Threshold

  And safe.

  That thought brought me to an abrupt halt.

  This was one of the few buildings on the entire site that was protected from Threshold’s shadow! The wall of the Magi’s compound was high, and this house low. It was in constant shadow – but the shadow of the wall, not of Threshold. Adding to its security was the enveloping verandah. Raguel had said that Ta’uz spent long hours staring out the windows of his house at Threshold. Boaz could not do that here even if he wanted to; both verandah and wall hid Threshold from sight – and hid the house from Threshold.

  I began to think of all the times (and they were rare) when I had seen even a hint of the man hidden within Boaz. They always occurred within this house, never outside.

  Within the house, where he was safe from Threshold.

  I realised I was not only staring, but shaking as well, and I forced my legs to move. Boaz might be watching my approach. Even now he could be working himself into a murderous fury at what he might well perceive as my reluctance to obey his orders.

  I hurried forward, and stopped at the doorway. “Excellency?”

  “Tirzah,” he stepped out from an inner room, “you are late.”

  “I had to hurry back to my tenement to wash and change, Excellency.”

  “Then wash my hands and feet, and sit at the desk, and do not waste any more of my time.”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  He set me once again to translating the Geshardi treatise on the square, and I bent over the papyrus, trying to write with as much neatness and precision as I could. I heard Boaz sit in a chair behind me, then the rustle of papyrus as he unrolled a scroll to study.

  I worked in silence for perhaps two hours, for I could see the shadows lengthening in the garden outside, and the distinctive shadow of Threshold stretch further and further across the compound.

  Except that it never touched this house.

  “You are not concentrating.”

  He was standing directly behind me and I could not help a start of surprise. I had not heard him rise.

  “I have almost finished the treatise, Excellency. See, I am on the very last passage now.”

  He picked up the sheet on which I had been writing and studied it briefly. “Ah yes, I can see that. I will be glad to be finally able to read this treatise.”

  “You cannot read Geshardian, Excellency?” Again he had so surprised me I asked a question without permission.

  “The northern languages are coarse and unrefined, girl, and I have never wasted my time on them! Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Excellency.” So this was why he’d taught me to write. Few within Ashdod would have any command of these languages. I wondered that he would even think to find a northern treatise interesting.

  “You have a question, girl. Ask it.”

  “Excellency, I did not know that the Geshardi worshipped the power of the One.”

  “They do not,” he dropped the sheet of papyrus back on the desk. “But they have some moderately learned geometricians among them. One day, perhaps, they will come to understand the One.” He saw that I had another question. “Yes?”

  “You worship the One as a god, Excellency. I had never realised that before.”

  “It is the power of the One we worship, foolish girl, not the One itself. It has no personality within itself. Perhaps the lower castes see the One as a god, Tirzah, for as the number from which all numbers emanate from and then decay into the One resembles Providence. But do not believe for a moment that the One has a mind and a will of its –”

  “Excellency!” The frantic shout of a guard cut Boaz off and he whirled about.

  “Excellency!” The guard reached the doorway and grabbed at its supports to stop himself from falling headlong into the Magus’ apartment. “Excellency…Threshold…there’s a problem…you must –”

  But Boaz was already out the door, thrusting his arms through his blue robe as he ran. The guard caught up with him, words tumbling from his mouth, and without thinking I rushed out as well.

  Five.

  Who?

  I was not stopped as I hastened after Boaz to Threshold’s compound. All knew that he made frequent use of me, and my presence with him was not questioned.

  “Where?” Boaz said, and the guard led us up the ramp and into the abomination itself.

  About us workers stood still, silent and pale.

  The guard took us only partly up the main passageway before he turned down one of the major corridors that branched off it.

  As soon as I entered that corridor I sensed its wrongness – its increased wrongness. I could see it, too.

  Boaz stopped, and we both looked at the glassed walls. I hesitated, then reached out a trembling hand, not believing what I was seeing.

  “Tirzah?” Boaz saw me as if realising for the first time that I had followed him, but he did not berate me, for he, too, was now standing by the walls, running unbelieving hands over them.

  What had been glass was still warm. It was also very, very dead, and at that I was not surprised.

  Some kind of heat, so tremendous that I could not conceive how it could have been generated, had completely fused the glass into the stone of Threshold’s walls. The masonry was now clearly visible through this brilliant black substance that was like, and yet unlike, glass.

  The entire corridor had been fused in this way. Now it was a tunnel black as night and yet still radiating light down its length.

  “This way,” the guard said quietly, and led us yet further into Threshold.

  The five workers had been simple labourers, sent in to see why one of the gates had apparently been blocked open. They had moved deep into this corridor, then the gates before them and behind them had slammed closed.

  None of the three Magi who stood waiting for Boaz could explain why.

  “We were nowhere near the controls, Boaz,” said one.

  “No-one was,” confirmed another.

  Their words wafted over my head. I was staring transfixed at the five bodies. Whatever heat had seared through this corridor had burned them, although not beyond recognition, for enough remained of their features for me to see that at least they were none that I knew.

  And I could certainly see that they had been cooked. They were contorted into shapes of pure horror, their bodies twisted, their limbs flexed, their hands black claws. Their flesh still smouldered, and the smell was wrenching.

  I turned away, unable to look any more. Four or five paces away lay the blackened remains of one of their tool bags, the tools themselves scattered about the floor.

  I peered more closely, then walked over, squatting to pick up a hammer.

  I gasped, not only at its feel but at its weight. It had been turned completely to stone, as had all the tools. Even wooden handles had been converted into black, glassy stone. Had the glass, melting from the walls and ceiling, dripped down onto these tools? Or had some other force been at work, something I could not understand?

  “Boaz?” I said incautiously, but in such a state of horror that I did not think to address him properly, “what has happened to these?”

  And I held out the hammer for him.

  He cursed and struck the hammer from my hand. It hit the floor with a sweet, clear ring. “What are you doing here, girl! Get back to my residence!”

  “I…Boaz…” I did not move, but overcome by what I saw about me and by the coldness of his eyes, I burst into tears.

  “Curse you!” he hissed, and, seizing my arms in cruel fingers, bundled me into the care of the guard. “Get her out of here!”

  The guard had no wish to linger. He took hold of me with kinder hands, and pulled me down the corridor. As we left I heard Boaz say to the other Magi. “It’s even better than I’d dreamed. Far more powerful. Far more.”

  The guard escorted me back to the Magus’ residence. I sat on the chair in front of the desk, the Geshardian geometrical treatise awaiting completion before me, my eyes uselessly blurred with te
ars.

  18

  HE came back as night fell. His manservant, Holdat, had been in and laid out a meal, but I had not liked to touch it, and was not hungry in any case.

  “Have you finished?” he asked as he stepped through the door.

  I nodded listlessly. At some point I had found myself writing without realising I had picked up the stylus. Startled, I had stared at the page, then shrugged. I needed something to keep my mind busy.

  “Then stand up!”

  I struggled up.

  “How dare you presume to intrude!” he seethed, and I blinked, terrified.

  “Excellency?”

  He stopped in front of me and leaned threateningly close, his finger stabbing at the air between us.

  “How dare you follow me from this room!”

  “Excellency, I was afraid!”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid that it might be someone I knew lying dead in Threshold, Excellency. I had to know.”

  He paused, and I did not like the expression that filtered across his face. “The guard said nothing about deaths.”

  “Excellency, why else would he rush in so pale and horrified? All slaves instinctively fear death and crippling injury on a construction site. It is our lot, and it is what I thought of first.”

  “Did you think Yaqob lay speared by glass, my sweet?”

  That was exactly what I had feared – surely Threshold had us marked by now? I opened my mouth to reply, but burst into tears instead, and just as quickly tried to stifle them. I gulped, a shaking hand over my mouth, my eyes wide and terrified.

  My fear was clearly evident, and it sated his need to intimidate me into submission. I had presumed too much in following him into Threshold, and I’d had to be chastised and put back in my place.

  His expression relaxed slightly, but not before a final barb. “Do that again and I’ll pass you across to the guards for their enjoyment, Tirzah, because – by the One! – you give me little enough. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Excellency!” I sobbed, my entire body shaking now.

  There was a long silence. Then…

  “Ah, Tirzah. Why cry so? Here,” and he handed me a napkin to wipe my face with.

  It was not the hand of the Magus.

  I scrubbed at my face with the cloth, surreptitiously looking at him. He was still very, very wary, but it was the man not the Magus who now stood before me.

  I burst into fresh sobs, relieved, yet scared I would say or do something that would cause the Magus to snap back into control.

  Boaz gestured impatiently, and finally snatched the sodden napkin from my hand. “Go and wash your face. Your kohl has smeared all over and you look like a five-year-old girl caught out at some mischief.”

  As I gratefully wiped the cool water over my face, finally managing to stem the flow of tears, I wondered if I should have offered to wash Boaz’s hands and feet on his return.

  “Excellency?” Unsure of how to phrase the question, or even if I should just take the initiative, I vaguely indicated the basin.

  “There’s no need, Tirzah,” and he was beside me, hanging his over-robe on a peg by the stand, washing his own hands, taking the towel from me to wipe them dry.

  “Good. Now, have you eaten?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then sit.”

  It was a plain meal. A bowl of cold, soaked grain. A platter of fruits. Unleavened bread with a small dish of oil. An assortment of cheeses. A pitcher of wine and two goblets.

  He laid some fruit on a plate, broke a piece of bread, seasoning it lightly with the oil, spooned some grain beside it, then handed the plate to me. “Eat, Tirzah. It has been a long time since your dawn meal.”

  He passed me some wine. “It would please me if you drank, Tirzah. And then ate some more.”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  He did not want to talk, which suited me, and we sat for some time in comfortable silence. I marvelled that beneath the Magus lived such a man, and I hoped that, after the Magus had so terrified me, the man would linger a while yet. I was more determined than ever not to speak or move out of turn.

  As Holdat materialised to clear away the meal, Boaz leaned an elbow on the table, took a sip of wine, and smiled at me.

  “What are you thinking, Tirzah?”

  “I am thinking that I still have much to learn, Excellency.”

  “A diplomatic answer, Tirzah. I wish you would make me a clear glass plate that I could fasten in your skull and show me what goes on behind those lovely eyes of yours. Come, sit with me by the window.”

  He brought the wine over, and placed it on a small table by our chairs. We were very close.

  “Talk to me, Tirzah. Do not be afraid.”

  But it took some courage to say what I wanted, for I was very frightened of losing him back into his shell.

  “Excellency, I am wondering why you have asked me here. I know that you do not want to use me,” and something shifted in his eyes at that, “but wish to teach me the skills of writing. Yet surely, somewhere at court or among the servants and scribes of the Magi, there is one who can translate Geshardian for you?”

  “Are you still scared of the writing?”

  “Sometimes, Excellency.” And even more afraid of what Yaqob will say to me when he finds out, as he surely will.

  “There is no need, Tirzah. The last thing I want to do is to cause you harm.”

  I kept my face impassive, but I felt a spurt of hard anger inside. How could he say that when he spent hours threatening me, my friends, and driving me into repeated episodes of sobbing terror? How dare he say that when he almost crippled me with pain in the workshop when I refused his bidding?

  I turned my face away slightly, lest he see the emotion seething inside. He must be aware of what he did when hiding beneath the robes and demeanour of Magus.

  He stood up, and again I jumped, sure that somehow he’d seen my inner anger. “Excellency?”

  “Peace, Tirzah. Sit there and wait.”

  He was gone some minutes, and when he returned it was with the white robe and sash of the Magus gone and the long blue wrap knotted about his hips. In his hands he carried a box, and on his face an expression so wary I wondered if the Magus would emerge at any instant.

  “Excellency,” I cried softly, leaping to my feet, “let me carry that for you.”

  But he snatched it away, his eyes alarmed. Dismay thudding my heart, I dropped to my knees. “Forgive me, Excellency! I only thought to help.”

  “Get back in your chair, Tirzah,” and I was relieved to hear that, although harsh, he did not use the voice of the Magus.

  I crawled back, my heart still pounding uncomfortably. He sat down as well, and stared at me steadily.

  “If you ever reveal what I am about to show you, Tirzah, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

  And what made that threat so frightening was that it came from the man Boaz, not the Magus.

  I believed him utterly, and my belief showed on my face. “Yes, Excellency.”

  “Good.” He sighed, then relaxed, staring at the box, his fingers gently tapping.

  I understood we had reached the point to which he’d been directing me ever since he’d first ordered me to his quarters. Now that we had arrived, he was in no hurry to proceed.

  His long fingers still tapping gently, gently, gently against the lid of the box, he leaned his head against the high back of the chair and regarded me. It was a pleasant inspection, and I relaxed and took some more of the wine.

  “Tell me of your northern lands, Tirzah.”

  “Excellency, where shall I begin?”

  “With the land itself. I have never seen it.”

  “Viland is very flat, Excellency. Windswept. It is a narrow strip of land running north-south. There are wild grey seas to the west, great mountains and forests on our eastern borders.”

  “And the people. Is your colouring usual among northerners?”

  “Yes, Excellenc
y. All Vilanders are fair haired and blue eyed.”

  “And are all the menfolk as handsome as you are beautiful, Tirzah?”

  I blushed, and he grinned.

  “They hide behind great beards, Excellency. It is difficult to say.”

  “Another diplomatic answer, Tirzah. You have been wasted in craftwork. What of Geshardi? You speak the language well. Have you ever been there?”

  Now there was an edge to his voice. Geshardi was what he’d wanted to discuss all this time. Questions of my homeland had been part gentle detour, part ruse.

  “I learned the language from the traders that my father and I dealt with, Excellency, but I have never been there.”

  “Surely they described it to you.”

  “Geshardi lies beyond the western forests of Viland’s border, Excellency. The traders spoke of a milder climate than ours, and gentle hills that rolled into the distance, covered with soft gorse and low trees and abounding in deer and hare.” I paused, then gave him what I thought he wanted to know. “The Geshardi traders had light brown hair, rather than the Viland fairness, but they generally had blue or grey eyes. We are of cousin races.”

  I hesitated again. “They did not have great beards, Excellency, and they were fair of feature and smooth of tongue.”

  He was silent a long, long time, his eyes very distant. I took the opportunity to study the box. It was quite large, and extremely well crafted. I peered closer, but could not quite make out the wood. It almost seemed to be made from Jusserine, a rich, dark red timber which grew in the forests that divided Geshardi from Viland.

  “My father was a Geshardi Prince,” Boaz said eventually.

  I could not think of anything he could have said which would have stunned me more. Boaz’s father came from Geshardi?

  My eyes narrowed. How could this help Yaqob? And then I felt my stomach clench with self-hatred at so treacherous a thought.

  He was looking at me again. “My mother was Chad-Nezzar’s sister.”

  “Yes, Excellency. I have heard you are the Chad’s nephew.” I looked at him more carefully now. His face and arms were tanned from the sun, but the skin of his chest and belly was much paler than I’d seen on any of pure southern blood. And his grey eyes…