Beyond the Wall of Time Page 37

  A hundred fears, each one ready to claim the unwary.

  The two dejected, ill-used donkeys recovered slowly over the long, slow days of the journey, and Robal was largely successful in keeping them in feed—when he remembered to feed them. The miners had sold him food as part of his cargo, and he shared it with his beasts: bran mash, groats, rotting vegetables and hard biscuits. No meat. It didn’t matter. He ate a little of everything and tasted nothing. Their diet he supplemented with grass and other plants from the side of the road and adjacent fields, letting them eat whatever they chose.

  He came back to something approximating life on the day a middle-aged, dwarfishly short farmer told him that a party of a dozen or more were only a few hours ahead: he’d sold them food that morning, apparently. Robal asked if there was another road to Zizhua from here, and was told there was not. But, the farmer added, for a fee he would show the barbarian a little-known stock route into the Zizhua Valley. He used it himself to graze his sheep there in the winter, where they did far better than on his own land. The farmer was breaking some law or other; Robal didn’t listen to the man’s blather. After the promise of coin the guardsman did not have, the farmer hoisted himself aboard the wagon and pointed across his fields.

  Progress was painfully slow. “It’s a direct route,” the farmer insisted, or at least that was what Robal understood by the man’s words: his accent was strange even for a Bhrudwan, and Robal, relatively new to the language, struggled to make sense of it.

  “What you got in the wagon?” the man asked him.

  “No questions about that,” Robal growled.

  The farmer nodded wisely, no doubt assuming some sort of contraband.

  “If you try to find out, I will cut off your hands,” Robal added, easing his sword a little way out of its scabbard.

  The man nodded again, wide-eyed.

  Unless the cargo takes your hands first, Robal added, but did not say it aloud. He could not afford any knowledge of the contents of the wagon to be noised about. For all he knew, any person he met—that fat woman kneeling by the river washing her clothes, or this old man chivvying a flock of sheep along the dirt road—could be one of the Destroyer’s spies.

  The farmer was a talkative man. He told Robal about his dutiful wife and three lovely daughters, and about the collapse of his house in the dreadful earthquake. He had buried his wife and two of his daughters; the third had married a year ago and now lived far to the north, where, the man hoped with oft-repeated fervour, she had escaped the quake.

  “I was to go north anyway,” he said. “When I leave you, I will take to the Malayu Road. I must tell her what happened to her mother and sisters. The farm can look after itself until I return.”

  The farmer didn’t look particularly sorrowful at his loss, but Robal couldn’t really tell whether the man’s constant smile was a cultural thing or relief at finally being alone. Possibly the latter. Serves the fellow right if he settled for a less consuming love than mine.

  On a crisp autumn morning they broached a high saddle and looked across a wide valley. Fog hugged the ground, and at irregular intervals steep, isolated hills poked through the pale shroud.

  “Zizhua,” the farmer announced unnecessarily.

  “Do you think we have arrived before my friends?”

  “Oh yes,” the man said, smiling rather slyly. “Your friends will come soon, but not today. Time for you to make ready your surprise. Bang bang bang!”

  “What do you know about my intentions?” Robal asked sharply.

  Not sharply enough.

  “You have explosives in your wagon,” the man said, carrying on blithely. “I can smell them. When I am a boy I make fire-candles for the great celebrations of Malayu. They make a distinctive smell. Oh, do not worry,” he added, belatedly noting the anger on Roba1’s face, “I keep your secret to myself. Your plans are safe with me.”

  “Indeed they are,” Roba1 said bitterly. “Or, at least, they soon will be.”

  What was to prevent the man making his way straight to the Destroyer and selling him Robal’s secret? Perhaps the man would demand more money from Robal to keep his secret. Whichever, the man had to be silenced. This was too important to be left to chance.

  Time slowed down as Roba1 watched himself draw his sword. He willed the blade to come out more swiftly, hoping he could do this before he had a chance to think, but his thoughts raced far ahead of his will. Murderer, they shrieked at him. You should never have walked away from those keeping you on the straight path.

  One death to save thousands of lives, he told his traitorous thoughts. His sword came clear of its scabbard and he lifted it into the air.

  “Please… my daughter… ”

  One death to protect yourself, his conscience corrected him, reminding him of another man who had made a similarly venal argument only a little while ago. A man who regularly played god with his empire, killing the few to save the many.

  The tip of the blade parted the farmer’s outstretched hands and slid easily through his quaking chest, grazing a rib but finding his heart.

  Robal’s fellow guardsmen would have applauded him. A pragmatic man of action, they would have said.

  As the light went out in the farmer’s eyes, eyes that would never now see his one remaining daughter, Robal’s conscience disagreed with the guardsmen. You have become a man who would take an innocent life out of expediency.

  The body slid off his blade and slumped sideways on the wooden seat. As it came to rest, time resumed its normal pace and Robal drew a huge, sobbing breath.

  Some time later a man with a pale, sweaty face, a thin line for lips and eyes reddened with suppressed weeping, drove a large wagon down into the Zizhua Valley. The man barely noticed when the body at his side toppled from the wagon and landed softly in the grass.

  That night the travellers rested in a grove of the strange feathery trees. Their branches quivered gently in the breeze, creating a susurration oddly pleasant to the ear.

  “It appears the storm did not penetrate this far inland,” Kannwar remarked as they laid out their makeshift bed-rolls. “I am pleased they have survived: the lauren tree grows nowhere else but the Zizhua Valley.”

  “Is the tree responsible for that aroma?” Stella asked him. The whole valley had smelled faintly of cinnamon, but the scent was much stronger here amidst the strange foliage.

  “Oh, yes,” Kannwar said. “Look!” He gestured to the base of the nearest tree.

  There Stella saw a strange arrangement: a smaller tree, little more than a bush, had been cut back near to its roots perhaps a season or two ago, and the tender shoots had grown to an arm-span or more in length.

  “Harvesters will strip these shoots of their bark,” explained Kannwar, “then dry out the bark and roll it into strips. All the cinnamon in the world comes from this valley.”

  “I often had cinnamon on my morning bran,” Stella said in wonder. “I had no idea it came from this far away.”

  “There are severe restrictions on how much can be harvested. I can remember receiving a delegation of Zizhua natives a few centuries ago, come to make an argument for increasing the volume of production. They wanted easier lives, they told me. I replied that if it was ease they wanted, they ought to leave the valley.”

  Stella frowned. “I suppose you had them put to death to impress on others the foolishness of questioning their lot.”

  “Not at all,” Kannwar said. “I acceded to their request, but asked that one young person a year be sent to Andratan for training. They saw that as a fair trade.”

  “That’s something, at least.”

  “No, it isn’t. None of the youngsters ever adapted to life outside the valley. They all missed their lauren trees, they claimed, and I was unable to command their loyalty. At that point there were a few deaths. The natives never learned of the true circumstances surrounding those deaths, so I would thank you not to mention them.”

  She snorted. “To travel around the world trying
to make right all the wrong you have done truly would be a task for an immortal.” A thought struck her. “We are to meet these natives?”

  “Indeed. None but those born in Zizhua are allowed in the valley. According to their gift, negotiated with me many years ago, the inhabitants will seek to enforce this rule by slaying us. We should expect a visit tomorrow morning, if not sooner.”

  “Oh? Would you have told us this had I not asked?”

  “I intend to sit up tonight and take every watch. There is, therefore,” he added complacently, “no need to worry.”

  “Every word from you serves to amplify my worries still further.”

  “You?” Kannwar said. “What do you have to worry about?”

  She sighed, the weariness of nearly ninety years weighing heavily. “I left Instruere with one companion and another man trailing me. That man is now a corpse animated by an inimical god, wandering Bhrudwo to serve some dreadful purpose. My guardsman has left me and I have no idea where he is or what he intends. I’m frightened that they will meet and it will go well for neither.”

  She lifted her face to his. “And I am currently enduring what must be the strangest, most diffident courtship of all time. My paramour seems to think that displaying himself at his worst is somehow attractive to me. I suspect he hopes to impress me with the small gleams of humanity he allows to shine through his deliberately brutal façade. I am not impressed.”

  “Is there any point in his continuing then?”

  “None. He knows full well that he horrifies me, yet if I wish to risk becoming close to anyone without condemning myself to watch that person wither and die, he is the only choice. He knows this too. What he doesn’t fully appreciate is that I am unsure whether I would rather be his companion or be dead.”

  “He would be flattered to hear that.”

  “And yet I see occasional glimpses of Kannwar, the boy born two thousand years ago, the hope of his generation, and he never fails to thrill me.”

  “Because you have already shared a life with the hope of another generation and you cannot now settle for anything less. Poor Robal! A worthy man driven mad by his intended’s impossibly high standard.”

  She nodded, acknowledging the point. Truly, she’d never thought of it in quite those terms. Leith had been the chosen tool of the Most High, just as this man had once nearly been, and now was. I always was ambitious, she thought, remembering her desire to leave Loulea and its limited supply of small-minded boys all those years ago. Ambitious—and foolish.

  “So, you see, I feel responsible for the fates of Conal and Robal,” she continued. “This adventure is bringing out the worst in good men, using them up. Can you not see that this piles guilt on my shoulders?”

  “You ask me that? Guilt and I are close companions.”

  “Yes, I imagine you are. The deaths you bring about in the present are real ones, while those you hope to save in the future are notional at best. It is no wonder you suffer.”

  “Stella, Kannwar!” someone called. “The food is ready!”

  “Ah, joy,” said the Undying Man. “More gruel.”

  The Falthan queen drifted away, her false hand clasped tightly in the Destroyer’s illusive palm. From behind the lauren tree Robal watched them go, then melted silently into the night.

  The Zizhua came before dawn, brandishing knives and clubs. The party numbered no more than ten, at least to Stella’s bleary eyes as she rose, stretched over-tired muscles and walked guardedly towards them. Kannwar had spun some kind of magical web around the camp in which the attackers had become ensnared like so many giant flies.

  “I am the Oldest Man, Lord of Bhrudwo,” he said to them without preamble. “I signed your gift many years ago. I have come to see how you are using it.”

  “We still obey the terms, as you can see,” said one of the young men struggling in the web. Like the rest of the Zizhua he was curiously dressed, wearing a woollen waistcoat and skirt made of grass rather than the ubiquitous Bhrudwan jerkin and trousers. His face had been pierced with a number of decorations made from what appeared to be bone, lending him an altogether wild appearance, but he spoke the common Bhrudwan tongue well enough.

  “Yes, I can see you still attempt to preserve the integrity of this land,” Kannwar said. “Do you continue to produce cinnamon and osmanthus?”

  “Release us from your snare and we will show you,” the young man replied.

  Within the hour the travellers had broken camp and were striding through the grasslands, struggling to keep pace with the Zizhua. The waist-high grass glowed in the morning sun, giving off a piquant fragrance when crushed underfoot. Sights and smells to enchant the senses, Stella thought as they approached one of the steep-sided hills.

  “Limestone,” Noetos said, pointing at the forest-cloaked hill before them. “Such hills will be riddled with caves. I suppose that’s why we see no habitations.”

  The nearest Zizhua grunted, the closest these perfunctory people seemed to come to unnecessary conversation.

  Kannwar nodded. “A perfect place for civilisation to begin,” he said. “A valley rich in soil and livestock, with an equable climate and ready-made shelter. I trust you can see why I insist that visitors are kept from this place, even at the cost of a few incautious lives.”

  “And you have brought us here,” Stella said carefully, not wishing to alarm their hosts, “because of the protection such a valley offers its inhabitants. “

  Kannwar nodded again.

  “It’s so old,” said Lenares. “Nowhere in the north have I found a place as old as Talamaq, but this valley feels far older.”

  The party reached the base of the hill and was guided to a narrow, dark cleft in the rock. “Welcome to our city,” the Zizhua spokesman said, clearly feeling the need for some small ceremony. “Follow us closely. I do not want our people alarmed.”

  Inside, the air was close but not unpleasant, bearing a faint perfume of cinnamon intermingled with wood smoke and some unidentifiable fragrance. Perhaps this osmanthus Kannwar mentioned. The Zizhua lit torches and the darkness gave way to white walls, intricately fluted. The path was narrow and winding, leading downwards, reminding her of Bandit’s Cave and the Hermit of Firanes who dwelled there. She had thought of neither for many years. A man, she remembered, who had turned from his calling. Was such rebellion a Falthan characteristic? Were the more regimented societies of Bhrudwo and Elamaq more likely to be obedient to their gods?

  The sounds around them changed and the scent became stronger. A moment later they rounded a corner and stood on a shelf high above the city of Zizhua. The astonishing sight sent four of Stella’s fingers into her mouth, a habit she thought she’d freed herself from decades ago.

  Far below them hundreds of lamps made patterns on the floor of the vast cave. Streets and houses were illuminated by a yellow glow uncannily similar to that of the fields outside. Other lights, whiter and brighter, bobbed between the yellow lamps. There was enough light to illuminate the walls and roof of the cave, much further from them than Stella would have guessed given the size of the hill. These surfaces were adorned with riotous patterns, clearly carved by no human hand but by indescribably patient natural forces.

  “Glorious,” she breathed, aware that the others had halted too, held in place as involuntarily as she was by the awe-inducing sight.

  “Like something from a fairy tale,” Sauxa said.

  “And where do you think fairy tales come from, if not from our earliest civilisation?” Kannwar asked them.

  “It is difficult to imagine my ancestors living in this valley, perhaps in this very city,” Anomer said. “Truly, I am sorry they ever left.”

  “I am not,” said Cylene. “I’d far rather be outside. The view is pretty, but these walls seem as though they are about to collapse on top of me.”

  The Zizhua spokesman grunted again. “Make your visit short,” he told her. “Outsiders often find our cities uncomfortable places.”

  “You do entertai
n visitors then,” Kannwar said, an edge on his voice.

  “A few get this far, yes. They are either killed or forcibly escorted out of the valley, depending on who discovers them. And of course we must entertain your officials when they make their irregular visits to check our production, according to the terms of the gift. None is allowed to stay.”

  “Good,” Kannwar said.

  The journey down to the floor of the cave was not unlike that into Corata Pit, excepting of course the canopy of rock overhead and the never-ending variation of tortured limestone on the wall to their left. The whispers and smells of the city intensified as they descended.

  “Can the god find us here?” Stella asked Kannwar.

  “I hope not. I would not be pleased if this place was destroyed.”

  “Nor its people,” she prompted.

  “Nor its people, of course,” he added.

  Its people proved hospitable enough, though they appeared to be acting under duress. They had clearly not forgotten the terms of their agreement with the Lord of Bhrudwo, and knew he could end their isolationism at any time by flooding the valley with eager immigrants. So the adults were civil without ever quite approaching pleasantness, and it was only the children who gawked in open horror at the strangers.