by Glenda Larke
Pinar's. My son… and Temellin's. There was a whisper in the darkness, or perhaps it was in my head: Follow him.
I said, I don't know how. Yet even as I said the words, I floated free of my body, pulled by a mother's ties to her flesh and blood. Goddess, I thought, the shade that came into my bedroom in Sandmurram. This is what it was. Jahan. It had been fahan. No wonder I had thought him familiar when we'd first met in Madrinya.
The bubble drifted away into the utter desolation of the blackness, beckoning me with its longing.
I looked down at myself and saw my translucent form: naked, torn, defiled with sores and smirched with corruption. At my feet my body lay, solid, clothed in tatters, equally ravaged.
Free of pain, I drifted away, following my son through the darkness to his father.
And found him on the southernmost Rake. It was dawn there, and the camp was just about to settle into sleep for the day. Part of my rational mind puzzled over that – surely they should have been further away, somewhere deep in Kardiastan by now. Yet, there they all were: Temellin's small army, and Temellin himself. He stood on the edge of the rock, watching the red light of the sunrise wake the Shiver Barrens. He didn't see me at first. I opened my mouth to speak – and found I had no capacity for speech. I went to touch him, but my hand passed right through his body.
His eyes widened as he focused on the movement and realised it had form. 'Derya?'
His use of that name, the one he had known me by when we had been lovers, brought forth a rush of tenderness for him. I nodded.
He, however, was appalled. 'Are you – are you dead7'
I heard the dread in his voice and his concern warmed me. I shook my head. He stretched out a hand to touch me, but it passed through my image as though I were not there.
Then he saw the floating bubble that was the shadow self of our son, and looked at it with equal incomprehension. In the dim predawn light, I doubt he realised what it was. He looked back at me. 'You can hear me.'
I nodded again and I held out my left hand to him, indicating the split cabochon.
'You know how to release your essensa? Who taught you that? And why? It's dangerous! You are not yet Magor-strong enough to do such a thing without risk.'
Helpless to explain, I just stood. My thoughts were muddled, not fully my own.
He took a deep breath, striving to find sense in what was happening. 'Forgive me, Shirin, for what I did. For not trusting. I have your letter.' Finding no words to tell me how he felt, he made a helpless gesture with one hand. 'What can I say? I want you – and the baby.' He ran fingers through unruly hair. 'Garis told me everything. He was a fool not to go on believing you. Korden and I are on our way back to the Mirage City with half our force. In case you weren't able -' The words almost choked him. 'Is – is the Mirage City in danger, Shirin? Is that why you have come in this form? To warn us?'
I shook my head, and he slumped with relief. He sat down at the edge of the rock, but his eyes never left my face. 'I've failed you all,' he said. 'I let my personal prejudices, my mistrust of you – I let them override my wisdom. Did you stop them, the Stalwarts?'
I nodded.
'How can I – we – ever thank you?' He heaved in a breath, trying to find the right words for what he wanted to say next. 'About Pinar; I know what you did. And I thank you – for saving my son.' He paused, his face white and strained. 'I've often wondered if I could have saved Miasa's child, if I had ripped my daughter from her mother's womb at her death, if I had given that baby to the Mirage… When we all knew Miasa was dying, I broached the subject with her, thinking it may give her some comfort to know I might be able to save the baby. But she was appalled. She forbade it, again and again. She made me swear. The child was hers too; it was her body… I couldn't do it to her.' His voice trailed away and he was silent.
'I think I was wrong,' he said at last, looking away from me to the Shiver Barrens. 'With that decision I condemned the Mirage – the Mirage Makers – to further years of pain and desecration. Now it seems someone else had the strength and the determination to do'what I could not.' His grief and guilt were palpable and I longed to take him into my arms. 'I should have told you. I should have told Pinar.'
I nodded, and meant it. It had been more than just a mistake; it had been wrong.
Brand would certainly agree with that, I thought. What's more, if he ever met Temellin again, he would doubtless tell him so, at length.
He went on, 'I had no right to keep the nature of the bargain a secret. I've known it since I was ten years old, you know. I've had to live with it since then. Never knowing what to do about it. But… I was always afraid someone would sacrifice themselves. How could I face Korden, for example, if it were his wife? I didn't know what to do. So I kept it to myself. I thought maybe the Mirage Makers would solve the problem
themselves, somehow… That it would never come to this. I failed my people, Shirin. I failed my Miasa's child. I failed the Mirage Makers.'
Goddess, I thought, appalled. Realising for the first time what it must have been like for him. A child, growing up with that knowledge, not knowing who to tell. Not knowing what to do about it. Knowing that somewhere in his future he had to sanction a murder.
'Pinar,' he said, after a long pause. 'She was thoroughly irrational where you were concerned. Cabochon knows, that at least was clear enough to me. She poured out her bitterness day after day, carried it to our pallet at night.' He raised tormented eyes to me. 'My fault, I fear. I couldn't give her the love she needed to be a happy woman. You have that. You always will. And she knew it. You can't tell lies to a Magor woman. Shirin, we can work this out – is that why you came?'
The sun's rays reached us at last and by its light he saw my ravaged skin. His gasping 'Derya -/' tore at me. He stretched out a disbelieving hand towards the wound on my face, but then withdrew it, remembering I had no substance. 'The Ravage…'
I nodded again.
He swore, words I didn't know, and turned from me, shouting, his voice harsh in the windless silence of the Rake. Within moments they were there: Korden, Zerise, Garis and tens of others of the Illusos and Theuros.
'Ravage sores,' Korden said with certainty, his eyes hostile. He wouldn't forgive me Pinar's death in a hurry.
'That's her essensa,' Zerise said, her scarred face thrown into stark relief by the coming light of day. 'The other is her child.' She brushed back an untidy hank of grey hair.
'But he – he is still in her womb, surely,' Temellin protested, finally understanding the floating globe.
'The Mirage Makers must be involved, and who knows what the Mirage Makers are capable of? But she needs help, Mirager.'
This last was said with so much reluctance I found it hard to nod my agreement. I could already feel myself fading.
'Can she hear us?' asked Garis. His emotions yearned at me, full of guilt and shame, asking for my forgiveness. I pitied him; I recognised all the signs of an overdeveloped conscience playing havoc with someone who failed his own high standards. Garis was finding it hard to live with himself.
'Yes,' the Illusa replied. 'But her essensa has no strength, no substance.'
Temellin cut her short. 'I want to get to her. I am going to follow her back.'
Zerise's razored features jabbed at me even as she looked at him. 'She is close to death wherever she is. Act wisely, Mirager. Kardiastan relies on you for its future.' Her emphasis nagged at me, telling me something, but I had no inclination to think about it just then.
'No, wait -' Korden interrupted. 'Temel, think] If you go as an essensa, how will you be able to help her if you have no substance?'
'My cabochon will retain its powers. Some of them, anyway. Garis, get my sword.'
'What can you do for her that she can't do for herself? She has her own cabochon! She's dying, Temel.* There's nothing you can do. But if you go, you may not come back. There's always a chance the essensa may lose its hold on reality – forget it has a body to go back to. And if it del
ays too long, the body dies.'
'I've done it before,' he pointed out, his voice tight with irritation. 'And so did Jahan, when we needed a spy after I'd lost my sword.'
I wanted to laugh at the irony. If Jahan had glimpsed me that night in the Prefect's villa in Sandmurram, my whole charade as Derya would have been doomed from the start.
'It was dangerous then, and it's dangerous now,' Korden said. 'You shouldn't risk yourself.'
Temellin looked back at me as Garis returned and handed him his sword. 'There's not much a person can do as an essensa, but if you are ill with the effects of Ravage sores, I can help to heal you.'
But Korden still wasn't about to give up. 'If you must help her, send someone else.'
'This is my child. They are both my responsibility.'
'This is the woman who killed your wife,' Korden said, 'who killed one of the Ten.'
Temellin turned on him, almost vicious. 'This is the woman who went to save your family, Korden, when our foolishness left the Mirage City undefended and our future – our children – in jeopardy. And you'd better hope she did succeed against the Stalwarts, as she says she has, because if she has failed, there's little hope we'll get there before the legionnaires do.' He pointed to the sword-shaped mark on my breast. 'Look at that, Korden, and tell me she's not worth saving.'
Illusa-zerise laid a hand on Korden's arm. 'He is your Mirager, Magori,' she said, resigned.
'He's also my cousin – my friend! I can't let him kill himself for this – this – Tyranian traitor!'
'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 iri on me once more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
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 settie 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. 'Saddlecloths?'
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.'