Threshold (16 page)

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Did
Boaz
know what this book was?

If he noticed any of the emotions surging through me he gave no sign.

“Tirzah. Open the book. Please. In there is a story. Please read it to me.”

I opened the book. Inside the writing was exquisite, drawn in vermilion and edged with gold, spreading across
smooth creamy parchment – vellum, not papyrus. The characters were unusual, but I could read them. There was a listing of contents, and my eyes skimmed down it, wondering which tale Boaz wanted me to read to him.

“Excellency? Which one?”

And then my eyes found it, and I had no doubt about which one Boaz would name. Which tale it was that had haunted both his child and manhood.

“The Song of the Frogs,” he whispered.

I
RAISED
my eyes and looked at him, knowing then that stronger magic than fate had enslaved me and brought me through so much hardship to this man and this moment in time.

Was it this book?

“As you wish, Excellency,” and I turned the pages and began to read.

The Song of the Frogs

It was a long time ago. A time when mists clung thick to form and voice. A time when all peoples, all races, all creatures lived in happiness and sharing.

It was this same world we live in now, but different.

The peace did not and could not last because it was perfect, and all know that perfection is a dream but never a reality. One race turned against another, then they united to turn against a third, and when all save a few were exterminated, those few crept among other peoples and whispered words of discord and hate.

War spread with the cruel relentlessness of a malignancy.

Because war thrived, peoples learned to live among it. Cultures, societies and religions adapted. Sometimes war raged year after year, while other years were spent in peace – or what passed for it. Some races were decimated, others, more fortunate, more adaptable, more war-like, flourished.

But among all races there was one people known as the Soulenai, and they found it difficult to adapt to this new word and world of war.

Oh, gods. I risked a glance at Boaz, but the name seemed not to perturb him.

The Soulenai were masters of magic, Necromancers of renown and skill, but they were peace loving, and the thought of waging war made them nauseous.

They believed at first that if they took no sides, if they extended goodwill to all, then none would have reason to wage war on them.

But their lands were invaded, their children slaughtered.

So they thought to move far away, journey to a land where there was no war.

And so they did. They found a peaceful if largely dry land, covered with ten thousand pebbles, but a land where they could flourish again with work and effort. Yet within a decade war had found them, and decimated the land where the Soulenai settled. Dry land became utter desert, field turned to rock, furrow to chasm. Even if steel did not pierce their bodies, many among the Soulenai laid down and died because of their great sadness.

Those left alive wept, wondering if they were cursed.

As they wept, a great river rose from their tears, running through the pebbles and the cracks in the rock and following the course of the chasms, dividing the desert, and giving life along its banks.

The Soulenai sat on the banks of the river and ceased their weeping, but their hearts still sorrowed. No matter where they went, what they did, war would follow, and eventually all would die. What use the beauty of the river when none would be left to enjoy it?

But as they grieved anew, their sorrow dryeyed now, a song rose about them. It was an ugly song, and the Soulenai thought it suited the harshness of the desert and rock about them.

One thought to ask, “Who sings?”

“We do!” And ten thousand frogs lifted their heads from the banks of the river and saluted the Soulenai.

“What strange creatures are these?” the Soulenai asked, for none had seen frogs before.

The frogs introduced themselves, and then made great glad cry.

“Soulenai Saviours! For millennia we were locked inside a myriad of pebbles, trapped, as if by sorcery. But then came a wet such as we had never dared dream, and it was your tears. The river formed, and we sprang into life. Thus for you we offer our song.”

The Soulenai smiled, glad that they had helped at least one race. “We thank you, Friends Frog. You sing a beautiful song.”

The frogs laughed. “You think it ugly, but we do not care. Soulenai Saviours, our song is a gift, and we would tell you how to use it.”

“A gift?”

“We will give you a land where you may live in peace forevermore, Soulenai Saviours.”

“Oh! What is this land?”

“We know it only as the Place Beyond.”

I stopped, pretending to pause to wet my throat with wine. This was dangerous. I risked another glance at Boaz. He sat with his eyes closed, his breathing gentle, and I could not tell his thoughts. Magus waiting to trap, or man yearning for the comfort of his lost mother and unknown father?

“Please, go on,” he said, and opened his eyes. They were bright with tears.

I returned to the tale.

The Soulenai were cautious. The frogs sang of hope, but the Soulenai had seen hope dashed before.

“See!” cried the frogs, and opened their throats in song.

The Soulenai saw. They saw a land where the mists still lingered. They saw a land of sea and stars, plunging cliffs and sweeping plains. A land where they would not be disturbed. They saw a land of such peace that it was magic in itself. It was a land where eternity laughed. A land where the unborn frolicked with the dead and yet no-one knew the difference between them.

“We think we like this land, this Place Beyond,” said the Soulenai. “But how do we reach it?”

“Follow our song,” cried the frogs. “Listen, understand, let our song rock and soothe you, let it touch you, touch you, touch you. Let it hold you, touch you, love you.”

And so they did.

The Soulenai followed the path of the frogs’ song, for they were of such magic they could understand the song, and they went into the Place Beyond, and none have heard of them since.

But I think that if you let the Song of the Frogs rock you and soothe you, if you let it hold you and love you, then you too may be able to reach this Place Beyond, for it is surely a wondrous land.

“I think that is where my father took my mother,” Boaz said into the silence. “I think that he understood the Song of the Frogs. I think that is why my mother died of grief. She had lost not only her lover, but the Place Beyond.”

“Perhaps that is where they are now, Excellency,” I said softly.

“Perhaps, Tirzah, perhaps.” He sighed. “I wish
I
could understand the Song of the Frogs. I think I would like to visit this land called the Place Beyond.”

Even now I still thought of entrapment, but I also thought of something that needed to be asked.

“Excellency?”

“Yes?”

“Excellency, what was your mother’s name?”

Boaz stirred in his chair, and took the book from my hands, replacing it in the box.

“My mother’s name was Tirzah.” His eyes were still on the box.

Such emotion overwhelmed me I found it hard to speak. “Excellency, why give me your mother’s name?”

“For the frogs you carved me that day, Tirzah.”

And yet he had dashed them to the ground. Killed them. Would I ever understand this man?

“Tirzah?”

“Yes, Excellency?”

“It would please me if, in my bed, you would call me Boaz.”

And so I did.

He did not take me into the Place Beyond, but he transported me nevertheless. Yaqob and I had never had
the time nor the privacy to do our love justice. Boaz and I had ample of both. And Boaz also brought laughter, which Yaqob had never thought to do. He teased me with his hands, his mouth, his body, until – driven to wantonness – I pleaded with him to make an end to it and mount me.

“An end to it?” he said. “When we have the night before us?”

But he did as I asked, and with the sweetness and tenderness he’d given me in that kiss, until I pleaded with him
never
to make an end to it. By that time, even he was too breathless for laughter.

An end to it there had to be, and it brought me as much release as he – which surprised me, for I had not realised that a woman could gain as much satisfaction from a bedding as a man.

He did not leave me, but lay sprawled heavy across my body, gently kissing, stroking, whispering…

…
hold me, touch me, soothe me, love me…

…until we both drifted into sleep.

We slept, then we woke and Boaz, still heavy atop me, resumed where he’d left off, and it was faster, harder and more frenetic than our first loving, but it was as good, and this time my cries made no coherent words.

We slept again, and when I woke, it was to find the Magus had returned.

I
GRABBED
for the sheet, not wanting the Magus to so witness my nakedness, but he tore it from my hand, then seized my arm, half-dragging me from the bed.

He was robed in his full vestments of office, his hair tightly clubbed back into its queue, his eyes full of fury.

“Filthy whore!” he hissed. “What have you done?”

I could say nothing, fearful that whatever I said or did might cause him to kill me.

“Did you think to subvert me into subdividing the One, as Raguel did with Ta’uz?”

My eyes widened, and his mouth thinned in satisfaction. “Yes, word of Ta’uz’s disgrace reached us back in Setkoth. Think not to so pollute me or the One.”

He hauled me closer. There was nothing in his face of the man who had been with me the night before.

“Nevertheless,” he said, his voice now soft, “I did achieve good union with the One. Perhaps I should have explored this avenue of meditation previously.”

Those words hurt me more than his hands. Boaz had left the One far behind him when he brought me to his bed. But I could understand why he lied to himself.

He wrapped his arm about my shoulders to hold me tightly against him, then placed his hand over my face. His
fingers gripped me painfully, and I struggled helplessly against him.

“I can make sure that you will not conceive,” he said. “
Absolutely
sure –”

“
No, Excellency!
” I cried, “there are herbals I can –”

“Absolutely sure,” he whispered, and the power of the One flooded my body.

Nothing I had felt before prepared me for this. Even the pain he’d caused me in the workshop had been inconsequential compared to what he did now.

My breath racked in for a scream, but I was in such agony I could not let it go. The power seared through me, concentrating in my belly, roping about like a blade out of control. It was surely tearing me apart.

Another surge, and my body jerked about in his arms. I don’t know how he managed to hold me, for I was convulsing uncontrollably by now.

“Absolutely sure,” I think I heard him whisper from very far away, then he dropped me on the bed.

I came to perhaps an hour later. I whimpered, for the pain was still almost unbearable.

“You will get dressed, and then you will get out.”

My hands clenched at the sheets and I dragged myself to the side of the bed. My body screamed at the abuse it had taken and at the abuse I was now subjecting it to, but I had to get out.
Had
to.

My vision blurred, and I groped about for my dress, pulling it over my shoulders. Then I struggled to my feet, bent almost double, one arm wrapped about my belly, the other feeling along the wall for the door.

“I will summon you again,” he said, and I stumbled out into the blessed sunshine.

Kiamet carried me back to the tenement building. For that I will be everlastingly grateful to him. He had kind hands
and an even kinder voice, and I think he said a number of unkind things about Boaz on the way.

Isphet was appalled, as were the other two women of our quarters.

“What has he
done
?” she whispered as she lowered me onto my sleeping pallet.

“Ensured I will not subdivide the One,” I said, then I fainted.

She washed me, and fed me a drink which eased much of the pain, then wrapped me in blankets and let me lie back down.

“You must stay here today,” she said. “Not even Boaz would insist you made an appearance at the workshop.”

“Thank you, Isphet,” I said, and grasped her hand. Apart from wanting to know what he’d done to hurt me so badly, she’d asked no further questions.

“Sleep,” she said.

I woke in the early afternoon and lay for some time, not thinking, not wanting to think. Much of the pain had subsided, but when I lifted the blankets I saw that my belly was deeply bruised, evidence of the internal hurt.

I wept then, for I was sure that he had utterly destroyed any chance I would have for bearing children. It was my penalty for witnessing what I had.

“Tirzah?”

The door to the internal courtyard opened and a figure slipped through. “Tirzah?”

“Yaqob!” and then he had me in his arms, soothing me and crying with me.

He saw the bruises, and the hurt in my eyes, and he rocked me in his arms, and promised me a death for Boaz that would pain him ten times more than he had pained me.

But that gave me little comfort, for I was not sure, even after what he’d done to me that morning, that I wanted him to die.

“Yaqob, how did you get here?”

“Shush, love,” he murmured. “I was careful. Everyone thinks I’m in Threshold, laying glass. But, after what Isphet told me this morning, I had to come…”

“Oh, Yaqob!” I sobbed anew, and he kissed me, and let me weep.

“I have to go,” he said after a while. “I dare not stay any longer.”

“I thank you,” I whispered. “But go now, for I could not bear if it you were seized on my account.”

He kissed me again, and smiled for me, although his eyes were grim, and then he was gone.

I lay for perhaps another hour, then I struggled into my wrap, combed my hair into some semblance of order, and carefully, carefully, made my way out into the street. I blinked in the sunshine. It seemed strange that everything was carrying on as normal.

But there was something I had to do. Something I had to destroy as Boaz had all but destroyed me this morning.

Very slowly I made my way to Isphet’s workshop.

She was appalled that I had left my pallet.

“You need at least a day and a night, Tirzah. And we can manage without you today.”

“I will not stay long. There is something I must do.”

And she let me go.

Some of the workers nodded to me as I crossed the floor towards the stairs, and Druse caught at my elbow, fearful to hug me. “Daughter…”

“Shush, father. I will be all right. Let me go now.”

And he did.

The stairs were hard, but the pain was receding with every hour that passed, so I managed them with reasonable dignity. Zeldon and Orteas put their arms about me, their voices murmuring, and I let them hold me for a few minutes, then I gently disengaged myself.

“Let me go now, there is something I must do.”

I went to the place where I had secreted the goblet. I had wrapped it in thick rag and cloth, and Zeldon and Orteas could not understand what was in the bundle I carried, but they did not pry.

I went back down the stairs, and made my way towards the furnace.

What I would do would kill the glass, and for that I was truly saddened, but it would have to die. I couldn’t let it live now. Not after what he’d done.

Neither could I unwrap it, for I did not want to hear its soft whispering, asking what I did to carry it so close to the heat and flame.

“Tirzah? What is that you do?” Isphet asked behind me.

“Think not that I intend to kill myself, Isphet. Please, leave me be.”

And she faded back into the workshop.

The heat of the furnace was very hot on my face, but it was comforting, and I realised why Raguel had liked to work so close to the fires. Somehow they would have scathed away so much of the hurt to which she, too, had been subjected.

I was so close to the flames now that they seared the tears from my cheeks. I lifted the bundle in my hand and stepped up to the great doorways. Beyond them, red and yellow and orange flames and streaks of heat rippled and writhed, so intensely alive they called to me.

I prepared to cast the goblet in as Raguel had once cast in the bundle that represented her child.

Sweet, sweet Tirzah, let us touch you, touch you, hold you, soothe you, love you.

“No!” I cried and raised the bundle.

Sweet Tirzah, let us love you and hold you, let us soothe away the hurt, let us speak to you, talk to you, talk to you…talk…

“No!” I sobbed, but I had lowered the bundle in my hands, and my head drooped.

Talk to us, Tirzah, let us love you, touch you, soothe you…

And there was nothing I wanted more. Nothing.

My entire body racked with sobs now, I clutched the bundle to my breast and fled into the tiny alcove at the rear of the furnace. There I curled up into a tight ball, wrapping myself about the bundled goblet.

Soothe you, soothe you, love you…

And they did, although to this day I’m not sure how they managed it. After a long time I unwrapped the goblet, and turned it over and over in my hands.

The Goblet of the Frogs was all but complete. There was some fine sanding to be done among the river reeds, but the frogs were finished, and the lacework of the cage was fine and strong, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever created.

The amber frogs were alive, crawling through the reeds, their eyes black and glistening with sympathy, reaching their cool, moist toes through the reeds to touch my hands and stroke my skin, then, suddenly shy, hiding among the waving reeds until their courage returned and they reached forth again.

Hello Tirzah.

The voices of the Soulenai, speaking to me through the mouths of the glass frogs.

I dashed away the final tears.
Greetings, Soulenai.

This is a beautiful goblet, Tirzah. Deeply magical. Do not destroy it.

No. No, I won’t.

You carved it for…him.

Yes. But I do not think I will give –

Shush, and listen to what we have to say to you, Tirzah.

I kept my silence.

We watched and listened last night. We were pleased at what we heard.

They were silent for a while, and I thought they must still be overcome by what they had heard and witnessed. After a long time they spoke again.

That is the Book of the Soulenai, Tirzah.

Your book.

Yes, Tirzah. Be quiet. Let us speak, but we must of necessity be brief, and we cannot tell you it all. Listen. Boaz is an Elemental Necromancer.

No, no, it cannot be –

Yes, it
can
be, Tirzah, and it is. His father used that book to make him, spun magics about his conception and about the woman he made him in, and created an Elemental within her womb. Of course, he did not expect to be eaten by a water lizard within days of the conception. The boy was born and grew without his father to guide him, grew in a sterile and polluted environment where the Magi seized him and corrupted him as a child.

I thought of the scroll he had written as a nine-year-old child. Perhaps the Magi made their move when his mother died. And they never “understood” what they had in their care.

He was a Prince at court, Tirzah. The Magi seduced him in the hope that through him they could extend their power over the Chad and his heir. He has exceeded their expectations. Boaz has become a Magus of great power and purpose and influence and he works well for their cause. For Threshold.

But…

But underneath all of this lay the makings, the blood, of an extraordinary Necromancer, Tirzah. The growing boy, trying to be at one with the One, was horrified by the whispers he heard about him. Horrified by the talents he displayed. So he buried them deep. Buried his true self deep.

I thought of his residence. It was bare of anything that might whisper to him. Few metals, no gems, no glass. Wooden goblets.

Tirzah, the Magus is in almost full control. Only rarely does Boaz relax enough – and only ever with you – to reveal his true nature. Yet even with you such revelations frighten him. Terrify him.

“There is no hope for him. He will
never
let the Necromancer through.” I spoke aloud now, wanting to deny Boaz with my voice.

There is hope, Tirzah. There must be hope, for Boaz is the only one with a chance of destroying the horror that Threshold is becoming.

What do you mean?

He is Magus-trained, and you have felt yourself the degree of the power of the One that he commands. He understands Threshold in a manner that we, or you, cannot. Yet he is also a Necromancer. He will be able to wield powerful magic on that day he learns to combine both sides of his nature. He must be the key to Threshold’s destruction.

My mouth twisted bitterly.
He will never destroy –

You must persuade him, sweet Tirzah. You must make him see who he is, teach him not to fear his hidden self, open himself to the elements, to us, to the Song of the Frogs.

He will never listen to me. He will never let himself be who he truly is. You know what he did to me. You know.

Yes, we know, sweet Tirzah, but there is hope.

Now I did laugh bitterly.
Hope? Hope? After what he put me through? He will always deny his Elemental side. Always.

We believe not, Tirzah. Think, if you will. Think. He has kept the Book of the Soulenai, even though he must have known it was crafted of Elemental magic. Yes?

Yes
, I said reluctantly.

He could have,
should
have killed you this morning, Tirzah. What true Magus, fully in control, would have let a woman live who had seen enough to think him an Elemental? Who knew that he kept an Elemental talisman? And who he knows must be Elemental herself?

What he did was bad enough.

Yes, yes it was. But even that was not as bad as it could have been.

Oh? And how much worse could it have been? He has destroyed any chance I have of bearing children. My womb has been rent and shredded.

No, Tirzah. He has hurt you badly, but he stayed the worst of the power. Your womb will recover, although it may take months, even years, to do so.

I was crying now. Even if my womb did recover, it would not lessen the betrayal of what he had done.

Tirzah, if someone visits such pain on another person, then one day that pain will rebound on them. It is the price he will eventually have to pay. Tirzah, he could have killed you, he could have permanently crippled you, but he did not.