The Heart of the mirage mm-1

by Glenda Larke

  'A brother?' he said bitterly and then, echoing my thought, 'I'm your slave.' He raised a hesitant hand to touch my hair. 'I've never been your brother. And a slave you could bed, for all that custom dictates otherwise.'

  'But we were brought up together.' Don't say it, Brand. Don't say it.

  'That doesn't make us siblings. And it's not love of Favonius that stops you, either. You don't love him.' He said that with utter certainty.

  'No – no, I suppose not. He's a friend and he fulfils a need.'

  'I could also be that. And I wouldn't ask for more than I could have.' He trailed his fingers from my hair to my face. 'I have loved you since I was a boy; in all those years, I've learned to be content with very little.' He bent to kiss me, gently brushing my mouth with his lips and moving his hand to cup my breast, but

  before he could deepen the kiss I pulled back. His hand remained where it was; the shining flecks in his eyes flickered.

  'I can't, Brand.' For once, I could read his emotions, and I rather wished I couldn't. I was aware of a deep bitter grief filling the room and knew how much I'd hurt him. He must have guessed it was more my disdain for a slave-lover, rather than any sisterly affection, that stopped me from desiring him. I felt shamed, and didn't understand why.

  His hand slipped away and his eyes dropped. 'I'll take care of the sword, Legata,' he said, voice neutral. He went to pick up the wrapped weapon from where I had placed it on the table – and found he couldn't move it. Startled, he withdrew his hand. 'Ocrastes' balls – it's so heavyl How can you lift it?'

  I was glad to change the subject and said, 'It is not heavy to me. Where shall I put it?'

  He hesitated.

  I quirked an eyebrow at him. 'Ah, you too, Brand? What are you afraid of? Numina?'

  He looked at me, amused. 'If it is a numen's plaything, what does that make you?'

  I made a wry face. 'What indeed?' Inwardly I just felt sick. I heard myself silently repeating the words, J am no immortal. Nor a numen. There are no such beings. Probably never have been…

  He tried to diminish his unease with a laugh. 'Put it under the pallet against the wall. It will be safe there. No one will find it.'

  I did as he suggested and turned to go. 'Thank you. Goodnight, Brand.'

  'Goodnight, Legata.' There was a familiar trace of mockery in his voice and his emotions were once more veiled.

  Soft-footed, I started back to the main sleeping quarters of the household. Oil lamps flickered in wall niches, the smell of the burning muted by the perfumes added to the fuel. The halls were dim and silent. My thoughts were a chaos of swearing. What in all Acheron's damnable mists was the bloody man thinking of? How could he possibly think I would respond to his lovemaking?

  I embarked on another of those silly, futile conversations I sometimes conducted with myself: Your fault, Legata. It was you who insisted on treating him as a friend.

  The reply: He is a friend, damn it. That's the way I wanted it. The way I still want it. I need a friend…

  You wanted him in your bed. You wanted to say yes just then.

  I am not going to bed my slave.

  You could go back.

  Shut up! ‹ I entered the corridor leading to my apartments. A single flame still burned at my doorway, unmoving, as if pasted onto its lamp. Others had guttered, dimming the passage. I walked on, preoccupied, towards my door, passing the silent row of statues with their marble faces made grim by the lack of light. And then that final lamp flame fluttered, dancing the shadows of those carved watchers.

  Something had created a current of air at my door.

  I stopped, uncertain of what I was seeing. The form of a man, yet he had no solidity. A transparent and ethereal man, a painting done on glass. No painting though. He moved.

  I did two things at once, both instinctive. I stepped out of sight behind a statue, and I drew my knife. And stood mere, immobile, while all the hairs on my arms

  rose up… The man walked through my door and into my bedroom. I had closed my door – and it was still closed. The man had walked through the polished planks of wood. And disappeared.

  I didn't believe in shades of the dead. I was neither superstitious, nor given to hallucinations, nor easily deceived by tricks of the light or sleight of hand. I wanted a logical explanation. Yet, as I stood there in silence, peering out from under the arm of a life-sized statue of Bator Korbus mounted on a plinth, a shudder skidded up my spine. I took a deep breath and tried to remember exactly what I had seen.

  A naked man about my height or a shade taller. Muscular, as well sculpted as a statue of a naked competitor in the annual games. I hadn't seen his face, but a fluidity to his movement spoke of a man still young in years. Hair too long for a Tyranian. He'd worn it, Kardi-style, tied back at the nape with a thong. His skin could have been Kardi brown, although it was hard to be sure when he had been so… ethereal. I had seen through him, I was sure of it, the way one could see through a glass of white wine held up to the light.

  A shade had just entered my room. A shade from Acheron?

  Or a god perhaps, in some… otherworldly form?

  I couldn't believe I was thinking this. It was madness. What was happening to me?

  I stayed where I was, still motionless. I thought of rousing the household, but quelled that thought immediately. I was a compeer, not some moondaft madwoman. I couldn't admit to being scared of a shade. And if I said I'd seen one, and no one else' did, then I was going to make myself an object of ridicule. So I remained where I was, sweating even in the cool of the night air, waiting for Goddess knows what.

  Five minutes later, the shade walked back through the door. No, not walked. He seeped through the door. And stopped. And hovered, then slowly turned his face in my direction, his features too transparent to be recognisable. There was a dark circle on the back of his hand, like a wound.

  I held my breath. My skin prickled. It was dark where I was, and he was in the light of the lamp outside my door. If his eyesight was normal he would find it difficult to see me, hidden as I was. However, he was alert, poised, holding himself the way I did when I was sending my senses outwards. I tried to sense him in turn, but couldn't. Not unexpected, I suppose, seeing he was only a ghost. Or a shade. Or something else equally intangible.

  I thought: He can't see me, but he knows I'm here.

  For a breath-halting moment, we stood like that. And then he turned and vanished, gliding away like wind-wafted mist.

  Back in my own room a few minutes later, I saw nothing to indicate someone had entered while I'd been gone. Nothing had been disturbed. The floor was spotless.

  I shook, as if the foundations of my life were crumbling and I could find no security. Too many things had happened that day; piling on top of all that had preceded. The mother-figure of my childhood had threatened me with death; the slave-brother of my adolescence had proclaimed himself lover; the abilities I had were taking on new and frightening dimensions in this, the land of my birth. I was either flirting with madness, or someone had drugged me into seeing things that couldn't exist, at least not in the land of the living.

  Perhaps this was connected to what had happened back at the Meletian Temple in Tyr. A conspiracy to make me believe in the gods of the pantheon? To have me consult the temple priestesses, to seek out the cult of Melete? Well, I wouldn't do it. I was the logical compeer. I was the Tyranian who bowed to a goddess more as a matter of conformity than belief. Who hoped there was an afterlife awaiting, in a not-too-daunting Acheron, after the Vortex had whisked her away from her body- but who was not wholly convinced of any of it.

  Come on, Ligea. You are the cool-headed compeer. Think.

  I turned to the more solid of my reservations. I started to make a list in my head of the things that bothered me most, trying – in vain – for dispassion.

  Who had wanted me to go to Kardiastan so badly they had connived with the Meletian High Priestess and the Voice of the Oracle to make it seem like a good idea? If it had b
een the Exaltarch himself, Bator Korbus, then why? I was not so important in the overall scheme of things, was I?

  Why had the Prefecta's Kardi slave called me Theura? Did I really remember that word from my childhood, but applied to someone else? I looked down at my palm, at the swelling there that had so startled Othenid she'd dropped a pitcher and earned herself a beating. It had been so important to me as a child that I had tried to keep it hidden. No other Kardi I'd ever met had such a lump. Was it a curse, a blessing, an accident of birth that the Kardis had some superstition about? What did it mean? It had fitted so neatly into the hollow on the hilt ofMirAger's sword… I should have asked if anyone had noticed a lump on his hand. No, perhaps that wouldn't have been a good idea. I didn't want to draw attention to my own.

  I thought of the sword: how could it be so heavy to Brand that he could not lift it, yet so light to me I could pick it up with two fingers of one hand? What was I? The bastard child of a goddess? Immortal? Someone who could see the shades of the dead? Kardi nobility? They say only the highborn fight in Kardiastan…

  Remember – you are of the Magor… but from them you must always hide it.

  All that had once been solid was dissolving. I shivered.

  I did not know myself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two days later, there was a report, which the Prefect immediately showed to me, from the city of Madrinya, capital of Kardiastan. A legionnaire, who had been present at both the slave auction in Sandmurram and at the execution, swore he had seen Mir Ager in the capital, very much alive.

  There was other news from Madrinya as well, none of it good. Within the city itself, no less than four senior legionnaire officers, all men known for the severity of their treatment of local people, had been found slain. All had burn marks on their chests, and in each case there was no evidence to indicate who was to blame. In addition, there had been a steady stream of slave escapes from the city. The situation was so dire some Tyranians were reluctant to allow their slaves any freedom at all. Requests were being made for legionnaires to stand guard on the houses of high officials to stop further runaways.

  Few of the escaped slaves had been found. Even worse, a military caravan carrying new supplies of weapons from Sandmurram to Madrinya was missing, gone with as little trace as water poured into desert

  sand. Forty legionnaires, their mounts and the carts of supplies they had been accompanying had simply vanished between one wayhouse and the next. The only clue was a report that a group of twenty or so shleth-mounted Kardis had been seen in the area. 'Terror riders,' Prefect Martrinus muttered.

  The backstreets of every town whispered of how a man called Mir Ager, or possibly Mirager, was responsible, directly or indirectly, for all the deaths, slave escapes and legionnaire disappearances – but nothing was ever said openly.

  As soon as I heard all this, I made arrangements to set off for Madrinya.

  I was glad to go. I hadn't seen any more shades, but I had not been sleeping well in that bedroom, either.

  When I spoke to Prefect Martrinus about my intended journey, he suggested we take horses, but I asked for shleth riding hacks. My request had sent legionnaires scurrying out all over the city searching for suitable mounts, because our army did not use them.

  Unlike the Prefecta, I liked the look of the animals. The size of sturdy horses, they had coats of wool, large clawed paws rather than hoofs, and no tails or manes. Their main divergence from the horse, however, was their possession of a third set of limbs: long jointed feeding arms, usually kept tucked out of the way in grooves along the sides of the neck. To eat, they used the three digits at the end of these arms to pluck leaves or grass, which they then passed to the mouth.

  When we all assembled at the army headquarters on the day of our departure, Brand contemplated the beasts with a jaundiced eye. 'Why did you decide on them rather than horses?' he asked.

  'Because the Kardis ride them, even though they also have horses,' I said.

  'Ah.' He nodded, following my reasoning. 'The local barbarians know best, eh?' He paused briefly to poke his riding crop at a snake trying to insinuate its way into one of our still-to-be loaded packs. 'Let's hope it's not the breeding season. I understand they – the shleths, not the barbarians – have a tendency to become irascible when the females are on heat. It is common then for a rider to complain of being pinched black and blue by the fingers of his mount.'

  I glanced at him, but his face was bland as he watched the thwarted snake glide away through the dust, and I couldn't tell whether that last remark was a joke or not. Since the conversation we'd had in his room, he had reverted to his usual faintly amused, calm self. That night-time exchange might never have happened from all the signs he gave. Once again, I was left with the feeling that, for all we had grown up together, I scarcely knew him.

  'What do you think about our audience?' he asked a moment later, jerking his head at a group of Kardi men and women who were standing across the square, watching the travel preparations with impassive faces.

  I had become used to Kardis always turning away from us; suddenly to be the focus of Kardi attention was unsettling. The hostility of this particular group was obvious to me, as always, but this time I could also sense intense, urgent curiosity. These Kardis wanted to know what was happening. 'They're just interested,' I said, but I was thinking: They are spying on us. I didn't like the feeling.

  Brand snorted, but didn't comment. He said instead, 'Tell me, Legata, how do we learn the trick of riding these beasts?'

  ¦ 'Aemid will teach us. She is familiar with them.' I looked across at the slave woman, who was standing patiently by the luggage, waiting to make sure it was correctly loaded. She was wearing an anoudain – which I certainly had not paid for – as she always did now. She delighted in emphasising her Kardi origins even as she discouraged me from publicly acknowledging my own.

  I was still angry with her and had not solved the problem posed by her disloyalty. No doubt if I did anything to threaten the Kardis, Aemid would warn them. I did consider having her jailed under a military guard, but the thought of incarcerating the woman who had raised me was ultimately unthinkable, just as it was impossible to consider selling her. In the end, as much as the situation galled, I decided it was better to let Aemid keep watch on me. After all, I was an expert at manipulating things to my own advantage, wasn't I?

  I turned my attention back to the preparations for our journey. The mounted legionnaires accompanying the three of us to Madrinya milled around on their gorclaks. They were clad in their uniforms: short tunics leaving their knees bare, worn with the usual cuirasses, greaves, helmets and sandals. I myself had discarded my wrap for a tunic worn over loose trousers, a Tyranian outfit more commonly worn by artisans. I didn't care if it was unstylish; I was determined to ride rather than endure the discomforts of a litter or cart, and it was impossible to ride anything wearing a Tyranian wrap.

  I caught the eye of the legionnaire officer and asked, 'I'm told the tradeway is paved the whole distance?'

  'That's right,' he agreed. 'Designed by Tyranian military engineers, built by slaves. An easy journey

  now compared to what it used to be. Used to take four weeks in the old days.'

  Although most of Sandmurram was wholly Kardi, the administrative and commercial quarters around the Prefect's residence had a distinctive Tyranian face and this was the area where I had spent most of my time. There was much that was familiar, toning down the strange. It was not until I left Sandmurram altogether that I appreciated just how different Kardiastan was from Tyrans.

  Outside the town, even the Kardi sky had a character of its own: a vividness to the blue more intense than elsewhere, a clarity made more noticeable by the lack of clouds. When I remarked on the lack to Aemid, her reply was a terse: 'It never rains in Kardiastan.'

  Indeed, numerous tracts of stony soil and sand made her assertion easy to believe. Nothing seemed to live in these desolate areas, although they had a kaleidoscopic bea
uty. The sands were multicoloured, often spread with intertwined swirls of colour as though the wind had sorted out grains of different weights or densities to create patterns. Sometimes wind-blasted rocks were heaped in the centre of such patterns, their tortured shapes struggling out of the sand like the petrified remains of long-dead monsters.

  And then, just when it seemed Kardiastan was a dead world, we would come upon a wide, gentle-sided valley where it was hard to believe it never rained. In these lush vales, the soil was rich, the vegetation prolific and flocks of waterbirds skimmed azure pools and lakes. I liked the contrast, the abrupt change from the hot reds and oranges and browns of the desert sands and stones to the cool greens and blues of the low-lying areas between.

  'But where does all the water come from?' Brand asked in wonderment. Aemid's explanation, begrudgingly given, was that in such low-lying areas water seeped up from under the ground to create havens for life; it was only the higher areas between that were dry.

  Most of the valleys were settled by Kardis. Domestic animals grazed under the watchful eye of Kardi herders. Wild coppices separated fields planted with grain and other crops; fruit trees lined the meadows. Every so often, windmills with hide sails pumped water to irrigation systems. Villages and towns were never built in the centres of these dales as might have been expected, but on the edges where the soil was too dry and stony to be tilled. The houses were of adobe and blended unobtrusively into the desert landscape beyond them.

  Curious to see the interiors, several times I stopped and asked an owner's permission to enter. The request was never refused, but we were never offered the hospitality of a seat or a drink, either.

  Cool and dim inside, the rooms had stone-tiled floors and simple wicker furniture. I thought them spartan and was inclined to be disparaging – until I saw what Tyrans had wrought.

  Where the Tyranian civil or military administration wanted wayhouses, they had erected vast stone and marble buildings, usually on a lakeside, marking the landscape – as Brand asserted – like gorclak turds in a flowerbed. For the first time I found my admiration for Tyranian progress was tinged with embarrassment. I had once regarded such monuments as magnificent, symbolic of the might and grandeur of Tyrans; now I looked and saw an oppressive lack of imagination, a desire to dominate rather than to belong. What was Tyranian suddenly seemed to lack grace and subtlety.