Threshold by Sara Douglass Page B

building is finally complete, I believe the Magi will. We know too much about Threshold and its secrets.”
    Abruptly Yaqob leapt to his feet and started to pace restlessly about the room.
    “But I want to live, as does everyone here. I want to be free. I want my children to be free and to grow in pure sunlight far from this foul shadow. I want us all to be able to practise our arts without constant fear. For months I, as Yassar and Isphet and scores of other Elementals in this damned calculus of a compound, have been planning. It has been slow, hard, and we’ve had to be careful, but it goes well. Within the year we hope to have built up a sufficient store of blades and to have enough support among the other slaves to overwhelm the guards and the Magi – and to kill every one of them! – and make our escape.”
    His anger frightened me, and I had to look away. Overthrow the guards? The Magi? How?
    But escape…I had never dared hope. Free? Oh, to be free again!
    “I will help,” I said, my voice low but fierce.
    “Yes,” Yaqob said, “you will. You have no choice now that you have heard all you have this night.”
    He watched me carefully, then relaxed, reassured by what he saw in my face. “For a long time we would not trust you. We constantly fear that the Magi will plant spies among us. And your arrival on the night that Raguel gave birth seemed extraordinarily coincidental.”
    Raguel stared into her lap, her face hidden. She spent her days silent and still, her nights tossing in restless and noisy sleep. When she was with us. Over the past twoweeks Ta’uz had occasionally required her presence for an hour or two at night.
    “But no spy the Magi planted would be able to hear the glass as you can. Until we were sure you were Elemental yourself, well, we would not trust you.”
    “What do you plan to do, Yaqob?” I asked. “And where can we go once we escape? What is there for us?”
    “There is no need for you to know the details of our plans yet, and the less you know, the safer it will be for you. And as for where we go once we escape…well, Isphet?”
    “I was born free,” Isphet said, and her eyes were very distant. “Free. Far to the south-east of this place, across a great arid plain, stands a range of low hills that hide a lovely secret. Deep within this secret lives an isolated community devoted to the study and development of Elemental magic and service to the Soulenai. The elders among them are powerful beyond anything I could be; indeed, they live in such seclusion that few of us ever see them. We call them Graces, for the serenity their contemplation and power gives them. These hills are where I come from, and they are to where I hope the majority of us will be able to make our escape.
    “Now, Tirzah, I know you must have questions, but I would like you to sleep on them, absorb what you have heard here tonight. I, or Yaqob, will be pleased to answer anything you ask – but only ask when you can be sure we will not be overheard.”
    “Yes, Isphet. Thank you.” Underlying all the swirling thoughts and questions in my head was a sense of quiet gladness. They trusted me.
    “Good,” Isphet said. “Tirzah.” She reached out and took my hand. “In the morning I will induct you and begin your instruction. Druse, and the three others in the workshop who are not among us, shall have to be sent on a long and involved errand to one of the other workshops, I think. Raguel?”
    She looked up from her lap, her eyes dead.
    “Raguel, I will need you in the morning, and Yaqob, too, I think.”
    Isphet’s face saddened.
    “It is time to farewell the spirit of Raguel’s baby and to wish her well. Yaqob, your presence will infuse strength into the ceremony and into Tirzah, for already she hears the voices strongly and may well be afraid of what she will experience tomorrow.”

7
    I HARDLY slept that night. I had my own sleeping pallet by now, but I am sure that my tossing and turning must have