Threshold (18 page)

He left me lying there for close on three hours; still, tense, terrified. He sat at the desk, his stylus scratching back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Every few minutes my eyes drooped closed, then I would open them wide, scared I would slip into sleep. That would have angered him more than anything else. It would have been a presumption.

Eventually he sat back, wiped then put away his stylus, rose, and extinguished the two lamps, leaving only faint moonlight to illuminate the room. He walked over to the bed and stood looking at me.

I didn’t know what to do. I had not covered myself, and I wondered if that was a mistake. But just as I was
about to reach for the sheet he turned aside and disrobed, hanging his clothes over the back of a chair.

He sat on the side of the bed, sighed, then rubbed his eyes with his hand. When he dropped his hand I could see that his face was very weary.

“I had to do it, Tirzah,” he said, and the coldness had gone from his voice. “I had to.”

“I know, Excellency,” I whispered.

He nodded, hesitated, then lay down beside me, but not touching me, as tense as I was. “Tirzah…”

Then he sighed again, and rolled over and gathered me into his arms.

I kept very silent, and kept my responses very passive, not wanting to do anything to frighten him. Yet even so, it was good.

Again I woke to stare into the eyes of the Magus. Distant, derisory. I tensed, waiting for the pain.

But it didn’t come. He handed me my robe. “Get dressed.”

I scrambled into it, then hesitated, unsure as Holdat entered and laid out a meal of bread, oil and cheese with a pitcher of goat’s milk.

Boaz sat down, then waved to me to sit and eat.

Every move I made I thought I’d drop something, clatter something else, and how I forced some of the bread down I don’t know. The milk was easier.

“I have decided that this union with the One through the use of a woman’s body does have some merit,” he said.

In the present tension that was almost too much, and despite the danger sliding about the room I had to bite my lip to keep from giggling inanely. Some merit, indeed. Well, I suppose the Magus had to justify himself however he thought appropriate. I dropped my eyes to the plate. “Yes, Excellency,” I mumbled.

“I have decided to explore it further.”

I looked up, wondering what he was leading to. He was looking at me very carefully, and I realised that he was as unsure of himself as he was of me.

“But I cannot keep Kiamet scrambling about Gesholme every time I need to find you.”

I took a deep, unbelieving breath.

“So I have decided that you will move into these quarters. There is a small closet at the rear that you will inhabit whenever I have no use for you.”

I let my breath out slowly. “Yes, Excellency.” I doubted I would ever see the inside of this “closet”.

“Apart from the capstone, the caging work is almost complete, and the six other cagers can do that. I think I will keep you at work here. There are several other Geshardi treatises that I would like translated.”

“Yes, Excellency.” Emotion soared through me, but I kept my face bland and submissive. The Magus would never have allowed this, never. Were the Soulenai right?
Did
he want me to help him?

“Do you have any questions?”

“Excellency, I have some small items that I will need from my quarters, and there is something I would like to collect from Isphet’s workshop.”

“Slaves have no possessions, Tirzah.”

I dropped my eyes, unsure again.

“But you may go. Be back here by mid-morning.”

“Thank you, Excellency.” I rose, bowed, and walked outside, trying to keep my gait from springing with hope. He had shown me something of his true self again last night, had shown some regret for his actions, and yet this morning the Magus had not felt it necessary to exact retribution for my witnessing of such fragility. In fact, for a Magus, he had been quite pleasant.

And to share his quarters!
No
Magus ever did that with a woman!

I wondered, hoped, if the man so long denied was sliding closer and closer to the surface. If one day the Magus would dare to let him free.

As I passed Kiamet I smiled and winked, and then laughed at his shocked face.

I sat at the translation for most of the afternoon. It was an even drier treatise than previously – is any given line composed of a finite or an infinite number of dots? – but I sat happily, and the hours flew by.

Boaz spent the entire day at Threshold. Holdat brought me a light meal after noon, and I thanked him, and he looked surprised at that, but managed to return the smile before he left.

I hummed a little as I worked. All within the workshop were stunned by the news I was to move into Boaz’s quarters. My father had hugged me, and told me to be careful. Isphet had been quiet, and Yaqob’s eyes had darkened into unreadability, but both had thought this a good opportunity for them. Surely I would find out something of use.

And so here I was, and I hoped it would end well. I would live life on a dangerous blade-edge, ever careful not to provoke the Magus, but ever hopeful that he would relax more and more until I would spend most of the time with that man who had shown me his father’s book.

I thought I would like that very much.

There was a step at the door, and I turned about – careful with my movement.

Boaz. He removed his outer robe, then asked how the translation went. He felt no need for harsh words.

“Excellency, it is going well.”

“And do you find it fascinating, Tirzah?”

“Ah, Excellency, it is a truly astounding piece of work.”

“Really, Tirzah? Then I must have given you the wrong treatise to translate.”

My eyes flew to his, but they were blank, and his face was devoid of humour. I looked back at the desk.

“You may sit on the verandah, Tirzah, or stroll the gardens, until Holdat brings the meal.”

“I thank you, Excellency.”

I returned from the verandah when I saw Holdat approach with his covered tray, and this time he was the first to smile. But I noticed he wiped it from his face before he stepped inside.

The meal passed silently. Boaz served me himself, and that gave me the courage for what I had to do. There would be no good time, only a worse than usual time, and this was not one of those.

After Holdat had removed the remains of the meal, Boaz waved me to the chairs by the window. On the way I lifted a bundle from a shadowy space among the papyri rolls on the shelves that ran the length of one wall.

He saw, and tensed.

I dropped to my knees before him and bowed my head. “Excellency, forgive my forwardness.”

“You should know better, Tirzah.”

But his voice was tight rather than angry, and I looked up. “Excellency. I know that on many occasions I have angered you when you have only tried to teach me what is right, and for that, I crave your pardon. Excellency, I have learned so much from you that I find it hard to express my gratitude. I have not the words for it, but perhaps this will demonstrate something of what I feel.”

And I held the bundle out for him.

I think he accepted it only because my hands shook as I held it out, and he could see the fear burn bright in my eyes.

I
was
afraid, because what I gave him now presumed so much that he might well retreat into a fury that could kill me.

My heart thudded as he slowly unwrapped the cloths, then they fell free, and he turned the Goblet of the Frogs over in his hands.

His eyes were downcast, and I could not read them, so I looked back to the goblet. For me it sang, and I wondered whether Boaz could hear it, too. I could almost see the frogs move; I could almost hear the Soulenai hold their collective breath.

Boaz took its weight in one hand, then held it up so that the amber glass sparkled in the light.

He was going to dash it to the floor!

“I dropped the other one,” he said quietly.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“And I have every right to do so with this one.”

“Yes, Excellency. Slaves own nothing.”

He tormented me for a moment more, then finally lowered it, and I (as the Soulenai) let out my breath. Again he rolled it between his hands, studying it intently. “Why the frogs, Tirzah? They are ugly brutes to decorate a goblet with.”

“Their song is comforting, Excellency. It is the first sound I wake to, and the last I hear at night.”

“But now
my
voice will be the sound you will sleep and wake to, Tirzah!”

“Yes, Excellency. Please, I do beg your –”

“Oh, be quiet,” he said, “and take this ugly piece of glass and put it back on the shelf where it won’t irritate my sight.”

“Yes, Excellency. Thank you, Excellency.”

And so a month passed. Boaz never revealed himself to the extent he had that night he’d had me read from the Book of the Soulenai, but neither did he revert to the hateful man who’d torn me apart the following morning. I think that I had earned some measure of his trust, for he could find no way in which I’d taken advantage of that moment of
abhorrent weakness I’d witnessed. But he could still remain cold and distant with me for days on end. Then I would silently continue at whatever translation he gave me, and I learned his habits so that I could anticipate his every need. Gradually he would warm back into disinterest and occasional rebuke.

As I suspected, I was never banished to the closet (in reality a small store room at the rear of his house). He let me roam about his residence as much as I liked, as in the gardens close by. The room I knew so well was the main chamber of the house. Several smaller rooms ran off it, and they contained nothing of interest. But at the back of the house lay something I had never suspected – a charming bathing house. It was verandahed like the house, and was protected by the wall, and in the evenings Boaz would ask me to bathe with him in the great, square bathing pool. It was tiled in such vivid emerald glass that the water glowed as if lit from beneath, and the water was delightful after the heat of the day. No-one else used the pool, and we had complete privacy. Often I dived down to the bottom of the pool to lay my hands and cheek against the glass, feeling its cool joy, until Boaz would dive to fetch me.

But it was at night, in the darkness and intimacy of the bed, that he let me get closest to him, in both emotional and physical senses. Sometimes he would lie and talk for hours, very quietly, telling me stories of the court. Never personal, never dangerous, but stories that showed me glimpses of the man he truly was.

I never asked him questions. Nor did I ever call him Boaz.

Sometimes he would ask me to tell him of life in Viland. As I spoke, he would roll closer to me and fold me in his arms, and I would lay my head on his chest and fight to keep my voice expressionless. He never asked me questions about Geshardi, but on these nights he would always make love to me with such sweetness and
tenderness I would sometimes cry afterwards, and this he did not seem to mind very much at all.

On the mornings after this sweetness and tenderness he would be terse and cold, and I had to be extremely careful. He would eventually relax, sometimes over a day, sometimes taking two or three. But relax he would.

On occasion it was the chilling Magus who lay down beside me, but he would roll over and go straight to sleep, pretending I did not exist. He never “used” me, he never “communed” with the One through me. The Magus never laid a finger on me.

And the Goblet of the Frogs stayed on the shelves. I never saw him handle it, or even look at it, but he did not break it – and I noticed that it collected no dust.

He occasionally allowed me to visit Isphet. Sometimes he insisted Kiamet accompany me, sometimes he asked Holdat to go with me. Rarely was I allowed to go back to Isphet’s workshop or her quarters alone, and generally only when Boaz knew Yaqob would be busy at Threshold.

Either he still distrusted Yaqob, or he was jealous of him. I realised that I hoped it was the latter.

One day a week Boaz made me accompany him on his inspections of Threshold. Only the gods know what everyone thought about the Magus dragging his mistress through the site after him, but they kept their eyes downcast and their faces respectful. On these tours Boaz was always very distant, sometimes to the point of spitefulness. It hurt, until I realised that he only ever relaxed with me in the privacy and safety of his residence (his safe residence), and he was unlikely to present anything other than his Magus-face to me, or to anyone else, where Threshold could see.

By the end of the month the plating on the northern face had begun. Isphet told me that Orteas and Zeldon were busy with the plates for the capstone, as were those workers in Izzali’s workshop. The Infinity Chamber had
been completed, and now no-one was allowed in there save the Magi.

Almost finished, Threshold was changing, and I did not know what to do about it.

The exterior blue-green remained unchanged, and the last time anyone had seen the Infinity Chamber it had still been golden, but the rest of Threshold’s internal spaces were turning into slippery glazed black. Any tools left inside overnight were stone in the morning.

None of the Magi seemed concerned, and Boaz always appeared delighted with the progress.

“It’s even better than I’d dreamed,” he had said on that day he’d first seen the black corridor and the five, blackened bodies. “Far more powerful. Far more.”

And while Boaz gradually relaxed with me, he never hid his delight in Threshold. I wondered one evening, as he and another Magus sat laughing and drinking on the verandah, if he would ever be able to let go his addiction to the power that was Threshold.

If, finally, the lure of the threshold would be too great.

I
WAS
tidying the desk when first I noticed it. Several other Magi had spent some hours here the night before (I’d sat quietly in a corner, rising only to serve wine as it was needed), talking to Boaz about the final date for the completion of Threshold, and passing about several papyri rolls and bundles. Eventually Boaz had sent me to stroll the gardens for an hour or two as they discussed more private business, and when I’d returned the Magi had gone and Boaz was asleep in bed.

It was a scrap of papyrus paper only, and I might have put it to one side had not the word “weapon” leapt out at me.

My heart beat faster. This was no idle notation regarding mathematics or geometry.

Almost instantly I dropped it, whipping my head up, certain I would see Boaz standing in a doorway or window, watching me.

But I was alone. Boaz was at Threshold, Kiamet with him. Even Holdat was busy elsewhere in the compound.

I picked the paper up again and read, my heartbeat now scudding painfully fast.

I knew Boaz had frustrated Yaqob time and time again; first by ordering the search that had discovered the blades
Yaqob and his fellow plotters had built up over many months, then by constantly moving the soldiers’ various weapon caches about the site.

What I had here was the location of a temporary site. Over two hundred lances, five hundred swords, and a hundred pikes were being moved there today and stored for a week only before they’d be moved somewhere else.

I put the paper down, shaking.

It was not a particularly large cache, but that in itself was tempting. I knew Yaqob and Azam only wanted to know the sites of the caches so that on the day they rose against the Magi they could seize the weapons. It was a risky plan. Yet here was a cache of weapons that if seized now could be hidden about Gesholme. One or two swords here, a pike or a lance there. In a search many might be found, but many others would not.

I looked at the location again. It would be so easy for them. Perhaps only one or two guards to dispose of, and two dozen men could spirit the weapons away in a few minutes.

And, oh! They’d be so useful. It would mean the difference between an uprising doomed to failure and one that might just succeed.

“Yaqob,” I breathed, and stumbled back to the bed.

What should I do?
This
was what Yaqob had thought I might find all along.
This
was the information he’d wanted.

And
this
was exactly how Boaz might set out to trap me. He was a careful man, so very careful. He would never leave information like this lying about.

Yet it was only a scrap, as if it had fallen unnoticed from a sheaf of papers. And there
had
been a large number of papers passed about last night.

“Yaqob,” I whispered again, and rested my head in my hands, thinking.

Was there still enough of the Magus in Boaz to try to trap me like this? Yes. But what if it wasn’t a trap, what if I
did
tell Yaqob, and he succeeded in his uprising because of
it? Would I betray Boaz by revealing the location of the weapons? Or would I betray Yaqob by remaining silent? I didn’t know what to do. It was like trying to outmanoeuvre a viper. Either way and it would strike.

They had a week. I could think about it for a day or two, then tell them. Watch Boaz, see if he watched me more than usual.

The more immediate problem was what to do with the scrap of paper itself. In the end I burned it. If Boaz
didn’t
know about it, then he wouldn’t miss it. If he
did
know it was there, then he would expect me to burn it anyway.

“Damn you, Boaz,” I muttered as I watched it burn to untraceable ashes. “Damn you whether you planted it or lost it!”

I disposed of the ashes, then went about my usual routine, and watched Boaz as closely as I could without raising suspicion.

But he gave me few clues. The only one, if clue it was, came on the third day of the week when he gave me permission to visit Isphet’s workshop unescorted. I was somehow not surprised to find Yaqob there.

“Tirzah!” He took my hand, and smiled, but made no move to kiss me. “You look, well, pampered.”

I coloured. Boaz was growing bored with the white garment I wore each day, and so I now had several dresses, of varying degrees of richness but of the same cut and fashion as the white sheath. Today I wore a lemon-coloured affair with dark green and red patterns about the hem and breast, hanging from a red- and gold-beaded collar. My skin glowed with over a month of good eating and a comfortable bed. I had discovered a new kohl of light grey which complimented the blue of my eyes. I looked like a woman content with her lot.

That was, I suppose, a mistake. I should have turned down the corners of my mouth and reddened my eyes before I let Yaqob see me.

“
He
does not ‘hurt’ you then, I see,” he said flatly, and I winced.

“Yaqob, please…”

“Tirzah.” Now Isphet stepped up and kissed my cheek. “What news?”

“Oh, I grow bored with my –” By the Soulenai themselves, I almost said “translating”, and then thought, did they
know
? Holdat was a slave himself and had contacts outside the compound of the Magi; even the guard may well have gossiped. “Ah, I grow bored with my life of enforced idleness, Isphet. I long to be back here with you.”

I hoped they would not read the lie in my face. I enjoyed their company, and I liked to visit, but I was also growing accustomed to the little luxuries of life with Boaz.

As I was growing accustomed to Boaz himself. Even his distant Magus persona. I was, I realised, settling into life with him. If I had to, it was going to be very, very hard to let go.

“I hope,” Isphet said rather carefully, “that you do not grow so accustomed to your life of idleness you have forgotten what it was like to live and work the life of a slave?”

“And,” Yaqob said, fingering the fine cloth of my dress, “you have not forgotten what it is that we all strive for.”

“Freedom,” I said in a small voice.

He nodded. “Tell us.”

“Oh, Yaqob, there is not much to tell. We rise every morning, Boaz goes off to Threshold, I dust and doze until he comes back, we eat, we go to bed.” I gave a shaky laugh. “I might be the wife of any boring citizen were it not for the robes and the manner of a Magus that Boaz wears.”

Yaqob and Isphet looked at each other.

I took refuge in anger. “He tells me nothing! He does not trust me! Would you prefer that he beat me, hurt me as he did that one morning, than leave me in relative peace?
Do you think to distrust me because I seek only to please him and humour him? Do you –”

“
Hush
,” Isphet said, and looked ashamed, which only made me feel worse. “I’m sorry, Tirzah. It must be hard for you.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know if this is of any use or not…”

“Yes?” Both Isphet and Yaqob leaned forward.

“Boaz and his fellows have been discussing the date for completion of Threshold. There’s to be a Consecration Day.”

“When?”

“Eight weeks from last fifth-day. A big ceremony. They were
very
specific about the date. It’s important for some reason. I think Boaz has been so jumpy over past months because he thought Threshold might not be ready in time.”

“Thank you, Tirzah,” Yaqob said. “That might well prove to be useful. Eight weeks. We don’t have much time. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

On the way back to Boaz’s,
our
, residence I tried to justify my silence. I was only protecting Yaqob. If it was a trap, then he would die. But even if it wasn’t, well, it would be a mission fraught with danger, and many might well lose their lives. Kiamet might be stationed there that night (although he’d not been moved from his post in months), and he had treated me with such kindness I’d not like to see him hurt. Yaqob might seize a weapon and do something foolish.

Like try to kill Boaz. I shuddered and hurried inside.

Five days passed.

It was very late one evening. Boaz had been genial if not exactly friendly all day, and I had great expectations for the night.

“Excellency, how does that feel?”

We were on the bed, Boaz lying naked on his stomach, me, also naked, kneeling beside him. I was slowly rubbing oil into the muscles of his back and legs. I don’t know who was receiving more enjoyment from it, Boaz or me.

He murmured contentedly.

“Have I missed a patch, Excellency?”

“No.” He rolled over. “Put the phial down, Tirzah.”

I smiled and did as he asked, waiting for him to reach for me. But he didn’t.

“Tirzah,” he said. “I have had a worrying week.”

“Excellency?”

“It seems I have misplaced a most important piece of papyrus.”

My smile froze to my face.

“It contained information that, had it reached certain slaves, would have caused great trouble.”

“Excellency, I don’t know what you mean.”

“No, Tirzah, I think that you do. Tell me.”

I fought for time to think, turning a corner of linen over and over in my hands. He
knew.
But should I confess? Or continue to pretend ignorance?

“Excellency,” my voice was very low, but I looked him in the eye. “I burned the paper. I realised its danger.”

“Why didn’t you just give it back to me, Tirzah?”

“I panicked, Excellency. I thought that if you knew I’d seen it, then you might think I might pass the information back to…”

Oh gods, trying to watch every phrase I spoke throughout the day was a trial I could do without!

“To who, Tirzah? To Yaqob?”

“To any who might betray you,” I said softly.

He seized my wrist. “I needed to know if you would betray me.”

I was furious that he had again set out to entrap me…but at the same time I realised I had passed a crucial
test. He could never have known if I owed my true loyalty to him or to Yaqob. Now I had shown my hand, and perhaps now he would trust me more.

“Do you still lie with him, Tirzah?”

“Not since you first summoned me to your residence, Excellency.”

“Good,” and he pulled me down to him. “Very good.”

And I had a feeling that I had passed two tests that night.