Anything but. I touched the life force easily enough – I think I could have done it in my sleep – but to direct the power was far harder. I ruffled Caerfom’s clothes, and I tangled Isphet’s hair, but the waters remained disobligingly still.
“We will try again tomorrow,” Caerfom sighed, and dismissed us for the day.
Seven weeks after we’d arrived, Zabrze woke Boaz and me late one night.
“Damn you, Zabrze,” Boaz mumbled, “you may have nothing better to do here than sit about and grow lazy, but Tirzah and I have had a long and tiring day.”
“Get up, Boaz, Tirzah,” Zabrze said curtly, “and listen to what I have to say.”
Boaz sat on the side of the bed, rubbing his eyes, and I struggled into a sitting position, grasping the sheet to my breast. Were Boaz and I going to be bothered the rest of our lives by Zabrze’s midnight intrusions?
“One of my runners came in tonight,” Zabrze said.
“And?” Boaz asked.
“And bad news.”
There was a sound at the door. Isphet, cradling Zhabroah, came in and sat down next to Zabrze. “I couldn’t get back to sleep,” she said.
“Get on with it,” Boaz said to Zabrze, ignoring Isphet. “What news?”
“The man was one of those I’d sent to Darsis. He never got through. He’d taken a slightly different route to the others I’d sent; I can but hope they got through.”
“Zabrze –”
“He travelled north-north-east, rather than north-east, and so he did not move as far east as the others would have, nor as quickly…do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, yes. Will you get on with it?”
“Two weeks after he left the Juit estate he heard a rumbling in the night. He leapt to his feet, but he could see nothing, and the noise had disappeared. So he went back to sleep. In the morning he rose –”
“And saw stone,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” Zabrze said, his voice weary. “About five paces away – to the west – the land and everything in it had been turned to stone. He knew what it was. He’d been at Threshold when…well, there was nothing left alive in the land to the west. Nothing. All stone. Nzame has extended his power.”
“How far from Threshold was he at this point, Zabrze?” Boaz asked.
“He would have been about three days march from it. Two weeks march from Lake Juit would have put him almost directly east from the pyramid.”
“Setkoth,” Boaz said.
“Oh gods,” I whispered.
“Yes,” said Zabrze. “Setkoth must have been turned to stone long before.”
Zabrze’s other children would doubtless have been caught in the city by expanding stone. If Nzame hadn’t rounded them up and eaten them beforehand. If they hadn’t had the foresight to escape.
Zhabroah. Survivor.
“There’s more,” Zabrze said. “The stone frightened my man so much all he could think of was to get away as fast as he could. He turned directly east and travelled night and day. Five days after Nzame expanded, he sent some of his stone-men a-foraging.
“Luckily my man saw them before they saw him. He hid as they passed, and what he saw made him believe that it was more important to get this news back to me than try to continue on into Darsis.”
Zabrze paused, collecting his courage. I glanced at Boaz, and he leaned close and put a comforting arm about me.
“It was a group of thirty-six stone-men. A regular unit. They marched – if you can call it that – in formation, shuffling and crumbling. Their features were malformed and craggy, their legs and arms thick and cumbersome. Their mouths, my man told me, were hung open as if in perpetual despair. They moaned, their heads lolling from side to side…moaning, moaning, moaning.”
If merely the telling gave Zabrze so much distress, then how badly affected had been the man who’d done the seeing?
“They were led,” Zabrze continued, “by a man who rode what my man could only describe as a shuffling, shapeless lump of rock, about the size of a donkey. This leader…was Chad-Nezzar.”
“What?” Boaz and I cried together.
“A Chad-Nezzar not turned to stone, but irreparably altered by Nzame. He was quite mad, my man said. Cackling and singing about power and the glory of Nzame. He stroked his mount of rock, as if it were alive, and called it beloved. His body was scarred where he’d torn his studs and bangles from his flesh, and dreadfully sun-burned.”
We sat for a few minutes, absorbing the news.
“You shall have to tell the Graces of this,” said Boaz eventually.
“Yes. And I shall have to think how I can combat an army of ten thousand stone-men, for Nzame must surely have that many.”
“And Chad-Nezzar,” I asked. “Has he the experience to lead an army?”
Zabrze shook his head, and opened his mouth to answer, but was forestalled by a voice from the doorway.
Solvadale.
“I heard,” he said. “And I do not believe that Chad-Nezzar is just ‘mad’. I think that now he may well be an extension of Nzame himself.”
37
WE doubled our efforts. Several days a week the Graces added mornings to our daily training sessions.
“Learn,” they admonished. “Control.”
It took another few weeks, but finally we grasped the skills needed not only to feel the life force within the elements, but to control it and direct it.
“Ruffle the waters using the glass sphere, Tirzah,” Xhosm said, and I did.
“Create a square of red linen using the force within this metal ball,” Caerfom told Yaqob, and he did.
Solvadale handed Boaz a slim gold chain. “Take the force within this chain and transform it to the sound of bells.”
And the Water Hall pealed with a clarion of bells.
“Isphet,” Gardar commanded, “use what this silver goblet gives you and weave a basket for me.”
And so she did.
Of us all, Boaz was the most powerful, and accomplished his tasks with the most ease, but each of us improved daily.
Whatever object we used, whether metal, gem or glass (and occasionally pottery, but the soul of pottery was dim and gave us little to work with), it was not altered by our use of its life energy.
“We do not completely understand how,” Solvadale said one afternoon. “Somehow the elements draw more energy into themselves from a primal force that we have yet to detect. They just replace what they have lost through your use.”
“We can use anything elemental?” Yaqob asked, slowly tossing the metal ball from hand to hand.
“Yes. But some things can be used for more. Again,” Solvadale turned to me, “I refer to the Goblet of the Frogs. Tirzah has a special talent to create objects of such magic within themselves that they, in turn, can be used for magic beyond, say, that ordinary ball. Even Boaz could not have conjured Fetizza out of that metal ball. A life form, let alone a magical life form is…difficult.”
We were silent, thinking of Fetizza. Each morning and evening more amber frogs slipped from her mouth. Now hundreds of her children swam and bounded up and down the entire Abyss, and their chorus echoed between the walls at dawn and dusk.
“What of stone?” Isphet asked. “Stone contains elements within it. Yet why can we not hear stone whisper?”
Gardar pulled out a small rock from under his bench. The Graces might not be wielders of magic, but I had yet to discover how they managed some of their sly manipulations.
“Feel it,” Gardar said, handing it to Isphet. “Then pass it along.”
Isphet held the rock, concentrating, then sighed and passed it to me. I rolled it between my hands, seeking, but knowing I would find nothing. I passed it to Boaz.
“Stone is dead,” Solvadale said. “Even though it contains many elements, minerals and sometimes even gems, there is something in the process whereby stone is formed that deadens whatever life it contains. You will never be able to use stone.”
“Yet Nzame uses
stone,” Boaz said. “He turns land and life to stone…and his stone walks.”
“We do not know why.” Solvadale sighed. “Boaz, you have turned what Nzame created from stone back to hair. How? What did you do?”
“I am not sure. I only knew then that Tirzah needed her father’s hair to farewell him, not a stone abomination. I just held it.”
“If we knew, Boaz,” Yaqob said, but with no trace of recrimination in his voice, “then we might know how to combat Nzame’s stone-men. How to turn stone to soil and life again.”
Boaz lifted his head, nodded slightly at Yaqob, then looked at Solvadale. “You said that eventually you would tell us more of Nzame. More of the Vale. Will you do so now?”
Solvadale hesitated momentarily, sharing a glance with his fellow Graces. “Yes. Yes, we will. We can teach you no more. It will be your task to further develop what you have…and use it against Nzame.”
And the Song of the Frogs? I could almost hear Boaz thinking. Will you tell me where I can learn to understand that? How I can use it against Nzame?
“It is time for you to see, and to use, the Chamber of Dreaming,” Solvadale said.
They took us to the rear of the Water Hall, to a door that none of us had noticed previously. Behind it stretched a long corridor, carved deep into the rock of the Abyss.
We reached a series of steps, which the Graces led us down, then along another corridor, longer even than the first, then down yet more steps.
“We are very deep within the rock,” Caerfom said quietly. “Once down these next steps we will enter a chamber that Graces regard as a place of mystery, but that Necromancers regard as a place of power.”
The four of us shared glances that were at once apprehensive and excited. Solvadale beckoned, and we followed the Graces down a further series of curved, pink rock steps.
Then we entered the most incredible chamber.
It was a roughly circular natural cavern, carved out by the passage of water over millions of years. Water tumbled from a fissure high in one wall to a pool in the centre of the chamber, then flowed into a darkened tunnel in the opposite wall.
“This is where the river emerges from the rock,” Caerfom said, then pointed to the tunnel. “And there it flows to emerge into the Abyss.”
But while the water was wondrous, it was not the most remarkable thing about the chamber.
The walls were encrusted with every gem possible to imagine, and flowing down their surface were rivulets of metals, some pure, some oxidised. Their iridescence lit the chamber with a soft glow.
The energy, the power, within this cavern was astounding.
“We come here to contemplate,” Solvadale said. “But you can do more. My friends, I have brought you here for two reasons. First, so that you may experience the wonder and power of the Chamber of Dreaming, but second so that you may use the power within the chamber to understand more of the Vale and of Nzame. It is easier to show you than to explain…but a warning.”
I dragged my eyes away from the incredible walls to Solvadale. His face was composed, but his eyes were worried.
“What we are about to do here will call tremendous power into use…be careful of it. You are yet inexperienced; do not overstep the bounds of your learning.” He took a deep breath. “Use of this power will also almost certainly attract Nzame’s attention. Be wary of him.
“Now, Isphet, I want you to lead this rite as you have led so many.”
“You want me to use the water.”
“Yes. But instead of using metal powders to cast into the water, you will use the power of the elements surrounding you.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Good.” Solvadale paused and looked about at us carefully. “The four of you must combine the power you have and that you draw from the walls. In this rite you must act as one. Lean on each other, draw strength from each other. Can you do that?”
Eventually we all nodded.
“Yes,” Boaz said, “we can do it.”
“Isphet,” Solvadale said, and took her hand. “Normally in any Elemental rite you would contact the Soulenai. Touch the borders of the Place Beyond. Today I do not want you to do that.”
“Then what…?”
“Today, as the waters swirl and you meld power with your three companions, I want you to touch the Vale.”
She physically recoiled from him. “But the Vale is dark…evil.”
“Touch, I said, not enter. I want you to do this – and it must be brief – because it is going to be one of the only ways you will understand Nzame. I could spend a day telling you what I know of the Vale and of Nzame, but it would be a poor thing compared to the knowledge and understanding you will gain with a momentary touching of the Vale itself.”
“It is dangerous,” Boaz said.
“Yes, it is dangerous.” Solvadale’s eyes were very direct. “But you will all face danger at some point, and I do not want to shield you here. Draw power from the elements about you in this cavern, but more importantly, draw power from your companions. Isphet, are you ready?”
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“And you Boaz? Tirzah? Yaqob?”
We looked at each other, sharing small smiles of support. “Yes, we are ready.”
“Then begin, Isphet.”
She was very calm, very sure. She shook her hair out, as I did mine, and locked eyes with each of us in turn. As she did, we touched power with the elemental energy about us – and, oh! it was so powerful! – and then touched each other, sharing power, supporting.
Isphet turned to the great pool, then cast out her arm.
The water trembled, then swirled, gathering speed until it roared about the pool like a great, angry animal.
Colours flared, blue, red, gold, green, and intermixed, caught by the raging waters until they were just one swirl of light.
I could feel the others, inside and about me, and we took comfort and strength from each other, and shared the strength among our fellows. Somehow, somewhere, I was aware of the Graces watching us, but they were inconsequential now.
There were only the four of us, now as one, and the swirling waters.
Isphet continued to direct, but I could feel Boaz’s power underpinning all of us, and I think Isphet responded to some wish of Boaz’s, for she did not take us immediately to the Vale.
Instead we saw Ashdod.
The land.
We saw as if from high in the sky, as if we were birds circling on a thermal, seeking a safe place to roost.
But there was no place to rest.
We wept, for Ashdod had been largely turned to rock.
Stone radiated out from Threshold like a cancerous web. It stretched almost to the borders of Ashdod, and in places fingers of stone probed into neighbouring realms. The stone had spread over land, city and palm alike, only the great serpentine of the Lhyl remaining free.
But the reed banks were stone, and the frogs silent.
Bands of stone-men shuffled to and fro, crumbling, moaning. Sometimes they shuffled with no apparent purpose, sometimes they marched bands of screaming, terrified people towards Threshold.
Nzame screamed – Feed me!
And we recoiled.
Lake Juit, I thought, and somehow that thought communicated itself to my three companions. The next instant we saw the lake, lapping gently, mournfully, at great stands of stone reed banks and marshes. Stone Juit birds lay dead on the banks and, in places, at the foot of the shallow lake.
I cried, and I felt the others cry with me.
The house, the beautiful, beautiful house where once I’d dreamed of a peaceful life with Boaz, lay sagging under a mantle of stone.
As our vision sharpened I saw a stone-man stumbling, shuffling, moaning along the stone path to the stone landing, waving his arms to and fro, his mouth hanging open in despair.
Memmon, as trapped by Nzame as every other life form in Ashdod, doomed to shuffle between river and house, house and river, looking for visitors
come to disturb his peace, looking for someone come to release him from his death.
Enough! Boaz cried, and we all agreed. Enough.
The Vale, Isphet said, and so we directed our power and our vision.
The waters before us swirled black, eating all colour and light within the chamber.
Vision faded.
Cold seeped into my being, threatening to freeze the marrow in my bones. We travelled through a great…
Nothingness, Boaz said, and we agreed. This was a nothingness between worlds.
Be strong, Isphet called to each of us, for if we falter here…
We doubled our efforts, clinging to the power of the elements about us and to each other’s power, sharing, reassuring.
Then the blackness changed. It was still cold, but there was a something here, rather than a nothing.
We are at the edge of the Vale, Boaz said. Let us explore its edges first. Gain some understanding, before we enter.
We thought that a good idea, and I wondered if we need enter at all.
We must, Tirzah. Isphet. We must see.
But first the edges. This was a tightly bound space, and I remembered what Isphet had said about the Vale when we’d queried her while still in Gesholme. It was a place of darkness and despair, and here, so close, I could understand that well. She’d said that it was a place deliberately sequestered from our world, as from all worlds.
Not any more. Not now that Threshold had touched it.
Very gently, very, very carefully, we entered. It was a probe, a brief touch, nothing more, yet we reeled back in horror, retreating to the nothingness.
What we saw in the Vale was indescribable. It was all the bleakness and darkness that any could imagine, and then more. It was all the despair and misery that could be generated by living beings, and then magnified a million times.
But worst of all was that whatever was inside the Vale thought.
It lived, and it planned.
And now it had a fingerhold in Threshold. Nzame was terrible, but he was only a fraction of what the Vale contained, and what threatened to seep into our world.