Threshold (46 page)

Tirzah! Tirzah! Hurry!

The frogs roared, and I thought I saw Fetizza rear up on her hind legs and scream.

“Tirzah! Tirzah! Hurry!”

“Boaz!” I shouted, “
Boaz!
” I pushed down with the pole, grunting with the effort, and then again. And, oh gods, again. I could see nothing but the thick reeds and the clinging mist…then there was a gap, a space of clear water tinged with the redness of dawn light and…

…the punt wobbled and tipped, and the frogs jumped up and down in a frenzy then sideways into the water. Fetizza bounced about excitedly, and the punt lurched from side to side. I clung on frantically, but it was too late, the punt was rocking wildly, and the pain in my body was too great, I couldn’t fight everything at once.

I fell into the water with a huge splash, tumbling deeper and deeper until I felt my hands and face press into the soft mud. I fought to the surface, fighting not to open my mouth and gasp at the pain that rocketed through me, fighting, fighting, fighting…

Strong hands grasped me and my head broke the surface. I heaved in great gulps of air, trying to call out his name, trying to clear the mud from my eyes, then he pushed me beneath the water again, impatient hands clearing mud from my face, and then, then I was free and splashing and spluttering through the water trying to find him again and…

…and millions of screaming Juit birds launched themselves into the air, their shrill cries and the throb of their wings filling the sky and my soul. The mist had cleared, and the world was shifting pink and red against a dawn sky, and I blinked, and blinked, searching frantically, and then there he was, his hands reaching out for me.

I clung tight with arms and legs, and we sank below the water again, and when we finally broke the surface he grabbed hold of the side of the punt and laughed.

“Why try to drown me, Tirzah, when you have only just found me?”

One hand on the punt, the other arm about me, Boaz leaned over to kiss my mouth, but I was sobbing too freely, and he could only hold me close and kiss my forehead and cheek and eyes and nose.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I don’t know who said this, Boaz, me, or the frogs, or perhaps all of us.

I calmed down eventually, and seized his face between my hands and stared at him.

“Boaz.”

He finally managed to kiss me, and then, as if for the first time, realised the mound of my belly.

“Tirzah! The baby! Oh, thank the
gods
, you kept the baby!”

“It’s not – ?”

“No, no!” He grabbed me tight. “Nzame wallows lost in Infinity. The baby is safe. I thought you would…oh gods, Tirzah, thank you for not listening to me…
Tirzah!
”

I had gasped with pain, and it was worse than ever. “Boaz, this baby demands to be born.”

“What!”

“Here, now…
ah!
”

“I don’t know anything about delivering a baby!”

“Then you’re about to add to your store of knowledge, Boaz.
Get me into that punt! NOW!
”

He heaved me over the side of the punt and I rolled into it, hoping all the frogs had escaped. I squeezed my eyes shut as another contraction racked me, then opened them to see Fetizza staring curiously from the far end.

Boaz climbed into the punt, almost falling out again as it rocked to and fro.

“Tirzah, I don’t know how –”

“Boaz,” I ground out between my teeth, “if you can survive Infinity you can survive the birth of your child. You are going to deliver this child, and you are – Oh…
gods!
– going to do it –
now!
”

Boaz shot one frantic look at Fetizza –

“
Boaz!
”

– then bent down to me. “Tell me what to do, curse it, tell me what to do!”

He did magnificently, as did I. For a first birth the child issued forth with blessed brevity, rushing its way into a dawn that rang with the cries of the Juit birds and sparkled with the curious eyes of the frogs. We were very close to the Place Beyond, and through my pain and the sweat that ran into my eyes I saw the Soulenai standing about the punt, their mouths and eyes opened in astonishment.

A baby! A baby! A baby!

I think it had been a very long time since any of them had seen, let alone participated in, a birth.

Boaz lifted the baby, as astounded as the Soulenai, stared at her, then stared at me.

The expression on his face was the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

I struggled up onto an elbow. “Tie the cord with a strip from my robe, Boaz. There, yes, and there too. Now bite.”

He paled, opened his mouth to object, then bit down on the cord.

He placed the baby very gently into my arms, leaning down to kiss me.

“A daughter, Tirzah.”

“Yes.” She gazed at me with deep blue eyes.

“Boaz, will you name her?”

He looked at me, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and worry, more lines about his eyes and mouth than I remembered, and so dear I thought I would embarrass myself before all the spectral Soulenai and burst into tears again.

He smiled, very slow, very tender. “I shall give her your name.” He paused. “Ysgrave.”

I drew a deep breath. Ysgrave. The name he had taken from me the day we met.

Ysgrave,
the Soulenai whispered.
Ysgrave.

Ysgrave,
and an insubstantial hand drifted over my shoulder and touched the girl’s forehead in blessing.

Avaldamon. He kissed my cheek, and I was surprised to find his touch warm, and then he lifted his hand to Boaz.

Boaz. You have surprised us. We did not realise the Song of the Frogs could be so manipulated. We could not understand why you refused to join us, why you refused to talk to us. I think we needlessly worried Tirzah.

“I wish I could have told both you and Tirzah what was happening,” Boaz said. “But I was trapped in these borderlands, lost, and I could only call to Tirzah, call to her to fetch me.”

“Fetizza sang,” I said, and smiled fondly at the frog. “When I was too exhausted, the frogs brought me to you.”

Avaldamon drifted away.
We cannot stay here. The sun crests the reeds. We cannot stay…but come back! Come back! Come back!

Boaz lay down beside me and we rested a while, sometimes talking, sometimes touching, but mostly just lying, sharing life and love.

Eventually I roused, and asked Boaz to assist me wash myself and our daughter, and then I told him to make himself truly useful and pole us back to the river and the Juit house.

H
OLDAT
and Kiamet, stunned but with tears of joy in their eyes, stood back and let Boaz and me step onto the verandah of the house. Boaz paused, showing them our daughter.

The guards, awakened from their magical sleep, eyed me curiously.

What should they do now?

Before they could make up their minds, I stepped inside.

I know I must have looked dreadful. My robe was tattered and stained, and still wet. My hair hung lank to my hips and probably had water weed tangled through it.

And I was very obviously no longer pregnant.

Isphet stepped forward, her face strained and deeply upset. “Tirzah, what have you done?” she whispered. “Tirzah, please, don’t torture yourself like this. You can’t hide the baby forever. Give it up now.”

Behind her, Zabrze and Layla frowned, puzzled at her words.

“I have no intention of hiding my daughter, Isphet. She is far too beautiful.”

And Boaz walked through the door with our daughter cradled in his arms.

I think I shall treasure the look on Isphet’s face forever.

“Her name is Ysgrave,” Boaz said very softly, his eyes on Isphet, “and she is not what you think. Nzame is gone. This baby will harm no-one.”

Isphet put her hands to her face and burst into tears, and then Zabrze stepped past her and embraced his brother.

I slept that day through, Boaz beside me, our daughter between us, then in the evening we all sat on the verandah and watched the Juit birds return in a disordered, bright, bloodied cloud to roost in the reed banks. The baby suckled at my breast, and everything was very well in this world.

“Explain,” Isphet said softly, and Boaz did.

“Nzame had taken advantage of the bridge the Magi – we – had created from the Vale to step into Threshold. He was peculiarly tied to the power of the One and Threshold, although had he been allowed to stay and grow he would have eventually freed himself from Threshold’s restraints.”

I thought of the dreams Nzame had used to touch Boaz and me, and perhaps many others. If he had this ability while tied to Threshold then I dreaded to think what he could have accomplished free.

“He was tied by the One, and he could be trapped by its power. What I did was use the One to seize him, bind him, merge with him, and then activate the Infinity Chamber so that I could drag him through into Infinity.”

Boaz paused. He had used few words for what must have been a hideous battle, but the pallor of his face and the faint tremor in his fingers betrayed the horror of the memory.

“Infinity.” He stopped, and his eyes were very far from us.

“What was it like, brother?”

Boaz roused himself. “It was nothingness, yet it was everything. We have developed language to suit the world and the reality in which we live. It cannot hope to explain what I found there.”

“You were there for weeks,” I said. “We thought you lost.”

“Weeks? I suppose I was.” He smiled at me. “Else you have used your skills at necromancy to grow that girl very quickly. Yes, well. Weeks. I did not realise it was that long. Time has no meaning, no dimension in Infinity. I explored, examined. I wish…”

He did not have to finish. If it had not been for me, Boaz would never have come back. But what he had discovered had changed him; I could see his new-found knowledge eddying about the shadows of his eyes.

“While in Infinity I realised that the Song of the Frogs – the formula that can transport a person into the Place Beyond – had subtle nuances that I might be able to manipulate so that I journeyed only as far as the borders of the Place Beyond, no further. The borderlands are dangerous, though, and I did not know if I would be forever trapped there, or if I could eventually escape. But I thought it worth the risk. I wanted to come home.”

My eyes filled with tears at that simple statement.

“And so I sang the Song, and as I transported – almost into the Place Beyond – I had to use all my strength and skill to halt at its borders. The Soulenai did not know what was wrong, they wanted me to come through…but I thought…I thought that I still had a chance to come home.”

He paused and took a deep breath. “But I could not move, not of my own volition. The Song had done its work and dissipated. I will never be able to use it again. I could not even move completely through into the Place Beyond had I wanted to. Trapped, trapped in the borderlands.”

Boaz lifted my hand. “Trapped, waiting for you to save me. The bond between us has been forged by pain and fear, and cemented by love, trust and power. It drew us together when we were separated by vast distances of space and dimension.” He paused. “But that bond also contains something else, something I cannot quite explain.”

“The frogs,” I said.

“Yes, the frogs. I don’t think any of us yet appreciate the power and the mystery of the frogs. Tirzah and I share a bond, not only with each other, but with the frogs.”

“And in the end it was the frogs that enabled me to reach you.” I explained to the others how the frogs had sung when I’d been lost and too exhausted to go on. “I was so close to Boaz, but could not get to him. The frogs completed my journey.”

We were silent for a very long time. Ysgrave slept warm and safe by my breast, and Boaz’s hand rested on my shoulder. Isphet and Zabrze sat as close as Boaz and I, and the dog was curled at Layla’s feet. Across the table Kiamet and Holdat were sharing a jug of wine, listening and watching.

The Juit birds had settled for the night, and the frogs choralled among the reeds.

“Zabrze,” Boaz said, “you do not need me in Setkoth. Tirzah and I will stay here for some time. Rest. Think. Study. Listen to what the frogs tell us. Explore the marsh.”

“Don’t get lost,” Zabrze said sharply. “I – none of us – want to lose either of you again.”

“No,” Boaz said, and his hand tightened a little on my shoulder, “I don’t think that we will.”

“And Infinity?” Zabrze asked. “Will you ever go back there?”

“No. Whatever else you do in Setkoth, Zabrze, you must discourage any resurrection of interest in the Infinity formula. Nzame is not destroyed, merely trapped in Infinity. Who knows what he will learn there over the ages.

I want no more bridges built into Infinity, because the moment one is completed, I fear Nzame will rush straight back across it. Darker than ever before.”

“Then I shall burn the libraries of the Magi,” Zabrze said. “Remove every trace of them.”

“Good.”

Zabrze leaned forward. “Boaz. Tell me what to do with Threshold.”

“Remove the plate glass from the outside. Melt it down and sell it as bead necklets – the En-Dorians will love them. Strip the Infinity Chamber of the golden glass, and melt it. Bury it. Do the same with the capstone. Then block up every shaft and entranceway so that
no-one
can ever find their way inside again.”

“You do not want to pull the entire structure down?”

“No. It has taken eight generations to build, and would take two or three to pull down. More would die in the process, and I do not think I could stand that. No. Fill the shafts and corridors with stone and block up all the entrances. Then leave the sand to drift over the stone and the memories. Leave Threshold for future millennia to puzzle over – but leave them no trace of its secret.”