The Heart of the Mirage (43 page)
Read The Heart of the Mirage Online
Authors: Glenda Larke
The ember of anger flared, to unite with his scorn. ‘I have an army. And I have fifty Magoroth swords behind me. You have no one except Brand, and you
think you can make a difference in Tyrans? You think you can help us by being in Tyr—one lone woman against the Exaltarch? Are you
mad
?’
‘I won’t be one lone woman for very long, Temellin. For every two citizens of Tyrans, there is a slave.’
His breath caught as he considered the enormity of what I planned to do, and the fire of his anger seared. I think he knew then that I needed justice for myself more than I needed him. More than I needed his son. How could such knowledge not hurt him? He was willing to sacrifice all he was for me, and I rejected that offering. Worse, the sacrifice I made, of my own chance at happiness, was made not for him, nor for our son—but for myself. I needed to bring down the men who had wronged me. I needed to obliterate the system that had made it possible. And I was willing to pay heavily.
He stepped away from me, but in the confines of that cabin there wasn’t far he could go. I was so aware of the rage flaming through him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is a reason I understand. There was a time when I burned with a similar passion for revenge. I grew out of it. Perhaps you’re even right, we could become two reed monkeys fighting over the same stretch of rushes if you stayed, but I doubt it. I think what we had would have helped us rise above such pettiness.’
What we had. I heard the past tense and lowered my head so he wouldn’t see the anguish in my eyes. ‘I want justice. Not revenge.’
He snorted. ‘Justice, revenge, whatever you call it. You will find out one day just how high the price you are going to pay really is.’
‘I already know.’
‘No. You haven’t the faintest idea.’ His scorn was obliterating, wiping my words away.
And, of course, he was right. I thought I knew, but I really had no idea at all…
If I had known, I would never have started.
By now his anger and his love and his hurt were so inextricably mixed, it was hard for him to pull them apart and for me to recognise them. When he showed me the way he felt, it was an assault on my senses, driving breath from my lungs. I turned away from him, leaning against the hull, resting my forehead against the boards. The cabin was awash with too much emotion.
There was a long silence until both of us had more control.
‘Will you ever come back?’ he asked finally.
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ I turned to face him. ‘To see you—to see you both. And one day I shall come as Exaltarch, as the ruler of a State coming to visit a fellow monarch and his son.’
He stared, disbelieving. ‘You’re out of your mind! The
Exaltarch
? Cabochon, Derya—! How can you even
envisage
that? With a ragtag army of slaves more used to wielding a scythe or a pickaxe or a broom, against the empire’s finest legionnaires? That’s insane! And stupid. And it’s not like you to be stupid.’
‘I spent a lot of time warded in a room with no one to talk to, day after day. I did a lot of thinking about this. I have no intention of being stupid.’
There was another long silence. I could almost feel him dampening down his rage, smothering the flame, depriving it of fuel. It was still there, though, smouldering in some dark, deep recess of his soul. It always would be. What I was doing to him was just another form of betrayal and I was uniquely placed to know how much fury betrayal generates. Goddess, I thought, we are becoming experts at hurting one another.
Then his lips twitched, but there was more sardonic appreciation than amusement in the result. ‘Sarana—you always were a little devil. I used to hate playing with you. Who’d have thought that would change so much?’ He gave a laugh, half rueful, half bitter. ‘Or maybe nothing’s changed. You used to make me cry then, too. Ah, Derya—no, Sarana—fate played a nasty trick on us.’
‘Do I go with your blessing then, Tem?’
He shook his head. ‘
Blessing?
Never! But I don’t know how to stop you.’
‘No. That’s because there
is
no way.’ I let him feel the truth of that.
He threw up his hands in resignation. ‘So when do you leave Ordensa?’
‘We were just waiting for you to arrive. We’ll sail tomorrow morning.’
He put his head on one side, regarding me with eyes that had lost their laughter and a gaze that hungered. ‘I’m not your brother any more. Is that going to make any difference to how you spend the next few hours?’
I swear my heart stopped beating. ‘Ah, yes. Um, it certainly could do.’
We both knew this time would be different. Our need was there, but the joyous sparkle had gone, and we both doubted we’d ever get it back.
But we still loved, oh, yes; only it was such a dark, grieving love.
No one gets to this point in writing a book without help, and I have been lucky enough to have had enthusiastic people supporting me all the way. Top of the list is always my agent, Dorothy Lumley, who has read this particular book so many times without ever losing her enthusiasm for it. My editor Stephanie Smith at HarperCollins Australia, and Kim Swivel, my copy editor, have helped to make it better, even when I thought I was done. And many thanks to my first readers whose appreciation kept me going, and whose criticism and eye for holes is so much appreciated: in this case my fellow Voyager authors Russell Kirkpatrick and Karen Miller; Alena S., Fiona McL., bookseller Mark T. And lastly, thanks to Perdy Phillips for the wonderful map and Shane Parker for the gorgeous cover.
Many years ago, when my own children were very young, I heard for the first time two stories, from opposite sides of the globe. One told the tragedy of stolen babies raised by those who had murdered their mothers, inevitably indoctrinated with the very beliefs their true parents had died resisting. The second story,
equally tragic and just as true, told how several generations of children were forcibly taken from their loving, caring families to be raised by strangers. They were told to forget who they had been and where they had come from, to forget their language, their culture and their people; indeed to denigrate their very origins.
Ligea’s story is my way of saying sorry to all those mothers and their children; my way of paying homage to
los desaparecidos
, the Disappeared Ones of Argentina, and to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal Australia. As a mother, I have wept for you.
Glenda is an Australian who now lives in Malaysia, where she works on the two great loves of her life: writing fantasy and the conservation of rainforest avifauna. She has also lived in Tunisia and Austria, and has at different times in her life worked as a housemaid, library assistant, school teacher, university tutor, medical correspondence course editor, field ornithologist and designer of nature interpretive centres. Along the way she has taught English to students as diverse as Korean kindergarten kids and Japanese teenagers living in Malaysia, Viennese adults in Austria and engineering students in Tunis. If she has any spare time (which is not often), she goes birdwatching; if she has any spare cash (not nearly often enough), she visits her daughters in Scotland and Virginia and her family in Western Australia.
Visit Glenda Larke at:
www.glendalarke.com
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I
SLES OF
G
LORY
T
RILOGY
The Aware
(1)
Gilfeather
(2)
The Tainted
(3)
Book One
‘I almost regretted having Awareness. Without it, I wouldn’t have noticed a thing; I would have been as oblivious to the danger as everyone else.’
Blaze Halfbreed doesn’t like Gorthan Spit, but she’s being paid to find an enslaved Cirkasian woman. A woman needed by the Keepers to further their political ambitions.
When Blaze sees dunmagic running over the floor in the taproon of The Drunken Plaice, she knows trouble is not far away. Could it be in the form of the three tall, very handsome men at other tables? Just what is their business here?
Her search for the Cirkasian takes Blaze deep into Gorthan Spit, and she is horrified to unravel a threat to all the Isles of Glory…and a more immediate threat to her own life.
Could the key to it all lie with an ancient legend of vanished islands?
Book Two
‘I first met Blaze and Flame the day before I murdered my wife…I wouldn’t be recounting any of this, except Blaze insists I must. She says it’s important that you Kellish people understand the Isles…’
Branded a murderer and banished by his people, Gilfeather is unwittingly caught up in Blaze and Flame’s dangerous quest. He’d much rather be going home to the Roof of the World.
Blaze and Flame have fled Gorthan Spit and are searching for in the Isles of Glory…
As they hunt their quarry, problems multiply. Is there something wrong with Flame…can she be trusted?
Book Three
‘I plunged into the darkness…When I emerged, I was on the other side of death, in a life about which I understood nothing. I was Ruarth Windrider and I was human.’
The balance of power in the Isles of Glory is threatened by the growing strength of the Keeper Isles. The alien ghemphs are forced to take sides, ending generations of neutrality. And it seems that Ruarth Windrider’s difficulties have only just begun—Flame is not at all happy to see him, and Blaze Halfbreed has disappeared.
Again this backdrop of upheaval, the selver-herder Gilfeather and the patriarch Tor Ryder strive to find a way to destroy magic…all magic.
And in Kells, Anyara Teron dreams of voyages of discovery…
for travellers of the imagination
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Voyager
An imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers
, Australia
First published in Australia in 2006
This edition published in 2010
by HarperCollins
Publisbers
Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Glenda Larke 2006
The right of Glenda Larke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollins
Publishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Larke, Glenda.
Heart of the mirage.
ISBN 978 0 7322 8198 4 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 0 7304 4388 9 (epub)
I. Title. (Series : Larke, Glenda. Mirage Makers ; bk. 1).
A823.3