Beyond the Wall of Time

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  “But I don’t—”

  “Say nothing of this. Remain where you are and allow the others to minister to you without comment. Do not question me about this now or at any time in the future. And above all, keep my secret. Do you understand?”

  Torve nodded, but he understood nothing. As the magician walked stiffly away, he whispered: “But I don’t know what your secret means.”

  The man did not hear him, or, if he did, chose not to acknowledge his words.

  Later that night Lenares came to see him. She would know, he could not keep his healing from her; but he tried, pretending he was asleep. It seemed, however, she was not aware of the change in his numbers. Something had blinded her.

  “Torve, Torve, I’m so sorry,” she whispered as she ran her fingers gently through his hair. “I did this to you, I was so selfish, I wanted you so much, I liked how you felt when you pressed close to me. I knew Dryman didn’t want us to… to whatever.”

  She couldn’t say the word even now; perhaps she didn’t know any words for it. Warm, salty drops began to patter onto his forehead.

  “I should have figured out who Dryman was, but I didn’t think like Mahudia taught me.” Her voice had thickened and she spoke louder, loud enough, perhaps, to have woken him had he in truth been asleep. “I was proud. I didn’t think anyone could keep secrets from me, even though I understood you couldn’t tell me what you knew. I was proud and I was stupid.”

  She began to sob.

  “I even let Umu go. If I had held onto her I could have made her heal you. And then I had to watch as Dryman took his knife to you.”

  Nothing more for a while, just more tears on his face and her thick breathing. His healing was hidden from her by her own grief.

  He felt so deceitful. What he ought to do was to open his eyes and offer whatever comfort remained for him to give. He ought to tell her he was healed. But he couldn’t. Trapped by who he was, by who he’d been bred to be, Torve lay there helpless as his Lenares sobbed out her heart, apologising to him again and again, until her words and her tears faded into cold silence.

  She finally sighed one last time and left him. He lay there the remainder of the long night, thoroughly desolate.

  * * *

  Across the sheltered campsite from where Torve lay, Lenares hunched in on herself and tried to gather her thoughts. Mahudia was dead and hidden from her; Torve was dying—he hadn’t even stirred when she’d blubbed all over him; and Mahudia had said that Lenares had made a mistake with her calculations. She was dizzy with confusion and loss: not only was the love she had barely discovered about to be taken from her, she had clearly lost her mathematical infallibility. One mistake, that was all it took, and she could no longer trust herself. What other mistakes might she be making? Who might suffer as a result?

  The nearest she could come to her possible error was in the application of Qarismi of Kutrubul’s dividing by zero. Mahudia had hinted at it. Qarismi’s theorem had been how she ensnared the Daughter: dividing the hole in the world by nothing and creating a web to catch her. It had worked too, or so she’d thought. Ought she to have divided the hole in the world by zero, or divided zero by the hole in the world? There was a clear mathematical difference: one made no sense. She could not remember which one she had attempted. The thought cheered her a little; she could accept a mistake in her understanding or application of a principle, but not one of computation.

  Her ragged breathing slowed. She had not truly realised just how much she relied on her ability with numbers to define who she was. If she should lose that… would it honestly be more of a loss than losing Mahudia or Torve?

  Yes, she whispered to herself, deeply ashamed.

  “Your thoughts must be important ones,” said a voice beside her, so close she could feel the speaker’s breath tickle her ear.

  “Don’t—” touch me, she was going to say, but she held her tongue as she tried to work out who it was. His face was barely visible in the darkness.

  “Anomer?”

  “Sorry to frighten you,” the boy said. He crouched down on his haunches and turned his face slightly away from her, allowing a little light from the cloud-shrouded moon to illuminate his features. “I could hear you talking to yourself and wondered if you wanted company.”

  The words formed themselves in a line on her tongue, ready to be delivered: No, go away and leave me alone, tend to your own business. It was what she wanted to say, what she would have said before coming on this journey. But she knew it would be rude to say those words, and Anomer had been kind to her earlier, not telling the others how badly she had led them.

  “Thank you, I would like that,” she forced herself to say.

  Was it telling lies like this that had undermined her ability with numbers and caused her to miscalculate? She wondered if her numbers required literal honesty, and if her attempts at being like others would eventually make her like everyone else: innumerate and lost.

  “Sorry to blunder in on you with no warning,” he said, smiling. He really did have nice teeth.

  “It was my fault,” she replied. “I thought I was leading everyone sonwards, but I must have brought them around in a huge circle.”

  “I meant now, Lenares, not yesterday afternoon. Though I hope I didn’t frighten you then either.”

  She could feel herself turning red. “You didn’t frighten me. But I was scared when I found out we had gone in a circle. Can you find your way through jungle like this?”

  “I found you, didn’t I?” Not the answer he had given her earlier.

  “Then you could lead us,” Lenares said, unable to keep the hope from surging through her voice. “Without your father here, no one seems to know where we should be going.”

  “Ah, there it is. As to that, my father is searching for my sister and the two others still missing. I must pursue them and offer any assistance I can. But I will find them and bring them back. We will all gather together again and decide then what to do: whether to continue following my father’s fixation with the Undying Man or strike out in some different direction. But if you are looking for a leader, why not follow Heredrew? He seems a knowledgeable and trustworthy man.”

  Lenares was about to reply when a shriek ripped the night in two.

  Dulled by her lack of sleep, Lenares trailed Anomer by seconds, but despite catching an ankle on a hidden obstacle of some kind—possibly a root—she arrived at the source of the noise before anyone else. The screaming sounds came from the normally quiet woman Moralye, who was shaking as she made the unearthly noise. She stood over a prone body as though preparing to defend it. A dead body.

  “What’s wrong, Moralye, what’s wrong?” Stella asked, rushing towards them, then looked down and gasped.

  Lenares could have told them. Would have, but she had learned they didn’t like her displaying her facility with numbers. She’d only taken a glimpse at the woman’s half-obscured face, but that had been enough.

  “He’s dead!” Moralye said, her voice starting to crack. “He won’t wake up!”

  Lenares found herself frightened by the intensity of the woman’s emotion. While she herself had managed to grieve after a time, it had been in private; she would have been mortified had anyone witnessed her distress. But Moralye didn’t seem to mind who knew she suffered.

  Isn’t this a kind of truth you cannot emulate? a sly thought said. By hiding your feelings, aren’t you lying to the world? By expressing hers, isn’t Moralye telling the truth?

  Lenares wanted to ignore the idea, but she sensed an important truth in the words, waiting to be unpacked. She put it aside for the moment, to be examined later.

  Stella’s face underwent a series of changes so swift none but Lenares would have noted them. Shock, denial, even momentary relief as her mind rejected what she saw; then horror tinged with acceptance and the beginnings of anger.

  “Who did this to him?” the Falthan queen asked as she bent over the unmoving figure and began to remove the thin blankets he�
��d been wrapped in.

  “I don’t know,” Moralye answered, her voice spiralling down towards normality. “He was… he was like this when I made to wake him for a dose of his medicine.”

  “Medicine?” Stella turned her face, hardened by anger, to the young woman. “What medicine? Why does he need it?”

  “I have been administering it twice daily: once at midday and again in the early hours of the morning. He needs it for his chest. You knew he was ill. Surely you have heard his laboured breathing? Have you not seen me crushing the roots?”

  “I knew he was sick, yes, but not that he was close to death. Why did you not say?”

  Moralye wilted under the hardness of the woman’s face. “I did say. At least, I said he was unwell. Remember, I stayed behind with him when the rest of you went up to the Canopy. He instructed me as to what root to seek out and the correct dosage to administer. I did not realise he was in serious danger of dying. I did nothing wrong.” Her face crumpled and she began to sob. “1 forgot that every sickness in someone so old brings them near to death.”

  “But you did do something wrong,” Lenares said, and the pale faces of those awoken by the noise swung towards her. “At least, you think you did.”

  This was both right and wrong, Lenares realised, as she found herself caught between two conflicting thoughts. Right, because the woman was desperate to hide something, and deception should always be uncovered. Wrong, because Anomer had helped Lenares hide something only a few hours ago.

  The woman put her hands to her face, obscuring any view Lenares might get of her numbers.

  “I… I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I think I may have given him his medicine twice yesterday. I was tired, so tired, and I became confused.” Moralye cleared her throat, then raised her voice a little. “As well as being one of the greatest scholars in this age of the world, he had become my friend. I would not willingly do anything to hurt him. But I… I couldn’t remember if I had dosed him at midday, so I gave him a dose mid-afternoon. He was coughing so, and there was blood in his sputum. I couldn’t remember!”

  Stella reached up and pulled the woman down beside her. Both faces were streaked with tears. Lenares realised the light was growing: dawn was coming belatedly to the Padouk forest.

  “I doubt your actions killed him,” the queen said to the young scholar, her own voice rasping with hurt. “But you should have told us he was so badly ill. There is at least one among us who has demonstrated a past facility with healing. Heredrew might have been able to save him. He has on at least one occasion previously.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Moralye said, her voice relapsing into a wail. “I thought he knew his own condition. I trusted him to tell me if… He said nothing, made no complaint, so I thought… I’m sorry!”

  So Heredrew is a healer! Lenares had not seen that in the man’s numbers; but then, he wore his face like a mask. What might a healer be able to do with Torve? Ease his passing? Keep him alive? Make him whole again?

  “Phemanderac was the most beautiful person I ever met,” Stella said simply, standing and wiping her eyes. “But for his intervention, Faltha would have been lost to the Destroyer a generation ago. He is a hero whose true tale has never been told.”

  Moralye groaned like a woman in pain as she got to her feet. “He was the most important man in Dhauria. The young scholars worshipped him.”

  “I wish Leith was here to say something,” said the queen, “but as he is not, I will say it for him. Phemanderac loved Leith like a brother, and more; but never once behaved in anything other than an appropriate manner. For that, and for many other things, he earned our undying respect.”

  A deep voice came from somewhere in the shadows. “The man had a sharp mind. He taught me a great deal about how to think.”

  Sometimes Lenares could decipher a lot from what someone said, even if she couldn’t see them. Heredrew knows something about this death.

  This time she would keep quiet; this time she would not embarrass someone who, in all likelihood, had an innocent explanation for the way his numbers added up. Instead, she would seek him out later and ask him to explain himself.

  The prospect made her instantly nervous, even a little frightened, though she could see no reason for her fear. She had faced the Emperor himself, a much more ruthless man than this kind if somewhat austere Falthan, and had bested him with nothing more than the truth.

  “To come so far,” Stella said, “only to fall in an unfamiliar land. It is an injustice.” She choked back tears. “I’m sorry, old friend, that we dragged you into this.”

  Those gathered around the cold body of the Dhaurian scholar continued to share their observations on his life; sombre words interspersed with lengthy silences as a watery sun rose to send slivers of light shining through the trees. The morning dawned cloudy but dry, with the promise of real heat later: already the bushes and trees had begun steaming. Around them the forest lay quiet save for the muted chatter of birds; the animals no doubt keeping their distance. It seemed, though, that the trees held their breath in honour of the dead man. Fanciful—no doubt the cessation of the storm led to the feeling of peace—but even Lenares felt it.

  She remained some distance apart, listening to the expressions of grief with one ear while worrying at how she would approach Heredrew, this man who frightened her; how she would convince him to help Torve, and what, if anything, she should say about his involvement in the death of the scholar.

  Torve eased himself to his feet. For the first time since the events in the House of the Gods he experienced no pain, just a general tiredness little different from the soreness one feels after a long day’s walk. He spent a moment stretching his muscles, then picked his way over to where the travellers stood in a circle. His Lenares stood a little way from the others and so she saw him first.

  She shrieked out his name. Every head turned in her direction, then to him as she raised her arm, pointed and ran towards him, her face open and hungry.

  Torve held his breath. Perhaps twenty paces separated them. Twenty paces and the loss of his manhood. Not a distance that could ever be spanned. Yet Lenares seemed to have forgotten his loss; her naked hunger burned itself on his mind, frightening in its intensity. Lips parted, nostrils flared, eyes wide open. A pace short of him she froze, her face suddenly stricken, and reached out a hand hesitantly; it was as though the life had gone out of her. Everything he had feared.

  “Torve, are you… I don’t want to—please, Torve, don’t go!”

  But he turned away anyway, unable to face her intensity, and he strode off towards the forest, head down as though flinching from a blow.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE VOLUNTEER

  “HE’S STILL TRACKING US.” There was anger and not a little admiration in Duon’s voice.

  “Just our luck,” Conal growled. “That canone will never give up.”

  “Foul language for a priest,” Duon said, and felt a little hypocritical, having taught him the word in the first place. Duon had used it frequently in the last two days.

  “Not a priest, not any longer. Just a hunk of meat. I can’t do anything he doesn’t want me to.”

  For the third time that afternoon the man took the sharpened stick and thrust it towards his own stomach; as with the first two attempts, his hand stopped abruptly just short of piercing the skin. Duon was sure it was no act.

  Arathé mouthed her words and waved her hands desultorily, saying something like, “He won’t let us die.” It was hard to tell exactly; she was so tired her hands didn’t form the words properly.

  Captain Duon would never have believed he would be wishing for his own death. Even after the horror of the Valley of the Damned, when as leader of the Emperor’s army he’d lost thirty thousand men, he had not sought to end his life. He’d thought then that he’d known despair, but what he had felt then was akin to joy compared to this. This complete loss of self. Slavehood without a moment’s respite. Of course he wanted to live, but he’d
take death over a continued existence as the puppet of a cruel magician.

  “Your father will keep tracking us,” the priest said. “Canone.”

  He seemed to enjoy the flavour of the word, the smuttiness of it. Small rebellions, all they were capable of.

  Duon sighed. “Noetos wanted us to go our own way, but now he comes after us. The faster he comes, the harder the voice drives us.” I just want to lie down.

  Never. You’re mine until you burn out.

  Physically sick at the sound of the voice, Duon responded with anger. May the hour come soon, especially if it inconveniences you.

  His words had as much effect as a gnat biting a horse, he had to acknowledge. Certainly not worth the voice answering him.

  Noetos had trailed them ever since the voice had led them down from the Canopy. They hadn’t been difficult to track, Duon surmised: one by one each of them had tested themselves against the hold on them. The resultant struggles gave the fisherman noise, broken foliage and, in Arathé’s case, blood to follow. All the efforts proved futile, as Duon guessed they would, but each of them would keep trying, he was sure.

  To escape the hold the voice had on him was now the sole desire in Duon’s heart. Arathé had told them of the indignities the voice had forced her to commit, and he had seen for himself the way her body had been possessed. The voice had done similar things to him, he knew, though at the time they had seemed praiseworthy. The inhuman speed and strength in the Summer Palace; the ability to swim even with a broken leg; surely they had been sign enough. But because their effect had been laudable, he’d not questioned the voice closely.

  Not that it would have mattered. The voice had demonstrated his absolute mastery of his charges, and their fate was clear. He would continue to reside in their minds, his presence making Duon sick to his stomach, and whisper his mocking words while scheming new atrocities for them to commit. Then he would take possession of their bodies, compelling them to do his will. And so it would go until they died, discarded, hands and hearts blackened by all they had been forced to do.