Threshold

14

AS demanded, I went back that night. I washed and clothed myself in the white dress, used the kohl Isphet gave me to emphasise my eyes, then walked alone to the gates of the Magi’s compound. The guards let me in without a word.

I hesitated outside the open doorway, then walked through. “Excellency?”

“Good. You are here.”

He sat back from his desk, and I fetched the water and washed his hands and feet, drying them, then rubbing in the fragrant oil. When I had finished, he indicated the chair at the side of the desk, waited until I had picked up the stylus, then resumed his lessons.

He made me redraw and explain all he had taught me the previous night. I struggled to remember. I had spent some seven hours at this desk last night, and much of what I now recalled for the Magus was vague and imprecise.

When my stylus slipped in my nervous fingers he shouted, and I cringed, half expecting him to strike me. But he only watched me, his eyes very careful, then asked me to draw some further figures that he had only touched on briefly before.

These, at least, satisfied him. “Good. You have not disappointed me.”

I blinked in amazement – and some very faint gratitude that I should have pleased him. I loathed the characters, truly I did, but I was craft-trained, and I took a professional pride in doing my best at whatever task I was set.

“Tonight,” Boaz continued, “I will instruct you in the art of constructing simple words with the characters you have already learned. See, here is your name again – do you understand how it is constructed?”

I glanced at him, and was surprised to see that his face held no scorn or animosity.

“Yes,” I hastened to reply as I saw a flicker of irritation at my hesitation. “I understand, Excellency.”

“Then draw it yourself.”

I did, and he seemed satisfied. “Now, my name. What characters would you use to construct that?”

I frowned. “Excellency?” It was a long word, and I was not sure of some of the characters.

He laughed. “Boaz!”

I almost dropped the stylus in my utter astonishment, not only at the laughter – unforced and easy – but that Boaz should be able to laugh. Then, completely forgetting my loathing of the man and his manipulations, my own mouth twitched. Excellency, indeed!

I drew the characters, and he nodded, his amusement fading. He took me through several other words, then had me lay down the stylus.

“Tirzah. You must not fear what I have just taught you. Yes, I can use words as sorceries, as numbers and symbols, to work my will, but I do not intend to teach you to do so. Nor will I make you write unwitting sorceries. That is not why I have asked you here. Do not fear the stylus so much.”

I relaxed still further, a dangerous thing to do, and smiled. “Thank you, Boaz.”

The change was instantaneous.

“You will call me Excellency!” he hissed. “If you dare presume again –”

“No, Excellency!” I stumbled, falling from the chair to the floor and my knees. “Forgive me!”

He turned back to his desk. “Very well. You may go. You are too tired to learn any more tonight.”

“Thank you, Excellency,” and I fled.

Isphet welcomed me home gladly, and gave me the herbal to drink. I lay awake for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. He had smiled and laughed at my foolish incomprehension, and we had then sat in comfortable companionship as he taught me my first words. During that time I had not been frightened, angry or even resentful. Then…

I stared at the darkened ceiling. I understood what I had done wrong. I had presumed. I had stepped over that danger-edged invisible line of what was acceptable and what was not.

I drifted into sleep, and that night the chorus of the frogs in the reed banks rang loud through my dreams.

The next day I managed some time with Yaqob; I think the whole workshop had conspired to give us this chance. We found ourselves alone in the upper workroom as the workshop slowed down for the night.

“Tirzah.” He hesitated, then saw the expression on my face, and held me close. “Poor Tirzah,” I thought, wondering if he pitied me more than loved me.

“Tirzah, I must ask…about you and Boaz…”

Yes, I thought, yes he does. He cares.

“…if you think you will be able to glean anything from Boaz or his quarters…Raguel was so useful, and if you could find us something that will enable us to understand him, understand how to destroy him and escape from this place…”

I walked a few steps away. “I don’t know, Yaqob. His rooms are so bare, so barren…”

Yaqob seized me by the shoulders and turned me about. “He doesn’t say anything about weapons, or patrols?”

He saw the look on my face, and dropped his hands.

“It’s not why he requires my services, Yaqob.”

“I’m sorry.” Now it was Yaqob who walked away. He sat down on a bench, then looked up at me. “Tirzah, despite Boaz’s presence I believe we will have a chance at a successful uprising –”

“But the extra soldiers. And no patrol works to routine any more, Yaqob!”

“Listen to me, Tirzah! I think I have found another man who will serve as well as, if not better than, Ishkur – a gang-leader called Azam. He is ruthless, and determined, and he hates all Magi as much as we. The stonemasons have pledged me their support, as have the carpenters and water-carriers. Soon I will have Gesholme united behind me. Boaz will falter. He must. He will make a mistake, or become complacent.”

I shook my head. I did not think Boaz would make a mistake, and the word “complacent” did not equate with the sense of danger that hung about him.

“By the Soulenai, Tirzah! You know that Threshold will be the death of us all, eventually. Don’t you want to escape? Don’t you want our children to be born free?”

I burst into tears, and he held me tight again, stroking my hair, kissing my forehead. “Tirzah, we rely on you. You can deliver us Boaz. Make sure that you do it.”

A week passed, and then two. Boaz required my presence every second night, and on several occasions we worked almost until dawn.

He pushed me to learn as fast as I could, and I found it easier with each succeeding night. Soon I could write to his dictation, and that pleased him, save when occasionally I misformed the characters, or did not get their edges as straight and as clean as he desired them. He gave me small pieces, scraps, to read, and I tried to make my voice smooth and pleasing, for he snapped whenever I stumbled over a word.

I was still very wary, but I chose to trust that he would not give me sorceries to form or to read, and I bent my entire will to learning the art of writing. In their own way, letters and characters were fascinating, and I enjoyed the challenge of learning some of their mysteries. Besides, here was a skill I could surely use to help Yaqob; perhaps one day Boaz would be careless enough to leave patrol rosters about, or perhaps a list of the location of weapon caches.

And perhaps not. Boaz gave me only meaningless passages to decipher. Sometimes he played with me, handing me items regarding Gesholme and Threshold to read. My eyes would brighten, skimming ahead over the text, trying to see how useful this might prove, then I would realise that he had given me nothing but absurdities, and I would look up to meet his cold eyes.

“Do you spy for Yaqob?” he asked one night.

“Excellency, what do you mean?”

“Does Yaqob question you about what happens between us?”

At least that I could answer directly. “No, Excellency. He assumes he knows…and he does not want to know the details.”

“Slaves own nothing,” he said, “not even their own lives. Yaqob should not expect to have any claim to your love or your body.”

I bowed my head and did not respond, but I was angry. Love was a gift freely given, not demanded or owned. My body might not be mine any more, but I reserved the right to bestow love as I wanted.

He didn’t laugh again in my presence. What I had seen so briefly on my second night in his room had been a momentary aberration.

“Tirzah, Orteas has work he must finish here. Will you assist me in the Infinity Chamber?”

I laid down the piece of glass I’d been caging. Zeldon and Orteas tried to shield me from the Infinity Chamber as often as they could, but they felt the horror as much as I, and it was not fair to them that they shoulder this burden.

We walked quickly along the streets to Threshold. Almost the entire southern face had been glassed now, and it shone in the sun. The glass completely covered the mouths of the shafts as they led inwards, but sometimes…sometimes in the evenings when the sun did not shine so directly I thought I saw flashes of light across the blue-green southern face, as if there was a fire within that sent light surging upwards through the shafts.

The interior of Threshold was cool, but I was not grateful for the escape from the heat. Every time I came in here the feeling increased that somehow Threshold was alive. Its shadow stretched darker day by day, and its mouth seemed to yawn wider every time I approached it.

When would it need to feed again? Five. Ta’uz had said it would be five, and I wondered at the significance of the numbers. How could he have predicted the three?

I followed Zeldon up the passageway. Colours swirled, but the glass did not speak.

“Zeldon, do you feel anything from these walls?” I whispered.

“No. There is nothing. The glass on these walls was mixed and crafted in Ymelde’s workshop, and she tells me that she put nothing into its crafting that could have killed it.”

“It is Threshold, then,” I said, and wished I hadn’t spoken. Even if there were no guards or Magi about, Threshold itself could hear. How much did it know about my involvement in the plot to kill Boaz, or Yaqob’s part, or Zeldon’s? Had we been spared only because Threshold was somehow restricted to three that day?

“Yes,” Zeldon said, “it is Threshold.”

And, because we neared the Infinity Chamber, we fell silent.

Several workers were waiting with the portions of glass to be attached, and a Magus, Kofte, was standing with a dreamy expression on his face as he ran tender hands over the golden walls. He straightened as soon as he saw us, and his face assumed its normal arrogance.

“To work!” he snapped.

It was painstaking work, and Zeldon and I focused as closely as we could on the task at hand, for that way we dulled the despair of the glass already nailed to the wall.

Concentration helped, but even that wavered when, with each succeeding panel we helped attach, the panel added its horror to that of the rest of the glass. The instant a panel was laid against the stone that would hold it, its whispering screamed into fright, and then into…into something else. Something else that continually fed the glass’ despair and kept it at fever pitch. I knew that some of these panels had been here over a year, and yet their screams were as barbed as the first day, their anguish even worse.

I wished I could understand, wished I could help the Soulenai understand.

I straightened, easing my back, as the last panel was fastened in place, and looked about. Kofte was still here, but he was ignoring us, turning his attention again to the walls. My eyes trailed over the inscriptions, and then stopped. Caught. I had reached a passage I could read.

I held my breath, stunned. I had never thought that I might be able to read this dreadful writing! Read, but I could not understand all of it. Although I could form the words in my mind, and could have mouthed them had I wanted to, I could not understand the meaning of the majority of them. They were foreign. Hard. Incomprehensible. But there were one or two words…a phrase…some that I did know.

I dropped my eyes, relieved that I had not been able to comprehend most of what I had read. What would have happened had I spoken them aloud? Would sorceries have sprung into action? Would Infinity have reached out to seize me?

I jumped as Zeldon dropped his hand on my shoulder. “We’re finished, Tirzah,” and we turned as one to bow for Kofte as he dismissed us.

The next day I approached Isphet. I needed to talk to someone about what was happening – but not her. This saddened me more than my inability to talk to Yaqob. Since my arrival, Isphet had become a good friend, a friend she thought I would be able to turn to with any problem. Over the past two weeks she had pressed me to talk of how I felt about Boaz, about his use of me, but to do that would deepen and complicate the lies already thriving between us.

“Talk to me,” she would say, stroking the hair from my forehead. “It will help.”

I would turn my head away so she could not see the deceit in my eyes. “I cannot, Isphet. I’m sorry.”

And so I would take her herbal brews and drink them uselessly down, for Yaqob had lost all desire for me while he thought I bedded with Boaz.

Initially I did not talk to Isphet because I feared what Boaz might do when he found out. Now I could not talk to her because I feared the suspicion that would flower in Isphet’s face when she realised what was going on.

Boaz had been more than cunning. I was increasingly isolated from my friends and my lover, trapped in a web of lies he had forced me to construct. There was no-one I could safely talk to. Except…

“Isphet, I would like to touch the Soulenai, and let them touch me. But I want to be alone when I touch them. Will you aid me in this?”

Since my induction into the Elemental arts, Isphet had allowed me to touch the Soulenai on a number of occasions. Each time she and several others had been with me, and I had revelled and grown in the experience. But now I needed to do this on my own.

“Why alone, Tirzah? What is it you want to say to them that cannot be said in front of myself, or any other Elemental who joins the rite?”

“I…I…”

“What is it you have to hide, Tirzah? I do not like secrets in my workshop!”

“I am confused, Isphet, and I am afraid, and I do not like it that others should hear of my intimate problems when I speak of them to the Soulenai. Isphet, please!”

She could read the truth in what I said, but she was still hurt. “You can always come to me, Tirzah. I have been through what you have.”

“Isphet, please. Just this once. It will give me peace.”

In the end, she chose to trust me, and for that, I thought, I would always love her.

Behind one of the furnaces was a small, almost totally enclosed alcove, but there was space enough for me and a bowl of glass. No-one would know what I did there, and Isphet took care that none saw our preparations.

She was a master of the Elemental arts, and I marvelled at her skill. Not just in the preparation of the molten glass, but at her ability to carry a bowl that weighed almost as much as she did and contained the heat of the sun within it.

Yet not a trickle of sweat ran down her brow as she laid the bowl before me, nor were her hands so much as reddened when she withdrew them from the glowing metal sides.

“Undo your hair,” she said curtly, still displeased with me, and I hastened to comply. Then she placed several pots beside me that contained the powdered metals I would need.

“Do not be too long, for I know not what will happen if a guard or a Magus appears. And,” she hesitated, and her voice softened, “be careful.”

Then she was gone.

I had learned well from Isphet, and I knew what to do. I stared for a very long time into the glass, knowing now that the reason it stayed molten was because I needed it molten, then I passed my hand over in a great arc.

The glass swirled, and I felt myself drawn into its motion.

My hand passed over again, and blue flared within the glass, then red, gold and green as I added successive powders.

The colours sang, soft and sweet, and I let myself be seduced into their embrace.

“My friends,” I whispered, hardly aware of my voice, and I saw into the Place Beyond.

Tirzah.

I wept, for it was all I could do for the moment, and the presence of the Soulenai enveloped me.

Tirzah! What’s wrong?

At least that I could answer, and I told them all that had happened since our plan to kill Boaz had gone so disastrously wrong. It was a relief just to talk, to tell, and when I had finished I found my tears had dried and I felt calm and refreshed.

You tried to murder Boaz? That was rash. It would be dangerous for you to try again.

That was no casual remark. It was as close to an order as I had ever heard the Soulenai mouth.

Tirzah, we do not think it is such a bad thing that this Boaz has called you to his side.

But I cannot see the good in –

Sometimes it is not always easy to see the reason or the goodness within the reason, Tirzah. Persevere. Wait to see what he reveals of himself.

Reveals of himself?

Wait. Tirzah. Wait.

He means to use me. I do not like it. I think he wishes me to betray myself and my friends.

They did not comment on that.

If he speaks of himself, Tirzah, then listen. And you say he teaches you to write. How unusual. For what purpose, Tirzah?

I cannot tell. But –

But?

But perhaps this art of writing will help us understand why the glass screams within the Infinity Chamber – and perhaps even help us understand what it is that so infects Threshold.

Tell us!

I paused to collect my thoughts and gather my courage. I would have to speak those words I had seen within the chamber. Briefly I told the Soulenai of my experience.

They were wary, as I had expected them to be. But they were also so desperate to understand what was wrong with the glass they eventually asked me to mouth some of the words…but be careful, Tirzah, for we do not want you or us ensorcelled.

Yes, I know. I saw the word “Infinity” in two places, but I was not surprised to see that there.

No. What else?

I saw the word “Bridge”.

Bridge? Bridge to what?

Infinity, I suppose. Isphet has said she supposes that Threshold is being constructed as a means for the Magi to step into Infinity.

There was a long pause. What else, Tirzah?

A phrase. There was one entire phrase I could read and which made sense. All the rest was gibberish.

Yes? A phrase?

It used the word “Bridge” again. It read “…from the Vale across the Bridge to…” There was no more, for the panel ended there.

The Soulenai shrieked, and I reeled back in my tiny alcove and struck my head against the brick. My head swam, and I managed to retain contact with the Soulenai and the Place Beyond only with the utmost effort.

What have I said? What have I done?

Not you, sweet Tirzah, not you! Oh! What have they done? What can we do?

What is it?

Oh, Tirzah, we fear very much that the Magi have unleashed something that not even they will be able to control. The Vale…the Vale…

What is the Vale?

It is a place of darkness and despair, Tirzah. We will not go near it, nor do we wish to talk of it. No wonder the glass screams. Does the Infinity Chamber touch the Vale? Does it?

I do not understand…

But they were gone, and I blinked and looked about, and noticed that the glass had cooled and the colours had mottled, so I bound my hair, and stepped back into the workshop.