Threshold Read Online Free

little apprehensive, we stepped through.
    An extraordinary garden stretched ahead of us for some one hundred paces, and was almost thirty wide. There were manicured trees, brightly flowered and darkly leaved, and neatly raked paths between carefully laid out flowerbeds where plants bloomed in orderly rows and concise geometric designs. They reminded me of the perfectly square fields of the countryside. Everything here had its assigned place, and nothing was allowed to extend beyond that place.
    Everything, I realised in my next breath, was ordered with the utmost precision.
    “This way,” Kamish said, and marched down one of the paths, the guards motioning us to follow.
    He led us to a tiled verandah, and bade us stop just beneath its shade. “Do not speak,” he said, then disappeared inside the dark well of a door.
    He was gone for some minutes, reappearing with a subservient smile on his face and wringing his hands humbly.
    “Your Excellencies,” he murmured, and then waved whoever followed to inspect the line of slaves.
    Two men stepped through the door, their very bearing sent chills down my spine. One was middle aged, the other ten or fifteen years his younger. Both had the dark hair and swarthy complexion of all southerners, although the younger had grey eyes rather than the usual black of his race.
    Their colouring was the only feature they shared in common with anyone else I had seen since docking in Adab. Their robes were of the finest linen, the under robes white and belted with a sash of shimmering cobalt, the outer a radiant blue, and left to float free about their forms. Their hands, fine but strong, were folded before them. Both had their hair swept back and clubbed into queues in the napes of their necks. Their entire bearing screamed of enveloping confidence and authority.
    But it was their faces that caught and held my attention. Both were striking, but their expressions were predatory, and they possessed barbed and cruel eyes that radiated supernatural power – as if from a virulent sickness within, rather than with the power that understanding and knowledge gives.
    “Sorcerers!” my father whispered.
    “ Magi! ” Kamish growled. “Fall to your knees, filth!”
    We fell.
    The Magi were unperturbed by my father’s thoughtless whisper, if they’d even heard it, and proceeded to stalk about us with measured paces. Power drifted after them like a cloying scent. I hastily averted my face as they passed by.
    “And what have you bought us this time, Kamish?” the older Magus inquired, his voice a lazy, dangerous drawl. He spoke in the common trading tongue.
    “Two stonemasons,” Kamish replied, his voice oily and subservient again. “A carpenter, a metalworker, and three glassworkers.”
    The Magi exchanged glances.
    “And how much of our wealth have you spent on them?” the younger asked.
    “One hundred and seventy-five sequents, Your Excellency.”
    Both Magi took great, shocked breaths, but before either could speak, Kamish continued.
    “It was these two who so raised the price, Excellencies,” he explained, gesturing towards my father and myself. “They are glassworkers of high renown. The man mixes and moulds like no other – and you know how much need you have of such talent – and the woman…”
    He paused, then flared his hands dramatically. “The woman can cage!”
    The Magi stared at him, then at me, then back to Kamish.
    “ Fool! ” the younger Magus cried. “The maggots that infest the corpses of dung-beetles enjoy greater intelligence than you!” And he stepped forward and struck Kamish a great blow across his face. The factor fell to the tiled walkway, his face impacting with a sickening crunch. I cringed, expecting to be the next struck.
    But the Magus’ attention was on Kamish. He leaned down and seized the man by the front of his robe – its fine weave was now stained by the blood that trickled from his nose.
    “Boaz,” the older Magus muttered. “There is