“I don’t have Ravenna here to try and murder me on the way in.”
“What you do have is —”
“Infinitely worse, I know. But I have more power now and, I think, a few more friends. And this guardian, about whom Avaldamon is so mysterious.”
“Likely because he has no bloody idea.”
Ishbel laughed. “Likely. But still, this needs to be done, Maxel. The pyramid must die, if this world is to survive in anything resembling freedom. We need to be rid of it.”
Maximilian sighed. “Ishbel —”
“Shush,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him lingeringly. “Shush. Wait here for me among the reeds, and believe, and I will return.”
The One strode toward DarkGlass Mountain. He was not far away now, but he feared even that short distance might be too great.
Elcho Falling was at DarkGlass Mountain.
“I am going to eat you!” he whispered, increasing yet again both the rate and length of his step until he was jogging in long, thundering strides.
The One was half the height of DarkGlass Mountain itself, and growing a hand’s-breadth with every pace.
Ishbel walked across the glass river, her strides slow but sure. The light breeze lifted her loosened fair hair and twisted her long skirts about her legs, but Ishbel paid no mind.
Her eyes were fixed on the pyramid.
It took her until almost full dark to walk along the causeway to the pyramid, and in that time light started to flash and fork underneath its glass skin. The static electricity raised goosebumps on Ishbel’s arms, but she did not hesitate, nor lower her eyes from DarkGlass Mountain.
She was concentrating, very hard, on something the Goblet of the Frogs had told her.
Glass is liquid.
Glass is liquid. As she drew to within twenty paces of its eastern wall, the pyramid looming and throbbing high over her, Ishbel began a great unwinding.
Pace after pace she drew closer, then, ignoring the gaping black hole of the door she and Isaiah had once used to enter, and without any hesitation, Ishbel walked straight into the glass wall.
And vanished.
The One broke into a run, his mighty arms pumping at his sides, his eyes fixed on the horizon, over which, just over, lay his purpose.
Now invaded by that witch .
Ishbel took a deep breath, feeling herself merge with both stone and glass, and then she was in the Infinity Chamber.
She blinked. It was lit, but not from any internal light. Instead, she found herself looking at a large rat, holding up a candle.
It was sitting on a very large book that looked as though it had recently been scorched with fire.
Hello, the rat said.
Ishbel considered that. She had not heard the rat, either with her ears or her mind voice. The greeting simply “was”.
“Hello,” she said. “Who are you?”
I am your courage.
Ishbel frowned a little.
When Josia died, it took many hours for him to pass. It took enormous courage for him to endure. Magnificent courage. Too good to be wasted. I was the one who took his life and with it I took his courage. Now it is yours.
That was something Ishbel knew she’d need to spend a little time thinking about later, if she were fortunate enough to enjoy a “later”. But for now she let it go. “Is that the Book of the Soulenai?”
Yes. It has been waiting for you as well. Would you like to read it?
“I think I should.”
Ishbel moved toward the rat and the book, glancing about her as she went. The candlelight glimmered off the golden glass and Ishbel thought the glass was moving, almost as water, but she was not sure.
For now, the book.
Ishbel knelt down, and the rat moved to one side, helpfully holding up the candle.
Ishbel turned the cover, then the first few blank, creamy pages until she came to an index page.
It contained a list of stories.
The tale of the Magus Ta’uz and his lover Raguel.
The tale of Druse and of how he was turned to stone and then crumbled into the river.
The tale of the little girl, Ishbel, and how she was burned alive in her family house when it was overcome by pestilence.
Ishbel drew in a sharp breath, and her fingers trembled where they rested on the page. Then she read on.
The tale of all those murdered by the pyramid’s malice.
The tale of how they shall all aid you, Tirzah’s child, to murder Threshold.
The rat used its spare forepaw to touch Ishbel’s arm gently.
The One comes, he said.
Maximilian stood on the river bank, staring at DarkGlass Mountain. It still throbbed and sparked with light.
What was happening to Ishbel inside?
He was undecided whether to go to her or not. Surely he could help her . . . surely he could provide some assistance, surely . . .
His head jerked to the north. The ground beneath him had started to shake, as if by the footfalls of a giant’s feet.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
“Oh merciful gods!” Maximilian said, looking on with absolute horror as the enormous form of the One appeared, quite suddenly, out of the darkness.
He was flailing his arms in a windmill motion, as if to propel himself forward, and he was running straight for DarkGlass Mountain.
Without any hesitation, and before Maximilian could even think about what action to take, let alone enact, the One ran straight into the side of DarkGlass Mountain and vanished without trace.
Chapter 21
Darkglass Mountain
Ishbel rose to her feet, turning in alarm.
The One!
She could feel him crashing through the pyramid toward her, feel his anger, feel his murderous need to wrap his gigantic hands about her throat and —
Ishbel, the rat said. He raised up the candle, and Ishbel turned to him . . . and cried out in horror.
Just as the rat pulled the candle close to blow it out, Ishbel saw hundreds of black hands rise up behind the golden glass of the Infinity Chamber and then reach through it, reaching for her.
Before she could react, even move a muscle, she was caught fast and dragged into the pyramid.
Ishbel found herself in a strange place that she could only comprehend as thick light. She could breathe, if she concentrated on it, but movement was difficult.
She could sense many, many others close, pressing in so that they almost touched her.
At her feet sat the rat, atop the Book of the Soulenai.
A man emerged before her. He was tall with a lined face, as if he had suffered greatly, and his dark hair was slicked back into a club at the base of his neck.
“Did you read the first tale in the Book?” he said.
Ishbel opened her mouth to say “No, I had no time”, but in that instant she realised she knew the first tale.
Long, long ago, a Magus named Ta’uz took as his mistress a slave from the camp that surrounded Threshold, and which housed its enslaved builders. This Magus, Ta’uz, affected great disdain for his mistress, whose name was Raguel. When she bore their child he murdered it, for Threshold, and the Way of the One, demanded its death.
No Magus was permitted to subdivide away from the One.
But Ta’uz continued his affair with Raguel, even though it took many months before she could bear to go back to his bed. Despite what had happened between them, despite the murder of their daughter, and despite the fact that Ta’uz was a Magus and Raguel a slave, they became close and eventually came to love each other.
They edged close to happiness, and Threshold was displeased.
One day it took them.
A great sheet of glass slid from its upper walls, slicing through the air, and before either Ta’uz or Raguel could move it speared them on the jagged edge of the glass and they died.
The pyramid did not like their closeness, which drew the Magus away from his devotio
n to the One.
“Yes,” said Ishbel. “I know who you are. Ta’uz, why is the light here so thick?”
“Because it is crowded with the souls of those the pyramid has murdered over the years,” Ta’uz replied.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I am going to aid you. I am going to show you the first step you must take within this intricate puzzle of a pyramid, the first stone you must unwind to open up the pyramid’s deepest vulnerabilities.”
“Thank you,” Ishbel said. “I must start soon, for the One is here, and searching for me. He has great hands, I fear, and he has grown them for me.”
“Indeed. Ishbel, do you know the second story in the list?”
Ishbel thought.
The tale of Druse, and of how he was turned to stone and then crumbled into the river.
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
Druse was Tirzah’s father, sent into slavery with her, and like her, a glass worker, although nowhere near as magical as his daughter.
Druse had also been slaughtered by the pyramid, turned to stone before Tirzah’s eyes in an effort to punish her, and then his body was taken to the river and its stone remains crumbled to lie scattered along its muddy bed.
“Why do I need to know that story?” she asked Ta’uz.
“So that you will know that not all your family died in the charnel house you once called home.”
Ishbel did not know what to make of that.
“If you know these two stories,” said Ta’uz, “then I can show you the stone that, if overturned, will lead to the unwinding of the entire pyramid. But, beware, Ishbel, for both the pyramid and the One will fight back. They will give no quarter. Do you dare this?”
Ishbel thought, and as she did so, the rat left his perch on the Book of the Soulenai and tugged at Ishbel’s skirts. She lifted him up, amazed by his warmth and the dark beauty of his eyes, and he scrambled onto her shoulder.
“I am ready,” said Ishbel, knowing that the rat would be her courage.
“Good,” said Ta’uz. “See.”
He moved his hand and the light shifted, and Ishbel saw set out before her a flat piece of land shimmering under the desert sun. To one side lay a deep and winding river, encased by thick reed banks.
The River Lhyl, as it had once lived.
This piece of land was marked out with pegs and stretches of creamy cord were tied between the pegs. The cords and pegs described an intricate pattern on the ground.
Ishbel could see that this pattern described power.
Magi walked about, stepping carefully over the cords and pegs. They were dressed in long robes of blue, over white under-robes. Their movements were measured, their arms folded with their hands secreted away in the voluminous sleeves of their blue robes.
“Their movements describe a pattern,” said Ta’uz. “A mathematical formula.”
“An enchantment,” Ishbel said.
“If you like,” Ta’uz said. “A set dance to garner power, if you will. Look.”
Now Ishbel saw slaves, hundreds of them, hauling with ropes many huge blocks of stone. She saw, as though many months passed in a moment, the slaves begin to construct the foundations of what would grow to be Threshold, later called DarkGlass Mountain.
Many slaves died, crushed when the blocks of stone slipped and fell.
“Do you see?” said Ta’uz. “Do you understand?”
He pointed to a single block of stone, one among hundreds now laid into courses, and apparently innocuous in its similarity to its fellows.
“Yes,” Ishbel murmured. “I see. I understand.”
“Unsat that stone, and the entire edifice of the pyramid, all that it is, has been or could ever be, will unwind to dust. You will need to find this stone, and you will need to unseat it. Can you do this?”
Ishbel looked into Ta’uz’s eyes, and saw increasing anxiety there.
“I can do this,” she said.
“It will take great fortitude and courage for I feel the One thunder close, and I feel the pyramid’s malice tighten about you like a fist about a gnat.”
“I have fortitude,” said Ishbel, “and,” she lifted a hand to touch the rat, “I have courage.”
“Remember the story of Druse,” said Ta’uz. Ishbel leaned close, kissed his cheek, and turned away.
She took a deep breath, then a big step forward .
. . . and stepped out of the dense light and into one of the black-glassed internal corridors of DarkGlass Mountain.
She could hear the pounding of feet and knew that it was the One, coming for her.
“This way,” she said to the rat and walked down the corridor without hesitation, taking the first turn on the right, and then the third on the left.
Ishbel stopped, staring about her, unable to comprehend for the moment what had happened.
The pyramid had vanished, and she was now standing in the hallway that led to the kitchen in her parents’ home in Margalit.
She could hear the faint sounds of a crowd outside, cries that the house be burned to save the rest of the city from the pestilence within the Brunelle residence.
I can smell corpses, said the rat.
“I can hear the crackle of flames,” Ishbel said, so horrified her voice cracked from the dryness in her throat and mouth.
Chapter 22
The Brunelle House, Margalit
Ishbel was eight, trapped in her parents’ house in Margalit.
The bodies of her parents and aunts and cousins and all their servants lay strewn about the house, decomposing into noxious heaps of whispering blackened flesh.
She stood at the top of the staircase, both hands clutching white-knuckled at the newel posts, listening to the crowds at the front doors.
There is plague inside!
All are dead!
Burn the house! Burn the house, so that we might live!
“No!” Ishbel cried, her hands now shaking, her voice quavering in fear. “No! I am alive! I am alive!”
She raced down the stairs, tripping once and rolling four or five steps to a landing, before picking herself up, bruised and scraped, and racing downward again.
Watch out, Ishbel. They are lighting the faggots right now.
Ishbel fell again in her terror, cringing against a wall.
The whisper had come from the body of a servant girl who lay in a doorway. Her name was Marla and she had always been kind to Ishbel. But now she was dead, her face half rotted away, her teeth poking out all green-stained and oddly angled. What was left of her face rippled, and Ishbel saw that the movement had been caused by maggots feeding deep within the girl’s cheeks.
Watch out, Ishbel, the faggots are burning well, now.
It was not the corpse that whispered, but the silvered hoops in Marla’s ears.
Watch out, Ishbel. It is getting awfully hot.
“No,” Ishbel whispered, backing away on her hands and knees, then turning so she could continue down the stairs on her bottom, too shaken to try to get to her feet, her breath jerking from her throat in terrified, tiny sobbing hiccups.
She slid down the stairs, her skirts tangling with her thighs and hips, one shoe half falling off.
Someone pounded on the front door, and Ishbel tried to call out, to let the crowd know that she was alive, that they must not set fire to the house, but as she opened her mouth she slid another turn of the staircase, and instead of words, nothing came from her mouth but a terrified squeal.
A man of glass stood four or five steps down. His flesh was formed of a pliable, and utterly beautiful, blue-green glass. Deep within the creature’s chest a golden pyramid slowly rotated and pulsed.
His head was glass-like as well, his features beautifully formed, and his eyes large round wells of darkness.
They were staring at Ishbel with dark, malicious humour.
“I am the Lord of Elcho Falling,” the glass man said, “and I am come to save you.”
He took a step upward, and Ishbel scre
amed, turning to scramble away as fast as she might.
“I am come to save you,” the glass man whispered, and Ishbel felt his hand close about her ankle.
She almost blacked out in her terrified panic, but just as the darkness was closing about the edge of her vision, a new voice spoke in her mind.
Courage, Ishbel. Remember who you are, and where you have been, and what your purpose is this day.
The glass man firmed his grip about Ishbel’s ankle, and she knew that at any moment he would haul her down the stairs . . . but she tried to concentrate .
The glass man was not the Lord of Elcho Falling. He was the One.
Maximilian was the Lord of Elcho Falling.
Suddenly Ishbel was not eight, but thirty, and she rolled over onto her back and thrust her foot as hard as she could into the face of the One.
She did not manage to touch him, but he reeled back in surprise, and his grip on her ankle loosened.
Twist it, Ishbel! the rat said, scrambling for purchase on her shoulder.
“Oh, be quiet,” Ishbel muttered, and jerked her ankle free of the One’s grip.
The One regained his balance and reached once more for Ishbel, still scrambling to get to her feet, but as he did so the stairs under his feet warped and curled, and he was no longer there.
What happened? said the rat.
“I unwound the staircase from beneath his feet,” Ishbel said. “Now he’s above us.”
Then she was on her feet and hurrying down the stairs, trying to get to the front door before the crowd outside set fire to the house.
Her terror had abated somewhat, but it was still there. The month she had spent among the rotting corpses of her family when she was eight had left an indelible scar on Ishbel’s psyche. To merely recall the memory was unbearably painful.
To find herself back in the house, even knowing it was a construct of the One’s power, was almost too much for her, even as an adult.
She wished Maximilian were here.
The crowd outside had quietened and that caused Ishbel more concern than had they been vociferous.
What were they doing?
She could hear the One pounding down the stairs, but she was almost at the front door, and if she could open that and escape the house, then Ishbel knew she’d be back in DarkGlass Mountain, at the place within its structure where that single key foundation stone lay .