Threshold

  “I was merely trying to be polite,” Hadone said, finally rising, and I realised he did not like Kamish very much either.

  “These are the two you wrote me about?”

  “Indeed,” Hadone said. “The man has won renown over many nations with his skill at mixing and moulding, and his daughter,” he paused slightly, “has been trained well. Among her many skills, she can also cage.”

  “She cages?” The gleam in Kamish’s eyes increased. “My masters –”

  “Would surely pay well for the skills these two carry. I believe your masters are scouring all living lands for such as these.”

  “And she cages,” Kamish repeated. I waited for the inevitable “She’s too young”, but it never came.

  “Cages,” he said yet again.

  Hadone’s mouth drooped in imitation woe. “And with such skills, Kamish, I regret that I must ask a price to match.”

  Kamish had given too much of his eagerness away, and his bargaining power was severely curtailed. Within minutes, as my father and I stood by while our lives were haggled away, Hadone had won a price for himself and Skarp-Hedin that would not only pay our debts but leave the two slavers rich men.

  As Kamish bustled about, shouting for his men, Hadone turned to my father and myself. “I wish you well,” he said, and his eyes met mine.

  I was astounded to see a trace of regret there.

  But then he jingled the coins in his purse, and the regret faded and he turned away.

  I never saw him again.

  2

  KAMISH had us chained again, but only lightly, and not to each other. These bonds did not rub too much on our previous chafes, nor weigh down our limbs as had the others.

  He bade us walk to a cart he had waiting. It was larger than the conveyance Hadone had owned, and was pulled by a quartet of stout mules. Five other slaves were waiting in it: two stonemasons, a carpenter, a metalworker, and one other glassworker.

  My father cheered as we gleaned their occupations.

  “A building site, then,” he said as the cart moved off. “And a rich one,” he added, remembering the amount Kamish had paid for us.

  His fingers tightened about his tool sack, and he dropped his voice. “Are you well?” he asked me. “Did he hurt you?”

  I jumped, for I thought my father did not know, and then I reddened. “He was good enough,” I said, and hoped it would do.

  “You have paid a high price for my foolishness, daughter,” he said, and turned his head away.

  And if I had not killed that vase, I thought bleakly, I would still be home dreaming foolish romanticisms about the manner of husband I would win myself. I could not blame my father for anything, not the loss of my freedom or of my maidenhood, and I rested my hand on his arm and hoped he understood.

  From the back alleys of Adab we travelled into open countryside – a low range of rolling hills that descended into a flat, featureless plain. I looked at the position of the sun – we travelled yet further south.

  “We go to Ashdod,” one of the metalworkers said, noting the direction of my gaze. “Kamish’s masters come from Ashdod, and there we go now.”

  We passed an hour exchanging information in the common trading tongue. Of the five, three had been forced into slavery by debt, while the other two had known nothing but that life, being born to mothers already enslaved.

  No-one had any intimate knowledge of the southern realm of Ashdod, save that its people kept well to themselves, and that over the past fifteen years an increasing number of factors such as Kamish had appeared in market places, spending freely to buy workers for a construction site.

  And the highest prices of all they paid for glassworkers. Again my father fingered his tool sack.

  Soon the sun glared overhead in its full noon-day heat, and Kamish called a halt.

  “We will wait out the next few hours in the shade of these palms,” he said, and waved the six men who rode guard to help us from the cart. “Each day we will rise at dawn, travel until noon, rest through the heat of the day, then resume our journey until starlight.”

  “And how long is our journey?” I dared to ask.

  “Long enough,” Kamish said, “long enough.” He turned away, and would say no more.

  And long enough it was. After two days we joined with a trading caravan, a line of heavily laden camels and mules and some twenty men. The traders sent us to the rear of the column, their mouths thinning with disgust at the idea of joining with a convoy of slaves. But Kamish had six guards, and in open territory where bandits lurked, the extra guards were worth the indignity of seven slaves.

  The climate grew ever hotter the further south we travelled. My father and I wore the light robes that Hadone had clothed us in, but soon even they grew too confining, and on one noon stop we tore out the sleeves, and ripped the garments off at mid-thigh, using part of the now spare cloth to wrap about our waists and between our legs for decency. Decency only, for modesty had long been left behind on a journey where I was the only female among several dozen men. But amid slaves there is a shared respect, and none of them ever tried to touch me, while Kamish, the guards and the traders completely ignored me.

  After a week of travelling through arid plains, relieved only by the occasional stand of date palms grouped about a spring or well, we entered a rugged range of rose- and sand-coloured mountains. I had never seen anything so wild or so beautiful, and although the peaks and cliffs were barren, the ravines were filled with springs and ferns. Everyone took advantage of the plentiful water to wash themselves and their clothes, and Kamish even ordered our chains removed, reasoning we were far enough from any civilisation to try to escape.

  The absence of those chains enslaved us more than their presence. With his order to have them removed, Kamish had shown without words that he believed there was no hope left for us.

  We travelled slowly through the mountains for some twelve days, and then passed into stony desert that ate at the strength of human and animal alike. We travelled at night; the day hours we spent lying motionless beneath tarpaulins that kept the sun from us, but which trapped thick heat and countless flies to torture us and keep us from sleep. Water was rationed, and we sucked what extra moisture we could from the dates and figs fed to us at dawn and sunset.

  My father grew ever closer to his sack of tools and drew further from me, as if his guilt over our plight had created a chasm between us. Even though we travelled hip to hip in the cart at night, and lay sprawled side by side during the day, it sometimes felt as though the vastness of the desert lay between us, and I mourned that growing distance as I had not mourned the loss of my freedom.

  After countless days we left the desert behind us, and the weather cooled slightly. We passed through lands made fertile by regular irrigation channels. Perfectly square fields appeared – flat expanses of grain, grass, and legumes – worked by swarthy dark-haired men and women, their naked children playing about their legs.

  “We are in Ashdod,” Kamish remarked, “the land of the One,” and he spurred his horse away.

  I looked at my fellow slaves, but they only shrugged. Curiosity had been dulled by the weeks of harsh travelling.

  Eventually the caravan reached a wide river, its waters languid and green and bordered by thick reed banks. Here Kamish parted our company from that of the traders with brief farewells.

  The river was called the Lhyl, one of the guards told me as we waited on the wharf, and it was the lifeblood of Ashdod.

  “Rises far to the north-west, in mountains so cold it’s said even the air freezes.”

  The guard paused, as if trying to picture this implausibility in his mind, but eventually he continued. “The Lhyl flows south for many weeks until it empties into a great lake called the Juit.”

  He spoke in his native Ashdod tongue, but I had no trouble understanding it. I was used to learning languages, and I had listened carefully to the guards’ conversation whenever I could on our journey.

  “‘Tis
said that the lake is surrounded by flames and ghosts. Now that I won’t credit.” He spat in the river, and the gracious Lhyl absorbed his phlegm without a murmur.

  Kamish wasted no time in hiring river transport, and soon herded us aboard a craft of bound river reed with sun-yellowed sails.

  We sailed for two weeks – weeks when I savoured the gentle rocking of the boat, the cool air, and melodious chorus of frogs at dawn and dusk – until we approached a massive sprawling city. Kamish’s manner picked up the instant he caught sight of it, and he pointed before us.

  “See? There lies Setkoth, greatest city in the world. It is home to hundreds of thousands, and in its heart spreads the magnificent palace of the great Chad-Nezzar, Chad over all Ashdod.”

  “Is it there we will be set to work?” asked one of the stonemasons.

  “No,” Kamish said. “Nor will such as you ever lay sight on his royal face, or even his regal abode. You are destined for mightier, holier labour.”

  Infuriatingly, he shut up after that, and we were left to gaze silent and open-mouthed in wonder as Setkoth swept into full view. The city was crowded with the same mud-brick, white- and pink-washed houses, flat-roofed and canvas-awned as they were at Adab, but dotted among the houses, and clustered near what must be the heart of the city, were great domed buildings, some with minarets and spires that reached for the sky. There were towers, too, so spindly I could not conceive how they managed to stay upright, and graceful bridges that arced over the river and the myriad canals that branched off into the city itself.

  The crew docked our boat at a stone pier, behind which reared a featureless brick wall with a heavy wooden gate in its centre. Into the central panel of the gate was burned a single, strange symbol.

  Kamish was now openly nervous as well as excited, and he clutched at his robes. His mood was catching, and I smoothed the cloths wrapped about my body as best I could, wishing I had not so mutilated my robe and that I’d had the opportunity to wash off some of the grime of travel.

  The guards hustled us onto the pier, the stone hot on our bare feet. Kamish gave us a cursory inspection as we shifted from foot to foot, frowning as if noticing for the first time how we’d cut down our robes to the briefest of garments, then spoke to the river boat captain.

  “We’ll probably be back in an hour or less. Wait for us, for we still have some way to travel.”

  The man eyed the wall, then dropped his eyes to us. “To Gesholme, no doubt.”

  Kamish nodded curtly. “No doubt.”

  Then he knocked at the gate. It opened instantly, as if the servant within had been waiting for us. Kamish waved us forward, and, in single file and more than a little apprehensive, we stepped through.

  An extraordinary garden stretched ahead of us for some one hundred paces, and was almost thirty wide. There were manicured trees, brightly flowered and darkly leaved, and neatly raked paths between carefully laid out flowerbeds where plants bloomed in orderly rows and concise geometric designs. They reminded me of the perfectly square fields of the countryside. Everything here had its assigned place, and nothing was allowed to extend beyond that place.

  Everything, I realised in my next breath, was ordered with the utmost precision.

  “This way,” Kamish said, and marched down one of the paths, the guards motioning us to follow.

  He led us to a tiled verandah, and bade us stop just beneath its shade. “Do not speak,” he said, then disappeared inside the dark well of a door.

  He was gone for some minutes, reappearing with a subservient smile on his face and wringing his hands humbly.

  “Your Excellencies,” he murmured, and then waved whoever followed to inspect the line of slaves.

  Two men stepped through the door, their very bearing sent chills down my spine. One was middle aged, the other ten or fifteen years his younger. Both had the dark hair and swarthy complexion of all southerners, although the younger had grey eyes rather than the usual black of his race.

  Their colouring was the only feature they shared in common with anyone else I had seen since docking in Adab. Their robes were of the finest linen, the under robes white and belted with a sash of shimmering cobalt, the outer a radiant blue, and left to float free about their forms. Their hands, fine but strong, were folded before them. Both had their hair swept back and clubbed into queues in the napes of their necks. Their entire bearing screamed of enveloping confidence and authority.

  But it was their faces that caught and held my attention. Both were striking, but their expressions were predatory, and they possessed barbed and cruel eyes that radiated supernatural power – as if from a virulent sickness within, rather than with the power that understanding and knowledge gives.

  “Sorcerers!” my father whispered.

  “Magi!” Kamish growled. “Fall to your knees, filth!”

  We fell.

  The Magi were unperturbed by my father’s thoughtless whisper, if they’d even heard it, and proceeded to stalk about us with measured paces. Power drifted after them like a cloying scent. I hastily averted my face as they passed by.

  “And what have you bought us this time, Kamish?” the older Magus inquired, his voice a lazy, dangerous drawl. He spoke in the common trading tongue.

  “Two stonemasons,” Kamish replied, his voice oily and subservient again. “A carpenter, a metalworker, and three glassworkers.”

  The Magi exchanged glances.

  “And how much of our wealth have you spent on them?” the younger asked.

  “One hundred and seventy-five sequents, Your Excellency.”

  Both Magi took great, shocked breaths, but before either could speak, Kamish continued.

  “It was these two who so raised the price, Excellencies,” he explained, gesturing towards my father and myself. “They are glassworkers of high renown. The man mixes and moulds like no other – and you know how much need you have of such talent – and the woman…”

  He paused, then flared his hands dramatically. “The woman can cage!”

  The Magi stared at him, then at me, then back to Kamish.

  “Fool!” the younger Magus cried. “The maggots that infest the corpses of dung-beetles enjoy greater intelligence than you!” And he stepped forward and struck Kamish a great blow across his face. The factor fell to the tiled walkway, his face impacting with a sickening crunch. I cringed, expecting to be the next struck.

  But the Magus’ attention was on Kamish. He leaned down and seized the man by the front of his robe – its fine weave was now stained by the blood that trickled from his nose.

  “Boaz,” the older Magus muttered. “There is surely no need to so dirty your hands.”

  Boaz ignored his companion. He hauled Kamish to his feet and shook him until the man whimpered in pain.

  “How dare you even draw breath in my presence,” Boaz said, his voice flat and deadly. “See her! No-one that young, that inexperienced –”

  “I can cage, master,” I said as deferentially as I could.

  Boaz dropped Kamish, who surreptitiously scrubbed at his nose with a spare fold of his robe. “So she has a voice to lie with,” Boaz said. “Stand up.”

  “She is of the northern races,” the older Magus observed as I stumbled to my feet, wishing I’d never spoken. “As is her father. See their hair, and the fairness of their skin.”

  “And she still smells of the whale oil, Gayomar,” Boaz said. “Her race has barely learned the art of fire-making, let alone the finer skills of craft work. Girl, why do you lie?”

  I could not bear the intensity of his eyes, and I dropped my gaze. “I can cage,” I whispered with the last of my courage.

  “Look at me.”

  I could not, and I felt my hands tremble.

  “Look at me!”

  Not only his voice but his power reached out, and my head was flung back so that my eyes stared into his.

  “Did you learn to lie from your father, girl? Should I have him put to death alongside Kamish and you?”

&nbs
p; I was saved from replying by Kamish himself. “Excellency!” He was back on hands and knees now, his face pressed so close to the tiles his voice was only just audible. “Excellency, they came with the best assurances. And I trust the slaver who sold them to me. Over the years he has provided us with some of the best –”

  “Shetzah!” Gayomar exclaimed. “You have not seen them work? You waste our money on word alone?”

  Kamish could only shake, and Boaz ignored him. “Caging is the provenance of master craftsmen alone,” he said. His eyes had not left mine for a moment. “It takes a lifetime of skill to perfect. You are…what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

  “She is nineteen, My Lord.” Now my father spoke. I jumped, for I had forgotten his presence. “And she was born with the skills that usually only a lifetime of experience grants. Her delicacy of touch can free lacework from the inner walls of glass with only minimal struts. Her ear for the drill bit is phenomenal – I have never seen a piece of her work crack as she excavates.”

  Gayomar stepped up behind Boaz and put a hand on the Magus’ shoulder. “The old man speaks as one who knows glass, Boaz. Perhaps…”

  Boaz shifted his grey eyes to my father. “You have your tools with you?”

  My father nodded.

  Boaz smiled, thin and cold. “Then, Gayomar, we shall have ourselves an amusing afternoon. Kamish!” he called.

  Kamish leapt to his feet.

  “Kamish, there is a small table and a stool inside. Bring them out.”

  Kamish stumbled as he hurried to do the Magus’ bidding. When he returned, Boaz wheeled away and disappeared momentarily. He reappeared carrying a lump of murky glass, roughly rectangular, the height of a forearm and the width of two palms. It was thick, thick enough to be caged, but to my dismay I heard it groan as Boaz set it roughly down on the table, and I saw that scores of tiny fracture lines ran through it.

  It would prefer to die than be worked.

  I looked frantically at my father, but the next moment Boaz seized my arm in tight fingers and dragged me to the table. I almost overbalanced, but managed to sit down on the stool.