The Heart of the Mirage

by Glenda Larke

  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.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  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 see
med 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…

  Instead, I said, searching for calm, for reason, ‘What passion? It’s just lust, Brand. No different to the needs I slake with Favonius. Or the others, over the years.’ Dear Goddess, what about that other thing they told you?

  He gave a disbelieving snort and said, still angry, still grieving, ‘I don’t understand you. These people—those who call themselves Magor, I mean—for all their strange customs, they are an improvement on those you served in Tyr. I don’t know why, because they have terrible power. I’m not going to forget in a hurry what Garis did to me that first day! But somehow they are not corrupt, the way those of Tyrans are. And if they win here, they won’t be basing the nation they build on slavery as Tyrans does. Tyrans is sick, Ligea. Don’t you know that yet? And what loyalty do you owe to such as Rathrox anyway?’ He gave another snort of disgust. ‘Vortex take it, how could someone who can see through a lie as easily as you can, let themselves be fooled the way you were? Think, Ligea. Think. Think about Gayed, about your childhood. Think about who it was who loved you. There’s no more time for self-deception, not now. Now is the time for decisions, no matter how difficult they are to make.’

  ‘And what’s your decision to be?’ I asked levelly. ‘Will you leave me, to stay with these people, when I return to
Madrinya?’ I had deliberately emphasised the ‘when’.

  He winced, an expression of both pain and exasperation. ‘Why are you so blind to the things and people that touch you closest, Ligea, when you see other, more distant things and people so clearly? I love you. I love you so much that I can stand here and watch your eyes hunger for another man, and listen to your cries of joy in his arms, and still take the pain rather than leave you. I make myself less than a man for you. I serve you, not Tyrans. I am so besotted, so weak, that I put you before what I know is right.’

  His words cut at me, slashed me with their tragedy. Tears blurred my image of him, but were not shed. I reached out to touch his arm. ‘Brand—oh Goddessdamn, Brand, this is not right. You will come to hate me. When we reach our destination, you must leave. For your own good. How can I ask any loyalty of you when I give so little; no, when I give you nothing, in return?’

  His lips twisted bitterly. ‘That would be my ultimate punishment. I would rather live in pain than in loss.’

  He turned away, leaving me to return to my cave. I made a hole in my sleeping pallet and thrust the sword inside. I was responsible for the packing of my own things and stowing them on the pack shleth, so I had no fear anyone would find it. Then I crept back into Temellin’s arms, trying not to think because thinking was painful. Because I didn’t want to think about that other thing I knew.

  An hour later, I knew the pain had to be faced because I couldn’t sleep. Because I couldn’t push away the sound of Brand’s voice. Think, Ligea. Think about who it was who loved you?

  Memories…the journey inside oneself can be the loneliest journey of all…

  I loved the terrace of the Gayed villa; it had the best views in all of Tyr. From there I could see the Meletian Temple on a neighbouring hill, with the Desert-Season Theatre tiered beneath it; from there I could see the river and the life of the docks and the sea beyond; from there I could watch for visitors coming up to our house. I could be the first to know Pater was on his way home.