“We hide ourselves and our secrets with great care,” the Grace replied. “These hills are hidden well from casual eyes…and, casual, most eyes turn aside. Come on now, don’t stand about.”
Beneath the outcrop lay a dark cleft in the rock, head high and just wide enough for a person.
“How will we fit everyone down here?” I asked as I stepped through and found the Grace waiting at the top of a circular stairwell.
“There are other entrances, wider and more accommodating than this. But this stairwell is the most spectacular. For our small group it will do well.”
The bends were tight, and the steps narrow and steep, and I hung tight to the banister about the outer wall.
“Tirzah,” Boaz said behind me, “let me go ahead, then you’ll feel safer.”
I smiled gratefully at him as he squeezed past, and I did feel safer having his body before me. I placed my other hand on his shoulder and risked a glance behind.
Isphet followed me, but her grace and confidence told me she’d probably climbed these stairs ever since she was a toddler. Behind her came Zabrze, and I think his face was as pale as mine.
We climbed for half an hour, then we came to a small landing which opened onto a balcony, and Solvadale led us out.
I gasped with delight. We were some ten or fifteen levels below the topmost Step, and I walked to the railing and looked up. The sun shone almost directly overhead.
When I dropped my eyes, I held my breath in sheer wonder. The mist had cleared, and I could see that a great river wound through the Abyss. A narrow strip of rock bounded it on either side, but the bottom was almost completely covered with the dark emerald water.
“No-one has ever plumbed its depths,” Isphet said quietly at my side. “The Abyss continues down,” she shot a glance at Boaz, “perhaps even into Infinity.”
“It is a site of great power,” Solvadale said. “Far greater than you realise, Isphet.”
And with that he led us back to the stairs and continued the climb down.
He stopped every half an hour or so, always at a balcony, so we could catch our breath and rest weary legs. Corridors opened off all the landings. Eventually, I guessed, we would be led to quarters in one of the Steps.
The next, as it turned out.
As we stopped at the landing, I automatically moved towards the balcony.
“No,” Solvadale said sharply. “Wait. This is where I leave you. Isphet, in the morning you may show your friends about the Abyss. After your noon meal, I would have you bring Yaqob, Tirzah and Boaz to speak with me and several other Graces in the Water Hall. Do you remember it? Can you find your way there?”
“Yes, Grace.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Then greet your father, Isphet.”
She gave a small cry and whirled in the direction of Solvadale’s eyes.
A man emerged from one of the corridors. Gaunt and grey-haired, he had Isphet’s commanding eyes and presence.
“Father!” Isphet flung herself into the man’s arms, and they embraced fiercely.
Thinking to give them a moment of privacy, I looked back to where Solvadale had been standing, but he was gone. I frowned. He would have had to step past me to reach any of the doors, or even the stairwell.
“A baby, Isphet?” I heard her father ask, and I turned around.
“Ah,” Zabrze said, stepping forward. “I should explain.”
And so he did.
Isphet introduced her father, Eldonor, to the rest of us, and he clasped our hands with genuine pleasure, even though I could see he was eager to talk with Isphet.
“Solvadale asked me to show you to your chambers,” he said. “Follow me.”
Eldonor led us down several corridors, spacious and well lit, not only from windows carved into the outer wall of rock, but also from shafts like those in Threshold. I shivered, and turned my mind from the pyramid.
The rock was the same uniform pink throughout – perhaps slightly deeper in colour internally than on the outer walls of the Abyss – and glowed warmly in the light.
Eldonor stopped at the entrance to a chamber, and showed Yaqob inside. Two doors down he stopped at another door, and indicated to Boaz and me.
Eldonor was perceptive, for no-one had said anything about our relationship. Or perhaps the Graces had perceived from a distance, and had informed him of the required living arrangements.
“Refresh yourselves,” Eldonor said, waving about the spacious chamber. “At the end of this corridor is a small eating hall. Please join me as my guest once the sun goes down.”
Then he was gone.
The chamber was simply but well furnished, and opening off it was a small room where we could wash. It contained a large sunken bath, and I sighed blissfully when I saw it. In the main chamber were laid out fresh linens and robes, and flowers – pink and gold waterlilies – floated in a bowl on a low table.
Boaz and I shared the bath, scrubbing at each other’s hair, and laughing as the soap ran down into our eyes. It was good to wash three weeks of accumulated filth from our bodies.
“I cannot remember the last time I had you to myself,” he said, kissing the lather from my shoulder.
“But you mustn’t get used to it, Boaz,” I replied. “I was thinking of offering to look after Zhabroah for Zabrze and Isphet. They cannot truly want to have a crying babe to disturb their rest night and day.”
He slipped his hands about my waist. “You are a tease, Tirzah…aren’t you?”
“Absolutely not, Boaz!” I cried in mock indignation and then laughed as his hands tightened. “Well…”
“How much time do we have before dark, Tirzah?” he whispered into my wet hair.
“Enough, Boaz. Enough.”
We enjoyed a pleasant meal with Yaqob, Zabrze, Isphet and Eldonor. He was a good host, never too inquisitive, drawing information from us with the most exquisite tact, and giving as much back himself as thanks. Isphet sat close to him, her face radiant with joy at finding her father still living.
Finally, as we sat sipping goblets of sweet black wine and nibbling tart cheese, Eldonor asked his daughter to describe her life as a slave at Threshold.
He was horrified at what he heard, and he wept a little. Zabrze had not realised how bad it had been, either, and he bowed his head as Isphet, and then Yaqob, talked.
Boaz, for his part, kept his face averted.
Neither held anything back. They talked of their humiliations – Isphet’s years spent at the beck and call of Magi who wished to use her, Yaqob’s frequent beatings in his youth when he was too outspoken – but they also spoke of their joys – the friendship and support they’d found among their fellow slaves, the delight at the creation of the glass, even though it was for a darker purpose.
“I thought you dead,” Eldonor said finally, clearing his throat. “None of us heard anything from you. Years went by. And we thought that if Isphet and Banwell were still alive, then they would send word.” He took a deep breath. “Last night Grace Solvadale came to my rooms and said, ‘Isphet comes,’ and I went down on my knees and wept.
“But Banwell did die. I am sorry, Isphet. You loved him well.”
She nodded, dropping her eyes and not saying anything.
“Yet he was a rash man. He was the one to decide it would be an adventure to seek a life beyond the Abyss.”
“And I agreed, father,” Isphet said. “Do not think to blame Banwell in this.”
Eldonor held his silence as a servant refilled our goblets, then departed. How far I had come, I thought, from the belly of that filthy whaler.
“But you have found another love, I see,” Eldonor said. “And one more highly ranked than your last. One who will be – perhaps is – Chad.”
He shifted his eyes to Zabrze. “You will be a mighty man, Zabrze, ruler of one of the richest realms in the known world. Yet here you bed my daughter, a run-away slave. What do you intend to make of her? Will you enslave her once more? Or shall you make her a mistress? Or
a concubine to set beside your next high-ranking wife? Or shall you just cast her off when you regain your realm from the horror that grips it?”
“I shall make her my wife,” Zabrze said quietly, holding Eldonor’s stare. “No more, no less.”
“No,” Isphet stumbled. “You can’t. I…”
“Isphet,” Zabrze said, and took her hand. “We both know what there is between us. Will you deny that?”
She was silent, staring at him with her great eyes.
“And,” Zabrze’s mouth lifted in a slight smile, “you are more the Chad’zina than all the empresses, begums, regnalias and matriarchs that it has been my misfortune to entertain over the years. I would marry for love this time, and you will ever be my only chance for that. Come, what do you say?”
Eldonor had relaxed into a slight smile, although Yaqob had a huge grin over his face. Boaz and I, like Isphet, could but stare.
She smiled eventually, but she had to make a noticeable effort at it. I think, had Zabrze not pressed, she would have sat there for hours, battling her shock.
“I say yes, Zabrze. Yes.”
His entire body relaxed. “You shall have to redecorate the court with your Elemental ideas, Isphet my love. It shall be…interesting.”
At that instant I had my first understanding of why the Soulenai had told Isphet she would have the opportunity to illume. As a Necromancer and as a Chad’zina, it would be her task to relight a nation with the mysteries of the Soulenai.
When, very much later, Boaz and I returned to our chamber, it was to find that the bed had been remade.
Boaz grinned wryly. “And what will they think of us, Tirzah, that we should tangle the sheets so early after our arrival?”
“They will think we are very much in love, Boaz,” I said as I sat down.
“Tirzah.” He sank down on the bed beside me. “Zabrze shamed me earlier with such a public protestation of his love for Isphet. He has never treated her with anything but honour, and yet I…”
“Boaz –”
“No, let me finish. I have treated you so badly, not once, but often, that I do not know what to do to compensate, or to prove to you how much I truly do love you.”
I put my fingers over his lips. “I do not need proof, Boaz.”
“Yet I must offer it. Tirzah, I swear that somewhere, somehow, I will prove to you the depth of my love, and how much I crave your forgiveness.”
“No! Boaz, that is too heavy a vow.” Loss, all I could think of was loss. “I understood you long before you understood yourself. There is no need for forgiveness –”
Now it was he who stopped my lips. “Yes, there is, Tirzah. Yaqob’s attempt to murder me showed me how deep is the need for forgiveness. Not only yours, but that of all those I’ve mistreated over so many years as Magus.”
I was almost crying now. “No, Boaz. You go too far…too far.”
“But for now,” he cupped my face in his hands, “I can only beg you, as Zabrze begged Isphet, to be my wife.”
“Yes, yes. That is enough, Boaz. It is all I want.”
But his eyes were sad as he bent to kiss me, and our lovemaking that night was more tears than laughter.
I lay still in the morning, feeling slightly ill. Had it been the wine? The bitter sadness of the night?
Then an almost forgotten cramp twisted deep in my belly, and my eyes flew open. I had not had a monthly flux since Boaz had loosed his power through me after the first night we’d bedded. Months…many months ago.
Tentatively I probed at my belly with my fingers. My womb, for so long such a hard unresponsive canker, was now soft and pliable.
The cramp struck again, worse than before. Sighing, I wriggled out of Boaz’s still-sleeping embrace to attend to myself.
35
AFTER we’d broken our fast, Isphet took Zabrze, Yaqob, Boaz and me for a tour of the Abyss. At first Zabrze was inclined to grumble, for he wanted to see that all our people had been comfortably settled, and that their presence wasn’t going to disrupt the Abyss too much. But Isphet said they could wait for another two or three hours.
“I want to show you my home, Zabrze. This afternoon, while we go to the Graces, you will be free to question as you want. But for now you will follow me.”
Zabrze acquiesced.
The Abyss was so wondrous and so bountiful I could not understand why Isphet and Banwell had ever contemplated a life outside it. As we walked about, many people greeted Isphet warmly, some with barely controlled emotion. She had been greatly missed. Yet even to us, the people were open and friendly. They were curious at the influx of newcomers, but not particularly perturbed at the sheer numbers that had climbed down into their midst.
I soon understood why. The Abyss, not simply the chasm but the dwellings opening off it, was massive. There were, Isphet told us, one hundred and ten Steps which dropped a thousand paces and ranged almost half a league along the Abyss. In some places, the corridors and rooms stretched back into the rock for almost an hour’s walk.
“We have room for eight hundred thousand people, yet currently we are some ninety thousand only. The five thousand will not overly stretch space,” Isphet said. “Although they may have had to dust the quarters assigned them.”
“Was the population once much larger?” Zabrze asked. “This complex is so immense.”
“Not by much, perhaps some two or three thousand more several generations ago. We did not build this, Zabrze.” Isphet waved a hand at the magnificence above us. “About six hundred years ago our forebears discovered it, virtually in this condition. Abandoned. Even now there are areas of the Abyss, complexes deep within the rock, that we have hardly explored. Every year we lose adventuresome young children who try to map the unknown corridors. The Graces understand far more about the Abyss than do most of us. There are areas of the Abyss that only they visit.”
“Whoever created this must have been a magical people,” Boaz murmured. “Look, Tirzah. The balconies and carved dwellings down the sides of the chasm look like caged lacework.”
He was right. It was as if a giant had carved the outer lacework of the Abyss, and left it for tinier people to carve out the inner dwellings.
Isphet led us over one of the bridges across the Abyss and into a large domed hall on the other side. It had been beautifully carved and gilded, and enamelled and cut-glass panels had been inserted into the dome.
“You and Banwell were glassworkers,” I remarked to Isphet. “So there must be workshops here.”
“Yes. The people of the Abyss have a deep love of the crafts and most have proficiency in one or another. The glass workshops, as other workshops, are deeper into the rock. I will show them to you another day.”
As we walked I noticed that the complex was lit by light reflected along artfully yet often almost invisible mirrors in ceilings and walls.
“Were these crafted here?” Yaqob asked, pausing to admire one.
Isphet hesitated. “Yes, but not by us. They were part of the complex as it was discovered by our forebears. We have not learned the secret of their making.”
I imagined that the first thing children were taught was to avoid throwing balls at them. I wondered how many corridors and apartments had been abandoned because the lighting mirrors had been broken.
Over the next few hours Isphet slowly led us through parts of the Abyss. There were schools, libraries, homes, markets – all carved out of the rock. Food was provided by the river, principally fish but also a variety of shellfish and eels, and Isphet said that there were vegetable and grain fields above us, sheltered in the valleys to the east of the Abyss. “We do not spend our entire lives within this chasm.”
“Isphet,” I said, “I have noticed that many of your people are lighter skinned than most southerners, and with grey or blue eyes. How is that?”
“The people of the Abyss are not a race as such. Indeed, we consider ourselves a part of Ashdod. Although the Chads have completely ignored us.” She shot a mischievous glance at
Zabrze. “We are a myriad of peoples who have gravitated here over many centuries. What connects us all is our devotion to the Elemental arts. Tirzah, you are proof enough that one does not have to be southern born and of dark visage to be an Elemental.”
I nodded. The Soulenai had passed through many lands in their quest to escape war and find peace, and I thought they must have left their blood scattered through most of the known world. I daydreamed a little, wondering which of the Soulenai had wandered Viland thousands of years ago. Was it my mother who had bequeathed me their blood? Druse had shown no sign of Elemental leanings. And Avaldamon. Avaldamon had been Geshardi…and the Book of the Soulenai was written in that language.
Finally we found ourselves at the base of the Abyss. The chasm was bathed in sunlight, for it was close to noon. We stood on one of the narrow rock ledges above the water, gazing silently into it.
There was a strong, deep current, although the upper layer of the water was almost still. I could see fish flashing in its depths, and I thought that fishing must be easy where all one had to do was string a net across this narrow waterway.
“The water comes from an underground river that surfaces through a fault in the rock beneath us,” Isphet explained. “It travels south through the Abyss, then swings east-north-east once past the chasm. From there I believe it meanders its way to the great sea far to the east.”
Suddenly Boaz laughed, and pointed. There, sunning herself on a slight outcrop, was Fetizza. She croaked companionably as Boaz called to her, but did not move.
“Are there any other frogs here?” Boaz asked.
“No,” Isphet said. “I don’t think so. Fetizza shall have to make do with the company of children splashing about her. Come, it is time to eat.”
Once the meal was over, Eldonor took Zabrze off to attend his people, and Isphet led us to the Water Hall.
“Ordinary folk only ever come here at the invitation of the Graces,” Isphet explained as she led us through long corridors and then down a series of stairs. “Many of our rites are conducted here, but mostly, so I have heard, the Graces sit here and dream.”