Beyond the Wall of Time Read online

  Stella stood up. “This was all his plan? How long have you known this?”

  “He told us only in the last few days,” Conal said. “Before that we did not even know his name.”

  “He tells the truth,” Lenares said. “But something does not add up.”

  “Much does not add up,” Conal agreed. “I am a man of few powers, so what did Husk think to achieve by bringing me here? Or was I just the instrument by which Stella was brought?”

  “I cannot see why he wants me,” Stella said.

  “I can,” said Kannwar. “Revenge. You were the one who betrayed him to me, and that on false pretences. You tricked him and he suffered for it. I should have made an end of him.”

  “Who knows what his insane plans were?” Moralye said. “What matters is how you were treated.”

  “We were treated very well,” Conal said.

  At this Lenares hissed.

  “Very well, all things considered,” the priest amended. “Most of the time he was only a voice in the back of our heads. Without his intervention, Stella would be dead and one of the Lords of Fear would be immortal. Hard to see that as a good thing. Yes, in the last weeks he has been a harsh taskmaster and I wished with all my heart to be free, but I am alive still.”

  “And you say you are now free of his control?” Stella asked him.

  “Yes. He cannot touch me now.”

  There was a deathly certitude in the words that tickled some warning thoughts in Stella’s mind, but in reviewing what he’d said she could make nothing of it.

  “Very well,” Moralye said. “I suggest we think on this tonight and resolve the issue in the morning. As Lenares would no doubt remind us, our ultimate task is to remove the threat posed by the gods. But I will not be party to this if the price is the reinstatement of a tyrant in Bhrudwo. Any tyrant.” She looked around the semicircle, ensuring everyone understood her meaning.

  “Rest well,” she added.

  The others echoed her words, and made preparations for sleep.

  In her present state Stella required no sleep. She had grown weary of conversing with the Most High, who seemed to have little to say, and had been left with her own thoughts. What few there were soon suffered an interruption by Lenares.

  “Don’t listen to the priest,” Lenares said, even as she shook Stella by the shoulder, assuming she was sleeping. “Don’t listen to him.”

  Stella levered an elbow under herself and raised her head, the most she could achieve without the intervention of the Most High. Amused at the woman’s intensity, she smiled. “I’ve already listened to him. How should I now remove the words from my ears?”

  “You make fun of me, but you know what I mean. Don’t consider his words in your plans. He is wrong.” She sucked at her lip, frustrated at her inability to communicate her meaning. “I don’t mean his ideas are wrong, though they are. I mean there is something wrong about him.”

  Now she had Stella’s attention. Stella called for the Most High to listen, but there was no answer. Was he listening regardless or was he elsewhere? Could he not be in a place? One of a hundred questions Stella had not asked him.

  The crack of a trodden-on twig made them both spin their heads. Conal stepped out of the darkness, a cudgel in his hand and something dangerous in his eye.

  Stella cried out and thrust Lenares behind her. At least, she attempted to: the arm she lifted was the one ending at the elbow, and her push achieved little apart from her own pain.

  “Not you I want,” Conal said. “Not yet. Get out of the way.”

  “I’ll burn you with my magic,” Stella said.

  “You wouldn’t hurt your devoted priest, would you?” the figure snarled. “Of course you wouldn’t, because you can’t. Your magic is locked up.”

  Lenares looked on with wide eyes. “Just like Dryman,” she whispered, and began to back away.

  “Enough.”

  The figure stepped over Stella, raised his cudgel and struck Lenares a fearsome blow to her shoulder. Bones shattered like thin sticks. She collapsed to the ground with a scream.

  “Conal!” someone cried. “What’s happening? What are you doing?”

  Conal turned his eye on a wide-eyed Stella. “Shut your mouth, bitch, or I’ll break your face,” he rasped.

  He turned away and called to the others. “Some sort of wild animal. A rat. I’ll have it dead in a moment.” He raised the club a second time.

  “No!” Stella cried, and threw herself at Conal.

  The club descended, its tip scraping her forehead above her right eye. She backed away, slithering on her back, one hand raised, shielding herself and Lenares from the death facing them.

  Please don’t kill them, Conal whined.

  Too late for that, said Umu. It’s amazing how much strength one can transfer to such a weak arm as yours—what is that?

  A roar came from the far side of the camp and Kannwar stood, his burning eyes staring in their direction.

  He has a link to Stella, Conal said quietly. He knows something is wrong.

  You should have told me! Umu raged.

  You didn’t ask, Conal said, his voice freighted with spite; then squealed as she took his fragment of consciousness and squeezed it.

  The Undying Man started towards them.

  “Is that Conal?” cried another voice. “But he’s dead! We buried him!”

  Umu glanced to Kannwar’s left, to where Noetos strode into the camp, followed by Duon and Arathé. For a moment she was paralysed, knowing trouble came for her but not realising why. Then she remembered Husk’s two other spikes.

  They know you died, she said, and dropped the cudgel in dismay. A moment later she sent Conal’s arms scrabbling for it.

  “It’s Conal’s body, right enough,” Duon said. “But who is that inside?”

  Conal moaned in an extremity of pain and self-loathing. His arm had just struck down his queen, was about to slay the only woman he’d ever loved.

  Don’t be so sure, Umu said. Stella has immortal blood. People have thought her dead before.

  She hissed to herself, the element of surprise lost. She spun his body around and set off into the darkness at a shambling run. A commotion broke out behind them. Shouts echoed across the rim of the pit, voices yelling at each other in anger.

  Perhaps I will have to come back and kill her again and again. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you, Conal?

  He ignored her taunts.

  Something rippled across his damaged consciousness, a light-headed uneasiness akin to a short dizzy spell. Conal wondered, now he no longer had access to his glands, how he could feel anything.

  “Not you I want,” his mouth said to Stella, who stood defiantly in front of a frightened Lenares. “Not yet. Get out of the way.”

  This is odd, Conal thought. Stella ought to be lying on the ground, but there she stood, along with Lenares, who had definitely been badly hurt.

  “I’ll hurt you with my magic,” Stella said. She raised a hand to her head, as though checking it was unhurt.

  She remembers being struck.

  “You won’t hurt your devoted priest,” the figure snarled. “Your magic is locked up. You need the assistance of the Undying Man to make use of it.”

  Lenares’ eyes were as wide as saucers. “Just like Dryman,” she said, backing away.

  What has Umu done to my memory? He paused a moment. No, not just my memory. Lenares and Stella know something is wrong. Umu doesn’t realise though.

  “Enough.”

  Conal’s body stepped over Stella and raised his cudgel. Lenares, clearly knowing what was coming, turned her shoulder away from the blow, but it fell anyway, striking her savagely on the head. She collapsed like a falling tree.

  Come on, he begged them all. Do something to change this!

  “Conal!” came the voice, right on cue. “What’s happening? What are you doing?”

  Umu turned Conal’s head to face a wide-eyed Stella. “Shut your mouth, bitch, or I’ll break your
face as well,” rasped his voice.

  She doesn’t know; she’s blind to the—what did the Padouki warrior call it? This double-time. How can we use this?

  “Some sort of wild animal,” his mouth called back. “A rat. I’ll have it dead in a moment.” His arm raised the club again, exactly as he’d known he would.

  “No!” Stella cried, and threw herself at Conal.

  The club descended, this time taking her above her right eye, and she fell to the ground like a discarded toy.

  Conal watched all this in impotent horror from somewhere far behind his own eye. The time-doubling had hurt two of his friends. As he screamed at Umu, the dizziness intensified, then vanished.

  “This is our chance,” Kannwar insisted.

  “Our chance?” Robal shouted, his face red with rage. “Stella’s hurt! Heal her with your magic!”

  “It is likely one of the gods is trapped inside the priest’s body. If we take that body and imprison it, we eliminate one of our enemies.”

  Robal turned Stella’s limp body onto its back. Though he despised himself for it, he couldn’t help the frisson that burned its way up his arms. He had not touched her since their first meeting, when he’d mistakenly thought she was offering herself. How could he think this way when Stella might well be dead?

  All such thoughts vanished when he saw her blood-spattered face. The blow had caved in her cheek, the whole right side of her face unbearable to look upon. He turned his head away.

  “She is alive,” Kannwar said, his words clipped. “She cannot be killed. She cannot be healed by anything you or I might do. Her blood will restore her. The best thing we can do is pursue her assailant, which is what I intend to do, accompanied or not.”

  “We ought to stay together,” said Sautea, the older of the two Fossan fishermen. “If we separate, the gods can pick us off.”

  “Like fish in a shoal, friend?” Noetos stooped to stare at the injured women. “Less chance of being eaten when the shark comes calling?”

  “Unfair, Noetos.” Mustar clapped a hand on Sautea’s shoulder. “We’re as brave as you, fisherman, and far more sensible.”

  “If you’re sensible, you’ll come with Heredrew and me. We need to find the priest.”

  “Heredrew?” Robal said, his temper flaring. “Heredrew’s a fraud. Hasn’t anyone told you?”

  “Please! I need assistance! Can anyone help me?”

  The voice cut across their debate. Torve the Omeran stood at the edge of their circle, his face white.

  “Lenares, she is hurt. I think she is dying.”

  The others turned to where the dark-skinned man beckoned them. A figure lay prone right on the edge of the pit, and a number of the travellers rushed to her side. Robal stayed where he was, his hand on Stella’s wounded forehead.

  “Oh, Stella, my queen,” he whispered. “I am no guard to have allowed such things to happen to you. But I would be your lover, not your guard; your husband, not some impotent watcher. I could guard your heart and keep you safe.”

  Her flesh warmed under his hand; she stirred and began to pant. Her eyes sprang open.

  “I wish I were dead,” she said, her words slurred by the damage to her face. Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. “How… how is Lenares?”

  “Think of yourself for a moment, my dear,” Robal said. “She is well.” He had no idea, of course. “But you are not. I cannot stand to see you so badly hurt so often, Stella. I wish you would leave the fighting to others and find somewhere to stay safe with one who can look after you, providing your every need.”

  His heart began to pour out with his words; he could not have stopped it even if he’d wished.

  “Again and again you have put yourself at risk,” he said, “suffering captivity and injury in the service of people who do nothing but despise you and question your loyalty.” He ran a finger tenderly down her left cheek. “You deserve so much better, yet you continue to close yourself off from those who care about you the most.”

  “Oh, Robal, this is not the time for ourselves. Of course I wish I could rest. You know better than anyone how tired I am of this existence. I cannot face my friends and had to flee from my subjects. I am a thief, stealing life from some storehouse to which no one else has access. Yet I have this gift, this curse, this magical blood, and I cannot hide it away. If we keep to ourselves, how will we be able to defeat the immortal gods?”

  “I don’t care about the gods,” Robal said, hissing the last word. “I don’t care about him either. I only care about you and me.”

  He’d said it. Something within him, some knotted emotion, came free and a supernatural calm descended upon him. She knows. Up to her what she does with the knowledge.

  “I’m just a soldier,” he said. “Not a very smart one either. I listened to you talking with Phemanderac and understood one word in ten. I don’t share the abilities and memories linking you to the Destroyer. But, Stella, I can give you love.”

  As he watched her face, the blood dried and the dreadful mess began to fade away, as though painted out by an artist. Truly, nothing can hurt her, he thought, then remembered her arm. His own sword had taken it off below the elbow.

  “Love is not enough,” she said, her voice firm. She glanced at her missing hand, as if she had read his thoughts. “Love can sometimes be the very worst thing a friend can give you, especially if it cannot be returned. It is fierce when it needs to be gentle, selfish when it needs to look beyond itself. Robal, I know you will misunderstand these words, but now is the time to keep your love to yourself.”

  “You are wrong,” he said. “Wrong. It is exactly what we need to make sense of everything. It will cause us to fight on instead of giving up, as you seem to wish. Love drives me, Stella. What drives you?”

  She sighed and closed her eyes. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do, my dear; I do.”

  Apart from some bruising, her face had restored itself. What magical stuff her blood was, and how deeply he wished she would share it with him! To watch the centuries pass, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the ages of man succeeding each other; to travel the length and width of the earth, walking unknown paths, standing on cold mountain peaks and in the midst of the harshest deserts. To engage with history or to remain aloof from it, entirely as they chose. To explore the depths of their love, kept together by the accumulation of tender moments, of shared experience. To develop their own language of intimacy.

  “I cannot make you see,” she said. “I cannot subject you to my suffering. And I will not watch you grow old and die. Robal, there is no future for us.”

  “There is,” he said, daring all, willing her not to misunderstand. “All you have to do is share your blood with me.”

  Stella said nothing for three, four, five beats of the heart.

  “Is that what this is all about?” she said. “Do you crave immortality that much? Is it me you love, or unending life?”

  The words he wanted never to hear had finally been uttered, and with them, it seemed, went any hope he had of winning her.

  “You rightly explained that for there to be the one, there must be the other,” Robal said, the words coming out too fast. “Be rid of the curse, or share it with me; either way I get what I want, which is you. I tell you the truth: I would rather have you and a normal life than live forever without you.”

  But he had no doubt she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. How much of my love for her is my desire for immortality? He could not say, he could not say; and the guilt finally stopped his mouth.

  She lay there, the Most High burning in every vessel and sinew, his presence pulsing with a pain she could not have borne had he not dampened it. Her blood bubbled and sparked with power too fierce for mortal flesh to contain, every mote bringing healing to her broken and exhausted body.

  But it could not heal her heart.

  Kannwar loved her, a love born of need, of desperation. From the time she delivered him from the retribution of th
e Falthan army at the end of the Falthan War, he had been in her debt. And his act of infusing her with his immortal blood ensured that, of all the people of the world, she was the only one like him.

  Robal loved her, but his love was a ravenous hunger, as much self-preservation, it seemed, as passion for her. Both loves were more than she was entitled to but less than she needed. Only Leith had loved her selflessly, and now Leith was dead, setting in motion this most unhappy period of her life.

  I am leaving you now, said the Most High. The rest of your healing you must accomplish alone.

  Suitably enigmatic, she responded, but he had gone. What healing? Her body or her emotions?

  The only true healing, she realised, will come when I die.

  His body was already becoming a stranger to him. Umu pushed it beyond mortal endurance, crashing through copses, rebounding from trees, stumbling over fallen trunks, thumping its feet in an endless procession of leaden steps, while Conal sat as an unwilling passenger, locked in a corner of what was once his own mind. He could not feel the pain these abuses undoubtedly caused, and this, more than anything, forced a final separation between what remained of him and what was once his own flesh.

  So pain gives us ownership of our flesh, he considered. Keeps us grounded in a world of actions and consequences. Becoming a philosopher was no comfort to him, but there was nothing else he could do except think.

  You may well be right, Umu said. I am certainly experiencing unpleasant stimulation from these nerve endings.

  Let me feel them, Conal begged.

  And gift you life? She laughed. Keppia is a fool. He refuses to feel the Emperor’s pain, unloading it all onto his captive. I, on the other hand, may well have discovered the way to make my presence permanent on this side of the wall.