The Heart of the Mirage (42 page)

‘Magoria-shirin is your cousin too.’ The words came not from Temellin, but from Garis. ‘And she is Kardi. Don’t make the same mistake I did, Magori.’ He
blushed miserably, embarrassed perhaps by his temerity, perhaps by the memory of his unjustified suspicions of me.

But Temellin was done with talking. He sat and pressed his sword down onto his cabochon. As mine had done, it split and the sword went on into his hand. He lay back down on the rock.

Zerise cried, ‘Fah-Ke-Cabochon-rez!’ and the words were taken up by all standing there, even Korden.

A mistiness gathered around his cabochon, a fog that grew and took on form as it swelled, pouring out of the palm. It wavered, gained definition and then steadied: Temellin, naked and visible, but with an unreality about his figure. The face lacked expression, the body moved with a stately smoothness that seemed unreal. The skin was waxy smooth, the eyes unblinking.

The Temellin lying on the red rocks of the Rake was as motionless as death.

I turned to our son and the blackness closed in on me once more.

I was back in my body, back with the pain, in desperate need of air. And so very, very tired. It was tough even to keep my eyes open. I wanted to slip away…I managed—just—to wrench the sword point from my cabochon. The gem closed up behind the blade, leaving the surface unblemished.

Temellin stood rigid and taut a few paces away. His cabochon glowed gold, casting an eerie light on his sweat-glazed skin and the knotted muscles of his body. The fluid ooze of the Ravage did not seem to touch him; he had enclosed himself within a warded space, perhaps more out of distaste for his surroundings than any real need. The corruption of the Ravage could not hurt an essensa. Nor could its creatures; they swam in frustrated circles, tails flicking angrily, spines and claws and talons extended.

Temellin gave them a cursory glance as though he were dismissing them from his calculations. I knew better; he paid them no attention because he didn’t need to just then—but he knew exactly how dangerous they would be to me the moment I left the cocoon of safety the Mirage Makers had built for me.

He looked up at Brand and made a throwing gesture with his hand, following it with a mime of rope pulling. Seconds later, a length of rope curled out over the Ravage, rested for a moment on the surface scum, then began to sink, slowly, through the muck. Ignored by the swimming beasts, it finally landed several paces from where I lay.

I didn’t know what good it would do. I was too weak to move, too close to suffocation to do more than lie as still as possible. And Temellin couldn’t touch or hold anything.

I underestimated him. He may not have been able to pick up the rope, but with his cabochon powers he could call up a wind, and he could penetrate the ward the Mirage Makers had placed around me. It was hardly a gale he created, but it was sufficient to stir the viscidity of the Ravage, to create a flow. The Ravage resisted, but it was Temellin who prevailed. The rope wavered forward on the flux, inched into my cocoon of protection and then under the curve of my ankle. It took longer to coax the flow upwards so the rope snaked around my foot, then over itself to make a knot.

Finally it was done.

Temellin looked at me in compassion, then nodded to Brand.

And I was back in the Ravage, back in the agony, back in the midst of the beasts. A battle boiled around me, with Temellin at the centre of it. Gold fire sizzled in rotting flesh, globules of molten fire spattered and burned. A worm-shaped creature disintegrated in a gush of pus; another melted. Something tangled momentarily in my hair before a beam of light seared a hole through its body and, threshing in pain, it dropped away into the depths. I was drenched with the decay of evil. I swam in bloodied slime and green rot…

Then I was free, cradled in Brand’s arms. I let go and faded into the nothingness beyond me.

When I woke, I didn’t open my eyes. I wanted to test the world little by little, one sense at a time, in case it was better not to wake at all.

Touch first. I was warm. I was wrapped up in something that prickled roughly, and the heat from a fire warmed one side of my body. More intimately, joints and muscles protested; my skin felt raw enough to have been exposed to the Shiver Barrens for a day or two; my cheek ached. A tentative fingering of my face told me I had an indentation there that would be permanent. I’d been scarred.

Next, hearing. The crackle of the fire, the far-off sound of river water over stones, and the nearby rustle of someone moving quietly. I had the idea it had been a voice that had awoken me. They were all pleasant sounds.

And pleasant smells too: the sweet scent of cooking remba rhizomes mixed with barbecued meat. Brand had been hunting again. There was also a whiff of shleth, a little too strong an aroma for my taste, as though I’d been snuggled up to one in my sleep.

Next, I tried my cabochon sensing powers—nothing. They were far too weak.

I opened my eyes.

Temellin’s essensa hovered at my side; Brand was by the fire. Neither of them was looking at me. Brand was gazing at Temellin belligerently, which seemed odd, considering the essensa was now much more ethereal than it had been. In such a form, the Mirager was hardly somebody to raise Brand’s ire. But irate he was. He said, ‘Do you know what hell she went through thinking she would be the one to supply the Mirage
with what it needed? She thought
she
was the one who was going to die, Temellin—all those weeks of imprisonment she thought she was doomed—and all you could do was turn your back. Ocrastes damn you, was it her fault she was taken by Tyrans as a child?’

I had evidently woken in the middle of what must surely have been a one-sided argument. I moved restlessly, and they both swung towards me. ‘He knows it, Brand,’ I said. ‘Leave it be, eh?’

He stared at me, expressionless, then shrugged and turned away.

I looked back at Temellin. ‘You are weakening. You must go back. Now.’ I hesitated, not wanting to say goodbye, because any farewell would seem too final. In the end, I settled for: ‘I’ll miss you.’ It sounded banal and quite inadequate.

He nodded, but made no move to go.

‘Tem—I’m fine. You’ve healed the worst—the rest will improve with time. And the baby is fine too.’ He still didn’t move. What was it Brand had said?
He’s not that sort of man—

He was blackmailing me. And I wasn’t foolish enough to call his bluff. I capitulated, as he guessed I would, and threw up my hands. ‘All right, all right! We intend to ride south, to Ordensa, to arrange a passage for Tyr. But I’ll wait for you there first. It’s a small place, isn’t it? You’ll find me. I’ll wait two weeks; no longer. But, Tem, it will just be to say goodbye. We have to be in Tyr ahead of Favonius and the Stalwarts, because I need time to settle my affairs before Rathrox moves in and seizes my property.’

He smiled, a smile of angry triumph, and then he was gone, fading out within a second.

Brand sighed. ‘One day you’ll have to tell me about the Magor and shades. But not now. I feel as if I’ve had
enough unpleasant surprises to last several lifetimes. Are you hungry?’

‘Ravenous.’ I tried to struggle up, but pain in my chest made me wince. ‘By all that’s holy, how did I manage to crack a rib?’

Brand looked guilty. ‘Er, well that was me, actually. You didn’t seem to be breathing when we got you out, and I couldn’t feel your heart, so I sort of, um, thumped you to get things started again, while Temellin did whatever it is you people do with that cabochon thing.’

I groaned and bit off the ungracious complaint I was tempted to utter; instead, I managed to sound grateful as I thanked him. He helped me to sit up and I looked around.

We had left the Mirage. We were in the foothills somewhere, near a stream, and I was safe from the Ravage. Our shleths were grazing nearby; those scarifying peaks of the Alps towered beyond. It all looked peaceful. And normal.

I glanced down at the blanket covering me and identified the source of the strong smell of shleth. ‘
Saddle
cloths?’

He gave a dismissive wave of the hand. ‘Our cloaks went down with the building. Fortunately there were a few odds and ends still in the saddlebags, including your purse and a change of clothing. ’Fraid that’s all we’ve got.’

‘My sword. What happened to my sword?’

‘It’s safe. You held on to it. You dropped the rope—but not your sword.’ He snorted. ‘Typical bloody-mindedness.’

I managed a smile, as he had hoped I would. ‘Watch who you insult, you Altani barbarian. And tell me what happened.’

‘You’ve been out for a full day. Temellin healed you. Mostly, anyhow. I guess a broken rib takes time to grow back properly.’

I looked at my cabochon. The gem really was whole again, without any sign of a crack or cut, although it was colourless. My hand touched my cheek, not wanting to remember.

He cleared his throat. He could have offered all kinds of platitudes to console. Instead, he said, ‘It’s noticeable. And not pretty. It’s red and puckered. The colour will fade with time. It won’t matter to him any more than it matters to me. Don’t worry about it.’

‘I don’t.’

He heard the catch in my voice. ‘What is it? The baby?’

‘He’s fine. It wasn’t the baby I was thinking of—it was you.’

‘What about me?’

‘I’m not blind, Brand. What’s wrong with your arm?’

‘I had to haul you out somehow.’ He swallowed. ‘It’s not so very terrible.’

I reached up to run my fingers down his left arm from shoulder to wrist. The arm was withered, without muscle or strength, a pitiful parody of what it had been.

I asked, ‘Why didn’t he heal you too?’

‘All his efforts had to go to you. You were so close to death. And it took all the strength he had. I don’t begrudge the way he used his power, Ligea, and neither should you.’

I said sadly, ‘I can’t heal it now, Brand. It is too late. And I’m too weak anyway.’

He gave another shrug. ‘I guessed as much. It doesn’t matter. It gives me no pain, and I still have
some use of my fingers. It’s just there’s not much strength there any more. Neither of us has come through this unscathed—but we are still here.’

I took his hand in mine. ‘Dear friend. How much I owe you.’

He gave a smile. ‘Maybe I’ll claim the debt one day—from the next Exaltarch of Tyrans.’

He would, too, the Altani bastard. I grinned at him.

The small fishing boat was tied up to the jetty in Ordensa and the owner was sitting in the open area at the back of his vessel, strengthening the stitching in a sail. He was an old man, dressed in shabby work clothes spangled with fish scales. A cloth cap pulled over his head protected a bald patch from a hot sun. His toughened hands and scarred fingers manipulated the curved bone of the sailmaker’s needle and the stiff hide of the sail with a confidence born of long experience.

He was so intent on his job he didn’t notice someone had stopped beside the boat and was looking down on him—but I did. I was seated in the cabin, and from where I sat I could see the newcomer’s feet and sandals. I didn’t need to see more; my sensing powers told me exactly who it was.

The fisherman finally looked up, and surprise stilled his fingers.

The expected voice: gentle yet authoritative—and so well loved. ‘Bitran of the
Platterfish
?’

The fisherman nodded. ‘That’s me. And this here is the
Platterfish.
Best boat on the coast, even though we are bound for Tyr next trip.’

The man squatted down at the edge of the wharf so that he came into my view. He was thinner than he had been, but his brown eyes—so like mine—tilted at the corners and his hair, as usual, was in disarray. He said, ‘I believe there is someone here I want to see, Bitran.’

Bitran gave me an uncertain glance, and I nodded. He gestured at the companionway. ‘The Magoria is in there.’

Temellin took a coin from his purse. ‘Go and buy yourself a drink, Bitran. In fact, buy several.’ He swung himself down into the boat and walked across to the top of the companionway.

‘That was very high-handed of you, Tem,’ I said. ‘It
is
his boat.’

He was looking down at me, but with the sunlight behind him, I couldn’t see his face. He said, ‘I wish I dared to be just as high-handed with you. Derya,
why
? Why do you feel you have to leave?’ He came down the steps, ducking his head to avoid the low beams. The cabin was tiny and with both of us standing, we were only half a pace apart, yet he didn’t touch me. ‘Where’s Brand?’

‘Delivering our shleths to the man who’s agreed to buy them. He won’t be back for several hours. I
have
to go, Tem. You know why. I don’t think sisters should marry brothers.’

His face took on a look of stubborn resistance and genuine bafflement. ‘You could still stay. And we’re having a child. I love you, Derya. I want you around. I want my son. Derya, for pity’s sake—I have lost two of my children, don’t let me lose the third. Please.’

‘You won’t lose him! I will send him to you. Or better still, you send someone to pick him up.’

His surprise, and his paradoxical hurt, filled the cabin. ‘You’d give him up, just like that?’

I feigned indifference, hiding the truth in the way I phrased the next sentence. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out to be much of a mother.’ Perhaps I wasn’t, but when I thought of this growing life, tenderness seeped into my heart. Treachery from within.

Is this how Wendia once felt about me? And Aemid? Wendia died knowing she had failed to protect her daughter, and that must have been a terrible way to end one’s conscious moments. And Aemid lived, knowing she had failed me. Perhaps I was only just now beginning to understand her anguish. And I was about to fail my son as a mother too…

Melete give me strength.

I knew I couldn’t keep him, this boy of ours. He was Kardiastan’s heir. I had a flash of memory: my hands soaked in Pinar’s blood, her son cupped in my palms. Why was my life studded with separations of children from their mothers? My son would never know me. That gnawing at my insides, it was painful.

‘But why must you go at all?’ Temellin asked. The emotion he allowed me to feel was more puzzlement than anger. ‘Is it because you haven’t forgiven me for my disbelief?’

‘No. Goddess knows, I gave you grounds enough to disbelieve! But I do have reasons for leaving Kardiastan. Half a dozen of them.’

‘I don’t need half a dozen. I need just one that makes sense to me. And—and the one you did have is not valid. This brother-sister thing. Derya—’ He stood straighter, made an effort to be more in command of himself. ‘I’ll give you a reason to stay, the best I can think of. You aren’t Shirin. You aren’t my sister. We were wrong. You are Sarana, my cousin, Miragerin of Kardiastan.’

I went cold all over.
He knew!
And then:
He loves me enough to tell me?
Goddess, I didn’t deserve that. I swallowed. ‘How did you find out?’

His smile quirked with irony. ‘You told me in your letter. When you hinted that the Mirage Makers mentioned to you their need of an unborn child. I couldn’t believe they would give that information to Shirin. They hadn’t given it to Korden when he walked the Shiver Barrens, and at that time he was my heir, so why would they give it to you? I tried to tell myself it was because you were bearing my child, but somehow it just didn’t seem right. Especially when, in the end, it was Pinar’s son who became a Mirage Maker. So I started to think about things. I remembered what you said about your memories of your childhood in Kardiastan, and suddenly it seemed more of a description of a fight involving a howdah. And then I went to Zerise again. I pestered her, and finally she admitted she was uneasy about you being Shirin. It seems you have Sarana’s eyes.’

I waited for him to go on, to tell me how Solad had made a traitor of himself, but he said nothing, to spare me the pain, perhaps. He must have worked it out, of course. Maybe he’d always suspected it; Solad was the one who had sent the ten Magoroth children away, after all.

I stared at him, emotions suppressed, stomach churning. Was he truly willing to sacrifice all he was, all he had—for
me
? Sweet Elysium,
he was prepared to trust me with his land
! With his people.

This was what it was to love.

Something fundamental inside me shifted position, grinding into me with deep-felt, intense pain. I knew myself inadequate, less than he was. I loved, but my love was a damaged thing, torn by so many betrayals,
folded and put away and ignored until now, when I wanted to take it out again and shake it free—only to find it flawed and tattered, creased with memories of where it had been, of what had been done to it, of the pain it had caused.

He touched my shattered cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You are beautiful,’ he said, and perhaps I was to him.

My eyes filled with tears. He took me in his arms, holding me gently, shielding his feelings, as if afraid the strength of his passion would frighten me away. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Be our Miragerin.’

‘Tem,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t take away from you what you are! You
are
the Mirager of Kardiastan. More than that, you are the ruler everyone wants; not me. I’m not the person for this land.’

‘You want power. I know you do.’

‘But not this way.’

‘When you walked the Shiver Barrens, what were you told? Did they show you a Mirager bestowing cabochons? Did they tell you the conjurations for it?’

I nodded.

‘Then you were given a Mirager’s sword. And a mandate to rule. You just didn’t realise what you had been told.’ He pulled back a little so he could see my face. ‘Derya, you are the rightful Mirager, not I.’

‘I don’t want it.’

He saw something in my expression I hadn’t known was there. He exclaimed, bewildered, ‘You—you knew all along! That’s why you are leaving, isn’t it? Damn it, you make me so
ashamed
. I didn’t trust you, and all along you knew what you could have had.’

I interrupted. ‘Not all along. And I’m no saintly handmaiden to the gods, either, Tem.’ Just a better person than I once was. I’d felt the claws and teeth of
evil in my flesh, and the horror of it was still with me. In the creatures of the Ravage, I’d glimpsed the soul of what I had once nearly become, and I hadn’t liked it. I wanted to be better than that, better than I had been—but there were limits to how much one could change in a single lifetime.

I said, with brutal honesty, ‘I’m doing this for myself as much as for you. I don’t
want
to rule Kardiastan. I’m not the person for the job: you are. The Mirage Makers may have given me the sword, but they haven’t taken yours away. You still have a mandate to rule.’

He absorbed that, feeling my truth. And said, ‘We could rule jointly. As husband and wife. How much better if Kardiastan had two Mirager swords! I almost wrecked everything when I lost mine.’

‘You were going to kill yourself, weren’t you? I saw the relief in your eyes, but I didn’t recognise it for what it was. You were going to sacrifice yourself for your land because you’d lost your sword, and now, in a way, you want to do it all over again. For me. Well, I won’t let it happen.’

‘It’s not a sacrifice! Not if we rule jointly. We need never fear the loss of a sword again. We’d have two! And you would stop me making so many mistakes. The only person I’ve ever been able to rely on is Korden—but I don’t see eye to eye with him on so many things. Derya, I’ve been so damned
lonely
.’

With that, he almost persuaded me. Almost. But something else prevailed. Commonsense? Selfishness? ‘Tem, Tem—it wouldn’t work. Think about it for a minute, the practicalities. We’d end up hating one another. It’s one thing to make a sacrifice, it’s quite another to live with the results. We want the same things, you and I, but neither of us is big enough to
share them. And I’d never be accepted by most of the Magoroth. I killed one of the Ten, for a start!’ Every word was the truth, and every word was a destruction of desire, a slash across the dream of a future. ‘I bet you and Korden had yet another argument when you told him you were coming here to see me. Especially when you should be off fighting the legions.’

His anger stirred, a remnant ember glowing in the cold ashes of the rage that had once led him to fling his sword at me. ‘You can’t turn me down because of Korden!’

‘No. Tem, I’m—I’m going to Tyrans. I’ll work for Kardiastan there; I’m going to bring down the Exaltarch from within. I’m going to halt the slavery.’

‘That’s ridiculous! I can’t let you go.’

‘Tem, you can’t keep me here against my will.’

We stared at each other, and I felt the ember flicker as his anger burned brighter. ‘Skies above,’ he said, ‘have you thought how dangerous it will be for you in Tyrans? Once the Stalwarts return to Tyr, the Brotherhood will be looking for you. And you would take our child into such danger?’

‘It’s no safer for me in Kardiastan. Less so, in fact, because I can’t stay in the Mirage, because of the Ravage. It will be years before Pinar’s son is strong enough to help the other Mirage Makers get rid of it. And even here, outside of the Mirage—well, the Tyranians must be scouring the streets looking for Ligea by now, and that’s just when they think I’m on their side. You aren’t going to take back your land overnight. You’ll have to fight the legions every inch of the way, and there are still so few of you. I’d be no safer here than in Tyrans.’

‘We need you, Derya. We need your Magoroth strength.
I
need you.’ His voice shook. The ember of
anger was a glowing coal now; I could feel its heat. ‘You still haven’t given me a reason I can accept.’

‘Tem, I have something to do in Tyr. Something I need to do. Until I have, I shan’t be able to live at peace. I love you more than I can say, but I don’t want to stay here.’

‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’ His shrewd brown eyes narrowed. ‘What is it—guilt? You’ve guessed—?’

‘About Solad? Yes. Had you realised he was the traitor before all this happened?’

‘I wondered. I always wondered. It seemed so…convenient that he sent the Ten to safety just before the massacres. And as I was growing up I heard people say he was not acting normally after the death of his wife and daughter. And then Zerise told me long ago that Solad had his sword with him that night of the Shimmer Feast. She saw him kill legionnaires with it. But it was forbidden to bring swords into the hall, so that was strange too.’ He scowled.‘A salve to his twisted conscience, I suppose. As if taking a few Tyranian soldiers with him could make up for what he did.’

‘I’ve been unlucky in my fathers, haven’t I? And I do feel I owe Kardiastan something because of that. But even that’s not what drives me. It’s more personal than that.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s a need to do something about what was done to me. They
wronged
me, Temellin. Gayed, Rathrox Ligatan and Bator Korbus. They murdered my true mother in front of my eyes.’ That golden woman, splattered with crimson. She died under the swords of Gayed’s men while I watched, too young to understand what I saw. ‘They turned my true father into a traitor and made him commit a crime, the immensity of which I can’t even begin to imagine. They twisted him until there was no
way out but to join those he betrayed in death.’ That laughing, loving man holding out his arms for me while I ran barefoot, across an agate floor, towards his embrace. ‘They enslaved my people. They took me from what was left of my family, to raise me themselves. I was only a child when they began a deliberate plan to…deform me. They deprived me of everything that was mine, and distorted my life into something that was foul. And as they did it, as they watched me grow up, they mocked me.’

I met his eyes, begging him to understand. ‘Then they threw me back into the arena, intending
me
to finish what they had begun. To have me kill my own people. My own cousin, the Mirager. What they did was evil. Vile, by anyone’s standards. And they almost succeeded. They shouldn’t be allowed to triumph. Do you understand?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Of course I do.’ He cupped my face, touching me gently, belying the ever-present anger. ‘But you can fight them here. We can defeat them here.’

‘Perhaps. But it won’t bring me the satisfaction I crave. Bator Korbus would still occupy the Exaltarch’s seat in Tyr, and Rathrox Ligatan would still run the Brotherhood. Every year there would be another attempt on your borders. They would blockade your ports, sink your fishing fleet. Your whole rule will be one of battle and invasion. Is that what you want? Continually having to breed more Magoroth to throw against an enemy who can draw on resources all the way from here to the Western Reaches? Is that what I would be delivering our son to?’