The Heart of the Mirage (32 page)

Sickened and frightened, I turned away.

And so the days passed. I exercised rigorously, I ate, I slept and every other minute of every day was spent either reading, or exerting my will on that delicate curve of golden stone in my palm, inveigling it to do my bidding—without reducing everything in its path, myself included, to a heap of ashes.

And then came the shock: the thrilling, breathrobbing, devastating shock.

I was seated at my desk, browsing through a book entitled
The Mirager: His Powers and Responsibilities
, when I came across it, the passage that made a mockery of everything Zerise had said about Sarana and Shirin and me. A passage that took away one pain, only to replace it with another, just as tearing. A passage that changed everything.

On the death of the ruling Mirager (or Miragerin),
I read,
the dead ruler’s heir will walk the Shiver Barrens and be given a Mirager’s sword. If they already have a sword, they will exchange it.

At the same time, this new Mirager or Miragerin will be given the conjurations that will bestow cabochons on the newborn. This information is given only to the ruling Mirager or Miragerin, and is not bestowed on any other Magoroth; nor is any other sword capable of bestowing cabochons. For this reason, the ruling Mirager or Miragerin should take special care of their sword. No other will ever be given to them…

My first thought was one of protest: but this is wrong. I had been given the conjurations under the Shiver Barrens. I knew how to bestow a cabochon; the Mirage Makers had shown me in the vision. Presumably my sword was capable of producing the gems. Yet Temellin was the Mirager.

I sat there, thoughts tumbling through my head, and the truth came, a crushing avalanche of knowledge
roaring into my consciousness in a single wave, too much to absorb all at once.

This information is given only to the ruling Mirager or Miragerin—
I looked up from the book. The Miragerin. Goddess, that was
Sarana
, not Shirin.

The Mirage Makers had told me, implanting the knowledge through the indelible clarity of one of their visions, but I hadn’t seen it. My own memories had told me, but I hadn’t thought them through.

…nor is any other sword capable of bestowing cabochons.

The behaviour of the Magoroth had told me, but I had forgotten. Only now did I recall the reverence with which they had treated Temellin’s newly recovered sword. Garis had told me, but I had missed the significance of what he’d said: ‘Until Temellin grew up a bit, no newborn Magor children received their cabochons.’ Temellin had told me, but I hadn’t realised: ‘You don’t know it, love, but you’ve just saved my life—’ Sweet Melete, if I had not returned his sword to him, he would have had to kill himself so that someone else would become the Mirager—and receive a new Mirager’s sword.

Dear Goddess, I was Sarana, daughter of Solad and Wendia; I was Miragerin of Kardiastan; I was the little girl in the shleth howdah who had watched her mother jump out to her death at the hands of the legionnaires led by General Gayed of Tyr.

I was the girl who had become a pawn of Tyrans, a hostage who had enslaved a nation.

I stood at my window looking down on the street below. I had been drawn there by the jingling of a shleth harness and the chatter of voices, to find the road filled with a line of mounted Magor and pack animals, all heading out of the city. There were those of gold cabochon rank, as well as Illusos, Theuros and ordinary Kardis, all of them heavily armed.

I raised my cabochon to my ear and listened, trying to gain some clue as to what was happening. In the confusion of sound it was hard to hear individual conversation, even with my enhanced hearing, and the sort of remarks I did pick up were of little value; things like: ‘Your girth needs loosening, Jaset,’ or ‘Did Bethely give you a hearty farewell last night, Mooris? It could be a while before you see her again!’

My eyes searched for and found Temellin: he had pulled his mount to the side and was watching those who rode past. His ivory full-sleeved shirt and rusty brown trousers were crumpled, as though he’d been sleeping in his clothes, or had simply lost interest in his appearance. The scarlet slash of his cloth belt and
the blood-red of his bolero didn’t quite match; his hair was longer than usual and more unruly than ever.

The moment my gaze found him, he looked up to see me, and I wondered if he had deliberately stopped where he had just for that purpose.

I brought my cabochon up to my face, close to my eyes, and concentrated. The stone, which I now kept uncovered by skin, began to glow faintly and I used the light bathing my eyes to enhance my vision. Temellin sprang into clarity as though he were close enough to touch. He looked thin and tired; nothing of his laughter was visible on his face any more. The brown eyes regarded me thoughtfully, the mouth was tight.

My body hungered, my heart grieved, the sight of him lacerated me. Temellin. My cousin. I could have bedded him without guilt, if he would have had me. Well, perhaps not quite without guilt. What my bloodfather had done to save me had left me with a burden that would last forever.

Tears came to my eyes and Temellin blurred back into a distant figure mounted on his shleth. I opened up my palm and flattened it against the glass of the window in a gesture of greeting and farewell. I thought I saw him begin to raise a hand in acknowledgement, but the gesture died half made and he turned away, urging his mount along with the others.

I sat by the window looking down the road for a long while after it was empty of people. The Mirage Makers created a flock of pink flamingos for me to look at, and then—perhaps because the birds looked a little lost standing on the cobblestone road—added a marshy pond with waterlilies. None of it eased my torment.

I had finally thought it all through: a story of betrayal and tragedy that started when I was a child
and wasn’t finished yet because I was the one who held the endings, and I didn’t know which one to write into Kardiastan’s history. I may have thought it all through, but I still didn’t know what to do.

It had all started because a woman took her daughter away from the child’s father. Magoriawendia removed Sarana from the palace because she thought the Mirager-solad was ruining the child with his lavish spoiling. I could even remember some of the arguments now, the incomprehensible shouting matches between two much-loved parents, arguments so shattering to a child not quite three. Far distant memories:
running, barefoot, across polished agate floors into my father’s arms. Adoring him, feeling safe and loved in his strong clasp…

And somewhere on the journey to another city, Magoria-wendia’s party had been ambushed and wiped out—with the exception of that same child, Sarana, heir to her father’s Mirager sword. She fell into the hands of General Gayed and Rathrox Ligatan, who knew exactly what they had, and were prepared to use her in ways Solad could never have envisioned.
My mother, jumping out of the howdah, sword in hand, leaving me in the care of my Theura nurse, while she battled to save us
—
and died…

Sarana, the beloved daughter of an obsessed father, a man so crazed by the thought of what they would do to her if he didn’t obey them, he was prepared to betray the rest of his family, his fellow Magor, his country: prepared to raise wards around the annual Shimmer Feast so no one sensed the trap closing in on them, prepared to lower those same wards at the crucial moment to turn the trap into an extermination.

Solad’s supposed discovery and identification of his daughter’s body, his return with her already shroud-wrapped
in his howdah, her burial griefs—all playacting to conceal the kidnapping, to hide the existence of a hostage he would do anything to save. The scale of his treachery was breathtaking. I even wondered if he’d killed another child in order to have a body to wrap.

Of course Solad knew what was going to happen at the Shimmer Feast: he had arranged it. And some shred of remaining good sense or conscience made him send away ten Magoroth children to build the core of a new leadership. Just ten of them, with a few teachers; not enough to be missed by the Tyranians. The calculated cruelty of his decisions—take Temellin, but leave his sister Shirin; abandon the babies to their fate. Did his conscience bother him, my father? Did he think I was worth all those slaughtered that day? A whole nation enslaved? Did he really think the vestiges of future hope he seeded by sending the Ten away was enough to atone for his crime?

My Mirager father had sold his honour for his daughter. Temellin’s parents and his sister Shirin, and Goddess knows how many Magoroth had died—
to keep me alive
. Kardiastan was enslaved because of
me.
Temellin and the others of the Ten were brought up in exile because of me.

Because of me. Sarana. Solad’s heir. The rightful Miragerin. Miragerin-sarana. Me.

It was the only explanation that made any sense.

My memories all fitted; I’d seen Wendia jumping out of a howdah into battle. If I’d been Shirin, I would never have been sitting in a tiny curtained room that swayed just before my mother was killed. I would never have seen her rip off her skirting to fight. Shirin’s mother had been attending the Shimmer Feast and would have been shot down with the others, far from the nursery.

There was more evidence, too, once I started to think things over. The Mirage Makers had said,
You are the Miragerin
, not,
You are the Miragerin-shirin
. And now I had the book to tell me they would never have given Shirin the cabochon-making conjurations. Sarana was another matter. When Sarana had disappeared from Kardiastan, they must have thought her dead, so they bestowed the Mirager’s sword on her heir: her cousin Temellin. Once they had seen Ligea Gayed, they had realised Sarana was far from dead and they had tried to make up for their past mistake.

I’d been so blind. I was the one with the memories of what had happened in the ambush; I should have known those memories didn’t fit with what Zerise told me of Shirin. I should have realised much earlier about the significance of the Mirager’s sword. Temellin and the Magor had been so upset by its loss, so relieved at its return. Why, even the ordinary Kardis had cheered to see it again. I had seen the reverent way the Magoroth had touched it back in Madrinya; I’d heard Temellin say to Korden, ‘At least you can stop worrying about that baby of yours.’ I’d been told the first thing Temellin did when he returned to the Mirage City with the sword was to bestow cabochons—which would not have been necessary if other Magor or other swords could have performed that task in the year the Mirager’s sword had been missing—yet I’d still blithely gone on thinking there was nothing special about my knowledge, about
my
sword.

And then that casually uttered but infinitely tragic, ‘Ah. You don’t know it, beautiful one, but you’ve just saved my life.’ Temellin had thought there wasn’t going to be another Mirager’s sword until he died, and without one there would never be a new generation of
Magor. So some time before he’d met me, he’d decided to die.

The cold-blooded courage of that decision pierced me. I remembered his reluctance to ask if I really did have his sword; he’d been so concerned about what my answer would be that he hadn’t been able to frame the question.

I remembered the strange reaction of Korden when he’d seen with his own eyes Temellin’s sword safely returned: the odd mixture of relief and guilt. Part of Korden desperately wanted to be Mirager, but not over Temellin’s body. In his heart he believed he’d be a better Mirager, but he’d been terrified Temellin was going to suicide, and he had feared the guilt that would have consumed him as a consequence.

I understood Korden better now that I was burdened with the guilt of my own past.

I wondered at my own blindness…The compeer in me had been granted enough evidence to unravel the tale long ago, but this hadn’t been a crime I could solve objectively, distancing myself from the players; this had been my life.

And most of all, it was hard to acknowledge that for much of that life I, independent, manipulative, powerhungry Ligea Gayed, had danced to another’s direction. I’d been betrayed by the two men I called father. Mocked by the man I’d called my mentor. I’d been manipulated, a poor senseless marionette jerked on the end of strings held by my enemies.

One good thing came out of my new understanding of who I was. I knew now that my son had been fathered by my cousin, not by my brother.

When Reftim brought in my lunch later that day, I asked abruptly, ‘Where were they all going?’

‘I don’t know that I should answer that,’ he said, his plump cheeks flushing to match the colour of his bobble nose.

‘Then let me speak to someone who can. Who’s in charge now the Mirager has gone?’

‘The Miragerin-consort.’

‘Oh. Well, I hardly want to see her. Who else of the Magoroth is still here?’

‘Garis didn’t leave. Nor did Gretha.’

Gretha was Korden’s wife and a little calculation told me she was expecting another child any time. ‘I’ll see Garis,’ I said.

‘I’ll tell him you want to,’ Reftim replied, making it clear he doubted Garis would come.

He was wrong; Garis came barely half an hour later. He paused in the doorway and we stared at one another, both looking for the right words to say. He was doing his best to shield his emotions, but Garis tended to leak things at the best of times. I’d felt his curiosity even before the door opened.

‘Well met, Garis. What have you done to yourself?’ I asked, indicating the sling he wore around a heavily bandaged left arm.

‘Broke a bone,’ he said briefly. ‘Came off my shleth yesterday like a damned fool.’

‘And you so proud of your riding skills!’

He gave a reluctant grin, and for a moment he was his usual cheerful self. ‘Don’t rub it in—everyone else has. The Mirage chose to grow a tree right in front of my mount just when I was taking a drink from my waterskin; hardly my fault. Those wretched Mirage Makers! I could almost believe they wanted me to miss out on all the fun.’ He gazed around with interest. ‘I was told your room was prone to changes, but I didn’t hear about the books.’ He walked over to have a look;
it did not escape my notice that he’d made no attempt to touch my cabochon in greeting, and I doubted the snub had anything to do with his injury. He ran a finger along the spines of a row of volumes, reading the titles. ‘They’re all in Kardi! Did you know you’re breaking Tyranian law? It’s one of the new promulgations of the Exaltarchy: the Kardi language is now barbaric and unlawful. They have been destroying our written works for years, of course, but now they want to make it illegal even to
speak
our own language in any public venue.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, ‘about not speaking Kardi, I mean. But there’s a great deal I don’t know, Garis. I haven’t spoken to anyone except Illuserreftim—and Caleh very briefly—for two months, and Reftim never says anything anyway. Why has everyone left?’

He looked up sharply, shedding his concern. ‘Did Temellin never come?’

‘Only once. Right at the beginning.’

‘Ah. I did wonder. Cabochon, you must have been lonely. I would have come if you’d asked for me.’

‘That might have been unwise on your part. I am hardly the city’s most beloved guest at the moment. I did appreciate your sending the flowers, though; that was a kind thought.’

His emotions blanked over. ‘Flowers? What flowers?’

I stared. ‘You haven’t been sending me flowers?’ I indicated the vase on my desk. That day the petals of each flower reassembled themselves every few minutes, so that the flower arrangement was different every time I looked.

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t think of it. I wish I had.’

‘Reftim told me they came from you.’

‘I didn’t even know about them. I bet I know who did send them, though.’

‘Do you think so?’ I was doubtful, yet wanting to believe.

‘Who else?’

I thought immediately of Pinar, some trick of hers, but had to dismiss that idea: the flowers were harmless and perfectly ordinary, insofar as the Mirage’s flowers were ever ordinary. Who indeed. Yet he hadn’t wanted me to know they came from him…I pushed the thought away before it could hurt me with the other memories it would bring. ‘Garis, did you believe me when I said Brand had told the truth—that I had changed, and given my loyalties to Kardiastan?’

He looked away to take a book down from the shelf. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I can sense your truth, but Temellin says you can lie and make it seem like the truth.’

‘No. I can’t. I never lied. I just omitted to tell the whole story, and let people jump to the wrong conclusions. It was deliberate, of course, but it does make a difference. It means you can trust what I
do
say.’

‘I’ve never been convinced you were wholly as Tyranian as Pinar or Korden said. Anyway,’ he added, his expression suddenly mischievous and admiring, ‘if you did come here with the idea of betraying us all, I can only salute you. It was a gloriously brave, wonderfully insane thing to do.’

I chuckled. ‘It was rather involuntary, if you’ll remember. Events sort of overtook me.’

He wasn’t listening. He had just read the title of the book he was holding, and his attention was now back on the books on the same shelf. ‘Mirageless soul! Shirin, do you know what these books are?’