Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  ‘But I don’t understand. You are still cloaking yourself. How can you do that with a dulled cabochon?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just happens. Like a habit.’ He struggled to explain. ‘I need power to uncloak myself, not to hide in the first place.’

  She tried not to show her consternation, and asked him to try some far-sensing instead.

  Only once in the next hour did he have any success. His cabochon suddenly flared into colour when she asked him if he knew how to build a killing beam of power. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, his tone as bitter as a frost-burn, ‘I’m very good at that.’ He looked down at the glow in his hand, and then pointed it at the empty fireplace. Destructive power blossomed against the brickwork and then died as suddenly as it had occurred. One of the mud-bricks was now just glowing powdered dust on the hearth. A wisp of smoke trailed upwards from its centre.

  She was shaken. ‘I’ll be sun-fried!’ She gaped at the hole gouged in the brickwork, then back at his cabochon, almost colourless once more.

  When she looked back at Arrant, he pulled a wryly amused face and shrugged, palms outwards. ‘Only thing is, I can’t necessarily do that when I need it.’

  ‘That was impressive,’ she told him. ‘It takes a lot of power to do what you just did. And you showed excellent control to contain it all to that one brick. Quite frankly, Arrant, I don’t think there are many students your age who could be quite so precise. Or so, um, thorough.’

  Temellin interrupted at that point, rising to his feet. ‘I think it’s time for your morning class, Ungar. Thank you for doing this.’ Politely, he opened the door for her, and followed her out as she stepped through. ‘Wait here a moment, please, Arrant,’ he said before pulling the door shut behind him. ‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Have you any ideas on how to help him?’

  She shook her head, still trying to hide her dismay.

  ‘Have you ever had a pupil with similar difficulties?’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘The truth please, Magoria.’

  There was a weight in her chest and she exhaled, as if she could lighten the load of it. ‘I’m confused. If you’d asked me that earlier, I would have said that I’ve never seen anyone with so little control and so little power—well, except for his remarkable cloaking abilities. But what he did just then? Mirageless soul, the power he had. I felt it as it left his cabochon. The resonance of its passage hit me in the diaphragm.’ Deeply embarrassed, she rushed on. ‘Someone who has access to that much power could be dangerous if they can’t control it. But I don’t know where to begin. I’m sorry, Magori.’

  ‘Build his confidence, perhaps? I don’t know, either, Ungar. I can tell you this much: he has—with his cabochon alone—done some things that none of us could do with our swords in our hands. Do you think you can help him?’

  She fidgeted uncomfortably. ‘Temel,’ she said, addressing him as a friend, rather than as Mirager, but with an awkwardness she found hard to hide, ‘do you remember that day, on the rake—when we were returning to the Mirage hoping we could stop the invasion across the Alps by the Tyranians? Sarana came to us as an essensa.’

  He nodded, tensing.

  Silly question. As if he could forget. They had all been in a panic after Garis had arrived with news for Temellin. Ungar hadn’t really understood it all then, but it was apparent that Arrant’s mother had cut open Temellin’s pregnant wife and given the baby to the Mirage Makers. Even worse, the Mirage was under attack from a Tyranian legion and a man called Favonius.

  Ungar shivered at the memory. They’d all been afraid the Mirage would fall to Tyr…‘There were two essensas that day,’ she continued. ‘Zerise said the other was Sarana’s baby. Would that have been Arrant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The word was a whip crack, but she plunged on. ‘That was a lot to ask of an unborn child. We could be looking at damage that was done a long time ago, before he was even born. It may—may not be fixable.’

  ‘I know that.’

  She castigated herself silently. ‘You fool, Ungar. Of course he would have thought of that.’

  ‘Will you try?’ Temellin asked. ‘For his sake, as well as mine?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. For all our sakes.’ But no plan came to mind and the weight in her chest grew heavier.

  ‘If you would. Please don’t mention his problems to anyone just yet.’

  ‘There—there have already been rumours—’

  ‘I know. But let’s not give them substance. Give Arrant a chance. I think it would be best if you taught him personally for a while. Best that we don’t put him into a class with other students. He needs to build confidence. Anyway, we’ll talk about it again later.’ He opened the door and went back into the room.

  She took a deep breath and started out for the Academy. The bell on the roof, rung by one of the senior students using a power-created wind, sounded for first class, so she took the shortest route: the back stairs that led to the alley running between the walled gardens, and thence to the Academy practice ground.

  In the alley, she bumped into Firgan.

  Something told her he had been waiting for her, and her heart started to thump painfully. Everything about him unsettled her, and always had, ever since the days when they had been children together in the Mirage. Later, they’d been lovers for a time, but something about him had worried her and she had stepped back from the relationship. She’d suspected since that he had not forgiven her for that. In Firgan’s world, he was the one who decided to leave.

  ‘What’s the hurry, sweetheart?’ he asked. His smile was, as always, warm and teasing.

  Her heart thumped faster. ‘Sweet damn,’ she thought, ‘he still has the power to attract me. Even after all this time. And I know he’s a bastard.’

  ‘I’m late for class,’ she said aloud, and went to move around him.

  ‘You’ve been giving a private lesson to the Mirager’s son, haven’t you?’ he asked, anchoring her by a grasp on the arm. ‘Is he any good?’

  ‘None of your business, Firgan. Let go of me. I’m late.’

  ‘Of course it’s my business. It’s everyone’s, including yours. The lad is in line to be our Mirager.’ He released her, but his next words were enough to make her hesitate. ‘Come on, Ungar, lovely one—you can tell me. Do we all have reason to worry about our future?’ He smiled ruefully. ‘If you can look me in the eye and say the boy is truly talented and a worthy successor to Temellin, I shall be on my way.’

  Too late, she reeled in her emotions, but not before he’d sensed her anxiety—no, her shock that the Mirager-heir had no control over the potent power he evidently possessed.

  She couldn’t meet his gaze and dodged around him to continue on. He didn’t follow, but she knew that if she turned there would be a dimpled smile on his face, and his attractive eyes would be twinkling.

  ‘Charm,’ she acknowledged to herself. ‘But it covers an inner darkness.’ The combination produced a titillating sense of danger.

  She hurried on.

  Arrant felt sick. In truth he’d felt ill ever since his conversation with Temellin the evening before. He had to redeem himself, yet didn’t know how. Now, of course, he had something else to feel sick about: facing his father again after his failure to manage his cabochon. If only he could have done all the things he did the day his mother had last tested him. He’d managed everything perfectly then, and he still had no idea why.

  He fingered the edges of his bolero. It felt strange to be dressed as a Kardi. He wasn’t used to the full sleeves of the shirt. They ballooned out before being caught in at the wrist, and he’d dipped one into the sauce served with his breakfast. The servant assigned to him, Eris, had been obliged to show him how to wrap the cloth belt around his waist and how to tuck the trouser legs into the leather lacing of his sandals. Which was another thing he found hard to get used to—wearing sandals indoors.

  As Temellin stepped back into the room, Arrant said quietly, ‘I did tell y
ou it could be like that. I never know what will happen when I reach for my power. I can misjudge and harm innocent people. Or I can try the simplest of things—and nothing happens at all.’

  Temellin didn’t answer immediately. He sat down opposite Arrant. After a long silence, he said, ‘You don’t like using it, do you? Could that be your problem? Your reluctance?’

  ‘No, I don’t like using it,’ he said, his tone measured. ‘I shredded people to bits with it when I was nine. It rained blood, did you know that? There’s a place just outside the walls of Tyr that they call the Bleeding Fields. They say if you walk there barefoot, you still pick up splinters of bone in your soles. They say that when it rains heavily in the wet season, the blood leaches out of the soil and runs crimson into the River Tyr.

  ‘No one knows how many people I killed there. There were no whole bodies to count, you see. Just blood and bits of bone. And teeth. Mustn’t forget the teeth. There were teeth everywhere, like seeds in a melon. They don’t even know which side of the battle the dead were on. No one could tell from what was left.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Foran died there. Nobody could find him afterwards; there was nothing left to find. Nobody goes there after dark now. No one plants anything. It is a barren waste.’

  Temellin’s hand reached to cover his son’s as he said gently, ‘I’m sorry, Arrant. No one should have to go through that, least of all a child. But it wasn’t your fault and you mustn’t blame yourself. Right now, we have to look to the present. We have to find a way to give you control. For the time being, I want Ungar to give you private lessons.’

  He met his father’s gaze and held it. ‘All I can promise is that I will strive to learn. If you think there’s no hope that I’ll improve, then perhaps it would be better if I did go back to Tyr.’ He wanted to hear Temellin deny that would ever be necessary. He wanted to hear him say he couldn’t bear it if his son left him, but the words remained unsaid.

  Instead, his father nodded. ‘I know you’ll try your best. You can start ordinary combat and academic classes at the Academy tomorrow. I think you need to get your Magor sword soon, so that we can see if that makes a difference. Perhaps with its hilt in your hand expanding your cabochon power…we’ll see. We’ll give you a couple of weeks to settle in, and then go to the rake. Once there, you will have a chance to meet your brother, and you can ask the Mirage Makers about this difficulty of yours. Who knows, they may be able to help you. Ask them.’

  He wanted to shout, ‘I have. I’ve asked Tarran a thousand times…’ And Tarran had asked the other Mirage Makers, but they had said his problem was unique. They had no idea what had caused it, and therefore no idea how to mend it. The gall in his chest tightened as he remembered. Finally, he asked, managing to sound unruffled, ‘Will you be there too?’

  ‘Of course! I was the one who first showed your mother the Shiver Barrens, and I’ll show you in turn. Right now, you must excuse me, though.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’m due to meet with the City Councillors over the quality of our water.’

  Arrant looked up quickly, interested. ‘There’s a problem?’

  ‘It’s a sewerage problem really; waste from some quarters of the city is contaminating wells and the lake. The old network of drains is just too ancient to be viable any more—the Tyranian building programme put too much pressure on it. A new system has to be designed and we Magoroth will have to use sword power to excavate some new channels under the city. But first we have to locate the old ones. So now you know the truth, Arrant: the Magor are no more than ditch diggers.’

  ‘How do you locate the drains?’ Arrant asked.

  ‘Vale-ferrets. The city engineers send tame vale-ferrets down and then we Magor use our positioning powers to follow the animals through the sewers. Unfortunately, the City Councillors are quibbling about payment for all this.’ He pulled a face. ‘They always do. Some of them even seem to think we Magor should work for nothing, although just how they expect us to earn a living if we don’t charge, I have no idea.’

  Arrant looked blank.

  ‘Didn’t Garis get around to explaining all this to you? We don’t tax people the same way Tyr does. Each town or vale has its own local government. They pay levies to us for particular services and we pay the individual Magor who does the job. It’s a perennial problem, because our Covenant with the Mirage Makers states that we are not supposed to use our powers for personal gain. The Covenant Tablets also say we have to use our enhanced abilities to better the life of the non-Magor. We all swear to that—you will too, once you have your sword. So some non-Magor say we should do it all for free.’

  ‘Garis did explain some of this. It sounded horribly complicated.’

  ‘It is. We get around the moral restrictions that the Covenant demands by never accepting money directly from non-Magor for the services we render. A Magor healer, for example, is paid out of the Magor Treasury for every patient he treats. The patients themselves pay the local civil authorities where they live, and they pass the payment on to the Treasury. Doubtless it’s hypocritical. Certainly it’s cumbersome, and we are always fighting corruption in the system. Magor healer ethics, for example, decree that no sick person should ever be turned away—but it often happens because the civil authorities insist on payment first. And I suspect much of what is due to us gets skimmed off somewhere along the way.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘It is indeed complicated. In the end it works because it is in the interest of the non-Magor that we Magor don’t have to spend our time working at other more mundane jobs. After all, what would be the point in having a healer living down the street, if they were always busy being a bricklayer in order to make ends meet? I know it must seem idiotic, because we have to negotiate every new deal, like this drainage one, without ever mentioning something as crass as coinage, but we manage.’

  ‘Can I look at the plans for the new drainage system?’

  His question bewildered Temellin. ‘What do you mean, plans?’

  ‘Hasn’t anyone drawn up plans on parchment?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it’s all in the head of old Barret. He’s the Madrinyan buildermaster.’

  Arrant, tutored by the best academicians of Tyr, was shocked. ‘And what would happen if he died? Everything should be recorded!’

  ‘This is not our concern. We just supply the Magor skills and power when they are needed. The city authorities worry about the building and the design.’

  ‘Can I come with you to the meeting?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so, if you want to. But it will be mostly about money, not the drainage problems. Still, it would be an opportunity to meet the Councillors, and you could ask about the plans.’ He looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you won’t be bored?’

  Arrant shook his head. In truth he was much more interested in drainage and how to fund a new system than he was in starting combat class or cabochon exercises, but he didn’t think he’d better say that.

  The next morning, Arrant woke just as the dawn light crept into the room. He had left the shutters open so that he could see the night sky as he fell asleep. There had been a madman’s moon that night, when a black circle moved across the yellow disc until the moon looked like a broad bright wheel with a hole in the centre. Folk said if you looked at the dark circle too long, you’d go moondaft because the hole sucked away your sense. The Tyr Academy scholars had told him it was just the shadow of the moon’s child, and he preferred their explanation.

  Now, in the first dawnlight, he watched the stars disappear and thought of the day to come. Temellin was going to take him to the Magoroth Academy for his first combat lessons. He was nervous, but determined. He would try to make his father proud. He had to redeem himself. That first meeting had been so disastrous he didn’t even want to think about it. How could he have made such a mess of things?

  He had enjoyed listening in on the discussion with the City Councillors, though, but his understanding of city financing (drummed into him by the chief scribe of the Asenius Counting House) and
city drainage problems (part of his lessons from the architectus scholar of the Tyr Academy of Learning) were not going to impress his father. Temellin needed him to have Magor skills.

  And he had made everything so much more difficult for himself. How was he ever going to introduce his brother to his father now that he had practically denied Tarran’s existence? And so much might depend on it. What if the solution to the problems of the Mirage Makers depended on future cooperation with the Magor?

  He grimaced, missing Tarran and knowing that he was suffering somewhere, fighting a battle that never seemed to result in a victory for the Mirage Makers. Every thought he had of his brother was tinged with a poignancy that almost broke his heart. Tarran didn’t deserve his fate.

  When the knock came at his door—Eris with a ewer of warmed water for his morning wash—he was relieved. It was better to be doing something than lying there, thinking.

  The first thing Ligea did each morning when she left her bed was to pick up the lump of clay the Mirage Makers had sent her. She would hold it in her palm until it altered shape and re-formed to become a bust of Temellin’s head. Each time she did so, she saw a representation of his reality. It was her way of reassuring herself that he was alive and well. Her way of remembering. She would study it for a moment, thinking of him, thinking of her son.

  And then she would put it down, and get on with her life.

  That morning as she cupped the head in her hands, Temellin seemed severe, unsmiling, preoccupied.

  ‘Perhaps Arrant hasn’t arrived yet,’ she thought. ‘He wouldn’t look like that if his son were with him, would he?’

  Of course not. He’d be overjoyed. But Arrant would arrive soon, and they’d be together. Father and son. ‘Not long now,’ she whispered. ‘Love him, Tem. Do a better job than I did.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘There are two kinds of combat class,’ Temellin told him as they walked to the Magoroth Academy after breakfast. ‘The normal kind given to all warriors, no different to the training you will have had in Tyrans, and the Magor sword training that you will begin once you have received your sword. Firgan teaches some of the classes, mostly the more advanced ones, and a Theuros called Yetemith does most of the intermediate ones. Bit of a sour fellow, but he’s a fine teacher.’