Threshold (13 page)

“I am confused, Isphet, and I am afraid, and I do not like it that others should hear of my intimate problems when I speak of them to the Soulenai. Isphet, please!”

She could read the truth in what I said, but she was still hurt. “You can always come to me, Tirzah. I have been through what you have.”

“Isphet, please. Just this once. It will give me peace.”

In the end, she chose to trust me, and for that, I thought, I would always love her.

Behind one of the furnaces was a small, almost totally enclosed alcove, but there was space enough for me and a bowl of glass. No-one would know what I did there, and Isphet took care that none saw our preparations.

She was a master of the Elemental arts, and I marvelled at her skill. Not just in the preparation of the molten glass, but at her ability to carry a bowl that weighed almost as much as she did and contained the heat of the sun within it.

Yet not a trickle of sweat ran down her brow as she laid the bowl before me, nor were her hands so much as reddened when she withdrew them from the glowing metal sides.

“Undo your hair,” she said curtly, still displeased with me, and I hastened to comply. Then she placed several pots beside me that contained the powdered metals I would need.

“Do not be too long, for I know not what will happen if a guard or a Magus appears. And,” she hesitated, and her voice softened, “be careful.”

Then she was gone.

I had learned well from Isphet, and I knew what to do. I stared for a very long time into the glass, knowing now that the reason it stayed molten was because I
needed
it molten, then I passed my hand over in a great arc.

The glass swirled, and I felt myself drawn into its motion.

My hand passed over again, and blue flared within the glass, then red, gold and green as I added successive powders.

The colours sang, soft and sweet, and I let myself be seduced into their embrace.

“My friends,” I whispered, hardly aware of my voice, and I saw into the Place Beyond.

Tirzah.

I wept, for it was all I could do for the moment, and the presence of the Soulenai enveloped me.

Tirzah! What’s wrong?

At least that I could answer, and I told them all that had happened since our plan to kill Boaz had gone so disastrously wrong. It was a relief just to talk, to tell, and when I had finished I found my tears had dried and I felt calm and refreshed.

You tried to murder Boaz? That was rash. It would be dangerous for you to try again.

That was no casual remark. It was as close to an order as I had ever heard the Soulenai mouth.

Tirzah, we do not think it is such a bad thing that this Boaz has called you to his side.

But I cannot see the good in
–

Sometimes it is not always easy to see the reason or the goodness within the reason, Tirzah. Persevere. Wait to see what he reveals of himself.

Reveals of himself?

Wait. Tirzah. Wait.

He means to use me. I do not like it. I think he wishes me to betray myself and my friends.

They did not comment on that.

If he speaks of himself, Tirzah, then listen. And you say he teaches you to write. How unusual. For what purpose, Tirzah?

I cannot tell. But
–

But?

But perhaps this art of writing will help us understand why the glass screams within the Infinity Chamber – and perhaps even help us understand what it is that so infects Threshold.

Tell us!

I paused to collect my thoughts and gather my courage. I would have to speak those words I had seen within the chamber. Briefly I told the Soulenai of my experience.

They were wary, as I had expected them to be. But they were also so desperate to understand what was wrong with the glass they eventually asked me to mouth some of the words…
but be careful, Tirzah, for we do not want you or us ensorcelled.

Yes, I know. I saw the word “Infinity” in two places, but I was not surprised to see that there.

No. What else?

I saw the word “Bridge”.

Bridge? Bridge to what?

Infinity, I suppose. Isphet has said she supposes that Threshold is being constructed as a means for the Magi to step into Infinity.

There was a long pause.
What else, Tirzah?

A phrase. There was one entire phrase I could read and which made sense. All the rest was gibberish.

Yes? A phrase?

It used the word “Bridge” again. It read “…from the Vale across the Bridge to…” There was no more, for the panel ended there.

The Soulenai shrieked, and I reeled back in my tiny alcove and struck my head against the brick. My head swam, and I managed to retain contact with the Soulenai and the Place Beyond only with the utmost effort.

What have I said? What have I done?

Not you, sweet Tirzah, not you! Oh! What have they done? What can
we
do?

What is it?

Oh, Tirzah, we fear very much that the Magi have unleashed something that not even they will be able to control. The Vale…the Vale…

What is the Vale?

It is a place of darkness and despair, Tirzah. We will not go near it, nor do we wish to talk of it. No wonder the glass screams. Does the Infinity Chamber touch the Vale? Does it?

I do not understand…

But they were gone, and I blinked and looked about, and noticed that the glass had cooled and the colours had mottled, so I bound my hair, and stepped back into the workshop.

“
T
ONIGHT
,” he said, “We will do something slightly more difficult. You can form characters well enough, and have read the trifling pieces I have handed you. Now, something more challenging, I think.”

We sat by one of the tall windows. It was open, letting the night fall inside. Beyond the verandah was an octagonal pond, thick with lilies and flowers, and the cool breeze wafted in a gentle fragrance that mingled with the scent of the oil on Boaz’s feet and hands. It was very quiet, and I found it hard to believe that we were wrapped about by a community of thousands of slaves.

Boaz rose from his chair and moved across to one of the cabinets. He was dressed only in a loose wrap of vivid blue cloth, knotted about his hips and falling in soft folds to his ankles. He wore no jewellery, no metal. I had never seen him dressed so casually before, and it disturbed me. This Magus did nothing on impulse.

He retrieved a small scroll bound with flax thread and brought it over to me, then sat back down opposite, leaning back in his chair. The only light came from a lamp on the wall behind him and the brilliance of the moonlight that fell through the window, and his face lay in shadow.

“Read.”

I fumbled the flax knot, then rolled out the scroll with uncertain fingers, for he had never let me handle anything this fine before. The papyrus was delicate yet strong, and characters had been inscribed upon it in bold strokes.

I recognised the writing. It was Boaz’s, but without quite the beauty I had seen him write before me.

“I wrote that when I was nine,” he said. “Read it.”

My eyes skimmed the words. At first I thought it was nonsense, then I realised it made horrifying sense.

I cleared my throat and read, praying my voice would remain steady and not irritate him with a stumble.

One, three, nine, eighty-one. A form in itself. Three lines of three, nine lines of nine, the square of beauty, let bred into more beauty. Life is numbered from conception to death, rising from and declining into the One. There is beauty in numbers. This beauty is called Regularity, and its essence is Predictability. Everything else is unworthy. Eighty-one, nine, three, One. Life is numbered, all elements of life can be reduced to numbers, life is nothing but the predictability of numbers. There is nothing but numbers. Nothing. Nothing but the One.

I stopped. I could go no further. Tears filled my eyes.

“I was nine when I wrote that. The age of beauty I think, for nine is a special number in itself. An age when a child comes into realisation.”

His voice was distant, remembering. “Tell me what you think of it, Tirzah.”

I answered truthfully. “I find it sad, Excellency.”

“How so?”

I hesitated.

“Speak, do not fear me.”

“I find it sad, Excellency,” I said slowly, “that a boy so young should find life so sterile.”

I waited for the outburst, but it did not come. Instead he leaned across the space between us and lifted the scroll from my hands. He ran his eyes over the first passage, then rolled it up and put it on the floor beside him.

“I do not understand,” he said, and I wondered if he were jesting at my expense. But whatever his face could have told me was hidden in shadow. “I do not understand why you should find these words sterile. Are not numbers beauteous? Does not their contemplation provide one with the answers of life?”

“Excellency, I found it sad that a boy of only nine years could have written that. A child of that age should be out discovering the wonders of life, playing with his fellows.”

“And were you out playing with
your
fellows at that age?”

I was silent.

“No. You were not. You were inside discovering the beauties of glass, while I was inside studying the numbers and their forms. You caged, I calculated. Which of us is right, Tirzah? Who has seen the most beauty?”

He was moving the conversation into dangerous territory, and I tried to deflect him. “Excellency, how is it that you can use numbers, cold formulae, to explain the myriad wonders of life, to explain life itself?”

The question was a risk, but I had kept my voice respectful and slightly puzzled, and he accepted it.

“Numbers are the building blocks of life, Tirzah. All is ruled by numbers, and all are generated from the One and decay back to the One. Let me demonstrate.”

He stood up and took my hand, forcing me to my feet. I tensed, but he only led me out the door.

Kiamet faded away from his post, giving us privacy.

Boaz kept my hand in his. “See this potted vine?”

I nodded. At our feet was a large terracotta pot with a fat-stemmed vine in it. The vine’s stem grew up a verandah
post, leaves branching off it, until it disappeared into the darkness beyond the light.

“See.” His voice was very soft in my ear, and I could feel the warmth of his body. “There is a leaf at the base of the stem. Yes?”

I nodded.

“And then the stem twists once, and another leaf. Then it twists twice, and there is another leaf. Then three times, and yet another leaf. Then five twists, before a leaf, then eight, then thirteen, then…well, I could go on. But the progression is one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one and so on. Predictable. Do you understand the predictability in that progression?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “The next number is obtained by adding the previous two numbers.”

“Yes, very good. Now.”

He pulled me over to a bush growing just beyond. He leaned down and broke off a small branch. “Look, here is where it branches out from the main stem, then it divides twice, then three times, then five…”

“But I thought it was one, one…”

He smiled. “The main stem is the first one, then this broken stem the second one, then it launches into the twin divide.”

He threw the branch away. “There are other progressions in nature. You will find that many plants divide one, two, four, eight, sixteen and so forth. Is it not wonderful? Life
is
dictated by numbers. There are examples everywhere.”

He paused, and studied my face in the moonlight. “Ah, but I see you yet resist.
We
are composed of nothing but numbers and our forms are dictated by mathematical and geometrical formulae – not by the whim of gods or fate.”

“I cannot believe you, Excellency.”

“Then I shall prove it to you.” He lifted one of my arms, and slowly ran his fingers from the base of my neck
over the beaded collar of the dress then down my arm to the tip of my middle finger. His touch was very soft.

“From the base of your neck to the tip of your longest finger, your arm is
exactly
half your height. As are your legs. Exactly. But, Tirzah, as measured from the tip of your beautiful head to the soles of your feet, where does your body divide exactly in half?”

I was silent.

Boaz’s hand slid to my waist, firm and very warm. He pulled me gently against him, and my eyes widened.

“Not there, Tirzah.” His hand slid slowly down over my belly, rucking up the material of my linen dress slightly. I shivered. “Whether a man or a woman, their body divides into two at the organs of sexual pleasure and generation.”

I thought he would move his hand down yet further, but although the pressure of it increased, he kept it still. I could not look away from his face.

He laughed softly. “Appropriate, is it not? At that point where a body is precisely halved, so two bodies join to form one and, eventually, one body will divide to create two lives. No wonder, perhaps, that some Magi seek a woman to find perfect union with the One.”

He lifted his hand from my belly to my breasts. “And the body is halved again, quartered, at the breast. Do you want me to go on? There are still further fractions we might explore.”

I couldn’t speak. I was terrified that whatever I said, however I moved, would only encourage him further…and yet…He was so very close, his hands so very sure, and the scent of the oil I had rubbed into his flesh was so very strong. I could feel his heart beating through the wall of his chest. I wondered if this night he would finally bed me, and I wondered that I felt no revulsion at the thought.

A hand shifted to my hair.

“You have such beautiful hair, Tirzah. It is like trapped sunlight. I am so glad that you leave it loose when you
come to me.” He took a strand of hair and pressed it to his mouth, and I could feel his breath on my cheek. I closed my eyes and let myself relax. It would be bearable.

He kissed my forehead very gently, then my ear, then trailed his mouth down my neck. “Do you wear it loose like this when you go to the Soulenai?”

And, by the Soulenai, I was so demented by that stage I almost said yes.

But some instinct made me hesitate even as I was mouthing the word…and my eyes flew open, horrified, and I very gently disengaged myself from his arms. “What do you mean, Excellency?”

“You do not know what I mean by Soulenai?”

“No.” My breast was heaving, but I hoped he’d put that down to frustrated desire rather than fear.

“Just as well, my sweet,” and his eyes and voice were frigid, “for I would have killed you had you answered ‘yes’.”

Oh, by all the gods and Soulenai and damned numbers and cursed fractions in existence, I hated him at that moment! He had so very nearly trapped me, using my own weakness to do it. And with that “yes”, not only would I have killed myself, but probably all those I loved in the workshop as well.

He watched me steadily, then waved me back inside the room. “Sit down, Tirzah.”

I sat down, finally regaining my composure.

He sat also, and his face retreated into the shadows. “I am fully aware that someone tried to kill me that day Ta’uz died. But I am in perfect union with the One, and Threshold protected me. Tirzah, who planned my death?”

“Excellency, I have no idea. It was an accident, surely?”

“Was it perchance those Elementals who practise their arts within Gesholme?”

“Excellency!” I pleaded, and my voice broke on the word. He knew my guilt, I was sure of it. All he had ever
wanted to do was use me to trap the others in the workshop.
Dung lizard!

“Tirzah, listen to my warning.” His voice slid cold and sharp from the shadows. “I know full well that more than those who died planned my death. If I find one piece of evidence that indicts anyone,
anyone
, then I will have them summarily killed. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Excellency,” I whispered.

We sat for what seemed a very long time. I was tense, not daring to move, breathing as shallowly as I could.

Then Boaz visibly relaxed, and his voice warmed. “I have frightened you, Tirzah. I am sorry.”

He rose, startling me, but he walked over to the cabinet and poured wine into two wooden goblets, handing me one and sitting down again.

He had never offered me wine before, but as he sipped and stared out the window, I raised the goblet to my mouth and took a careful mouthful.

The wine was extraordinary. It was a nobleman’s wine, and certainly better than anything I’d had before. I took another mouthful. There was still silence between us, but it was companionable now. Not cold or dangerous.

It was as though I sat with a different man.

My resentment and loathing faded, and I shifted more comfortably in my chair. I drank some more wine, and wondered why he did not use glass goblets. There was so little glass or metal in this room. I drank again.

“Talk to me, Tirzah,” he said, and I jumped slightly.

“Excellency?” I was confused. Talk about what? And what would destroy this mood?

His goblet was empty, and now he rose to refill it, bringing the wine pitcher back to refill mine as well. “This silence is eating at me, Tirzah, and you must have questions. Ask me one or two.”

I didn’t speak, thinking, suspecting another trap. But Yaqob had been pressing me for information recently, and I
realised there was something I could ask Boaz that was reasonably safe in the context of our previous conversation. Something that might provide useful information for Yaqob, and perhaps even the Soulenai.

“Excellency…”

“Ask what you will, Tirzah.”

“Excellency, you have shown me some mathematical progressions, formulae, that rule nature. There is another curiosity I have heard, and I wonder if you might explain it to me.”

“Yes?”

I took a deep breath, then leapt in. “One day I heard two Magi briefly mention the numbers one, three, five, seven, eleven. They are another progression, perhaps.” I prayed Boaz would not read the lie in my voice, for these were the figures Ta’uz had mentioned in connection with the numbers who would die on site. I only hoped Boaz would not remember the conversation he’d had with Ta’uz, or connect it to my question. Even the lie that I’d accidentally overheard Magi converse was dangerous.

But Boaz paid it no mind. “You have given me only five numbers, and in themselves they do not make a progression. What follows the eleven?”

“I do not know, Excellency.”

“Well, then I cannot say what progression those numbers are part of.”

“Oh, but I thank you for your consideration, Excellency.”

The lamp swung in the night breeze, and I saw a tiny smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “You are being very polite, Tirzah.”

I am being very careful, I thought, for I do not want to scare you from this mood. And the next instant I wondered why I’d thought “scare”. Why not jolt? Or shake? And
why
didn’t I want this mood to end? I hung my head, thinking it best not to respond.

He sighed, and swirled the dregs of his wine about his goblet. “There is only one thing those numbers have in common.”

“Yes, Excellency?”

“They are all incomposite numbers, except the One, of course, which exists outside and beyond the others.”

I did not have to pretend confusion. “Excellency?”

He sat forward, so I could see his face more clearly. “Incomposite numbers are those which cannot be factored – they cannot be divided except by themselves or by the One. They are thus indivisible.”