Threshold (10 page)

C
HAD
-N
EZZAR
stayed a further three days, at which point he declared that he was utterly bored and pined for the pleasures of his court at Setkoth. At noon the next day, he embarked in a flurry of trumpets and regal waves of his hand.

Leaving behind five hundred of his men – and Boaz.

Ta’uz and Yaqob, for different reasons, were equally furious. Whatever rift there was among the Magi, Ta’uz and Boaz represented different sides of it, perhaps even led the different sides. To have the two of them on site made life intolerable for everyone. Ta’uz remained Master of Site, nominally the senior Magus in a caste where there was, apparently, little in the way of ranking, but daily Boaz’s presence undermined his authority.

We learned much from the careless gossip of guards which was overheard and spread about by slaves. Boaz was not only a forceful and powerful Magus, he was also favoured nephew of Chad-Nezzar and younger brother of the heir to the throne, Prince Zabrze. Despite what many Magi may have wished, Chad-Nezzar still remained in ultimate control of the realm and Zabrze in ultimate control of the armed forces. Neither Magi nor guards
wanted to alienate Boaz or, through him, Chad-Nezzar and Zabrze, and all sensed the shift in authority on site.

Yaqob was furious because he could see all of his carefully laid plans crumbling about him.

“We must move…
soon!
” he said, and stared about the room, daring any to contradict him.

Yaqob could no longer come across the rooftops at night – one of Boaz’s first actions had been to instigate irregular but frequent patrols – so now, dangerously, we were grouped in the upper room of Isphet’s workshop. Orteas, Zeldon and me, simply because this was our work space and we refused to be dislodged; Yaqob; Isphet; Raguel; Yassar; two or three men from other workshops; and a big, brawny fellow called Ishkur, one of the prime gang leaders among the labourers.

“If we wait any longer then I am afraid this…this
Boaz
,” and the word was a curse the way Yaqob mouthed it, “will seize complete control from Ta’uz.”

“The man would be an effective Master of the Site,” Ishkur remarked.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Yaqob said. “Ta’uz…well, Ta’uz is worse than the slime the river frogs feed on, but at least he is predictable and does not concern himself overmuch with security.
Damn! Everything
we’ve planned has been based on the presumption that Ta’uz would continue as Master of the Site. Raguel? What news?”

“Not much, Yaqob. Since Boaz has been here I have hardly been called to Ta’uz’s quarters. When I do go, he is distracted, but not only by Boaz. He also worries about Threshold. I think…”

“Yes?” Yaqob asked impatiently as Raguel drifted into silence.

“I think that is partly the reason Boaz has stayed. He is concerned about progress, but he is also concerned about Ta’uz.”

“Why do you say that, Raguel?” Isphet and I had told of the extraordinary scene within the Infinity Chamber, but any extra information Yaqob could get from Raguel might prove the key to understanding, and then destroying, Boaz.

“It was two nights ago. Ta’uz had finished with me, and I was standing behind the bed, dressing, when Boaz entered the apartment. There was only one lamp burning, I was deep in shade, and Boaz did not immediately see me. Ta’uz was furious at Boaz’s entry; the Magus had not knocked, nor even wasted any time on polite pleasantries.”

Raguel shivered as she remembered. “How they avoided striking each other I do not know, for the hatred lies deep between them. They began by arguing over some administrative detail that Boaz thought had been overlooked – I think Boaz had come straight from questioning one of the clerks. Then Ta’uz threw a pile of papyri to the floor, completely enraged, and shouted that administrative details were the last thing on his mind when Threshold…He stopped suddenly, and Boaz asked him what he meant. Ta’uz told him of the death of the slave, and then stood and looked at Boaz.

“Boaz was silent for some time, then said that the death of a slave was an inconsequential thing on a work site of this size. Ta’uz stared at him, saying that both of them knew better.”

“What did he mean by that?” Isphet asked.

Raguel spread her hands helplessly. “I do not know, I’m sorry. By this time I had crept as far back into the shadows as I could. I was terrified that if Boaz saw me…even Ta’uz had forgotten me…and I thought…”

She shook herself and continued. “Boaz tried to change the subject, intimating that Ta’uz was frightened of shadows, but then Ta’uz said, ‘The next time it will be three, Boaz, and then five, seven, eleven. We both know what those numbers mean.’ He said,” and Raguel’s voice
broke a little here, “he said that Threshold had fed. And, that having once fed, would have to continue to feed.

“Boaz was shocked into silence, but then opened his mouth as if to say something. Ta’uz stopped him, and said that Threshold should never have been built. He said that the formula was too dangerous and far too unpredictable. Then…then I think a breeze came in through the open window and shifted the drapery about the bed, and the next thing I knew Boaz was staring at me, then shouting for me to leave.”

“And Ta’uz?” Isphet asked.

“Ta’uz hadn’t even looked at me. He was staring out the window at Threshold. He said, as I fled the room, ‘By the One, it’s seen us!’”

There was silence for a while.

“We move, and soon,” Yaqob eventually said.

Ishkur looked up from his hands; they were spade-like, and deeply callused. “We are not ready.”

Yaqob took a deep breath, not liking to be contradicted. “We have thousands willing now. What if Boaz seizes control and asks his uncle to send a few more of his gilded spear holders? We have a chance at overwhelming the guards and soldiers here now, but
not
if any more reinforcements arrive.”

“Weapons?” Isphet asked. “Without them…”

“Several of the metalworking shops have been making and secreting blades for months. But we need more – especially with the imperial soldiers that Chad-Nezzar left here. With luck we will be able to steal some from the guards – we know where they have several of their weapon caches.”

“But if we steal from them, they’ll know a revolt is planned,” I said, worried for Yaqob.

He touched my cheek. “Don’t worry. We won’t go near the caches until we plan to move. Ishkur?”

“If we have men grouped near the caches when we give the signal for the uprising,” Ishkur said, “then they can
break in and seize the weapons before the guards realise what’s happening. Then we might have a chance.
Might.
”

It sounded like a chance that rested on hope more than surety. Might, might, might.

“Ishkur, we rely on the labourers for most of our fighters,” Isphet said. “You command their loyalty and respect.
Will
they fight?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. They trust me where they might not trust Yaqob.”

Yaqob stirred, and Ishkur hurried on. “Yaqob, you live here as one of the elite glassworkers. You rarely have occasion to move among the labourers. But they will listen to me. Trust me.”

“I understand, Ishkur,” Yaqob said. “Look, I know that I’ve been pushing for an uprising, and I realise that some of you here feel it may be premature. We had thought to prepare for several more months yet. But,” he looked about the room, “we do have an alternative to launching a premature uprising before Boaz convinces the Chad or his brother to move more imperial soldiers here.”

“Yes?” several people said at once.

“We can kill Boaz,” Yaqob said.

Everyone stared at him, and my lips parted in a slow smile. Kill Boaz. Yes. There was nothing I would like more. My smile widened for Yaqob, and he saw it and grinned back.

“Boaz has disturbed all our plans. If he’s gone, then we are left with Ta’uz. Nasty, but predictable, and a known quantity. And we have Raguel, who has some contact with him and, as we’ve all heard, can provide interesting information. Information,” he paused, “that will mean we can kill Boaz without fear of reprisal.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I think we should arrange for an accident on site,” he said. “We know that Ta’uz, at least, is expecting one. Three will die, he thinks. Well, let’s give him an accident. Boaz
and two of the other Magi – not Ta’uz. Ta’uz will suspect Threshold, not us. Well?”

Ishkur’s eyes gleamed, and I could see that he also liked the idea. “What do you have in mind, Yaqob?”

“Ishkur, is it your men who work atop Threshold, preparing the peak for the capstone?”

Ishkur nodded.

Yaqob’s face and eyes were very cold. “I hear some of the glass up there is very unstable, Ishkur. It could cause a dreadful accident were it to fall.”

B
OAZ
was unpredictable in many ways, but he never forwent his early afternoon stroll about Threshold. He would walk its perimeter once, then move to the ramp where he talked to various of the Magi supervising the site. Then he would just stand, looking, completely still, his eyes focused on Gesholme and then further to the Lhyl River and the reed banks.

No-one knew what he looked for, and no-one cared. It was enough that we had this one moment of predictability, and it would be enough to kill him. He even stood in the same spot, day after day, the spot where Gaio had died, and that would be enough to ensure a neat, clean kill.

Which was more than he deserved.

I wondered if he would scream, as had screamed the glass he’d deliberately dropped. Well, today, glass would wreak its revenge.

We were all there. Yaqob, Isphet and myself pretending concern about a delicate pane that was being transported into Threshold and which required our undivided attention lest the labourers trip and break it. Ishkur, standing to one side of the ramp, directing his gang of labourers. Raguel, taking some tools – unfortunately left behind – to glassworkers inside Threshold. Others, scattered about,
pretending interests and problems where there was only one interest and only one problem.

Boaz.

He arrived as expected, Ta’uz with him today, and the Magi hurried the inspection about the perimeter of Threshold. Neither wanted to spend too long in the other’s company. Then Ta’uz stalked away, leaving Boaz to mount the ramp.

Boaz did not waste much time in conversation with the two Magi awaiting him, and within minutes had turned to stand motionless, gazing back across Gesholme towards the river. He was so focused on whatever it was he saw, that I doubt he noticed anyone about him.

The two Magi stood slightly to one side of Boaz, discussing some calculation.

“Good,” whispered Yaqob. “Three of them. Perfect.”

I glanced about us. Guards were dotted through the crowd of labourers scurrying here and there around Threshold’s skirts, but they saw nothing out of the normal. Ta’uz was still here, but deep in conversation with one of the captains of the guard; perhaps trying to find out whether the man was loyal to him or to Boaz.

Well, in a minute or two the captain wouldn’t have a choice.

I frowned. Raguel was close by Ta’uz, and I wondered what she was doing there. Had he called her over?

Yaqob caught Ishkur’s eye, and the man nodded slightly.

Then he dropped the hammer he was holding and bent down to pick it up.

It was the signal the men atop Threshold had been waiting for. I tensed, and felt Isphet do the same by my side. Yaqob muttered under his breath, his shoulders tight.

None of us dared look upward…until…until…

“The glass!” a guard screamed. “Excellencies,
the glass!
”

Our heads whipped skyward, relief that it was finally done rushing through our bodies.

“By the Soulenai,” Isphet whispered, “let it fall true.”

A great plate of blue-green glass, carefully chosen for its position, had been dislodged. The southern face, above the ramp where Boaz still stood utterly motionless, was protected from the wind, and the plate should fall straight and true.

Spear-like.

And so it did.

Slowly at first, twinkling cheerfully in the blazing sun, it slid free of its moorings, then picked up speed as it rushed down the centre of the southern face. Its passage made a peculiar whistling noise, and I wondered that Boaz did not look up, or move, even though the two Magi with him had ducked for cover inside Threshold’s mouth and several guards were rushing up the ramp to push Boaz to one side.

But the glass did its killing long before they reached Boaz.

Some twenty paces above the ramp, as the plate glass was whistling down so fast it was only a blur, it screamed.

Every Elemental within two hundred paces heard that scream, for it tore through our souls, ripping and shredding. I cried out, as did Isphet and Yaqob, but our cries were lost among the screams of the crowd as the glass…

…as the glass jerked, then twisted and flipped, as if flicked by a gigantic hand. It somersaulted through the air, hit the lintel above Threshold’s mouth…

Boaz smiled. I saw it, and I could not believe it.

…and broke into two murderous spears. One swept over Boaz, the wind of its passing ruffling his robes, and struck Ishkur directly on the top of his head, spearing down through his body. It clove him in two. The glass bisected his entire body, and the two sorry halves fell
limply, bloodily, to either side of the now silent splinter protruding from the ground.

I had my eyes on Boaz and then Ishkur, and for a heartbeat I did not realise what had happened to the other spear of glass. I turned my head just in time to see the jagged piece impale both Ta’uz and Raguel.

She had been standing close to him, so close that she shared his fate – or perhaps Threshold had always meant them to die in that manner. Die together.

Utter, utter silence.

Then…

“Take those three slaves,” Boaz said calmly to the captain Ta’uz had been talking to, “and kill them.”

I thought he meant Yaqob, Isphet and me, and my stomach curdled so violently I was sure I would vomit, but then I saw Boaz wave vaguely at Ishkur’s three men at Threshold’s peak.

The captain of the guard, his loyalties decided, hurried to do the Magus’ bidding.

“Three,” Yaqob said emotionlessly beside me. “Three. Dead. Threshold has fed. As Ta’uz said it would.”

Isphet grabbed our arms. “Out of here,
now!
Before he sees us!”

I was unable to move, but Yaqob responded quickly to Isphet’s urging and helped pull me down a side alley. Shocked and bewildered, we stumbled back to the workshop. As we waited for the others to return Yaqob held me tight, and tried to comfort me, but no comfort would help after what we’d witnessed.

It was that day we all realised just how malevolent Threshold truly was.

Boaz took over as Master of the Site quickly, efficiently, completely. Ta’uz was buried with the honours accorded to any Magus, but Raguel’s and Ishkur’s bodies were thrown to the great water lizards that lurked in the Lhyl.

I believe the three slaves taken from the peak were thrown in the water alive once the lizards had started their feeding frenzy on the corpses.

Ta’uz was dead. Ishkur was dead. Raguel was dead. Two of them mourned, one regretted.

And Yaqob’s plans for a revolt lay as shattered across the dust of Gesholme as that glass had shattered three lives.

He needed the weight of numbers that the labourers would bring him, yet they had trusted only Ishkur completely. It would take Yaqob months, if months he had, to find someone of comparable standing and trust-worthiness who could persuade the labourers to his side.

Raguel. Raguel had been loved by many of us, and had been badly treated by the Magi for years. To lose her like this…
and
her body. Isphet had raged for hours that night, striding about our apartment, tearing gouges in the mud walls with her nails, screaming her grief. Raguel could not be farewelled into the Place Beyond without the remains of a body. She and her daughter would be denied each other for eternity.

But Raguel had also been a source of information and, regrettably, Yaqob mourned her death for the loss it caused his plans.

In the end, ironically the greatest loss was Ta’uz. Now Boaz had free rein, and within only hours we felt the touch of his power.

That night every tenement building in Gesholme was searched.

The guards came just as I had managed to get Isphet onto a sleeping pallet, my arms about her, rocking her, crooning wordlessly to her. I was appalled at the extent of her grief, yet my soft crooning was meant as much to comfort me as it was Isphet.

There was a pounding at the door. Saboa went to open it, but was thrown back as the door was kicked in. Five
men shouldered their way past her, a mixture of imperial soldiers and old guards – but old guards with new resolve strengthening their eyes and hands.

They tore the room apart, breaking many of the urns, tearing others from the ground, ripping our sleeping pallets, tipping oil from lamps, thumping the walls to sound out hiding places. They searched us too, their hands rough and humiliating, then shoved us aside as thoughtlessly as they had the urns and lamps.

I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Soulenai that at least we no longer had Raguel’s baby stored in one of the floor-cooled urns; I wondered numbly what Boaz would have made of that had they thrown it triumphantly before him.

They were searching for weapons, and for other evidence of the plot to escape. The plot…I had no doubt that Boaz had somehow managed to scry out its existence; that he somehow knew a plot
must
exist.

Cold fear gripped me. Yaqob! But surely he would have the sense not to keep anything in his quarters that might incriminate him. Surely.

In the morning when we crept to work we saw guards posted on rooftops.

People nodded to each other as they arrived at the workshop, but few spoke. I looked frantically until I saw Yaqob’s form in a darkened corner, lifting glass down from a rack. Unheedful of the eyes, I rushed across and wrapped my arms about him.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” He managed to put the glass to one side. “And you?”

I nodded, unable to speak, and buried my face in his chest.

I felt his hands through my hair, and then one hand caught my chin and tipped my head back.

“They found the blades that we’d managed to make,” he said, his voice dead. “And they’re dismantling the guards’ weapon caches, storing the weapons elsewhere. We’ve lost.”

I buried my face in his chest again, fiercely glad that he was safe and that, if his plans for an uprising were in tatters, then at least that meant he would continue to be safe for a while longer.

“We’ve lost,” he said again. “For the moment.” Then he put me to one side and went back to work.

Our lives continued to be disrupted by irregular patrols, unpredictable searches. Sometimes a guard was posted in the workshop, sometimes not. But if a guard was not there, then we never knew when one would be back.

Magi appeared in greater numbers, and a week after Ta’uz’s death river boats deposited another two thousand soldiers with which Boaz could work his will.

Yaqob’s face grew lined and his manner abrupt, even with me. Life became even greyer in this the most dismal of places, and the shadow of Threshold stretched ever longer.

Sometimes it winked.