50
SHE was instantly suspicious.
“Please, Isphet. I am sick of Setkoth, and the peace of the lake is what I need for my final months. Please.”
“I will come with you,” she said carefully.
“That would be nice, Isphet. Do you think Layla might like to come too? And Zabrze? It would provide peace for all of us after the confusions and sadnesses of the past few months. Besides, Lake Juit is where Boaz was born. Please, Isphet. I want to go. I would feel close to him there.”
She gave in.
We embarked three days later, me, Isphet, Layla and dog, Kiamet and Holdat and several units of soldiers.
“But I’ll be down for the birth,” Zabrze said. “I’ll not miss the arrival of my first niece or nephew.”
Isphet had the grace to look uncomfortable. I felt sorry for her. In her position I hoped I would have the strength to do the same thing. But Isphet did not understand, and if I told her of my dream then she would think it only a phantasm of a woman determined to protect her child.
Zabrze stepped back and looked at the soldiers. “They’ll provide protection,” he said, and threw a puzzled look at Isphet. “No-one has been down to the Juit estate since…since Nzame disappeared.”
“All will be well,” I said. “Memmon has sent report that the land blooms as never before.”
Memmon had woken from his entombment with everyone else when Boaz had dragged Nzame into Infinity. I wondered if the experience had improved his temper at all.
“Goodbye, Zabrze. Do not linger overlong here in Setkoth.”
The journey was uneventful. We passed Threshold that first day. The capstone had gone, and I noticed that Zabrze had ordered the entire pyramid covered with reed matting.
The Infinity Chamber must be dark and lifeless.
I turned back to the river. I did not know why I had to go to Lake Juit, but I trusted the Book of the Soulenai.
My sleep had been uneventful and dreamless, and my days peaceful. I ate well now, disturbed by how weak I’d grown in those months fretting about both Boaz and our child. The baby moved about in my womb, and I leaned back in my chair and enjoyed the warmth of the sun.
Isphet ordered a leisurely trip, and she was pleased that I so enjoyed it. The river air was sweet, and the frogs sang well into the day and still further into the night.
Ten days after leaving we arrived at Lake Juit. Kiamet helped me to my feet, and I stood and gazed, entranced. It was far more beautiful than I remembered, the lake spreading for leagues in every direction, the marshes and reeds stretching even further.
A voice broke my reverie. Memmon, standing on the landing, the house rising serene and graceful behind him.
By his feet sat Fetizza, croaking cheerfully.
I gasped, then laughed. No-one had seen the frog for months. She had disappeared with Boaz’s departure, and I had thought that perhaps her existence was somehow tied to his.
But here she was, now looking irritably at the dog barking by Layla’s side, and her presence was surely nothing but a good omen.
Isphet kept close but companionable watch on me. We spent our days wandering the riverbanks, or sitting in the shade of the verandahs, sipping iced fruit wine and gossiping.
“Do you remember…?” one of us would ask, and we would mention a moment, or a friend, or a day in the hot workshop that had somehow been memorable.
Isphet thought she was helping me grieve, helping me let go of the past.
I was simply passing time, waiting, watching for something that I did not yet recognise. And so I would talk softly and smile, and take another sip from the Goblet of the Frogs.
Kiamet and Holdat were constant companions as well, always at hand to offer sweetmeats, or iced wine, or conversation. Layla spent many evenings with me, asking about Viland, and listening to me read from the Book of the Soulenai.
The weeks passed. The sun rose and set over Lake Juit and the marshes…
…it was the marshes, I knew that now, something about the marshes…
…and the mist formed, thickened, and then dissipated with each dawn and dusk.
My belly swelled.
The soldiers patrolled and stood about my window at night.
Memmon grumbled about the accounts.
And Isphet relaxed.
She confided that she was with child herself, and I smiled, and said that she’d be hard put to beat Neuf’s total at her age.
Isphet blushed, and changed the subject. I knew she was embarrassed, not at my comment, but at the fact that she should be bearing a child which presented no threat.
Neither of us talked about my approaching confinement.
Three weeks before the baby was due, Zabrze arrived in a river boat garlanded with silks and banners.
Ashdod must truly be recovering, I thought, as I struggled from my chair.
Zabrze had brought Zhabroah with him, and Layla rushed to take her brother. We would all be here, I thought, for whatever it is we await.
Zabrze brushed my cheek with his lips, and laughed, then seized Isphet and kissed her with more abandon. “I have missed you, wife,” he said.
I looked away, but only to give them privacy rather than through any grief that Isphet should have a husband left to touch her so.
But Isphet noticed, and drew back from Zabrze’s embrace, and called us together for an afternoon of conversation on the verandah.
Memmon grumbled about the extra guests, but I noticed he talked to the household keys that hung at his belt as he walked away to the kitchens.
I turned my head and smiled.
Zabrze told of the new trading partnership he had forged with Darsis and En-Dor. “They are pleased that Threshold no longer consumes all our wealth, and that we shall have some coin to pay for their exports. I think,” and he grinned, “that Ashdod’s exports for the foreseeable future shall be nothing but rock. Darsis and En-Dor can build from our misery.”
Then the conversation turned to the Juit estate, and Memmon arrived to stand stiff and tall and give account of the produce and the new crop of foals and calves that the previous month had brought.
“Good,” Zabrze said, and waved him away. “Life is very good.”
He looked towards the marshes. “And if I could think how to turn those reed-choked swamps into profit I would. Currently they are good for nothing but getting lost in.”
I opened my mouth to object, then saw the grin on Zabrze’s face. I smiled myself and…
…and remembered what Zabrze had said that day we’d approached Lake Juit after fleeing Threshold.
It is too easy to get lost in there. Many fishermen have gone in and never come back. Fallen over the edge of the world, I think. Or trapped with the gods in some Elysian paradise.
I remembered the day Isphet had led the rite to contact the Soulenai on Lake Juit. I remembered how close they’d felt. How vital. How vigorous. Different.
Close.
I shuddered.
“The sun has gone, Tirzah, and you are cool.” Isphet leaned forward. “Come, we shall go inside.”
River reeds tangled about me and I fell, tumbling over and over, through water, beneath water. I fought my way to the surface, screaming as I exhaled. “Boaz? Where are you?”
I blinked. Something roared, and I thought it was the blood beating through my head. I blinked again, and saw that millions of Juit birds had launched into the yellow and orange sunset, millions and millions of them, pink and red, screeching.
“I wonder what has disturbed them?” Zabrze said.
Tirzah? Can you hear me? Help me! Please, please help me!
“Tirzah?”
I blinked again, then smiled, radiant. “Yes, Zabrze. I think I shall come inside.”
I lay in the bed, unable to sleep. The baby had shifted during the afternoon and now lay awkward and uncomfortable. My back ached, and I hoped I had the strength for what I must do.
Tirzah? Can you hear me? Help me! Please, please help me!
As the night deepened, I closed my eyes, touched the power of the Goblet of the Frogs in my hand, and worked my necromancy.
I waited two more hours, then rose, wincing as the ache flared across my back. I crossed to the door, and opened it quietly.
I’d whispered to Holdat as I’d made my way to bed, and I hoped he would not let me down.
I should have trusted. Here he was, moving swiftly and silently to my side. He nodded at the question in my eyes, put a finger to my lips, then led me slowly through the house.
Everything was quiet, still.
The front door stood ajar, and thick marsh mist seeped through. It touched the outline of everything in the room, giving all a ghostly aspect.
The door abruptly swung open, and I tensed, but it was Kiamet, and he grinned and waved me through.
The house, as everything within two hundred paces of the river, was shrouded in the mist. Guards stood posted at every window and entranceway…
…watch for the Lady Tirzah, watch lest she try to escape and bear her child in secret…
…but Isphet had severely underestimated the Lady Tirzah, and now, no doubt, lay as heavily in enchanted sleep as these guards nodded over their spears.
Kiamet waved me forward again, impatient. Holdat took my arm and we walked down the path to the landing where Kiamet had moored a small punt.
“My Lady,” he whispered. “Let Holdat or myself come with you. You are in no condition –”
I kissed his mouth softly, stopping his words. “Dear Kiamet. Thank you, I am ever in your debt. But this I must do alone. Come now, help me into this boat.”
The flat-bottomed punt wobbled alarmingly as I settled my weight into it. I shook my hair out, then took the pole Kiamet handed me, and smiled at the two of them one last time.
“Goodbye, my friends. Watch for me as the sun burns the mist from the river.”
I dug the pole into the soft riverbed and pushed, and Kiamet gave the punt a shove from the landing.
And so I drifted into the mist.
I did not know exactly where I should go. Kiamet had placed a small lamp in the far end of the punt, and it glowed in the mist, encasing the boat in a soft puddle of light. As soon as I saw the first of the reeds on the western bank I poled in that direction.
I slid in among the reeds without a murmur, and they parted before the flat prow of the punt. It was silent in here. A different world…and that was what I was counting on. The marshes. A borderland; somewhere in here this world touched that of the Place Beyond.
And there Boaz would be waiting for me.
I think I understood what had happened now. Boaz had learned while in Infinity. He had learned how to manipulate the Song so that he was transported to the edges of the Place Beyond, but not propelled directly into it. Thus the feeling that he was there but not there. With, but not with the Soulenai. Refusing to be accepted among them. Not talking to them.
Agitated, disturbing the peace of the Place Beyond, crying out to me, to the bond between us, to find him and bring him home.
Wondering about the baby.
“Boaz?” I whispered into the mist, “where are you?”
There was nothing but the soft swish as reeds parted gently before the prow of the punt and the bobbing light.
I poled for hours, until the small of my back screamed in agony and my hands blistered on the rough wood of the rod. A breeze arose, shifting the mist but not dislodging it, and lifting my hair. It tangled with the pole, and I paused to take breath and lift my hair away and over my shoulder.
The baby shifted, and the ache in my back flared into something more urgent, more primeval.
“Boaz? Boaz?”
There was nothing.
The pain coursed through me again, and I sobbed, then muttered to myself and took grasp of the pole again. Some-where Boaz waited…waited…and this child demanded to be born. Here, where Isphet was far, far away.
I bit down the pain, and pushed the punt through the reeds.
The lamp was duller now, or was the night less dark?
I cried, for I understood that I had to find him by dawn, or lose him forever.
A frog croaked to one side, but I ignored it. Just another unwelcome reminder of how close sunrise was.
The mist thickened so much I could hardly breathe. I paused, one hand to the mound of my belly, the other on the pole. I pushed weakly, unable to use both hands now.
Another frog croaked, and then the punt rocked so violently I lost my grasp on the pole and dropped it into the water.
I cried out and lunged for it, but I was too awkward, and the punt rocking too much for me to find it. It had gone, and I was stranded.
Both hands on my belly now, I looked up.
Fetizza had climbed onto the prow of the punt; it was her weight that had rocked the vessel so alarmingly.
She stared at me with great liquid dark eyes, then slowly blinked.
Another frog, much tinier than Fetizza, leaped into the punt.
I flinched as yet another frog jumped in, over my shoulder this time.
Then I cried out as hundreds of tiny frogs rained into the punt. Some landed on my head and tangled in my hair, and I raised my hands and tried to free them, flinching again and again as frogs hit me and then bounced into the punt.
A great contraction banded my body, and I groaned, and gripped the side of the punt.
Every one of the frogs in the punt was staring at me. Motionless. Waiting.
Fetizza opened her huge mouth…and sang. The other frogs in the punt joined in, as did the millions of their brethren clinging to the reeds of the marsh.
The punt slid forwards.
I could do nothing but sit and gasp, blinking at the droplets of moisture that adhered to my eyelashes and ran down through tendrils of my hair. My robe was soaked, clinging to my ungainly body.
The frogs’ chorus surrounded me, and I lifted my hands to the sky.
“Boaz!”
Tirzah! Tirzah! Please…hurry!
“Boaz!”
My hands dropped to the sides of the punt, and then amazingly I saw the pole floating by. I seized it and pushed down with all my will.
Tirzah! Tirzah! Hurry!
The frogs roared, and I thought I saw Fetizza rear up on her hind legs and scream.
“Tirzah! Tirzah! Hurry!”
“Boaz!” I shouted, “Boaz!” I pushed down with the pole, grunting with the effort, and then again. And, oh gods, again. I could see nothing but the thick reeds and the clinging mist…then there was a gap, a space of clear water tinged with the redness of dawn light and…
…the punt wobbled and tipped, and the frogs jumped up and down in a frenzy then sideways into the water. Fetizza bounced about excitedly, and the punt lurched from side to side. I clung on frantically, but it was too late, the punt was rocking wildly, and the pain in my body was too great, I couldn’t fight everything at once.
I fell into the water with a huge splash, tumbling deeper and deeper until I felt my hands and face press into the soft mud. I fought to the surface, fighting not to open my mouth and gasp at the pain that rocketed through me, fighting, fighting, fighting…
Strong hands grasped me and my head broke the surface. I heaved in great gulps of air, trying to call out his name, trying to clear the mud from my eyes, then he pushed me beneath the water again, impatient hands clearing mud from my face, and then, then I was free and splashing and spluttering through the water trying to find him again and…
…and millions of screaming Juit birds launched themselves into the air, their shrill cries and the throb of their wings filling the sky and my soul. The mist had cleared, and the world was shifting pink and red against a dawn sky, and I blinked, and blinked, searching frantically, and then there he was, his hands reaching out for me.
I clung tight with arms and legs, and we sank below the water again, and when we finally broke the surface he grabbed hold of the side of the punt and laughed.
“Why try to drown me, Tirzah, when you have only just found me?”
One hand on the punt, the other arm about me, Boaz leaned over to kiss my mouth, but I was sobbing too freely, and he could only hold me close and kiss my forehead and cheek and eyes and nose.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I don’t know who said this, Boaz, me, or the frogs, or perhaps all of us.
I calmed down eventually, and seized his face between my hands and stared at him.
“Boaz.”
He finally managed to kiss me, and then, as if for the first time, realised the mound of my belly.
“Tirzah! The baby! Oh, thank the gods, you kept the baby!”
“It’s not – ?”
“No, no!” He grabbed me tight. “Nzame wallows lost in Infinity. The baby is safe. I thought you would…oh gods, Tirzah, thank you for not listening to me…Tirzah!”
I had gasped with pain, and it was worse than ever. “Boaz, this baby demands to be born.”
“What!”
“Here, now…ah!”
“I don’t know anything about delivering a baby!”
“Then you’re about to add to your store of knowledge, Boaz. Get me into that punt! NOW!”
He heaved me over the side of the punt and I rolled into it, hoping all the frogs had escaped. I squeezed my eyes shut as another contraction racked me, then opened them to see Fetizza staring curiously from the far end.
Boaz climbed into the punt, almost falling out again as it rocked to and fro.
“Tirzah, I don’t know how –”
“Boaz,” I ground out between my teeth, “if you can survive Infinity you can survive the birth of your child. You are going to deliver this child, and you are – Oh…gods! – going to do it – now!”
Boaz shot one frantic look at Fetizza –
“Boaz!”
– then bent down to me. “Tell me what to do, curse it, tell me what to do!”
He did magnificently, as did I. For a first birth the child issued forth with blessed brevity, rushing its way into a dawn that rang with the cries of the Juit birds and sparkled with the curious eyes of the frogs. We were very close to the Place Beyond, and through my pain and the sweat that ran into my eyes I saw the Soulenai standing about the punt, their mouths and eyes opened in astonishment.
A baby! A baby! A baby!
I think it had been a very long time since any of them had seen, let alone participated in, a birth.
Boaz lifted the baby, as astounded as the Soulenai, stared at her, then stared at me.
The expression on his face was the sweetest thing I have ever seen.
I struggled up onto an elbow. “Tie the cord with a strip from my robe, Boaz. There, yes, and there too. Now bite.”
He paled, opened his mouth to object, then bit down on the cord.
He placed the baby very gently into my arms, leaning down to kiss me.
“A daughter, Tirzah.”
“Yes.” She gazed at me with deep blue eyes.
“Boaz, will you name her?”
He looked at me, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and worry, more lines about his eyes and mouth than I remembered, and so dear I thought I would embarrass myself before all the spectral Soulenai and burst into tears again.
He smiled, very slow, very tender. “I shall give her your name.” He paused. “Ysgrave.”
I drew a deep breath. Ysgrave. The name he had taken from me the day we met.
Ysgrave, the Soulenai whispered. Ysgrave.
Ysgrave, and an insubstantial hand drifted over my shoulder and touched the girl’s forehead in blessing.
Avaldamon. He kissed my cheek, and I was surprised to find his touch warm, and then he lifted his hand to Boaz.
Boaz. You have surprised us. We did not realise the Song of the Frogs could be so manipulated. We could not understand why you refused to join us, why you refused to talk to us. I think we needlessly worried Tirzah.
“I wish I could have told both you and Tirzah what was happening,” Boaz said. “But I was trapped in these borderlands, lost, and I could only call to Tirzah, call to her to fetch me.”
“Fetizza sang,” I said, and smiled fondly at the frog. “When I was too exhausted, the frogs brought me to you.”
Avaldamon drifted away. We cannot stay here. The sun crests the reeds. We cannot stay…but come back! Come back! Come back!
Boaz lay down beside me and we rested a while, sometimes talking, sometimes touching, but mostly just lying, sharing life and love.
Eventually I roused, and asked Boaz to assist me wash myself and our daughter, and then I told him to make himself truly useful and pole us back to the river and the Juit house.