Threshold

28

I LED Boaz through the streets back to the Magi’s compound. It was very quiet now. Everyone was in bed to rest for Consecration Day.

“Let no-one in,” I said to Kiamet, and he nodded. I wondered when he ever slept, but now was not the time to ask.

I led Boaz over to the bed and sat him down. His face was expressionless, his eyes dull.

“You heard the glass,” I said.

He looked up. “What?”

“You heard the glass scream, Boaz. It wants you to save it.”

“No.”

“Yes! It was screaming to you!”

“No!” His eyes were wild now, and he stood to face me. “What you speak is –”

“Truth, Boaz. What I speak is truth.”

“No. I heard nothing. I –”

“Shetzah!” I flung my hands in the air. “How long are you going to deny that you are an Elemental, Boaz?”

He cringed at that word.

“Say it, Boaz. We’re safe enough here. Threshold can’t hear us or see us.” My voice was much, much softer. “Why else pick a residence so shielded from Threshold’s eye? Why else save to hide your Elemental leanings?”

“No! I am a Magus…a…”

“What you are, Boaz, is an Elemental Necromancer. I am Elemental, too. Don’t deny that you don’t know that.”

“No, Tirzah. Stop. You’re condemning yourself. I’ll have to kill you –”

I laughed. “Go ahead, then. Kill me.”

He cursed and turned away. “I do not believe you. I cannot be this…Necromancer.”

There was a slight step outside on the verandah, but I assumed it was Kiamet at his post.

“Oh? Thus speaks the man who kept the locks of the dead? Thus speaks the man who turned stone to hair? Thus speaks the man who keeps and treasures the Book of the Soulenai?”

“No! I do not want to hear any more.” Boaz flung himself away from me.

“She speaks truth, brother.”

Zabrze! I looked at him gratefully. Maybe Boaz would listen to him.

But he had no intention of listening to either of us. “Out! I want you both out!”

“No,” Zabrze said quietly. “I’ve had enough, and I’ve heard enough to know Tirzah has, too. Boaz, the time has come to admit who you really are.”

“Kiamet!” Boaz shouted.

“He will not come, Boaz,” Zabrze said. “Kiamet is my man.”

That stunned me as much as Boaz. Kiamet?

“Has Kiamet been spying on me for all these months?” Boaz said.

“Looking out for you, Boaz, and keeping watch. But ‘spying’? No. Kiamet owes his loyalty to me but has not reported on the activities within this residence. Although,” Zabrze glanced at me, “I wish I had asked him to do that. It might have saved me some surprises on my arrival.”

“We were in the Infinity Chamber, Great Lord,” I said. “The glass in that chamber screams with despair. It is…” I shuddered. “Tonight Boaz laid his hands on the glass and heard it. It screamed to him to save it. Great Lord, only an Elemental could have heard it.”

“Boaz,” Zabrze said, “you are an Elemental. Listen to us.”

Boaz opened his mouth to deny it yet again, and I turned away in disgust.

Boaz, Boaz, Boaz.

I twisted back. It was the Goblet of the Frogs. I looked between the two brothers. Boaz had clearly heard it, for his eyes were riveted on the glass, but Zabrze was only staring irritably at Boaz.

That answered one question. I had thought Zabrze might be Elemental, too, but that call had been so strong that even the weakest Elemental would have picked it up.

Boaz, Boaz, Boaz.

Not many voices. One.

“No!” Boaz screamed, and leaped for the glass.

It flared. Light seared through the room, and Zabrze and I both cried out.

“What?” Zabrze murmured.

“The goblet is Soulenai magic,” I said, blinking my eyes, trying to clear them, frantically searching for Boaz. What was he doing? “It calls to Boaz.”

There was a faint tinkling, and I thought that Boaz had managed to shatter the glass.

“No!” Not my voice, but Boaz’s.

He was crouched by the cabinet, his hands over his face. A man stood before him, with his hand reaching down.

Boaz.

Not a man but a spectre, woven of mist only.

“By the gods!” Zabrze cried. “Avaldamon!”

Boaz’s head jerked up, unbelieving.

Boaz. The spectre’s hand drifted closer, and Boaz, shaking, reached out his own.

Boaz. Listen to the frogs. Learn their Song. Follow the path it shows you, for it is all that will save you. Listen, Boaz. Accept. Destroy Threshold.

And then he was gone.

I rubbed my eyes, wondering if he’d ever been there at all. I’d never heard of this – but what power Avaldamon commanded to so visit from the grave!

“Avaldamon!” Zabrze whispered, and then he stepped to his brother’s side, knelt down, and embraced him.

I think it was Zabrze’s embrace, even more than the fleeting apparition of Avaldamon, that shattered Boaz’s resistance. He broke into harsh sobs, and Zabrze rocked him back and forth.

Boaz finally blinked, as if waking from a dream. “Tirzah?”

“Boaz!” I dropped beside him, and added my arms to those of Zabrze’s.

“Boaz, listen to me now. The Soulenai say that you are the only one who can destroy Threshold.”

“Oh, no, Tirzah. I cannot –”

“You are Magus trained,” I said, repeating what the Soulenai had told me. “You understand the power of the One. You understand Threshold. And you also command such great,” I kissed his cheek, “wonderful,” now I kissed his forehead, “Elemental power, you can counteract whatever Threshold truly is. You are the key to Threshold’s destruction.”

Boaz slumped against Zabrze and myself. “My father…”

Zabrze glanced at me. “Avaldamon was an Elemental Necromancer, Boaz. He told me this. Why, I don’t know, for such a confession was more than dangerous in a world where the Magi ruled. But perhaps even then he had an intuition of his own death and knew that someone had to be told.”

Boaz raised his tear-stained face to Zabrze. “And you accepted it?”

“Avaldamon had been kind and understanding in a court where very few were, Boaz. I trusted him. And I admired him beyond any man I have met since. His powers were astounding – he demonstrated some to me – and yet his compassion was overwhelming. He was,” Zabrze’s mouth twisted cynically, “a bright contrast to the Magi at court.”

“And to what I became,” Boaz said very quietly. “How is it that you did not tell me this earlier?”

“I was gone so long from court when you were young, Boaz. When I returned it was to find that the Magi had claimed you. I…hesitated…to stand up in court and shout that you were the son of an Elemental Necromancer.”

Even Boaz had to grin weakly at that.

“Come,” I said, and pulled both men to their feet. “Let us sit where it is more comfortable. You are both too old to squat so abandoned on the floor.”

It was a bad attempt at humour, but Zabrze and Boaz seemed grateful for it. They sat at the table, and I lifted the boxed book and the goblet down and placed them before Boaz.

“You always knew, Boaz,” I said. “You did.”

It was a relief for him to finally admit it.

“Yes, although for a long time I did not realise what it was.” His voice was very quiet, and he kept his eyes on the box. “I felt so abandoned when my mother died. I had no-one to turn to…”

I glanced at Zabrze. The man’s face was distraught, and I touched his hand.

“…and one day a Magus came to talk to me. He said that the power of the One was a wondrous thing and that if I opened myself to it then I would never be alone. It sounded…a relief. I threw myself body and soul,” his mouth quirked at the unintentional pun, “into the study of the One. It appeared to be everything that I needed. Solace. Company – the company and community of the Magi as well as the One. Power. That appealed to me.”

“Maybe you were yearning to understand your own power, Boaz,” I said, “and misunderstood the yearning.”

“Maybe. Whatever, it did not take much to push me into a singular dedication to the One. I learned easily, the Magi were proud of me. Even Chad-Nezzar was, I think, for I was an orphan boy who had no grand inheritance. Let the Magi have me, he said, and take care of my education.”

“When did you begin to realise that there were depths to you that were different?” I asked. Now both my hands were wrapped about one of Boaz’s.

“About twenty. I realised that when I touched certain things – glass, metal – they whispered to me. I knew what it was immediately. And I knew that Elemental magic was bad, corrupt, foul. So I believed myself to be bad, corrupt, foul. Tirzah, Zabrze, you’ll never know what years of horror I went through. I built walls and fortresses that I hid behind. I became the perfect Magus. It took me five, six, seven years, but I did it. Eventually I believed that I’d killed whatever it was that had so corrupted me.”

“But you still dreamed of the Song of the Frogs,” I said.

“Rarely, Tirzah. Or maybe I so blocked the dreams from my conscious mind that I do not remember them. I was inviolate. The perfect Magus. Until you carved those cursed frogs for me in Setkoth.”

Zabrze looked puzzled, and I told him briefly how I’d carved the glass on my arrival in Setkoth. He nodded, and told Boaz how the frogs had screamed on his father’s death.

“Well,” Zabrze said eventually, sitting back. “What to do now?”

“Destroy Threshold,” I said firmly. “We must.”

Boaz was silent.

“We must,” I said again. “Will you not yet admit its wrongness, Boaz? Will you yet deny it?”

He dropped his eyes. “No. No, it is wrong. But apart from physically pulling Threshold down…I cannot think how…”

“Boaz,” I asked, “what is Threshold’s wrongness?”

“It is the power that it draws upon, I suppose,” he said.

“The Vale,” I said, remembering.

“The Vale?” Zabrze asked. “I have only barely heard of it.”

“It is,” Boaz began slowly, thinking it through, “a well of power. The Magi have known of its existence, and have known of the power it contained. We always thought it the well of Creation, the void out of which the universe and all it contains sprang. We thought to tap it. Threshold – or, more correctly, the Infinity Chamber – would then become the bridge into Infinity and immortality.”

“Boaz,” I said, my horror mounting. “What if something were to come through the other way? What if something in the Vale used Threshold as a bridge into this world?”

Silence.

“Damn you, brother!” Zabrze said, and grasped Boaz by the arm. “What have you done?”

“Am I to blame for the entire history of Threshold?” Boaz snapped, wrenching his arm away. “Threshold was conceived and begun long before Avaldamon arrived to beget me. I have overseen the final days of its completion, nothing else! Do not blame Threshold on me!”

“Then oversee its destruction, brother!”

Boaz looked out the window. “Too late, Zabrze. It has begun.”

I turned to look outside. Dawn light was filtering through the hanging vines about the verandah. How long had we been talking?

“What do you mean, ‘too late’?”

Boaz looked back to Zabrze. “Threshold will awaken to its full power when the sun is directly overhead. Noon. When light will flood the Infinity Chamber. There is nothing we can do to stop the process now.”

“But I thought,” I said, “the rites…surely if you do not conduct the Consecration Day rites…”

Boaz shook his head. “The rites were for two purposes only. One, for show. Everyone expected some sort of rite once Threshold was completed. The Consecration Rites were designed to fit that need. The rites would be grand to make the Magi look grander. And two, and far more importantly, the rites were designed to have at least some of the Magi in or near the Infinity Chamber when the sun seared through. We wanted to be first.”

“Thus your insistence that you conduct the rites,” I said quietly. He had been going to leave me. Leave me for Infinity and all it promised.

“‘Insistence’ is too pleasant a word for it, Tirzah. No, whichever way you look at it, the lack of rites is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to whether Threshold finally awakes or not. Whatever happens, once the sun reaches its full strength…”

“So we physically destroy it,” Zabrze said firmly, and Boaz laughed harshly.

“Destroy it, Zabrze? It has taken eight generations to build, and we have some six hours to pull it down.”

“I have an army.”

“And do you trust them? The power of the One is strong among the military. The Magi have been cultivating it for years, decades, anticipating that Chad-Nezzar might try to use the army to seize Threshold for himself. And the promise, the thrall, of power is going to make many stay their hand.”

Zabrze was tellingly silent, and I thought of the respect the officer on duty at Threshold had shown for Boaz last night.

“And,” Boaz said quietly. “I doubt very much that Threshold would allow itself to be destroyed. You have seen demonstrations of its power. If any came near it with a mallet…”

“Nevertheless,” Zabrze said, “we must try.”

And then I remembered one of his officers talking so quietly with Azam. “Great Lord…”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “We must make use of Yaqob.”

Again silence. This man would make a great Chad, I thought, for he constantly outwits all those about him.

“Yaqob?” Boaz asked, a decided edge to his voice.

“Boaz,” I said gently. Boaz disliked Yaqob for many reasons other than that he might be an Elemental. “The slaves will fight to destroy Threshold. They know full well how wrong, how dark, it is.”

“And they are planning a revolt, anyway,” Zabrze finished.

“And why does that not surprise me?” Boaz muttered. “But how is it that you know this, Zabrze?”

“Shetzah, Boaz! I cannot think how you can spend so much time in Setkoth and still be so unaware of court intrigue!” Zabrze leaned forward. “I came down here fully expecting trouble – from several quarters. I’d heard the rumours about Threshold, about the ‘accidents’ on site, so I certainly expected trouble from the pyramid itself – I did not realise then how bad it would be. I also knew that Chad-Nezzar had a tenuous idea about seizing Threshold for his own use, and I knew that the Magi and the power of the Magi had infiltrated much of the army, how much I wasn’t sure, but enough that I no longer trust much of my command. And then, here we were sailing into an encampment of slaves unsure of their future. Of course I expected some kind of revolt, or at least a plot for one!”

“And so you came prepared to put that down?” Boaz asked.

“No,” Zabrze said, staring at his brother, “I came half-expecting to use them as allies.”

“I saw one of your officers talking to a man I know is involved in the plot,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But how did you know so quickly?” I asked. “Your men had been here barely two hours before I saw –”

“I told Prince Zabrze, Tirzah,” said a voice, and I looked about, wondering when the shocks were about to stop.

“I told him.”

“Kiamet?” Boaz said, his voice angry.

“My brother is Azam,” Kiamet said. “No-one knew that. No-one.”

Gods. I dropped my face into one hand.

“Kiamet has been a very useful man,” Zabrze said quietly. “Very.”

“Azam pressured me for information,” Kiamet said. “But I would not give it to him. I,” he hesitated, his eyes pleading to Boaz for understanding, “I would not betray you, My Lord.”

“But you did not hesitate to work for my brother,” Boaz said bitterly.

“Oh, Boaz, be sensible!” Zabrze said. “You should have realised! Kiamet was not one of those guards who has been here under Magi influence for years. He came down with the soldiers when Chad-Nezzar came here some months ago. He has always been my man.”

“And yet, Boaz,” I said, thinking it through, “there is much he could have reported to Zabrze about both you and me, but did not. Think about it. He has been more loyal to us than is immediately apparent.”

Kiamet shot a grateful look my way. I returned it. He could have told Azam about what I’d been doing in this residence, what I’d been learning. But he had not.

“It has not always been easy,” Kiamet said simply.

Boaz nodded, accepting it. “Now what?”

“Now we see just how many we can rally to aid us,” Zabrze said, and stood. “Perhaps if we can raise a thousand or more then we might mount an assault on Threshold itself. Smash the capstone, even the Infinity Chamber. Stop it.”

“But –” Boaz began.

“But if we can’t,” Zabrze looked at me, “Tirzah? If we can’t?”

“Then you must do what your father told you, Boaz,” I said. “You must listen to the Song of the Frogs. Understand it. Learn it. Learn who you are. And then perhaps you will be able to stop whatever it is that Threshold will become at noon.”

“And how, pray, will I learn to understand the Song of the Frogs?”

“I have some friends, Boaz.”

“Yaqob!” He spat the word.

“Yes, and Isphet, and a dozen others. They will help you. There is a place that Isphet knows. A community where the ways of Elemental magic are still strong. Among them are Graces, elders of power who can teach you.” I looked at Zabrze. “Great Lord, if you can’t destroy Threshold, then I will have to get Boaz away from here.”

Zabrze nodded. “Can you get him to your friends now?”

“I think so. Boaz, here, take this,” and I handed him the box containing the book.

I quickly wrapped the Goblet of the Frogs in a robe and held it close.

“Kiamet,” Zabrze said, “go with them. Make sure they are safe. Then go to Azam, as we planned.”

Kiamet nodded.

“And Tirzah?”

I looked up.

“Stop calling me Great Lord. It is slightly ridiculous in the situation.”

I nodded, smiled, then Kiamet and I hurried Boaz out the door.