Beyond the Wall of Time (60 page)

“I have a question for Torve and Captain Duon,” she said. “Why did Umu return the bronze map to this room?”

“What do you mean?” Duon answered her, but even as the question slipped out of his mouth, comprehension dawned on his face.

Lenares willed him on, wanting him to work out what it implied. The four southern survivors of the Valley of the Damned—Lenares,
Torve, Duon and Dryman—had been corralled into Nomansland, where they were trapped in the House of the Gods. There, in the
Throne Room, they were snatched up by a god, chair, bronze map and all, and deposited in Raceme. The huge, circular bronze
image had landed on top of Lenares, knocking the breath from her.

Torve saw it more quickly even than the explorer. “The map was ripped away from this room when we were taken up by the god
and dropped in Raceme. Yet here it is now. Umu must have gone to a great deal of effort to bring it back.”

Lenares smiled. “Umu has rebuilt the chairs and retrieved the bronze map. There can be only one reason. They are the components
of the secret mechanism.”

She scrambled up onto the chair she associated with the Father. “Cylene!” she called excitedly. “Get up in the chair nearest
you!”

Dear sister, she did what she was asked without question. Who else should Lenares ask but Torve?

“Torve! Please, Torve, could you climb the remaining chair?”

Yes!
she exulted as Cylene reached the seat and sat herself down in it. Immediately her rear made contact with the stone, the
numbers embedded in the bronze map changed… amplified… began to make sense. There were just as many lines and names on the
map as before, but some of them thickened and changed colour, making the whole map easier to read. Now, if only there was
a legend.

Torve sat on the third chair. For the first time in who knew how long, all three chairs were occupied. Not by gods, but did
that matter?

Everyone in the circle gasped as the map began to glow as though backlit with sunlight. The room filled with light, and the
travellers cast huge shadows on the walls behind them.

Yes, yes, yes!

The legend appeared. Not that it was really needed now: Lenares could read the map as though it was a part of her own mind.

Oh, of course.
The centre of the map wasn’t in the same place as she remembered from Marasmos, because they were much further north now.
The bronze map was centred in the Bhrudwan continent, and Elamaq and Faltha were small and stretched around the periphery
of the map. Bhrudwo was much larger, and many places were marked. One colour for towns, another for roads—all named, if she
looked closely enough—a third for rivers. And so it went. Forests, bays, oceans, mountains.

But the legend had far more on it than mere physical features. It was the oddest legend Lenares had ever seen on a map, and
she had seen—and drawn—plenty of them as part of her training. She focused on the heading “Fear” and the map changed. Muttering
from below indicated the others saw the change too. The names were still there, but they had turned grey and become smaller.
Instead, the map was covered by shades of red. A pinprick of bright red pulsed in the room at the centre of the map—the room
they were in. She desired to see this more closely, and the map obliged. She found she was looking down on the back of her
own head, and in the centre of the bronze map was… a bronze map, which, if she looked more closely—no. She stopped, worried
that she might be starting down a never-ending path.

Could she enlarge other areas of the map? Anywhere else wouldn’t entail the sick-making effect she’d just experienced.

Talamaq
, her mind said. Immediately she was drawn down into the map—or the map swelled, she couldn’t tell which—and the red-coloured
city spread out before her, just as it appeared on the maps she had studied in the city’s scholarium.
Oh.
Thinking the name sent her down, so that she hovered just above the scholarium itself, an annexe to the Talamaq Palace. The
view readjusted.

Something odd was happening. She could actually see the heads of people running to and fro across the map—although not a map:
at this scale, she was seeing the physical world as it actually was, watching events as they happened. Everything was covered
in a deep red wash. The scholarium’s glass roof was broken and smoke spiralled up towards her, borne away to her left on a
sea breeze. Part of the palace was in flames, and as she looked more closely she saw that the people were fighting with each
other. Some lay prone on the ground. She almost found herself shouting down to the figures, warning them of soldiers approaching
from around a corner. She doubted they would hear her—and, of course, she had no idea what side she should take, if any.

Voices were calling out to her, but she ignored them: not from the map. Fear? Was this a map of fear? Well, there was certainly
enough fear in this room to show up as a red patch on the map. In fact, it had grown since she’d first changed the legend.
Hah.
Just like her, her companions had been frightened when she’d swooped in for a closer look. Where else did fear lie? Another
scarlet blob lay on—she zoomed closer—an island off the coast of Malayu.
Ah, Andratan.
That made sense. Other places she knew glowed red: Aneheri, Raceme. And Talamaq, of course. She greatly wished she could
return there.

Back to the legend. “Wealth” said one heading. “Love.” “Weather.” “Wars.”
Oh my.
She so wanted to explore, but there wasn’t time, she knew that. Her body shook with excitement, the glory of revelation almost
overwhelming her.
Oh, if I could only sit here forever.

One more thing to try. She reached into the map with her mind and touched one of the rooms of the Godhouse. Immediately it
was outlined in gold. She tugged it to her left, and all the rooms changed places. She tore her gaze away from the map in
time to see the corridor out of the room blur.

So that’s how she did it.

Lenares could not resist the sweet feeling of power pulsing through her body.
So this is what it is like to be a god.

In her exalted state she almost missed the last heading. “Travel” it said, in small letters.

Containing her excitement, she mentally indicated the heading and the map reverted to its initial appearance—but now threads
snaked out of the map, connected to every feature, and up into the night sky. She needed no explanation as to what this was.

“Duon!” she said, her voice not much more than a croak. “Take hold of that thread there! No, the one to the right, the one
marked ‘Andratan.’ ”

“Wait, everyone,” Noetos said. “Think about this. I know what this looks like, but we have no way of knowing what will happen
if one of us does as Lenares asks.”

“But it says ‘Travel’!” Lenares said, agitated.

“And I’m sure that’s what it allows us to do,” the fisherman said reasonably. “But why not take a moment to test it? The room
next to this has an orange thread. I’ll take hold of that thread and see what happens. If it works as we think it will, I’ll
be back amongst you in a moment. If not, well.” He stepped forward and leaned over the map.

“Someone else,” Cylene said. Lenares didn’t think her sister had intended to say the words aloud.

Sauxa snatched the thread in his beefy hand and nodded to the fisherman. “More expendable, me.”

“Aye,” said Noetos, and nodded back.

What should Lenares say? Was intent enough, or was there some magic word? Examining the legend was no help: the word “Travel”
was now lit in the same orange as the thread the plainsman held in his hand.

The answer, she supposed, was the obvious one.

“Travel,” she said.

Sauxa vanished.

A thin orange line appeared in the next room, spearing up into the sky.
Or
, Lenares corrected,
spearing down into the room.

A few moments later Sauxa came walking back into the Throne Room. “That was… odd,” he said.

“Can we go now?” Cylene called from her seat.

“Not just yet,” Noetos said. “Sauxa, we need to repeat the experiment.”

“Why?” the plainsman asked. But Lenares knew.

“We need to know if we can make a return journey,” said the fisherman.

It was disconcerting to see Sauxa vanish, but even more so to see him return. One moment gone, the next moment there.

“I can return myself,” he reported. “Just by keeping hold of the thread and saying the word ‘Travel.’ ”

“A third time, my friend,” Noetos said.

This time even the old man understood. “You want to see what happens if I release the thread.”

A few moments later he returned to report success. “It just hung there in the darkness.”

Noetos leaned across the map and grabbed a strand, then vanished.

“Such an impulsive man,” Sautea said. “I know exactly where he’s gone.”

An odd comment, Lenares thought, as his destination, Fossa, was marked clearly on the map. But the older fisherman wasn’t
looking at the map, staring instead into the night sky as though expecting to see his friend returning, sliding down the thread
as though it was a rope.

Noetos reappeared about ten minutes later. “We have a problem,” he said.

“Oh?” Bregor said. “What’s happened to Fossa?”

“Nothing beyond what we already knew,” the fisherman replied, wiping at his eyes. “Houses burned, no sign of anyone from what
I could see, no lights, boats lying around in the harbour or beached on the rocks. Deserted, destroyed, desolate. That’s not
what I meant.”

Bregor gave a huge sigh. “What then?”

“I didn’t end up in Fossa,” he said. “The beam of light deposited me at the top of the Cliff of Memory, about half an hour’s
walking distance from the centre of town. It took me a few minutes to work out where I was, actually.”

“The map is inaccurate?” Moralye said, alarmed.

“A little, I think,” Noetos acknowledged. “Enough to be of concern.”

“Only a few minutes’ walk,” Consina said. “Better than walking from here!”

“I’ve worked with maps and charts before, and inaccurate charts are dangerous things,” said the fisherman. “Unmarked shoals,
hidden reefs, islands marked on the map but not really there. Hegeoma, what would have happened had I arrived, say, ten minutes’
walk out to sea?”

“Oh,” the woman said, and nodded acknowledgment to him.

“Well, we may not be able to get to Andratan,” Seren said, “but at least we can come close. The sooner we start, the more
time we have to walk the extra distance required.”

“Or swim,” Mustar said quietly.

“We can do better than that,” Lenares said, her mind whirling. “I suspect the map was damaged when it fell into Raceme. Bent,
perhaps, out of its perfect shape. So all we have to do is send people to various parts of the world and measure the extent
to which the map is inaccurate. I can then calculate the degree of error for travel to Andratan.”

“We’d be trusting to your figuring?” Noetos said.

“Unless you think you can do better,” she snapped back at him.

The next hour was likely the strangest in their lives, Lenares considered. Certainly of their journeys so far. One by one
she sent people to their chosen destinations: Moralye to Dhauria, Sauxa to Instruere, Seren to Eisarn Pit, Sautea and Mustar
to Fossa, as they could not be persuaded otherwise, Bregor to Raceme, Cyclamere to the canopy at Patina Padouk, Consina to
Makyra Bay. Everyone but Sauxa and Bregor wanted to go to their own towns; if it were her, Lenares considered, she’d go somewhere
storied and exotic, like Crynon or Lake Pouna. Or Ilixa Island, which until this moment had been considered a legend. She
ached to take one of those threads in her hand and travel there, but she dared not move from her seat. The travellers might
be able to leave their threads and return, but the cosmographer doubted she could climb down from the seat without dire consequences.
She imagined the threads winking out, her companions left on their own with no hope of resuming their adventure.

She wondered how many of them would return. Would any of them opt to resume their lives at home, leaving the contention with
Umu to others?

Sauxa reappeared first. “Nothing wrong with the map,” he said. “I appeared in the middle of the Great Hall of Instruere, exactly
as I intended. Gave a few fellows putting out chairs quite a fright.” He laughed shortly, then frowned. “Things aren’t going
so well there, it seems. The Koinobia have taken over the city, according to one fellow I spoke to. Guardsmen replaced by
priests, citizens forced into Hal worship, public houses closed or converted into places of worship. Violence in the streets,
so the lad said.”

“Didn’t he wonder about the beam of coloured light?” Torve asked.

“Didn’t see it,” the plainsman said. “Said he didn’t anyway, and he had no reason to lie. Queen Stella needs to go back there
and straighten that Koinobia out. Put this Halite thing down.”

Moralye and Seren returned within moments of each other. The scholar echoed Sauxa’s comments about the accuracy of the map,
explaining how she had appeared within ten paces of the door to the scriptorium. “I walked in and that blind oaf Palanget
greeted me as if I hadn’t been away. Didn’t anyone notice I’d gone?”

“But you returned,” Lenares prompted.

“I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough,” Moralye said, her face sour. “I’d rather be a part of making history than stuck
in the darkness reading about it.”

Seren shook his head at Lenares’ enquiry. “I walked for a thousand paces or more,” he said, “before I came across the Altima
Road. Even then I was perhaps another hour’s journey on foot from the pit, not a journey I’d undertake at night on my own.”

“In what direction would you have had to travel from the beam of light to go directly to the pit?”
Bearing and distance
, she wanted to demand of them.
Give me bearing and distance!
But these were ordinary people and didn’t calculate such things as a matter of course.

“Seven thousand paces, give or take, in a sou’souwest direction.”