by Glenda Larke
Brand, blinking in the glare from Pinar’s weapon, launched himself at her from behind. In a fury, she slashed back with her sword, narrowly missing Garis. Brand flung himself flat as power poured from the end of her blade and cut a smoking swathe through walls and ceiling. Garis was hit by falling stone. He sagged as he fought his dizziness, then succumbed and fell unconscious. While Pinar was distracted with the others, I heaved a piece of stonework at her head. More by luck than skill, it connected and she collapsed, blood trickling down from a temple wound.
I drew my sword, then remembered its uselessness against her and dropped it to the floor where it still glowed—together with hers—to light the room. I focused my power into my cabochon instead and prepared it to kill.
There was nothing beautiful about the Miragerinconsort as she lay there in the broken remains of stone and wood. Her hair was tangled and sprinkled with dust, her face older than her years, the skin dry and slack. I felt once more the stirrings of pity. Pinar would have been a different woman had Temellin loved her…I raised my left palm and directed it at her throat. She had no defences against me; a small flare of power and she would be dead. I could give her child to the Mirage Makers, make myself safe.
Yet I paused.
‘Do it,’ Brand said, pulling himself to his feet. ‘She’s already stirring.’
I whispered, ‘She’s Temellin’s wife—’
‘Turd take it, Ligea, since when have you been squeamish? Kill the woman and put her out of her madness and pain, because if you don’t, she’ll have you and the Mirage will have your son.’ He turned, looking for his sword.
He was right, and I knew it. Yet I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill her.
I don’t know just what kept me from murder. She was Temellin’s wife, she was pregnant, she was one of the Ten orphaned and exiled because of my father’s obsession for me, she was my cousin, she carried the child of a man I loved, my son’s sibling—they were all reasons enough to stay my hand.
‘Vortexdamn you! If you can’t, I certainly can.’ Brand groped around in the rubble for his sword, pulling it out from under some crumbled stone. It was slightly bent, but that hardly mattered. I was still hesitating, for the first time in my life unable to act decisively when a death was called for, unable to kill quickly and cleanly and without conscience.
And then Pinar grabbed her sword and erupted up from the floor, swinging first at Brand. Taken utterly by surprise, he was felled by a flash of light and crashed back with his astonishment written in every line of his face, already beyond thought by the time his body hit the floor. Then his surprise and shock blinked out of existence.
I couldn’t sense him. I couldn’t sense him.
I sent forth my cabochon power in protest and Pinar was hurled backwards, hitting the wall behind her with a clunking thud. Yet there was no change in her expression or her alertness. She smiled, warded herself and pointed her Magor sword at the centre of my chest.
She said, ‘I have you now.’ Brittle words of promise and I didn’t even notice.
Brand…Please, not Brand. It wasn’t possible. Yet that was his body there on the floor. Could any normal man take the brunt of a bolt from a Magor sword and live?
My fault. I had broken every rule I ever learned about surviving a brawl and now my closest friend was dead. Because of my foolishness, my misplaced compassion. Another body to bury under my bloodied doorstep…What’s her unborn child to you, anyway? What about your unborn child?
Grief such as I had never known submerged me. Oh, Goddess, cabochon, Brand! The only true friend I’d ever had. Who had never doubted me, all through the years.
The hot pain of loss seared; unspilled tears turned to fury.
I called up the whirlwind, the storm. It came tinged with the potency of my anger and swept into the room, tearing at us all. I centred it on Pinar, trying to wrench the sword from her hand. A flash of energy and light shot from her blade and met the wind in a whirl of gold and light and swirling rage. Power was flung out in random bolts, shattering more stones and shredding room furnishings. I myself was lashed with it, my clothes torn, my skin blasted with grit. Across the room Pinar screamed at me, but the wind brushed aside the words unheard.
Another bolt flared outwards in my direction. I raised my cabochon against it and the power of the two met, clashing in a maelstrom of spitting wrath and sparks. The strength of the sword was greater, and I felt my hold over the wind falter. Pinar’s wards protected her; my own—poor weak things made using a cabochon, not a sword—could have been cobwebs spun to impede the thrust of a gorclak charge for all the good they did. No ward I could raise would offer me a defence against her sword.
The whirlwind was now full of colour and spinning with misdirected power, a horrifying storm of destruction, yet still Pinar could keep it at bay and have her sword pour out its stream of puissance. I staggered behind the ineffective barriers of the wind and cabochon, feeling my strength slip away as Pinar’s power battered me, rammed me against the wall, pierced me with splinters of pain. I knew I could not withstand much more.
I concentrated on the whirlwind, tightening its circles, forcing it faster and faster into a smaller and smaller area until it was just a blur of dust and energy hardly the size of a man’s arm. I quenched my pain—it was a distraction I could do without—and coaxed the twist of air to do my bidding. And Pinar, alarmed, swung at it—
Her sword passed out of the protection of her warded area. Too late, she knew her mistake. The wind plucked up the weapon, and whirled it away through the air.
But I had no more strength. I released my hold on the wind and it spat out in all directions, random and wild. The air was filled with grit and dust and spluttering power. I did not see what happened to Pinar’s sword. I fell to my knees, the last of my strength gone. And the more experienced Pinar was far from exhausted.
She came across to me, scooping her blade up out of the wreckage of the room, grinning her triumph. ‘You fool, Shirin,’ she said. ‘Did you think you could withstand a Magoria of my expertise when you didn’t even have a Magor sword you could use against me? I will have your life and that of your child. It will be my son who is heir to Kardiastan, not yours.’
There was no hesitation in her. She laid the tip of her sword to my chest and thrust down hard.
I toppled onto my back, the sword pinning me to the floor. I felt the path of the blade as a swathe of pain as it pierced me. I knew the way it took: straight into my heart…I wanted to weep at the waste, at the futility of my struggle, at the fate of my son. I thought of Temellin and longed to tell him how much I cared.
I felt my power drain from my cabochon—not outwards, but inwards, into my blood. I felt the rush of it through my body until it met the power of the sword blade, united with it in joyous recognition…and for a moment, in my befuddlement, nothing made sense.
‘Die, you Tyranian vermin,’ Pinar said. ‘You and your bastard.’
I saw the world with renewed clarity and felt unexpected grief. ‘Pinar,’ I said, my voice surprisingly calm and clear. ‘Pinar…what have you done?’
‘I’ve killed you, Ligea.’
‘I am Kardi…’
‘With a Tyranian soul.’
‘I am sorry…’
‘I’m not.’
‘Pinar…you don’t realise…Your child will not die. I swear it to you…he will be a Mirage Maker.’
She was mocking. ‘What do you dream of now? You are dying, Ligea!’ Then her hand—still on the hilt of the sword—began to shake and the shaking was carried over into her body.
I said in gentle pity, ‘You…hold…my sword in your hand, Pinar.’
She looked down in disbelief.
‘You picked up the wrong blade. You have tried to turn a Magor sword against its owner.’
‘No!’ The word ripped out of her, but the horror on her face said she recognised the truth. ‘You’ll die! The sword entered you—’
‘You gave it no chance to cha
nge direction.’ I shuddered, remembering Temellin’s weapon hurtling towards me.
Pinar struggled to release the blade, but her hand seemed welded to the hilt. She pulled and the blade slid free, renewing my pain.
Her shaking was so severe, she could not stand. Her knees bent under her and she slipped to a kneeling position. Her eyes were wide with the fear of death, echoing her raw emotion bleeding out into the air. ‘Shirin—help me. Help…’
‘Pinar…I don’t know how.’ It was true. My sword drained her of life because she had dared to use it against me. Only at her death would it release its hold on her. I crawled over to her side. ‘But I have made you a promise and I will keep it: your child won’t die. He will live…and he will save the Mirage.’
But Pinar was past hearing. She fought against the sword, tearing at it with her right hand, raking her own flesh into bleeding tatters in her desperation to free herself, beating the hilt on the floor to break the clasp of her left hand, screaming her panic and anger and disbelief. With a howl of terror she rolled across the floor to where her own sword still lay, snatched it up and tried to bring it down on her left wrist.
She was turning her own blade against herself, forgetting even now that a weapon could not harm its owner. The sword refused to sever her hand, and jerked out of her grip instead. In its place she seized on a hunk of stone debris and used it to batter at the glowing blade she still held. A flash of light, a smell of seared flesh. She gave a scream of pure agony. I looked down at my cabochon. Still a flicker of colour there. I coaxed back the power until the stone was glowing again. I thought, briefly, of using it to cut off her hand, the one clutching my sword. I doubted it would save her life—hadn’t someone told me removing a cabochon meant death? I thought about it, then thought of Brand, and sent the fire of my cabochon to sink deep into her chest. The screaming was sheared off as life ceased and she collapsed.
I wanted to rest. I wanted to give my body time to heal. I wanted to give my mind time to accept what had happened. I wanted to give myself time to recover from the shock. I wanted time to forget the look on Pinar’s face.
I wanted time to grieve for Brand. To feel the pain, the guilt, the precious love that wasn’t the right love.
Brand…
I was not given time.
I heard something in my mind, ordering me, not doubting my obedience. It did not come as a surprise, but it was unwelcome nonetheless. Now, it said, but not in words. In concepts. In pictures. In emotions. At a guess, without the song of the Shiver Barrens, the Mirage Makers found communication difficult.
Action. Offer. Time. Consequences. I interpreted, hoping I understood: With your own sword. We shall guide your hand. Hurry, or the child will die.
I untied Pinar’s clothing, my fingers clumsy with distaste. Then I took up my sword from where it now lay free of Pinar’s grip, placed the tip to the bared skin and waited. I could have sworn I felt a hand, as chill as spring water, close over mine and press down. The edge of the blade opened up a gash from navel to pubic hair. My eyes were blurred with unshed tears as I saw the womb displayed before the blood ran and covered it. I reached in with a hand to lift the organ out, cutting it away from the body that had sheltered it. Then I felt my cabochon encircle the child inside, swaddling him with protective power to keep him safe.
I held Temellin’s son nestled in my palm and my tears spilled over. He was so tiny.
‘What in the name of the Magor are you doing?’
I looked up, startled.
Garis was pushing himself away from the floor, his eyes wide with shock and revulsion. ‘What abomination have you committed? You—you—numen! Sweet cabochon, Pinar was right! Oh, Mirage damn my wretched soul, what have I done?’
I looked at him in silence, my own distress overwhelming me. I wanted to speak, to explain, to erase the horror on his face, but he had started to fade away. I looked at him in puzzlement as he lost solidity, then any semblance to reality. He had disappeared and so had Brand and Pinar and the wreckage of the room. I was standing in total blackness, swathed in it.
I looked down at my precious burden, feeling its life, not seeing it, but knowing it was there.
Well? I asked. What now?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As I stood there, the floor still solid beneath my feet, in a blackness so thick I could feel it, that last sight of Garis calling the light into his sword and looking at me in horror was etched into my brain, along with the detailed image of the remains of the room. The wooden ceiling sagging in smoking tatters. The floor, gouged and pitted, littered with stone rubble and dust. Holes large enough to walk through gaping in the walls. Piles of splintered wood scattered around the walls. Brand lying against one wall, rolled there by the forces Pinar and I had unleashed, his deep redbrown hair with its copper flash dusted with dirt, his body half buried under broken wood and a tattered something that may or may not have once been a pallet. One arm outstretched towards me as if in rebuke.
His death hurt me so much I couldn’t even consider it true. He couldn’t have died. Not Brand.
Nearby lay the Miragerin-consort. The expression on her face, caught in the rictus of death, was one of utter terror. Her eyes bulged, her mouth gaped open in a silent, endless scream. Her left hand was scarified into bloodied pulp, her arm burned and charred to the elbow. A burn on her chest revealed the manner of her death, unmistakably the mark of a cabochon. And then the worst—the thing that horrified Garis so much—the bared, violated body; the gash where something had been ripped out…
Garis standing there, so young and so hurt I wanted to take him in my arms and tell him it all wasn’t as bad as he thought.
But I couldn’t. I was rooted to the spot, rendered first dumb and then horrifically blind with only the memory of his face before me. The blackness was so total I felt the air itself had turned to pitch. It was a relief to inhale and realise I could still breathe. To realise I was still alive.
A moment later, all my fears dropped away like shed skin. I was swaddled in love, a gentle flooding emotion quite unlike anything I had ever felt before. A totally unselfish love accepting me exactly the way I was, requiring nothing of me except my existence. A united love of many individuals…
And inside my head, those wordless ideas: Time. Patience.
I waited.
And realised I could still hear what was happening in the room.
Comfort followed hard after the love, soothing me, attempting to take away my grief, but every sound I heard was a slash of painful memory. Someone retching. A rustle of movement. Then a groan, partly of pain, partly of anguish.
Then a voice. ‘Brand?’ Garis’s voice. ‘Brand? Oh, Ravage hells—’
I could no longer see or sense emotion, but I was hearing everything as if I were still standing there in that room watching. Thumps and scrapes: Garis flinging off the debris to uncover Brand’s body. An intake of breath at what he found, followed by sounds of unidentifiable movement. I tried to shut it out, not to hear. To concentrate on what was happening to me.
I was still standing motionless, Temellin’s son in my hands. The blackness was just as solid. The love was still there, unquestioning and total, the comfort doing its best to trickle through me, to find and fill all those crevices where grief lurked and hurt. The burden I carried felt marginally lighter.
Then Garis’s voice again, coming out of the darkness like an arrow of light. ‘Come on, Brand, fight it, you great lunk. You can’t die yet—I won’t let you.’
Tears came, but I couldn’t wipe them away. I still couldn’t sense Brand. Garis I could feel, but not Brand. Didn’t that mean he was dead? Oh, Goddess, tell me that just means he was unconscious. Tell me I was wrong…
It wasn’t the Goddess who replied; it was the Mirage Makers. Concept: Death. Image: Brand. Concept: Negation. He was not dead, not yet. But then I heard the sob in Garis’s voice, the despair and exhaustion. And I couldn’t help. I couldn’t lend my healing to his, I couldn’t move.
Brand still might die while I stood invisible and helpless just a pace or two away, yet so far off I could have been in another world.
Time passed so slowly.
I should have tired, but the darkness seemed to support me. My arms did not ache even as the hours passed. The Mirage Makers did not speak, but neither did their love falter. Almost indiscernibly the thing I carried lost its reality, lightened in my hands, to become less substantial, until I held a wraith, a being created from nothing more substantial than mist or sunlight.
Occasionally I heard Garis make a movement from the other side of the darkness, but I could not identify his actions. I had no proof Brand was alive—until I heard his voice.
Weak, hardly more than a whisper. ‘Garis?’ It could have been the final mutter of a dying man; I had no way of knowing.
Garis’s reply: ‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Healing a great gash in your belly. Lie back and let it happen.’
A moment’s silence, then Brand again. ‘Pinar did it. Where’s Ligea?’
‘Who? Oh, Shirin. I don’t know. I think she’s all right.’ His bitterness speared me. ‘Pinar is dead.’
And still more silence, like the blankness of death.
It was several more hours before either of them spoke again. Then it was Brand’s voice I heard, stronger now, no longer the voice of a dying man. My heart rejoiced, but the saner part of me wondered how it was possible. His hold on life had surely been as tenuous as a last solitary thistledown resisting the tug of the wind. And Garis was hardly an experienced healer. How then had he saved someone so close to death? It didn’t seem to make sense.
I heard Brand ask Garis, ‘Did you see what happened?’
‘No. I was knocked out. But Shirin was alive at the end of it all. Then she, er, sort of disappeared.’ He kept his fear tightly clutched within, yet I felt it anyway. ‘I don’t know where she went. I can sense her, though. It’s strange; it’s as if she is close by, but also somehow remote at the same time.’ The sound of water being poured, then a pause. ‘How do you feel now?’