The Infinity Gate: Darkglass Mountain: Book Three - By Sara Douglass Page 0,40

whether to go to her or not. Surely he could help her . . . surely he could provide some assistance, surely . . .

His head jerked to the north. The ground beneath him had started to shake, as if by the footfalls of a giant’s feet.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

“Oh merciful gods!” Maximilian said, looking on with absolute horror as the enormous form of the One appeared, quite suddenly, out of the darkness.

He was flailing his arms in a windmill motion, as if to propel himself forward, and he was running straight for DarkGlass Mountain.

Without any hesitation, and before Maximilian could even think about what action to take, let alone enact, the One ran straight into the side of DarkGlass Mountain and vanished without trace.

Chapter 21

Darkglass Mountain

Ishbel rose to her feet, turning in alarm.

The One!

She could feel him crashing through the pyramid toward her, feel his anger, feel his murderous need to wrap his gigantic hands about her throat and —

Ishbel, the rat said. He raised up the candle, and Ishbel turned to him . . . and cried out in horror.

Just as the rat pulled the candle close to blow it out, Ishbel saw hundreds of black hands rise up behind the golden glass of the Infinity Chamber and then reach through it, reaching for her.

Before she could react, even move a muscle, she was caught fast and dragged into the pyramid.

Ishbel found herself in a strange place that she could only comprehend as thick light. She could breathe, if she concentrated on it, but movement was difficult.

She could sense many, many others close, pressing in so that they almost touched her.

At her feet sat the rat, atop the Book of the Soulenai.

A man emerged before her. He was tall with a lined face, as if he had suffered greatly, and his dark hair was slicked back into a club at the base of his neck.

“Did you read the first tale in the Book?” he said.

Ishbel opened her mouth to say “No, I had no time”, but in that instant she realised she knew the first tale.

Long, long ago, a Magus named Ta’uz took as his mistress a slave from the camp that surrounded Threshold, and which housed its enslaved builders. This Magus, Ta’uz, affected great disdain for his mistress, whose name was Raguel. When she bore their child he murdered it, for Threshold, and the Way of the One, demanded its death.

No Magus was permitted to subdivide away from the One.

But Ta’uz continued his affair with Raguel, even though it took many months before she could bear to go back to his bed. Despite what had happened between them, despite the murder of their daughter, and despite the fact that Ta’uz was a Magus and Raguel a slave, they became close and eventually came to love each other.

They edged close to happiness, and Threshold was displeased.

One day it took them.

A great sheet of glass slid from its upper walls, slicing through the air, and before either Ta’uz or Raguel could move it speared them on the jagged edge of the glass and they died.

The pyramid did not like their closeness, which drew the Magus away from his devotion to the One.

“Yes,” said Ishbel. “I know who you are. Ta’uz, why is the light here so thick?”

“Because it is crowded with the souls of those the pyramid has murdered over the years,” Ta’uz replied.

“Why are you here?”

“Because I am going to aid you. I am going to show you the first step you must take within this intricate puzzle of a pyramid, the first stone you must unwind to open up the pyramid’s deepest vulnerabilities.”

“Thank you,” Ishbel said. “I must start soon, for the One is here, and searching for me. He has great hands, I fear, and he has grown them for me.”

“Indeed. Ishbel, do you know the second story in the list?”

Ishbel thought.

The tale of Druse, and of how he was turned to stone and then crumbled into the river.

“Yes,” she said, smiling.

Druse was Tirzah’s father, sent into slavery with her, and like her, a glass worker, although nowhere near as magical as his daughter.

Druse had also been slaughtered by the pyramid, turned to stone before Tirzah’s eyes in an effort to punish her, and then his body was taken to the river and its stone remains crumbled to lie scattered along its muddy bed.

“Why do I need to know that story?” she asked Ta’uz.

“So that you will know that not all your family died in the charnel house you