched my lips (
let us hold you, soothe you, love you
), then drank obediently. A dreamless sleep would be good. “Boaz?”

“Hmmm?”

“Why does the Infinity Chamber touch the Vale?”

He stilled, but he did not retreat into a chill. “How do you know that?”

“Boaz, you taught me to read.”

“Ah. Well,” he thought about it. “The Vale contains the power that we need, Tirzah.”

“It is dark power, Boaz. Surely the deaths…the manner of deaths show that. Do you know what you do?”

Now he did retreat into distance. “Nothing will dissuade me from Threshold, Tirzah. No childish hopes. No childish myths. Nothing. I have worked towards it most of my life. I am not going to give up on the dream now.”

He would not speak again, but he sat with me until I drifted into sleep.

In the morning, he went back to Threshold.

T
HRESHOLD
was, I thought, the mistress against whom I could not compete. Over the next few days I tried, softly, gently, to persuade him to see, to
admit
, the wrongness of Threshold, but he refused. Threshold was the culmination of everything that he, as countless other Magi, had worked towards. He told me that I could not understand what power it would bring, nor would he attempt to explain what that power was.

I gambled on the fact that Boaz had grown tired of trying to kill me and so, somewhat nervously, I trampled all over what had previously been forbidden ground. I never mentioned the word “Elemental”, but I asked him to tell me of his mother, what she had told him of his father, and if he’d ever heard any other tales of the Soulenai. I talked to him of my love for glass, and while I never quite said that it whispered to me, I went dangerously close to it. I asked him time and time again what it was the frogs had “seemed” to say to him, and then, as he was holding me each night while the sleeping draught took effect, I would ask him to whisper the words back to me again and again.

Boaz bore all of this with varying degrees of patience…or impatience. Sometimes he would ignore me, often he would stalk off to Threshold. Sometimes he would tell me
to go to sleep – and once, exasperated, he fed me the sleeping draught so that I
did
fall silent. Sometimes he would let me talk on as he sat at his desk, and sometimes he would talk.

I think in the three or four days after I’d been dragged from the cell, Boaz came to a decision within himself. I did not think it went far enough, but it was an improvement on what had been. Boaz would admit to himself that his true nature was not quite the cold, calculating Magus face he showed the world. He had warmth and humour, and he would no longer deny that. He had ordered me to his residence, and then asked me to his bed, not to use me, but to love me. He would admit that. His Magus side would just have to learn to live with it. With me he would be himself, and not expect me to pretend that I saw someone or something else. Now he discarded completely the robes of the Magus while he was with me and wore the simple blue wrap.

Despite all this progress, Boaz would not yet admit any elemental magic within himself. Perhaps he did not even recognise it, and I thought it would need even more time before he could be brought to see it, let alone accept it.

I wondered how much time we had.

More worrying was the fact that his fascination with Threshold, and with the power it promised, had not dimmed. Perhaps he relaxed and laughed with me, perhaps he allowed himself to remember how much he loved his mother and mourned the tragic loss of his father, but none of this was going to interfere with Threshold or its needs.

I do not think that anyone beyond Boaz’s residence had any idea of the profound changes within him. Outside the safety of his home, Boaz remained the chilling, calculating, indifferent Magus. It was safer that way.

Certainly this was the face he continued to show Threshold, and even Isphet, who came once every day, had
no idea of the changes my brush with death had wrought in the Magus.

I was young and I recovered relatively quickly. Eight days in bed to match the eight days I’d spent crawling about the cell, and then I got up. I was weak, but I was whole, and the experience had effected no profound physical changes. Even my womb remained the hard, dry canker it had been. I had hoped that somehow all the fluids Boaz and Isphet had forced down my throat, and the hours I spent soaking in the bathing pool, might have softened it. But apparently not.

Well, Boaz had not changed so much that he would allow me to subdivide the One, and so I sighed, and put all thought of children from my mind. This was not the place anyway, and I was still a slave.

On the ninth night, as we sat by the window, I asked Boaz to show me his father’s book again. “Would you like me to read from it? There are many other stories within it, and I, at least, would like to explore them.”

He sat and thought about that for a while. Old habits were hard to overcome. But he eventually fetched the box and laid it in my lap.

“It is not too heavy for you? I can bring the table over…”

“It is not too heavy, Boaz. I thank you.”

I examined the box closely. It was very finely crafted, so finely that I knew I had yet to meet the craftsman who could match it. The original ruby shade of the wood had darkened almost to black. But it had been well cared for, regularly oiled, and it was in good condition. I ran my fingers over the hinges and lock. They were of a bronze alloy, and they whispered sleepily to themselves. They were so old I think they had no interest beyond their own slow dreaming.

I opened the box, and Boaz took it from me as I lifted out the book.

“It is so beautiful, Boaz.”

“Yes.”

“You have kept it all these years, and carried it about with you.”

“Normally not. I have a residence in Setkoth – not the house you came to – and usually it lies in a locked cupboard there. It lay untouched for many years. But after I saw the frogs that you carved that afternoon…it reminded me…and when I prepared to come to this site I brought it with me, even though I could not read it.”

“But you thought I might be able to.”

“Yes. Somewhere in the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that you and your father were here, and perhaps one of you might again read me the story.”

I grinned. “
One
of us?”

“You.” He was relaxed enough to return the smile. “Read to me now.”

And so I did. I read again the Song of the Frogs, and halfway through Boaz got up and fetched the Goblet of the Frogs from the bookcase. He sat there, turning it over and over in his hands as the story ran to its close.

Hold me, soothe me, touch me, love me.

The lovely voices rippled about the room, and as my own voice died we sat and listened to them. I knew he could hear them as well. I
knew
it.

“I am always comforted by those words,” I said. “Surely you must be, too.”

Silence.

“Yes,” he replied, reluctantly.

“It is what your father sang to your mother. It is, I think, part of the Song of the Frogs.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think,” I said slowly, “that if one day we understood the entire Song, if perhaps you sang it to me one night, we could reach this Place Beyond?”

“Do not press too far, Tirzah.”

“I am past fearing you, Boaz.”

He sighed. “Be careful. Between us and in this place there are words you can say that cannot be said anywhere else.”

“Certainly not in Threshold’s shadow.”

Irritated now, he stood up and stared out the window. Then he poured a measure of wine into the goblet. “You are well enough now, I think, to stomach some of this.”

He fed me a mouthful of the wine as he had fed me over the past days, and I swallowed it and smiled as he then drank from the goblet. He sat, pulling his chair close, and we shared the wine companionably for a few minutes, sharing from the Goblet of the Frogs.

“Would you like me to read another story, Boaz?”

“Yes, I think I would like that.”

And so I opened the book randomly, and read a tale. It was a tale of the very early Soulenai and how they had discovered their magic. They had, it seemed, grown an affinity to metals and gems and a fascination with and love for glass.

Again, very dangerous, and when it was done Boaz rose and poured another goblet of wine and drank it all himself in four large swallows.

I had pushed far enough this night. I closed the book, patting it gently in thanks, and put it back in its box.

“Boaz? Where does this go?”

“I’ll put it on the cabinet here. Perhaps I will ask you to read from it again one night. And perhaps, now that your translation has been laid to one side,” we had both abandoned the pretence I was there to translate dry geometrical treatises, “you can read from it yourself during the day.”

Boaz wiped the goblet and put it beside the box. Not back on the crowded shelves.

Then he fetched a small box from a locked drawer in the desk.

I had never seen inside the drawer before, and I had certainly never seen the box.

As on the first night when he’d sat with the box containing the Book of the Soulenai on his lap, so now he sat, distracted, his fingers gently tapping the box.

“Tirzah, if I give you this box and its contents, will you promise me never,
never
to tell me what you do with it?”

“Of course, Boaz. What is it?”

He handed the box over and I took it in trembling hands. I felt sick, apprehensive, as if I somehow knew the importance of what lay within.

I opened it…and stared until my eyes blurred with tears.

Inside lay three locks of black hair, tied with thin golden wire…and a lock of hair that had been completely turned to stone.

“I know,” he said slowly, “that…others…sometimes like to have a body, or a remnant of a body that they can farewell properly…Look,” and he pointed. “This lock is Raguel’s.”

I swallowed, and had to grasp the box firmly to stop my hands from shaking.

“And this, Ishkur’s.”

I took a shaky breath.

“This…this one belongs to Ta’uz,” he said.

My eyes flew to his face.

“Tirzah, I do not know how they regarded each other, but they died together, and I know how I feel about you. I thought…”

“Thank you, Boaz,” I whispered, the tears sliding free now.

“And this.” He picked up the stone curl. He did not have to explain who that belonged to. His fingers closed over it. He stared at his fist and a change came over his face.

Something happened. I do not know how else to explain it, but something happened in that room.

When he opened his fingers, there, nestling in his palm, was a lock of greying blond hair.

He put it back into the box and closed the lid.

“You did not see that,” he said, and for the first time in many, many days I heard a trace of danger in his voice. “Nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened, Boaz. But I do thank you for this box. Once I have…emptied…it, I think I shall use it for my kohl sticks.”

He let his breath out. “Yes, that sounds a suitable use for it. Tomorrow you may visit Isphet in her workshop, I think, but I do not want to know what goes on there, and I do not want you to be gone too long.”

Kiamet escorted me to the workshop, clucking all the way that I should not be embarking upon such an excursion yet.

“I shall retreat into the darkness of insanity if I cannot walk about, Kiamet, and it is not that far.”

He waited outside. “Do not be long,” he said, and there was fear in his face.

“Kiamet, I shall be as long as it takes. Wait. Do not come in after me.”

He nodded, and looked unhappy.

Two steps inside the workshop door I was enveloped in a gigantic hug.

Yaqob! I was surprised, not only at the vehemence of his embrace, but because I had not thought of him in days. Many days. Poor Yaqob.

I kissed him gently and asked him to set me down.

“Soon,” he whispered fiercely. “Soon we’ll have you free from that piece of sun-rotted beetle dung. I will kill him myself.”

“Yaqob! No!”

“No?” His arms loosened about me. “No?”

“No. I, ah, I mean that we have to be careful. Sure. When do you plan your uprising?”

“Soon,” he said, and kissed my cheek. “Soon.”

“When?”

“Shush, love. We’ll warn you beforehand. Tell you to be ready.”

I wanted to question him further. Surely he wasn’t going to do anything without telling me! But the others were crowding about, touching, kissing, telling me how much they loved me.

Eventually Isphet rescued me and took me upstairs with Yaqob and Zeldon.

“What is that you carry, Tirzah?” she asked.

“Oh, Isphet!” I opened the box and showed them the hair. “Locks from Raguel, Ishkur, Druse…and Ta’uz!”

Unless I had actually come out and said Boaz was an Elemental Necromancer, I doubt I could have shocked them more.

Isphet, her hands shaking, reached out and took the box from me. She stared at it, then raised sharp black eyes to my face. “How?”

Oh, but I was going to be glad when all this pretence was over. “One of the slaves in the compound has helped dispose of most of the bodies. He snipped these from their heads.”

“Druse?” Yaqob asked. “How? We all saw him.”

“As they dragged his body away,” I did not have to pretend the heartache in my voice, “a stone curl crumbled off. The slave picked it up and, overnight, away from Threshold, it reverted back to its natural state.”

“Which slave?” Isphet asked.

Oh, damn her! “I do not know his name, Isphet. A slave. Middle aged. I hardly saw him in the darkness.”

“And Ta’uz?” Zeldon said. “
Ta’uz?
Why would we want a lock of his –”

“They died together, Zeldon,” I said, my voice tight with the strain of this deception, “and they created a child together that we sent into the Place Beyond. I thought it
fitting that perhaps we send him with the mother of his child.”

“And no other locks?” Isphet probed. “These are all he collected?”

“Damn you, Isphet! These are
all
he gave me! I know not why he took a lock from one and not another. Perhaps he knew they might mean something to me, perhaps sheer happenchance! If you like, I shall take the box back and throw –”

“No. No, I am sorry, Tirzah. I did not mean to sound ungrateful. I wonder when we can farewell them?”

“Now,” I said. “We will not be disturbed. Boaz is busy at Threshold and does not expect me back for an hour or more yet.”

Isphet looked at me again, her eyes sharper than ever.

We farewelled them with due reverence and much gladness into the Place Beyond. I like to think that Ta’uz was surprised, but glad to be sent to such an eternity, and his daughter was there to greet him.

A land where the unborn frolicked with the dead.

And the murdered with their murderers. But I think such concepts had been left far behind in that wondrous place. Druse was surprised as well, but grateful, and I was grateful – no, more than grateful – that Boaz had given me this chance.