The Heart of the Mirage (20 page)

As we rode, I realised why a horse or a gorclak could never have made that journey and lived. Their small feet would have broken through the surface. Only a
shleth could cross the Shiver Barrens. They spread out their pads to the size of serving plates and used a fastwalking gait that spread their weight evenly on three legs at a time. The constancy of the speed they maintained was impressive; a glance at the concentration on Temellin’s face convinced me it was necessary. If we didn’t reach the other side of the Barrens by dawn, we died.

We rode in silence. Temellin travelled in a world of his own as if he listened to voices only he could hear, yet I did not regret the lack of conversation. I, too, wanted to listen. I wanted to listen to the song of my own body, to the sound of the footbeats of my mount, to the now-stilled music of the sands, echoes of which I still seemed to hear. Above, the purple softness of the sky with its blue points of light and swirls of stardust; below, the sparkle of blue-frost and the crisp crunch of paws…No, there was no need of words. I was beyond them.

We had no time for rest. Safety was a night’s ride away; the pace had to be steady and relentless. Occasionally Temellin would draw his sword and swing it in an arc in front of him. Each time, when it flamed briefly, he would make a slight adjustment to the direction of our ride.

When we passed a dozen silent frost-covered figures, half buried in the sand, half exposed in a naked tatter of bone and desiccated flesh, we did not stop. Temellin did not seem to notice them, but my heart clenched painfully as recognition came. There could be no mistaking the lance still clutched in a fleshless hand, the clasp from a military cloak lodged in leathered skin, or the metal links caught on the white curve of ribs, gleaming in the starlight—all that remained of a cuirass. And beyond the men, the
skeletal remains of animals with pitted and pockmarked horns in the middle of bone-white skulls. Appalled, I averted my eyes.

In predawn light I had my first glimpse of the end of the Shiver Barrens: a dark silhouette across the horizon ahead, a continuous jagged line of a low ridge against the mauve of sky. Temellin spoke for the first time. ‘That’s the first Rake,’ he said. ‘That’s safety.’

Dawn came: a shaft of light that shot across the plain from behind, sending our shadows racing ahead to touch the stone of the Rake, now coloured the ebony-red of newly shed blood. The shleths quickened pace, aware time was slipping away from them with the darkness.

‘Don’t worry,’ Temellin said from beside me. ‘We will make it.’

But soon I was doubting his words of reassurance. The crispness was gone from beneath the paws of our mounts. They were forced to slow as the crust broke slightly each time a foot landed. A little later, when I looked behind, I saw sand escaping from the confining surface wherever the crust had cracked. The grains weren’t truly dancing as yet; the sand bubbled, broke and fell back only to bubble and burst again. Ahead, the white plain was white no longer; the frost had melted.

‘Temellin—’ I began. Fear and excitement mingled. I knew my eyes shone.

‘Trust me.’ He laughed and let loose his emotions. He was exhilarated, revelling in the race against time, the possibility of death, the joy he anticipated. ‘I’ll get you there. Believe me, there’s no way I’ll be cheated out of what I intend to have today.’

Yet by the time the Rake was within reach, the soft sound of the song of the Shiver Barrens murmured
anew. The shleths were floundering, almost wallowing as the grains rose up to batter at their legs. On their last desperate run to the rock ahead, they even unfolded their feeding arms and used the balled fingers as an extra pair of feet, anything to give them added purchase on the restless sand. Behind, our tracks were a ploughed furrow through a barren field.

And then we were safe. The rock was beneath us and our mounts halted, heads hanging low with fatigue.

Garis whooped and laughed. ‘Wow—that was terrific!’

Brand shook his head and muttered something about youth and idiocy.

I looked around. The lengthwise red crease of the Rake, slashing across the sands in a seemingly endless ripple, was no more than ten minutes’ ride widthways in the flatter places. But it wasn’t often flat. It was a naturally carved flounce of curves and caves and fissures accentuated by light and shade. In the sun, the red was almost blinding; shadows cooled it to mahogany and rust. Such were the tortured convolutions of the rock that some niches and corners were always shadowed, and in these places pools collected the run-off of dew and frost.

All this I hardly noticed just then. I was looking across one of those flatter areas and seeing what was on the other side of the flounce—and in my fatigue, my heart plunged. All I could see was sand and more sand. The Shiver Barrens began again on the far side of the Rake, stretching as far as the eye could see.

With a speaking glance at Brand, I slid from my shleth.

Temellin dismounted beside me and came over, his eyes sympathetic. ‘It takes five nights to cross the
Shiver Barrens, Derya,’ he said. ‘There are four stone ridges like this one, slicing through the desert from one side to the other. We must reach one before dawn of each day. As you can see, on a Rake there is shelter and water and shade and firm ground. Here we are safe. You can even bathe. There is no need to look so miserable.’

He grinned at me and suddenly I didn’t feel so tired.

We found a shaded cave where we could water the animals and feed them the fodder cakes we had with us. Another recess carved into a cliff provided us with shade. However, after we’d eaten, Temellin disappeared. I sat waiting, and was not disappointed; when he returned it was to beckon me away from the others. I joined him out in the sun once more, wincing in the already savage heat. ‘I have found a place,’ he said. ‘Come.’

He held out his left hand and instead of giving him my right in return, I reached across with my left. The touch of his cabochon to mine was the drug I needed to reassure myself that I was desirable—and desired.

He had found a cave for us, a hollow rounded and smoothed like a scooped-out melon half, just big enough for the sleeping pelts he had thrown down. A little lower, there was another rounded dip, also shaded, full of ice-cold water.

He took me in his arms and whispered, ‘Your bath awaits, my lady.’ But in the end, it was the bath that had to wait. Once we were naked and in each other’s arms, we could not stop the flame of emotion demanding instant physical consummation. We were intoxicated with each other, drunk on the smell and taste and touch of each other; unbearably aroused by our desire, then inebriated with its satiation. At that
moment, the idea any action of mine could lead to the death of this man was utterly unthinkable.

Afterwards, lying side by side, I found myself crying with the wonder of it all. He lay there, naked, perfect—sculpted thighs, hard buttocks, taut length of muscular leg. Our left palms were still clamped together so we could feel every nuance of each other’s emotion, or at least those we cared to share, but when I wondered how I would ever be satisfied again with a lesser lover, when I remembered I was supposed to betray him, I shielded my guilt from him. And there was, even then, a part of my brain thinking through possibilities. Like: if Tyrans wanted to prevent the Kardis from crossing the Shiver Barrens, then all they had to do was kill all the shleths. Or: the Stalwarts need not cross the Alps; they could commandeer shleths and cross the Shiver Barrens just as the Kardis did. They could wrench the Mirage from Kardi control, and that would wreak havoc on the Kardi heart and soul.

But I had no way to get that message to the Stalwarts in time. They would cross through one of the world’s most treacherous mountain ranges, enduring horrors I could hardly imagine, in order to serve their country and their Exaltarchy. To bring peace to a warring nation and a people who could not accept the natural order of subservience to a superior culture…

We drowsed, then bathed together and made love again, this time with a more leisurely passion, although the culmination was as intense as ever. I fell asleep naked in his arms and did not wake until it was dark.

Temellin had gone and I was already chilled.

It was Garis who had awoken me. He was shaking me by the foot, his voice full of laughter.

‘Derya? Are you awake? Temellin says it’s time to get up.’

I stirred and sat up. I was still naked.

‘Now that’s a sight I’d walk all night to see!’ he exclaimed. He rolled his eyes and grinned. ‘You are incomparable, Derya.’

I pulled the sleeping pelt up over my nakedness. ‘Scat, Garis.’

‘Killjoy,’ he said, not moving.

‘
Scram,
Garis!’

‘I’m going, I’m going! Temellin wouldn’t appreciate too much appreciation anyhow. But I’m glad for him, Derya. I really am.’ This last was said without the banter, and then he was gone.

I was glad, too—for myself. For now.

We were on the fourth Rake.

I lay awake and watched the patterns of water reflections on the cave roof. A pretty dappling, a moving artwork. Beside me Temellin lay replete with lovemaking, his face young and contented in repose. I resisted the temptation to kiss him, and touched my cabochon to his instead. I felt his dreaming: pleasant dreams of contentment. I wished this journey could go on forever, that I would never have to face the decisions awaiting me on the other side of the Shiver Barrens, that I would never have to make a choice between desire and duty; between a man and an obligation; between Kardiastan and Tyrans, between the land of my birth and the land of my loyalties.

I turned my gaze back to the roof of the cave and tried not to listen to the song of the Barrens.

Something was moving the surface of the water outside to cause that dappling, and yet I’d felt no wind. Puzzled, I rose, dressed and stepped out into the blazing heat of the day. The tiny pool tucked away in among the rocks was as flat as oil in a lamp. I looked back at the cave roof: the dappling had vanished.

My skin prickled warning.

Come
. I heard the voice singing in the dance, the invitation clear and unequivocal. And knew immediately this was not the voice of the Shiver Barrens; this was no melody of movement, beautiful but meaningless; this was something quite different.

It was we who woke you, we who ruffled the water. Come
.

Appalled, I asked in a whisper, ‘Who are you?’

We are the Mirage Makers. Come
.

Mirage Makers? What in all Acheron’s mists were Mirage Makers? ‘Come where?’

Into the dance.

‘You would kill me?’

You will not die. Come.

‘I dare not.’ In fact, I thought I was probably not having this conversation. I was dreaming. Or I had a bad case of sunstroke.

You do not dream. Nor are you ill. You listen to our song. As we listen to yours. Come. It is your time to receive what is yours to own, your time to hear what is yours to know, your time to hear the song of your birthright.

I felt an all-consuming terror and shook my head. I started to back away, thinking to wake Temellin. ‘I will not listen.’

Come, you who call yourself Ligea.

The horror I felt then was stultifying.
Sweet Melete. It knows who I am! Temellin will kill me
. I thought those words in my head, but they answered, those voices, nonetheless.

Of course we know. Are we not the Mirage Makers? And are you not of the Magor?

The sun beat down at me, yet my horror was as cold as frost. I dared not wake Temellin. Instead, I gathered
the tatters of my shredded courage, and walked to the edge of the Shiver Barrens to look into the dance. There were patterns within patterns, and somewhere I thought I saw shapes—wispy shapes in relief against the patterned background.

‘No,’ I said. ‘You entice me to my death. I will not go.’ Yet the fast beating of my heart was not just generated by fear; there was also that wretched love of danger urging me on, telling me: this could be the greatest adventure of your life…

You have a duty. You are the Miragerin
.

‘Turds. I am not Temellin’s consort, nor ever will be.’ And with those words came a pang of regret. But I had no time to think about that.

You are the Miragerin. We have no knowledge of what will be, only of what is. What is cannot be denied. Refuse to come to us now and tonight we shall break the frost beneath the feet of your mount and draw you under. Neither way will you come to harm, but this way is better. Come
.

I looked back at the cave where Temellin slept, and I was torn.

What must be, must be
, the voice said gently.
Come
. The tone contained no real hint of threat, in spite of the words. There was no menace, nor even seduction. It was more the reasoned tones of a teacher, gently admonishing a reluctant pupil.

And I went. I stepped away from the rock and began to walk into the dance.

I felt nothing. The sand did not batter me; the only thing that touched me was the caress of the song, the Shiver Barrens’ song, rippling along my skin and into the weave of my being. The dancing sands rose higher and higher around me as I walked, yet parted before me as I moved. Waist-height, shoulder, chin—I gave
one last look back at the safety of the Rake and was submerged.

The music of the sounds was almost unbearable in its beauty. I heard and saw and felt and smelt it. Purple light bathed me; I was looking through a mist of movement and somewhere beyond I could see the forms that were there, but not quite visible. When I stared at them they slipped away like elusive dreams, always just out of reach, just unknowable.

I did not hear the voice again; yet, surrounded by the music, I heard meaning being woven into the song of the Shiver Barrens, meaning coming from something, or things, that were not the Barrens. There was no need of words. I heard and understood.

When the music twisted I saw a Magor sword suspended before me. The song wove itself from these things calling themselves the Mirage Makers, to the sword, to me, and I knew it was mine; all I had to do was to fit my cabochon into the hollow on its grip and it would belong to me, could never be turned against me. I reached out and closed my left hand around the hilt. It melded to me, throbbing with a desire to be used.

This is your Magor sword
. Still the music spoke to me, slotting knowledge wordlessly into my mind.
There is a responsibility that comes with this weapon. This is not the sword of Tyrans which drinks blood for the sake of power; it is the sword of the Magor, an instrument of service
.

‘Service? To whom?’ I asked.

To the Magor. To Kardiastan. To those others of this land, the non-Magor. Use it for personal gain, pursue corrupt goals, and you break the Covenant made by your forebears with those they called the Mirage Makers. Are you willing to accept this gift?

My hand tightened on the hilt. It was part of me…I could no more have refused it than I could have denied my hunger for Temellin.
Yes
, I whispered in my mind.
Yes, I accept
. The response was emotional, irrational even. It was not possible to serve Tyr and the Brotherhood at the same time as the Magor. Yet I accepted the sword and ignored the contradiction.

Inside my head, I sang my thanks for the gift and knew I was heard. I closed my eyes, strangely lulled, and felt myself drifting, bodiless.

And then came a vision. It was a message woven in music, yet it was not as sounds, but as images, that I knew it.

It was night-time and there was a Mirager. It was not Temellin, or any particular Mirager, but rather the essence of a Mirager, of all ruling Miragers and Miragerins that had ever been or ever would be, male or female. He knelt on a flagstone floor with his head bowed, and his hands held his Magor sword. I knew he had fasted. I knew he was praying, but not to any deity. He was not praying
to
anything; rather, he was praying for a newborn child, praying for its wisdom and its service. He was dedicating a baby to the Magor.

He chanted words that themselves had no meaning—and yet which contained a wealth of meaning. Gradually the sword he held began to glow with a gold light. He gave no sign he’d noticed, but held it lying across his hands with the hollow in the hilt uppermost. Then, after a time that seemed endless, the hollow was no longer empty, but was filled with a gem, a cabochon. Although I had no memory of ever having seen one, I knew it for what it was.

It was shaped like half a pigeon’s egg, sliced lengthways.

It was rounded, without faceting. I strained to see its colour, but sometimes it looked gold, sometimes green, sometimes red. It was the essence of all cabochons that had ever been…

Then the night ended and the Mirager rose to his feet, still carrying the sword. He went into another room where the baby slept in his mother’s arms and the father stood watching his wife and child with tenderness. The mother held out the child and the Mirager knelt before her and laid the hilt of the sword, cabochon down, onto the tiny left hand. There was a flash of light, a baby’s cry, and pain, the Mirager’s pain as the cabochon was ripped from his sword and became part of the child for all his life. Yet when the Mirager stood his face was calm and proud.

Knowledge came to me as I watched. Just as the swords were gifts from the Mirage Makers to the Magor, so were the cabochons, only they were bestowed through the medium of a Magor sword. The Magor had no say in the gem colour.

I looked down at my own left hand. Somewhere, some time, I had lain in my mother’s arms and a Magor—a Mirager? Temellin’s uncle Solad?—had pressed the hilt of a Magor sword to my palm…

The vision was gone.

There was another in its place, but less defined, more blurred, as though it was something that had never happened, may never happen. I saw a figure—a Kardi who could have been man or woman—holding a soft, rounded shape cupped in his or her hands, a shape that throbbed with a regular beat. I stared at it, puzzled, and was given the knowledge to understand what it was. A woman’s womb with a living embryo, a womb and its contents ripped from its mother…Appalled, I drew back, putting a protective hand to my
own abdomen as if I were denying to be identified with the woman who would supply that disembodied organ and its doomed child. I strained to see the person’s face, but it was featureless. Whoever it was, he or she appeared to be offering the unborn child to the indistinct shapes inside the dancing sands, offering it to the Mirage Makers. And the Mirage Makers were accepting it, drawing it into the sands so it merged with them, so it became one with those shadowy beings who definitely weren’t human. I thought, and knew it a truth:
The Mirage Makers want an unborn child.
And to supply it, a woman was going to have to die…Then, in shock:
Why is such a vision being shown to
me
?

But I had no time to dwell on the horror, on the terror of that moment, or on the additional knowledge that was then slotted into my mind. Before I could assimilate all I now knew, there was another vision.

Two hands. Reaching out to one another. One was indubitably mine, the other was the personification of something that was not a person: the Mirage Makers. Then the vision split. In the first image the hands clasped and melted into one another in a symbol of unity. In the second, my hand took up my Magor sword and split the hand held out to me so its blood drained onto the sand below to become a black foulness that was death without redemption.

Then the vision was gone and I was standing under the dancing sands once more, the singing filling my ears, my eyes, my body. It was telling me the Mirage Makers knew who I was, knew I had the power to destroy both them and the Magor, that they had indeed
given
me that power with the bestowal of my sword, but that they’d had no choice. They were not
free to make decisions, they could merely accede to the immutable rules laid down in antiquity, when Magor and Mirage Makers had settled their differences and made their pacts.

The singing took on the sound of tragedy, of grief, of a plea asking me to respect my birth-gift. It was a song filled with such a depth of sorrow, I felt every dancing sand grain was a teardrop to be shed at the moment of my betrayal. I wept then, wept for what I was: Kardi Magor-born, but bred to know there was a better way of life, a great civilisation offering so much more…

I turned and stumbled away, instinctively groping back to the safety of the Rake.

When I stood again in the desiccating sunlight with the hard red rock beneath my feet, I looked back at the dancing sands and knew they had become once again deadly for me. The Mirage Makers were gone from the Shiver Barrens. The song was there, still beautiful, but the melody now belonged only to the sands. And yet, I still thought that if only I could listen in the right way, I would understand. That it was
important
to understand.

It was hard to imagine I’d stood beneath the Shiver Barrens in the heat of the day and survived, yet I held the Magor sword in my hand as proof, its hilt fitted so comfortably into my palm…Right then, though, my thoughts were not of the sword. Nor did I think of the gift of an embryo, the bestowing of cabochons—I could think about all that later. It was something else that had me standing out there in the sun, unable to move in my shock.

There was one piece of information I had unwittingly gleaned along the way that tore me apart.
No. It couldn’t be true…

‘Ligea!’

I looked up. Brand was looking down on me from the crest of the Rake.
Don’t think about it.

‘What the world are you doing out in the sun?’ He came down to me and looked at the sword in my hand with surprise. ‘Temellin’s?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Mine.’
Concentrate.

‘Where in Vortex did you get it?’

‘I think—from the place that all the Magor obtain their swords. Brand, there’s no way I can explain.’ I refused to meet his eyes as I added,‘And please—don’t mention this to the others, either; I don’t want them to know I have a Magor sword. Not yet, anyhow.’ I looked down at the weapon. I wanted to know what it meant; I wanted to know what this Covenant was…and I wanted to know my own mind. Only then would I know whether I should tell the Magor that these Mirager Makers had bestowed a sword on me.

Brand looked irritated. ‘You expect me to take much on trust, Ligea. One of these days you will push me too far.’

I shrugged. ‘You are free. You have only to tell me and I will ask nothing of you.’

‘Ligea, Ligea, what are you doing?’ The depth of his grief sliced into me, focusing my attention. He had deliberately bared himself. ‘I feel I don’t know you any more,’ he said. ‘This passion you have for Temellin, it’s insane. Do you think you can bed a man one day and betray him the next? Not even you can do that and stay yourself.’

I gave a bitter laugh. I wanted to say, but I have to do just that, Brand. I have to betray either Temellin or Favonius. And I have known and bedded Favonius for years. It is Temellin who is the stranger, the foreigner with foreign ways. Temellin is just a lust in my loins.
Such lust won’t last, it mustn’t last—if it did, it would drive me insane because I can’t have him forever…