Threshold (7 page)

Her voice drifted into silence, then she shook herself and continued. “Among the other workers in Gesholme, the ranks of the metalworkers, as you would expect, and those few gemworkers in Gesholme have Elementals among them who still listen to the voices of the elements and the Soulenai as they craft. But of them Yaqob will speak later.

“Ashdod was a wondrous land when many could hear the elements, when the Soulenai were able to speak and laugh as they desired, and when we still had the great Necromancers to work their wonders for us. The people of Ashdod would consult with the Necromancers and the Soulenai for advice, or to beg their favour and intervention in our lives. We did not worship the Soulenai as gods, but we learned to respect them and to accept the advice and aid they were willing to offer. The crafts flourished, for it was among the crafts that Elemental magic was at its strongest.

“So Ashdod society existed for hundreds of years. But then came a change. The higher caste of Ashdod society
has ever been inclined to the philosophical arts and less inclined to listen to the voices of the Soulenai.” Isphet shrugged slightly. “In that sense, Elemental magic has always been strongest among the lower castes rather than the nobility. Anyway, over generations there grew among the nobility a taste for mathematics, and eventually this taste solidified into a caste. Men only, for they claimed that women did not have the agility of mind to embrace the myriad complexities of numbers and forms. As I told you on your first night, Tirzah, the Magi, as these mathematicians came to be known to distinguish them from the Elemental Necromancers, command power through contemplation of the One, and of all numbers and forms that the One generates.

“Gradually their power and influence increased. The Magi loathed the magic of the Elementals, because they said it was unpredictable, reliant on chance and the whims of the Soulenai.
Their
magic, they claimed,” and Isphet’s voice became hard and brittle, “was powerful because of its very predictableness and because, once its rules and parameters were understood, it could be manipulated to the Magi’s needs. They work their magic according to set
rules
! Tables! Parameters! Can you imagine that?

“Their influence over the nobility and the monarchy increased, and eight or nine generations ago they moved against us, moved to destroy Elemental magic. Life became ordered – you have seen fields and gardens locked into rigid geometric shapes, the length and angle of their borders carefully defined according to the Magi’s dictates – and any Elementals caught practising their arts were put to death.

“Tirzah,
never
let the Magi know you can hear the glass sing to you, for they would kill you on the spot.”

I nodded.

“And so,” Isphet waved one hand about, “we practise in secret as best we can. Most Magi believe that all
Elementals have been exterminated, but even so, we must be wary. If any really suspected…”

I thought of the Magus Boaz –
he
still believed the Elementals existed, and suspected me of the art. I closed my eyes briefly, thankful he was in Setkoth rather than here, then wondered if I should say something. But as I opened my eyes and prepared to speak, Isphet continued.

“Now, I want to tell you what I can about Threshold. Much of this is supposedly secret, confined to Magi circles, but we have gleaned it over many years, from indiscreet words and whispers and from what we have seen about us; the Magi are not always as inscrutable as they believe. Eight generations ago a cadre within the Magi conceived of a mathematical formula so perfect, yet so powerful in its perfection, that many among the Magi argued it should be allowed to fall into distant memory. Nevertheless, those in favour won out. The formula consisted – consists – in constructing a building that physically embodies the perfect mathematical–geometrical form.”

“Threshold,” I said.

“Yes, Threshold. For generations its construction has consumed Ashdod, and consumed us. Gesholme grew alongside Threshold to house the workers needed to build it. The encampment was once much larger, when tens of thousands were needed for the major construction work; what you see about you now is about a third of its previous size. Once the workers were free and paid for their labour. No more. All of us in this room, save you and I, Tirzah, were born into slavery.

“Threshold’s purpose – the purpose of the formula – is not exactly clear to us, but some of it we can guess. The heart of Threshold is the Infinity Chamber.” Now Isphet looked carefully at me. “The One.”

I must have looked confused, for Isphet immediately explained. “The Magi believe that the One is birth and death within itself, for it is the number from which all
other numbers and forms are born and into which they will eventually collapse and die.”

“Thus it represents Infinity,” Yaqob said very quietly to one side. “The Magi always strive for complete union with the One. With Infinity.”

Isphet wriggled irritably at his interruption. “The fact that Threshold, as a building and as a mathematical formula, has as its heart a chamber named
Infinity
makes us believe that it is being built to enable the Magi to eventually achieve complete union with the One.”

There was a very long silence.

“We believe,” Isphet eventually said, very quietly now, “that when Threshold is complete, it will provide the Magi with the means to step into Infinity.”

She let me think about this for a moment, then went on. “Frankly, if they want to step into Infinity and thus rid this land of their presence, then I for one care not. Indeed, there would be celebrations and laughing the night they stepped through. But there is something wrong with Threshold. All of us have felt it. Threshold’s shadow stretches across us all, even at night we can feel its weight in our dreams. Day by day the sense of wrongness grows. Anyone who has been into the Infinity Chamber knows just how deep the wrongness has spread. Tirzah, you know.”

I nodded again, not sure I could have spoken, even had I wanted to.

“Yes,” Isphet said, “we all know about it but none of us can tell
exactly
what the wrongness is. The glass screams inside the Infinity Chamber…but
why
? Have the Magi miscalculated? Is the formula flawed? No-one is sure and,” her mouth quirked, “no-one dares question the Magi on the matter. Yaqob, I wish that you would now speak.”

He stared at each of us in turn. “We are enslaved here, trapped unwilling in the wrongness that is Threshold by these loathsome dung lice who call themselves Magi.”

My head snapped up at the bitterness in Yaqob’s voice. I knew he resented his lot, but I had never realised the depth of it.

“It will kill us, eventually. And if Threshold does not do it, then once the building is finally complete, I believe the Magi will. We know too much about Threshold and its secrets.”

Abruptly Yaqob leapt to his feet and started to pace restlessly about the room.

“But I want to live, as does everyone here. I want to be
free.
I want my children to be free and to grow in pure sunlight far from this foul shadow. I want us all to be able to practise our arts without constant fear. For months I, as Yassar and Isphet and scores of other Elementals in this damned calculus of a compound, have been planning. It has been slow, hard, and we’ve had to be careful, but it goes well. Within the year we hope to have built up a sufficient store of blades and to have enough support among the other slaves to overwhelm the guards and the Magi – and to
kill
every one of them! – and make our escape.”

His anger frightened me, and I had to look away. Overthrow the guards? The Magi? How?

But escape…I had never dared hope. Free? Oh, to be free again!

“I will help,” I said, my voice low but fierce.

“Yes,” Yaqob said, “you will. You have no choice now that you have heard all you have this night.”

He watched me carefully, then relaxed, reassured by what he saw in my face. “For a long time we would not trust you. We constantly fear that the Magi will plant spies among us. And your arrival on the night that Raguel gave birth seemed extraordinarily coincidental.”

Raguel stared into her lap, her face hidden. She spent her days silent and still, her nights tossing in restless and noisy sleep. When she was with us. Over the past two
weeks Ta’uz had occasionally required her presence for an hour or two at night.

“But no spy the Magi planted would be able to hear the glass as you can. Until we were sure you
were
Elemental yourself, well, we would not trust you.”

“What do you plan to do, Yaqob?” I asked. “And where can we go once we escape? What is there for us?”

“There is no need for you to know the details of our plans yet, and the less you know, the safer it will be for you. And as for where we go once we escape…well, Isphet?”

“I was born free,” Isphet said, and her eyes were very distant. “Free. Far to the south-east of this place, across a great arid plain, stands a range of low hills that hide a lovely secret. Deep within this secret lives an isolated community devoted to the study and development of Elemental magic and service to the Soulenai. The elders among them are powerful beyond anything I could be; indeed, they live in such seclusion that few of us ever see them. We call them Graces, for the serenity their contemplation and power gives them. These hills are where I come from, and they are to where I hope the majority of us will be able to make our escape.

“Now, Tirzah, I know you must have questions, but I would like you to sleep on them, absorb what you have heard here tonight. I, or Yaqob, will be pleased to answer anything you ask – but
only
ask when you can be sure we will not be overheard.”

“Yes, Isphet. Thank you.” Underlying all the swirling thoughts and questions in my head was a sense of quiet gladness. They trusted me.

“Good,” Isphet said. “Tirzah.” She reached out and took my hand. “In the morning I will induct you and begin your instruction. Druse, and the three others in the workshop who are not among us, shall have to be sent on a long and involved errand to one of the other workshops, I think. Raguel?”

She looked up from her lap, her eyes dead.

“Raguel, I will need you in the morning, and Yaqob, too, I think.”

Isphet’s face saddened.

“It is time to farewell the spirit of Raguel’s baby and to wish her well. Yaqob, your presence will infuse strength into the ceremony and into Tirzah, for already she hears the voices strongly and may well be afraid of what she will experience tomorrow.”

I
HARDLY
slept that night. I had my own sleeping pallet by now, but I am sure that my tossing and turning must have disturbed everyone else in the room. For as far back as I could remember I’d heard the voices. As a tiny child, sitting under my father’s work table, I’d been mesmerised by the shards of glass sifting through my fingers. Not only by their colours, although they were glorious enough, but by their soft cries and their words. When I was old enough to work the glass I used what they said to make the working easier. Now I knew why I had mastered the art of caging so young: my voice shaped the glass as much as my tools did, and I listened to what the glass told me it could or could not bear.

Who were these Soulenai? Was it not so much the voice of the glass I’d heard, but the voices of these strange spirits who sometimes spoke through it?

I remembered how I’d sat before Boaz and shaped the glass, drawing on the voices to help me. He’d sat but a pace away, his hands about that glass, his fingers touching mine from time to time. Deaf to the beauty and music beneath his fingers.

Magus!
I thought, and I put all the loathing Yaqob had taught me into that thought.

Thank the Soulenai the Magi here had shown no special interest in me. There had been Kofte’s brief display, but that had been only a transient sexual interest which had faded the moment I’d fainted in the Infinity Chamber. Perhaps the Magi required their women to retain control of their consciousness while they communed with the One.

My mind drifted back to the glass. Why had Isphet said I’d be frightened? Surely she wasn’t going to show me anything so horrifying as what had touched me in the Infinity Chamber?

Well, it would be good to have Yaqob there, anyway. I smiled into the darkness, and turned over, and spent the last remaining hours of the night drifting in and out of dreams of Yaqob.

My father was cheerful in the morning, and looked very bright of eye. He had slept extremely well, he said, and did not complain when Isphet sent him off with several others to help out in another workshop.

They would be gone for the rest of the day.

We continued working at our assigned tasks until almost noon, and then Yaqob came to fetch Orteas, Zeldon and me.

“Will we be safe?” Orteas asked.

“Yes. Watch is being kept along the alley and down the main thoroughfare. There are no guards and no Magi close.”

Later I would realise that when anyone in our workshop planned to practise the arts, an effective system of watch was kept by Elementals in the other workshops. But for now we followed Yaqob down the stairs.

Work had ceased. Most of the workers were silently lining the sides of the room, but in the very centre of the room stood Isphet and Raguel in front of a small table.

In its centre was a great bowl of molten glass.

“The others will watch,” Yaqob said quietly, “but in this ceremony they will not participate.”

Isphet nodded as I reached her, and I saw that she and Raguel had loosened their dark hair.

“Let yours out, too,” Isphet said, and I hastened to comply, shaking it out over my shoulders. “If we were free we would come to the Soulenai garbed in our best raiment and garlanded with flowers. That is impossible here. The loosening of our hair from the chains that binds it is the best we can do. The Soulenai know of our difficulties, and appreciate the effort.

“Tirzah. You have heard the voices in the glass, and in many of the other elements about you. Some of the voices are those of the element itself, some the voices of the Soulenai. But what we hear of their voices in our daily lives through elements like metal or glass is an echo only. Today we will touch them intimately, and let them touch us. It is a frightening experience the first time, and that is partly the reason I have asked Yaqob to stand with you. Already you trust him, and today you will learn to trust him further.”

I wondered how much she realised of my growing feelings for Yaqob – how much did Yaqob know? – then decided it didn’t matter very much.

“Tirzah, see.” And Isphet passed her hand over the wide bowl of molten glass. I looked down. The glass glowed with heat, but was otherwise colourless. I wondered what she had done to it to keep it so molten, for glass normally cooled fairly quickly, and this was far from the furnace.

“Listen to my voice, Tirzah. Do what it tells you. And follow the movements of my hand.”

Her hand passed over the bowl again, and I realised that the molten glass was spinning inside it. Around and around. I felt myself pulled into its thrall.

Again Isphet’s hand passed over the bowl, and this time she cast powders in, metals, and colour flared and
swirled within the glass. Bright blue. Again her hand swept over the bowl, and now a vivid red swirled and intermixed with the blue, again, and then gold joined them.

“Watch the colours, Tirzah.
Feel
them. Listen to them…listen…can you feel us listening as well? Can you feel me? Can you feel Raguel? Can you feel Yaqob?”

I opened my mouth to say that, no, I could not, but my eyes were fixed on the swirling colours within the bowl of glass. Isphet’s hand passed over again, and my head swam with its movement. Green swirled there now.

“Yes,” I whispered, and indeed I could. I could feel them beside me, but I could also feel them
inside
me. Raguel was only a distant, pastel presence, but Isphet and Yaqob were strong and vivid, primary colours in themselves. I could feel them swirl with the rainbow in the glass. Were they in there? Was
I
in there?

“My friends.” The tone of Isphet’s voice was very warm, musical, like nothing I’d ever heard her use before. I sank deeper into the swirl of colour, listening to her liquid voice sound through me as about me. I understood from Yaqob’s presence that Isphet was no longer speaking to us.

“My friends. I speak to you with gladness and sadness. Gladness because today I bring to you one you have already whispered to, but who has yet to hear your full beauty. Her name is Tirzah.”

Tirzah.

I reeled, uneasy, for a voice of unimaginable power had moved through me. Not sounded, for I had not heard it as such, but I had felt it.

Tirzah.

I think a sob escaped my lips. I had never conceived of such power in my meagre existence, nor had I ever thought such beauty to exist.

Tirzah.

And I would have panicked save that I could feel Yaqob’s presence, a strength that offered warmth and comfort and reassurance, and I took all it offered.

Listen to them Tirzah. Revel in their beauty.

He let me see how he had submerged himself in their voices, and then I felt Isphet, and she showed how she had submitted herself to their power. Neither Yaqob nor Isphet were diminished by such surrender, but enriched.

Surrender
, they cried, and I did.

The Soulenai enveloped me, seared through me. The colours before me swirled at an impossible rate, and I was as trapped by their frantic motion as I was by the presence of the Soulenai.

They spoke to me of impossible things, of lives and experiences beyond my comprehension. But they were so gentle. I had not expected such gentleness, such tenderness. They touched me, and explored me, and encouraged me to touch and explore them. They laughed at my first tentative efforts and I cried out, and on some distant plane I felt Yaqob physically grasp me and hold me upright.

Tirzah, you are welcome among us. Nurture us, and we shall nurture you. Serve us, and we shall serve you.

Yes
, I cried, and they accepted me.

My friends.
Now Isphet spoke again.
Today we come to you with sadness amid our joy at Tirzah’s awakening. Our friend and your servant, Raguel…

Raguel
, they whispered.

Raguel had her child snatched from her, many weeks ago. This is the first time we have dared join with you, and now we beg your assistance in seeing the child on her way into the Place Beyond.

Their sorrow pierced through me, but I was growing used to their intrusions through the spaces of my body and my mind, and I did not cry out. I felt Yaqob, as tender as the Soulenai, radiate pleasure at my acceptance of their touch.

There was a movement. Isphet’s hands again, and as they passed over the swirling glass this time they threw not metals, but fragrant gum resin and as it hit the glass it began to smoulder, and intoxicating smoke surrounded us. I breathed deeply, my hands acting of some accord not my own to waft the incense closer and closer to my face.

And through the smoke I caught glimpses of the Place Beyond.

What I saw I can hardly put into words. The Place Beyond was a land of sweeping distance, and yet enveloping warmth and security. It was infused with a peace so pervasive that anger, jealousy and war were words and concepts not only unknown, but also unimaginable. I longed to be able to step into that wondrous land.

Give us the child.

Again movement, but this time Raguel – and Yaqob, who was tightening his hands about me.

I saw as if in a dream, caught by the incense and the continuing presence of the Soulenai.

Raguel bending, lifting something from the floor.

A sad, wrapped bundle. Stained here and there with the fluids of putrefaction. A movement, quick, but unutterable sadness swept through me.

The bundle hit the molten glass, and the colours splattered about us – only the presence and benefaction of the Soulenai stopped any of the droplets hitting us.

The bundle burst into flames. In the space of a breath it was gone, lost…but then I heard,
felt
, the baby girl.

She was among us now, touching us as the Soulenai did, exploring, her presence a soft sense of wonderment.

I cried, and I knew that Raguel did too, and the Soulenai comforted us both, and the child laughed, and all was well.

She did not stay long. The Soulenai took her with them into the Place Beyond. As they sped away I felt a sense of
loss so palpable I moaned, and closed my eyes, and let Yaqob keep me from falling to the floor.

There was a space of time in which no-one moved or spoke.

Finally I felt Isphet place her hands about my face, and I opened my eyes. She was smiling.

“Welcome among us, Tirzah. You are an Elemental born, and now you have been accepted by the Soulenai. What we did today was simple, a touching only. Over the next months I will take you deeper and deeper into Elemental magic. You will become great among us, I think, for your abilities are astounding, and if we are to right the wrong that is Threshold, then I think that you will be greatly needed among us.”