Beyond the Wall of Time (57 page)

This is Husk’s time.

There is a buzzing at the back of his head. He takes it for part of the excitement: his body is still relatively new and he
does not know exactly how it will react to the stress it is about to be subjected to.

The buzzing grows and his scalp becomes warm. Some sort of attack from the Undying Man perhaps. Still he does not panic. He
draws from his conduit to the void and prepares his defences. Chief among them is a strong shield to keep out any magical
assault; so much power is at his disposal that he cannot conceive of anyone penetrating it.

The shield snaps closed around him, yet the buzzing does not cease. Instead, it grows; and now he can hear voices.

No.

Something’s happening
, says a voice.

No, oh no. He has no defence against this.

Another voice whispers in his mind.
She has found the connection between we three spikes and Husk. She has Conal’s mind wide open. I… can feel her widening the
channel—ah, she’s going to burn out our minds!

The artery he made to link himself to his spikes, the connection he’d strengthened until it was impossible to break, begins
to burn, to blister. Something begins to move along it, towards him.

Frantic with terror, Husk tries to cut the link.

His magical power has no effect.

He tries to assemble a barrier between the channel and his own body.

The intruder bursts through it with ease.

It is coming, it is coming—it is here.

“No!” he cries, the word ripping out his throat. “No! Stay away!”

It reaches for him, fastens onto him.

“Do not… I will… AAAAAAH!”

It slides into his mind and fills it, evicting him with no effort.

It is the Daughter, Umu, and she is unimaginably strong. She tears his mind open, laughing as she does so, leafing through
his thoughts of revenge, whispering mocking things at what she finds. She throws carefully nurtured concepts away as though
they were so much rubbish. Husk sits at the back of his own head, a tiny ball of misery, beyond terror.

“Ah,” says Umu, settling into his mind as though it was a rented room. No, a room repossessed by a moneylender. “I will be
comfortable here.”

Husk screams, but no one can hear him.

THE BROKEN MAN

THE FLAMES WRAPPED THEMSELVES
around Stella like a former lover renewing an unwanted embrace, licking, caressing, burning. She could not move, whether
because of Kannwar’s power or the strength of the blue fire, she could not tell. She remembered panicking the first time she
had travelled this way, and how it had so nearly destroyed her. Would that it had. But she could not struggle, could not fight,
and so the flames overwhelmed her, burned her to ashes, and bore them away.

The first thing she felt as she came to herself was a cool wind whipping at her hair.
Alive then
, she sighed. A moment later, the second realisation:
Still under Kannwar’s spell.

“Come, my queen,” growled the loved, hated voice from beside her. “We have business to attend to.”

She opened her eyes reluctantly and scrambled to her feet. The bitter wind whipped at the stunted bushes around them, the
thin branches clacking together, creating an unpleasant sound.

“Cold wind and thorny bushes,” she said. He’d returned her voice, at least. “Why doesn’t that surprise me, Destroyer?”

“Ah, Stella,” Kannwar purred. “Delight of my heart. Unquenchable spirit.”

Hatred for the man boiled up within her, underlain by something darker. She wanted to hate him, wanted to… She
couldn’t
want
that
. What was wrong with her?

They reached the end of the bushy grove and emerged into the open. To Stella’s left the land dropped away to the dull grey
sea, whose great surges boomed and sucked at the coast. Above them the louring sky darkened towards twilight; towering clouds,
pale at their tops, dark and forbidding at the base, blurred where rain swept across the water. Ahead lay the island itself:
a table-top of rolling grass interspersed by gnarled trees. Her gaze followed the lie of the land forward, and snagged on
the fortress.

Andratan stood there, towers, battlements, keeps and walls all purpling in the last of the day’s light. Like a champion before
battle it seemed to adopt a confident stance, immovable, certain of its own strength.

“Home,” said Kannwar. “You’ll like it here.”

“Only if you find somewhere else to live.”

The Destroyer smiled at this weak sally. Then his face changed.

“You dare sit on that seat?” he breathed.

Stella quailed at the anger in his words, then realised they were not meant for her. He snatched at her hand and began to
drag her forward.

The sodden ground kept trying to snare her feet. After the second time she’d fallen, he hauled her mud-soaked figure to its
feet and sighed.

“Come on, Stella,” he grated. “We have an uninvited guest to be rid of. And I had so hoped our nuptials and their consummation
would be a more select affair.”

Again his words stirred something within her as thick as tar, as black as pitch. She was frightened of him, petrified in fact,
but what seemed to be building inside her scared her far more…

“The Sea Door,” he said. “He will be expecting us to use the main entrance. Always direct, our Deorc. We shall just have to
confuse him.”

“You are enjoying this,” Stella said in wonder. “A man who betrayed you seventy years ago has escaped from the most appalling
torture and now controls your castle, and you are enjoying yourself!”

The Destroyer turned to her and not for the first time she saw the delight of a young boy shining out from his dark eyes.
“How else does one know one is alive?” he said, grinning widely.

He led her down a slope to their left, to the top of a stone stair that led all the way down to the sea. They were much closer
to the fortress now, but the largest tower stood well to their right. Across a small inlet, in which three ships lay uneasily
at anchor, stood an adjunct tower at the base of which Stella could barely make out a small door.

“Mind your step,” said the Destroyer.

The steps were wet with spray and hard to see in the gloom. Stella rolled her ankle on the third step and fell in a heap.

“Are you doing this deliberately, my queen? Do I need to possess you in order to carry you over my threshold?” He lifted her
chin in one illusory hand. “Do you ever want to exercise free will or must I compel every aspect of your life from now on?”

“No,” she said, attempting to stop the tears that had begun to fall. “I’m trying. Please, help me to my feet.”

He raised a finger to her face and traced one of her tears as it rolled down her cheek. “This will not do,” he said, his voice
gentle. “We cannot enter my house like this. We are not beggars come to request a favour from some great lord that we should
creep and weep.”

He waved a hand and his guise changed. Gone was Heredrew, that elongated man. In his place was a shorter, more compact figure,
long blond locks framing a handsome face with an aquiline nose and deep blue eyes. The hair tumbled down to the high collar
of a formal brown jacket, embroidered in green and gold; his leggings were similarly adorned. He wore white gloves and long
black boots, and the overall effect was unsettling. The syrup deep within Stella stirred. She had no doubt she was seeing
Kannwar as he had been when he had rebelled against the Most High, before the Water of Life had twisted his body. A figure
altogether fair, the best of his generation, the culmination of a thousand years of patient planning by the Most High. The
true First Man.

Almost unbearable to look upon.

His hand waved again. Her bedraggled, soaked attire vanished, to be replaced by a flowing red dress. Ankle-length, gold-threaded
silk, hugging the curves of her body, the high collar tickling her chin. Crystal slippers on her feet and a tiara in her hair.
She raised a hand to explore how her hair had been styled.

He smiled. Her hand dropped back to her side.

“That’s how I see you, my queen,” he said. “That’s how I’ve always seen you. Come, now. Let us enter our house with dignity.”

This is some kind of glamour
, she thought.
I am helpless in the hands of the Destroyer. My friends are trapped in the House of the Gods. Umu is loose and the world is
still endangered. And ahead of us waits another madman, someone who believes I betrayed him seventy years ago. And all I care
about is how beautiful my captor looks?

Something within her urged her to forget everything and surrender to the moment.

As they reached the base of the stair, a huge figure stepped out from an embayment in the cliff to their right. “Halt!” it
cried. “Give your name and—oh.” It lowered the enormous sword it had drawn, laid it on the stone step and bowed. “My lord,”
it said, in a voice like gravel.

“Prepare the boat,” the Destroyer commanded the figure.

As the man rose, Stella was forcibly reminded of Noetos; certainly this fellow was of the same stock, if somewhat larger even
than the fisherman. His red hair was cut short, his hairy arms exposed by the short-sleeved jerkin he wore. Stella had never
seen a man so muscled.

The man disappeared around a bend in the path, then came back a moment later and beckoned them forward. A boat slopped in
the water. The Destroyer gestured her towards it. “You first, my queen.”

She thought of pitching herself in the water. Saw herself carried out by the sea, then pitched back against the rocks by the
first wave. Imagined the crack and shatter of her bones, felt the water filling her chest. Sighed deeply as she envisioned
herself coming back to life, and plunked herself in the boat.

The bay was perhaps two hundred paces across, an effective barrier preventing an easy approach to the tower. The red-headed
giant rowed them across in twenty powerful strokes of his oars, leaped out of the boat and made it fast in one swift motion.

The Destroyer pursed his lips. “Come with us,” he instructed the man. “Draw your sword.”

The man nodded, content to leave his lord’s command unquestioned. Or frightened perhaps, though he did not look frightened.
His expression was remarkably blank. A dullard? Stella thought of her brother, her poor dead brother, killed seventy years
ago by drink, and the uncomprehending look on his face when the bottle had taken him.

The Destroyer led them up the ten steps to the door of the tower. The remains of the day were leaching away, but Stella could
still see the disturbing architecture of the tower above her. Surmounting the door was a carving of some battle scene in which
a man with a flashing blade held off a horde of wild-looking soldiers. The artist had injected the scene with a manic quality
and the snarl on the face of the defender was little less sinister than those on the attackers’.

“That happened,” said the Destroyer, noting the direction of her gaze. “The hordes of Kanabar overcame my armies and drove
me back to Andratan. Actually, we were never in any serious danger of being overrun but feigned defeat, thus stretching the
foolish barbarians’ supply lines to breaking point.” He laughed. “It did my legend no harm to have fought their elite troops
single-handed at the door to the Sea Tower.”

“How long ago?” Stella croaked.

“Over seventeen hundred years ago,” he replied. “Seems like yesterday.”

As he spoke the words, something thickened in the air around them. A trap?

“Ah, now that I did not expect,” the Destroyer said. “No matter how clever my plans are, some dupe always blunders in and
upsets them. Conal Greatheart, Leith Mahnumsen, lucky fools.”

“What has happened?”

The Destroyer pursed his lips. “Umu has been extremely clever,” he said. “Ironic, really, in light of where we stand. She
has pretended to flee from the hordes intent on her destruction and has now found a far safer place from which to wage her
war. Not that Deorc will think so.”

Stella shook her head, not understanding a word of it. The Destroyer leaned on the door and swung it open, and she followed
him inside.

And so this ends, one way or another, for everyone else
, she thought.
But for me, it begins.

Conal’s body lay empty and stiff at the base of the throne.

“Has she gone? Is she still hiding in there?”

The travellers gathered around, staring at the body, most of them unclear as to what had just happened.

“Umu has gone,” Duon confirmed.

Cheers accompanied this statement, dying out as it became clear that the principals did not share their joy.

“She’s not been driven beyond the hole in the world then?” Bregor hazarded.

“No,” Noetos said. “You’re all aware that my daughter, the Elamaq captain and”—he kicked the corpse with his boot—“that thing
were all linked to the magician’s voice. You know that we discovered his identity and location, being one Husk of Andratan,
who had opportunistically spiked these three when they visited the fortress. You also know they broke free of his control
by exploiting the death of Conal.”

Everyone nodded. As much had been explained to them during their journey north to Zizhua Valley.

“But what you didn’t know—and what we did know, but discounted—was that the magical channels formed between Husk and his three
spikes remained open, even though Husk himself could no longer exploit them. That’s right, isn’t it?” he finished, turning
to his daughter.

She nodded, and extended a hand to Duon, gesturing for him to speak.

“We might have been able to close them,” the southern captain admitted, “but we never tried. It seemed to us that we might
be able to utilise the link to draw power from Husk, in the same way he had once used us. Turn and turn about, in a way. In
fact that’s just what we did when we rallied together to drive Keppia out of Cylene’s body.”

“But Umu found the link, didn’t she?” Lenares said, her eyes sparkling as she solved the puzzle. “She discarded Conal’s dead
body and leapt into Husk’s live one.” She giggled. “How surprising for Husk!”