Song of the Shiver Barrens

by Glenda Larke

  He could feel a few jiggling in his ears. Only it was more like an army marching down his ear canal with copper studs in their sandal soles. He extracted the grain in his eye, but others were already hitting his closed eyelids in relentless attack. Each was a tiny pinprick, almost unnoticeable of itself, but each was also part of a battle line of millions. His face was beginning to sting. The backs of his hands were raw. When he gasped, a phalanx danced into his throat. They crunched when he gritted his teeth, yet refused to be still even in his mouth.

  He was going to die by pinprick. One tiny wound at a time.

  Maybe the Mirage Makers would come back. They had come from the Mirage to give him his sword, so they must have been aware of his arrival on the rake. Just as they were of all the young Magoroth who came to receive their weapon. So why wouldn’t they be aware of him now?

  ‘Because,’ the voice of reason told him, ‘you are under the Shiver Barrens now, blocked by the sand, and the sands eat Magor power. And because something tore them away—which might be the same thing that would stop them returning…’

  Tarran would come if he heard. And in the past he had always known; right across the Alps, he had known. But perhaps his brother had blocked him out of his part of the collective mind that was the Mirage Makers. Perhaps he didn’t want to hear from Arrant.

  ‘Oh, mirageless soul,’ he thought wretchedly, ‘once Tarran realises how I died, he’ll blame himself.’ He unwound his cloth belt and flapped it at the surge of sand erupting in his face. And saw a formless lump of a shape crossing in front of him from right to left, almost swallowed up by the swells of sand. He screamed, ‘Wait! Wait!’ And choked on grit.

  The shape stopped, turned and came stumbling towards him. His first thought had been that it was the nebulous form of a Mirage Maker, but now he realised this was a person, wrapped in a cloak and clutching a Magor sword. Suffering, just as he was. The golden glow from the weapon spluttered ineffectually like a guttering lamp flame.

  His father pulled him into a hug and wrapped him in a second cloak just as the sword’s light dimmed and vanished.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘There’s got to be something else we can do,’ Garis thought wildly. ‘We can’t lose them. What about a whirlwind? Maybe I can push a path through the sands. If I stand on the rake, then my power will work…’ No sooner had the thought come, than he used the power of his sword to start a whirl of air. He built it up high and fast. He whirled it stronger and tighter. Around him people yelled and banged and clapped. The guards slapped the flat of their swords against their bucklers. The servants battered metal kitchen pots together. He turned the whirlwind into the Shiver Barrens, trying to bludgeon a way through. To plough a path through to Arrant and Temellin. If he could find them.

  It didn’t work. The sands ate the whirlwind. They drew it downwards and sucked it of power, sucked it dry just as children suck juice from an orange, until all that was left was an aimless breeze that stirred the grains not one whit.

  ‘What about water?’ Samia shouted at him. ‘Fill the wind with water, keep it well above the sands so that they can’t suck away the power, and then drop the water. Would it, um, flatten the grains, do you think?’

  He thought of the Rift, of the winds that carried water in them, drenching all who rode that way. ‘Worth a try.’

  He built another whirlwind of power and used it to sweep up all the water he could find in the crannies and hollows of the rocks, and from the soak behind the rake. But when he dropped it from above, the grains parted to let the shower fall to the ground, then closed up behind it. Their frenetic dance did not slow. Garis swore.

  He changed his tactics. He drew lines with water, thin trickles dropped by the whirlwind, falling in patterns like the spokes of a gigantic fan-shaped spider’s web, with himself at the apex. Pathways to safety—if there was anyone alive to see one of them.

  Temellin swung his sword in an arc. The faintest flare of colour came into the blade and disappeared before Arrant could be sure he had seen it. Grains flew into his eyes and he was forced to close them.

  Temellin put his mouth against Arrant’s ear. ‘Keep your eyes closed. Grab me around the waist. Keep your head buried in my back.’

  Arrant did as he was told, and stumbled in his father’s wake as they moved off. His thoughts were jostling horror. How could Temellin see unless he kept his eyes open? He needed to see the flare from the sword to keep a straight line to the rake. Arrant thought of the single grain of sand jiggling under his eyelid. He thought of enduring the rasping of countless grains against the eyeball. And in his despair, he thought his heart would stop. Temellin would go blind. He shuddered. Not once, but in endless spasms.

  Temellin ran at a shambling gait, doubled over, one eye closed, the other looking directly down at the ground. He had wound his cloth belt around his head, to swathe his nose and mouth and his closed eye in its folds. He held his sword with the point in his line of vision. The top of his head faced into the swirls of sand.

  ‘Sweet hells,’ Arrant thought, ‘how can he survive?’

  The pain continued. Pinpricks on top of pinpricks. Sand grains ricocheting off the walls inside his ear. Slivers burrowing under his fingernails, leaving trails of fiery pain like red-hot sparks. Grains coming up from under the cloak in their blind dance, to find and irritate the crevices of his body. Grains pushing at his eyelids. Grains joggling into his nose. He knew he was bleeding, and disregarded it. It must be worse for his father. Much worse.

  It seemed to last forever. Pain, stumbling, more pain, skin rubbed raw, desperation. Then Temellin stopped. Arrant cracked his eyelids apart and saw him swing his sword through an arc, only to have it remain quiescent.

  ‘No more power,’ Temellin told him, and coughed, an unpleasant rasping sound. His uncovered eye was streaming blood. ‘We’ll have to guess from here on in. Hope my sensing abilities return. Listen for a noise, Arrant. It might be our only chance.’ He rewound the cloth about his head, uncovering his protected eye.

  Arrant choked, knowing what that must mean. He bent his head in despair, fumbling to cover his own face—and saw a mark on the ground. His eyes teared, a desperate attempt to rid the eyeballs of the grains that scratched at them. He tugged at Temellin’s arm and pointed. There was water on the rock beneath their feet. A thin trail of water, leading away to the right and the left.

  ‘Garis,’ Temellin whispered. More blood wept from his nose and mouth and ears. ‘Ingenious.’

  ‘Which way?’ Arrant asked. There was no way to tell whether to turn left or right. No way to know in which direction to follow the trail.

  ‘Listen.’

  Temellin tried to enhance his hearing, and failed. Arrant, who had never been able to do so with any reliability, used his normal hearing instead. And heard nothing either. His necklet writhed unpleasantly at his neck. He touched it and felt the carved runes move under his fingertips once more. This time he kept his hand there long enough to be positive he wasn’t imagining it. The grooves in the obsidian writhed. He was overwhelmed by smell. And feelings. Such odd emotions. Boredom. The pleasant sleepy boredom of someone—of lots of someones—who enjoyed doing nothing. Sandhells, was he going mad? He strained, trying to pin down the location. Looked at his cabochon. No colour. Closed his eyes, wanting to scream with the irritation under his lids. Not his cabochon. His necklet. Warm at his throat. Not people, animals. Shleths. Sleepy, bored, smelly shleths. He pointed to his right. ‘That way,’ he said with certainty.

  And Temellin accepted his certainty. He pushed Arrant down under the cloak again, and they moved off. Arrant kept his eyes closed. And thought of his father, who could not. Who had to watch that thin dribble of water that was going to lead them to safety.

  Some time later, Arrant had no idea how long, Temellin staggered and fell. Arrant knelt beside him, rewrapped his head to protect his injured bleeding eyes, and then tried to lift him. He wasn’t strong enough.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ Teme
llin whispered. ‘Follow the water, Arrant. Your chance. You must live.’

  Arrant hesitated. Leave him?

  ‘That’s an order from your Mirager.’

  But Arrant caught the echo of Brand’s voice in his head. He thought now he really understood what Brand had meant. When you die, you do so knowing how you lived. And if you haven’t lived well, then your death is hard and bitter. He said, ‘Papa, I couldn’t live with myself if I did that. Put your arm around my shoulders. I know where the camp is. It’s not far, and I don’t need to use my eyes to find it now.’

  He hauled his father up and thought of the shleths, heard them, smelled them. The fire of the necklet runes branded his skin with pain. And the two of them staggered on.

  There were hands grabbing him, voices crying out. The cloak was flung off. He opened his eyes. His sword—so dearly bought—clattered to the rock, and lay ignored at his feet. His gaze sought his father. Temellin had dropped to his knees, his hands covering his face. Garis and Samia were kneeling beside him. Garis was peeling off his clothing. Samia grabbed the Mirager’s hand, cabochon to cabochon.

  Someone took Arrant’s left hand and his pain halved in intensity. Someone else was stripping his clothes off, too. He wanted to protest, he desperately wanted to go to his father’s side, but one of the Theuros guards, Farrenmith, kept a firm hold on his arm. ‘We’ve got to get your clothes off,’ he explained, ‘so any remaining grains of sand can find their way back to the Shiver Barrens. And then we want to start the healing process.’

  ‘Father?’ he asked, coughing. His throat felt dry and raw. Blood trickled from his nose and from the corner of his lips. Something still jiggled in his ears. A thunderous noise, deafening him. ‘I want to know—’

  ‘Garis and Samia are the best healers we have here,’ Farrenmith said, patting his shoulder. ‘Samia says your father is worse off than you are, so they are attending to him. Lie back, Arrant. Hey, someone get water here!’

  His thoughts were muddled. Samia—she had said she was training in healing, but she was only a child. What could she know? He strove to hear what Garis and Samia were saying, but someone pushed him down onto some soft pelts in the shade. Too weak to struggle, he was forced to acquiesce.

  ‘We will wash the blood away and start the healing process,’ Farrenmith told him. ‘I am going to pour oil into your ears. Lie still.’

  Absurdly he began to feel drowsy. He didn’t want that, and tried to push sleep away. ‘Will he be all right?’ he asked. He was naked and someone was washing his face. Liquid trickled into one of his ears, then the other, mercifully stilling that horrible battering against his eardrum.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Farrenmith said, his tone soothing. ‘His skin’s seeping, just like yours, but that we can fix. It’s only his eyes they are worried about.’

  Only his eyes. Only. Vortexdamn it! He tried to struggle up, but slipped further towards sleep. ‘Blast them,’ he thought. ‘They are doing that.’ The Theuros. In their efforts to aid his body’s healing, they were pushing him into rest. ‘Rot them all…’

  When he woke, it was night. The sky was ablaze. Stars. The luminous glow of towering nebula clouds. He’d thought he’d never see them again. He felt sore, all over. His eyes stung and teared. His ears hurt, bruised inside and out. His skin felt raw everywhere. It was bitingly cold; his nose, peeping out of the pelts heaped on him, was freezing. He turned his face to the left and saw the pristine white of a peaceful Shiver Barrens, frozen into stillness by the sparkle of frost. He saw the guards, who’d built a fire using dried pats of shleth dung, warming their hands to flames that smelled of burning grass.

  He turned his head the other way and saw the wrapped bundle that was his father. Oil lamps placed on the rocks burned steadily in the still night air, but he could see little. Garis sat cross-legged beside Temellin, holding his hand. There was no one else close by.

  ‘Garis? How—how is he?’ he asked, and dreaded the answer. Dreaded it with a burrowing fear that lodged deep in his gut, that dug into his bones and ached there.

  Garis relinquished his hold and stood to come across to him. He knelt, sitting back on his heels, and said, ‘He’s not in any danger, don’t worry. He has eaten, and he is sleeping.’

  ‘His—his eyes?’

  There was a pause that told him everything he did not want to hear. Then, ‘They appear to be badly scarred. We have tried to set healing in motion, but I don’t think the prognosis is good. The damage is, um, severe.’

  ‘What in the seven layers of hell does that mean?’

  ‘Right now he can’t see, Arrant. He can’t see at all. I’m sorry.’

  ‘He’s—he’s totally blind?’

  Garis nodded. ‘It looks that way. It’s hard to say at this time. Maybe it won’t be as bad as it looks.’

  ‘No. Oh, no.’ Hoarse words stuck in his throat. Garis levered him up and gave him a sip of water. He drank, spluttered, then clutched at the Magori’s hand. ‘It can’t be,’ he whispered. ‘I mean, how did things go so wrong? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I didn’t—oh, gods, Garis, why didn’t I think more about how I was going to get back? I didn’t realise what it was going to be like in there. So—so difficult to see anything. I couldn’t find my way. I would have asked, but the Mirage Makers just—just vanished. And then the sands started to change.’

  ‘It was our fault,’ Garis said. ‘Mine and Temellin’s. We should have given it more thought. We knew you had problems with your powers. We should have sent you in holding a cord, or something. Ravage hells, Arrant, I’m sorry.’ He closed his eyes and dropped his head, struggling with his emotions. ‘It wasn’t your fault. How could you know the Mirage Makers would disappear before you reached the rake? They’ve never done that before.’

  Arrant battled the impulse to cry. He felt like a three-year-old again, not understanding the larger world. A short time ago he had looked forward to receiving his sword. Things had gone wrong so fast.

  He didn’t sleep again after Garis went back to his healing of Temellin. He lay awake looking out on that night sky, the lush black greying with the coming of dawn, the twinkling beads of the stars fading as he watched. The frozen clouds of the horn of the Cornucopia dimmed from fire-red to orange as the sun crept up to the horizon. The Shiver Barrens themselves looked so harmless: glistening blue-white, so untouched, so faultless, so cold, so silent. How could these be the same sands that had taken his father’s sight with their horrible dance?

  He rose and moved across to Temellin. Garis relinquished his place to him and left them together. Temellin was wrapped tightly in his cloak, apparently still asleep as light stole into the world once more.

  Another day. A new dawn. Arrant had his Magor sword, somewhere. And his father was blind. Made blind in exchange for a blade that was useless in his son’s grip. Arrant dropped his head into his hands, but he couldn’t even cry. He felt he’d never cry again. Some griefs were too bitter—and corroded too deep—for tears. His father had said he must leave behind his childhood. Well, he had. His Magor sword may not work for him, but he was a man now, for all that.

  We failed him, you and I, Tarran. And now he is blind. Did you hear me, brother? Did you hear me and not come?

  He couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t believe it. A Ravage attack had prevented him from coming. Or maybe it was because the Shiver Barrens was a world where Magor magic was always dimmed, and Tarran simply hadn’t heard him. The Shiver Barrens, it—they?—had their own magic, he knew. They were different, alien, and they smothered the power given to the Magor by the Mirage Makers. He shuddered. People underestimated the Barrens. They weren’t just lethal: they were alive. Sentient in some bizarre way. They spoke a language. The trouble was that no one could interpret it. His necklet had brought him to the edge of understanding, but had been unable to take him a step further, to communication. Just as it made him aware of the feelings of his mounts, but nothing more.

  He tried not to think about how to tell his m
other what had happened. And it was better not to remember that, when Temellin next opened his eyes, it would be to a world of darkness and the knowledge that he would probably never see again.

  ‘Think instead about the Mirage Makers,’ he told himself. ‘Think about how to help them.’ Think about why the Mirage Makers needed to use the Shiver Barrens. Could it be because, to communicate, they needed more than an illusion? They had to have something that was real. Like the song of the Shiver Barrens, which they then twisted into the speech they needed. He fingered the necklet runes and wished he understood more than he did.

  As the camp started to stir with the dawn, he found there was a limit to how much he could distract himself. When his father groaned in his sleep, and murmured his son’s name, Arrant wondered if he was always doomed to cause the people he cared about pain, disfigurement or death. His father, blinded while saving his life. Brand, killed saving Sarana from the consequences of his betrayal. Sarana, injured saving him from his folly. Foran, dead because Arrant had wanted to get closer to the battle. Soldiers, disintegrated because he couldn’t control his power. Tarran without his sanctuary because he, Arrant, had betrayed him.

  ‘I should have kept on walking into the Barrens…’

  He hadn’t spoken out aloud, but a hand gripped his in a strong, solid clasp. His father’s hand, finding his unerringly, his powers still strong. Closing over his fingers in comfort. His voice was hoarse as he said, ‘Thank you. You saved my life back there.’