Threshold

18

HE came back as night fell. His manservant, Holdat, had been in and laid out a meal, but I had not liked to touch it, and was not hungry in any case.

“Have you finished?” he asked as he stepped through the door.

I nodded listlessly. At some point I had found myself writing without realising I had picked up the stylus. Startled, I had stared at the page, then shrugged. I needed something to keep my mind busy.

“Then stand up!”

I struggled up.

“How dare you presume to intrude!” he seethed, and I blinked, terrified.

“Excellency?”

He stopped in front of me and leaned threateningly close, his finger stabbing at the air between us.

“How dare you follow me from this room!”

“Excellency, I was afraid!”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid that it might be someone I knew lying dead in Threshold, Excellency. I had to know.”

He paused, and I did not like the expression that filtered across his face. “The guard said nothing about deaths.”

“Excellency, why else would he rush in so pale and horrified? All slaves instinctively fear death and crippling injury on a construction site. It is our lot, and it is what I thought of first.”

“Did you think Yaqob lay speared by glass, my sweet?”

That was exactly what I had feared – surely Threshold had us marked by now? I opened my mouth to reply, but burst into tears instead, and just as quickly tried to stifle them. I gulped, a shaking hand over my mouth, my eyes wide and terrified.

My fear was clearly evident, and it sated his need to intimidate me into submission. I had presumed too much in following him into Threshold, and I’d had to be chastised and put back in my place.

His expression relaxed slightly, but not before a final barb. “Do that again and I’ll pass you across to the guards for their enjoyment, Tirzah, because – by the One! – you give me little enough. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Excellency!” I sobbed, my entire body shaking now.

There was a long silence. Then…

“Ah, Tirzah. Why cry so? Here,” and he handed me a napkin to wipe my face with.

It was not the hand of the Magus.

I scrubbed at my face with the cloth, surreptitiously looking at him. He was still very, very wary, but it was the man not the Magus who now stood before me.

I burst into fresh sobs, relieved, yet scared I would say or do something that would cause the Magus to snap back into control.

Boaz gestured impatiently, and finally snatched the sodden napkin from my hand. “Go and wash your face. Your kohl has smeared all over and you look like a five-year-old girl caught out at some mischief.”

As I gratefully wiped the cool water over my face, finally managing to stem the flow of tears, I wondered if I should have offered to wash Boaz’s hands and feet on his return.

“Excellency?” Unsure of how to phrase the question, or even if I should just take the initiative, I vaguely indicated the basin.

“There’s no need, Tirzah,” and he was beside me, hanging his over-robe on a peg by the stand, washing his own hands, taking the towel from me to wipe them dry.

“Good. Now, have you eaten?”

I shook my head.

“Then sit.”

It was a plain meal. A bowl of cold, soaked grain. A platter of fruits. Unleavened bread with a small dish of oil. An assortment of cheeses. A pitcher of wine and two goblets.

He laid some fruit on a plate, broke a piece of bread, seasoning it lightly with the oil, spooned some grain beside it, then handed the plate to me. “Eat, Tirzah. It has been a long time since your dawn meal.”

He passed me some wine. “It would please me if you drank, Tirzah. And then ate some more.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

He did not want to talk, which suited me, and we sat for some time in comfortable silence. I marvelled that beneath the Magus lived such a man, and I hoped that, after the Magus had so terrified me, the man would linger a while yet. I was more determined than ever not to speak or move out of turn.

As Holdat materialised to clear away the meal, Boaz leaned an elbow on the table, took a sip of wine, and smiled at me.

“What are you thinking, Tirzah?”

“I am thinking that I still have much to learn, Excellency.”

“A diplomatic answer, Tirzah. I wish you would make me a clear glass plate that I could fasten in your skull and show me what goes on behind those lovely eyes of yours. Come, sit with me by the window.”

He brought the wine over, and placed it on a small table by our chairs. We were very close.

“Talk to me, Tirzah. Do not be afraid.”

But it took some courage to say what I wanted, for I was very frightened of losing him back into his shell.

“Excellency, I am wondering why you have asked me here. I know that you do not want to use me,” and something shifted in his eyes at that, “but wish to teach me the skills of writing. Yet surely, somewhere at court or among the servants and scribes of the Magi, there is one who can translate Geshardian for you?”

“Are you still scared of the writing?”

“Sometimes, Excellency.” And even more afraid of what Yaqob will say to me when he finds out, as he surely will.

“There is no need, Tirzah. The last thing I want to do is to cause you harm.”

I kept my face impassive, but I felt a spurt of hard anger inside. How could he say that when he spent hours threatening me, my friends, and driving me into repeated episodes of sobbing terror? How dare he say that when he almost crippled me with pain in the workshop when I refused his bidding?

I turned my face away slightly, lest he see the emotion seething inside. He must be aware of what he did when hiding beneath the robes and demeanour of Magus.

He stood up, and again I jumped, sure that somehow he’d seen my inner anger. “Excellency?”

“Peace, Tirzah. Sit there and wait.”

He was gone some minutes, and when he returned it was with the white robe and sash of the Magus gone and the long blue wrap knotted about his hips. In his hands he carried a box, and on his face an expression so wary I wondered if the Magus would emerge at any instant.

“Excellency,” I cried softly, leaping to my feet, “let me carry that for you.”

But he snatched it away, his eyes alarmed. Dismay thudding my heart, I dropped to my knees. “Forgive me, Excellency! I only thought to help.”

“Get back in your chair, Tirzah,” and I was relieved to hear that, although harsh, he did not use the voice of the Magus.

I crawled back, my heart still pounding uncomfortably. He sat down as well, and stared at me steadily.

“If you ever reveal what I am about to show you, Tirzah, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

And what made that threat so frightening was that it came from the man Boaz, not the Magus.

I believed him utterly, and my belief showed on my face. “Yes, Excellency.”

“Good.” He sighed, then relaxed, staring at the box, his fingers gently tapping.

I understood we had reached the point to which he’d been directing me ever since he’d first ordered me to his quarters. Now that we had arrived, he was in no hurry to proceed.

His long fingers still tapping gently, gently, gently against the lid of the box, he leaned his head against the high back of the chair and regarded me. It was a pleasant inspection, and I relaxed and took some more of the wine.

“Tell me of your northern lands, Tirzah.”

“Excellency, where shall I begin?”

“With the land itself. I have never seen it.”

“Viland is very flat, Excellency. Windswept. It is a narrow strip of land running north-south. There are wild grey seas to the west, great mountains and forests on our eastern borders.”

“And the people. Is your colouring usual among northerners?”

“Yes, Excellency. All Vilanders are fair haired and blue eyed.”

“And are all the menfolk as handsome as you are beautiful, Tirzah?”

I blushed, and he grinned.

“They hide behind great beards, Excellency. It is difficult to say.”

“Another diplomatic answer, Tirzah. You have been wasted in craftwork. What of Geshardi? You speak the language well. Have you ever been there?”

Now there was an edge to his voice. Geshardi was what he’d wanted to discuss all this time. Questions of my homeland had been part gentle detour, part ruse.

“I learned the language from the traders that my father and I dealt with, Excellency, but I have never been there.”

“Surely they described it to you.”

“Geshardi lies beyond the western forests of Viland’s border, Excellency. The traders spoke of a milder climate than ours, and gentle hills that rolled into the distance, covered with soft gorse and low trees and abounding in deer and hare.” I paused, then gave him what I thought he wanted to know. “The Geshardi traders had light brown hair, rather than the Viland fairness, but they generally had blue or grey eyes. We are of cousin races.”

I hesitated again. “They did not have great beards, Excellency, and they were fair of feature and smooth of tongue.”

He was silent a long, long time, his eyes very distant. I took the opportunity to study the box. It was quite large, and extremely well crafted. I peered closer, but could not quite make out the wood. It almost seemed to be made from Jusserine, a rich, dark red timber which grew in the forests that divided Geshardi from Viland.

“My father was a Geshardi Prince,” Boaz said eventually.

I could not think of anything he could have said which would have stunned me more. Boaz’s father came from Geshardi?

My eyes narrowed. How could this help Yaqob? And then I felt my stomach clench with self-hatred at so treacherous a thought.

He was looking at me again. “My mother was Chad-Nezzar’s sister.”

“Yes, Excellency. I have heard you are the Chad’s nephew.” I looked at him more carefully now. His face and arms were tanned from the sun, but the skin of his chest and belly was much paler than I’d seen on any of pure southern blood. And his grey eyes…

“She’d been married in her youth to an Ashdod nobleman. I have an older, half-brother, Zabrze – heir to the throne now. When her husband died, Chad-Nezzar had her married to a Geshardi Prince at Ashdod’s court to conclude a trade alliance.

“They were married in a flurry of trumpets, clinging silks and carefully applied kohl. They retired to secluded apartments where they stayed, as is tradition in Ashdod, for seven days and seven nights, before emerging to further banqueting and a score of invitations to hunt.

“My father was, apparently, a man of action, and the seven days and nights spent in seclusion had left him thirsting for adventure.”

Boaz slid his eyes my way again, and they were deeply amused. “Although he had not spent those seven nights in total inactivity, Tirzah, for I was made on one of them.” He looked back to the dark of the night outside. “On his first hunt, down the great River Lhyl, he grew so excited he stood up in the boat to sound the trumpet, lost his balance, and toppled into the water. A great water lizard took him.”

“Oh, Excellency, I am so sorry…”

“I never knew him, and that saddens me, Tirzah, for I think he was a man worth the knowing. My mother became hysterical when she heard. In seven days he had won her heart, and she never recovered from his loss. Within the year she had given birth to me, and when I was six she died. Of despair, I think.”

My eyes had filled with tears, and Boaz had to collect himself before he could go on.

“This box contains my father’s wedding gift to my mother. She treasured it, for it was all she had left of him, apart from me, of course. It contains…a book.”

And suddenly I knew why the writing, why the reading, why the translating. Boaz wanted to read the book, but couldn’t, so he had trained me to do it for him.

I vaguely wondered why he hadn’t simply asked me to teach him the Geshardian tongue.

“She told me, and at the age of six I wasn’t old enough to understand completely what she’d meant, that he had seduced her with tales from this book. She could not read it either, during her lifetime no-one else from Geshardi came to Ashdod, and all she had were the memories of the tales he’d read to her. There was one…”

“Yes, Excellency?” I could only whisper now, and the tears were running down my cheeks.

“There was one in particular that I loved, and which she told me time and time again. But it has been thirty years since her death, Tirzah, and the tale has all but gone from my mind. Tirzah, would you read it to me?”

“It would be my honour, Excellency.”

He sighed, and undid the catches on the box, and lifted out a large book.

My breath caught in my throat as he handed it over. It was very, very beautiful. Bound in calfskin, the cover and spine had inlays of precious metals and gems set amid copper and gold wire and bronze studs.

I reached out my hands, and took the book.

And almost dropped it. Not only because of the weight, but because it spoke to me.

Lovely woman, hold me, touch me. Come, do not fear me. Lovely woman, I am yours, kiss me, soothe me, hold me, touch me…touch me…

How I sustained my composure I’ll never know.

Touch me, soothe me, let me love you, love you, let me lie down beside you, let me touch you, love you…

The book was a work of great Elemental necromancy. Greater than any Elemental magic I’d witnessed or felt under Isphet’s tutelage. What I was hearing through the elements of metal and gems in the book was not the voices of the elements or even of the Soulenai, but…but Boaz’s father’s voice, his soft seductions as he’d bedded his new wife…

Lovely woman, let me hold you, touch you, love you…Oh! Lovely woman!

Questions about Boaz’s father and his relationship to the book raced through my mind, filled it, consumed it.

Had he made the book? Did he have any understanding of what the book was? Was he an Elemental Necromancer himself?

I blinked away my tears, the voice fading now as the book throbbed with the heat of their passion. My hands trembled, but I steadied them and studied the book anew. It was very old, ancient, and Boaz’s father could not have made it. Perhaps he had just acquired it as part of a trading deal, and knew none of its magic. Perhaps he’d had no idea that the book had absorbed the passion of their wedding night, and had kept it alive though the man and the woman had died.

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Did Boaz know what this book was?

If he noticed any of the emotions surging through me he gave no sign.

“Tirzah. Open the book. Please. In there is a story. Please read it to me.”

I opened the book. Inside the writing was exquisite, drawn in vermilion and edged with gold, spreading across smooth creamy parchment – vellum, not papyrus. The characters were unusual, but I could read them. There was a listing of contents, and my eyes skimmed down it, wondering which tale Boaz wanted me to read to him.

“Excellency? Which one?”

And then my eyes found it, and I had no doubt about which one Boaz would name. Which tale it was that had haunted both his child and manhood.

“The Song of the Frogs,” he whispered.