by Glenda Larke
‘Then you’ll get into trouble for not telling who did it.’
She was really annoying him. He tried to relax his clenched jaw. ‘Better than lying here being laughed at. I lose either way, and he wins. Just do it, girl.’
She considered. ‘He probably intends to come back before the next class to release you himself. After all, he doesn’t want to get into trouble. Easy for him to lift his own ward. If I were you, I’d wait.’
‘I’d rather not be around for the humiliation of that.’
She tilted her head to one side, thinking. ‘Well, I could get you out of there without breaking the ward, I think.’
‘Then do it!’ he shouted.
‘Don’t yell at me. I didn’t do this to you.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Sorry. If you can get me out of here, please do. I’d be grateful.’
‘Like this.’ She pointed her cabochon at the ground alongside the edge of the ward and scoured it with a beam of red light. Dust—coloured red by her cabochon’s glow—billowed up in a cloud that obscured everything.
‘Gods,’ he shouted, ‘are you mad? You’ll cut me in two!’
‘No, I won’t,’ she said calmly. ‘My power won’t penetrate the ward.’
‘So what in the seven layers of Acheron are you doing?’
‘Digging you out,’ she said. ‘I’m digging a trench along the side of the ward. The ward is anchored, but it doesn’t go down into the ground. I should be able to make a hole big enough for you to wriggle through. Don’t move and you won’t get hurt. Least I don’t think you will.’
Fortunately the ward kept most of the dust from choking him, but he couldn’t see anything. She was like a hare digging a scrape, sending dirt flying furiously. After a while he felt the earth beneath him lose its stability. He squawked a protest.
She ignored him.
He squished himself over to one side of the ward, away from the area of her excavations, and watched mesmerised as the earth trickled out under the ward. It seemed an age before she stopped and the dust started to settle.
‘There you are,’ she said, allowing the red glow to subside. ‘You should be able to squeeze through there.’
It was a tight fit, but he did it, edging flat to the ground under the length of the ward. He stood and brushed himself off. ‘Thanks,’ he said trying to be gracious. ‘That was a, er, trim solution.’ He kept his next thought to himself: ‘Hades, rescued by a girl of what, ten? Eleven? Great, Arrant. You’ll go far.’
She grinned. ‘Let’s put the earth back. No point in them knowing how you got out.’ She started pushing the soil into the trench, and he helped to stamp it down, until the ground looked more or less flat again.
He liked the idea of them seeing an empty ward, sitting there like a dusty food cover. That would make them wonder.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Sam,’ she said. ‘And I got to go.’
She turned and walked away in the direction of the outer gate. He watched her, wondering who she was.
There was still plenty of food on the long trestle tables when he entered the dining hall. He looked around, saw Perradin and sat down next to him.
‘I was wondering what happened to you,’ Perradin said. ‘Lesgath came in ages back. I was going to go and get you if you didn’t come in soon. I suppose that sand-weasel left you all the work cos you’re younger than he is. He’s about as mean as they get, Lesgath is.’ He shoved a plate of roast venison in Arrant’s direction. ‘Here, have some. The meat tastes good, but it’s as tough as dried hide strips.’
The lad next to him grinned. ‘There was some sauce to go with it, until Perry here dumped the lot in his lap.’
‘The bowl was slippery,’ Perradin said in his defence. ‘You’d been pawing it with your greasy hands. Arrant, this is Bevran, who thinks he’s funny. Never believe a word he says.’
Arrant found himself looking at someone of about his own age, who had a mouth far too wide for his face. The overall effect was odd enough to make Arrant want to laugh. Bevran grinned as if he knew his looks were innately amusing and rejoiced in it.
Arrant nodded awkwardly, and wished he’d had more to do with boys his own age before now. He found he rarely knew quite what to say. ‘Do either of you know a girl called Sam? An Illusa? Bit younger than us?’
‘Sam? Nah, I don’t think so.’
‘No,’ Bevran said. ‘Don’t know any Sam. But then, I don’t know all the crimmies, or the weeds.’
‘All the what?’
‘Crimsons and greens—Illusos and Theuros.’
‘Oh.’ It was going to take him time to learn all the student slang. ‘And what’s a sprout?’
Perradin answered that one. ‘Hey, there’s lots of stuff you don’t know, isn’t there? That’s what the girls call us boys. And we call them buds. Because of—’ He made a gesture in the chest area and Bevran rolled his eyes appreciatively.
Just then Arrant caught sight of Lesgath making his way out of the hall, using the door that would take him back to the practice ground. He was alone, and he failed to notice Arrant. It seemed Sam had been right; Lesgath had intended to release him. When he turned away, Serenelle Korden caught his eye. She had her head cocked to one side and was watching him, her gaze thoughtful. Or was it calculating? She had made him look a fool on the practice ground.
He turned his attention back to Perradin and Bevran. ‘What do we do after lunch?’ he asked.
‘Classroom stuff.’ Perradin counted the subjects off on grubby fingers. ‘History and geography, mathematics and geometry, the theory of Magor magic and healing, battle theory and logistics and ethics. It’s all right, I s’pose. Some of it’s interesting stuff, and Lesgath and Grantel and their barbarian hordes aren’t in our class, thank the Mirage. Serenelle is though. I never know what the sands she’s thinking. Are you any good at geometry?’
‘Not bad. It was one of my favourite subjects.’
‘Solid! You can help me.’
Arrant’s first days at the Academy were not as bad as he had feared. Much of the normal class work he had already covered with his Tyranian tutors. He enjoyed the classroom atmosphere, even though he sometimes found the other students childish, a stray thought he was wise enough to hide. They had not lived the kind of life he had. Their early childhood had been spent in the Mirage, cradled by the charm of Mirage Maker eccentricities.
Lesgath ignored him most of the time. If the combat class necessitated some kind of interaction, he was polite, if distant. Arrant, knowing Lesgath’s private face did not match his public one, was equally polite but cautious. Serenelle always seemed to be watching him, assessing. He guessed she continued to eavesdrop, and he was circumspect in what he said to Perradin and the others, but as far as he could tell, she did nothing to harm him. Firgan came to watch his combat classes several times. He did not speak, and as usual Arrant felt nothing of his emotions, but the critical assessment of his gaze was unfriendly.
Unfortunately, within a day of his arrival, everyone seemed to know that the Mirager’s son had no reliable control over his cabochon and had to be specially tutored by Ungar, who usually taught the elementary classes. Worse still, he was soon the victim of a series of petty indignities as well as anonymous and malicious innuendo. When he left his writing tablet on his desk one lunchtime, someone scratched a message into the wax: They won’t wean you till you learn how to pee standing up. Perradin told him that some of the senior students were openly wondering if he should really be Mirager-heir, given his disability. One of his fellow students, a girl called Vevi, asked him, in front of many of their classmates, if he could really melt them all by accident, as the rumours said.
‘Don’t take any notice,’ Perradin said.
‘But could you really?’ Vevi persisted.
Because she sounded more interested than nasty, he answered honestly. ‘Probably, but I’d have to be trying to hurt you first. Don’t worry, I shan’t mince you or splinter the Academy b
y accident.’ And yet, even as he spoke the words, there was a cold, hard lump in his stomach. ‘At least, I don’t think so…’ he added to himself.
Vevi looked disappointed, but Perradin nodded equably. Nothing seem to faze him, not even his constant mishaps due to his clumsiness. Perradin never did seem to see things. At first his lack of passion irritated Arrant, more used to Tarran’s bright exuberance, but after a day or two of Perradin’s calm, he began to appreciate his new friend. He was reliable. Kind.
But he wasn’t Tarran.
He kept waiting for Tarran to return, but the days went by without any touch of his mind. He remembered his brother’s last words: The Ravage is widening in the north and the Mirage needs the strength of every single one of us, just to withstand the spread. Arrant wanted desperately to talk to his father about it, but without Tarran, he had no way of proving he could communicate with his brother. He quelled the urge.
All the other students stayed in the Academy, eating in the refectory and sleeping in dormitories, but Arrant remained in his own bedroom, taking his supper every night with his father.
They were awkward meals, with both of them feeling their way, trying to find some common ground, searching for a mutual trust, but never truly finding it. Temellin never again alluded to the events that had led up to Arrant’s leaving Tyr. Arrant knew his father was trying hard to be kind, to be fair, to be loving, but he never forgot that first unguarded moment, when Temellin’s feelings were written on his face for him to read. He never forgot his father’s disbelief at a time when he’d needed his trust, or that Temellin had once rejected him. He remembered, but he still strove to please and be the kind of son Temellin would have wanted.
It hurt to see the worry in Temellin’s eyes as Arrant continued to fail to control his cabochon power reliably. Temellin doubted his son’s competence.
‘Did you know,’ he asked Temellin one evening, as they sat beside the fire in the Mirager’s apartments after dinner, ‘that many of the students in the Academy believe that my position as Mirager-heir will never be confirmed by the Magoroth? That the Council will try to declare Firgan Mirager-heir in my stead?’
‘Student gossip. It doesn’t mean that it will happen. Arrant, there has to be consensus—and that includes my consent as well. We have yet to see what happens to your power once you get your Magor sword.’
‘What if—um, I mean, won’t it be better that Kardiastan has a skilled Mirager, rather than one like me?’ He shivered and moved closer to the fire. ‘But not Firgan,’ he thought. ‘Please, not Firgan.’
Temellin shoved another bundle of tightly bound reed fuel onto the coals before answering. That was another thing Arrant had found out; wood was scarce in Kardiastan, far too scarce to be burned. ‘If there were a suitable candidate in the line of succession, I might consider it,’ his father admitted, his honesty painful. ‘But Firgan? Believe me, you would be a much better Mirager than Firgan. True, he is popular with many who fought alongside him. If I could be sure he was also a wise and compassionate man, I would say to you—let him be the heir.’
He ran a hand through his hair in a troubled gesture. When his fingers snagged in the leather tie, he pulled it off in exasperation. ‘Being the Mirager of Kardiastan is a thankless task. I thought once that I loved the power, but then I had to give up the woman who has meant more to me than any other; I had to marry a woman I did not much like; I had to separate myself from my son and see him come back to me as a stranger. I had to lead a nation into war and watch as good people died.
‘It’s not a fate I’d inflict on my son if it weren’t necessary.’
‘But you think it is? Necessary?’
‘If you aren’t the heir, then it will be either Korden or Firgan. Korden doesn’t want it. He thinks he has more influence being my adviser, and that I would trust him less if he was my heir. Not necessarily true, but he believes it is. As for Firgan? I don’t like him. During the war he had a reputation for being needlessly ruthless. He’s charming when he puts his mind to it, generous with money, and Korden won’t hear a word said against him—but I dread the idea that he might rule this land. There’s nothing tangible I can use to discredit him; he’s too clever for that.’
Even though all the shutters were closed, the chill of a frosty desert night had entered the room and he warmed his hands at the tlames. ‘Gretha—Korden’s wife—is a singularly silly woman who has alternately spoiled her children or played them off against one another. She has never instilled any ethical values into any of them. She’s just taught them to present a respectable face to the world.’
‘You think I’d be a better ruler?’ Arrant couldn’t help the surprise that slid into his voice.
‘Yes.’
The brevity and certainty of Temellin’s answer took Arrant aback. ‘But you don’t know me.’
‘I know Sarana. I know Garis. I know what they say about you. And I am getting to know you. I like what I see. I am hoping that one day you will trust me with the truths that you hide, whatever they are.’
Arrant sidestepped that subject. ‘But what about my power? I’ve killed people when I didn’t mean to and I’ve been unable to call on my power when it was necessary.’
‘We’ll find a way to train you in its use. Arrant, this land needs a future Mirager of better calibre than anyone in Korden’s family. The world is changing with the break-up of the Exaltarchy. The Magor are generally too inward-looking, so we need someone like you, who knows more of the world. I’d like you to come to terms with your destiny.’
He wanted to reject the idea outright, but heard instead the echo of a voice in his head: I have to be able to live with myself. Or rather, I have to die knowing how I have lived. Brand’s words to him, spoken with the knowledge that he was soon to die, asking Arrant to remember, asking him to have courage. Gods, how could he have forgotten that? Brand, showing in his last moments that you had to accept duty, responsibility and sacrifice as being part of any life lived well. Arrant choked on the denial he had been about to voice.
Temellin noticed his turmoil but did not remark on it. He went across to the table and poured himself some wine. ‘Would you like some?’ he asked. ‘I can add some water.’
‘Yes, please.’
As he came back to the fire and handed over the goblet, he said, ‘There’s something else I need to tell you. I have no tangible basis for saying this—it’s just a gut reaction that I have, born perhaps of many years of war and other horrors. Be very careful around Firgan.’
Arrant remembered the shaft of malice from the man when they had met, and stirred uneasily. ‘You mean he might try to harm me?’
Temellin paused, as if embarrassed. ‘I’m probably overreacting.’
Arrant stared at him, trying unsuccessfully to sense something of his emotions. He fell back instead on his own instincts, thoughts flying, and asked, ‘Gods of Elysium—that’s why you delayed my return to Kardiastan? You thought I might be in danger from Korden’s family? That Firgan might want to kill me?’
‘Well, that wasn’t the reason in the beginning. At first it was because of the Ravage and the danger posed by the legions. But once we were free again, and back in Madrinya? Yes. By then Firgan was older and without a war to occupy him, and I feared what he might do to a young boy.’ He shrugged. ‘I had no proof, nothing—just something in my gut. No one can close themselves to Magor scrutiny all the time, you know—not even you! Some whisper of my sensing power when Firgan is near urges me to caution. It’s why I want you to continue sleeping in this pavilion and not with the other students. I’m being careful. Just think of the trouble I would get into from Sarana if I let something happen to you.’
They looked at each other, imagining—and exchanged grins.
‘Would it be all right if I go out into the city?’ Arrant asked. ‘Buildermaster Barret has sent me an invitation to look at the drainage on the next Academy rest day. I suppose the City Councillors must have told him I was interested.’
Arrant nodded, pleased that Temellin trusted him not to disobey. ‘Why would Firgan ever do anything violent, though? I mean, what about our Covenant with the Mirage Makers? Misuse of power would mean no more Mirager swords and therefore no more cabochons and therefore no more Magor power. No Magor would risk that happening, surely.’
‘What if he didn’t care what happened after him?’ Temellin shook his head as if he, too, didn’t quite believe it could happen. ‘I’m not convinced Firgan does care. Arrant, please, I do ask this of you: do your very best to be confirmed as the Mirager-heir.’
Later that night, lying on his pallet with his hands behind his head gazing through the open shutter out at the bright studs in the night sky, Arrant considered that. And terror rippled through him because he knew something Temellin did not. Something Tarran had told him. We may not have much longer, Tarran had said back in Tyr. Come back home.
If Firgan realised that, then what would stop him from breaking the Covenant and behaving as reprehensibly as he liked if he became Mirager one day? After all, the outcome would be no different to what would probably occur anyway as a result of the death of the Mirage Makers. Arrant remembered the deliberately painful cabochon clasp the man had given him. He remembered the malice. With his powers and the help of a few like-minded Magor, Firgan could destroy the hard-won peace of the nation and turn Kardiastan into his personal arena of cruelty and arbitrary despotism.
A light wind rucked the surface of the vale lake, but that wasn’t what startled the young lad fishing at the lakeside. It was the smell that travelled across the water on the breeze, an odour of putrefaction as if a whole herd of animals had died out there somewhere, and been left to rot. The boy gasped at the stench, at its intensity. It burned the insides of his nostrils and the surface of his throat, scorched his skin like flame. He looked up and saw a cloud of dust bearing down on him. It curled over the jagged edges of the crest of the First Rake and poured down into the vale like thick soup.