Threshold (3 page)

I could not bear the intensity of his eyes, and I dropped my gaze. “I
can
cage,” I whispered with the last of my courage.

“Look at me.”

I could not, and I felt my hands tremble.

“
Look at me!
”

Not only his voice but his power reached out, and my head was flung back so that my eyes stared into his.

“Did you learn to lie from your father, girl? Should I have him put to death alongside Kamish and you?”

I was saved from replying by Kamish himself. “Excellency!” He was back on hands and knees now, his face pressed so close to the tiles his voice was only just audible. “Excellency, they came with the best assurances. And I trust the slaver who sold them to me. Over the years he has provided us with some of the best –”

“
Shetzah!
” Gayomar exclaimed. “You have not
seen
them work? You waste our money on word alone?”

Kamish could only shake, and Boaz ignored him. “Caging is the provenance of master craftsmen alone,” he said. His eyes had not left mine for a moment. “It takes a lifetime of skill to perfect. You are…what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

“She is nineteen, My Lord.” Now my father spoke. I jumped, for I had forgotten his presence. “And she was born with the skills that usually only a lifetime of experience grants. Her delicacy of touch can free lacework from the inner walls of glass with only minimal struts. Her ear for the drill bit is phenomenal – I have never seen a piece of her work crack as she excavates.”

Gayomar stepped up behind Boaz and put a hand on the Magus’ shoulder. “The old man speaks as one who knows glass, Boaz. Perhaps…”

Boaz shifted his grey eyes to my father. “You have your tools with you?”

My father nodded.

Boaz smiled, thin and cold. “Then, Gayomar, we shall have ourselves an amusing afternoon. Kamish!” he called.

Kamish leapt to his feet.

“Kamish, there is a small table and a stool inside. Bring them out.”

Kamish stumbled as he hurried to do the Magus’ bidding. When he returned, Boaz wheeled away and disappeared momentarily. He reappeared carrying a lump of murky glass, roughly rectangular, the height of a forearm and the width of two palms. It was thick, thick enough to be caged, but to my dismay I heard it groan as Boaz set it roughly down on the table, and I saw that scores of tiny fracture lines ran through it.

It would prefer to die than be worked.

I looked frantically at my father, but the next moment Boaz seized my arm in tight fingers and dragged me to the table. I almost overbalanced, but managed to sit down on the stool.

“Cage!” he said and, grabbing my father’s tool sack, threw it on the table.

I halted its slide in the instant before it shattered the glass. An unwelcome memory of the vase I had dropped
surfaced, and I managed to quell it with only the most strenuous effort.

“It…it is bad glass, My Lord,” I murmured.

“Bad glass or not, it is the only thing you have to work with.
Cage it!
”

I took a deep breath, clenched my fingers to stop their trembling, then stared at the glass, trying to see what I could do with it. But all I could feel was the weight of the Magus’ eyes behind me.

I cleared my throat. “I will need oil. Something fine.”

Silence, then Gayomar spoke. “Kamish. There is a jug of linofer oil standing on the shelf by the inner door. And bring the cloth that is folded beside it. We do not want her to ruin the tabletop as well as the glass.”

There was rough amusement in that voice, and, deep within me, anger stirred.

I raised my head and twisted on the stool, staring Boaz in the eye. “What would you like me to cage?”

“Something that will save your life, your father’s life, and that of the foolish Kamish,” he replied, then stood back a pace, arms folded, waiting.

And so, with the slaves – now forgotten by all – the two Magi, the ashen-faced Kamish and my father watching on, I did what I could.

For some minutes I ran my hands over the glass, feeling it, feeling for its soft voice, wondering what it would permit and what it would not. It was rough, discarded glass, a greyish and cloudy blue. Thrown away because of the myriad tiny fractures and air bubbles it contained. To try and cage it…

I wondered what design would please the Magi, what design would save my life. I knew nothing of their culture, or of the patterns that they considered pleasant. Would one of the myths of Viland please them? No, I thought not.

I turned the glass over and over in my hands, listening as it finally spoke to me, and I made up my mind.

I set the glass to one side and opened the tool sack. I took out several pliers of differing sizes, a slender hammer, an even more slender chisel, a drill, two glass cutters, a wax marker and a small, pliable ball with a slender nozzle – this I half filled with linofer oil. It was not the best oil for glassworking, but it would do.

I took the wax marker and quickly sketched a design on the face of the rectangular glass, and then on its two narrower sides.

Boaz breathed deeply behind me, and I let myself relax slightly, relieved. This was an arid country, and the Lhyl River was the source of all life. Its culture, as Setkoth itself, was undoubtedly river-orientated, and thus I had sketched the outline of river reeds, two frogs clinging to them. It was a simple design, but pure and delightful because of it.

Using one of the glass cutters, I scored over the wax markings, cutting thin tracings into the glass. I was careful to only barely score the surface of this delicate and fractured glass, and when I was finished, and the wax wiped away, the score marks were visible only as lines of light running over the surface.

I breathed more easily now, and smiled, understanding the glass, knowing it would do its best for me.

“There is no vice here,” I said, and looked at my father. “I need someone to hold the glass as I drill it. Father, will you –”

“I will serve,” Boaz said, and Kamish scrambled to fetch another stool.

He sat down opposite me, taking the glass between his hands. My confidence faltering again, I hesitated, then moved his hands slightly so that the glass tilted away from me.

He made no comment at my hesitant touch, his eyes remained unblinking on my face.

With the drill I made two score of tiny holes across the surface of the glass, avoiding the fracture lines, and praying to the glass that it would tolerate my intrusion and not shatter. When this was done I drilled more deeply, using the linofer oil to soothe the shock of the drill’s penetration, listening to the song of the glass as the drill bit ever deeper, adding more oil whenever its song swerved towards harshness.

Then I took the hammer and chisel and tapped out the sections of glass that had been weakened by the drill holes. I held my breath as the glass closest to the most dangerous of the fault lines fell safely out, then I reached for the finest of the pliers, using them to chip and nibble at the outline of the reeds and frogs until the design stood out from the supporting glass.

I raised my eyes to Boaz.

By this stage he must have realised that I could work glass with the best craftsman, but it was still not enough. If the design now stood out from the glass, then I had to free it – create the cage.

Caging was traditionally reserved for round vessels. An outer design, called the lacework, was carved from a thick wall of glass, and then all but freed from the remaining smooth inner wall. Only a few, almost invisible struts would support the outer design – which then became, in effect, a cage of lace about the inner, plain wall of the vessel.

This was a free-standing block of flat glass, and faulted and sad. It would not cage well, if it would tolerate it at all. But I could do my best. I turned the glass in Boaz’s hands, so that it faced me almost sideways, then I picked up the drill again.

Use of the drill now was more than dangerous. Normally I would have worked at the glass patiently with chisel and pliers, forceps and soft words, but that process would take days if not weeks, and those I did not have.

Closing my eyes briefly I winged a prayer to the gods and a gentle lullaby to the glass, then I set to work.

The glass cried almost instantly, and I winced, but I soothed as best I could, and murmured to it, and pleaded with it, and finally it acquiesced. It was a brave glass, and tears came to my eyes at its courage.

These drill holes moved horizontally behind the outline of the reeds and the frogs, and, despite my best efforts, one or two cut directly through fault lines.

Laying the drill and oil bag to one side, I again picked up a pair of pliers, using one of the handles to tap at the glass.

Sections cracked, crumbled, and then slid to the table.

I took the glass completely into my hands now, cradling it against my breast, tapping, tapping, tapping, using both drill holes and fault lines to my advantage, murmuring wordlessly, soothing, reassuring.

There was utter silence about me, and I could feel the eyes of slaves and Magi alike riveted to my face or to my hands, but I did not care. There was only me and my glass and the growing mound of fragments and dust in my lap and on the table.

The cage was emerging now, and with it emerged the true hidden colour of the glass. Once grey and cloudy as an unwanted and discarded lump, the glass now shone a deep, vivid blue. Most of the air bubbles and the fracture lines had been chiselled out and, despite what I’d originally thought, the cage had been almost entirely freed from the inner wall.

“Let me see,” Boaz said, his voice peculiarly tight, but I shook my head, my eyes still on the glass wrapped in my arms and hands.

“No. Wait. Let me just…” Using the inner teeth of the finest of the pliers, I smoothed the rough edges as best I could. The glass should have been patiently sanded over many hours to hone it to its best, but in less than an
afternoon I knew I had created something wonderful from a glass that had thought itself fit only for grinding into spare chips.

Finally I took a deep breath, and inspected it. The intertwining reeds stood completely free from the inner wall of the glass. Two frogs leaped playfully among them, their back legs serving as struts to anchor the cage lacework to the supporting inner wall.

It was beautiful.

My hands shaking, I held it up for all to see.

The failing sunlight – how many hours had I been working? – caught and twinkled in the blue glass, and the reeds and frogs danced back and forth in the shimmering light.

Boaz stood up slowly, his stool scraping behind him, and lifted the glass from my hands.

“She has astounding talent,” Gayomar said in the language of Ashdod. “Astounding.”

Boaz’s face hardened. “Perhaps the glass…speaks…to her, Gayomar. Perhaps she is…Elemental.” His eyes slid over me, their power seeking, searching, and I dropped my gaze quickly, guiltily. Elemental? What was this?

“Well,” Boaz continued to Gayomar, “I can warn Ta’uz about her, but he will never listen to me. He thinks all Elementals were gone generations ago. Bah!
All
glassworkers should be watched. Ta’uz has ever been lax in that regard. If I were Master of Site…”

His fingers tightened about the glass. “What is your name, girl?” he asked, again using the common tongue.

I told him, and then said my father’s name.

Boaz regarded me steadily. “Your names are as heavy and cumbersome as your language. You belong to Ashdod and to the Magi now, and from henceforth will wear names that please us. Your name,” he indicated my father, “is Druse, a good worker’s name. And you,” he swung his eyes back to me, “shall be called Tirzah.”

Gayomar jerked with surprise, but did not speak.

I was not so reticent. I stood up, my eyes angry. “No! My name is –”

“
Your name is Tirzah!
” Boaz shouted. “Do you understand?”

I closed my mouth with a snap, but my eyes were no less angry and resentful.

“This glass is very beautiful,” he said, his eyes harder than I’d seen them yet, “and its beauty catches at the hearts of all who gaze upon it. But I own it as tightly as I own your soul, and it will do my bidding as will you. Do you understand?”

I was still silent, my entire body stiff and resentful.

His eyes dropped to the glass, and I thought I had bested him. His hands ran over it, and I could see how gentle their touch, how caressing their passing.

I relaxed. He thought it beautiful, and for its beauty, he would not deny me my name.

Then he hefted the glass in one hand, raised his eyes to mine, and opened his fingers.

The glass smashed into a thousand pieces on the tiles, and as I heard its death cry so I remembered the death scream of the vase I had dropped.

I hated Boaz at that moment, and knew I would take that hatred and stoke it and feed it until I could repay him a thousand times over for the humiliation of my slavery and my rape and the death agony of that brave glass.

“And so I will dispose of you, Tirzah, should the whim take me.
Do you understand?
”

“Yes, I understand, Excellency.”

K
AMISH
bundled us back through the garden. His relief in being left his life found outlet in his anger at us – particularly me, and by the time I clambered back into the river boat my arms were already darkening with livid bruises.

“Gesholme!” Kamish shouted at the river boat captain.

We huddled in the belly of the boat, out of the way of the oarsmen, my father’s arms wrapped protectively about me. He realised a little of what I felt, although not all, for he’d never heard the glass in the same manner I had. The other slaves regarded us silently, then Mayim, the other glassworker, reached out and gently touched my arm.

“That was wondrous,” he said. “I thought that glass was fractured beyond help, yet you still worked it into beauty. You must have magic in your fingers, Tirzah.”

I eyed him carefully, wondering at his choice of words, but then decided it was simple praise. Nothing else. I nodded, grateful, then cuddled a little closer to my father. Druse.

I thought of my new name – Tirzah. It was pretty, and rolled off the tongue with its own special music. But I would ever associate it with Boaz, and with my slavery.

One day I would cast it off.

But not now. Tonight all I wanted to do was cling as tightly as I could to my father, and close my eyes and pretend that none of this was happening.

Time passed, and I dozed.

I dimly realised we had left the confines of Setkoth, for the sounds of the city grew dim, and the smell of the river changed from rotting vegetable matter and human filth to that of the sweet cleanliness of open countryside and thick reed banks. The breeze grew cold, but my father was warm and there was a tarpaulin beneath our feet that our small group managed to wrap about us to keep out the worst of the night chills.

I wondered vaguely where this Gesholme was, and what it was, but the river was soothing, and I slipped deeper into sleep.

Hours later a shout woke me. The night was dark and still, and the boat’s crew had shipped their oars. There were shouts from the crew, and answering shouts from the bank as ropes were thrown and tied. The boat shuddered, then jerked as it bumped against its mooring. It was cold now, and I shivered in my thin cloths and wrapped my arms about myself.

“Get up!” Kamish shouted, and we struggled to our feet, straining our eyes in the darkness.

A settlement sprawled from the western river bank far to the west and south. It was tightly walled and closely gated, and guards watched atop towers and walkways.

A slave encampment, then.

To the north-west there appeared to be another compound, also walled, but with buildings too low to be seen from here.

Beyond that loomed a massive structure that ate at the darkness and the stars. I could not make out its exact shape or dimensions, but the cold deepened about me, and the bruises on my arms throbbed anew.

One of the crew leaned down to offer me his hand in alighting. He noticed the direction of my eyes, but kept his own carefully averted.

“Threshold,” he said.

A contingent of guards arrived from the compound to escort us inside the gates. Kamish gave them a small scroll, inscribed with our names and our abilities, then stepped back into the river boat.

“I wish you the best,” he cried as the crew pushed out into the current and slowly turned the boat about, yet I knew he wished us anything but, and I thought I saw a gleam of teeth as the oarsmen finally made way for Setkoth.

The walls of the compound were of sandstone and at least five paces wide and fifteen high, the gates of wood reinforced with metal bars and covered over with sun hardened mortar.

One of the guards atop the wall leaned down as we passed. “Welcome to Gesholme,” he called, and ghostly laughter followed us along the narrow street.

Regular blocks of tightly packed tenement buildings, some four or five storeys high, loomed to either side of us. An occasional light glinted behind their tightly shuttered doors and windows. Streets intersected the main way at regular intervals, and I realised that the encampment – Gesholme – was much larger than it had appeared from the river. Many thousands must live here.

The walls and close buildings let no breeze through, and the air was thick and humid. Where minutes previously I had pulled my wraps closer, now I loosened them about my neck, and slapped at the hundreds of small, biting insects that hovered about our group.

The lead guard called a halt. Another wall loomed before us, but with a smaller gate this time, and the two guards who stood by it were better uniformed than those who escorted us.

“New arrivals,” said our lead guard, and one of the men by the gate grunted, inspected us, then waved us through. Into a different world.

Here were no streets, but spacious avenues. The buildings were low, and sprawled comfortably. Pastel lights glinted, not only in windows but strung through date palms and across cool pools of water.

There were no biting insects here – none had come through the gate with us.

“The compound of the Magi,” said one of our guards. Then he smiled at the apprehension in all of our eyes. “It seems you’ve run up against them before. Well, here you’ll have to get used to their presence.”

We stopped while he went into a particularly fine building, surrounded by columned verandahs festooned with hanging, crimson- and purple-flowered vines. The sound of murmured voices came from within a dimly lit room, then the guard reappeared accompanied by two Magi.

Without prompting, the seven of us fell to our knees, while the guards bobbed their heads and saluted with their spears. “Excellencies!” they shouted.

“Excellencies!” we murmured in quick echo.

These two radiated the same power as Gayomar and Boaz had done, and were similarly dressed. Their black hair was also clubbed back into severe queues, and sharp eyes swept over us as vultures survey carrion for the most vulnerable flesh.

One dropped his eyes down to the scroll Kamish had given the guard. “From Boaz, no less,” he muttered, then grimaced and rolled his eyes as he read what followed. “Elemental? The man has been reading legends. But he sends three glassworkers, and that is good.” He raised his eyes. “Druse, Mayim and Tirzah. You will accompany me. My name is Ta’uz, and I am Master of this site. Do you understand?”

“We understand, Excellency.”

“Good. The other four,” he read out their names, “will accompany Edohm. Come.”

Rolling up the scroll with a snap he waved at my father, Mayim and myself. We scrambled to our feet and hurried after him.

I only ever caught glimpses of the other four slaves again, rare flashes of friendly faces within the walls of Threshold, and what happened to them in the end I know not.

Ta’uz led us back through the gate of the Magi’s compound, then turned sharp left, hurrying us towards a quarter in the northern part of Gesholme. Eventually he stopped outside one of the tenement buildings, and spoke to us. “Mayim, you will work in Izzali’s workshop. Druse, you and Tirzah will work in Isphet’s workshop. You may well see each other during the day, but at night men and women are quartered separately. Do you understand?”

“We understand, Excellency.”

“Good. This is Yaqob’s tenement, and this is where Druse and Mayim will live. You,” he waved at one of the guards, “wait here with the girl.”

The door of the tenement opened at a sharp knock from a guard, then Ta’uz, my father and Mayim, accompanied by five guards, disappeared inside. I wanted to wish my father goodnight – this was the first time we’d been separated in weeks – but I knew enough now to keep silent. I was content that we’d work together in the same workshop.

I glanced at the stars. By the gods! That would be in only a few short hours! I felt desperately tired, and wished more than anything else I could have a long night’s sleep in a bed that was anywhere but here.

The guard stood wary and silent, his eyes not leaving me for a moment, and I stared at the ground, shuffling
uncomfortably from foot to foot. I remembered Hadone, and shivered.

Ta’uz abruptly reappeared, guards in attendance, and the door of the tenement slammed shut behind him.

“Now you,” he said, and marched off ahead.

Surrounded by guards, I felt more alone than I ever had in my life.

He led me to another tenement, almost identical to the one where he’d left my father and Mayim, and ordered the guard to knock at the door.

There was no answer, save a soft scuffling inside, and Ta’uz stepped to the door himself, and delivered it a hard blow and a shouted command.

Steps sounded and the door opened a crack, then was flung wide as the person saw who waited outside.

I gasped. Even in this flickering torchlight, the one who opened the door was the most exquisite woman I’d ever seen. She was perhaps thirty or thirty-one, with shining black hair and almond-shaped dark eyes that were intelligent and all-knowing. Her face was as astounding in its strength as it was in its beauty.

“Yes?” she said.

Ta’uz held her stare, then cursed. “Did you think I would not know, Isphet?” he asked as he shouldered past her.

She turned to follow him, but at that moment one of the guards seized my arm, intending to drag me through as well. I cried out as his fingers bit into the bruises Kamish had given me, and Isphet turned back in my direction.

“Oh gods,” she whispered, “you have the most exquisitely bad timing, girl.”

We hurried into a room filled with blood and screams, and with birth and death. A woman lay on a pallet against a wall, her face drawn and damp, her robe patched with sweat and the fluids of birth. A tiny baby sprawled across
her belly, her stump of umbilical cord wobbling pathetically in the uncertain light.

Ta’uz leaned down and seized the baby; she squalled, and the mother screamed. Isphet stepped forward, her hand outstretched, but she halted as Ta’uz rounded on her, his face contorted with fury.

“Did you think to keep this hidden from me, Isphet? I knew she was breeding, and that she had not understood.
Nothing
here breeds save the One.
Nothing.
Is
that
understood?”

Isphet opened her mouth, her eyes fearful, but Ta’uz gave her no time to answer. In one shocking, vicious move, he swung the baby by her feet and smashed her skull against the wall.

Then he threw the broken body down on her mother’s belly.

“I will expect to see you at your post by the furnaces in the morning, Raguel,” he said to the mother, who was staring appalled at her dead infant. “And you can use this useless lump of flesh to stoke their fury.” He looked up, stared at Isphet, then shifted his gaze to me.

“Her name is Tirzah, Isphet. She works glass. She and her father, Druse, will join your workshop in the morning.” Then he strode out the door.

It slammed shut, and for a moment there was utter silence in the room.

My heart was thudding painfully, my throat dry, and I thought I would faint. I wished I could close my eyes and forget what I had just seen, but it was seared so painfully into my mind I knew it would give me nightmares for weeks.

Gods knew what nightmares the poor mother would suffer.

Why?

I felt a hard hand on my arm, and somewhere in my nightmare I wished people would stop punishing my bruises.

Isphet.

“Sit here in the corner, girl, and shut up.” And she shoved me down and left me.

That was unfair, for I had not made a sound since my arrival. But I sat silently anyway, grateful to be off my feet, and watched as Isphet and her companions tried their best to modify the horror.

Isphet was as blunt with the mother as she had been with me. “You were a fool, Raguel, and well you knew it. Ta’uz would never have let the baby live, and you can only thank the Soulenai…”

Soulenai?

“…he did not tear it from your womb while it yet grew. That would have killed
you
, as well.”

“
But he fathered her!
”

Isphet struck Raguel across the face, and the sound hid my own shocked gasp.

“Enough, Raguel! If you had listened to me in the first instance none of this would have occurred, and Ta’uz would have no reason to keep such close watch on my workshop. Now, because of your stupidity, we will have no opportunity to –”

Abruptly she remembered my presence, and she slid a careful eye my way. She hesitated, then turned back to Raguel and plucked the still body of her daughter from her hands, handing it to a woman in her mid-twenties.

“Kiath, take this and wrap it. Ta’uz was right enough when he said it would feed the flames.”

There was silence again, everyone staring at the body in Kiath’s hands.

“But not yet, I think,” Isphet finally finished. “We can make better use of this fuel on a day when the guards keep less close watch. Kiath, store the body in a tightly sealed jar. But wrap it tightly first so that its fluids will not seep through and reveal it to curious eyes. Saboa?” Isphet motioned to a girl about my own age. “Take these,” she
roughly pulled several stained cloths from beneath Raguel’s hips, causing the woman to cry out in pain, “and wrap them about a loaf of bread. We shall make much cry and sadness and toss it into the furnace in the morning, and no-one shall be any the wiser. You!”

I jumped. I wanted nothing more than to huddle in my corner and remain unnoticed.

“You…Tirzah? Come here and help me make Raguel comfortable. Come on. If you’re going to share my quarters and my workshop, then you might as well dirty your hands in this little disgrace as well. And bring that bowl of water with you.”

I dared linger no longer; I had no doubts that Isphet would physically haul me over if she thought I’d not make it on my own.

A large bowl of water was warming by a small brazier in the centre of the room. I took careful hold of it and walked over.

“Good,” Isphet muttered, not looking at me, then began to wash Raguel down. As she did so she talked in a soft, gentle voice, surprising me. “You are not to blame for this disaster, Tirzah. Ta’uz would have dealt this babe death at some point, even had we managed to hide the fact of the birth from him. Perhaps it was kinder this way, before Raguel had a chance to form too close a bond with her.”