The Heart of the Mirage (22 page)

Had he loved me? That proud man who’d given a sixteen-year-old daughter a horse too tough for her to handle because he’d wanted her challenged? The man who’d urged that same sixteen-year-old into the Brotherhood, into the manipulative hands of Rathrox Ligatan, to be trained and hardened and taught how to kill? A proud man who had once been part of a defeated army, an army humiliated by Kardiastan. The only time he’d been on the losing side. The only time treachery rather than military might had provided the ultimate victory.

Would such a man have taken a three-year-old enemy child into his family for reasons of love or compassion?

Of course not.
Delusion
.

Then what was the truth?

A far-sighted man, he’d taken a child of Kardiastan and made her a woman of Tyrans. A man of vision, he’d taken one of the Magor and made her a
Brotherhood Compeer. A man of foresight and planning, he had moulded me, the malleable, eager child; wrought me into his instrument of revenge.
One day you’ll be of service to us…

I’d mourned him when he died. I’d
wept
at his burial griefs.

I lay there, and my blood froze with the betrayal of memory.

I had been betrayed by a man I’d loved as my father. By the man who had
been
my father. Whom I had loved. Who had used me. Who had doubtless despised all I was…

Tears trickled unbidden down my cheeks. Tears from Ligea Gayed? She never cried. But I’d never been so utterly bereft before. I’d never felt that choking in my throat, that crushing sense of betrayal turning my whole life into a lie.

Yet they’d forged their weapon well, those two brutal men of Tyr. I was still a woman of Tyrans…wasn’t I?

My clothes weren’t made for those nights. The still air was cold and the bitterness of it seeped into my bones. Under the feet of the shleths, the sands were hard with ice; ahead the last of the Rakes clawed at a purple sky pricked through with stars, stars as bright as sparkles of sunlight on the sea. The Shiver Barrens: a land that burned with vicious heat by day, and stole the warmth from our bodies by night, a land that killed so easily, yet possessed a beguiling beauty destined to linger on in memory.

A land frightening in its mysteries.

My head pounded. Yesterday’s strangeness had been real; I had the sword to prove it. And those visions, they must have been real too. I had walked
under
these killer sands, and lived. Something nonhuman had spoken to me. Something had shown me a vision of unspeakable brutality. And something had told me that thing I didn’t want to think about.

I felt sick. Confused. Afraid.

And then those memories Brand had coaxed out of me with his taunting words…Had he any idea of what he had done to me? He had scoured my life of its
illusions. What did I have now to replace the mockery of destroyed childhood dreams? The love of a slave, perhaps? I thought not. Or the love of an enemy, a man destined to marry another? Hardly that either. No, all I had in that empty space was the blight left behind by the deepest of betrayals.

I shivered.

‘Are you cold?’ Temellin asked.

We were walking our mounts, because apparently this last band of the sands was narrow, and there was no need to hurry. Garis and Brand were ahead of us, leading the pack shleth, and having their own conversation. By the sound of it, Garis was being amusing.

‘Cold? Yes, a little.’ In the vast emptiness of that landscape, my voice seemed frail, the whimper of a worm before the might of a god.

He fumbled in one of his saddlebags, and tossed me a blanket woven of shleth wool. ‘Put this around you.’

I smiled my thanks, draped it over my shoulders and asked the first thing that popped into my head.
Anything to stop thinking about what had happened the day before. Anything to be Ligea Gayed again.

‘Is slavery the only reason you fight Tyr?’ I asked.

I had previously avoided talking about Kardi politics. I had been wary of doing anything out of keeping with the personality of a woman brought up as a slave, but the time for that kind of caution was over. I hoped that by now Temellin trusted me, and I needed to know a lot more than I did. A lot more than what I could find out from observation and judicious eavesdropping.

‘Why do you ask?’ Temellin countered.

‘You risk so much,’ I said, choosing my words with care. ‘All of you. Have you any idea what can happen to you?’

He shrugged, apparently indifferent.

‘I don’t think you really understand,’ I told him, and the urgency I felt was genuine. ‘Listen, let me tell you about a place called Crestos. General Gayed’s brother was the Governor there for some years, and the Gayed family used to holiday there. It’s a large island in the Sea of Iss. The Crestians rebelled against Tyranian rule, oh, about ten years ago. They drove the legions out, slaughtered every Tyranian they could find on the island. They were left alone for a year or two, but the Exaltarch was just planning his revenge. He built a new fleet, landed legionnaires on every beach of Crestos, and killed every man between the ages of twelve and sixty. Then he repopulated the place with Tyranian soldiers who were retiring from military life. They were granted land or town properties. The only catch was that they weren’t allowed to take any women with them. So you can imagine what happened. Every child born on Crestos thereafter was half-Tyranian.’

He nodded, his emotions sober. ‘I’ve heard the story.’

‘I was on Crestos once, with the Gayed family, when I was about thirteen, before all this happened. I remember a peaceful, prosperous nation with a thriving commercial centre and port, a fine theatre and some of the best sculptors in the Exaltarchy. They had a good life then. They ended up with nothing. Not even their bloodlines. Was it
worth
it, Tem? Is what you do here worth the risk?’ To add a little verisimilitude to my anxiety, I added, ‘I don’t want to see you dead.’

He grinned at me. ‘I hope you won’t.’

‘Then maybe you could negotiate. Have the Magor swear allegiance to the Exaltarch in exchange for making Kardiastan slave-free. Kardi slaves are not popular in Tyr, I do know that. It would be no great
loss to the Exaltarchy, and they would save on the number of legionnaires they have to have quartered here.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your idea, or the Legata’s?’

‘I believe she was going to mention something along those lines to the Governor. She could arrange it.’ Perhaps.

‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How could you? You weren’t brought up here! This is
our
land, Derya. Ours! It doesn’t belong to Bator Korbus and his legions. It is our
right
to govern ourselves. To be free. To decide what sort of buildings to have, what sort of law, what sort of punishment for wrongdoers. To decide how to educate our children, and what language they should learn.’

I tightened my hold on the blanket over my shoulders, trying to keep out the cold. ‘But hasn’t Tyrans brought you many advantages? The Tyranian road system, for example.’

‘Built with the blood and sweat of Kardi slaves.’

‘The theatres. The stadia. The games. The schools. The baths. The libraries. I’ve seen all these things in Sandmurram and Madrinya. There would be more, if there was peace here.’ I heard a hint of desperation in my voice, and wondered at myself.

‘All built with slave labour, on the Tyranian model. The theatres perform works that have nothing to do with us, in a language which is not our own, playing music that is not ours. The games encourage a competitive culture foreign to us. The schools would teach our children to be Tyranian, if they could. They certainly try. Bathing naked in public and lying about afterwards being pandered to by a bevy of slaves—or even servants—is not our custom. And the libraries
don’t contain works written by us. In fact, if any book or scroll written in Kardi is ever found, it is destroyed. We have lost our literature by the promulgation of Tyranian law, Derya. So much has been taken from us—can’t you understand that? Because if you can’t, then you ought to return to Tyrans. All we want is to be left alone to rule ourselves. To be equal to Tyrans, not subjugated to it. Why is that too much to ask?’

‘And yet, from what Garis and others have told me, the ordinary Kardi never did rule. Ruling was the prerogative of the Magor.’
That’s right, Ligea. Slide the knife in, right where it hurts.

He was silent for a moment. I glanced across at him, and he was staring straight ahead, his face grim. He didn’t like the implied criticism. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s correct. And I’m not going to apologise for it. We at least are Kardi. We speak the same language, and live by the same code. We have special abilities that make us eminently suited to rule. And we ourselves are governed by laws of service to all.’

‘That last is exactly what Legata Ligea would say about the Tyranian authorities.’

He almost spat his contempt. ‘Can you really believe we have anything in common with their methods of governance and commerce? You’ve lived in Tyr! You’ve seen what happens there, surely.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And I know what slavery is.’

He was instantly contrite. ‘Ah, by the Mirage, I’m sorry. Of course you do. Better by far than I.’ He looked at me then, and smiled his apology. ‘You are right to question, for only by questioning can we learn. You have come far for someone who was brought up a slave.’

Something unpleasant crawled across my skin to nibble at my soul. My own lies, perhaps, so cleverly
worded to be sure he wouldn’t sense the falsehoods. I said, ‘Don’t think of me as someone who emptied the chamberpots or scrubbed the dishpans. Ligea took her slave with her everywhere—to school as a child, and then later to the theatre and the debates and the poetry evenings. Her slave learned along with her.’ True enough, although the slave had been Brand. I hoped Temellin would believe it of Derya.

He stopped and stared at me. Almost immediately, the ice beneath his mount began to melt, and the sands stirred. I halted alongside, wondering just what part of my statement had put that peculiar expression on his face. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ he said quietly. ‘You have been her companion all your remembered life. You love her, don’t you? She is as an older sister to you. You don’t want to betray her.’

‘Slaves don’t find it so hard to betray their owners,’ I said woodenly. My mount shuffled uneasily as sand grains bubbled around its feet.

‘Nonetheless. If you had to choose between the two of us, Ligea or me, who would it be?’

‘I already have chosen.’

‘No. You chose between freedom and slavery.’

‘I would not willingly see anything happen to Ligea. But then—I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, either.’ And that was true enough. Derya had vanquished Ligea in that particular battle.

He nodded, accepting I could go no further than that, and we continued on.

Brand and I looked upon the Mirage and did not believe what we saw.

‘It is not real,’ I said flatly. ‘How can anything like this be real?’

‘You are right,’ Temellin replied. ‘In one sense it is not real. Why else would it be called the Mirage? What is a mirage if not an illusion, a dream that is not there?’

‘I don’t understand.’

Temellin signalled Garis to ride on with Brand, leaving the two of us mounted on our shleths looking out over a landscape that could not exist. He reached across and took my hand. ‘It is the creation of entities we call the Mirage Makers. They have made a land including everything that pleases them, and because they are who they are, what they create has reality. I can eat the fruit and be sustained, drink the water and have my thirst slaked. But if the Mirage Makers decide they want a change, then the lake you see here today will be gone tomorrow; the leaves that are purple now might be white in an hour’s time, the road that runs across this valley may not exist two seconds hence—or it may last a thousand years. If they want music,
there will be music; if they want silence, they will have it. As a matter of courtesy, they do not usually remove the buildings from around us without warning, nor do they banish a chair that’s in use, nor do they build a wall across a road just as we ride down it.’

I remembered the shapes I’d thought I had seen in the dancing sands. ‘These entities—where do they live?’

‘They
are
the Mirage, all that you see before you now. It is impossible to think of them as being creatures like us, Derya. They have none of our limitations, none of our frailties. They do not need a form to move, nor sustenance to survive, nor a mouth to speak, nor eyes to see. They do not give birth or die, they just are. They are as much found in every grain of the soil beneath us as they are found in every leaf of that tree over there, or every stone in that wall, in every feather of that bird you see.’

He spoke almost as if I weren’t there, with a lyricism that spoke of his deep love for this place, the orator coming to the fore again. He continued, ‘To our Kardi forebears, the Mirage Makers were enemies to be feared because they were so far beyond ordinary Kardis, so unknowable. In those days patches of the Mirage were found throughout Kardiastan. Those places were dangerous. The Mirage could kill us, and did, without even noticing we were gone. And then the first of the Magor was born. She passed on her skills to her children and her children’s children. They were also mirage makers of a kind, people with the power to make what did not exist seem to have reality. Probably you and I also have that latent ability, although we do not know how to use it.

‘The illusions our forebears made had none of the—the solidness of the Mirage you see around you, but
they could create mirages on a vast scale. And did. They regarded them as an art form, and those who rendered them were revered, just as Tyrans reveres its sculptors. But for some reason, this Magor ability confused the true Mirage Makers, sending them mad with visions of a world that might or might not be. It became the weapon of the Magor, a weapon they turned against the Mirage Makers to punish them for their illusory world so treacherous to us. As more and more Magor were born, the Mirage Makers suffered immeasurable distress. And in their distress—no, in their madness—they damaged the land and its people still more. It was not a situation which benefited either side. Nor was it a conflict that could ever be won.

‘It was then the first pact was made, between Mirage Makers and Magor, a pact that stands to this day. A covenant, if you like. One day soon you will be shown the Tablets of the Covenant and you will be asked to swear allegiance to the agreement. Until then, it’s enough to say one result of the pact was that the true Mirage Makers withdrew behind the Shiver Barrens, and contact with them was restricted to what was necessary.’

He fell silent, his good humour in abeyance.

I prompted him to go on. ‘But you came to live in the Mirage. First just you and the other children of the Ten with your teachers; now it seems every Magor who wants to come. Not to mention the Kardis you have freed from slavery. Why did these Mirage Makers allow that?’

‘I wish I could tell you. None of us know what really happened, and the Mirage Makers choose not to tell us. After the invasion, Korden was the oldest of the Magoroth left alive: he was ten. I was only five. None of us knew what decisions were made by the Mirager,
my uncle Solad, or why. The Illusos, the Theuros who went with us, did not know. Why did Solad send us to the Mirage when he did? Did he sense the Magoroth were about to be betrayed, and sent us away to save us? He told those who took us how to cross the Shiver Barrens: how did he find out? No one had ever done it before. No one had ever tried; it was forbidden for us to try. What bargain did Solad make with the Mirage Makers so we can now take refuge here? No one was told directly, although I think perhaps I was given an indication, when I received my sword.’

He stopped abruptly, biting his lip, but you can’t pack words away again once they are spoken.

I prompted, ‘Received your sword?’

He ran his hand through his hair, chagrined. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t tell you anything about that, not yet. It’s just, well, something I was told then indicated that there was a price, negotiated by Solad, which has not yet been paid and one day we will have to pay it. The Mirage has saved us for now; the Mirage Makers tolerate us and adjust the Mirage so we do not suffer too much from its unpredictability, but there will come a reckoning and perhaps the discharging of our obligation will be difficult for us. For me.’

‘But you will pay?’

His face seemed grey as he replied. ‘Yes. I believe we must pay, whatever the suffering it causes. If there was a bargain, made by my uncle, I must honour it. To do otherwise would be to flirt with a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The Magor must have the cooperation of the Mirage Makers, or there will be no more cabochons and therefore no Magor in the future.’

I stared at him. There was so much pain in his voice, I could only assume there was something he was
not telling me, something so terrible he could not put it into words. I remembered my vision beneath the Shiver Barrens, and wondered if we both had more than an inkling of what the bargain was.

Infanticide.

No, don’t think about it. Temellin is not like that. He would never kill children, anyone’s children.

And yet when his eyes met mine, I saw only despair. I wanted to take him in my arms, I wanted to ease his torment, but instinct told me that would make things worse, not better. He was too used to bearing his burdens alone; perhaps no one had ever taught him to share them. Perhaps Miasa hadn’t been a particularly perceptive wife, or perhaps it was just that once she was gone, he no longer had anyone who would share his cares. He was hardly going to confide in me anyway, not when some of the Ten regarded me with such suspicion. Not when he couldn’t be absolutely certain of my loyalty.

I turned back to face the land ahead. I couldn’t decide whether it was beautiful or mad. Nothing was as it should be. Blue feathers grew in place of grass and they tinkled metallically in the breeze. The sky was pink and splintered with lines like cracked glass. There was a charming stone bridge crossing nothing except some rosebushes, and a crazy-paving road that changed to a waterfall at its end. Animals grazing on the feathers in a nearby field had green fur, black whiskers and no feet; a bird flew past with a furry tail, tasselled at the end. A large red statue of an upsidedown dragonfly dominated a field of cabbages. The plinth was built of bubbles. Something that looked suspiciously like a cow was curled up asleep on the roof of a house. The house itself was built of glass balls filled with fish and it leant at an impossible angle in
insane, asymmetrical beauty. A sentry marched up and down outside playing a lute: he was made of wood, no more than an oversized children’s toy with the ability to move.

‘Nothing that leans so far off the true should be able to stand,’ I murmured looking at the house. I felt I needed to say
something
.

‘It will, unless the Mirage Makers want it otherwise. Are you ready for the rest of this land?’

‘Where do we go?’

‘There is a city the Mirage Makers built for us. It is just a little idiosyncratic in places, but not too traumatic. And it is bizarrely beautiful. Not more than two hours’ ride from here. At least, that’s what it was last time I rode this way. The time before that, a black lake blocked the route and it took me four days to ride around it. The Mirage can be tricky.’

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it again. I couldn’t think of anything sensible to say.

We rode for an hour in silence. I did not want to talk; there was too much to see, to marvel over. After we crossed a stream that flowed, impossibly, both uphill and downhill, I was prompted to comment on the one ugly thing I had seen: a patch of black and khaki green on a hillside. I wondered at first if it was some kind of bog, but the stink soon made it clear it was more than that. No swamp this, but rather a suppurating sore about the size of a town forum, an expanse of foul rottenness that looked and smelled corrupt. Black scum floated over clear greenish ooze dribbling in rivulets out from the core, as though spreading contagion.

‘What happened there?’ I asked, halting my mount.

Temellin refused to look at it. He said curtly, his voice once more edged with pain, ‘We don’t know.
There have always been such patches, ever since we first came here as children. They grow larger with time, and new ones appear. We have tried to clear them away, but it’s impossible. They are poisonous to everything. I cannot believe they have their origin in the Mirage Makers. They are too…evil. We call them the Ravage.’

I was about to ride on when I was submerged in a suffocating emotion so thick I could barely breathe. Someone was hating me. The feeling was so real, so personal, I gagged, choking. I looked around wildly for whoever was responsible for such an outpouring of malicious loathing, but the only people in sight were Garis and Brand riding ahead of us, and—closer at hand but equally innocuous—an old Kardi woman fishing in a pond, with a couple of children playing around in a shleth cart behind her. I took a hold of myself and made an effort to pinpoint the source.

‘What is it?’ Temellin asked in alarm.

‘It’s the Ravage. It hates me!’ The words sounded ridiculous as soon as I gave voice to them.

‘Oh.’ He sighed and nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I mean, it hates everyone. We’ve got used to it, I suppose. Try not to let it worry you; if you don’t go near it, nothing can happen to you.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. ‘I—I don’t like it.’ I slapped my heels into my mount, desperate to leave that corrosive loathing.

A little later on, once we’d left the Ravage behind and had slowed to a walk once more, I asked Temellin if, when the Magor were free to live in Kardiastan again, they would leave the Mirage.

He nodded. ‘Oh yes. This has never been more than a temporary haven; it does not belong to us. I am sure it was never part of my uncle’s bargain with the
Mirage Makers that our stay be permanent.’ He glanced at me, his look soft, and I felt an answering surge of emotion. It occurred to me I had come to know Temellin surprisingly well in a short time. I knew how much pain he concealed behind that cheerful exterior of his; I sensed how much inner uncertainty, how much anger at injustice, there was inside him. One part of me wanted to help carry that load. Appalled, I tried to remember yet again that I had a duty to destroy him.

Neither thought brought me any joy.

A moment later, Temellin said, ‘Look—the Mirage City is in sight.’

He was pointing, and I saw the buildings rising out of the plain like a pile of ill-stacked bowls and mugs. They leant against one another, occasionally meeting overhead, sometimes held apart by crooked covered bridges or walkways. It was a city of narrow curved streets and winding stairs, of back alleys that dipped and humped like loop caterpillars. The stonework of the walls bulged with eccentric lumps and nodules or was pitted with niches and hollows planted with ferns and flowers. There was no symmetry, no planning. It had the unexpectedness of nature.

‘However do you find your way anywhere?’ I asked later, as we wended our way into this mess of streets and drunken buildings.

‘With luck, more than anything,’ he said with a grin. ‘And don’t forget, things can change overnight. A straight street can suddenly develop as many corners as joints on a shleth feeding arm, or a main road can become a stream. There was one awful week when we had to go everywhere by boat on canals; luckily the Mirage Makers tired of that change fairly quickly.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘All the Magoroth live in one building we call the Maze, for want of a better name. It contains any number of apartments, as well as servant quarters, nurseries—everything we need. We’ll find a place for you for the time being. Korden and Pinar will demand both you and Brand be under supervision, I’m afraid.’

I reined in my mount. ‘Will I—will I see you at all?’ It was an act. A touch of pleading, to show my trustworthiness. To give him a hint that perhaps Derya was falling in love with him. And yet, it was also not entirely a deception. Even as I spoke the words, I knew I wanted to see him again.
Vortex,
I thought,
why the Goddess is he so blamed attractive?

He stopped alongside me. ‘I—cabochon help me, Derya—I don’t think I can stay away. But I have promised Pinar she wouldn’t have to wait much longer; she is almost thirty-five. If she is to have children, we ought to get together soon and she wants marriage.’

His face was so drawn, his voice so stressed, I couldn’t bear to look at him. I knew, without him saying it, that once married he would be faithful to his wife, no matter that she was a murderous bitch. I said, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you and I did not live in the same building.’

‘Perhaps—later. Not now, not yet. Please, Derya, not yet.’

‘It is not a weakness to feel this way,’ I told him, nettled by the shame I sensed in him.