Beyond the Wall of Time Read Online Free PDF

lies outside the wall. Every node burned out is the death of someone
     who ought not to have died. The hole is now large enough for the Son and Daughter to reach through and act directly upon us,
     as you have seen. In the past, the gods had to content themselves with manipulating others to achieve what they wanted. Now
     they can bend the natural world to their will. They rocked Talamaq with earthquakes, they killed my foster mother Mahudia
     with a lion, they attacked Raceme with whirlwinds, and we were all there at Lake Woe when they sought to kill us with the
     fireball. Since then they have destroyed the tea house in Ikhnos with a flood, eaten my travelling companion, and burned a
     village by fire. There is even evidence that they are messing with time; that the linear flow of time is threatened. What
     is may be irretrievably mixed together with what was and what is yet to come. The Son and the Daughter have harnessed the
     power of fire, water, earth and wind, and perhaps time itself. All the magics are in their hands. Either we find a way to
     close the hole in the world or the world itself will become a wasteland, a battleground between the two gods to see who is
     the stronger.”
    She had faced many questions after that. Not everyone there had heard all the stories of the gods, and their history was picked
     over with much debate. Heredrew, who seemed to be as much a scholar as the old Dhaurian, confirmed Lenares’ account of the
     creation of the Son and Daughter and their subsequent rebellion against their Father. Falthan legend, apparently, tallied
     with this account in that the Father had arrived in the north, with a small band of refugees in tow, three thousand years
     previously. The telling took an hour or more, but at the end of it the group had assembled a history that dovetailed the various
     folklores of Faltha, Bhrudwo and Elamaq. The tall Falthan, Heredrew, downplayed the role of Kannwar, the Undying Man, as betrayer
     of the Father and source of the enmity between Bhrudwo and Faltha. He received little support in this view from the others.
    “You mentioned a travelling companion, Lenares,” Noetos had said. “You said he was eaten. Can you tell us what happened? I
     don’t remember hearing this story.”
    Her response was the most fascinating part of the afternoon’s discussion, at least to Noetos. After she had been claimed by
     the flood at Yacoppica Tea House, Lenares explained, she had taken up with a boatman—Olifa of Eisarn, she named him. Noetos
     had sat up at that, and his son reacted similarly. His miners, who had been talking quietly amongst themselves, seemingly
     uninterested in the debate, were struck silent. The sordid tale of how Omiy the miner had sought to force himself on the young
     cosmographer did not surprise Noetos, and her god-assisted escape made him grin fiercely.
    “A fitting end for one so false,” he had said. “Omiy deserved everything he got. He pretended to be my friend so he could
     get his hands on the huanu stone.” Noetos laughed bleakly. “No-one will get their hands on it now, not unless I can find the
Conch
and recover my pack. I want that stone. More valuable than Old Roudhos, he named it, because it absorbs magic, rendering
     magicians powerless. With it I will neutralise the power of the Undying Man should he refuse to give me a satisfactory explanation
     of the activities in his dungeons.” There was no explanation he would consider satisfactory, of course, and he knew everyone
     took his meaning. “The thought of that traitor Omiy ending up in a shark’s belly pleases me,” Noetos had concluded. “I take
     it as a sign we will all be granted vengeance against those who have done us wrong.”
    He had directed a sympathetic glance towards Heredrew, who looked more embarrassed than encouraged at his words. Noetos had
     decided then that he must seek Heredrew out and talk with him in an attempt to draw out the story of the man’s suffering