Beyond the Wall of Time
The wail that came from her throat felt as if it had been ripped from the depths of her heart.
She raised her eyes from the bodies of her enemies. On the platform beside her stood her friends and acquaintances—and her
brother—staring at her with wide eyes and white faces.
“Kill me,” she begged them, signing shakily. As her hands moved, flesh flicked from her fingers and fell to the ground. “Please.
Kill me now.”
No one moved.
She took a step backwards at the expressions of horror on their faces. Her foot caught on something and she stumbled, her
heel grinding, then sliding, in wetness. Another step, then another.
“Arathé, don’t.” This from her brother.
Another stop. Her heel balanced on the edge of the platform.
“I must,” she signaled, then closed her eyes and took another step.
“A joyous experience for readers who love getting lost in a complex fictional world… ”
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Across the Face of the World
By Russell Kirkpatrick
The Fire of Heaven Trilogy
Across the Face of the World
In the Earth Abides the Flame
The Right Hand of God
The Broken Man Trilogy
Path of Revenge
Dark Heart
Beyond the Wall of Time
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2009 by Russell Kirkpatrick
Excerpt from
Orcs
copyright © 2004 by Stan Nicholls
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First eBook Edition: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-05283-2
To Dorinda,
with love
Contents
CHAPTER 13: THE LIMITS OF LOVE
CHAPTER 14: DEATH OF A CAPTAIN
BRONZE MAP
HUSK STRUGGLES TO REMEMBER
what it is like to think with clarity. Seven decades of unrelenting pain have created a permanent cloud in his mind, as though
looking through smeared glass. He constantly has to fight off a desire to go to sleep and never wake up, has to keep resisting
the creeping lassitude that threatens to engulf him. Cannot remember what it used to be like living as a normal human being,
agony not the most important part of his life. Even now, despite his link to the unlimited power from the void beyond the
world, and the freedom from pain it brings, he finds it difficult to focus on the important things happening in a remote valley
a few hundred leagues away.
Part of Husk’s trouble is he does not know the location of the House of the Gods. Normally this would not matter. His magical
contact with his three spikes does not depend on his knowing where they are. But designing a strategy does. The place on which
his attention is focused, the place where his hosts now contend with the gods, is to be found at perhaps a half-dozen locations
in the world at once, and yet fully in none of them: a paradox of the kind of which the gods are distressingly fond. He has
spent a deal of time trying, in mounting desperation, to comprehend how the Godhouse works, but he is still no nearer a useful
understanding.
So he preoccupies himself with questions. Will the travellers—his spikes and his enemies—emerge into Patina Padouk, the land
from which they entered this version of the House of the Gods? Or, as happened in Nomansland, will they appear somewhere else?
Husk cannot lay his plans until he knows. Trouble is, with all the fog in his head he fears he may have missed some essential
clue.
Husk hates not knowing things.
He needs to know where everyone is because he must decide whether to confront his enemies here, in the Undying Man’s fortress
of Andratan, or there, wherever
there
might be. He wishes to destroy his enemies in a way that pays them back for his years of suffering, while, of course, risking
himself as little as possible. Best of all would be a public triumph here at Andratan. Himself in the Tower of Farsight, at
the head of a vast crowd of people, all watching the Destroyer and his cursed consort writhing out their agony in ways that
reduce the memories of his own pain to pleasant inconsequentiality. It is no longer enough for him merely to remain alive.
Not even enough to be immortal, the rich prize now almost in his grasp. To truly live he must destroy them both. No; more
accurately, they must be destroyed again and again. He must be able to return whenever the mood takes him to watch them suffer.
A public gallery in which the continual destruction of Stella and Kannwar is the main installation, that is what he needs.
He wonders just how many centuries it will take to cancel out his own hurt. If his hurting will ever end.
Events in the House of the Gods are seriously limiting his supply of power from beyond the wall around the world. The three
gods are all drawing deeply from the hole in the world—that blessed opening first made when the Son and Daughter drove their
Father out—and their combined power is squeezing his tiny, unnoticed conduit until it is almost shut off. Nevertheless, his
small link continues to restore him. Husk has grown new limbs to replace those seared away by the Destroyer’s magic, but their
fragility means he cannot yet walk on them. He now breathes air unmixed with his own blood. But his great plans, his plans
for his transformation to godhood, the elimination of all who might possibly hurt him and the subjugation of everyone else,
await a respite in the hostilities between the gods.
He is patient. He can wait.
In the meantime, Lenares is the great danger. She seeks to close the hole in the world, despite having taken advantage of
it. Ironic, this. She had managed to ensnare the Daughter by tying something—Husk is not exactly sure what it is she tied—to
someone beyond the wall. Husk does not know who, though Lenares herself is convinced it is her dead foster mother. Her use
of mathematics was flawed, but it worked nonetheless. Lenares has tapped into her own source of power, drawing on it unwittingly
to help her to capture the Daughter for a time; and, worryingly, may draw on it again, perhaps accidentally interfering with
his plans. It is unlikely she will learn how to harness her power, especially given the logical, mathematical cast to her
mind and its associated limits. However unlikely, Husk cannot risk her interference. He must find some way to eliminate her.
No elaborate revenge, no desire to inflict pain; he just wants an end to her.
Another question nags at him. Has he any further need for his spikes? Arathé, Conal and Duon have served him well but, unless
his new-found power is totally severed, he no longer needs them. In fact, he continues to expend energy to keep hold of them
that he could better use to strengthen himself. And it is not as though his spikes are of much use to him. Conal is blinded
in one eye and in all his opinions, and his recent possession by the Father has rendered him untrust-worthy. Imagine if the
Father seized the lad’s mind while Husk was in possession of it! Arathé is becoming increasingly wary of the voice in her
head, and is devising ever-cleverer ways of keeping him out. And Duon is trying to deceive him. A futile attempt—Husk can
read the outer layers of the minds of those he has spiked—but it makes the Amaqi captain, of whom he had high hopes, less
dependable.
Husk had supposed the huanu stone would aid him in defeating the Destroyer, but now wonders even at this. The stone is now
as much a risk to himself as it is to the Destroyer. It could undo the magic keeping him alive, could sever the supply of
power from beyond the wall. And it is now beyond his reach, sewn into the lining of a pack left behind on the
Conch
, which is probably a good thing. Too dangerous to allow his enemies access to something that could do him so much damage.
The same logic can be applied to the immortal blood he had planned to drain from Stella. Not yet in his possession, and just
as likely could be used to promote someone else to the ranks of the deathless. With his own conduit to the raw power of the
void, Husk need not risk the problematic—and painful—immortality offered by the blood. Maybe he needs to keep the blood and
the stone away from Andratan. The only difficulty with this line of thought is his inability to prevent them being brought
north regardless. With bravery and intelligence he has set all this in motion, and now it appears he is powerless to stop
it.