Threshold

23

I WAITED as Boaz questioned the foreman in charge of the plating, then fell into step behind him as he moved slowly around Threshold, his face upturned as he scanned the pyramid. I wondered how he could see it, for the sun glinted so fiercely off the glass that it must surely have hurt his eyes.

The wind ruffled my dress, and I smoothed it down. This was a particularly becoming dress, a deep violet with a delicate gold pattern running through it. I smiled as my fingers felt its silkiness. I wondered if I could persuade Boaz to obtain a crimson gown for me, for I thought it might suit my colouring very well.

I looked about. Scores of workers were now engaged in laying paving and tiling about Threshold rather than working on the pyramid itself. Hundreds more laid a great avenue from the riverbank through Gesholme to Threshold; many buildings had been destroyed to make way for it, and hundreds of slaves now slept in the open, or crowded into neighbouring tenements.

Seven weeks to Consecration Day, and the preparations proceeded apace.

I smiled surreptitiously at a young man who was paving several paces away. He was particularly handsome, and I could see the admiration in his eyes as he looked at me.

I sighed. This was boring. I don’t know why Boaz insisted I come with him for these inspections. Perhaps he only wanted to display me. That brought a small smile to my mouth, and I shook my hair out still further. Boaz liked my hair long and loose, and it was growing out nicely. Would it take a month to reach the small of my back? Or only three weeks?

Several other Magi brushed past me and walked with Boaz, talking quietly. They smiled and nodded now and then; all were pleased with Threshold.

We’d reached the southern ramp now, and Boaz led us up towards Threshold’s mouth. The skirts of my dress bunched in the stronger wind, and I frowned as I tried to make them lie smooth and becoming. Perhaps I should have picked something more serviceable to wear on this inspection.

Then we walked inside.

“What are you doing here?” Boaz asked sharply, and I looked up, startled, thinking he spoke to me.

But a group of workers were standing before him, obviously about to leave after completing some task.

“Some of the glass had broken in the main eastern shaft, Excellency,” the leader mumbled.

I looked over at them and grinned. My father was among them, although gods knew what he was doing with this group. But workers were often assigned to secondary tasks if they were free from their main occupation, and perhaps this was the case with Druse.

“Well,” Boaz said, “you should have been gone an hour ago. I wanted the interior clear for this inspection. I won’t –”

He stopped, and stared, as did I and the other Magi, the foreman, and sundry guards with us.

Every one of the men in the group, my father included, had whimpered. Frightened. Lost.

I frowned. What was going on? Boaz hadn’t come close to losing his temper, and…

…and then some instinct made me count the men in that huddled, subservient group.

Eleven. The next incomposite number after seven.

“No,” I whispered. “Father, please, come away from there…”

Boaz looked at me sharply, then back at the men.

“Father!” I cried, and took a step forward.

Boaz gestured, and Kiamet grabbed me.

“No,” Boaz said. “No. There is nothing we can do.”

There was nothing he wanted to do.

The group of eleven men were trembling now, their eyes wide, terrified. Druse blinked, then stared at me. “Tirzah!” he screamed, and reached out a hand.

I wailed, and tried to free myself from Kiamet’s hold, but he was strong, and held me easily.

“Tirzah!” my father screamed again, then began to die.

Threshold was enjoying itself. It had tasted death on four occasions now, and had learned that the slower and more terrifying the death, the sweeter the eating.

I twisted and screamed, as everyone else looked on with either horror or interested curiosity while the men died.

Gradually, sickeningly, Threshold turned them to stone.

First their feet. They were all barefoot from walking the delicate glass of the shaft, their sandals left behind at Threshold’s stone doorstep. Thus their feet were on stone, their bare feet, and Threshold seeped into them through their soles.

The flesh of their feet turned grey, then dull. The wrongness spread upwards in crumbling, creeping, writhing snakes of grey, up their shins, their calves, their thighs.

The men were in agony. They twisted and turned, trying to escape, but they could not, for their feet were stone, fused into Threshold.

The grey, relentless, crept further. Their hips, their bellies, and now the men’s screams were tearing them apart inside, for I saw a great gout of blood spurt from one of their mouths. The man took breath to scream, and he choked on it, then he took a great breath again, and his eyes bulged and he gagged and vomited, and what he vomited was shards of rock.

I wanted to look away, I wanted to turn and hide my face in Kiamet’s chest, but I could not, for there was my father dying before me, my father who loved me and who had raised me and who, despite his faults, was beloved to me.

“Is…” he whispered, and his voice was harsh and grating, as if he’d forced it through a roughened throat. “Is…”

Gods! He was trying to call me by my birth name!

He could no longer breathe, for the stone had claimed his chest, and the veins in his neck bulged and spasmed, and then they faded into grey, and his eyes, still staring at me, bulged, blood trickling from the corner of one of them, turning to tears of stone down his cheeks, and then one eye popped, and then, I think, it was over, for his face was nothing but a carving…a carving of a man who had died in such agony he would wear the face of it into immortality.

Silence.

“Such power!” whispered Boaz, and that broke the horror that held me.

“You cold-blooded lizard!” I screamed. “Is there nothing in your veins but stone?”

He turned and stared at me. Everyone did, and I think my voice must have reached those scores of men who stood on or about the ramp, staring at the eleven rock-frozen bodies.

“That was my father who died before you, and all you can do is stand there and whisper your admiration?” I had no sense of danger. None.

“Threshold is an abomination, Boaz! Destroy it! You have it in your power. Destroy it!”

His face darkened in fury, and he opened his mouth to shout, but I forestalled him.

“Look what it is doing, Boaz! Is it good that it destroys and kills? Is that good? Do you enjoy that? Is this what your father would have wanted?” And, oh, by the Soulenai themselves, I should have realised this was going to accomplish nothing at all but my destruction.

I freed an arm from Kiamet’s clutches, and I waved it about in a grand, sweeping gesture. “How can you stand here and declare your admiration when at the same time you yearn to understand the Song of the Fr –”

He hit me.

My head slammed back into Kiamet’s chest with such force I must have bruised him.

Then Boaz seized my hair in rough fingers and jerked my face back to his. It was roping with fury and the power of the One.

“It is well that the caging work is all but finished,” he seethed through clenched teeth, “because now I can well afford to rid myself of the more troublesome of the cagers!”

He threw my head back against the guard. “Take her to the hold, Kiamet, and lock her up. No food. No water. Tell me when she’s dead.”

I heard him step away. “And get someone to throw these lumps of useless rock in the Lhyl. Well away from the dock. I don’t want the boats to damage their keels on them.”

The cells in the compound’s hold had been constructed of thick stone to hold the most rebellious of slaves. There was no window, and what fresh air and light reached me filtered in through a gap between two blocks of masonry high in the northern wall.

There was a thick, wooden door, barred tight. Nothing else. No pallet, no blankets. And no water. Not even a bucket in which I could relieve my needs.

I curled into a miserable ball and cried. My father was dead. And it was all my fault. The Soulenai had entrusted me to persuade Boaz to accept his Elemental heritage, and destroy Threshold. But all I’d done was relax into a comfortable life as his mistress. I’d stroked my soft gowns, and eaten the fine food. I’d practised for hours drawing kohl about my eyes and rouging my lips. I’d strolled the gardens and watched the fish flash in the ponds. I’d worked at the translations, and enjoyed the challenge – the damned ensorcelled writing! I’d been soft and submissive, and wallowed in the Magus’ approval. And at night I had put to the back of my mind the canker in my belly that was my ruined womb, and flaunted my body before him, desperate to have him seize me and bear down on me.

All this I’d done, and meantime Threshold had grown.

And eaten my father.

I had betrayed Druse and the Soulenai, and I had betrayed myself. I had prostituted myself for a life of ease and leisure.

I curled up and hoped that death would come swiftly.

But it did not. The cell baked during the day, and froze at night. By evening on the first day my throat was rasping, crying out for water. I did not care. I continued to weep, losing more precious fluids by doing so.

The night dragged on for an eternity. I think I became delirious at one point, for I believed myself trapped in Infinity, and I cried out for Boaz to save me, to come rescue me, and then reviled myself for such weakness.

Morning came, and it was a relief. There was a noise outside the door, and I thought that it would open, but it was only a changing of the watch. So I sank to the floor and lay staring at the stone wall before me.

Was Druse condemned to lie in the mud of the river bottom for eternity? Raguel’s soul had been lost because we did not have the remains of a body to farewell into the Place Beyond. Likewise Druse’s soul would be lost. He had not been an Elemental, but that would not have stopped Isphet farewelling him into the Place Beyond.

Would Druse’s soul stare out of stone eyes at the murky life of the river for eternity?

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered hoarsely, but that was little consolation to offer a soul so abandoned by his daughter’s weaknesses.

That day was a nightmare. The cell became almost an oven, and my thirst became a raging beast in itself. By late afternoon I was sitting against the door, banging on it, pleading, shouting with what voice I had left for just one drink, just a small one, Boaz would never know…

I wanted to die, but not like this. I wanted a swift sword thrust. Easy. Gentle.

And so during the early evening I begged and pleaded for that.

The guards were silent.

My throat swelled so I could plead no more, and I fell into another delirium, to wake shaking and freezing in the depths of the night.

I struggled up, sobbing in great, dry gasps.

I blinked, then blinked again. Faint moonlight filtered in through the crack in the masonry, and it glinted upon something on the walls.

Ice.

I thought I must be hallucinating, but eventually I reached out and touched it…blessed ice. I scrambled to my knees, almost falling over, and licked the stone, crying again as I felt the moisture seep through the swollen tissues of my throat, blessing whatever gods had sent this to me.

Shivering, shaking with cold and fever, I crawled about the walls, scraping hands, chin, nose on the rough rock, licking, licking, licking like an animal, not caring that I sucked years of filth from the walls along with the moisture.

I did not want to die.

The day passed, but it took forever to do so, and I lay on the floor, my once beautiful dress now snagged and ruined and stained, and I begged the sun to go down and the night to fall.

When it did I managed to raise myself to hands and knees, a true animal now, and I waited for the ice to form.

I thought it would not do it. I ran my tongue about the walls, seeking, thinking that it would not get cold enough, worrying that my rough tongue would prevent the ice from forming, but eventually I found a slick of moisture and I broke into sobs, and then spent an hour trying uselessly to stop them, not wanting to waste the fluid.

Another day passed, and another night, and then perhaps some more days and nights, but I am not sure, because then I slipped into death.

“She is dead, Excellency. See?”

I heard this as if in a dream, but I did not open my eyes, for they were gummed closed. And anyway, I was dead, and I no longer felt any curiosity.

But strange, though, that the voice should have sounded so much like Kiamet’s. Had Kiamet followed me into eternity? Such a nice man. So kind.

A hand grasped my shoulder and rolled me over. My head lolled and struck the stone floor. That hurt, and I was angry. Pain had no place in eternity.

A step, and then someone knelt by my side.

Silence.

“You are a fool, Kiamet. She still breathes.”

“Excellency, I was sure! It’s been eight days. No-one –”

“Get out Kiamet, and close the door. Do not open it until I call.”

“Yes, Excellency.”

Not dead, then. I would have cried if I could.

He knelt there a long time, and I thought he was waiting for me to die. Then a rough hand grasped my hair and pulled my head forward, and this time I managed a croak of protest.

“You stupid girl,” he said, and I thought I heard his voice break. But that must be wrong. A product only of delirium. “You stupid, stupid girl.”

And then water splashed in my face.

Someone carried me back to his residence. Not Boaz, because he would never have allowed anyone to see that. Perhaps Kiamet. Yes, I think it was Kiamet. I was placed on Boaz’s bed, and even then I thought that unusual, for I must have been filthy. Then Boaz’s voice.

“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.