Beyond the Wall of Time (41 page)

“Get out of my way, girl.”

“No. Answer my question out loud for everyone to hear. Would you rather have the Undying Man dead or Cylene alive?”

“But we cannot do anything for Cylene!” the bear growled.

“We can, but I need you all to put down your swords. What is your answer?”

“I’d rather have both.”

One of the man’s friends called out to him, an older man with a round belly. “Come, fisherman, show us your heart. Which well
do you draw from when you need strength—love or hate?”

“What do you think, Sautea?” Noetos snapped. “You saw enough of me.”

“I would have said ‘love’ without a doubt in the days you and I worked The Rhoos,” the older man answered. “But now, after
what happened to Opuntia, I’m not so sure.”

The big red-haired man sighed. “I meant to make this man’s death—or, more likely, my death—a gift to my daughter, to show
her justice still exists in the world.”

Arathé waved her arms around and mouthed noises. “I don’t want your gift.”

“I never thought you would, child. But someone needs to show you that those that hurt without cause will have to give account
of it.”

Duon spoke. “Arathé reminds you all that there is one among us who has hurt thousands of people in the last few days without
cause. He is busy hurting another as we speak.”

“All right, all right!” growled the fisherman. “Lenares, show us what we can do to help reclaim Cylene from the Son. But I
do not withdraw my interest in this man. He still has questions to answer and I reserve the right to press for those answers.”

Lenares breathed a deep sigh, part relief, part apprehension. Time to begin. She turned back towards the village, now some
distance behind them, and began to trudge up the road.

“Everyone follow me,” she said.

She had always enjoyed being the centre of attention. She well remembered the day she had demonstrated she wasn’t just a half-wit,
that she could reason better than any of the other trainee cosmographers, better even than her teachers. Smarter than them
all. She still brought that memory to mind whenever she felt sad or neglected. Mahudia’s look of surprise, followed by a deep
pleasure, bathed her mind again now.

But never had she been the focus of such illustrious people’s gazes. The most powerful magicians in the world had been gathered
here, and Lenares Half-wit was the key. Without her, they could throw magic at Keppia and all he had to do was to hide deep
in Cylene’s body, letting the poor girl absorb the blows until her body died—and then he’d be free. But she had a plan, she
knew how to trap Keppia beyond the Wall of Time and, in so doing, free Cylene.

She had a plan, but it was Mahudia’s plan. Mahudia had come to her, tug, tug, tugging on the invisible connection between
them, the link between this world and the void. Even as the stupid fisherman and the stupider Undying Man had made ready to
slash at each other—as if that was remotely important—Mahudia had whispered her plan to Lenares. Lenares wished it were her
own plan, but she would never claim it as her own, no matter that no one else could hear Mahudia, no matter that her foster
mother would not begrudge Lenares her moment of glory.

“When I captured Umu,” she explained to her friends, “I thought I was being clever. I thought I had caught her by dividing
the zero of the hole in the world into smaller and smaller pieces, until Umu was trapped and I could bind her. But what really
happened was someone else from the void helped me. That someone says she is Mahudia, the Chief Cosmographer, who was killed
by Umu.”

Nearer to the village they drew, nearer to the ranting, wailing figure of Cylene. Behind Lenares came less than half the crowd.
The remainder were obviously too frightened to venture any closer.

“We are going to drive him out,” Lenares said, more quietly now, as they continued their slow march back towards Mensaya.
“But not out into the world where he can do more mischief. Instead, we will drive him back along the conduit he uses to draw
power from the void.”

“How will we do this?” Kannwar asked. “And what conduit is this? I can see no conduit, not even with the eyes of magic.”

“I can,” Anomer said. “My sister taught me to see the essenza in everything, the lattice that connects all things in the world,
from which comes all energy and all magic. Cylene is a mixture of two essenzas, one white, one black; and there is a black
cord stretching behind her, going up, up into the hole in the world and out of sight.”

“There’s no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in magic,” Kannwar said scornfully.

“Doesn’t matter whether we’re seeing a truth or a metaphor,” Anomer answered him, colour in his cheeks. “What Lenares says
she sees is what I see. Are we both imagining it, Lord of Bhrudwo?”

The man pursed his lips and did not offer an answer.

“So,” Keppia said, as the remaining travellers, magicians to the fore, surrounded him. “You have come to save your friend.
Go on then. I won’t put up a fight.”

Mahudia
, Lenares sent, her whisper travelling instantaneously along the tenuous connection to her mother.
Now.

The great storm had killed many thousands of people north of Patina Padouk; the huge earthquake and accompanying waves had
ended the lives of many more. Mahudia had explained that the void pulsed with a myriad new stars, all once nodes in the wall
of the world, now torn untimely from the pattern of life and cast into the ever-widening maw of the hole in the world.
Many are still nearby
, Mahudia had said to Lenares.
They are frightened and they are angry. They have agreed to help us.

Lenares waited, but saw nothing for some time. She ignored the threats coming from the monster’s mouth, watching for any change—and
finally saw it: a pulse in the broad connection between Cylene and the quarter-sky hole in the world hovering above them.

“What are you doing?” Keppia said, an edge to his voice.

“Nothing,” Lenares answered him. “None of us is doing anything.”

“Then what… is that you, Umu?”

The pulse arrived at Cylene’s body and the thing’s mouth opened in a bellow. But it was Keppia’s voice, not Cylene’s, that
came out.

It is working, Mother
, Lenares sent.

Good
, said Mahudia, her voice faint.
Few here want the gods to break through into the world. They think of their loved ones still alive, and, apart from a few
selfish ones, do not want them to die. And there are those who simply want revenge.

Lenares glanced upwards and saw a multitude of stars glittering beyond the hole in the world.

She returned her attention to the animated corpse before her and watched as the black began slowly to leach out of it.

“Stop this! I will kill the girl, I swear I will!”

“She is dead already,” Lenares said to him. “And we cannot stop what we did not start.”

The monster began chuffing heavy breaths, undoubtedly summoning all his power. The conduit expanded still further as he drew
on the void. The blackness began to return to Cylene’s body.

“All you magicians!” Lenares commanded gleefully. Truly, she was the centre of the world at this moment. “Use your magic to
see the dark essenza in this body before you. Pick at it, grasp it, and push it away from Cylene, towards the cord. Draw from
those around you who are not magicians. Now!”

At her command a dozen bright blue filaments snapped into existence, arcing towards the monster. Keppia threw back his head
and howled.

“He will flee,” Kannwar said. “We will have saved Cylene, but lost Keppia.”

“He will not flee,” Lenares said. “This will weaken him so much that Umu could destroy him should he abandon Cylene’s body.
This is his only chance. He will try to hold on.”

Blue fire assailed the monster from all sides, and the hungry conduit continued to suck at him. Around them people began to
collapse.

“Lenares! They’re dying!” someone cried.

Oh, I never thought of that.
“Stop drawing on them!”

“It’s not us. Keppia is draining them dry,” said Kannwar.

“Then some of you must protect them!”

Instantly six of the blue arcs vanished and the bystanders were surrounded by a faint azure glow. Keppia roared and began
to reclaim Cylene’s body.

“Umu! Help your brother!” the monster shouted, his attention fixed on a row of denuded trees lining the side of the road.
His sister, if she was anywhere within earshot, gave no answer.

The very ground around them began to shrivel and crack as the warring magicians drained essenza from every source. Plants
withered, grass collapsed into a grey mat, insects were fried where they crawled or flew.

“I have never… been this deep… into magic!” the Undying Man said.

“This is my world!” Keppia screamed as the black began once again to fade. “I belong here! I was tricked into leaving! You
cannot
dooooo
this to me!”

Lenares saw the moment Keppia gave up trying to remain in Cylene’s body and attempted to flee. All the black collected at
the entrance to the cord—which was now as wide as Cylene was tall—and made to run, taking the cord with him.

There came a faint cry from her own conduit, and at the same moment Keppia’s cord suddenly stiffened, locking more firmly
into Cylene’s body. Keppia shrieked, then was jerked bodily into the cord, from where he fell upwards, twisting and jerking,
towards the distant hole in the world.

“Push!” Lenares cried.

All the magicians united in one final effort, their blue fire pushing through Cylene and along the conduit. Screaming and
cursing, Keppia vanished from sight.

Amid the exhausted cheering, Lenares heard Mahudia speak. “Goodbye, child,” she said.

“Goodbye?” A cold premonition bit at the cosmographer and she suddenly found it difficult to stand. “Why goodbye?”

“If your sister is to live, Lenares, the conduit must remain open. Keppia no longer animates her body, after all. But if we
leave the conduit open at this end, Keppia may return at any time to possess her anew. We can’t guard the conduit forever:
the newly dead want to pass on. So I will wrap our conduit around Cylene’s, ever tighter, tighter”—the thin cord vibrated
as she speaks—“until the merest trickle of magic flows down to Cylene.”

“Will you still be able to speak to me?”

But the question was wasted. She knew the answer already, knew she had but moments left with her mother.

“I am the conduit,” Mahudia said, her voice growing fainter. “You must let me go, beloved daughter, so I can make Cylene safe.
Don’t weep, girl; you still have memories of me, and soon you will have your sister. She is special, Lenares, just like someone
else I know.”

Don’t weep, she says.
Lenares could do nothing but weep as she took the end of the tether linking her to Mahudia and held it loosely in her shaking
hand. Lose a mother, gain a sister, overcome a god. The latter a great victory, and yet it felt so much like a defeat.

She opened her hand.

NO ONE HAD THE ENERGY
to take to the road the next day, or the one following. Smoky, haze-filled days, the weather humid, the air heavy, tiredness
draped over their shoulders like a damp cloak. The travellers spent their time foraging for food, sleeping off their magic-induced
weariness and trying to understand what had happened.

Lenares received more praise than she ought for the banishment of Keppia, but less sympathy than she deserved for the loss
of Mahudia. None here, save Torve, had ever met the Chief Cosmographer, and most seemed to regard Lenares’ explanation of
Mahudia’s role in Cylene’s rescue as some sort of made-up story, an attempt to avoid the limelight. Their behaviour made Lenares
angry: her mother deserved unending praise for her brave sacrifice, but no one seemed to care.

They cared far more about reports that Umu knew what had happened to her brother. Lenares remembered the moment when Keppia
had cried out for his sister’s help and had looked imploringly at the trees at the roadside. A few of those people who had
remained on the open road, too frightened to follow Lenares back to the village and her confrontation with Keppia, reported
seeing a small, rotund man limping through the trees. Their descriptions matched that of Conal, the Falthan priest.

So close, some said. We could have defeated them both in one day.

But the people who said this were not magicians, nor were they friends or relatives of the eight people who had died that
afternoon, drained of their essenza by Keppia in his quest to free himself. They had no appreciation of the cost the battle
had incurred, nor did they realise, according to Kannwar, just how lucky they were, how lucky they all were, that Umu had
fled rather than attack.

“She did not accurately assess our condition,” the Undying Man had said. “Had she done so, she could have destroyed us all.”

“If she saw Keppia’s failure,” Moralye asked, her brows knotted in thought, “is she likely to try to force us into liberating
her in similar fashion?”

“I think not,” the Undying Man had replied, as if conversation between himself and a Dhaurian scholar, his fiercest of enemies,
was the most natural thing in the world. “She is likely to find another way. We need to recover our strength and confront
her before she grows too strong.”

“What will she do in the meantime?”

“You know the answer to that, scholar. She will slaughter as many people as possible in an attempt to widen the hole in the
world even further.”

“Such an action will yield unpredictable results,” Moralye commented. “Phemanderac taught us about the Wall of Time, and his
thesis was that the Fountain of Life weakened it in and around Dona Mihst, meaning exposure to the eternal void lengthened
the lives of those dwelling there. He argued there may not have been a simple correlation between exposure to the Water of
Life and the age to which men lived.”

“And what do you think of his thesis?” The Lord of Bhrudwo’s voice was devoid of inflexion.