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.”
8
SOME eight or nine months passed. I moved from nineteen to twenty shortly after my induction into the arts of the Elementals and I left what little remained of my childhood and former life completely behind me. I grew further distant from my father. It was a distance I regretted, but as Isphet increased her teaching, and as I accepted the presence of the Soulenai more, I found my need for my father growing less. And he knew nothing of the Elemental among us. He did not know that on some days when the glass glowed bright the voices of the Soulenai reverberated about the workshop as our hands and hearts moulded and shaped to the words they spun.
I often wondered what it was like for the non-Elementals who worked with us. Wondered if they ever realised there was a depth and a joy to the workshop in which they did not, could not, participate.
Now pottery and metal pots whispered and sang to me as well, and sometimes echoed the words of the Soulenai, although never so much as the glass. Yet, with all the joy of the discovery of the Elemental arts came a tarnish. Nothing was right within Gesholme, not when the shadow of Threshold lay over us like a quiescent tumour awaiting its chance.
I continued my work beside Orteas and Zeldon, caging Isphet’s wondrous golden glass. We took pride in our work, and lost ourselves amid the conversation of the glass, but it was sad also, for our work was destined for the Infinity Chamber.
I learned to go inside that
abomination and neither faint, nor let my horror disturb the tranquillity of my face. The Soulenai comforted me, even amid the screams of the glass nailed to the walls, and begged me to discover what it was that made the glass scream so…
What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
I tried, and the few of us with reason to go inside the Infinity Chamber tried, but we could not discern the ‘why’ of the wrongness, only the fact and the horror of its existence.
Meanwhile, Threshold grew. Orteas, Zeldon and I caged to the Magi’s supervision and designs, and during these months our work spread over fully a third of the area of the Infinity Chamber. Whenever any of us went inside (and we tried to go in pairs, for that helped us cope) we would view the designs of the completed panels, fearing what sorceries the strange symbols, letters and numbers constructed, yet yearning to understand what was wrong so we could aid the Soulenai. There was always a Magus with us – none of the slaves were allowed inside the chamber without at least one Magus to stand watch – and we dared not look too closely, let alone ask. But at night we would talk about what we’d seen, and try to understand. Try, and fail every time.
Elsewhere work progressed almost as rapidly as in the Infinity Chamber. Many of the shafts and corridors were fully glassed now, and on some days the interior of Threshold glittered with hard light. Sometimes, whether approaching the pyramid down the main thoroughfare, or standing on the balcony outside our workshop, we could see the openings of shafts on the exterior walls flare into light, and then die down.
Threshold not only took light into itself, but cast it out, too.
As the interior neared completion, the Magi gave orders that slaves should begin to plate the exterior.
Our workshop, as all others in Gesholme, worked eighteen hours of every day, mixing and firing the sheets of blue-green glass that would eventually cover Threshold. Even so, it would take a year before it could be done, if not longer.
I was lucky, for my workload did not appreciably increase, but Isphet worked hard, as did my father and Yaqob and many, many others.
I occasionally caught glimpses of Yaqob talking quickly, surreptitiously, with Yassar and other men not connected with our workshop but who I guessed to be part of the planned revolt. Yaqob rarely talked of it, only to say that, blade by blade, enough weaponry was being stored to stick every Magus twice over. Such talk, brief as it was, made me nervous. I was scared that slaves, even moderately well-armed, could not overcome both guards and Magi. I also remembered the intuition of loss that I had the first day I’d approached Threshold, and I watched Yaqob, and wondered.
Yaqob. Yaqob and I fell inevitably into love. It was a courtship conducted for the most part under the benign eyes of the entire workshop, but the more meaningful and the sweeter for it. We had to be careful, for although relationships – even marriages – between slaves were not forbidden by the Magi, neither were they encouraged. Anything that distracted a slave from his or her duty to Threshold was discouraged, and it was safer to hide our love from the Magi than flaunt it.
Neither of us wanted to give the Magi, or Threshold, the knowledge whereby they might hurt us.
So we were circumspect, but within that circumspection, we indulged our love as much as we were able. But that was difficult in a world where privacy between lovers was more often a raging frustration than a reality. We each shared our quarters with four or five others, and neither of us could find the courage to ask our friends to wait outside while we luxuriated in a slow exploration of love.
There were the rooftops, out of view of most and only sporadically patrolled, but there was always the shadow of Threshold, even at night, and we were as compelled to hide from it as we were from the Magi.
So as lovers, I think Yaqob and I discovered every canvas overhang, every dim storeroom, every darkened space between or underneath or above cupboards and shelves in Gesholme.
Even if we found the privacy, however cramped and uncomfortable, then we had only moments to spare between tasks, or before we had to be somewhere else, or before a Magus passed by, or a patrol, or someone came to rummage through the storeroom or cupboard for supplies. We never had the time to sate anything but the most basic and animalistic hungers – a hard and brief thrusting, desperate attempts to stifle every gasp, a sudden, insufficient release, and then we would go our separate ways, furtively rearranging wraps and promising ourselves that next time…next time…
And we were tense because Yaqob feared each time he entered me that this would be the time he’d father a child, and that was something he refused to do until we were free, until we could choose the direction of our own lives, until we’d escaped Threshold.
He groaned, then tensed, and I hid his face in my shoulder and murmured, “It’s all right, Yaqob, it’s all right.”
He took a deep breath, shuddered, then relaxed and withdrew from me, sliding his hands along my body.
“Are you sure?” He pulled my wrap down, then quickly rearranged his own more tidily about his hips.
“I have no intention of going through what Raguel did.” Omarni had told me what herbs she’d given me when I’d been in Hadone’s slavery, and most of them were available here, too. Isphet had contacts among the watercarriers, and they plucked the leaves from the river banks for me. Thus far they appeared to be working, and if not…well, there were other means to rid my body quickly and cleanly of any child that did manage to take hold. I was as determined as Yaqob not to breed more slaves for the Magi.
He kissed my cheek quickly. “Perhaps tomorrow…”
“Perhaps.” But I was not overly enthusiastic. I enjoyed these interludes with Yaqob only for the emotional closeness they brought. Physically, our brief, anxious lovemaking was generally uncomfortable, and always left me with my body aching and my nerves screaming with frustration. I envied Yaqob that he managed to find some degree of physical fulfilment in our time together.
“Shush!” He pressed his fingers against my lips, and listened intently. Steps sounded in the alley outside, then faded.
“Come on,” he said, “Ta’uz will be wondering where we have got to.”
We had been summoned back to the Infinity Chamber: I to make sure that the caged glass had been placed with the least possible stress; Yaqob to measure for more bridging panels of glass.
We could have taken our time, for Ta’uz, rather than waiting impatiently, was actually hurrying to catch us up.
He threw a furious glance at us as he passed, and we lowered our eyes, muttering “Excellency!”, and then he was in front and we matched our steps to his impatient stride. We tried not to look at each other, for to do so would be to smile; it was rare indeed that any of the Magi let themselves be caught in anything other than indolent splendour.
But Ta’uz was obviously distracted, and as we neared Threshold he actually stopped, and stared up at the peak of the pyramid.
Although the capstone was a year or more away from being placed, workmen were at the very peak of the pyramid preparing the masonry. There were five men, all tied to safety ropes, all moving slowly but surely. I did not envy them their task.
Ta’uz was fixated by the sight, and now Yaqob and I did glance at each other, all urge to smile gone.
“Ah,” Ta’uz muttered, and we tried to follow the line of his eyes.
“There,” Yaqob mouthed at me, and pointed surreptitiously. Ta’uz was staring at a small pile of stones to one side of the workmen; they were using them to build a ledge on which the capstone would rest.
The sunlight was bright, and the distance great, but what happened next I saw in such clear detail it was as if I was but three paces distant from the peak. None of the five workmen were close to the pile of stones at that moment, all absorbed by some problem in the mortaring further around the peak. But somehow…somehow the topmost rock lazily lifted itself from the pile, seemingly hovered as if indecisive – as if choosing – then hurtled towards the ground, impossibly fast, too fast, a blur, and embedded itse
lf in the head of a slave walking out of Threshold’s mouth.
It hit with such impact that it burst the man’s face and skull in a shower of blood and brain, and still had enough force to cleave his neck apart and completely embed itself between his shoulder blades.
Threshold’s shadow winked.
For an instant, the entire site stilled, then Ta’uz gave a great cry and ran to the prone figure at the top of the ramp. Yaqob and I were only a step behind him.
Ta’uz dropped to his knees beside the headless corpse – everything within two paces had been splattered with blood and brain – and reached out a trembling hand. He stopped himself just before he touched the man’s shoulder, the top of the rock clearly visible amid his smashed vertebrae.
I took a step backwards, sickened, but not before Ta’uz had raised his face to Threshold and whispered, “Why?”
9
TA’UZ recovered within moments of the death. He ordered the body’s disposal, then, beckoning impatiently to Yaqob and myself, he proceeded inside to inspect the Infinity Chamber.
It was bad, far more so than usual. Normally the glass screamed within the chamber, but this day it was subdued. Terrified. Whatever had possessed Threshold had also shocked the glass into almost complete silence, and when Ta’uz demanded of me why tears ran down my cheeks, I said it was because of the slave who’d died outside.
“Foolish girl,” he snapped. “Lives are for us or Threshold to dispose of as we will. Does the glass fit well enough?”
“It fits well enough, Excellency. The stresses are minimal and it sits full square.”
“Good.” He paused. “You share quarters with Raguel, do you not?”