‘I have counted the number of steps we have taken since the expedition left the Avensfather Gate,’ she said. ‘My own steps and those of our bearers, adding those that went fatherwards, subtracting those that went in other directions. It is automatic, it goes on in my head without me thinking about it.’ She looked at him as though she expected him to understand. ‘I have calculations for the angles,’ she explained. ‘Even if we travel on a line in a sonback direction, I can work out how far fatherwards we have come. Distance and bearing. I use the sun and the stars too. It is important to me. I need to know where I am for all my other numbers to work. All my other numbers are relative to each other, but I need an absolute. Since my seizure, my counting has stopped. How many steps did you carry me, and in what direction?’
His eyes widened in fear. A trivial thing, but he could understand that she needed a centre, something to base herself on. So similar to his Defiance. He was about to fail her.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Then I will have to go back to where I had my fit,’ she said. ‘Mahudia knew not to move me after a fit. I suppose you are not to blame.’ She sighed. ‘We will need food and water if we are to survive in the desert. We can take some from the expedition. It’s not really stealing. We would have used the food and water anyway had we remained with them.’
‘Go back? Steal? Lenares, they will catch us and put us to death.’ He didn’t know if they would be killed, but they would be imprisoned of a certainty. ‘What of the hole in the world? If we are killed, who will defend Elamaq against it?’
‘We have to go back,’ Lenares said stubbornly. ‘Otherwise I will have to start every calculation again. It has taken me years, and we don’t have the time. The hole will come back, and if I don’t know when it is coming it will get me.’
Torve closed his eyes, then had an idea. ‘What if we wait until the expedition leaves, then I take you to the place where you had your seizure? In the meantime, I could fetch food and water from the camp followers. Wouldn’t that be just as good, and a lot less risky?’
She nodded slowly. ‘It would depend on how accurate you were. Do you think you could tell exactly where Captain Duon’s tent had been once the expedition leaves?’
No. How to avoid answering? He would do anything rather than risk her back at the camp.
He turned away, so she would not see his face as he formulated his lie. A small dust-cloud in the direction of the camp caught his eye. Was the expedition moving already? Surely they would rest at least one night? No, the cloud was much closer than the camp…
‘Lenares, someone is coming,’ he hissed.
They scattered the sticks, smoothed out the sand and carried the blanket with them as they fled. Torve could not be sure if the cloud meant pursuit, or if whoever came towards them had some other purpose, but he could not wait to find out.
Lenares travelled in a strange world. All her life she had been surrounded by shapes, colours and sounds that threatened to overwhelm her with their reality, their immediacy. She had worked it out eventually: other people had a filter that told them what was important and what was not. They trusted these filters, called them experience or common sense or, in others, prejudice. But to her everything was important. She trusted no filter. How could she ignore anything? When she was young her mind came dangerously close to burning out, overloaded by life.
What had saved her was her developing ability to see the links between everything, and turn those relationships into numbers. Her mind ignored nothing, cataloguing everything, weighing, balancing, selecting.
However, since her seizure she had lost her inner scales. She could no longer weigh and balance the sensations coming through her eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. The world pressed in on her, beating at her fragile defences. She tried not to panic, but she needed to get back to the place where she had been afflicted with the seizure. And now they were fleeing in the wrong direction, it was all she could do to stifle a scream.
The Omeran led her along the base of the cliff; the fatherback side of the valley, he had said, but she couldn’t tell. She stumbled along after him, throat dry, legs aching, aches and pains surfacing all over her body as though she were being beaten by an invisible man. They were definitely being pursued, Torve said: the dust-cloud had stopped at the cliff-edge where they had rested, and was now moving in their direction. Perhaps one of the camp followers had told the soldiers about them. Though her body hurt, there was no time to stop and rest.
Darkness came upon them quickly, as it always did in the desert. Behind and to their left a sprinkling of lights sprang up where the expedition had camped, while their pursuers lit torches, illuminating the valley walls. Torve cursed, then reached out and clasped her hand in his.
‘Why don’t they let us go?’ he asked. ‘If they want us dead, the desert will take care of killing us. Has Captain Duon finally realised how important you are?’
‘Do you mean he might take me back? He might listen to me?’
‘Lenares, I don’t know. It could be the Elborans looking to capture you. We can’t take that risk.’
He doesn’t even consider the risk to himself, Lenares realised. Whether those following had been sent by the captain or the Elborans, Torve would be punished at best, slain at worst. She could not expose him to that, not when he had saved her from the cosmographers’ betrayal.
‘They are drawing closer,’ Torve said, panic in his voice. ‘Quick! In here!’
He pulled her to his left, towards a dark shadow in the valley wall. A cave of some sort, Lenares thought as he jerked her roughly through the narrow opening. She stifled a cry as her elbow cracked against the rock.
It was not a cave. The stars still shone above them in a narrow, crooked slot of diamond-studded purple. She stared at the sky, entranced, and lost her footing. With her hand still clasped firmly in that of the Omeran, she slid then tumbled down a steep sandy slope. Abruptly everything turned icy cold and dark. They had fallen into water.
CHAPTER 14
HOUSE OF THE GODS
SPLUTTERING AND COUGHING, Torve pulled Lenares from the black pool and laid her on the cool sand. Her head had barely been submerged, yet she lay unmoving. She breathed still, her heart beat strongly, her skin was warm and it was unlikely she had swallowed any water. He could not understand what was wrong. Another seizure? Surely not. But full darkness was upon them, and he could see very little by the sliver of starlight above him.
Thunderous voices erupted all around him: ‘…came this way. I saw…’ ‘…getting too dark to see where they…’ ‘…don’t understand why Duon wants to…’ A series of male voices, rising and falling, echoing as though the words reverberated around an enclosed space. ‘…uncanny girl, no wonder Captain Duon wants…’ ‘…don’t expect to be out here all night…’ After a few startled minutes, he realised he was hearing a series of speakers walking past the opening to this place, their words caught and amplified unnervingly by the cavern. At least a dozen snippets of conversation played out before the footfalls faded and silence fell.
The silence was almost complete. Not only were the constant clankings, mutterings and clatter of a normal evening camp missing, the random susurrations of the desert also seemed to be suppressed here, wherever here was. An aid to thinking, this lack of distraction, if only he had any sort of sensible decision to make. Lenares had presented him with a cruel dilemma: to serve Captain Duon but stay out of his hands. Clearly he could not leave this sheltered place until Lenares revived, and even then he would have to be certain the searching soldiers had returned to the camp.
Torve let out a deep breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. Safe; after a fashion, at least. The damp air, cooled by the nearby water, washed over him soothingly, chilling his skin. He draped an arm around Lenares’ shoulder, nuzzled his face into the back of her neck, and fell asleep.
His bladder woke him not long before dawn. The dark sliver above him shaded towards blue, giving enough light for hi
m to see the face of the girl lying in his arms. She appeared merely asleep; exhausted, not unconscious. He disentangled himself from her, found a private spot and relieved himself, then performed his Defiance.
This time the dance felt natural. A Defiance that worked with his imaginary enemies rather than directly opposing them, using the strength of their attacks to spin him from one stance to the next. Again he reached above the mundane world, his Defiance elevating him to something other than a frightened, confused Omeran. Was this joyous feeling, he wondered, the state in which the Amaqi normally lived?
No, you fool, came a voice from the depths of his mind. You are in love.
Love? His Defiance tailed off, undermined by the unsettling thought. He supposed Omerans fell in love, though from what little he had heard, usually in brief discussions between tasks with others of his kind, Omerans were paired and mated by their owners. His own parents he knew nothing about, having been separated from them as an infant, given to the young Emperor by his master. Had his parents loved each other? Or had they been forcibly paired, compelled to forsake their real loves?
Sudden anxiety took hold of him. Lenares was as crippled as he; how could a pair such as they deal with love? That was—his anxiety increased—if she loved him, if she was even capable of love.
Most importantly, he wondered, ought he to treat love itself as an enemy? Something to be defied? Anything that might affect his obedience to the Emperor should surely be classified as an enemy; no matter his own wishes, he could not override his breeding. Obedience to hs master was at the core of his being. If the Emperor learned of his pet’s feelings, he would order him neutered. And obedience to his master might well demand he not do or feel anything he knew would bring the Emperor’s displeasure.
No. He slammed down shutters in his mind. Best not to think such thoughts. He could obey his Emperor and still harbour feelings for Lenares—and would do so, until his master ordered otherwise.
He turned and gazed at her. She slept on, breathing evenly, and he felt confident she would wake when her body had recovered.
Dawn had well and truly arrived by the time Torve finished his morning ablutions. Light—though not direct sunlight—filtered down from the narrow sky over his head, illuminating a wonderland. The walls of the canyon were sheer, though not smooth, coloured a deep red not unlike the houses in Talamaq’s Third of Brick. The pool was in fact a lake, filling most of the floor of the ravine, surrounded on both sides by a short strip of sand. Untouched by any breeze the waters acted as a perfect mirror, and in their depths he watched the last of the stars wink out.
The bright morning sunlight crept slowly down the daughterwards face of the canyon. It touched the highest section of red rock, and a flicker of multicoloured light came from a point in the rock and flashed across the narrow gap to the sonwards wall, accompanied by a faint pinging sound. Lenares jerked awake as a second, then a third flicker sent beams of light in random directions, also attended by soft sounds. Down the sunlight marched, and the daughterwards wall exploded in a wild burst of sound and radiance. Beams of light reflected off thousands of sparkling glass-like rock splinters embedded in the red walls, bouncing from one fragment to another, bathing the watchers in every colour of the rainbow, each beam emitting a unique sound so that, in combination, a gentle solar choir sang to them in voices beyond the world.
‘Oh,’ Lenares said, all the sleep gone from her face. ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ Her eyes shone with their own glorious light as she watched.
For all its splendour, nothing in the Talamaq Palace had prepared Torve for such an overwhelming dance of light and colour. Subtle rather than brazen, the display continued to change as the sun worked its way down the wall, firing new rock fragments as it came. Then the light began slowly to die, as the sun’s angle steepened and it could not reach the deeper-set rock flakes. Like an exhalation of breath the song faltered, the colours faded, and light and sound diminished at last, dying into a bittersweet silence.
This was the reality, then, the Corridor of Rainbows in the Talamaq Palace had been designed to copy. Because the sun took a different path across the sky, every day would bring a new song to anyone dwelling here. And Torve was suddenly certain that someone had indeed dwelled here; that this canyon had been home to some privileged and powerful being; and that the display Lenares and he had witnessed was nothing more than a daily wake-up call, just like the Emperor received every morning, though infinitely more impressive than old Pycunda’s feeble knock.
Bewitched, Torve looked about the ravine, searching for other devices and delights. He quickly discovered the slope down which he and Lenares had fallen; climbing back up would be a difficult task. He could barely make out a vertical slit in the rock at the top of the sandy slope, a turn in the canyon beyond which must be the entrance they had stumbled through the previous evening.
In the opposite direction the ravine bent and twisted, then disappeared to the left with a promise of unexplored wonders. They would have to swim if they wished to look further, as the sandy beach did not extend all the way around the lake on either side.
His attention returned to the place through which they had stumbled into this wonderland. The canyon in which they stood was situated not half an hour’s walk from the fatherwards path from Talamaq to Marasmos. How could this place not be the marvel of the empire? Why was there not a city built nearby, servicing visitors who paid gold and silver to gaze in awe at the display?
‘Torve, please,’ Lenares said, touching him on his arm. ‘I must return to Captain Duon’s tent. Even now I feel…broken. Take me back there, please.’ Her voice was raw.
He nodded. Once Lenares had recovered her numbers they could return here. ‘Come, then,’ he said, extending a hand to her.
The two of them began to work their way up the sandy slope, no more than thirty paces high. A third of the way up, sand began cascading past them, covering their feet and ankles. They eased their feet free and took another step, triggering more sand. With a hiss the whole slope moved, sending them sliding, still upright, back to the beach beside the pool.
Lenares laughed and flicked a tangle of hair out of her eyes. ‘Again?’
After the third time they found themselves at the base of the slope, this time in a painful snarl of limbs, neither of them laughed. Their efforts had succeeded only in steepening the slope; every movement now sent sand sloughing down in sheets. Torve pulled Lenares to her feet, and shook himself in an attempt to free his clothing of loose sand. Another avalanche hissed past them, much of it finishing in the pool.
Increasingly worried, Torve searched for handholds in the sheer walls either side of the sandy slope. Higher up the wall, well beyond his reach, the rocks were clearly jointed, but lower down they had been worn smooth by water. After a number of futile attempts to force a handhold in the wall, he gave up, sucking at a bruised hand and growling in frustration. Lenares began to cry.
An hour later Torve himself was ready to cry. They had fallen in easily enough, but could not climb out. Trapped like insects under glass. Was the canyon simply a snare for inquisitive people? If they dug under the sand, would they find a forlorn scattering of skeletons?
‘We must follow the canyon in order to discover another way out.’ He tried to sound optimistic. There would be another way back to the dry riverbed.
‘But the expedition may be gone by then. What happens if there is a sandstorm? We may never find where Captain Duon pitched his tent. Then I would have to travel all the way back to Talamaq.’
Privately Torve wondered if this might, in fact, be the plan of the intelligence behind the hole in the world. He dared not voice the thought aloud.
‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ he said. ‘We get no nearer to the expedition by remaining here.’
As soon as Lenares had refreshed herself and attended to her woman’s matters, they left the deep, dark pool behind them. Holding hands, they waded through the cool shallows between one slender, pale beach and the nex
t, drawn on by a growing excitement at what they might find.
The feeling that they walked from room to room in someone’s house grew stronger in Torve’s mind, enhanced further when the canyon curved left and opened into a circular basin at least fifty paces across.
Ferns and grasses softened the base of the canyon walls on both sides, and framed a small jewel-like lake of seemingly infinite depth. Surrounding the lake were three large rock outcrops, far too regular to be natural, shaped like enormous low-backed seats. Torve scrambled up the nearest of the three and noted the signs of wear, the softening of the angular grey rock where a giant figure might have sat. The basin seemed like nothing other than a reception room, a place for intimate conversation, three large heads bent together.
‘Do you think,’ he asked Lenares breathlessly, ‘do you think this might be a place where the three gods meet?’
The cosmographer scowled at him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They can’t still meet here, because one of them is missing. I remember that. But without my numbers nothing is clear to me, not even you. Especially not you. Something is different about you today. What is it?’
So direct, as always. He dropped down to the floor of the basin and walked over to her, then took her hand in his and looked intently into her troubled eyes. Perhaps she would understand directness. He took a deep breath, drew her closer, bent forward and kissed her softly on the lips.
‘That,’ he murmured, ‘is what is different.’
‘Oh,’ she said, a gentle exhalation of air against his cheek. ‘I’ve known that since before we left Talamaq. But I thought Omerans weren’t allowed…weren’t allowed to…Mahudia told me it is dirty with Omerans, since they are animals.’
He pushed himself away from her, something deep within him wounded by her careless—no, her direct speech. ‘It is true,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘True that the Amaqi and Omerans both consider relations between their species dirt—distasteful. But not true that Omerans are animals. I am not an animal, Lenares. Look, there are birds here in this place. Are they filled with awe because they dwell in the house of the gods? They are not, but I am. How can I be called an animal? Compared to a bird or a beast?’
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