Beyond the Wall of Time (63 page)

“Enough,” Noetos said. “Must I fight you to enforce discipline?”

“You were just waiting for an excuse!” Bregor shouted. “Revenge for your wife!”

The fisherman released his anger. It surged down his arm and into his closed fist at precisely the moment it met the Hegeoman’s
jaw. Consina squeaked as Bregor crumpled to the ground.

You are right, my friend
, Noetos acknowledged to the unconscious man.
I was waiting for an excuse and you were stupid enough to give it to me.

Noetos glanced up to see the two small figures advancing through the gate.
Damn you, Bregor, for the distraction.
It wasn’t until one of the figures spoke that he knew who they were, and even then he wasn’t entirely sure.

“Welcome, my friends, to my home. Come in, won’t you?”

Kannwar’s front doors swung back into the wide hallway. The wind outside stirred the two small torches offering the only light,
and one of them sputtered and went out. Stella squinted into the darkness; it only needed a simple head count to work out
who stood there.

“You couldn’t keep them away,” she whispered. “Is there anything you can control?”

He snorted, then held up his hand for silence. “I’m having more success than the fisherman,” he said after a moment.

“Than a hot-tempered hick from a fishing village? You ought to be,” Stella said blandly.

He ignored her and strode forward. “Welcome, my friends, to my home!” he called to his former companions. “Come in, won’t
you?”

“I wonder how they escaped your trap,” Stella said, looking for any needle she could find. “Maybe you should have killed them
all.”

“And maybe I should kill you,” he retorted. He waved his hand and her throat seized up.

Strangling me?
she wondered, strangely unconcerned.
He can’t kill me by depriving me of air, can he?
Her immortal blood would keep her alive somehow. Curse it. No, she could still breathe. But she could not talk, she discovered,
when she tried to ask her captor what he had done to her.

“Why should we surrender ourselves to your hospitality, Kannwar?” Noetos called out. “We don’t trust you.”

Stella applauded the man’s courage, if not his wisdom.
You have to find a way of allying yourself to the Destroyer
, she wanted to tell him.
You’ll never get close enough to Umu to make an end of her if you don’t.

“I told you to come in,” the Destroyer said. “If that sounded like you had a choice, I apologise.”

He closed his fist and at least half those standing outside the gates were jerked forward as though on the end of strings.
Walking like marionettes, they made their obviously reluctant way inside the gate.

A bell rang behind Stella. She couldn’t talk, but she could turn her head, and saw a boy hammering at a bell with all the
energy he had.

“I don’t need reinforcements, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Kannwar said. “I’ve called all my servants and soldiers to
defend the keep from imminent attack.”

You want chaos
, she guessed.
You don’t care who survives, as long as you can creep up unseen on whoever sits atop this fortress.

After struggling to hold back their fellows, the rest of the travellers followed them through the gates and into the hallway.

“That’s better. I’m disappointed you seem to have turned against me, especially since I am the world’s best hope of getting
rid of our remaining gods. You do know why I left you in the Godhouse, don’t you?”

“I’m sure you can supply us with any number of plausible reasons,” Noetos said, striding up to the Destroyer. “Just as you
can take on any disguise you like. What’s this one: foppish Malayu courtier?” He looked the Lord of Bhrudwo up and down. “Doubt
it’ll catch on. Who in their right mind cares for fashions worn by two-thousand-year-old cadavers? Now step out of the way,
yesterday’s man, and let us do what you will not.”

Stella’s blood sang as, beside her, the Destroyer’s blood boiled—almost literally, so hot did it grow at these words. But
by some superhuman degree of self-control he battened his temper down and waved them ahead.

“Go on then,” he said absently.

“Stella,” the fisherman said, “are you coming?”

No
, said Leith’s voice.
You have unfinished business here.

“She’s not talking to you, my friend. She has more interesting people to talk to. Be on your way and mind you don’t damage
my house.”

Wisely Noetos said nothing in reply to the Destroyer’s words. He bent his head close to Captain Duon’s.

“Which way?” Stella heard the fisherman whisper.

The Destroyer groaned. “And with this the Most High hopes to redeem his mistakes. The fool is more out of touch than ever.
The god you’re looking for sits atop the Tower of Farsight. Take any passage: they’ll all get you there in the end.”

He flicked his hand lazily and released those in thrall to him.

*   *   *

Noetos could stand no more of the fatuous baiting from the man. With a curt signal he chose the stairway at the far end of
the hall.

“I don’t know what that bell means,” he said to Duon, “but it must be some sort of summons. Soon the corridors will be filled
with soldiers. Swords out.”

“Should we split into our two teams?” Duon asked him.

“Not yet,” Cyclamere said. “But we must hurry. Get as far as we can towards the Tower of Farsight before we encounter opposition
and have to start spending lives.”

They didn’t run, but they still moved quickly up the stairs and down the first wide hallway to the right. Noetos looked twice
at an odd suit of armour standing in an embayment, obviously decorative rather than functional given its enormous height and
girth.

“Why did he leave us alive?” Duon asked him.

“At a guess, I’d say he wants as much fighting as possible while he deals with Umu in his own way.”

“So why not stand back and let him?”

A good question. “In case of what might happen if he fails. Or succeeds.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We don’t have to understand,” Noetos said. “We’re soldiers. We’ve been given our orders. Let’s seek to carry them out.”

The hallway ended in a locked and barred door. Barred from their side, fortunately, but the lock defeated their attempts to
fiddle it open.

“Break it down,” Noetos said, pointing to Duon and Cyclamere. “We’ll charge it together.”

The swordmaster pursed his lips but did not offer a comment. The three men took ten steps back into the corridor.

A shout rang from behind them. Soldiers.

Cylene put her hand on a door in the left wall. “I’ll just look in here, shall I?” she asked.

“Now!” Noetos called. The three men crashed into the door, shoulders forward, and ended in a heap on the floor. The door had
rattled in its frame but no more.

“No time for another try,” Duon said, picking himself up. Ten grey-liveried men were almost upon them.

“Follow Cylene!” Noetos ordered the others, as the swordsmen readied themselves.

The grey-clothed men halted just beyond reach. “Surrender,” the oldest of them barked.

“Certainly,” Noetos growled, and the man nodded. “We accept your parole.”

“No, you southern fool, I meant for
you
to surrender.”

“Ah,” said Noetos, delighted the old trick had worked to unsettle the man. “Sorry. I’m not used to northerners with the power
of speech.” He made ready to charge.

“Noetos!” came a cry from behind him.

Damn you, Cylene!
the fisherman thought, then smiled as he felt a breeze on his back. “Again, my apologies,” he said to the soldiers. “We’ll
talk more about surrender later.” He spun on his heel and dashed for the open door.

With it slammed and locked behind him, Duon and Cyclamere, he leaned on the wood and allowed himself a moment to recover.
They stood in a small courtyard open to the stars—or what stars there were: a light mist had rolled in, obscuring most of
the familiar constellations. To his right was an arched window, slats broken and thrown wide.

“Thank you, Cylene,” he said.

She dimpled at him. “Would have been for nothing if the key hadn’t still been in the lock.”

“Onward,” Duon said, without his usual diffidence. “The men behind us will figure it out. Eventually.”

It’s time for something to be explained to you
, Leith said to her.

I am listening.
She rubbed her throat as she trudged after the Destroyer.
It’s not as if I can do anything else.

Do you remember the Hall of Fealty?
he asked her.

Of course. We sat there not ten years ago, rain beating on the roof, listening to the petitions of the hill men of the Veridian
Borders. One of the most boring afternoons I’ve ever spent.

Indeed.
The voice seemed amused.
Do you recall the first time we were there?

Oh yes, she did. Leith had taken her there the year after the Falthan War had ended, to honour her before the Knights of Fealty.
She’d endured as mixed a reception there as anywhere else and Leith had been distraught. “They don’t honour you,” he’d said
as they lay together that night, “and yet you were the true hero of the war.”

“They can’t honour me,” she had replied. “I upset their simple notion of a black-and-white world. Someone who served evil
yet achieved the purposes of the Most High.”

She’d believed that, back then. It had taken long decades of gritted-teeth endurance for that belief to be eroded away. She’d
served no one’s purposes but her own, and failed miserably at that. Leith had risked his life to save her. She’d been nothing
but trouble.

Kannwar planted Deorc in our camp as a spy, to confound our plans. The Most High planted a spy in Kannwar’s camp. Do you know
who she was?

“Keep up, my queen, or I will bind you,” said the Destroyer.

A troop of soldiers ran past them, saluting as they went.

“Or perhaps detail others to carry you,” he added.

Stella picked up her pace.

I see
, she said.
I am about to die, my unlooked-for blessing coming after all these years. You’ve been sent here to ease my passing, to tell
me things to lighten my heart.

I’m lying then?
His voice sounded hurt.

N-no, not lying
, she stammered out.

You were the Most High’s thorn in his enemy’s side. As you are again. It was your virtue as much as your vice that saw you
enslaved. Yes, you desired darkness. But darkness could not have ensnared you unless you decided to trust it, to treat it
as though it was light.

Oh.
Her head hurt with this convoluted thinking.
Everybody has an explanation for my behaviour. I don’t know who to believe.

Consider
, the voice said as they strode along a hallway with a series of tall arched windows high in the right-hand wall. She’d been
along here before this evening, or a corridor like it.
In the Hall of Fealty I told Leith he was but one of many I’d called to my service. Not the bravest or the best, just the
first to arrive. It is the same with you, dear Stella. That was the lesson of the Hall of Fealty.

You’re not Leith?

No—and yes. It is not a simple thing, this issue of identity. I have told you I am a reluctant participant in these affairs.
I created this… problem when, in attempting to help, I took away too much choice. Were I to continue to interfere, I would
be solving one problem while creating another.

Not sure I care
, Stella said, now aware whom she was speaking to.
At least our problem will have been solved. Interfere all you like.

Fine for a mortal not to care for the next generation. But you’re no mortal, Stella. Of anyone alive, you ought to care most
deeply about how this present crisis is resolved.

Ahead, the Destroyer came to a halt in the middle of a large hall set up for a banquet. He put his finger to his lips. Stella
shrugged: she couldn’t speak anyway.

You are not the best, Stella, but you are here while better women and men turned aside from my calling. Are you willing to
let me kindle what has been set within you?

That didn’t take much thought.
It’s yours, after all
, she said, and nodded.

Across the courtyard, down a passageway and through a truly enormous banqueting hall. Moralye caught her shin on a chair and
sent it flying into a table; crystal goblets and porcelain plates crashed to the flagstone floor. After that they moved more
slowly for a while, Mustar supporting Moralye under one arm.
He’s sweet on her
, Noetos realised.
And I thought he was after my daughter.

“Are we heading in the right direction?” he asked Duon.

“Yes, though in a roundabout way. That there,” he pointed out a window to his left, where a slender tower rose into the mist,
“is the Spindle. The Tower of Farsight is beyond it.”

“Good,” Noetos said, even though it wasn’t. Something had begun scratching at his mind, as though an insect had been trapped
in his head and was attempting to burrow its way out. Beside him, Arathé groaned, putting her hand to her head at regular
intervals. Duon had turned pale and licked his lips when he thought no one was watching.

When the attack came, Noetos realised, it was unlikely to require a swordsman to respond.

The Fire of Life blazed within her, an oxygen-starved flame opened to the air. It burned through the string-like binding between
herself and the Destroyer, but left the ends trailing. It burned higher and higher, searing the pain of her cursed blood.
Removing it.

Free of pain after seventy years.

You… you…
She shook with anger.
All this time you could do this for me and you never spoke of it? Where are you? I’ll kill you with my bare hands!

Never spoke to you? I spoke to you every day of your life. You never believed me.

I could have… Leith and I could…
Her words dissolved into an inarticulate groan born of the deepest recesses of her self.